Hey guys, this is Vapora Dark speaking, here to bring you my second ever proper guide, this time on my longest played champion, Warwick!

Warwick was the first ever champion I picked up back in August 2011 when I started playing LoL, and for a long time he was the only champion I was willing to play. I couldn't be bothered to take the time to learn to play other champions. Why do that when I could just play an incredible champ I already knew how to play, and I wasn't getting bored of? I probably played up from level 5 to level 28 with literally 96% of my matches played as Warwick. It was around then that I took the time to learn to play Talon. ( With whom true love would soon blossom )

I ended Season 2 at 1305 Elo with over 400 games played. Warwick was my 2nd highest played champ right after Tristana, and he had the largest win ratio of any champion with whom I'd had such a large pool of games played as, by far.



In season 3, I'm gold tier, and intend to keep on climbing. I haven't played Warwick much at all this season, and what I have played was mostly jungle, as I don't play much solo top anymore. But I intend to start playing more top Warwick regardless, so I can keep up my prowess with this incredible champion.

NOTE: I am no master of BBCode, so my guide isn't going to be the prettiest of guides. I intend to make up for that by going in-depth on the experience I've gained over exactly 1 year and 7 months of being a Warwick player ( at the time that I wrote this sentence, 31/03/2013 ). If you would rather see pretty pictures than a good, in-depth guide, search elsewhere.

Oh, and just to clarify, this guide is NOT a wall of text, not does it have any walls of text. A wall of text is a massive paragraph of like 100+ words. I break up my paragraphs where necessary. My guide is not a wall of text, it's just rather plain. But I honestly don't think that should be a problem, unless you're still at the age where you read books with pictures to complement the story. In which case, sorry that this guide isn't age adequate for you.

"Vapora, u crazy? Warwick's a jungler!"

No! Warwick is not a jungler! Or at least to me, he isn't. To me, he shall always be a dominant laner.

Lanewick is an art that lost popularity long ago after a nerf to his Q's % damage. At max rank, the damage was switched from 20% of their max HP to 16% of their max HP, which was lower than his old Q's % damage at level 4. Harsh nerf is an under-statement. Now the % damage doesn't take any effect in laning phase, you'll only notice it during late-game.

The reason this made Lanewick so unpopular was that his Q was considered a counter to tanky champions. If they stacked HP, his Q did extra damage to compensate. Many people used to consider him a counter to Cho'Gath because of this. But now that his Q has to rely just on its base damage in laning phase, it's basically a spammable spell that NEEDS to be spammed, yet costs 110 mana. This makes Warwick lose a lot of match-ups that he used to win, simply because his mana bar gets run down faster than their HP bar does. And no one wants to spend 1k gold on AP to make his Q as strong as it used to be.

The fact that you can get so much free sustain nowadays also hurts his viability.

"So why are you making a guide on him now that he loses lots of match-ups?". The answer is because he still wins some match-ups, and when he wins them, boy does he win them. You ever seen a Warwick take out a quarter of someone's HP bar in one hit? And then recover almost the same amount on his own HP bar?

You see, tanky champions now have the advantage over Warwick, but squishy champions are hard-countered by him. Champions such as Zed, Kha'Zix, Akali, etc. Mainly assassins. They CANNOT farm against him. They CANNOT trade against him. They CANNOT fight him. Even farming under the tower is hard, because Warwick has no problems poking them under their tower.

But why is he so strong? It's because his Q is strong in 2 different ways. 1: It's a massive nuke. 2: IT HEALS FOR 80% OF THAT NUKE. Okay, so at level 9 with a Doran's Ring and the Blast mastery, Warwick has 24 AP. His Q has a 1.0 AP ratio, which adds 24 damage to it. His Q has 275 base damage. 275 + 24 = 299. LEAVING ASIDE RESISTANCES, he'll hit them for 299 damage. Hard to trade against, right? But he HEALS 80% of that. 80% of 299 = 239. If he hits you for 299, then heals himself for 239 ( 299 + 239 ), then that means you have to do 538 damage to out-trade him. That's more damage than a friggin' Darius ult! You CAN'T out-trade that!

And you know what makes it worse? Even if you CAN somehow manage to deal that much damage, I dunno, maybe you pressed QWER and blew everything you had on him, then guess what? He still heals while he's attacking minions. OMFG WHAT BROKEN OP NERF PLS.

