[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the four Wards podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker A: It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, Jerks, and Velkoz. And you're listening to the Forwards podcast, here to help you move forward and lead.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to episode 443 of the four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We got the new guys today. It's mike of many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: How you guys doing?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: And pillow Pat.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Hello. Hello.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: All right, guys, we are the Forwards podcast, and we have some shoutouts. Shout out to Codex Ninja, our very own pillow pet, and Robogon for supporting us at the shoutout tier on our Patreon. Thank you. All three of you. You are keeping the lights on and paying for hosting this show so we can continue to get it out to all the people on the Internet who want to hear it.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Now, you. Yeah, seriously, like, appreciate it so much.
Could not do this without you guys.
If you want to get shouted out on the show or just tell us that you love us, we do have a Patreon. It is patreon.com. the Forwardspodcast. One dollars a month just tells you that you love us. Tells us that you love us. Words are hard. I've only been podcasting for, like, eight years, guys. You'd think I'd know how to talk by now.
Dollar five a month gets you an exclusive feed to some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes it's literally just us prepping the podcast. Sometimes it's completely off topic, tangents you'll never know until you get a listen.
And $10 a month will get your name in lights like Codex, Ninja, pillow Pet, and Robogon at the start of every episode for as long as you subscribe.
Last but not least, listeners, again this week, one of you sent in a question so you're not getting chewed out. But we do still need more questions right into the
[email protected]. so we can answer your questions on the show.
All right, guys, it is a patch week. We are recording this on Thursday. The patch just hit its patch 1414.16, and it's kind of a light patch. This feels like a. We want to test some changes before we put out the actual worlds patch in a. About a month. So there's not a ton of changes here, but we still picked out some ones we want to highlight.
And I want to start by talking about one of the most fun, simplistic champions in League of Legends.
It's Wukong.
They even highlight that he's one of the simpler champions to play and he's currently not all that powerful. So they're buffing him.
Wukong's passive gives him armor stacking when he's in combat. They buffed it by one armor at all points in the game, basically.
And his nimbus strike, his e. They buffed the attack speed that this gives.
Now that sounds like not a lot, especially since it's only a 5% attack speed buff.
Wukong's a jungler. Attack speed is directly a clear speed buff. And this is at level one, he gets 5% more attack speed.
He's also got a healthy clear already. And he just got a bunch of extra armor. Wukong is going to be a nightmare in jungle for other junglers to try to manage. He's gonna have so much more freedom to finish his clear in time to be able to then fight for scuttles gank before the enemy jungler or invade and fuck with the enemy junglers. Clear. And he's gonna be so healthy because of the armor buff that he's gonna be able to win a lot of those invade fights.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Don't take his passive for granted. Like, that's a lot of armor. Early game.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it stacks up to five times.
It was giving 25 armor at level one. It's now giving 30. He gained five armor at level one, essentially.
That's a lot. It's a lot, a lot.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: It's a really potent increase.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Especially stack that with this health.
Stack that with the health regen that comes with it. Like, you're healthy. You're healthy.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: You can take trades and come back healthy.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: It also is why Wukong is one of the junglers who can sustain in the jungle really easily because he stacks this passive up and doesn't take damage from the camps and just heals.
So I'm really happy about this. I enjoy Wukong. It is so satisfying to use his, uh, uh, stealth dash to, uh, to fake people out by hitting s and having them react thinking you've used it and then use it and juke things. It's so much fun every time you do it. And he's got a great team fight ult. So I'm happy to see him buffed.
All right, let's, let's stick with the champion change theme. Who wants to talk about a champion next?
[00:05:29] Speaker A: I can talk about Katarina.
So Katarina's q damage was increased and her e damage was decreased, and her r on hit effectiveness was decreased. So basically what they're doing is buffing her ap builds and nerfing her ad builds because more people are building AP than they are ad. So they're going to bump down the power on her e, her jump, they bumped it down. It looks like, what, by 20 at max rank?
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Zero at rank one. So it is not a nerf until you start putting points into it.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: So those AP builders aren't going to Max e, you're going to Q max first. And that's what they're incentivizing.
Personally. To me, like, I feel like this is probably a really good change for the Katarina players that were maybe struggling a little bit with the AP build and felt forced going into ad in certain situations. Now, AP should always, always be the correct build.
For me, I'm kind of scared because, like, Katarina, when she gets ahead, she's ahead, like, and there's no slowing her down. She's going to one shot you either way.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Here's the way I read this, AP. Katarina nukes people hundred to zero if they're a squishy ad on hit, Katarina was waiting for CC to be blown, and then she kills literally all five players during her ult, no matter whether they're a tank or not.
