adc and mid guide, ad buffs over all lots of buffs

Hey there, you curious Varus lover! I am Jochnes aka. Lissandragon, playing League of Legends over 6 years now! I loved to play Mid Lane Varus back in season 5 and 6, he got a lot of buffs lately and I think he is playable again! This is also helpful for Adc Varus players that chose to go for a poke build!

SUMMONER SPELLS - FLASH: Gives you the safety you need and can be used offensive with the Chain of Corruption + Flash combo! Barrier: A useful option against assasins so they can't finsh you, where they usually would. Barrier has a low cooldown of 3 minutes so you always got it when u need. Cleanse:Against teams with a lot of dangerous CC abilities it's a good choice, it may already be enough if they have one spell that you want to dodge with this in their mid or jungle position. For example: Cocoon, Glacial Prison, Light Binding, Charm and also Ignite Ignite: Good against champions that have a lot of healing like Swain. You have to aks yourself though if Barrier wouldn't be a better option.

Arcane Comet Arcane Comet: Guranteed hit on Hail of Arrows and Chain of Corruption, adding extra poke to Piercing Arrow. Manaflow Band Manaflow Band: Try to use it off cooldown in lane by using Hail of Arrows on the enemy, it adds extra mana to Muramana. Transcendence Transcendence: Will make you reach 45% CDR very fast, great synergy with the flat 4 second CDR of Piercing Arrow when hitting enemies marked by Blighted Quiver. Scorch Scorch: adds even more poke and makes it hard for enemies to survive early game. In long scaling games take Gathering Storm instead. Magical Footwear Magical Footwear: You get very gold efficient free boots that grant 10 extra movement speed, very good for safety! You can take Biscuit Delivery instead in a bad matchup, against high range like Xerath or assasins like LeBlanc to survive lane. Cosmic Insight Cosmic Insight: CDR is essential for Poke Varus, this is a must have!

Droan's Blade

Makes early laning very strong!

Tear of the Goddess

Get it as past as possible, use Piercing Arrow and Hail of Arrows in base to stack it up, can be upgraded into Manamune after Youmuu's Ghostblade if you don't need a power spike at that moment and want to get [[muramana] faster, because you get Mana on every auto attack then instead of only on ability casts! When finished it's super cost efficient

Ionian Boots of Lucidity

It's a cheap item which allows you to get other important items faster than with other boots and that's very good for poke Varus, the cooldown reduction is needed to get the 45% as soon as possible and less cooldown on summoner spells makes it much harder to catch you!

Mercury's Treads

Makes you less vulnerable to all-ins from champions with heavy CC.

Youmuu's Ghostblade

Very good stats, out of combat movementspeed lets you get into range for auto attack and your abilities, the active can be used defensively to run away from enemies or offensively to keep auto attacking and chase your enemies. Build Serrated Dirk as first piece item!

Duskblade of Draktharr

Grants good stats and also vision control with it's passive. Don't try to hard to get the empowered auto attack off, but there will be some times where you can, especially on Chain of Corruption catches and it's nice to have!

Manamune

Build it after your core lethality items, grants endless mana for poke and sustained damage! With this Poke Varus also becomes a huge threat for tanks.

Lord Dominik's Regards

Very cost efficient item as it now penetrates the full armor instead of bonus armor again! Build Mortal Reminder instead if you need the heal reduction, but lose some armor penetration for it.

Edge of Night

Good against squishy enemies with not a lot of armor, because the extra 18 lethality are more efficient then! The spellshield is a nice bonus, can be very useful against champions like Blitzcrank, Lux, Syndra and gives you more safety when goign for auto attacks or catches with Chain of Corruption

Maw of Malmortius

Very good against burst damage, buy Hexdrinker early on if needed and try to keep up the lifesteal and spell vamp granting passive of Maw of Malmortius by always damaging an enemy before it's running out. You can heal up with it very fast in late game!

Death's Dance

Very good against burst damage and poke, you can heal up with Piercing Arrow and the stats are insane!

Guardian Angel

Very good against Physical Damage heavy teams, especially against Zed and Talon you want this!

Mercurial Scimitar

Very good against strong CC abilities, similar to Cleanse. Only buy it against a lot of Magic Damage in the enemy team or when you really need it's active. It provides sustain and also mobility!

Blade of the Ruined King

Against tanky teams you can buy this as last item or if it's a long game, sell your boots for it! Good synergy with Muramana and Varus obviously!

Varus has a strong early lane, auto attack the minions permanently and use Hail of Arrows and auto attacks on the enemy whenever you can. The Arcane Comet and Scorch will make trades very good for you in addition to the 575 attack range, high attack damage and life steal the slowed enemy will have a hard item if you use it to your advantage.

When you bought Tear of the Goddess you can try to get lane priority by constantly auto attacking the minions and then using your spells on them. The Blighted Quiver active can also be used for this!
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You can call your jungler for a gank, Chain of Corruption is a 2 seconds snare with very high range! If the enemy plays to safe, get a push and roam or invade and poke or catch the enemies there!
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If it's too dangerous to push your lane, try to poke your enemy with Piercing Arrow. Charge it up before the minions arrive mid lane because the cooldown of it already begins on cast, so you will have it up again soon!
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Piercing Arrow's cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds when hitting an enemy champion that is marked by Blighted Quiver. Chain of Corruption also inflcits that on enemies, so you can get a lot of Piercing Arrow's of if you are smart! Time Piercing Arrow so that only one stack from Blighted Quiver remains on the enemy so that you can get 2 resets of it and then the third from auto attacks!
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Also calculate in that Chain of Corruption can split off up to 2 times and inflicts Blighted Quiver over a period of time which will then last for 6 seconds. So there will be a lot of people running around with it and you just need to hit one to get the CDR on Piercing Arrow!


Piercing Arrow has enough range to be casted out of vision of the enemy and deals a ton of damage. Try to not hit minions with it when aiming for a champion as the damage goes down for every unit hit, thought try to hit as many champions as possible!
Think about what your enemy is planing to do next and watch his movement. There are a lot of factors that come together when trying to hit a skill shot, probably the most important thing is how accurate you are using the hit box and your mouse. It's something that you can only learn by doing, don't be afraid of doing mistakes and remind yourself that you will become better at it!


The heal reduction from Hail of Arrows is very good against other Adc's because they won't profit as much from their lifesteal or Heal and would have to run out of it, but that takes to much time for them. Use uncharged Piercing Arrow in between you atuo attacks to prock Blighted Quiver bonus damage and burst down enemies.
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The Blighted Quiver max health bonus damage and Muramana on-hit damage also make Varus a DPS machine, never forget about that! Only use it's active on low health enemies to execute them with empowered Piercing Arrow!

Use Hail of Arrows slow to hit Chain of Corruption easier. Always keep track of enemies running into Hail of Arrows as it will be a very good opportunity to him them even on big distance with Piercing Arrow.
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I hope you learned a lot about Poke Varus and vote up my this guide so more people are going to see it!