ABOUT ME

On League I go by Federals1, and since 2018 I have hit challenger with at least 900 lp every single season.



I have also hit Challenger on EUW



I was also the number 1 Darius in the world in season 9.



Over the years have gotten top 10/5 on Volibear, Dr. Mundo, Sett, Garen, Malphite, Olaf, Aatrox and Mordekaiser. Most of the time I will play on my main account, so you can check out what I do there.

I will be livestreaming at https://www.twitch.tv/federals123 , so if you want to check it out and see how it's going be sure to tune in! I will be answering any questions and trying to give my thought process while playing, giving general tips and such. I hope if you end up checking it you will enjoy your time.

FUTURE GUIDES

I will be making more guides in the future, some already being in the works. My goal is to make a guide for every single champion I am extremely confident with, and ones I've been playing for a very long time where I have unique insights to share.
I am currently working on multiple guides but I cannot give an exact date when they will be out. I will post them gradually as I finish them, so if you want to see when they are out for a new champion you can follow and be up to date. To make sure they are done quicker not all of them will them will have a matchup spreadsheet at the start, that alone takes me a week by itself, it's massive.

While you wait in the loading screen, or even before minions spawn, go on an external website and check what runes your opponent has. I use op. gg or u. gg, but any website that show runes in full works. You will be able to see exactly what your opponent's runes are, and it can play a big part in your very first trade and knowing exactly how you might want to play out the first few waves. Here's an example: you see the enemy has Resolve secondary. It's extremely important to see what he has in Resolve. You can check and let's say they have Bone Plating and Overgrowth. Now you know you should play out your first trade a bit differently, trying to proc down Bone Plating first, or knowing that if you go for a trade he has that extra block power. This is something you should look to do every single game to gain an advantage.

This section is specifically made for someone else I know who is a Warwick one trick and who is playing in Masters+. I have put his social links here in case you wanna follow him and ask him stuff regarding his own playstyle:

Hornlime

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/h0rnlime
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@H0rnlime

The matchup spreadsheet is not done yet, but I will post it when I complete it.

Game Stages xEarly Game xMid Game xLate Game Champ insight xAbility tips and tricks xAll final items explained

Runes,Pros,Cons xAll possible runes xPros xCons

In the early game, you want to fight as much as possible. Warwick has one of the best early games out of all melee top laners. His dueling power is insane. Level 1 and 2 it might not be that amazing, it's not bad though just nothing too crazy, but once you hit level 3, it ramps up insanely hard. Having all 3 of your basic abilities is massive. First off, his passive allows him to sit at 50% health for the entire lane and NEVER dip below it. You won't go above 50% very often, but in most matchups, the enemy either kills you from 50% hp to 0 very quickly, or they never have a fighting chance. A champion like Malphite cannot poke you out ever because every auto attack will heal you when you are below half. He would literally have to contest every single minion to deny you the healing, and that doesn't seem very doable. On top of that, since you don't need to use your Q to heal, you should not run out of mana if you correctly use your spells. His W Movement Speed will also be on for the majority of the laning phase, as there is a very good chance someone will be under half health somewhere on the map, meaning you can use the speed to get back to lane quicker AND to dodge skillshots in lane. Your E is insanely good in the 1v1 duel. The fear combined with the damage reduction you gain from it is massive. It basically allows you to win almost every single melee duel in the game, aside from champions who can push through the fear effect like Olaf in his ultimate . Taking Barrier also means that if the enemy runs Ignite you can still win out the 1v1 and prevent mega burst abilities from killing you, such as Garen ultimate .

His 2v1 power is also disgusting. It's basically a death sentence for any jungler to gank Warwick early on if he has his basic abilities up and Barrier, not to mention going Lethal Tempo most of the time, so your Attack Speed will be insanely high. Most of the time the gank turns into a double kill for the Warwick, so the enemy cannot fully rely on the jungler's help. You can also very easily track down the enemy jungler due to your W . If the jungler is below half health, your blood trail will allow you to know exactly where he is at, and you can even ping your team to let them know.

