I'm less upset about the possible nerfs and more upset by the fact this could have been avoided if they reworked him. Riot has been talking about reworking Warwick for over 2.5 years now. It doesn't take that long to redesign a champion especially a boring one like Warwick. I can literally prototype 3-4 kits for him in about an hour, calc numbers for the kits in about 2-3 hours.
He already has a set theme and since lore has been liquified it's not that he would need that much effort in that area. This also applies for his VU as well but that is a completely different department.
The large time consuming thing would be the play testing part which can and will take a few months depending on how complex the kit is. This is why you have a dedicated designer doing things instead of just handing off projects to multiple people when you are called to do something else.
There are other factors but since I know Riot is an extremely unorganized company (I have friends who work there) when it comes to these type of things which would increase the amount of time things are done.
It would probably take a team about 8 months to a year to redesign a champion. Significantly less if the said champion doesn't need a new model.
BrokenArrow wrote:
The obvious answer would be to not make it apply on-hit-effects anymore. Or at least not 5 times. Even though that won't be a long-term solution either.
You wouldn't even have to go that far. His ult just needs more counterplay and bug fixes. Fix the stupid bug that applies all his damage regardless of him being CC'd or QSS'd out of his ulti. Then you can make his ult a skill shot and increase the range by 100 while giving it a travel time and he wouldn't be that big of an issue until he is reworked. He already has leap animations in the game files from the alpha stages of the game (he is literally that old). This is a temporary fix without hurting the champion significantly all while making the champion a little more interesting to play for people. This is how you do a nerf and a buff at the same time to an ability. Riot just takes the lazy way.
AND
Items like Feral Flare and the Devourer enchantment should simply never exist in this game. It's a stupid impossible to balance mechanic because it's either going to be ridiculously strong or not worth the gold. It's been less than 10 months since FF was made and it's like Riot didn't learn from that mistake. I don't think they care anymore.
This whole gut until we get around to it method Riot does is an extremely lazy way to go about things and makes me really upset as a game designer that they are getting away with this kind of crap.
There is a reason I turned down the job Riot offered me because honestly I don't think I would be able to deal with how things work there and how things are organized. Thank god I know people who work there.
My N3DS is my best friend here. =D