Nope, I just call that hard-countered. Suck it nab. Sweg.

Ahem, anyway, that concludes my explanation on what makes Lanewick strong. Let's continue.

Pros . Unkillable late-game. Great single-target CC. Great sustain. Strong fighter. Extremely mobile late-game. Decent damage.

Cons . Extremely mana hungry early-game. Doesn't win a whole load of match-ups. Hard to farm with. Ignite shuts you down in team-fights. Ultimate easily interrupted. Quicksilver Sash.

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Eternal Thirst (Passive) Each of Warwick's attacks will deal additional magic damage and heal him for that same amount. Each successive attack against the same target will stack this amount of healing and damage up to a maximum of 3 stacks. The stacks remain for 4 seconds. Tips: This will help you last-hit more easily, and will also keep you sustained just by last-hitting. If you want to heal a lot without wasting mana for Hungering Strike, auto-attack a cannon minion to death, as it's quite tanky and will therefore tank a lot of your full stack Eternal Thirst procs. This scales on attack speed and tankiness. AD and crits will do nothing for it.

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Hungering Strike (Q) Strikes an enemy for the greater value between a flat amount of damage and a % of the target's maximum health, and heals Warwick for 80% of the damage dealt. Tips: Spamming this early on will leave you OOM. Try and only use it when you need to sustain during the first few levels. Activating this spell will reset your attack timer. Keep this in mind during fights. . Max this first.

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hunter's call

hunter's call Hunter's Call (W) Warwick lets out a howl that inspires all nearby allied champions. This increases Warwick's attack speed by a large amount and all nearby friendly champions' attack speed by half as much for 10 seconds. Tips: Activating this during a team-fight will automatically give you an assist on anyone that dies on the enemy team. I don't usually bother casting this a lot during laning phase, because few players are stupid enough to sit in an auto-attack competition with you. It usually ends up being a waste of mana. For this reason, I usually don't take it unil level 8. With 40% CDR, this spell's cooldown will end before the effects' even finished, making it possible for your team to be permanently buffed with attack speed. . Max this last.

Hunter's Call

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blood scent (E) Warwick senses enemy champions under 50% life within a certain distance of him, revealing them and largely incresing his movement speed until they heal. Tips: Jungler ganking you on -50% HP and you have no wards? Its k. There are times when you can help your team get a kill from miles away from them, just by keeping the scent on an enemy they're chasing. Sometimes when you're running from enemies where it can be beneficial to turn around and Q someone, to activate this spell and gain a speed bost to help you get away. Max this second.

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Infinite Duress (R) Warwick lunges at an enemy champion, suppressing the target for 1.8 seconds and striking them in 0.33-second intervals, attacking 5 times in total. Warwick gains 30% life steal for the duration. Each of his strikes triggers on-hit effects and benefits from life steal and Eternal Thirst. Tips: After hitting 6, Warwick has extremely strong gank synergy with his jungler. He stuns the enemy for nearly 2 seconds, while at the same time dealing damage. You never want to use this to initiate a fight, unless you can catch out their ADC or someone important with a Flash ult. During team-fights, use this on the highest threat on the enemy team. That can range from their ADC, their APC, or even someone such as Darius. . Put a point in this whenever you can.

A novice mistake I would imagine a lot of people make is maxing W before E, which is quite simply, wrong. In-lane, you barely ever want to activate your W, because no one's stupid enough to sit in an auto-attack contest with you, so it's almost always a waste of mana. Outside of lane, you gain MUCH more from the increase in utility that comes from maxing E. You can help your team get kills by making them have vision of the enemy they're chasing down from miles away, or you can chase down enemies yourself much more effectively with the movement speed bost. W is only more relevant in late-game when everyone has full builds and therefore, more damage. At that point, increased attack speed becomes strong.

Mid-game it's just more of an assist farmer. You pop W, you increase the attack speed of everyone on your team, which means that anyone who dies on the enemy team, gives you an assist, because you assisted in the kill by increasing your teams' attack speed. Maxing W is a minor boost to your team-fighting potential, but being 10x faster than anyone in any team-fight by having your E maxed is just so much better.

