Abilities

Q:Jaws Of The Beast is your main gap closer, following dashes/blinks, and ignoring some forms of CC. On top of that it provies healing and does a lot of damage. The perfect dueling tool.

W: Blood Hunt is a very unique ability. It is useful for clearing camps as well as ganking. You can hunt down low health enemies even without vision making it the perfect tool for counterganking, and invading. On top of that it has an inbuilt attack speed steroid.

E: Primal Howl is a spell that makes you tankier by providing damage reduction. It’s very useful for engages as you soak up damage and fear enemies after it runs out. Combine this spell with your Q to fear enemies into your frontline.

R: Infinite Duress is a disgustingly strong lockdown tool. It is very versatile because it can be used offensively and defensively. Its range scales with your current movement speed. The range becomes absurdly high when you chase an enemy using your W.

Passive: Eternal Hunger Every auto-attack deals bonus magic damage. If Warwick is below 50% health he heals by the same amount. Below 25% this healing triples. Thanks to this effect you will have basically infinite sustain in the jungle. Even when not kiting properly you will be very healthy during your clears.

Skill Order

Runes

Press the Attack is by far the best keystone, even with the new Conqueror rune as a competitor. PTA wins out in short-term trades every time and also makes the marked enemy more vulnerable by increasing the damage they take by 8-12% from all sources.

Triumph is just too good in early skirmishes and all the alternatives are lacking.

Legends:Alacrity is very helpful to apply all of your on-hit damage and increase your passive heal. Therefore you don’t need Legend:Bloodline for lifesteal.

Legend:Tenacity is a viable alternative though. Against some team compositions with tons of crowd-control, this is a good choice otherwise stick with Alacrity.

Last Stand synergizes particularly well with Warwicks kit. Most of his healing and damage are only utilized when you are llow HP. You will win many fights because enemies underestimate Warwick’s damage and survivability at low HP.

Magical Footwear: One of the best utility runes. You can rush your jungle item without having to build boots and gain 10 movement speed for the whole game.

Future’s Market is essential for Warwick. You heavily rely on Tiamat and need it on your first back. Additionally, you will hit your powerspikes faster.

Builds

Core Items

Your starting items are the same every single game. Hunter’s Machete and Rejuvenation Bead are perfect items for fast clearspeed and an early Tiamat which you have to get at your first back. Afer your Tiamat you buy Skirmisher’s Sabre and upgrade it to either Warrior or Cinderhulk (depending on your playstyle) and pick either Ninja Tabi or Mercury’s Treads

Build Paths

Build Path: (Tiamat, Cinderhulk, Boots, TankItem, TankItem, TankItem, Titanic Hydra)

- Noobfriendly (Forgiving/Great for learning limitations/Autofilled)

- Best if team needs a Tank

- Versatile

- Great if team is fed

This is the perfect build for new Warwick players. You don’t have to play around any power spikes, therefore, you are fairly consistent and don’t fall off as much as Warriorwick does. You are the frontline that deals enormous damage even when building full tank. You have strong CC, can lock down targets with your ultimate and survive forever thanks to your amazing sustain. This build is also perfect if your team is ahead, just lean back and be their frontline.

Build Path: (Tiamat, Cinderhulk, Boots, Trinity Force, [Steraks Gage/Guardian Angel/Essence Reaver], Titanic Hydra, TankItem)

- Expensive but has most damage mid-late game

- Great if Fed Early

- Excellent Splitpushing

- Best Carry Build in Low-Mid Elo (Bronze-Diamond)

Once you have gained some experience with Tankwick and tested your limits it’s time to bump it up a notch. Convert your leads into wins by building more damage. Trinity Force scales amazingly (is very costly though) into the late-game. Obviously, you are not as tanky but you pump out some serious damage and will be able to win every skirmish if ahead or even. Great build if you are ahead and capable of carrying games.

Build Path: (Tiamat, Warrior, Boots, Deadman’s Plate, TankItem, TankItem, Titanic Hydra)

- Early Game Focus

- High risk, High Reward

- Great in High Elo (Mid-Diamond+) because of the shorter game times

Because of the high risk, this playstyle entails I would suggest this item build only for more experienced players. This is because you have to play around your power spike after finishing the Warrior Enchantment. You have to be proactive in this time otherwise you will fall off. It’s a two-edged sword, on the one hand, you deal a lot of damage, on the other hand, you are very squishy. If you manage to not fall behind though it’s super rewarding and you will dominate the midgame.

Tank Items

Magic Resist Items:

Adaptive Helm is a great item against DPS mages that deal repetitive damage with the same spell. This includes champions like Cassio, Taliyah, Aurelion Sol, Karthus…

Spirit Visage is your default Magic Resist item because it amplifies your healing. Buy it if there is no need for Adaptive Helm

Abyssal Mask is a more offensive tank item. More than 50% of Warwick’s damage is actually magical damage and Abyssal Mask amplifies magic damage for you whole team.

