Warwick Build Guide : Paws, Claws & Jaws :: League of Legends Strategy Builds

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Can we use a movement speed build on warwick, Along with the runes used at him to increase his movement speed, This would allow lightning fast speed, There are a few items which does affect movement speed which can use to our advantages, This would also help for a larger Ult distance providing surprise ganks and domination, What do you think?

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(1495) |

You can build whatever you like if it's working for you, but from my experience I wouldn't recommend any movement speed items other than .

and aren't terrible, but they also don't grant that much MS. I've played some games with and it doesn't feel worth it.

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Hey Psiguard,

Do you stream often? I noticed you haven't been on stream for years. Would love to see you play but if you're busy, I can understand that.

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I haven't streamed in a long time, unfortunately. I'm not sure when I'll stream again, but it helps to hear that people would like to watch if I do. Thanks for commenting.

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Ah, I see - no worries.

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Greetings PsiGuard,

I recently joined League (level 27 now), and because I liked warwick at the beginning, I decided to look for guides and found yours. Honestly, EXCELLENT work! In the beginning, I had issues understanding how things were, as items were confusing and runes were new to me. As I've grown, I've learned a lot and this guide becomes clearer and clearer to me.

In fact, I have recently come to a stage where I would like to know the ideal synergies with ww. It seems like even though I play ww, I don't always know who combos well with me as I'm also new to champs. I noticed you have a synergies and threats comparison in your rek'sai guide and I was wondering if you could make one for ww too. I know from experience that one threat is ahri, but I would like to know more as well as know which other champs combo well with me, considering I main ww. I'm exploring other champs too such as Kayn (turns out I tried him in a free rot early in the game... big mistake then but I understand him well now). If Rek'sai comes in a free rot, I'll make sure to try that champ out as you said ww and rek'sai are somewhat similar.

One last question, how do I deal with grievous wounds? Morellonomicon and ignite seem to really annoy me at times. Is there any way to avoid this? Thanks and keep rocking <3.

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Hmmm, I could look into adding a synergies section. I don't think Warwick has very many big synergies since he's fairly well rounded, but he pairs well with champions that can facilitate him invading & ganking, since Warwick works better if you can fight champions early than if he's just power farming. In general, I'd look for champions who can get early priority by pushing the lane and/or are down to fight early game. You can get away with more passive laners if they scale super hard since you can help neutralize the enemy jungler and get your team through the early game safely, so champs like and can still work even if they don't have the ideal early game.

I'll have to give it some thought but if I can come up with a decent list, I'll add it to the cheatsheet. Thanks for the suggestion.

As for grievous wounds, it's not something you can do much about. The upside is a lot of players are really lazy about buying it (ADCs especially) so in a lot of your games, you'll probably get away with murder because the enemy ADC doesn't feel like buying or something. If the enemy has a ton of healing reduction (like 3 s or multiple grievous wounds items), it can be a pain at times, but you just have to adapt and play a little more conservatively. You can still heal a decent amount even when your healing is reduced, and your sustain helps keep you healthy between fights which is still useful. You can rely more on good positioning, your damage reduction, and your defensive stats from items to get you through fights safely.

When the enemy itemizes for grievous wounds, they're usually giving up potentially higher damage items, so even though it's effective against you, they don't generally get that effect for free. As long as you don't overplay and get yourself killed a lot, you can win games because the enemy mage is forced to buy instead of a or or something.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.

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Thank you for your advice! That is actually a very interesting note that being forced to buy a morello or executioner can be a disadvantage. I know that some Ahri's incorporate morello automatically into their build, which really sucks, but I guess I'll just have to deal with that for now. If an ADC carries an executioner's calling I guess I should just think of that as an advantage.

In terms of synergies, I always felt like Warwick needs someone to cc an enemy champion in addition to his E+R combo in a team fight because his cc can be easily countered by a hard cc like sona's stun. I find the E+R is his only engage in a team fight, and once it's over he's basically squishy for me. Should I generally leave another teammate to engage and then follow with my E+R?

