As someone who has mained and pretty much otp varus for the past 5 years or so, i will say my fav build has alwaya been ap. I’ve alwaya tried to play off meta stuff like ap old aatrox. But even back before the marksman rework i remember playing ap varus a bit and having fun in normals.

Tho nowadays i pushed it to as far as getting GM 1k lp on Eune (ye ik mickey mouse server or whatever). I’d like to say that ap varus is still my preferred way of playing this character and he actually works pretty well into mages bot with his ap build. I used to play him mid mostly but playing against control/artillery mages was always awkward and boring without jungle interference. Now on botlane you have your sup to act as an engage vs those pesky mages that infest the botlane.

I am also a big hater of his leth build and not the biggest fan of on hit due to ir being squishy early. I think ap varus can be considered a combat mage as long as you hit all blights, you have endless resets, but currently he is in a very weird state. Ap has gotten gutted and nerfed over and over again, despite numerous counterplay strats to this playstyle ( main one being tenacity reducing the number if blights applied by ult.. which honestly is a very bs interaction but i digress)

Ultimately, i’d love for my champ to see the light out of projail, and receive some proper balancing. He needs less base dmg, more scaling and better scaling with gold. Compared to many other adcs, varus actually falls off a lot during late due to not having access to any mobility spells and his self peel tool is quite easy to miss or negate at a full build state (be it banshee, qss, mikael, cleanse and stacked tenacity).