Why does Warwick do AP damage?
He looks pretty much like an AD fighter/assassin. His previous Q used to do AP damage as well as his ult. The new Warwick do the same thing.
8 Comments
He doesn't do "AP damage"
He does magic damage and it scales on AP currently.
Also, when his rework was first introduced on the PBE it did not scale on AP at all. According to LoLWiki under the PBE tab they returned his AP scaling.
This is still not set in stone however.
To make you decided on ability damage or aa damage. He has a powerful kit, not terribly complex expect w (which still isn't terrible compared to other champs). It's damage mitigation and balance
I actually don't feel like I answered your exact question, sorry.
A lot of champions used to scale on AP because that was Riot's more obvious way of discerning between magic and physical damage.
More recently this is not necessarily the case. An ability can scale on AD and deal magic damage, or can scale on AP and deal physical damage (although still seems to be more rare).
Being an original champion with no major reworks (until now) this is really just the first opportunity that Riot has taken to bring him up to date.