Even when ganking the R doesn't actually do that much damage for me (usually because I'm the same level or one below), I feel like its only purpose is to get them under 50 and then chase them from there. Now, he is an amazing 1v1 duelist but I never find myself doing that much burst damage to an enemy champion unless they've truly overextended. It seems like I just whittle them. Sometimes my ganks don't according to plan but it seems like I always forget an oracle lens; I'll have to improve on that. I have of course punished a team before, but the issue is since Warwick is an easy character to learn (and counter!), many people know how he works and try to avoid being under 50% during most games (or my teammates just do a bad job at poking). That's mainly why I asked for a synergy chart so that I know when to choose ww from now on otherwise I'll keep getting Ahris in draft pick ;(.

I don't want to bother you too much as you're a busy person, but I do have one question. I heard that a jungler is supposed to stay near one lane and keep punishing that enemy lane rather than helping different lanes across the map. Is this true? I have been ganking wherever my team needs me on the map but I will say I feel underleveled a lot and it becomes really hard to gank later on because of this.

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wrote:

I always felt like Warwick needs someone to cc an enemy champion in addition to his E+R combo in a team fight because his cc can be easily countered by a hard cc like sona's stun. I find the E+R is his only engage in a team fight, and once it's over he's basically squishy for me. Should I generally leave another teammate to engage and then follow with my E+R?

Use E-R to fear enemies who could interrupt your R channel if they're close together. If they're spread enough enough to not get feared, it's probably not a good engage.

Warwick's engage is much worse than most engage champs. He works more like where he can sometimes start fights, but his most reliable roles are following up allies who go in or peeling enemies who engage on his team. If you're initiating with R, you either need to chain CC / one-shot someone for a pick, or you need to fear a tight group of enemies with a strong AoE followup like 's or 's .

wrote:

Even when ganking the R doesn't actually do that much damage for me

The damage is honestly the worst part of the ability. The way more important functions of are the gap close, CC and healing. You can use it to catch up to enemies, get picks, peel divers and win 1v1s (or last longer in team fights) with the healing, but very rarely will the damage be a big factor in a gank or team fight. If you can 100-0 someone as Warwick, usually it just means you're ahead in gold and XP and most of that damage will come from PTA, Q and autos.

wrote:

I do have one question. I heard that a jungler is supposed to stay near one lane and keep punishing that enemy lane rather than helping different lanes across the map. Is this true? I have been ganking wherever my team needs me on the map but I will say I feel underleveled a lot and it becomes really hard to gank later on because of this.

This is an overly simplistic view of early game macro. There will be some games where camping 1 lane will win you the game, and other times you can afford to gank all across the map constantly. In some cases, you may have very few gank opportunities early and you'll instead focus on counter jungling, denying scuttles and taking neutral objectives. Your early game plan will depend on which champions both teams have drafted.

Rather than "camp 1 lane," I'd rephrase this to "play around winning lanes." If your top is 0/3/0 and your bot lane is doing okay, playing around the bot side of the map is much more likely to net your team advantages than trying desperately to swing a lost matchup. Turning a losing lane into a winning one takes a lot more time, effort and risk than working with your strong teammates.

Keep an eye out for volatile solo lanes, which usually involve champions that are forced to trade with each other often. Double melee mid lane matchups like vs or aggressive top lane matchups like vs will usually be the focus of a lot of action early, which you can capitalize on by showing up often to punish the enemy laner or countergank the enemy jungler.

For bot lane, the best thing to check is whether there are two ranged supports (enchanters or mages usually) or if there's at least one engage support like or . Bot lane matchups with 4 ranged champs tend to be more stable and less likely to break out into random fights, so they're not as easy to camp. If your team has strong engage bot, it's usually good to cash in on that engage if they get pushed in. If the enemy has the engage, you can look to countergank the enemy jungler if your duo is pushing, or bait the enemy to engage 2v2 and then gank them. Just don't waste too much time trying to bait or countergank since you need to keep up in farm too.

