New WW Update Early Thoughts

I've only played two matches with him thus far, but I have over 1k games on old WW so I have some early pro/con feelings to put out there and get others' feedback for a healthy discussion.

Quick summary of skills and overall feel:

Passive change: Riot said Warwick will still be a new player's go-to jungler of choice for being a safe pick. Yeah, idk about that. With the removal of his sustain passive that healed him and kept him at a healthy level throughout JG he is very at-risk of early jg ganks from opposing team. Rengar's absolutely crap all over WW pre-6 for example and that has never been the case for WW. He could always hold his own and live to fight another day due to his sustain. Without the sustain WW feels somewhat glassy. He also is not a burst champ, and only has one damaging ability early. So I don't know what the hell the passive change can be considered other than a nerf to Warwick.

New Q - Feels fine. After some getting used to it might play out better. Where you land isn't always predictable as just Q'ing and walking away before with Wick as you have to be careful not to overstep as a melee champion in League. Better for ganking, I believe this might actually put WW back in top lane with an AP or CDR tank build potentially. For jungling, he has a longer animation so it does slow him down a tick.

New W - The new combined skill that crammed his Old crappy E toggle ability is where the unique 'fun' aspect of Warwick's new kit is centered. As to overall pro/cons over the old, I'm disappointed that Riot took away Warwicks main jungling lap speed ability with his Attack speed burst. It also helped him skirmish and your team push towers down fast, as well as solo drags and baron raids. Warwick's new Attack speed modifier is not nearly as helpful and slows his lap speed down considerably. Also, to use the Active W ability Warwick stops which is completely counterproductive to chasing, which is the main thrust of his kit.

New E - Basically giving Warwick a version of Noctorun's fear but instead of a spell dodge shield, a damage mitigator. Hands down this is superior to Warwick's previous underwhelming E movement speed up toggle. For style, I think Riot could have chosen something more unique and thematic for WW's new E, than just a skill copy/paste with a dash of flavor change from Nocturne.

New R - Yeah, it really sucks for competitive play. The arguments for Warwick player for years has been asking for more reliability in his Ultimate so 1,001 abilities, items, spells could counter or negate it's damage completely. Why in the hell would Riot think it a good idea to shove WW's ultimate into more of a epic fail direction? It is going to really suck for Warwick to miss his ultimate the million times going forward in this game that players Ult in only to have someone flash out predictably. Suppression needed to be true suppression. Instead WW now has a crappy skill shot R that is sloppy as heck to use.

The risk/reward was always present for Warwick. He risks his face going in to lock someone down, and the opposing team got to whale on him for it for the 2 seconds he's locked down a carry and is swiping away at them. Now his Ultimate is further infused with risk. Now he can miss completely even more often, or hit someone he has no interest in. So the rewards are even less likely to be achieved, but the risks are even higher, with further failure odds put into the dice roll.

Overall - Less useful competitively in ranked even than he was before. Not as tanky due to lack of passive sustain. More fun possibly, but target lock was enjoyable. He feels more like a berzerker kit now, except he doesn't have berzerker damage abilities to back up the play style. The new kit is sloppy. The passive was changed probably due to his new E mitigation but this isn't enough to keep up with kits like Rengar, VI, Kah, who have numerous significant spike damage abilities.

Just comparing Vi's kit versus Warwick's new kit. Why is it okay for Vi to target lock from a screen away and Ult to someone, drag all of their teammates in the path into a knockup and cc the hell out of the final target, when the new Warwick can't choose his target and will easily miss everyone often against skilled opponents with items, etc.? VI's entire kit damages opponents. Warwick still just has his Q and now a weaker passive, and an attack speed W that only kicks in when he's close to dying. He's majorly outclassed on paper. Nocturne who I discussed earlier can target lock on someone from a long ways away on the map with his Ultimate.

This new patch shifted Warwick into a bad spot. He's now just a really weak kit that can abuse less skilled players in league, but will be outclassed by almost everyone's kit severely. He's also so weak early on that you can't even risk chasing someone into opponents jungle as you can't survive anything as he still has no escape ability.

Last note, his appearance is less appealing. Bad direction to shift him to as a pet of Singed. Really dig my previous skin of Feral Warwick. New skin looks like some dimented teenage mutant ninja turtle experiment on a fox gone bad.

My scores weren't awful the couple games I played. First match I think I netted 10 kills, but removing his ability to dragon solo is a major crippler in his team utility as well as his tower pushing.

The tradeoffs for new kit vs old kit weigh heavily in favor of the old kit for utility. He's now just a much better finisher for opponents trying to flee fights. That one element doesn't present itself in enough situations to outweigh general usefulness in the 100 other areas of the game players see themselves in even when you're ahead in KDA, this kit doesn't feel as helpful to team.

Team buff Attack Speed for tower pushing was superior Old passive was superior Old ultimate was superior

New E Fear/mitigation ability does help some. Q-lunge does help some W - chasing ability is now fully realized.

Warwick's kit somehow still feels very badly outdated as he has no disengage/escape ability like every other jungler has now adays. His E has to be used in fights as he no longer has the amount of sustain built into his passive. So he can't rely on it's Fear trigger to get out of trouble.

Think Riot missed the boat on this one. His itemization also is in an odd spot. He still needs Attack speed to trigger his W 50% under HP ability and on-hit for ult, etc. but he has to build tank even more now just to survive a routine skirmish so his damage is going to be nerfed even harder.

It's hard to just rush BotRK after your jungle item as he's so glassy now. He feels like he's been pushed into the same usefulness and category of champion as Master Yi but worse. At least Yi does big damage if left ungarded to Towers. Warwick's W attack speed doesn't even trigger versus buildings so it's useless in pushing towers.

He's been nerfed, and it feels like Riot didn't even understand why some liked using Warwick for his subtle utility of dragon control and tower pushing with teammates.