I am happy to see Ad on hithenne fucking die. It should never have been a thing. It gives her sustain, something that Katarina should not have, and it makes her way too good against tanks. AP is a healthier design for the game, even if I still don't like Katarina because she's a stupid face roll Pentakill champion.
But AP is a design that can be balanced and has counterplay.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah, like, she's inherently gonna be squishy normally. She's not gonna be building her healthy on hit items.
You know, I remember what, when the new items first came out, what, like a year or two ago? However long that's been.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: When she would just build Kraken Slayer and just every on hit item and just zero to 100 or 100 to zero. Anybody? Full tank.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Didn't matter.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: The worst thing about Katarina was this facilitated tank catarina and giving her a heart steel and just waltzing through a team fight.
It's a really unhealthy thing for the game to see something that potent. Also be that tanky.
This should hopefully push that away into maybe just your aram build.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: I'm not even sure it'll be her aram build with the on hit effectiveness nerf. Let's hope so because that's, I believe, per hit and it hits like ten times. So it lost a lot of on hit damage?
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Oh, an immense amount. It didn't stop her from gaining tankiness though.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: True. We'll see, we'll see for Airam. But I think for Summoner's rift, this does push her fully into. You need to build AP and go for the one shots instead of the DP's.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: I mean, I forgot to mention it, but the Q damage went up 10% on your AP ratios and up 40 flat damage at max rank. I mean it's. It's a yemenite, huge buff. 10% is no small number. When you're building 5600 AP, easily you got another. I mean, it's just. No, he. It's no small number. She's going to hit you and that's her poke main poke ability. So it's. It's. She's going to shrink your health bar and lame very quickly once she gets a couple points into that.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: And then all in you. So you gotta play. Start playing safer around her if you.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: See her, which again is the assassin playstyle she's actually supposed to do and not like the fight or bruiser playstyle she's been doing.
Mostly I'm just happy she won't have fucking sustain options anymore. Her being able to rush Bork made her impossible to lane against.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: It was a nightmare.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Alright, Mike, it's your turn.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: Well, I have probably the largest change within this patch and I'm sort of doing this mostly on behalf of crush cause he'd be destroyed if we didn't actually talk about this. There's a suite of senna changes to almost everything that could possibly touch her except her e ability. She has a base stat change where her attack speed growth went from 4% to 2%.
It's never been a major thing for her, for her attack speed growth, but this is impactful if you're not building ad carry items.
She had a passive change where her crit stike chance per 20 stacks went from 10% to 8%. So you're going to need more stacks before you hit 100% crit.
Her q piercing darkness, her poke and heal got several important changes to it. One of them is an item interaction, which is also sort of a bug interaction with her in that now that when you auto queue, you automatically get two stacks with black cleaver because of the changes previous patch.
So that's sort of a fix for Senna specifically. But other than that, she lost what looks to be her entire lethality ratio. It's just gone.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: She has no, it used to be 160%. That's just gone. In response to that, she gained at max rank 40 base healing and 40% ap ratio. So it now heals 40 to 120 plus 40% ad plus 80% Ap.
And they did a slow change.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: I wanted to be clear on that lethality change. That means it is a net buff until, like, two lethality items anyway, because lethality was not scaling the way it does for an offensive stat. It was just, oh, you got 20 lethality. That's 32 healing.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: It was basically, most support senas have been building lethality. You're getting a little bit of lethality bonus sprinkled in there, especially since this is your first max. Anyways, you weren't getting multiple lethality items early unless you were smoking the lane. So the base damage is pretty much the same. The AP ratio change is pretty massive. But then she also got a change to the slow. It went from base 15% plus 1% per bonus ad, plus 0.06 per ap, up to 0.15% per bonus ad and 0.1% per aptain. So they're sort of shoving a couple of AP ratios in here and it's sort of. It definitely helps facilitate her support items or Nasher's tooth.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: What I want to know, and I would need to look into this. I wonder if this means if you went a full ap build, that would only be 850 ap for that to be a 100% slow.
I wonder if that works.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: I have no idea and I don't want to know because that sounds horrifying. I mean, we can just check that later in the toolkit, but we still have.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: I might go into practice tool and test that.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: We're not done with Sena changes. Oh, no, there's two more.
Her root duration on her w got a quarter second increase at all ranks and her our dawning shadows also got some extra little bonus changes. The AP ratio went up by 30%.
