Greedy Goblin

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Warwick's plight

People hate Warwick. They often flame when I pick him. And, I pick Warwick 80% of the time, so they flame a lot. I barely see opponents picking Warwick or this champion listed as picks for other teammates when I check their stats out. So I started to wonder what's wrong with Warwick. I believe that Riot doesn't create seriously undertuned champions as it's not their interest to effectively destroy a champion and his sales and skin sales. Sure, some champions are a bit stronger than others, but a couple % of power doesn't matter in lower leagues.

So what's wrong with Warwick? Actually, the right question is "what's right with Rengar, Kha'zix, Vi, Lee Sin, Hecarim and Shacko?" who are so loved and feared (75% banrate!!! For Rengar, 47% for Kha). The answer is: these champions can farm noobs like Warwick cannot. Warwick is very hard to counter with his gap-close + stun + high damage ultimate, track+fast chase finisher and very high life steal rate that makes him very strong in 1v1. By the time you notice him coming, there isn't much you can do. The feared "super junglers" on the other hand are trivial to counter: place a ward and when you see them, run to your tower.

But placing wards and avoiding unwarded bushes is a skill rarely seen in Silver or Bronze. I often look at the minimap and see a situation that is a guaranteed gank for the enemy. I ping with the red exclamation mark and sometimes they run. Most times they just keep laning near the enemy tower with no ward behind them as easy food for the enemy jungler. You can see a Kha'zix doing nothing else but walking up and down on the river, getting kills left and right. If the teammates wouldn't be total noobs, or they wouldn't be totally occupied by micro-managing a champion they don't know, he would have zero kills.

Therefore Warwick is a perfect choice for my plan, to elevate ratings just by queue-dodging. No one will blame me for simply being mechanically skilled and carry games.

However if you aren't running a project, just want to get out of Bronze and Silver, just learn the "super junglers" and walk up and down the river.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Carrying game have little to nothing with mechanical skills. Carrying is all about leading Your team to victory by ensuring getting objectives and advantages. Sure, mechanics are important, but art of getting fed comes more from understanding the game and exploiting enemies mistakes, rather than "outplaying" them by mechanics. Specially in lower league.

Warwick have bad reputation because he have no pressure on lines pre-6. Everyone knows, what Warwick gonna go and people thinks that because he is obvious, he is weak. But this is not true, because if Your team dont know how to play against Warwick he is as good as any other jungler.

The real problems of WW starts when he have to fight enemies that -does- understand the game. They will equip themselves with Deep Wounds items to counter WW lifesteal and Quicksilver Sash to counter his ult (QSS makes WW ult almost useless). This is why this champion in my opinion is weak at the moment. As ADC player I have no problems with WW, he ult me, I pop QSS and I run/kill him. The jungler I fear the most is Hecarim, because with his charge he can drive me away from my team and if he is fed/I am underfarmed, kill me in 1v1. Only thing that can save me there, is my teammate that would peel for me (will CC enemy hecarim, before he can drive me away) and we all know, why ralling on teammates is bad in solo q.

Above all else, if You manage to secure 6 wins out of 10 games as WW You will climb anyway. As a reader, what would interest me most is Your methodology of improving. If there is any, that You use currently. (I for example run small database for my ranked matches and tries to learn from better players than me by replaying their games)

Tal said...

Uhmm, it still isn't clear from your post why Warwick gets flamed... As someone who doesn't play LoL, it sounds like you could just pick Warwick and gank noobs with him just as well as the other heroes you mentioned.

Destabilizator said...

Back when I played LoL, we usually banned champs not for their OPness, but who are annoying to deal with - eg. Rengar hitting lvl 6 on top could use ult in the bush and run all the way to bot through mid lane stealthed.

Warwick isn't annoying, he has just one trick (ult) and is although the ult roots enemy, it also roots Warwick making both of you easy targets, so it requires a bit of situation awareness so you can melt the target faster than they melt you - which many many WW players don't have thus the hate at selection :P

Gevlon said...

