As of Patch 7.2, the quintessential jungler of League of Legends, Warwick, has been completely revamped from visuals to toolset. Even though he had a pretty hype trailer accommodating his remake, Warwick has been pretty much completely irrelevant with regards to competitive, and even top tier play.
Warwick’s New Toys
Aside from his passive, which is functionally almost still the same, the rest of Warwick’s kit has a distinctly different feel while still maintaining the same essential elements.
(Q) Jaws of the Beast – is a targeted dash that deals %HP and applies on hit effects
(W) Blood Hunt – gives Warwick passive attack speed and movement speed against low-HP enemies, and can be activated to run at people really quickly.
(E) Primal Howl – provides 2.5 seconds of pure damage reduction, culminating in an AOE fear around the wolf
(R) Infinite Duress – is his old ultimate, but as a skill shot with the ability to fly really far if you have tons of movement speed
Basically, you still need to do the same things to do well on Warwick. His level 3 gank has been slightly improved, as is his team-fighting thanks to Primal Howl. But on the whole, Warwick players are still looking to find isolated carries and jump on them.
The Ultimate Noob Trap
There’s been a lot of buzz around this rework, especially at lower rankings – and I totally get why. His kit is loaded with innate lifesteal and can basically win any 1v1 situation. Further, his mechanical simplicity make him a good fit down there.
The blood scent only adds to any low elo fears of this champion. Combine that with an ultimate ability that makes ADCs in 2017 an even more salient meme and his presence makes sense.
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So Why Does Warwick Suck?
In short. he’s not as good as the other junglers right now. The holy trinity of Lee Sin, Rengar, and Kha’Zix reign supreme, followed shortly by Rek’Sai. Warwick doesn’t share the same mobility that this top tier has. Further, lifesteal is a totally overrated stat, especially this season. For example, most marksmen are completely forsaking any lifesteal items until the 5th or 6th piece of their build.
If we look at the second tier of junglers, you get champs who are great at setting up picks: Elise, Evelynn, Zac. Each of them has a unique engage tool which serves as their respective competitive advantage. Warwick, while he has his own unique engage, is actually much more difficult to set up and incredibly easy to thwart with any team coordination.
Warwick isn’t actually that bad for the majority of players, but at a certain point he becomes pretty useless. We likely won’t see him in competitive play for… well… ever. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bring him out as your own pocket pick!
