It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally got our first look at the Warwick rework. He’s changed both quite a bit and not at all, retaining his emphasis on autoattacks and lifesteal while also introducing a few new tricks. Warwick’s also gained some new lore, turning him into a deadly predator of the Zaun underbelly. It’s a lot of cool stuff, and in today’s State of the Meta, I’ll be giving my first impressions on the Uncaged Wrath of Zaun.
Abilities
Warwick is still a simple champion and will likely not have shifted from his place as Baby’s First Jungler. However, he has a lot more room for mastery and skill expression with his new kit.
Jaws of the Beast and Primal Howl, his new Q and E, are a large part of this. The former gives Warwick a bit of extra mobility that enables pre-six ganking, while also giving the Uncaged Wrath of Zaun a chance to get behind his targets. However, saving the lifesteal from the ability for when you really need it might be a better use. Meanwhile, Primal Howl offers Warwick a choice between more damage reduction or an AoE fear that can scatter teams. Howl too early, and you risk getting blown up - but howl too late and the enemy team might be already out of range
Warwick’s new Blood Scent and Infinite Duress look like fantastically fun abilities. Sniffing out enemy champions from the scent of blood on them is an excellent thematic tie, and gives Warwick insane map presence, especially in the early game against junglers with risky clears. The fact that he can activate the ability to reveal ALL enemy champions makes him even stronger, even though it has a high cooldown. Finally, Infinite Duress lost reliability, but gained an absolute TON of range. Leaping from the fog of war onto a low-health carry is going to be awesome to do in-game.
Playstyle
As with his kit, Warwick’s playstyle has changed both a lot and not at all. He’s still a lifesteal-reliant diver who wants to leap onto the backline and tear it apart, but now Warwick has more options to accomplish this. His healing is worse than it was previously, but now Warwick has more utility to bring his team thanks to Primal Howl’s fear and the tracking from Blood Scent.
Warwick’s also a lot more about finding flanks than he was before. Since Infinite Duress can be body-blocked or dodged, the Wrath of Zaun will want to find an unwarded bush to set up in, then leap for his intended target before they have a chance to react. Getting there seems like a challenge, compared with other divers, but once he’s in Warwick has a great deal of stickiness and durability to do his job.
The early game is likely where Warwick will shine. His clear speed looks to be just about as slow as it was previously, but Warwick can now track down low-health champions in the fog of war to find opportunistic kills. It also lets his team keep tabs on the enemy jungler, so they’ll know when to back off in-lane. Could be quite strong.
Thematics
After watching the champion teaser, I fully expected Warwick to lose his VO in favor of animalistic snarls and howls. I am thankful to say that that isn’t the case - if anything, Riot just upgraded his voiceover to make him sound even scarier than he was before.
Warwick’s backstory has changed fairly significantly. Beforehand, he was a master chemist seeking the heart of a celestial being for… some reason… and ended up being cursed with lycanthropy… for some reason. It was kinda weird.
But now, Warwick is a bioengineered chimera who wants nothing more than to kill. Despite this, he still retains some semblance of his previous personality, and his desire for blood actually stems from his original goal of cleaning up Zaun’s underbelly. Instead of doing it the noble, human way though, Warwick has chosen to simply kill the unpleasant elements of Zaun.
I’m glad Riot retained Singed’s connections with Warwick in the new lore. Beforehand, Singed was Warwick’s apprentice in the chem lab and took over once his master turned into a werewolf. Now, Singed is the reason Warwick is a beast - and I can’t wait to see what happens when Warwick comes for his creator.
