Is Warwick top "cheese"?

I would define a cheese pick as something that requires your opponent to not understand how your pick works for it to be effective.

This is definitely the case for many people. WW is not that common of a pick, and people don't really know how to play against it, so you can get away with a lot of cheese in lower elo's playing WW. I think that's where much of the salt comes from.

The thing I'd say also is kind of unfair about WW is that you can take awful trades, but heal up off of a single wave. So WW players don't need to really play the lane the same way most champs do. Hence why they have the brain dead player stereotype (somewhat true lol). You can just mindlessly run in, do some damage, fear or run away if there's a blood scent, then heal up off the wave. It's something no other champ can do.

Ultimately, it's just a different playstyle that other's aren't used to. Certain champs that have specific playstyles people generally hate playing against, like Illaoi (though WW is much more interactive than her in). In general, I don't think he's cheese, since playing against WW is really just knowing his limits and not to be baited by low health. Something a lot of players don't know how to do since he's pretty uncommon. He's not like, say, fiddlesticks top who I think is really cheesy.