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WW AD Nerf: Overkill After Meta Shift

SirPurrr··37 votes·12,161 views
Warwick

WW got nerfs to his Q and AD right before a massive JG meta shift. Instead of strong level 3 junglers, it's all about junglers with great level 2 and crab control.

Even before the meta shift, WW was not excelling at the highest MMRs and was essentially never chosen competitively all year. He had a high ban rate in NA but was at a sub 2% ban rate in KR. Most of his success came from people overstaying at low HP or ignoring his highly predictable top gank timing with level 3. He does not do raptors or krugs well so in general, he's easy to outplay/predict by the enemy jg.

He's deceptively hard to master but his skill floor isn't high so he'll always have a decent win rate even when weak. There aren't as many "bad mains" dragging it down. However, he's not in a good spot now. His AD nerf hurts his already bad scaling and should be reverted. In general, he didn't objectively need nerfs. People were just not adjusting their play.

24 Comments

Tundra Hunter16 votes

Thank you for this post. I've been spamming this everywhere in the boards. I've been a one-trick pony Warwick playing in mid-plat since season 4 (I mained him pre and post rework). The rework was a big shift, changing him from a weak early / strong late macro jungler (he was good at pro-active play and objective control) to a strong early very weak late ganking jungler. I stayed at around 60% winrate pre and post rework in plat with him (didn't climb because my winrate with other champs is about 40%).

The post rework Warwick was incredibly well balanced for his playstyle (strong early, weak late). As you said, people simply didn't adjust and didn't know how to play against him.

If anything, for lower elo balance, Riot could have shifted some of his power from early to late, to make him less of a low elo bully is the early phase of the game, and more relevant late which would've helped him at higher elo. That would have been good. - a buff to his q later rank, and nerf to his w / e early rank, was perfect. It was the first change on the PBE when they nerfed Warwick and it was a very good idea.

Then they actually decided to nerf his base AD and his q later rank, saying "he is too strong early.... let's nerf his late" (wtf is that reasoning?)

Warwick is still decent in term of winrate, but imo he is really weak and awful to play. You have to make huge play in the first 5 minutes because after that you're just a smite bot running around the map. Whether you win by snowballing early or lose ... it's really not satisfying. =(

Worst "balance change" ever in my opinion

Summonah123698 votes

Why Rito nerf my doggy Warwick instead of TEACHING PEOPLE HOW EASY IT IS TO KITE HIM!?

0 Hogapu1 votes

i'd be glad to know how you kite him :)

Summonah123691 votes

{quoted}

i'd be glad to know how you kite him :)

I keep my distance, poke and make him miss his ult on me. Then when he's low I come in and kill him.

SpecterVonBaren6 votes

Champ becomes hated, people complain that Riot is showing favoritism to them because they aren't nerfed. Riot nerfs them, other people come in and say that the previous people should have just learned how to fight against the champ but it's all Riot's fault for listening to the complainers. Both groups blame Riot, neither acknowledges that maybe, JUST MAYBE, it's themselves that are the problem.

Tundra Hunter4 votes

Boards had a consensus about Warwick being too oppressive early (easy gank snowball, can't be contested early in jungle) and weak late. His early is still oppressive. His late is even more crap. So, complaining before the change and after it does make sense in that case.

SpecterVonBaren1 votes

Oh? Can you point to where in the OP's post they say that? To me it looks like they said no such thing and are just making a general statement of "WW weak and shouldn't have been nerfed". Or are you putting words in their mouth so you can keep up the wailing?

HaIlMonitor4 votes

He looks fine except in D+. But he is made to be a champ for beginners so I don't see what the problem is?

Seer of Mind3 votes

Just because he's a low cost champion doesn't mean that he can't be good, look at Annie for example, shes a well-rounded mid laner and is both good for newbies and high skill players. Warwick on the other hand is half of that since he's a jungler, him being nerfed makes it harder on both new players and players who play him in higher elo.

HaIlMonitor2 votes

His kit is to forgiving and he is a stat check champion she he will always have these problems. Lets not forget he was one of the highest winrate junglers from rework until the scuttle changes.

