11.13: Death's Dance huge buff, can now be used in more situations even if enemy team isn't primarily AD, the AD it gives makes Goredrinker heal more and now that it heals more on takedowns can survive and heal a lot more in fights.

I have been playing Warwick actively since early Season 10 and have been playing League of Legends since Season 1 so I have a lot of knowledge about the champion and its best matchups. I hit Diamond 2 last season with a 65% win rate when I was grinding ranked. Getting back into ranked this season and Warwick feels to be in a pretty good spot!

When you're playing Warwick your strongest point is level 3, so when you're playing Warwick you wanna take your strong early game and use it to make and push a lead. You should be looking to make a play at level 3 whether that be getting a laners summoner spell and killing them or invading and getting a kill. Warwick does not scale well and does not farm fast so getting behind is really rough for Warwick. Your goal is to get tiamat by the time dragon spawns and if so you're at a good pace to win the game.

First thing to decide when playing Warwick is whether to take blue smite or red smite. Safest one is to go red smite if you don't know but half the time blue smite is the better option. Blue smite is best against champions that are squishy, ranged, and are very mobile/hard to stay on. The extra movement speed bonus and slow allow ypu to get on top of them and kill them. Red smite is for champions with high burst that you need to reduce their damage or champions that are strong duelists, reducing their damage allows you to stay in a fight longer and win the fight from out sustaining them with your healing.

To repeat you wanna get ahead early and create some sort of lead, so you need to path the way you are going to create that lead. Most of the time this is through pathing from bot lane buff to top lane buff as it gives you the option to gank top, invade enemy at their buff, or gank mid. Path is going to be from bot lane buff to top lane buff then gromp. If you are going to invade level 3 you want to save smite so you can steal buff or use it for healing in 1v1 fight. If you do this path usually you will clear faster than enemy jungle and can invade them or gank mid or top who will be only level 2. Try your hardest to get a kill out of one of these lanes even if that means using your flash, most important thing is to get your tiamat before dragon spawns for pacing. After a successful gank, taking one scuttle crab back into your wolves and gromp that are respawning should give you tiamat with enough time to recall and run to drag before it spawns and take it as soon as it soawns where you should have 2 smites up to take it in only 15 seconds by yourself. Make sure you grab a sweeper to sweep the area to make sure its safe. From here you have a lot of options, you can invade their bot side because you most likely will have an item advantage, try a gank mid or bot, or you can clear your bot side with your tiamat which will help you clear fast into clearing your respawning top side then ganking mid or top or invading enemy top jungle whatever lane you got summs from level 3.

At this point you should be the strongest champion on the map so it's your job to help your team snowball, and don't be afraid to take the kills as you're gonna be spam ganking you can push your team farther by being the one fed. As your second round of buffs respawn you should be hitting level 6 from them and with that you can look for a play to get plates for your team through a gank or setup for herald with it cause herald will be spawning soon. Herald and drag will be how you close out games when playing warwick so be around those objectives as soon as they spawn. At this point after taking herald you want to be playing around one side of the map that gives you the best chance to win because if you get a crucial kill in that lane you have herald to feed plates to that player. Mid lane should be in the equation whatever side of the map you are on. Still be looking for invades on enemy jungle so because youre only focusing on one side if you pressure them they probably cant make plays on the other side of the map

With any jungler you want to be efficient with farming but its especially important with Warwick, warwick doesnt have any AoE damage abilities so you do not want to be clearing raptors or krugs until you have tiamat which is why its crucial to get tiamat as soon as you can, when you hit 1200 gold. Only time you wanna take raptors or krugs without tiamat is if you cant get a successful kill level 3 and its the only gold source you can get. After level 6 farming on warwick slows down dramatically as you are focusing on spam ganking from there, however you still want to be clearing as youre ganking so you dont fall behind in levels and get outscaled. If you are pathing top try to clear on your way up there, so long as your top laner isnt getting dove.