It was.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: It also gained 70. Yeah. This is specifically on the shield, not the damage. They also added 20 base shield at rank one and ten base shield at rank two. Compared to before. It is the same base value at rank three.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Yes. So it's a buff to support Senna. If you were building anything other than lethality, which actually gives you more support options now.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: Go ahead.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Basically means now, like support Senna. If you're building a lethality item, it's because it's the best damage or utility that you can get out of that slot as opposed to, oh, I have to build lethality to have my heal still be meaningful.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: They're definitely trying to. What they're wanting to do is push her back to her original support role with the healing and the slows. They didn't nerf any of her damages as far as her ad damage. So if you're still wanting to build her ADC style, you can.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: They did.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Technically you're going to trade off the healing. A lot of the healing or the main purpose of like the shields and the heals.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: So where the nerf goes through is it's essentially sustained damage is nerfed. If you're just doing your auto q burst, that's pretty much unchanged entirely apart from a little bit of crit loss. But you have a fairly large change to your attack speed growth, plus the crit change on your passive. So realistically, what they wanted to do was, and if you were very good at support Senna, you could just hit and hit and hit on a tanky opponent and just farm stacks up and up. They're trying to sort of even out the skill on her, give you a little bit, little tap down on her overall damage because it was at late game, she was a second carry.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: They're specifically trying to nerfenhe Senna supporting a tank that farms.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
And this makes it so that she is less of a damage threat late game while still providing the full support and giving her a few more options to buy some support items.
This also probably opens up some good sauce rageblade for her because that AP ratio is now going to be looking decent on it. If you're going to try and do some things, it still has the problem.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Of being an on hit item on Senna.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. You're not gonna be doing that much with it. But people have been trying to get some attack speed Nashers in there before. Usually you don't want to get it, but the amount of AP ratios that she has in here.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: I don't know. She's certainly happy about the AP ratios when she gets Baron buff. At the very least, Baron boiled bumps.
Alright, I'm gonna talk about a change that is a lot more subtle and I think has a lot of implications that we may not understand for a little bit. Cause they have made some, what they say are improvements to matchmaking. And these sound like improvements, but when they make improvements to matchmaking frequently there are unforeseen consequences. So that's why I'm cautious.
They have tried to make it so that there is more parity in off roles. Both teams should have a similar amount of players who are auto filled or in secondary roles. They have reduced how large the gaps in LP are allowed to be and they have decreased the amount of imbalance in matchmaking that is accepted for red side versus blue side.
Generally speaking, blue side is seen as having a mild advantage. So they would, of the two teams, whichever one had the higher MMR would be placed on red side, typically, and they're decreasing how much they're allowing that to be at play, how much all those will do.
We'll see.
I'm a little skeptical, but it sounds good.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see if it actually works. They've tried this in the past and I've seen it just not work at all.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: We've also seen a couple of examples of stuff like this getting reverted quickly because it has implications on queue times.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: I'm definitely happy to see that they want like to balance out the auto filling because that can just. If you have an autofill jungle and an autofilled mid or any combination of two roles, that's just going to put you in a handicap. Especially if the enemy team just does not have an autofill whatsoever.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: You would imagine that there'd be a really easy, or at least a relatively easy way for them to get. There's one auto fill on each team that seems like something that shouldn't be too bad.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Yep. And they do not say that they are trying to make sure that the autofills are in the same role, which would be the change they've attempted before and had to revert because it had major impacts on queue times.
So the fact that they're not doing that this time means maybe there's a better chance this doesn't. This just is an invisible improvement and doesn't cause queue times to get out of control. But I already am waiting three to four minutes for a game during like peak gaming hours in high plat, low emerald. So we'll see.
All right, you guys got some more changes to highlight?
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Moving on to another change that I think is gonna gonna throw a wrench in some people's playstyles as death timers. So death timers level one through eight have went up 4 seconds from six to ten, eight to 1210 to 14. You get the picture.
And levels nine, it went up 3 seconds. The rest of the levels are unchanged.
This is going to make a lot of solo laners, specifically in top lane.
Pretty sad. A lot of your into strats or happy, depending on how you look at it. If you're running that inting strat, you're going to have to wait a little bit longer in the fountain. Really. It's a nerf to ignite runners and above to TPE users.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Reverse that other way around.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right, you're right. Sorry.
And then to counter that a little bit, they increase the time on your movement speed when you die early from 5 seconds to 8 seconds. So it's kind of. They're kind of even each other out and they increased. The ticking down has been made more generous, it says. I'm not entirely sure what that means.
They've probably just loosened up the timing on it.
You're going to spend more or less time running back to lane, but you're going to spend more time at a gray screen dead. If you're aggressive, I think it's a good change.
6 seconds is just not a lot of time, especially if you've killed your opponent. You should be rewarded a little bit by it with a little bit more time and lane to set up however you want. So I think it's a good change.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: This they specifically call out in the patch that they're trying to specifically break the situation of early top lane. One V one. One player wins the duel and then the dying player has so little time of a death timer that they can then teleport back and freeze the wave against the person who just killed them and be at an advantage because they died.
Hopefully this change is enough to actually put a stop to that for good.
Cause that is some degenerate shit.
And that's why I said some top laners should be happy with it.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: We'll definitely see.