This stuff is really hard to master so don't be too discouraged if you can't figure out the right move to make all the time in the early game. Even if you're stumbling through the early game now, you'll get better at it as you practice. Just try to keep asking yourself where you can be most effective and try to path towards the parts of the map that are most likely to have action or have good setup for ganks.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.

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My god, this is AMAZING advice! Sorry for the late reply, was busy with some work. I usually E+R when I gank enemies that are close but let's say that I have a friendly laner that just doesn't want to capitalize on my gank, I just usually end up losing the 1v2 with an E+R engage, even if I'm a level above. I've never had a team fight where enemies are close enough for E+R to work. Now I'm starting to understand that I should really use R to engage a 1v1 gank or E+R in a 2v2 gank provided I'm supported by a laner. I fully agree with you that Warwick's engagement isn't as great as other champions, and I will secondarily engage in those from now on. I also understand that Warwick is better at counterganking, so I'll try to do that often.

The counter-jungling strat is something I didn't even consider, as Warwick isn't someone who I normally think of when it comes to counter-jungling (such as nunu and willump). But it makes so much sense in lower elo games because it's a 1v1 then. I will do that more often if I don't see a gank opportunity. I have another question now due to that, and that is, is there a specifically good time early to counter-jungle? Or should I wait until I get my R?

I will admit that I often start with Red buff, Krugs, Raptors, Wolves, Blue buff, Gromp, Gank/Scuttle, but I understand why you start with blue buff as the red buff is important for ganking, and since Warwick doesn't need a leash, I will do that more often. Obviously the ganking isn't fixed in the order, just a general flow I've heard from several junglers on MobaFire.

I definitely thought camping one lane was weird advice, and I received this advice during an argument and as a result, wanted to confirm with you. It definitely feels situational and not mandatory, so thank you for confirming this. I suppose I will theoretically travel the whole map to gank less often now as I don't see the point in doing that often.

My specific problems now are that I can't always specifically dodge a cc as you do in the videos you've posted, and this is both because of a lack of skill from me and my ping (I will hopefully fix this soon). Mastering holding down q is hard for me because sometimes I accidentally hold it down and end up going on the wrong side - fortunately, this happens to monsters more than champions from my experience. I will work on this.

My final question is, if an enemy naturally picks a Warwick counter such as Mordekaiser or Ahri because of their suggested Morello build, is it worth choosing Warwick then unless you have a synergy? Or should I choose a different champion like Kayn, Elise, or Master Yi? This should answer all of my questions for a while. Thank you for everything. You've helped me grow so much. Also, seems you have a new follower on Twitch :)

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wrote:

Now I'm starting to understand that I should really use R to engage a 1v1 gank or E+R in a 2v2 gank provided I'm supported by a laner.

W-E-Q-E-auto-R is also good for ganking, as long as you can get in melee range without using R. This usually works best when you're coming from a flanking position. If you use R while your target is feared, you can't miss it. You can also hold onto R and see if the enemy has any escapes that you can follow with it if you think you might not need to use the cooldown.

wrote:

I have another question now due to that, and that is, is there a specifically good time early to counter-jungle? Or should I wait until I get my R?

This is a complex subject, but the two most obvious times to counter-jungle are when the enemy shows on the map (like a red team Elise ganks bot while you're top, so you take her Raptors and Krugs), and when you have lane priority in nearby lanes and are confident against the enemy jungler. Warwick wins a lot of 1v1 matchups as early as level 2 or 3, so don't wait till 6 to invade. The main thing you want to check before you run into the enemy jungler is whether your nearby laners are pushed to the enemy towers. If they don't have priority, enemy laners could collapse on you.

If you're still new to the game, chances are sometimes your teammates won't actually rotate when they're supposed to. That's okay, 'cause as long as you build good habits, you'll end up winning most of your games and eventually your teammates will get more competent.