Seer of Mind3 votes

How to counter warwick 101

item 3165 item 3033

Tundra Hunter2 votes

item 3076 - 1000g item 3123 - 800g summoner 14 item 3140 - 1300g (also worked with "no counter" pre rework Warwick) item 3222

TwitchInMyPants2 votes

{quoted}

His kit is to forgiving and he is a stat check champion she he will always have these problems. Lets not forget he was one of the highest winrate junglers from rework until the scuttle changes.

In solo q, mostly at mid-low ELO where people are disorganized and his single target R can more easily get to a desired target and he has more overextending enemies to get at with his W speed. If he's balanced for competitive his solo Q winrate should be at about 52%, if he's breaking over 55 or more at the highest ELOs then there's a real problem. However most of the time he was around that 52% range where his kit advantages being exceptional against disorganized teams pushes him a bit higher than more team dependant champs.

He might've needed nerfs at some points but nerfing him in an environment where things that are good against him are coming out of the woodwork and are contesting slots for the best jungler are not changes that should stick to him. But just citing that he has a good winrate when his design is going to push him there doesn't really mean much. Champs like Jax and Kayn are also similarly better in solo q and have maintained solid winrates for months and they are in weaker competitive... I don't see the same kind of outcry for those champs. There'll always be some kind of bully/punisher that can maintain a high winrate even if counterplay exists.

Velasan4 votes

He didn't need the nerfs, but he's flexible enough that it doesn't matter too much.

The thing that hurt him the most was changing machete to not give attack speed. He's one of those champions that will always be complained about though, because if you don't play around the blood scent passive they just spent the whole game with a Warwick biting them on the heels. Similar to Yi if you don't play around what he can do just going to get mauled.

IMO I hope they undo the nerfs, but if they don't he's not terrible right now so we'll see what happens.

RekSai CoffeeCo4 votes

Yep riot just wants to nerf champs instead of fixing the jungle/scuttle problems THEY created.

LordGeovanni2 votes

Id feel better if i didnt auto lose as a melee champion versus warwick when i reach 50% hp.

GelsominoKiller2 votes

Probably there was a time were he was slightly dominant due to favorable meta (items, competitors etc), and a Nerf was warranted.

Anyway the meta shifts pushed him down and that is a shame.

Slythrin Umbreon2 votes

Honestly, I'd rather see the jungle get fixed over WW buffs.

Tundra Hunter1 votes

I'd like to see both.

Alex h87212 votes

Warwick is one of my favorite champs, he has a deceptively high amount of outplay potential in his kit that you learn about as you get more experienced playing him, Q follow/displacement immunity and R leap immunity to CC are huge, his buildpath is super versatile with E rewarding you for building tankyness (Damage reduction always scales well w/ defenses), E and R giving you the option to be the main engager for your team, and Q's applying on hits (same with R) allows you to build on hit damage items if your comp needs damage (with item 3078 item 3748 warwick does highly respectable damage).

I'm just a silver, but i think WW is in a pretty OK place right now, maybe a little bit of tuning on his base stats/base stat growth, or fixing bugs w/ his W (for example the bug where when you come back from grey screen and an enemy is low you will not immediately get the bloodtrail/ms boost) could help him be more viable in higher levels of play (man, would i love to see warwick played in the LCS), but i don't want the mistake to be made of overbuffing him because even if he is weak (at higher levels) it is not by a very large margin and it would be easy to over buff him which would eventually lead to big nerfs and a high banrate, which i don't want to see.

Oblivious Denial2 votes

WW has been strong ever since his rework. It's about time for him to spend some time at C tier.

LordGeovanni1 votes

Id feel better if i didnt auto lose as a melee champion versus warwick when i reach 50% hp. when Most burst in the game one shots you if you dont build defense 80%s you if you build one resist type and 70% you if you build normal bruiser build which is mostly tank and still 65%'s you with a full tank build versus both damage types.

Pubbi1 votes

Agreed. Riot buff my doggo please. Warwick

Tundra Hunter4 votes

Not a straight buff in my opinion. A power shift from early to late.

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