It's definitely in the right direction. When they originally lowered the death timers, it's just Matt, it's just, it was crazy because you would use psion, for example, you get a scion that just likes to get the wave, he'll die. Next thing you know, he's already back in lane because he was dead for a total of 6 seconds, which is no time. Plus the run speed back to lane and then you're unhealthy.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: So it's definitely a good change. I feel like it rewards you for outplaying your opponent or winning the one v one.
So I definitely agree with this change. I think it's going to help a lot in the top lane.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: All right, we've got one more champion and then a couple of item changes to talk about. So Mike, tell us about.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Hiyanna Qianna, a champion that most of you have probably never seen or maybe even heard of. She's pretty unpopular for the most part. She is an incredibly dangerous assassin.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: If you see, she is one of the only assassins with hard Cc in the entire game.
[00:23:02] Speaker C: Two forms, actually.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: She has two different forms of hard Cc, so.
And neither of them is on a delay because the other assassins with hard Cc are usually, like Leblanc, where you have to hold the chain, or Echo, where you have to stand in a zone for 3 seconds when it goes off.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: Yeah. So the changes are pretty positive overall. I'd definitely call it a buff overall.
There's a couple little nerfs. So her base armor went up by three from 28 to 31.
Her Q, which is her, basically, where she throws the wreck and has the stun that went up by ten damage early and down by ten base damage late, but gained 15% extra bonus ad on its ratio. And the scaling on that went from 50% to 75% bonus damage to monsters.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: So her w, I think that's just.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: A buff, honestly, it's a raw buff.
Ten base damage by level nine does not equal 15% of your bonus ad.
You definitely have more than that.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: It's about the same at level nine. That's one completed item, and then she just gets more powerful from there.
[00:24:24] Speaker C: It's also just straight a raw buff for jungling.
Yeah, 100% is pretty nice. Her w, it's pretty much a straight nerf, and it's just base damages.
So she went from eight scaling to 64 to eight scaling to 40.
This is just bonus on hit damage. So it's not the most impactful thing in her kit, but it's a good chunk of ace damage, and it's not going to be something you feel. For the most part, tear shape's not something you level early.
And the other change is into her alt, where she went from 170% bonus ad ratio to 125% bonus ad ratio.
It's a large chunk off her alt as the bonus ad ratio.
And she also, if I'm reading this right, lost 25% on the monster damage cap. So realistically, if she shoved that into a baron pit, she could steal a baron.
It went from 150 bonus ad to 125 bonus ad.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yep. Which still means that it can actually out smite. Smite late game.
[00:25:45] Speaker C: Yeah. So realistically, the r damage is a bit of a nerf, but your q is your bread and butter damage.
Gaining that extra bonus ad, gaining that extra bonus damage to monsters, gaining the extra base armor, I think they're sort of tapping her back to hopefully see her in the jungle sometimes instead of never see her ever.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: So they do say in the notes they think there's more work to do before she's truly good in the jungle. But this is also clearly intended to be a rebalance of make her stronger earlier and a little less oppressively strong late. Cause her ult was doing so much damage, she would just one tap you if she was at, like, three items, and you're a squishy. She could just one tap you at level 16, and there wasn't much she could really do.
[00:26:35] Speaker C: If she caught anybody unawares, she could 100% you, and you could do nothing about it. You have no counterplay to anything because she has the hard cc on you. She throws you into a wall through her ult, the damage explodes on you. She specifically jumps to a rock to get her q with the stun. She stuns two people, and then she explodes. It was a little disgusting. Hopefully a little bit less of the supreme display of talent damage.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: I want to draw attention to just how absurd her ratios still are with that nerf.
If she hits you with her ult, that's 125 bonus ad.
Her passive, which she can proc once per use of her w, basically on you, is another 30% bonus ad.
Her actual w itself is 10% bonus ad. On every auto, her e, which dashes to you and is a point and click, is 50% bonus ad.
And then if she's doing the strong version of her q that does amped damage when you're below half health, which you already are, by being hit by all that other shit, that's another 144% bonus ad.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Not to mention the e guarantees the q. Yep.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Pretty much cannot miss it. Literally cannot miss. Even if you use a dash ability while she's doing it, it still hits you.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Her e automatically. Yeah, you can still dodge the Q afterwards, but it's real hard.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: The Q follows you eq.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: The Q will follow you. It will hit you. There is nothing you can do about it. It's a mechanic of her q.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: Well, I'll be damned. I've seen her so little. I didn't know that.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you just eq. That's why, like, sometimes you just guarantee the snare if you dash on them and use the water element that you're gonna stun them.