Your only real issue is making sure you don't get kited. Early on you can only stick to people with your Q and your speed and not much else. You can use your E to fear them and manage to stay near them a bit more, but if you don't have the E they might be able to turn on you and fight you. Ranged champions will be tough to get close to early on, but there's cases where you can unironically just use your ultimate on them even if they have not lost any health. There's a lot of matchups where they just want to poke you down and not much else, but if you can actually get on top of them initially wit that ultimate , you can chase down for a kill. You can use your Q to get in front of where they want to go, and then fear them away with your E , which should give you a good chunk of time to get them low, after which your W speed will kick in and make chasing them down for the kill much easier. There will be matchups where you need to respect the poke and play it much slower, but there's not an insane amount of those, mostly just ranged ones and champions with a lot of dashes/ mobility.

There's also some matchups where getting hard burst is actually an issue, such as Riven, so buying the correct item components is crucial. Most of the time you can just simply go towards your general 2 core build, but there's cases where you might need to delay it by getting an item that will prevent the burst. Warwick won't have a DPS problem early on even if he doesn't go for damage first, so making sure that you don't die from 50% health very quickly is crucial here.

If the enemy laner is super passive and not really fighting you, you can actually look to roam and possibly get a pick onto the enemy jungler or mid lane with your ultimate . The only issue when trying to do this, is that Warwick is one of the worst waveclearing champions in the entire game. You have ZERO waveclear, it is completely non existant. You just attack the minions fast, and that's it, so you need to buy an early Tiamat if you want to try to do this. You can also look to rush Hullbreaker and just perma proc the effect onto the turret. That way, even if they don't give you a lead through kills, you can get plates and take down the turret quickly.

If you are going damage, your first large spike will be either Pickaxe or Vampiric Scepter, both of these are usually very good to spike on. Your dueling power becomes even better once you have one of those 2. Your next massive spike is when you complete Blade of the Ruined King. I would argue that this particular power spike is one of the best 1 item power spikes in the entire game. There's matchups where you will need to buy another 1st item to make sure you can play out the lane properly, but if you get Blade , always contest lane priority or ANY minion the opponent wants to kill. Tanks get their health obliterated, because your abilities do magic damage and your auto attacks plus Blade of the Ruined King do very good physical damage, so they need to get both armor and magic resist, and bruiser who most likely won't buy either stat also get destroyed because of the raw damage you have. You actually win the 1v1 vs every other Blade of the Ruined King champion as well, not a single one can 1v1 you. There's matchups where you can ult them if they took 0 damage and they straight up die after some extra auto attacks. Abuse your very strong early game as much as possible on this champion!

Most of the time in the mid game you look to push out the side lanes and 1v1 anyone who isn't straight up under their turret. If you maxed your E second, the damage reduction on it will be as high as a rank 1 Alistar ultimate .
I'm not kidding, look:

This basically means that unless their main source of damage is true damage, you will not even take half of the damage they deal when your E is on. If a Sett misses the middle of his fully charged W and hits the side instead, you MIGHT lose 15% of your health if he's really fed. This basically means that, unless the opponent you fight is very strong, you should be able to outduel every other melee champion from full health every time as long as you don't get hyper kited. There are obviously exceptions to this rule, but for the most part you should be king of the side lane 1v1 during this game stage. Stridebreaker will also allow you to have much better stick power during this time. You can also use your W to see if anyone is coming to stop you on the side lane, as if you don't get it activated, it means there is no one near. This also works well as a scounting tool near objectives. It's not as good as a blue trinket , but it can give some good info on where 1 person is sitting.

Your teamfighting isn't that great, but you can be an amazing engager for your team with your ultimate . You can just ultimate in to start a fight, either going for a high priority target, or just using it as a straight up hard engage tool. You will most likely get hard focued right after, but if you have your E you should be able to tank even all 5 people hitting you for the entire damage reduction duration and then some. On top of that, if the enemy has no heal reduction against you at this stage, you're probably not dying at all. This is the stage where you want to look to close out the game. Warwick is not a late game scaler, so you want to abuse your mid game power to take objectives such as Dragons or Baron , or just take down the side lane turrets for more gold and get a big item advantage, on top of the one that you can gain in the early game.

If you get here, you're not really gonna enjoy it. Your teamfighting isn't getting better, but a lot worse. When your E runs out you probably die shortly after. The items the enemies get by this point will hurt you A LOT, especially true damage, which straight up ignores the damage reduction. If you really need to teamfight, you need to hit that R on a priority target, or get a strong R + E combo in. That way, you can fear everyone around the target you ult , which can have some amazing setup for your team, but make sure the team can follow you up on the engage, or it's going to be horrible.