There are some specific timings for really early invades, but that's a difficult skill to learn so I wouldn't worry too much about pre-planned invade routes right now. Just focus on the fundamentals and reading the map instead of matchup-specific pathing.

wrote:

I will admit that I often start with Red buff, Krugs, Raptors, Wolves, Blue buff, Gromp, Gank/Scuttle

This 5 camp clear is most useful when you're pretty sure you can't do anything early game. Warwick is a strong early game champion, so don't make this your default path in every game.

The simplest way to decide how to path is to check the side lane matchups and guess if your team will be pushing early or if the enemy will. If the enemy pushes early and you path towards them, you can usually gank them at level 3. If your team will be pushing early, you can use their priority to contest the nearby scuttle more safely. You'll get a sense for who will have early priority in certain lane matchups over time.

I'd recommend doing Blue-Gromp-Red-Gank or Red-Blue-Gromp-Gank as your default routes. At level 1, if you feel like you won't be able to gank any of the lanes early, you can do Wolves in addition to those camps. I tend not to clear my own Raptors early on as Warwick unless I have to, 'cause it takes a while to clear without so it's usually better to find something else to do like a gank or skirmish.

wrote:

if an enemy naturally picks a Warwick counter such as Mordekaiser or Ahri because of their suggested Morello build, is it worth choosing Warwick then unless you have a synergy?

I wouldn't worry too much about healing reduction in draft. Bigger factors include jungle matchup, your team's damage composition, how much dmg vs CC/frontliners you have, how well both teams scale, and how many kiting tools the enemy has. Healing reduction is annoying, but ultimately teams will find a way to buy it no matter what their champs are, if they need to. It's just something you have to deal with and adapt your play to. Same thing applies to whether they're running or not. If I add a Threats/Synergies section, hopefully that'll help the draft part a bit.

It's really good that you're asking these kinds of questions because the key to getting better at jungle is constantly evaluating your habits and trying to play smarter every game. A lot of people don't improve because they just do the same thing every game and then complain about their team when it doesn't work out. Junglers have a lot of power over the early game, so if you keep thinking critically I'm sure you'll be a better Warwick player than me in no time. :)

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It seems that I made two responses that didn't send apparently. Sorry that this is coming to you delayed because of that.

wrote:

It's really good that you're asking these kinds of questions because the key to getting better at jungle is constantly evaluating your habits and trying to play smarter every game. A lot of people don't improve because they just do the same thing every game and then complain about their team when it doesn't work out. Junglers have a lot of power over the early game, so if you keep thinking critically I'm sure you'll be a better Warwick player than me in no time. :)

I don't know about that, my skill level and internet quality will probably need to improve a lot before I'm even close to your level. The way you dodge attacks is unmatched and I can't do that yet. At my level, it doesn't seem like enemies CC defensively that often, but rather offensively, so usually the W doesn't get cc'd often. I will say that I also don't actually press W as often as I should, so there's a way to go in terms of improvement. All I know is I want to do good for my team and become a better jungler, so I want to learn to be a more helpful jungler as often as I can. It's amazing how many friend requests I've gotten by playing as Warwick, and that's all thanks to you. Probably an average of one per match, which is insane in my opinion.

Unfortunately, sometimes I can't always jungle well with certain champions though. For example, I only have Master Yi other than Warwick in my champion list, so in one match where Warwick was banned, I had to choose Master Yi against an Amumu. I didn't even know Amumu was a Master Yi counter! The thing with Yi is he needs a leash early, while Warwick and Kayn don't. Even if you leash as Yi, he's incredibly vulnerable early to the point that the enemy Amumu killed me once and I could no longer solo blue buff, or gromp w/ smite after that. That match, in particular, was very embarrassing and toxic comments from my teammates soon followed after I died to a gromp, but I suppose that's just how it is. I honestly don't know if I can Master Yi anymore, I'm just too weak with him. One day I want to eventually grow in jungling on a general scale to the point that this is no longer an issue for me. The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I eat enemy Master Yis as Warwick breakfast, so I just feel like that champion needs a buff. Never had an issue with an enemy Master Yi; I don't get why everyone thinks he's broken in lower levels.