Probably a lot of people might not know that from, like you say, not playing it. But if you e on to someone, your q is guaranteed to hit if you use it right after.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: I think she is the least played assassin in the game, I believe.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: So.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: She's.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: That's why her, like bread and butter combo is to pick up the ice dash on you and root. You get the auto for her passive dash to a wall with her w to get the rock and then hit you with that when the root expires for all of the bonus damage, it's. She has a shitload of damage. Even with the nerf to hurl when.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: She'S in a good spot. It's scary.
I mean, she's oppressive. In Lane, you're really good at last hitting minions mainly because of your w. The on hit damage. It's kind of reminds me of like Zed damage. When a champion or a minion's low, it just almost guarantees you being able to last hit.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: It's like love tap on steroids.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Like misfortune.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: Yeah, because it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop repeated hits like mfs does.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: It does because.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah, you can't stack. You can't stack the passive on the same minion. No, but it just helps you with the last hit.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. She's really easy to last hit with.
Do we think Keanu is actually going to see any play with these changes?
[00:29:53] Speaker C: Nope.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: I think she'll see play. Whether it'll be how long it'll last, we'll see. Because there's just better options in the mid lane or in the jungle.
[00:30:04] Speaker C: I think.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: I think it's a push in the right direction.
It's definitely a push in the right direction.
I'm glad they're not over tuning her and going to make a nightmare, you know? So like they said, there's more work to do. So we'll see where she ends up in the next couple patches. I think we'll see an increase to her win rate and an increase to her play rate, but not by much.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: I think other assassins are going to start seeing the highlight before she does. We're going to start seeing more of the popular assassins before Qiyana starts to creep in. Talon zed.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Fair enough. All right, pillow pet, you want to talk about Bork?
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So Bork got some changes. Not a whole lot. To mention, the attack damage went from 55 to 50, attack speed went from 30% to 25%, and the on hit damage for melee went up 1%. The ranged is unchanged. So melee attack on hit damage is now 10% for.
This is a huge kind of nerf to the item for ADC's and ranged users using it for its stats as a stat stick.
It's a buff to a slight buff for the on hit of users.
You know, Renekton with his empowered w auto attack reset champions Pantheon, someone that can get the proc really quick and just abuse the on hit damage and get that on hit damage really quick because 30% is a lot of damage to get within half a second. I know there's a lot of other champions I mentioned. Jax talked about one earlier, so Jax, I know you got some more.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Basically, I think champions like Master Yi are also happy. Irelia is probably happy with this because these champions have the play pattern of use your spell, your gap closed. Okay, now auto them to death.
The champions that are unhappy about this, you mentioned marksman in general, are unhappy. They just lose ad in attack speed and get nothing in compensation. And then despite the fact that they're melee, Yone and Yasuo aren't happy about this.
They generally are not building attack speed for actual auto attacks centric play. Although they do auto attack, they're building attack speed to get their Q cooldown down, and they rushed this item and now their Q cooldown will not be quite as low on their first item.
And they aren't building on hit, they're building crit. So losing the ad means their crits hit a little less hard. It's less compensated by the 1% on hit then the melee users who are on hit based.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: So they're, they're wanting to move this item from a rush item is the main reason for the reduction in stats. They want you to move it to your second or third item and they don't state it completely. So if you don't know what Bork does, if the on hit damage is based off maximum health, and I do believe it's physical damage, it is physical.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Damage, but it is based on current, current max health.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: I'm sorry.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Which is an important distinction because current health means as they get lower health, it does less damage.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Let me also health is regardless, make sure to add this is really good against bruisers, not necessarily tanks, because their armor does reduce that damage. Just a little side note to add in for people who don't completely understand.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: It'S still good against tanks.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Just good. Yeah.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Don't give me wrong stacking. Bruisers are the ones this is best against.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yes.
This is not going to be your solution to a armor health stacking Mundo.
[00:34:13] Speaker C: No, you'll need armor pen first for that one. But with this nerf to Blade of the ruined king, this patch and the nerf to boots last patch, the two quick rush items for yone and yasuo.
Do we see them doing anything else in the beginning, or are they still instantly rushing tier two boots and bork?
[00:34:32] Speaker A: You have to rush tier tier boots.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: I think they still have to just rush tier two boots and Bork and just be weaker, which sucks.
I mean, unless you don't like the wind shooters, in which case you're probably happy about that.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Unfortunately, boot rush on any solo lane champion is just too good. The movement speed is too good. Being able to dodge autos or not.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Dodge Bork for or not bork berserkers greaves to get the attack speed to reduce their Q cooldown, they benefit more than most.
[00:35:08] Speaker C: The question becomes, or do they switch from this to, like, static shiv, which still has 45% attack speed?
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Um, no, because that item has no sustain.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: That's fair. The sustain on this, it's still 10% lifesteal, which hasn't been changed.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Then they're still gonna have to build the boots regardless. Now there is an argument to say for Yasuo, who can build a different boot.