You can still 1v1 a lot of champions depending on the build on side lane, so your best bet will be to permanently push out sides. You might not be the 2v1/3v1 powerhouse from the early and mid game, but you can at least match up to a lot of champions in the 1v1 if you play it correctly. Tanks will still be very easy to push into, as you can just take Hullbreaker and take the turret from right under their nose, and squishy champions will usually still be exposed to you just ulting on them and killing them fast. That being said, you really want to close out the game quick and not let it get to this stage. Your passive will be quite weak during this stage, as sitting at half health won't actually be enough into most bruisers. It is usually fine into tanks, but if you fight a champion like Fiora, Darius or Kayle, it won't be enough, so you will be forced to trade very well when you go to fight and will rely on the Blade of the Ruined King lifesteal to heal up past half in order to sit on side reliably. Heal reduction will also mess up your tankiness quite a lot during this time, so you need to consider the heal cut when going in a lot more.

ETERNAL HUNGER (P)

Your passive healing is going to be extremely important for lane. It is basically the reason as to why you are so strong early on, as you constantly heal back up to half health over and over again after every fight. Not much to say here other than that really.

JAWS OF THE BEAST (Q)

This ability has a lot more skill expression that you might initially think. For one, it's very important to know when you want to hold the ability or just tap it. There's a lot of situations where both the tap and hold are used, and you can even let go when you are holding the Q in the middle of the animation to place yourself on top of the enemy as opposed to a bit in front of them. The fact that it can follow dashes and blinks is also great and you can use it to follow stuff like Ezreal E or someone using Flash. On top of that, the ability makes you displacement immune while you are in the Q , so you can dodge abilities such as Sett ultimate or even Mordekaiser ultimate . It is also worth noting that if you get hard crowd controlled in the middle of the animation you will fully stop, so if you hold Q , you will basically detach.

BLOOD HUNT (W)

This ability is extremely good at tracking down the location is enemy members. If they are ever below half health, you will get a blood trail to their exact location. You won't see them, but the trail will tell you exactly where they sit, which means you can ping their location and let you team know as well. On top of that, the blood trail also goes to champions who are invisible, so if a Kha'Zix uses his ultimate to try to escape, you can activate your W and you will see the trail leading to him. It can also be used to scout areas to see if there are any enemies nearby. If you activate it and nothing happens, it means there is nobody within your W range, so you know for certain they are nowhere near you.

The Attack Speed part of the ability is also very good in the 1v1 and for taking down towers. The way it works is that if you swap from a target who is under half health to one who is above, you won't instantly lose the Attack Speed. It will actually linger for a bit, so what you can do is attack the low health minion once, then swap to the turret where you do 2/3 quick attacks, then hit the minion again, then swap back, and you can repeat this until the turret is gone. This is especially useful to do if you have Hullbreaker as you can proc the item passive way more.

PRIMAL HOWL (E)

Not much to say about this ability really. It's your main tankiness tool when 1v1ing people or when going into teamfights. The one thing that you should keep in mind is that it will not reduce true damage at all, and that you can actually activate the ability in the middle of your ultimate to fear everyone around you. It will also refresh the damage reduction duration once you hit your ult .

INFINITE DURESS (R)

This is going to be your main engage tool and lockdown in teamfights, as well as a very good source of healing once you land onto your target. You can also use it as an escape tool when getting ganked. Keep in mind that people can cc you and stop it completely, or just use QSS to get out of it, or certain abilities such as Gangplank W . You are also cc immune during the dash, so you can ignore stuff like Veigar's cage or abilities like Sett ultimate . There is one more thing to note, and that is the fact that the ability range scales with your Movement Speed, which is great as you get a lot of it from your W , but it means that if you get slowed down hard by something like a Nasus W , the range will become extremely short, so do not use it when you are hard slowed or you will legit do a pitifully tiny leap.

Blade of the Ruined King: Absolutely insane item for Warwick. The power spike this item will give you is insane. It will allow you to duel basically every single champion in the entire game with very few exceptions. You won't be insanely tanky, but trust me, whatever champion you face in the 1v1, will completely melt against this. The passive slow it also has is amazing at letting you chase down for longer.

Stridebreaker: The active slow is very good at allowing you to catch up to people. Getting kited is one of your main weaknesses so this can help out a lot with that, and the item also provides wave clear for you, which is equally as important, if not more.

Spirit Visage: Very good item that amps up all your healing, not much else to say here. It has some decent magic resist, but what you are really looking for here is the passive heal amp.