@Marek: in below-platinum tiers getting fed is simply outplaying the enemy on lanes. They will come and try 1v1 you again and you can keep feeding. When I gank bot lane, I ulti the support, so the ADC will stand 1v2 against my ADC and support. He flashes and runs maybe, then support dies. He has no flash and my bot lane isn't total horribles: he dies.

@Tal: ultimate spell has long cooldown. Without ultimate WW cannot kill anyone who is running to his tower. Other champions have short cooldown slow/stun/throw effects that they can use if they can sneak.

@Destabilizator: ganks aren't 1v1 fights. The point is that I root and my laner kills him.

Destabilizator said...

@Gevlon: I didn't mean "melt you" as you only, but you - all 2-5 of you.

Anonymous said...

as squishy-sup main (zyra/janna), i love playing against ww. he usually builds tanky, is easy to zone, does not snowball out of the world and most of all has no stealth / giant gap closer.
i actually do see him coming on my wards.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Marek that at the moment, WW is somewhat weak. His kit is limited and there's not much you can do without his ulti. Even then, it is easily countered. He's one of the oldest champions still not being reworked, I'm pretty sure this is going to change in the near future.

Unknown said...

I think that you hit the mark again, Gevlon. People today are not putting effort into "learning how to not suck atr a certain game". People assume that they should be able to play any game in any way they wish. This leads to really terrible multiplayer matches. As I stated in some posts before, if you need to capture a point in order to win, but 4 of 5 players are positioned far away from capture point, trying to "snipe" their ennemies, while the ennemy gains the point...

Same for LoL: If people are ignorant of how to deal against Warwick, they simply do not know enough about game mechanics to contribute seriously to their teams victory.

Gevlon said...

@Destabilizator: if the game goes to teamfight phase, it's a tossup anyway and goes down to "who can click correctly in the mess of 10 champions and effects all over the screen". Strategic thinking matters in laning phase where fights are 1v1 and 1v2 - 2v3 ganks.

@Anon: I like squishy supports. I target them instead of their ADC.

@Next anon: WW can farm fast without his ult. Can solo dragon, hell can even solo Baron.

@99smite: yes, it's sad to see Rengar feeding on obvious idiots. I once counted down on chat when a top laner will be ganked. I missed by 5 seconds.

Anonymous said...

Half the champions can farm as fast as WW, if not faster. It's true that WW is pretty good against both dragon/baron, but other champs just scale better later at least in terms of utility.

Unknown said...

WW is actually strong in terms of raw numbers (tuning) because he is a simple champion. You can't miss any of his skills, and there isn't a lot of separation from an average WW player to a great one (compared to a champ like Hec or Lee). The reason he isn't popular is because he's mechanically weak. QSS on carries removes his ult, and his pre-6 route is easy to predict and play against. Once you reach a level where people aren't still learning the basics of the game (silver and below), WW is a terrible pick.

That said, WW is a great pick at low levels, both because the player behind him can have terrible mechanics and still do well, and because he is a 'gotcha' champ to punishes those learning the game harder than a lot of other junglers. So sure, he might carry you out of the intro leagues, but not only will he fall off, he also limits the player behind him in terms of mechanical growth. He is basically the F1 drone of jungling champs.

If you continue with him, I think you are going to hit a pretty hard wall at some point, perhaps as early as Gold V, where even with queue manipulation, you are going to be such a drag on the team that despite having a favorable setup of the other 9 players, it's not going to be enough to progress.

Anonymous said...

People ban Rengar because of his ultimate having little counterplay if your team isn't very coordinated in teamfights (pugs aren't at lower tiers).

Kitty leap from stealth = dead champion. It's "un-fun" to play against.

Anonymous said...

" I believe that Riot doesn't create seriously undertuned champions as it's not their interest to effectively destroy a champion and his sales and skin sales." Actually they do this all the time, when they've given up on trying to balance a champion that is just too strong when played by a good player. Usually because it's dominating the pro and very high elo scene and making it "stale" for spectators. The best recent example is Kalista, they nerfed Azir hard as well recently, and the classic example from the past is Olaf (though he's since been buffed and been strong a while).