Armor Items:

Deadman’s Plate is what I would consider a core tank item. The movement speed it gives is just amazing. Combine this with your W and you have a better version of mobility boots.

Thornmail is an obvious choice against champions with massive healing as it inflicts grievous wounds. It is good against ADCs with Lifesteal and champs like Vladimir, Sylas etc.

Randuin’s Omen is great against critical strike champions like ADCs because it reduces crit damage by 20%. The cherry on the cake is the active effect which slows all surrounded enemies and the brief attack speed reduction for attackers.

Frozen Heart & Iceborn Gauntlet are great options if you want cooldown reduction and armor. Iceborn furthermore increases your stickiness in team fights because of the slow field created after the sheen proc.

Matchups

Easy

• Aatrox
• Lee Sin
• Master Yi
• Kayn
• Amumu
• Zac
• Evelynn
• Taliyah

Medium

• Camille
• Gragas
• Graves
• Hecarim
• Kha’zix
• Rek’Sai
• Jarvan IV
• Jax
• Shaco
• Rammus
• Udyr
• Pantheon
• Rengar
• Trundle
• Nunu
• Sejuani
• Xin Zhao

Hard

• Ivern
• Olaf Kindred

Gameplan/Playstyle

Warwick is a bruiser jungler that has the option to be a tank or a carry depending on the situation of the game. The fundamentals of jungling early are always the same regardless of build, however later in the mid and late game the path you take starts to show.

Ganking

Warwick has a decent early game, can gank and duel fairly well even at level three. You should also be able to win 2v2 fights and counter ganks most of the time. Unfortunately, Warwick has no long range gap closer until level six. This means that you have to path intelligently avoiding any possible wards. Post six you can mostly just run down the lane with your W and R. As always, try to cut the enemy off and safe your gap closer as long as possible.

Clearing

Your first clear is not that fast but once you back and buy a Tiamat it gets very swift. You don’t even have to kite camps thanks to your passive heal. If you manage to die against a jungle camp as Warwick you should stop playing the game; his sustain is that good.

Counterjungling

How to easily get leads and put the enemy jungler behind? Just steal his camps. On Warwick this is better than on your average jungler. Normally you can only take camps if you know that the enemy jungler is not nearby. As long as your lanes have priority you can just walk into the enemy jungle and contest camps. Obviously, you should not do this if the enemy jungler has a massive lead or your lanes cannot prevent more enemies from collapsing on you. Generally speaking Warwick is great to learn how to counterjungle and isn’t it always fun to tilt the enemies?

Powerspike

Warwick’s first big power spike is after finishing Warrior. If everything goes according to plan, the lead won in the early game transitions into his strongest phase: the mid-game. Even though he is obnoxious in the early game and deals tons of damage it gets even worse for your enemies. When finishing your second and third item you are not only dealing damage but also super hard to kill. I already talked about the different power spikes in the item build section so feel free to try everything out

Teamfighting

More often than not it is your job to kill one of the enemies’ carries. This is especially true if you go down the Warriorwick route. Your job is very similar to other bruisers like Jax and Irelia, diving the backline and constantly looking for flanks. If you play Tankwick however, your role is different. You either play the “in and out game” and wait for your cooldowns to come back up or you soak up as much damage as possible for your fed carries. The cool thing about Warwick is that chasing low health enemies is a breeze. This is why you don’t have to overcommit, just tank, burn some of your enemies ultimates and chase low HP enemies with your W.

Splitpushing

If you build some damage you can look to splitpush. Your waveclear is good and thanks to your good sustain it’s almost impossible to kill you in a 1v1. Additionally your ultimate is a great low cooldown escape tool which makes it even harder to catch you. The only problem is that you don’t deal much damage to turrets. But if nobody contests you or the enemy team decides to ignore you go ahead and destroy their base.

Jungle Routes

Prerequisite: Ward both Pixelbushes as seen in this picture below. Ideally, you get down both wards but one should be enough to decide on which scuttle you want to take.
The first clear on Warwick is crucial, you need to farm 7 camps to be able to buy a Tiamat at your first back (works if you are running Future’s Market).

Route 1: This route enables you to powerfarm with relatively low risk. If you or your team has warded the Pixelbush as recommend, you can decide which scuttle crab you want to take.

Route 2: Vertical Jungling is only an option if the enemy starts at his red and your Pixelbush ward shows you that they are doing the topside scuttle. It also works against junglers with predictable pathing. Important Sidenote: I would only split the map (basically divided by the midlane) if you want to relieve pressure from your botlane (toplane if you are on red side)

I would only use Route 3 if you are forced to (for example after an invade) or if you are 100% certain that the enemy starts at Blue Buff. Any Red Buff start is just stronger overall and because basically everyone is starting at red you are very likely to meet the enemy jungler at scuttle, possibly ruining your first clear.