Terminus: Warwick will actually use both the armor and magic pen, as his abilities to magic damage and his auto attacks do physical, not to mention the fact that he can also go items that deal physical damage such as Blade of the Ruined King.

Hullbreaker: Very good item for split pushing. You can actually proc the passive of the item a lot due to your high Attack Speed that becomes even higher due to your W .

Death's Dance: The bleed effect is actually very good and it gives you a lot of extra time to get more damage and healing off. If you can get a kill and cleanse all the stacked up damage it's great.

Sterak's Gage: Generally speaking it's not an amazing item to get, but you can do so if you want to teamfight more, or against some specific champions like Garen where you can block his ultimate due to the shield.

Force of Nature: If you want magic resist and Movement Speed this is a great item to take for that.

Wit's End: You use the passive effect of this item quite well, but the underrated stat here for Warwick is the tenacity. There's actually a good amount of lanes where the tenacity helps you out a ton in winning out the 1v1.

Trinity Force: Not a great item to take as your base damage is quite low so the Sheen damage won't be the highest, but it can be okay to take especially in a Q max focused setup.

Titanic Hydra: This can be a great item to take, especially due to the active, the only issue is that if you buy this you cannot take Stridebreaker and that is a very good item at allowing you to chase down enemies way easier.

Ravenous Hydra: Extremely situational item. Most of the time I never really go for it, but you can omega heal on waves if you take this, though I think it's overkill most of the time.

Jak'Sho, the Protean: Once the item is stacked up in combat it can give you a lot of resists, very good as a 5th or 6th item.

Thornmail: The defensive heal reduction item.

Chempunk chainsword: the offensive heal reduction item.

Guinsoo's Rageblade: Very underrated item. The Attack Speed on the item is massive, but the passive effect of getting more on hit effects is massive. If you also get Terminus and Blade of the Ruined King, you hyper shred most champions insanely quickly.

Experimental Hexplate: This is actually not a bad item to take. It is especially strong in lanes where you can only fight the enemy if your ultimate is up, such as Kayle.

Edge of Night: This is very specifically built as a counterpick item against Vayne and possibly Singed too.

Kraken Slayer: The effect of the item is nice, it's kind of a reverse Blade of the Ruined King, where the lower they get the more damage you deal, but I don't like it as much. Way more situational.

Overlord's Bloodmail: The damage you can get from this item is actually quite good if you go for a more health focused build. You also make use of the passive nicely because you fight at lower health anyways.

Serpent's Fang: Extremely situational item. You only really take this if there's a lot of shields on the enemy team and no one else can take shield cut. All of your damage is single target, so you will need to buy AOE from items to get more use from it.

Dead Man's Plate: The slow resist on the item is very nice and the speed you get from it also feels very good.

Guardian Angel: Generally you take this just before the game ending teamfight. The revive helps out a ton for the final fight or before a big objective fight.

Frozen Heart: Most of the time you only take this if the enemy team is mega stacked with champions who want to auto attack a lot, but not much else.

Randuin's Omen: Only really taken vs crit focused champions, such as Yone, Yasuo, etc.

Knight's Vow: Extremely situational item. You only ever take this if you are very weak and you need to basically peel for one of your main carries, so you can take it to make them a bit tankier.

Tier 2 boot upgrades:

Boots of Swiftness: Very good boots to make you way less kitable. The slow resist alongside the high Movement Speed feel very good for Warwick

Mercury's Treads: Only bought for the tenacity and not much else. You can also combine them with Wit's End to get even more tenacity.

Plated Steelcaps: Solid boots to take. They give you quite a lot of extra tankiness vs AD auto attackers.

Tier 3 boot upgrades:

Swiftmarch: You can get a lot of damage from these because of your w , which gives you some insanely high speed .

Chainlaced Crushers: Very good shield to have vs magic damage. Magic damage champions will take longer to poke you down and that's always solid.

Armored Advance: The shield these boots give help you out a lot in melee matchups where the enemy really wants to hyper all in you. They also help out a lot in shorter trades.

KEYSTONE RUNES:

Lethal Tempo: This is by far the keystone rune you will run most often. It has amazing synergy with your W and then fact that you want to attack a lot. It gives you insane dueling power during every stage of the time.

Grasp of the Undying: This is usually taken into slower matchups where they won't really fight you or where you just want the lane sustain from it, not much to it.

Press the Attack: I don't run this as much as I used to, but it can be okay to do very short trades and then backing off.