Um, maybe he can build like, the plated steel caps or merc treads. There's an argument there, but most of the time, 95% of the time, you're gonna be wanting berserker greaves early.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: You're real close with that number. 97% of the time is when Yasuo is building Zurich Greaves.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Okay, so I was almost.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: You were so close. That is actually hilarious.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Now you might change.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: That is less. He only builds it 93% of the time.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Say I'd see it less on him than I would also. But you can, you know, late game, you can always change them out. But I think with Zephyr added, it's just too good.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
Alright, I got one more item change to talk about and it segues into our trinket tip.
So Dorans Blade got a nerf. It lost 20 health and half a percent of life steal. This is specifically because marksman, who are the primary people who should be building Dorans Blade, are getting the most out of it. And I reducing their durability makes them more vulnerable to getting burst by getting caught out or by getting ganked.
They want to make the ad carries a little weaker in early aggression in solo lanes.
This shouldn't make a huge impact on duo lanes because there's a support there.
But they should be much less safe in top and mid because they have less health and less sustain to get back up.
Which ties into the trinket tip, because our trinket tip this week is Doran's Shield. First of all, if you are playing a fighter, a melee ad champion of basically any kind other than an assassin, you probably should have been starting Doran's blade already or Doran's shield already. Doran's blade really is just for the ranged champs right now.
Doran's Shield gives a lot of health and it gives a lot of sustain, and as a melee champion, you are going to take damage.
But there's some tech for Doran's shield.
Doran's shield heals you more as you get lower health.
So if you are in a trade or getting poked out, don't pop your potion early.
Let Doran Shield handle the healing. Sit on that potion until you're either in an all into the death fight or really low and need to pop the potion to be able to stay in lane.
If you top yourself up, you're basically wasting your Doranshield. Let the Doran shield do the topping up.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: And if you're trading autos to add in on this, if they're trading autos, there's a little icon down above your skill bars that's going to show the Doran's proc. The Dorn shield proc. So it's. It's more beneficial to space if you are going to take auto attacks to space those autos. By the time the end of that Dorrence shield buff is running out. Taking repeat of hits does not make Doran Shield any stronger, but spacing it out correctly makes. Gets you full benefit of Doran Shield if you can.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Yep. And again, this is a, like, it's the optimal way to do it, but you're not always gonna be able to do it optimally. Please use your potion before you're, like, super low health. If you are getting hit and in combat, using a potion in combat is fine. Just don't use it because you got poked twice by its spell.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: At level two in combat potion, I think potions heal for 150% or 100.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: 5125.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: I think 125 or 150.
That's probably 10% of your hp. So put, if you're taking an active trade, that's going to go, what is it? 100? 100. 2121. Hundred. 20? Uh, that's probably around a little more than 10% of your hp at level one. So if you're. If you're in one of those fights, that's going to be to the death. Popping your potion is going to give you a lot of benefit, because that's just going to be as good as getting a heal level one if you pop it and get max benefit from that potion.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: The potion is essentially two and a half procs of the Doran's shield. The health regen over 8 seconds.
So it. It'll do 45 health over 8 seconds each time you do the trade when you're taking damage.
And then a potion lasts for 15 seconds. So that's if you're trading optimally, something like half of your health. 200.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: This is. This is what I was referring to. This is what's not clear from riot.
You get on Dorn Shield 0% regen from the proc that they're talking about. When you are at full health, scaling to 45 regen over 8 seconds. When you are at a quarter health, it is linear scaling from that range. So like a quarter health is where Doran's shield is healing you the most whenever you take a hit.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: Yes. So this is when you are at low health, you can gain up to 90 health over the same amount of time that you would pop a potion.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Yep.
This especially will infuriate Doran's ring users who have no real sustain once they've spent mana.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Teemo hates Doran's shield. So if you have to face a Teemo, you always want to run Dorn shield because his passive continuously procs the shield.
[00:41:37] Speaker B: Yup.
All right, shall we get some listener questions answered?
[00:41:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: All right. So our first set of questions comes from Prince of winners, who writes hi, y'all. Prince of winners again, few questions. How do you utilize stat pages in determining optimal rune configurations for a specific match? Like, how do you account for scenarios where a rune setup might show a higher win rate, but is based on a smaller sample size, leading to potential inconsistencies?
Additionally, how should you evaluate runes that might require a more aggressive or risky playstyle, such as dark harvest on a mumu or electrocute on Galio when interpreting their effectiveness?
Alright, so it's kind of a two pronged question. He's talking about specifically, like, if you're looking up a build on op GG, how to interpret how much stock to put in that build.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: So my first impression on this would be understand. Try to understand your matchup a little bit. So if it's not going to be someone that you're facing, that you're going to be able to benefit much from dark harvest. Like we'll say, for instance, in top lane, Garen. If you're facing a garen, you're not going to probably be able to get as many dark harvest prox just from the inherent nature of his healing. Passive.
