Quote Originally Posted by PEACH View Post
Problems with Volibear jungling:

He's not as fast and his ganks aren't as strong as others. While he does have great CC with toss, and can move quickly, he doesn't exactly clear super fast or super high, and he's weak to invasion to some extent (the cooldown on bite is so high that if another jungler engages right after you use it, you really can't do anything to win the duel).

The lategame problems: He's not as inherently tanky as other people, and his bases aren't as great. While a fling and a good single target nuke are nice, he's not bringing the kind of AoE damage that Skarner or Shyv or Maokai will, or the AoE CC and single target deeps that Lee Sin will. The fact that his ult is a good on hit for magic damage but, being magic damage, scales terribly as people tank up is also problematic.

In general, I see him considered as OK; not good enough to justify nerfs and not bad enough to justify buffs. He basically brings decent, but not amazing strength everywhere.
His clear isn't anything to write home about, but it certainly doesn't feel slow. There are better gankers, but the ganks feel strong to me (though they are pretty heavily countered by immobilise, I must admit).

I'm not convinced on some of the late game problems there. His AoE damage with his ult active is actually pretty decent (especially when his attack speed is charged), and the fact that it's magic damage isn't really significant because you're not going to be building armour penetration anyway. Against a target without defensive items, it'll actually be stronger due to armour scaling. In terms of single target damage he gets more of an attack speed buff from W than Lee Sin does from his passive, and while Lee Sin has stronger damage abilities I think they probably come out with roughly similar damage potential. W is a long cooldown, but it hits like a truck compared to anything Lee Sin can do other than ulting, given a typical build on both characters.

Quote Originally Posted by fred dref View Post
For what it's worth, I think he's a lot stronger top than in the jungle, and I think he's also a lot stronger top than people give him credit for.
I'm not sure about him being stronger top, but he is very good top. Play him against GP and GP will end up having to sit as far away from you as possible hoping that he can leech a little bit of experience.

On Volibear in general, I suppose I have to broadly agree that he doesn't excel in any particular area (or with any particular stat, as pointed out by Dogmantra - though I do think at least Atmallet/Atmogs is a perfect bit of kit due to the health scaling and AS steroid). In higher level play, I suppose you want champions who are optimised for their role and will play exactly that role, but in my games, I like a champions that can be all rounders, and that's what Volibear feels like to me.