Fleet Footwork: This is actually quite good into matchups where you want both healing and speed . One matchup where this can be taken and it feels quite good is Teemo.



RUNE SLOTS:




Triumph: Very consistent rune.


Presence of mind size: You can run this if you wish, but most of the time I don't actually need it for the mana sustain as I max Q last.


Absorb Life: Can be taken if you want the extra sustain on lane, though it's been nerfed quite a bit.


Legend: Alacrity: You generally take this always as it's the best in this slot.


Legend: Bloodline: Can be taken, but I don't find much use for it.


Last Stand: This is the best one out of the 3 by far. Warwick loves to fight at low health so this is a perfect fit.







Taste of Blood: The only real take on that particular tree slot.


Deep Ward: Best one from its respective space generally.


Ultimate Hunter: Works well as Warwick's ultimate is a very powerful engage tool in certain lanes, and the more he has it up the more fights he can take.







Nimbus Cloak: Generally good rune that you can take in your secondary.


Transcendence: Can be done to get some extra ability haste as you go into the mid and late game.


Celerity: This rune has solid synergy with the W speedup to give even more speed and make him even quicker.


Gathering Storm: Default take here that can allow you to scale into the late game much harder and give you a lot more damage.







Demolish: Solid rune if you want to take early tower plates or split push a lot.


Conditioning: More scaling as you get into the mid game and you don't need Second Wind for lane sustain.


Second Wind: Best rune in its respective space for sustaining in the lane.


Bone Plating: Works best against combo based champions such as Sett, Riven or Renekton, but into those I usually just end up going Conditioning.


Revitalize: This rune is amazing for Warwick. Every time you attack under half health you heal up, so this rune will amp that up, on top of all your other healing. This is basically a second keystone rune, that's how strong it is.







Magical Footwear: Can feel pretty good to just get free boots, but not groundbreaking. The extra 10 Movement Speed is actually quite good for you as Warwick has lower base speed than most other bruisers.


Cash Back: Can be taken if you want to just get to your spike items in the mid game a bit sooner, but I don't like it as much.


Triple Tonic: Decent rune, the extra pot at level 9 is pretty good, and the second potion can be used to spike up your level 6 even harder.


Biscuit Delivery: Can be used if you want extra sustain, but most of the time it's bad and you can just take Second Wind instead, plus Warwick can just heal up to half anyways, so it's mostly used in the middle of combat as you get lower and lower.


Cosmic Insight: Generally good rune, the reduction on summoner spells feels pretty good.

+Insane early game power, one of the best in the entire game
+Infinite lane sustain, once you get to half health as long as you keep hitting stuff you will always stay there
+Free homeguard every time you run back to lane due to W, someone is almost always under half health
+Can ping the location of blood trailed enemies to allies, very good information, especially for higher ranks
+A lot of skill expression with his ability usage, it might not seem like it but he does have some unique mechanics and tricks he can do
+Flexible ability max order, literally any order max can work, experiment and see what you like
+Can turn 2v1 ganks very easily and come out on top
+Long range engages with his ultimate
+Can always stay in fights and is encouraged to do so even while at literally 10 health

-One of the worst waveclearing champions in the entire game, he has ZERO waveclear
-Most of your damage is single target magic damage, so if you play vs a tank and they rush Kaenic Rookern with Bramble Vest you kinda can't ever short trade, and in teamfights you can't hit multiple people at once with your damage
-His Q devours his mana pool, if you max this ability you need to be extremely mindful of how much mana you spend
-He can't really stick to people unless he has items that give him stick power like Stridebreaker, he can ult in but then it can be hard to stick to the target
-Gets kited quite easily if he doesn't have his ultimate or Ghost, if someone is half health you can just auto him to proc down the speed
-His ultimate can be bodyblocked to prevent the supression of a high priority target or he can get cc'd out of it

If you liked this guide, perhaps you would like to check out some of my other ones as well. As I make more guides for more champions this list will be updated to contain all of them. Simply click on the words below the champion portrait and it will take you to the respective guide.

Volibear Top Guide

Darius Top Guide

Garen Top Guide

Dr. Mundo Top Guide

Olaf Top Guide

Mordekaiser Top Guide

Udyr Top Guide

Here there will be a list of all the significant changes I am going to make going forward on the guide, so you can look here to see what the newest updates are, or old ones:

Update Log

Patch 25.09
1st May 2025:
- the publish date of the guide