I personally don't even take W 'till level 8. I just take E at levels 2 and 4, because you actually do more DPS on a running enemy by being able to catch up to them while they're running than by attacking more often when you can't even reach them.

So yeah. As Warwick is a 100% meelee champion with no gap closers outside of his ult, he's easily kited without a maxed E, so if you max W, you're gonna be in for a tough time.

I take 9 points in offense just to get the magic penetration, then go 21 points in defense to make Warwick the unkillable beast he's meant to be. DO I NEED TO ELABORATE ANY FURTHER?

Okay, I'll explain some of the little masteries. 3% CDR is pretty neglectible, while 5 AD and AP from Summoner's Wrath is pretty good. It helps with last-hitting, it helps with poking, and it helps with straight-forward fighting. Also, Warwick doesn't have any spells that will instantly farm a minion wave for him, all he has is auto-attacks. Every single last-hit you get counts, and moreso with Warwick, so I take Butcher to make sure I get every last-hit.

In the defense tree, I just take some of the standard tank masteries. You can change some stuff there if you want, but Juggernaut is important.

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration - All of Warwick's damage in laning phase comes from Hungering Strike, which deals magic damage. Hybrid penetration runes are also viable, but sacrifice early-game damage in exchange for late-game damage. I prefer to keep my laning phase completely dominant, which in turn will make my late-game stronger anyway.

Greater Seal of Armor - Inexchangeable. Warwick's laning phase is based on winning trades, therefore the less damage you take, the better.

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist - These are just general glyphs to have in your Warwick rune page in case you have to go top vs Rumble, or Akali, or something. If you want to have specialized rune pages for Warwick, you can have one rune page with flat magic resist for Rumble and Akali, and one page with magic resist per level vs anyone who doesn't do much magic damage. Also, vs someone like Riven you could replace your glyphs with armor glyphs, as she deals a boatload of physical damage but no magic damage.

Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed - These are just what I prefer on Warwick, I like being super mobile. Also viable are AP quints, armor quints, magic resist quints and mana regen quints. The armor and magic resist quints depend on who you're playing against though, it would be for specialized rune pages, not general rune pages.

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. I get these boots because your Q does magic damage, and your Q is what makes Lanewick. With these boots, you'll do more damage, which in turn gives you more sustain, which makes it better than all other boots. .

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. Your laning phase revolves around spamming your Q, and your Q costs 110 mana at max rank. For this reason, it's pretty much compulsory to take some form of mana sustain. I usually take a Doran's Ring or two. It's up to you to decide how many you need. If you're going OOM with 1, get another one. .

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. Once you have your core lane dominance items, you need some tankiness in preparation for team-fighting. I go with Giant's Belt, which I then build into either Sunfire Aegis, Warmog's Armor or Randuin's Omen, depending on the enemy team's composition. Sometimes I even buy 2 Giant's Belts and then just move on to Spirit Visage. It's a cheap way of getting beefy without needing to buy full items. .

At levels 1-4, you want to play really passive and farm. Your Q does very little damage for the mana it costs, and you'll go OOM within 4 Q's or so, which is only enough damage to take out about 50% of their HP, or less. Just farm minions and use your Q on the enemy whenever necessary to regain HP.

Note however, that even if they are playing passively, you do want to harass them every now and again, as much as your mana will allow you. Don't go OOM, but if you have a full mana bar, you may as well use your mana for something, right?

At level 5 your Q gets pretty strong, but harassing as much as you can with your Q as soon as you hit level 5 will leave you OOM, which is why I said to harass every now and again pre-5. When you hit 5, you can start playing slightly more aggressively, but remember not to go OOM. You want to have about 200 mana when you hit level 6.

At level 6, take their HP bar and your mana bar into consideration. Is their HP bar over 50%? Keep harassing them. Is their HP 50% or less, and you have 200+ mana? Ult Ignite Q, chase them and auto-attack them for as long as you can until they die.

Push the lane, recall, buy your items, prioritizing Doran's Ring and THEN Sorcerer's Shoes, and harass them with Q until you can do the same. Rinse and repeat. ( Warwick doesn't really have a very complex playstyle )

Also, remember Warwick has GREAT gank synergy with his jungler past level 6. He can lock the enemy laner down until the jungler can arrive to gank. Even if you can't kill the enemy laner on your own yet, if your jungler comes to gank it's usually an easy kill.

