Warwick Rework Concept
Woke up this morning thinking about Warwick and how disappointing he is, and decided I might as well write down my thoughts on the matter. I love the concept of werewolves and love just about any game that lets you play as a werewolf, but Warwick has never really struck me as a werewolf. He's just a goofy blue and yellow pinetree thing that snarls a lot, and that's disappointing. 
First, let's discuss the fantasy of playing Warwick. From what I've seen, there are three main builds Warwick sees, each with their own goal. -Build massive amounts of ability power and spell vamp to abuse the self-healing on his Q -Stack items with on-hit effects to melt people with his ultimate -Build pure tank and eventually become so durable that killing you is implausable at best
Now let's talk about the fantasy of playing a werewolf. A werewolf is fast, powerful, bloodthirsty, cunning, terrifying and savage. They stalk their prey with the intelligence of a man, lurking silently until they can pounce with the ferocity of a wolf. They fight with their claws and teeth, inflicting gruesome wounds and feeding on their victims. Should you manage to survive their initial mauling, the wounds they deal will risk killing you from blood loss, and will leave a trail of blood so that the werewolf will have no trouble finding you again. They avoid confrontation, instead waiting in the darkness to whittle away at their targets one by one with hit and run tactics, relying on fear, speed and stealth rather than brute force and combat prowess. A werewolf is at its most powerful when it and its target are isolated and in the dark, when it can ambush its victim and pick them off before help arrives.
Currently, Warwick doesn't really fulfill much of that. His life stealing abilities reflect a werewolf's bloodthirst decently, and Blood Scent has a lot of potential to fit the fantasy, but is too weak to give Warwick the feel of stalking his prey or to inspire dread in Warwick's potential victims(who are likely to simply dash away to safety when Warwick pops up on their screen). Aside from that, Warwick feels slow, clumsy and weak. He either builds offensively, getting himself killed almost immediately in any teamfight, or he builds purely defensive items so he can casually waddle in the direction of a high value target, disable them with his ultimate, and then contribute almost nothing for the remainder of the fight. The only time Warwick is scary is when he gets enough items to become effectively immortal, allowing him to splitpush freely since it would take 4-5 people to actually stop him.
Here's my ideas on how to improve Warwick so he seems more like the big bad wolf and less like grandmother he's supposed to eat.
Eternal Thirst I will admit that I don't know what to do with the passive here. Blood Scent is too powerful to be Warwick's passive, and should require skill points to reach full strength. It could just be left as is. Maybe make it deal double damage to jungle monsters and champions with Blood Scent on them, or just jungle monsters. Warwick should retain his status as "That guy who can jungle without runes" because it would be stupid to make the new player experience any more horrific than it currently is.
Q - Hungering Strike This could remain fairly similar to the original ability. A melee range, point and click attack that deals moderate damage. Alternatively, it could become a sort of cone skillshot, like a semi-circle version of Darius Q, making warwick swipe in a target direction and damage everyone nearby. The healing would need to be drastically reduced or even removed in that case. The AP ratio should be reduced slightly(0.75 or 0.60), but otherwise remain intact, no point in removing a potential build path simply because it's unorthodox. If it stays single target, then it's important to keep the selfheal intact, this is a big part of what enables Warwick to be such an accessible jungler. Access to AoE damage might be a strong enough tradeoff for sustain if it becomes AoE.
W - Hunters Call ACTIVE: For 6 seconds, Warwick gains bonus attack speed and grants half of that bonus to all nearby allies. In addition, Warwick gains 100% slow immunity, 100% movement speed, and ignores unit collision for 1.5 seconds while moving toward enemy champions. When moving toward a target under the effects of Blood Scent, the duration is increased to 2.5 seconds.
