@Morello: Can we talk about Warwick again? It's been two years...

A little over two years ago, I, Morello, and the community had a lovely heart to heart about Warwick.

Suffice it to say, nothing has happened. There's been no love for the old dog. Or rather, I should say nothing good has happened. Wriggle's Lantern happened, and Skirmisher's Saber happened, and toplane Warwick happened, and now look at him: he's a shadow of whatever faded glory he might have had. Long story short: something needs to happen. Something small, something big, anything. Something's gotta happen.

Thing is, I don't think Warwick needs a whole lot. He's not that far off from being what Warwick needs to be. It's just that he doesn't have the right levers, as riot calls it. He's too one dimensional. He autos things. He autos them to 50% so he can run fast to auto more. He blinks and then autos them. And he occasionally Q's, but not too much, because mana issues.

Now, I've given a lot of thought to Warwick, and how to rework him, and I think I've got it. Riot's been on this big "mini-game" bent for a little while, and while they do get silly at times, I think that's just what Warwick needs. Not only that, he already has the perfect base for it in place: his passive.

-All Warwick needs is a few more levers. And a mini game.

1. Once Warwick achieves maximum stacks of his passive on a target, killing the target restores mana based on the max health of the unit.
2. Using Q on a target with stacks of eternal thirst reduces the cooldown of Q. The more stacks on a target, the greater the reduction.
3. Warwick's ultimate gets an overhaul. Infinite duress changes into a lower cooldown, charge based version that dashes instead of blinking. It suppresses for 0.75s and strikes twice.

-So, here's what these changes are designed to fix:

1. Mana problems. It's designed to completely remove his mana issues.
2. Remove all top lane viability. A Warwick with no mana issues is a top lane nightmare. Since you have to strike a minion three times and then lasthit it to get back a mediocre amount of mana, all while being unable to respond to any harass due to losing stacks, the passive is designed to make getting mana back an absolute nightmare.
3. More interesting gameplay. People like pressing buttons. You get to press Q and R more.
4. An ult that isn't countered by literally everything.
5. An ult that can't 100-0 after a couple of items. He's not an assassin.
6. Clear speed and early clears. As a jungler that essentially only wants to buy Devourer, his clears are painfully slow. Being able to abuse his Q in the jungle will drastically increase his clear rate.
7. For being the king of single target damage, his early dueling is ridiculously weak.
8. Make his ultimate useful lategame for more than just picking off people out of position.
9. Give him some cc that isn't on a ridiculous cooldown without affecting his other abilities.
10. Lastly, decisions. A more robust kit means more decisions. Makes playing him more interesting.

-Don't forget, I said these changes introduce levers. Here's the levers:

1. Number of passive stacks. Considering his mana and Q are both based off his passive. If his laning gets strong, four stacks will effectively neuter any ability to regain mana. And if he's just able to stack and go ham with his Q too easily, then stacks hits that as well.
2. Passive damage. If stacks mean something and he has actual damage apart from hitting people, his passive can be used as a damage lever.
3. Q damage. You might think this was already a lever, but it wasn't. Right now, Q is his clear, his lifesteal, and his big damage. Hitting Q guts him. But since you'll be able to Q more, there's a lot more freedom to tweak cooldown and damage without gutting Warwick.
4. Infinite duress. With a charge based system, cooldown and number of charges become really potent levers.

-Now, about that ultimate I was talking about. There's a whole lot of cool stuff that can be done with it. Easy stuff. Exciting stuff.

1. Low cooldown. Think Diana.
2. No cooldown between uses of charges.
3. Able to interrupt itself. This is a huge one. Think Lee Sin interrupting his kick to use a shield. But imagine Warwick doing this to reach the back line. Warwick could use it to close massive gaps.
4. Short cooldown on using it on the same person. Think Yasuo dash.
5. It's a dash! It'll be high speed, but now there's counterplay to it instead of just "I think he's gonna blink."

tl:dr It's been a while Morello. Let's do something this time. Let's make Warwick more interesting.