This build abuses the fact that Warwick's AP scaling is insane on his Q and passive and that ability haste enables him to have a mini crown of the shattered queen on a 5 second cooldown. While it does leave the Ult damage in the dust, the fact that WW himself is CC'd when using it really makes it a situational ability anyways. Your Q and AAs will pop all squishies and your CC/damage mitigation will allow you to overpower almost any tank in a 1v1 because of your sustain and sustained damage.

You will be the main engage, but dont be afraid to just dip after you've used your CC. More often than not, your engage will pull their attention long enough for your team to pick one or two people. If not and they ignore you, B-line to their back line and pop them ASAP. If built properly you should be able to 3-hit kill any ADC, mage, or enchanter that hasn't built MR with PTA and Q.

Try to make sure you survive out of a team fight as you can easily clean up if your team gets wiped but the enemies are low. Once out of the fight, you can easily restore health and mana by existing in the jungle and a Q on any random camp, allowing you to run back in once everyone else's abilities are down.

This build plays similarly to an assassin, but is flexible and allows you to be frontline like a standard tank or bruiser. Your priorites are to make plays, take objectives, then kills, then camps. Push enemies out of lane, secure objective, then kills. Once you get Bami's cinder, clearing should become much easier, until then focus Buffs, gromp, and ganks; after you gank then go crabs, wolves, and kruggs (if you have time/need extra money for first back).

Only against tank heavy teams do I suggest going AD with items like BotRK and/or Divine Sunderer, but more often than not, a tank is more manageable than a fed Carry. Going these items also makes you squishier with less health and resistances so play accordingly.

The only times you'll struggle with this build is when you fail to get that early jungle pressure. This can happen when the enemy team steals your jungle, you die in a gank, or you die in an invade. When this happens, build Bami's ASAP and grab your "counter the carry" item first instead of cosmic. Cosmic helps you keep your lead, but if you're dying in fights then its better to play it safe

Because this season has introduced health into almost every AP item, and Warwick's E grants massive damage reduction before resistances, you get both massive offensive and defensive advantages by building them.

With max E, you get 55% damage reduction which is equal to 82 Armor and Magic Resist that can't be bypassed without true damage. With the recommended build fully built you end up with around 70 ability haste resulting in 40% cooldown reduction. This allows your E to be up more often allowing you to completely ignore damage making health folds more important than building resistances. If you can fit both Demonic and Titanic, your carry potential will become more insane, but you more often will get better performance with other items.

Warwick's main gimmick is that he is a self healing beast, but everyone sleeps on how overpowered his percentage damage reduction is. While anyone can build antiheal to stop his healing, very few can build true damage to actually kill him within 2.5-3.5 seconds (the duration of his E + CC). With the extra AP and passive on-hits, his Q and AA damage can very easily pop most within that time period, and if not, it will at least lower their HP enough for your team to deal with.

In order to demonstrate the major advantages you get when you go this core build instead of the meta here are the numbers:

Comsmic Drive vs Steraks Gauge

+200 HP vs +400 HP
+30 Ability Haste vs +0 AH
+65 Ability Power (+40 passive) vs +0 Attack (+26 to +47 passive based on lvl)
+17 Move Speed (+51 to +17 passive) vs +0 Move Speed
+0 Shield vs 75% bonus health Shield

With the nerfs to steraks, it's even less valuable in a Warwick build now. While you do get more HP from the item and a decent shield, the combat stats from cosmic drive are way more valueable allowing you to jungle more efficiently and have your Q and E up more often to hit even harder and last longer.

Demonic Embrace vs Titanic Hydra

+60 Ability power vs +30 Attack damage
+450 HP vs +500 HP

The stats on these items provide virtually identical raw combat results, and in certain cases can be interchangeable. However, the biggest difference between their utility is in their combat passive. While Titanic on paper will do more DPS especially in team fights, Demonic provides more burst allowing you to pop single targets faster with its massive amount of ability power for your Q and 8% enemy max health burn over 4 seconds.

Overall, these builds don't feel like they fall off late game. The move speed + tenacity from items makes it difficult for enemies to kite you, your tanky stats just keep growing as time goes on, and your AP scaling and CC allows you to still have a big impact in team fights late game.

Even in uncommon cases when a tank or bruiser is the problem, switching out one item for BotRK is usually all you need since most of your damage is magic anyways. Your magic damage max health Q plus physical damage current health BotRK on hit makes you melt tanks like butter even without needing penetration stats.

I have recently climbed out of bronze relatively easily with this build, but I have been playing Warwick for a while. I have been a strong believer in the For Fun Movement (@Rossboomsock please try this) and only recently started playing ranked. It wasn't until I heard about the HP "buffs" on magic items that I thought this would be good and it really works wonders. I've theory crafted with all kinds of items for Warwick and have found the most success with these sets. Check out my OP.GG @toinymeatgang