The idea here is to give Warwick the means to pounce on his prey without relying on a 2 minute cooldown ultimate. Rather than just giving him a dash, I thought it would be interesting and more thematic to give him an extremely powerful but short-lived movespeed steroid. It should ideally be something similar to a miniature Sion ultimate, though a bit faster since Warwick is a werewolf, not a hulking zombie juggernaut. If it winds up being too powerful, then removing the slow immunity should help keep Warwick in line. I just didn't want this entire ability to be invalidated by a stray slow. Also, Warwick should have a special running animation while this is active. Have him dash on all fours to really solidify that savage wolfman feel.
E - Blood Scent PASSIVE: Warwick gains sight of all nearby enemy champions with less than 50% of their maximum health, also alerting them to his presence. While any enemies are revealed this way, Warwick gains bonus movement speed, attack damage and ability power. This bonus increases based on the number of champions below 50% health, granting a large bonus for the first and a smaller bonus for subsequent targets.
ACTIVE: Warwick rends his target, dealing minor physical damage and causing them to bleed profusely for moderate physical damage over 6 seconds. During this time, they will be inflicted with Blood Scent regardless of their current health.
Ideally, the active should allow Warwick to stick to a single target once he reaches them without relying on his allies to disable them. The damage from the ability should be fairly weak and improve little with additional ranks to avoid putting too much power in a single skill. If he wants damage, he should max Q first. Maybe give it a good AP ratio and let it do some damage that way.
The passive should make Warwick terrifying and be the bulk of the ability's strength. The range should increase drastically and it should become a global effect at max rank to really be threatening. The current version of the ability is basically just an uglier version of Rengar's !. It doesn't do much other than let you know Warwick is nearby. Blood Scent should give the feeling that Warwick is everywhere, hiding in every bush and waiting to pounce if you dare to leave the safety of your team. The bonuses to movement speed, AD and AP should be just strong enough for the ability to feel impactful to Warwick, but not strong enough that Blood Scent turns him into a lategame monster for free.
R - Infinite Duress ACTIVE: Warwick leaps to the front of the target enemy champion and channels for 1.5 seconds, suppressing them for 1.8 seconds and dealing magic damage 5 times in 0.3 seconds intervals. Warwick gains 30% lifesteal for the duration, and each damaging strike applies on-hit effects. Infinite Duress should remain relatively unchanged. It's Warwick's most iconic ability, and fits very well with his theme. Give it prettier graphics, and make Warwick visually pounce on his target instead of just appearing next to them for a surprise hug. I also think it should gain an AP ratio to further legitimize AP Warwick. Maybe 0.15 so it's not too powerful combined with Nashor's Tooth.
Ideally, the result of this rework would be that Warwick is now the premier ganking jungler. His ganks should be fast, brutal and deadly, and he should be ready to gank from level 2 with just W and E. His time spent in the jungle will be more about healing his wounds than passively farming until he hits level 6. Warwick should now prefer to build damage (AP or AD, ideally it would be more of a personal preference instead of one being strictly superior) rather than just stacking defensive items in hopes of achieving immortality. His on-hit build and his AP build should be stronger than ever, strong enough to keep him from being forced to build tanky.
His role in midgame teamfights should be to ambush high priority targets before a fight, or to flank the enemy team during a teamfight so he can more safely dive the backline. He should NOT be able to just run right past the frontline with impunity, press R on his target squishy, then run out with his free kill. If Warwick builds tanky enough to survive the frontline, his damage shouldn't be high enough to guarantee a kill and vice versa. We don't want another pre-nerf Olaf. When lategame rolls around and everyone is grouped up constantly, a lot of his strengths will no longer apply, which is an issue I'm not quite sure how to tackle. You could give him wavecler and make him a splitpusher, but that seems like a cop out. You could also just make him tanky enough to stay relevant at level 18, but then he just turns into a better Olaf. This is a problem better left to someone with a greater understanding of champion design than I. Another worry is that he might be too oppressive of an early game presence, ganking continuously and ducking into the jungle to heal up to full with a single camp. Other than forcing him to watch his mana, I'm not sure how to prevent this either.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Warwick. I would be hyped to no end if some of these ideas made it into the game. Thanks for reading
