Ideas for Warwick champion update

HermanoTuyo·7/25/2016, 5:41:41 AM·1 votes·367 views

I feel like Warwick doesn't do enough to be competitive at the highest levels of play and his abilities don't match his lore or flavor too well, so I came up with some ideas for a possible rework. I'll describe the abilities first, then the reasoning:

Passive, Eternal Thirst: Damaging champions should apply a mark that can stack for increased lifesteal and other effects.

Q, Hungering Strike: No change

W, Blood Scent/Hunter's Call: The attack speed buff and the movement speed buff should be combined, and the teammate buff aspect of the W ability should be removed. This should be a medium/long cooldown ability that increases WW's attack speed and gives him added movement speed when moving towards marked champions for a fixed period of time (similar to Soraka's ability to move towards low-health allies, but with a time limit). The animation should be updated to look like Volibear's Q or Twitch's ghost so it really feels like the player is hunting the marked target. Also, the mark can persist into Fog of War, so Warwick can use the movement speed buff to chase marked enemies without having vision, increasing the sense that he is "hunting" enemies once he has acquired their scent.

E, Feral Dive: A short range gap closer that can only be used on marked targets, similar to Jax's Leap Strike. Should be fairly high cooldown, and using the ability should consume the mark.

R: Infinite Duress: No change, but killing or assisting a kill on a marked champion should passively grant WW a reset on all his basic abilities at level 6. After this first kill, there will not be any more resets until the equivalent of the ultimate's cooldown has expired (this is timed separate from the Ult timer.) At level 11, he gets two resets, and three at level 16.

The reason for these changes is because, as I understand, Warwick's flavor should really be as a bloodthirsty Werewolf. Once he gets your scent/taste it should feel like he wants to hunt you down. Smelling blood and granting vision is useful, but WW feels very utility focused with his current W and E, which don't really mix well with his Q or R, IMO. The new W and E would create a feel of hunting someone down once you get a taste for them, and the R's resets will enable potential late-game cleanup, similar to Kha Zhix.

The main weakness with Warwick should still be his lack of crowd control and inability to get in on a marked target. Similar to Volibear, you should be able to kite him out. Obviously his R is still his main tool for getting in, and as they get cleanse effects the E will help him stick on a marked target, making him really feel like he is out for blood.

Increasing the cooldown on the W should make it harder for WW to sustain through the early game and make him feel more of a late-game carry with clear weaknesses but very tangible flavor.

Lemme know what you think, feel free to reuse these ideas without attribution.

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