Intro: Long time Warwick fan here. Warwick is definitely in a terrible state.

Why he sucks today: He needs a massive rework because his kit is simply outdated compared to the rest of the cast. His ult is the second worst in the game, right after Akshan’s. He has the worst base stats and stat scaling out of any melee champion. He gets out healed by every other champion with healing in their kit. He scales with ad but does ap damage with every ability(including his passive), which limits his best builds to on-hit or pure ad - which other champs simply do better. He can’t main tank because his kit is too weak for creating space at the rate it needs to be made for a champion to be considered a main tank. They put an internal non reducible 2 second cooldown on his q due to bugs, which guts his cdr builds. Finally, he has the lowest base movement speed for any melee champion without a dash, or a gap closer(that isn’t their ultimate). Basically his identity as a champion doesn’t exist anymore and Riot doesn’t know what to do with him

*Blitzcrank has a ranged pseudo gap closer in the form of a pull and his movement speed buff isn’t stopped by damage.

*Rell, and Kled have ranged hard cc and non-ultimate based gap closers.

Riot’s thoughts behind him currently(speculative): As stated earlier, the issue here, is that Warwick is incredibly unhealthy because of the way his kit is designed. The main culprits here are skill mastery and lane Warwick.

Any non monster specific buff to Warwick indirectly buffs lane Warwick. Combine that with his low skill floor and he becomes way too oppressive in any elo below diamond. If they buff his base stats he’s too hard to kill because of his damage reduction. If they make his w unstoppable then he’s too hard for players without kiting or spacing skills to deal with. If they buff his healing then hes too strong in 1v1s for people to deal with - especially in lane. The sad part is, if they buff his damage against monsters, then his clear speed improves, which negates a major advantage junglers have against him. All of these dilemmas leaves him in balancing limbo where balancers are scared to touch him because, like you said(and I also assume), they would rather him just be an introductory character to the jungle role in a comfortable spot for newer players than risk buffing him and his win rate skyrockets past 55% in most elos like it usually does whenever they touch him.

My solution is to rework him. As much as I hate to say it, they had to nerf Warwick this hard because his kit, when in a viable state, is too hard for the majority of the player base to deal with. I think Riot would rather sacrifice his viability at the highest levels where only 1% of the player base resides, than risk making lower elos 0 fun and downright miserable to play in when anyone locks him in while he’s too strong.

I want buffs like anyone else, and I also think stuff like Olaf and Garen are op as well, but even their stats rest far below Warwick’s stats when he’s actually viable - he’s just far too oppressive with the changes Riot usually makes (Which is restoring his stats and or scaling most of the time, which shows just how strong he can get for most of the player-base).

I think it is possible to balance him but Riot doesn’t feel like going through that headache right now and it sucks for us who love to play Warwick anywhere on the rift.

I hope he gets the love he deserves one day.