https://lolalytics.com/lol/volibear/build/?lane=top

top volibear has a 50% winrate average, with a mix of bruiser items but mostly tank build. you can see by the win and pick percentages of these items that going for straight tank items consistently outperforms any investment into damage scaling, and bruiser mythics are picked enough with negative winrates that we can safely assume they're dragging down his proper winrate

https://lolalytics.com/lol/volibear/build/

jungle volibear has a 53% winrate, and if you check his item build % you will see comparatively little investment in damage whatsoever; he is solidly going to build full tank 80% of the time. a few reasons for this, i think:

• volibear gets insane value from haste more than anything since it so heavily affects his damage, his clear, and his tankiness, and many of his build options are cheap with 15-20 haste added in, he can very quickly get himself up to 40% CDR. He gets much more value from haste per-item than any dedicated damage stat like AP or AD

• volibear's very good base damage, which is also split between phys/magic, is better enabled by the more economic tank items letting him rush his build and abuse his superior early game as best he can. bruiser items are more expensive which makes him more dependent on snowballing, a tank item that gets finished quicker makes him more likely to get ahead to begin with

• his main bruiser items of choice, divine/trinity, both started performing much worse after 12.10. Divine because its shift to base AD worked out poorly for him, as his base AD is low to account for his passive and spell damage, and Trinity Force likely got worse because everyone is tankier, so its strong burst simply became worse to use unless you're committed to the side lane.

while he obviously needs a general nerf for at least his jungling, I think it's a good opportunity to give him the same thing similar bruisers like renekton and hecarim have gotten in the past; a slight nudge to push him back towards building at least 1 damage item after they started finding too much success on pure tank setups. It'd be a cool chance to play up the AP bruiser playstyle some people try to make work on him. I think perhaps a nerf to his spell damage with a bump up to his passive's damage scaling. Or his W's damage enhancement could be made to include on-hits in the % increase, which would do nothing for tank builds but would benefit Nashor's, Titanic, etc.

Thoughts?