Or if you're going against a tank, you're just probably not going to be able to benefit from those risky, risky runes because there's going to be a lot less chance to use them. So you more want to try to run into go into a rune page. That's more beneficial for what you're going to need that early game as far as instant sustain or additional poke and damage over time.
[00:43:30] Speaker C: So I think the most important thing to do when you're checking out those pages is actively look at what the runes are and read them. Actually look and see what they do.
You're going to want to know, hey, this guy has grasp of the undying here in a top lane thing. Am I trying to sit there and just farm minions or am I trying to go in there and do even pokes against my opponent? Am I trying to continuously fight my opponent?
Read what the rune does. Don't just follow what the rune says, because if you aren't doing what the rune asks you to, you're gaining no benefit, even if it's the best rune setup overall, win rate wise.
Such a the thing with grasp of the undying, if you're not actively fighting your opponent ever, if you're just sitting there and farming, you're not gaining benefit from grasp of the undying basically ever. Or if you're someone who does very short trades, you go and you do a little bit of a poke and then you walk away.
You're never going to want to use conqueror.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: To mention specifically on a couple of the examples you give, like dark harvest on a moomoo. That's never the right answer unless you're an Aram.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: I am going to push back a little bit.
Dark harvest is never the right answer because dark harvest itself is shit right now. You can make a case for electrocute right now, which is just better than dark harvest right now. When playing AP amumumu.
[00:45:10] Speaker C: Yeah, electrocute is a very. You're going to look at this and you're going to go, I need to do damage proc. Electrocute in a very short window is very strong. Galio jumps in, smacks you three times and you can walk away. Electrocute procs are good on high damage, small risk.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: Do I think you should be playing AP amumumu? No.
[00:45:29] Speaker C: Oh no.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: But electrocute on Galio is actually really good because you can proc it real quick and get out. So to touch on that example you give us, if you go in on Galio and you get the electrocute proc, do you gain or will you lose on that? As you try to walk away from that trade, are they able to answer back? Is a good question. If it is like a melee user that can't answer back to that trade, it's always going to be good to go. A champion that can proc electrocute if it's melee and benefit, not take a net loss in the trade by walking away because you just expended every ability you have.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Are you playing against Kassadin electrocutes probably going to be good because your job is to bully him and he doesn't have a good way to trade back once you combo him and walk away.
[00:46:26] Speaker C: So I think an important note here is what kind of game are you doing? Are you doing a draft style game? Are you doing a blind pick? Because you will change your rune setup based on what you're facing as well? If you don't know what you're facing, you might not want to have a highly aggressive rune because you may not be able to proc it. You may want something that's just always useful.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yep.
Alright, so Prince of winners does continue with a related question. How often do you consider the psychological effects of playstyles or rune setups? For instance, press the attack on ADC can give early game advantage, but might risk survival while fleet footwork improves lane and teamfight safety, potentially reducing early surrenders.
[00:47:17] Speaker C: Um, the one rune that mattered for this doesn't exist anymore, to be honest. For me, the one rune that was this is the late game attack speed scaling rune that allows you to go beyond the attack speed cap. I forgot its name.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Lethal tempo.
[00:47:31] Speaker C: Lethal tempo that doesn't exist. So now I don't care.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Press the attack is really good as a rune because not only does it give you increased damage on your current a target, it gives you increased damage on all targets as long as you are remaining in combat.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: I believe it's weird to just proc on their front line, and then when you're able to start hitting their back line, you already have the bonus damage and you'll still get a proc on that back line for the burst.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: And that's all. That's even your abilities, right? Increases your damage on your abilities, or is it just.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: But it's only procced from things that apply on hit effects. So auto attacks and abilities that can on hithenite?
[00:48:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Um, and so, like fleet footwork is good in a lot of ways, especially with the sustain. But I always feel like its hidden power comes with its movement speed that it gives you, because it lets you get in or get out of sticky situations like you can proc your fleet footwork and move in for a harassing auto. There's a lot of strength in that. Movement speed. Movement speed is arguably one of the best stats in the game.
[00:48:43] Speaker C: Yes, very much so. The base part of this question is the psychological effects of the rune setup. Doesn't. The one thing that really had an effect on it doesn't seem to be there anymore. Playstyle, I think, is very different thing. When you start seeing how people are playing, that drastically changes how I see the game.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's where I think the rune setups can also be like, if I see a Sylas running electrocute, I'm going to interpret his intentions very differently than if I see a Sylas running conqueror or running phase rush.