If the enemy laner is too scared to come and last-hit, don't go chasing them to hit them with your Q, or push the lane. Just stay at the enemy minions only last-hitting them, and let the enemy minions kill your minions to force the enemy to lose as many last-hits as possible. If your minions push to the enemy tower, they can farm more effectively than if the minions are in the middle of the lane. So just keep zoning them as much as you can.

Oh, and BUY WARDS. Like seriously. Wards are more important than HP pots, prioritize wards to them. And if when you want to recall, you'll have enough gold for the items you want, but not wards, then just stay on the lane and farm until you do have enough gold. Why? Because NOTHING is worse than losing your lane to the enemy jungler. It doesn't matter how much better than your opponent you are, if the enemy jungler ganks you while you're unprepared, you'll most likely die or burn your flash. And then what will you do if he ganks again?

At lower Elos people undervalue warding, but it's honestly one of the most important factors that determine whether or not you'll win your lane. If the enemy receives constant jungler help, you'll lose. If you see their jungler coming before they've reached you, you won't be harmed.

That's why I prefer starting with a ward in my Crystalline Flask start. 3 HP pots to give you an advantage in-lane is nice, but if the enemy jungler ganks you early and you give first blood to your enemy, you'll pretty much be too far behind to ever catch up again without your jungler helping. Which won't be easy if your enemy is smart enough to ward.

So ward please. It wins lanes.

This begins when either tower on your lane goes down. Rather than staying on your lane to farm, being VERY vulnerable to ganks, go roam. Your ganks are extremely powerful while your ultimate is up, and usually result in a kill. Suppressing someone for 1.8 seconds is extremely strong. I usually gank mid, because it's the closest lane to gank, and usually my mid can burst down the enemy while I have them CC'd.

Another alternative is to lane gank bot. Enter the bottom lane brush nearest your tower while the enemy minions are too far away to see you. Tell your bot lane to push the enemy to the tower, then enter the other brush, the one nearest to the enemy tower. When the lane becomes unpushed, you should be in the brush while the enemy ADC and their support are right next to you, farming in the ADC's case, doing whatever that support does in the support's case. Repeatedly ping their ADC to let them know you're about to ult, then ult him so your ADC and support can attack him. This usually results in a free kill because of how strong your ult is as CC.

If you get their ADC down, then ping the dragon and tell your jungler and mid to come. If you have 5 people dragoning while one of them is down, it's very hard for them to contest it. A free dragon is free XP and free gold, so try and get as many dragons as you can.

This is when both teams group up as 5 to push down towers and team-fight. Here is when you take up the role of an anti-carry. DO NOT INITIATE, unless it's to catch out someone on their team. If you ult one of them to initiate a fight, you'll most likely just get hit by CC and have your ult canceled. Just let someone else initiate, then ult the highest threat on their team. Locking someone down for 1.8 seconds can cause them to instantly die if your team reacts correctly.

Warwick's ult makes him synergyze greatly with assassins such as Talon. He locks them down and lets the assassin instantly kill the ADC with minimal effort, with no possible counter-play from the ADC themselves ( except having been smart enough to buy Quicksilver Sash before the team-fight starteed ). Then the 2 of you can turn round and wreck havoc on the rest of their team, their highest priority already dead.

The beauty of it is that if the ADC DOES buy a QSS, you can just stop focusing them with your ult. Switch your priorities to the AP carry, who can't build QSS into anything. Their AP carry is now in deep trouble, and you just successfully set the enemy ADC behind by 1550 gold.

If he doesn't buy it, he'll instantly die repeatedly in team-fights. If he does buy it, he'll have no need for it anymore, because you'll stop using your ult on him. But he can't sell it because you'd start focusing him again. It's win-win for you.

Late-game, in solo queue there's 1 technique you'll be using quite often, called Flash ult. If you see the enemy ADC out of position, or any squishy high priority target for that matter, Flash ult them to catch them by surprise from further away than they expected you to reach. If your team reacts and chain CC's them appropriately, it's an insta-death for the person you caught out. If the enemy team tries to fight you in a depesrate attempt to save the person while he's still alive, and ends up fighting you with that target already dead, then you've pretty much just won a team-fight for free. It's 5v4. And not the "yay their support is already dead" kind of 5v4. The "yay their highest damage out-put is already dead" kind of 5v4. You know, the one practically impossible to lose.