One tip to clearing fast early is smiting buffs instantly so you get the attack speed bonus from your W sooner. Only do this though after your first clear and if you arent worried about the camp getting stolen. I do this a lot on scuttle to take it really fast.

Q - holding your q allows you to follow enemies dashes/flashes and can also allow you to keep moving while CC if timed correctly. I.e. you can negate sett ultimate with warwick Q, he will go right through you. A lot of people dont know this but you can q over walls, if someone is standing right next to the wall across from you (thin walls) you can q them for damage or even hold q to get over the wall instead of having to flash.
W- use w to get movement speed when necessary but dont use it always cause smarter enemies will know youre coming for them, you can also use it to put pressure on a lane you arent even ganking cause they will know youre near. You can use it to check if anyone is in near vacinity cause it works in fog of war, use it to check if enemies are sneaking baron, hiding in a bush, invading your buffs. If duoing with someone you can communicate to teammate where enemies are hiding.
E - e gives reduced damage so keep on as long as you can in 1v1s to take less damage but sometimes yoy want to use it fast so they cant run away or you can set up a guaranteed ult
R - cant be cc while jumping so you can use it to go through abilities that would normally cc you. But be careful it can be cancelled by a lot of abilities. Can also use this to run away over walls, very effective

Ironwhip/goredrinker - goredrinker and ironwhip are auto resets so you can auto then use ability and auto to almost instantly proc PTA.
When going for ganks make sure you use your w for movement speed boost then right before you q the enemy start your e and almost always you want to hold q through enemy cause you can follow their flash which they usually use instantly, and then proc your e as you will be behind them and actually fear them back towards your teammate then get an auto off to proc PTA then ult before fear runs out.
Since your q follows flashes and dashes try to predict when they will use it and aave it for that or when you see the animation of the dash start.
You can start the first part of your E before using R then when you R someone it will proc the second part of your E during your ult and fear everyone around you so they cant peel the person youre ulting or you can time it to proc after your ult ends so they are cc longer.
When invading level 3 try to auto before you q so you can proc PTA faster and by the time your fear runs out they are already below 50% or even 25% sometimes so you get bonus attack speed and they can never win the fight
A lot of the time you dont even need to hit your ult to pick someone off, ulting to get in range to q through them then fear them back to your team to follow up is enough to get a kill

Let me start by saying full tank Warwick is not good this season like last season. With the builds I've given you are just as tanky and hard to kill as you would be going full tank but you do significantly more damage.
You again want to get tiamat asap for clearing, then on second back try to get ironwhip and boots. Boots allow you to get around the map faster to farm faster and push your lead more with ganks, ironwhip helps clear significantly and your damage is surprisingly high in 3v3 skirmishes, dont underestimate the active on it that early.
Then you want to finish goredrinker because by then most people wont have grievous so its pretty strong healing at that point and the ability haste from the passive is so good on warwick because lower cooldowns means everything for warwick, His abilities are so strong for fights. Then you will finish plated steelcaps or merc treads depending on team, 90% of the time merc treads are the better option because warwick no matter what is tanky and hard to kill, what kills warwick is cc not really damage. Thats why steraks and merc treads are so good for him. But if a team is 4 AD you want fo go plated steelcaps, or sometimes even vs 3 AD if they are really scary. Next instead of finishing titanic i will go either deaths dance, steraks, or abyssal, refer to builds above for when to take what. And then i will finish titanic hydra and then go steraks if i havent finished it or if i already did ill go deaths dance or abyssal depending on enemy team comp. Problem with abyssal is its a support item, you have to rely on your team to capitalize on bonus damage for it to be good, but it gives a lot of magic resist and warwick has so much cc you cant pass it up if against a full ap team. For the last utem the game should not make it to that point, if it does warwick is hard outscaled and it will be hard, but if it does then the last item can be a lot of things, you can finish deaths dance or abyssal, or go dead mans, or thornmail, or randuins, or even wits end or maw if you want more damage and are vs ap.