Anyways, I figured I needed a new champion in case Warwick gets banned, and I currently have Olaf, Fiddlesticks, and Zac shards. I might give Olaf a try as I heard he's good early into League, but Zac's gank potential looks amazing. I'm not too sure about Fiddlesticks at the moment. Olaf's R seems very powerful, and I can see why he's stated as one of Warwick's counters, although I've personally never had an issue with an Olaf or Jax (not sure why MobaFire puts Jax as Warwick's counter, maybe he's more of a theoretical counter). Let me know if you have experienced this too, and what to do when facing a good Jax/Olaf.

One thing that may be personally helpful to me is actually knowing what junglers I am forced to fight earlier versus later. I don't understand every enemy jungler's scaling, and this will help a lot with counter-jungling for me (in addition to your amazing advice earlier, never once thought of counter-jungling during an enemy gank). I usually just counter-jungle after killing an enemy jungler, but your advice gives me better options.

One issue with Warwick I personally have is fighting tanks. I barely do anything to Garen, and if I see a Volibear as an enemy jungler I can't really deal with him. I once fought a Nasus 1v1 while being one level higher, but he beat me through his R. I know now to avoid Nasus during his R, but what do I do about tanks in general? I can't 1v1 them effectively, and Volibear is just tanky to the point that I need to 2v1 him to get a kill. I have thought about trying Volibear out myself because of this in free rot. Is there anything I can do about tanks in general? I can't seem to always gank them effectively. Garen in particular is just never below 50 and his movement speed is better than mine through his Q when this is the case.

wrote:

I'd recommend doing Blue-Gromp-Red-Gank or Red-Blue-Gromp-Gank as your default routes. At level 1, if you feel like you won't be able to gank any of the lanes early, you can do Wolves in addition to those camps. I tend not to clear my own Raptors early on as Warwick unless I have to, 'cause it takes a while to clear without Tiamat so it's usually better to find something else to do like a gank or skirmish.

Honestly, the route I mentioned is actually less reflective of what I do as Warwick myself nowadays. I don't even know why I said I go raptors as I don't do this 95% of the time as Warwick. I usually wait until I get Tiamat like you do. I think I may have thought about how I jungle with Kayn and Lillia (AOE junglers) and may have put down that route, but I will say that for Warwick in particular, I used to follow that route on Red team, probably because of the habit of bottom leashing. On Blue team, I usually start with blue buff and follow a similar linear route. But your route is starting to make sense to me now because you're basically advocating for a route that allows both blue and red buff when you gank. I've never actually had mana issues with Warwick, but that could also partially be due to the fact that I don't press W that often. I will work on that, and use W to gank more often as you've stated. I should also probably double press E more, as I usually just let it run out.

I think overall, as I start to understand lane matchups, I will eventually become a better ganker, and I'm currently trying to learn as many champions' abilities as possible so I can become a better jungler. But sometimes I get random enemy junglers such as Neeko, and despite searching champ abilities, punishing them can be confusing as I don't understand why they went jungle in the first place. Apparently Neeko in particular can jungle effectively. But I'm trying to learn as many champions as I can right now to help me in those niche situations.

Truly, thank you for all of the advice. Maybe one day I could have the honor of playing alongside you to learn from you in like a voice chat or something, as on-the-spot corrections could be so helpful for me. Although I definitely don't want to mess with your MMR, so I'll try to build myself up before anything like that. It'll probably take a while though since I have college to worry about too. We'll see how it goes. Can't wait to see the Synergies/Threats chart!

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One of my fav guide and build to play jungle

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How exactly do you play ww? It sounds stupid, but whenever I try him, idk what to do in ganks. I try to use Q, but no damage. I see others use him, and they use his abilities so easily, destroying people in ganks easily. He is simple, but i just can't understand his playstyle of ability cycle.

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Your Q isn't your main source of damage (I don't even max it first). Use Q to follow dashes or reposition yourself to get a better angle for your E fear. In pre-6 ganks you usually want to come from the side or from behind. If you run at someone, you usually need ult or flash to make it work.