Assuming things go well and you win the team-fight ( or any team-fight at all for that matter, not just ones where you catch someone out ), try and determine which objective is more realistic. Baron or inhibitor? If you think you can destroy a few towers but not destroy the enemy inhibitor, do the baron. If you can either baron or destroy the inhibitor, always choose the inhibitor. Why? Because if the enemy team has to defend their base from super minions, your team can buy an oracle's, clear every enemy ward near the baron, and then just camp the baron.

If they try to stop your team from baroning, you just don't baron and stand right in front of it, stalling while your super minions push their base. If they give up and recall to defend their base, you have a free baron from destroying that inhibitor. If you'd baroned instead when you won that team-fight earlier, you would have an advantage in team-fights, but would it actually GUARANTEE you to win a team-fight and get their inhibitor? Not really.

Inhibitor > Baron, always. But baron > towers. Learn to prioritize objectives after winning team-fights, and you'll automatically win more games than you would otherwise.

Also, keep on buying wards for as long as you can to have as much map vision as possible. Map control wins games.

"But my item slots are full!" Oh well, I guess it's totally not your fault that you can't get wards the- wait a minute, is that a Cloth Armor in your inventory? You think a Cloth Armor is more important than wards? Wrong. Wards are more important than most <1000g items. Stuff like Cloth Armor, Long Sword, they're all minor, unimportant items that don't take priority over wards. If it's something like a Giant's Belt, I forgive you. But NEVER use up the last slot in your inventory on something like a Long Sword if you don't have wards.

You know, I originally had a few match-ups written down here, but then I backspaced it all, because why bother? Your playstyle doesn't change in practically ANY of them. Max Q, play passive at the start, become more aggressive when you get more damage on Q, try and kill them at 6. The only things I could say were stuff about the champions themselves, not about how you change your gameplay to adapt to it. It doesn't change vs ANYONE who isn't a counter-pick to you. So instead, I'm just gonna skip this section right here, and move onto a generalized chapter of what to do when you're counterpicked.

You thought it was Zed top and picked Warwick, but it turns out it was Zed jungle and Cho'Gath top? Well, sorry to break it to you, but you're not going to go 4/0 without immense help from your jungler. Contrary to popular belief ( BUT WW Q COUNTERS CHO ULT OMG ) Cho'Gath is actually a counter to Warwick. His sustain just shrugs off any Q's you throw at him, he can build a Negatron Cloak and STILL have too much HP for you to just auto-attack it all away, and, worst of all, he has no problems pushing you to your tower, where you will struggle to get last-hits.

Vs Cho'Gath, don't buy a Doran's Ring, nor Sorcerer's Shoes. Buy normal boots, skip straight to a Giant's Belt, buy a Vampiric Scepter, then build a Spirit Visage. Upgrade your boots to Mercury's Treads, then rush Sunfire Aegis. Take W at level 4.

All this is aimed to being able to tank minions before they reach your tower so you can keep last-hitting, while at the same time being too tanky and having too much sustain for Cho'Gath to just push you off the lane by harassing you while you're busy tanking minions. He's still likely to out-cs you, but he won't be able to kill you. Likewise though, you won't be able to kill him.

Vs other countered match-ups, such as Irelia, Riven, Jayce, Olaf, Renekton, etc., just rush a Giant's Belt after boots, build Ninja Tabi, then maybe build another Giant's Belt to be too tanky for them to kill. Just counter-build them, don't build the usual items, just build what you need to build in order to survive and farm against them.

There are various people I should thank for this guide, whom I shall thank right here:

jhoijhoi, for her guide on Making a Guide ( guideception ), and for letting me use some of her line dividers.

CellOne, for originally inspiring me to play Lanewick with his own guide.

Verus Vox, for telling me to go find a Warwick guide when I started playing League, which led to me finding CellOne's guide.

GuardsmanBob, for showing me exactly how Warwick is meant to be played through his own gameplay.

That's everyone I can think of, which marks the end of my guide. I hope you enjoyed reading it, I hope you learnt something from it, and I hope you have fun wrecking dem n00bs as Lanewick. Au revoir!