Hi guys, my ign is almavia, and I'm a Platinum player in NA Server. Warwick is one of my favorite champions to play, so I tend to insta-lock him a lot in Solo Queue. For several weeks, I was pretty depressed when WW was permabanned after his Preseason Jungle Rework. Luckily, people ban him less as he got nerfed. Now he's jungling is not OP anymore and this just gives you more reason to play him as a Top AP Champion. Which is better? That's debatable and varies depending on team compositions and situations. Overall, I'd say AP WW shines the best during early game & early mid/mid game while AD WW gets the spotlight during late game. The underlying difference is that AP WW is sooooo much more fun to play! Let's see how it's viable.

Pros
- Snowballs hard early game when played right
- Great Health Sustain from Q
- Massive Q harass in laning phase
- Percent Damage on Q counters Healthy Champs
- Can one shot a carry with combos
- fun to play

Cons
- Falls off late game
- Hard to CS
- Squishy
- MR from tanks SIGNIFICANTLY reduce your dmg output on them
- very vulnerable to CC

IGNITE
-It is very hard to get a kill without ignite. I'd say it's a must but you can take teleport for more lane presence globally.

FLASH
-Another very important spell. While chasing or engaging, flash helps so much in gap closing. WW is useless if he can't get close to opponents, and sometimes heavy cc prevents WW from reaching enemy carries, which is who you want to ult/kill as a bursty assassin in teamfights.

STARTING ITEMS
- Doran for more Q dmg/sustain and mana pots when he's low on mana.

Essentials
- After experimenting with so many different AP WW builds, I find these items to be the best fit for early game. Boots to gap close for Q and 2 Fiendish Codex for flat AP and CDR on Q and R.

CORE
- Sorc shoes for magic pen for Ult. The two codex build up to DFG and Nashor which are cardinal for 100 to 0ing a carry. DFG gives tremendous amount of ap, cdr, and burst for ult which WW all needs. Again more cdr from Nashor, and great On-Hit AP Scaling passive for ult and farming. Both Nashor and Wit's End have synergy with DFG burst.

END
- Wit's End for more on-hit. Bork for more one shotting on-hit and dmg after ult is done. GA for suicide ult engaging in teamfight.

CONSUMABLES
- Buy wards (Stealth/Pink) because if you make your enemy low, he'll cry for his jungler to help. And if you get caught near enemy tower, you're dead.
- Buy Mana potions. I found building mana sustain items wasteful on him because the whole point of him mid-late game is to 1 shot a carry not harass. So in order to replace a sustain item, I'd buy like 4 mana potions every time I back.

- With your Q's healing ability and some AP in the beginning, you should be able to out-trade most top laners.
- For the first few minutes, try to conserve mana and only use q on your enemy. Don't Q to harass when you're full at this stage. Start auto attacking and when your enemy fights back and your health gets little bit low, use q on them and step back. If your opponent doesn't have natural sustain (like Vlad/Cho) you won that trade close to 100%.
- Upon your first back, you should now have at least Boots of Speed and a little more ap. Also you better have at least 3 mana potions for sustain. Now this time you truly spam your q for some serious damage.

- If you haven't already killed your opponent yet, here is a chance to do so. Now you have ult and that provides you with so much potential. Not only it'd be easy for your jungler to gank, but you can also finish off your enemy fast. When he is less than half hp, walk up to him, land a q, wait like 2 sec (for Q cd to go down a little) and ult him, ignite, throw some autos and land another Q to finish him up. If he flash out just before your q, flash towards him to land your q and get the hell out of the tower range. Be aware of your enemy jungler at this point.

- Is your lane kinda boring? Still no progress? Does your opponent have just as much sustain as you or are you perhaps losing!!? Here is a time to contribute to the team in another way. Roam mid lane!!! You may be able to carry the game if you're super fed, but the real carries should be your mid-laner and adc as they have the most damage potential in mid-late/late team fights. Get your mid lane fed, and your team has a bright future!

Unless you are super fed, you've entered the late game by your 4th item. Unless your team is winning the game hard (which they probably aren't since they otherwise would've won before late game stage), you are very useless in teamfights in terms of overall damage output. After you ult, you'll get focused and die quickly as you're squishy or if you're at the front line, you'd get poked to death. I've had some serious trouble with this when I started playing AP WW. I'd win lane easily but my bot/mid lanes would be mediocre/bad, so I am forced to enter the late game and die easily without much contribution. There are couple ways to be useful in teamfights with this build.

1) Kill enemy carry(s) with your combo before you die. This way your death is not in vain and if you killed the carry without your team's help, your team would probably win the fight.

2) Use ult to peel for your carries. This is the less efficient way, but if your carry is worth protecting and if you can't 1 shot enemy carry, this is the only option.

With general Wit's End and Bork items, I guess you can call him Hybrid WW instead of AP. Because he's Q is a single targeting spell, a full AP WW would have little contribution in team fight so that's why I'd invest in his One-shotting-Carry-Ult with Wit's End and Bork. Don't worry he'd still have lots of AP from DFG, Nashor, and Runes+Masteries. After Nashor, laning phase is over anyway. Thanks for reading my guide :)

THERE IS MORE COMING ON CHAMPION MATCH UPS!!