Warwick is strong in 1v1s and he's good at cleaning up low health targets since you can run at them faster and you get more attack speed against them. gives you a bunch of up-front burst damage as well. Full health targets are harder to kill since they can usually run away after your fear runs out, but your teammates can help finish them off.

If you're chasing someone down in a gank, think more about getting behind them and fearing them towards your teammate(s), and less about trying to 1 shot them yourself. If you can get between them and their escape path, you can get a few extra autos off as well.

Post 6 ganks are much easier as well. Hold down Q during your ult to buffer it, so if your target uses an escape after the ult ends, you're guaranteed to follow.

Let me know if you have more questions. Honestly the easiest ways to learn Warwick's mechanics are to watch good Warwick players and practice yourself. There are some clips in the guide that demonstrate some example ganks so you can see visually how to be effective in ganks.

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Thanks! I did a lot better in teamfights because of the E reactivate when ult.

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I loved the guide. I was bad at jungle role in general and this guide really helped me to get a hang of stuff. tysm

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Hi.
Can you tell me why we should finish early? isn't it better to buy and finish the item later? doesn't seem to be as useful as other item options early game and I find farming with much easier because of its lower Active CD compared to .

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You can finish Cinderhulk first since it's been buffed. I just missed that part of the guide in my update. The cheatsheet shows finishing Cinderhulk first. I'll fix up the item section to reflect the new item order.

Edit: Item section is updated now. I also added some of the other items that I hadn't written up yet.

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Hey, I was just wondering, how do you feel about parallax's guide? I noticed that you have a few similarities, and his guide worked really well for me, so I am just curious about your opinion.

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I'm not sure which guide you're referring to.

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It's on youtube and its super long, around 2 hours, but it goes into the details of Warwick.

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Oh you mean Parnellyx. I did watch the whole vid a while back. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember agreeing with a lot of his stuff and disagreeing with a few things occasionally. I think he has some good demonstrations of different Warwick mechanics which are useful.

I can't really offer much more of an opinion than that, since it's been a couple months since I watched the video. I'm sure my overall impression of it was good, so you'd be fine following his advice.

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Hi there, it was really interesting to get all this info, thanks for that. What do you think is important for someone like me, who wants to start going jungle for the first few times?

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For a new jungler, some of the best things to keep in mind are:

Clear Gromp and Wolves often and try to secure as many Scuttles as possible to keep your gold and XP up. Once you have Tiamat, you can clear Raptors and Krugs more quickly as well.
Check the map before entering the river to see if there are any enemies that are missing or are pushed and could rotate to collapse on you.
Try to play around your winning lanes as much as possible. Your job isn't to help the 0/6 bot lane, it's to snowball your 2/0 top lane so they can pick up the slack until your bot lane farms into the game. If you do go to a losing lane, try to bring at least one winning laner with you (like a support + jungle gank on mid, or a mid + jungle gank on bottom).
After 20 minutes, avoid showing yourself on the bottom side of the map. You need to be on the top side so you can contest Baron.
Try to hold onto one charge of Smite after the early game, especially after 20 minutes. If there's a neutral objective like Dragon or Baron alive, you need to have a charge of Smite to secure it.

There's a ton more to know about jungling but those are probably the most common mistakes I've seen people make when they're unfamiliar with the role. You'll get better at it as you play more games. If you want more detailed information, read through this guide for the Warwick-specific stuff and check out my Nocturne guide for more extensive information on jungling and macro in general.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.

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Thanks a lot for the reply, i thnink this is enough to get started. Thanks a lot for the tipps

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Hey Psiguard,
This guide was exactly what I was looking for.
I tried it out against my brother, and it worked well.
Next step is to take it into Draft Pick.
Cheers for the guide

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Good luck, friend. <3

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Thanks for this guide.

I'm a low elo right now, but since I read your guide and started to play WW with your tips,I played 6 rankedgames and won 5!!

Keep it up!

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Great to hear! Keep up that win streak! :)

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