And that's where it does matter, is I do consider, oh, he's running this rune. He's looking to do this because I want to know what my enemy is intending to do so that I can better predict his actions, predict his movements and counterplay it.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't have a, like, the rune choice doesn't really ever affect my psychological going into a game, other than, like, Jax mentioned, my prep going into a game, you just. It's a dead giveaway of how someone's going to play. So Jax is right on the head there with you. It gives you knowledge of how they're wanting to play this matchup.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: Yup. Yeah. When you see the Yasuo with PTA or something, it's like, okay, he's either an idiot or he's looking to just fight me level two and win, or he's a Yasuo player. So the answer is really both.
[00:50:14] Speaker C: He's waiting to die ten times and then he'll just be unkillable. His zero ton power Spike is a legendary true.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: All right, we got one more listener question. This one comes from Codex Ninja, who writes, last episode, we talked about how the endemic skill level of the playerbase has exploded. What three skills do you think is the top endemic skills? So if you didn't listen last week, this is like the base skill level that it feels like new players are picking up on quickly or is expected of you to play at a, like, lower level that used to be more advanced skills.
Um, to me, the first thing that jumps out is it is relatively well known now amongst all skill levels that you can use flash to reposition an ability in action.
Um, Viq Lee, sink, whatever. There's a gazillion abilities that work like this, you can flash while the ability is going off to reposition the ability.
Yeah.
[00:51:21] Speaker C: Like a shuntaunt.
[00:51:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
There's so many of these. So that's why I think that's an endemic skill that I think didn't used to be well known, but it's well known enough now that even in, like, bronze four, you will see people attempting to do Flash's admit ability. Will they always succeed? No, but they know you can do it and they'll try.
They may do it in the wrong times, though, which is sometimes very funny. I have definitely watched people Flash to hit a viq that would have hit anyway, and I'm just like, you just spent Flash for nothing. Why would you do that?
What else you guys got? What else do you think is an endemic skill that didn't used to be super well known?
[00:52:14] Speaker C: I think my number one thing that I've been seeing is leaving skill shots.
People are much more often to actually try and hit where you're going to be versus where you are right now. And that is something that for a long period of time, you could just keep walking and you'd get out of almost everything.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: All right? Yes. However, anytime I play in an elo other than my own, I find it way harder to hit skillshots because people's movements are different.
[00:52:47] Speaker C: That's very true.
[00:52:47] Speaker B: I'm still trying to lead it, but people don't move in the way I predict because I'm in a different skill bracket than my usual skill bracket. Either higher or lower doesn't matter. So I miss a lot more, which I think is funny.
You got one pillow.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: I'm trying to think my big one would have been like the flashing and ability, the one that came to my head on that is like the ergot e. Flash is the one that I've used the most.
Just being it's nobody, there's no escape from it.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: They have to predict flash it, they can't reflex flash it.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: It's been so long since I've been a new player, it's hard for me to think of skills that I've gained that are just inherent. That would have been considered completely changed or over the times. It's hard for me to think of one.
[00:53:48] Speaker B: Let me give you one then.
Kiting.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good one.
[00:53:54] Speaker B: Way back in the day, and you'll still see this from genuinely new people until they figure it out. But they figure it out pretty quickly nowadays because they see other people doing it. But way back in the day, it was common in low elo for people to just stand and fight to the death. They didn't really understand how to move while fighting.
Um, nowadays you'll do that your first couple games, especially if you're playing like versus AI. But the moment you start playing Pvp games, you will see the other players moving while they're fighting and you will figure out how to do it pretty quickly. Not optimally. It takes practice and understanding to do it optimally, but you will learn that you can do it at all almost immediately when you're playing in PvP.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: I do have another one that complements kiting and that is your spacing as far as knowing when your autos going to hit and how to get out of their auto attacks, and knowing inherently your abilities ranges without looking at the indicators, I would say is definitely skills that more people know now.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: Dude, if you played 14 years ago, you know how bad the indicators used to be. Some of that's just the game is better about actually giving you that information.
[00:55:16] Speaker C: Some of that hasn't changed in the slightest. There are still lollipops galore with nautilus hooks or a blitzcrank.
Actually, that's a lot. A lot of that is skill dependent or skin dependent too. There are a lot of skins that actively hide your abilities ranges.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: But if you're not wanting to worry about happen to know any skills or anything like that, I just go lucian top.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: It's true, you just steamroll every every matchup and kill the nexus in ten minutes.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Yeah, you don't have to worry about knowing any skills or what the opponent's rank is.
[00:55:55] Speaker C: It's definitely an endemic skill by now. It's been around for almost a decade, eight years.
[00:56:02] Speaker B: All right, with that, this has been episode 443 of the Forwards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for mic of many names for pillow pet. Have a great night.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Bye.
[00:56:13] Speaker C: See you around.
[00:56:16] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Forewords podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the four wardspodcast, and of course send your questions to theforewordspodcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the forewordspodcastmail.com.
