[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, Jerks, and Velcaz.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: And you're listening to the Forwards podcast.
[00:00:16] Speaker C: Here to help you move forward and lead.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to episode 444 of the four Wards podcast. That's right, it's all fours this week. I'm your host, Jack Soman, and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in league. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: Four.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: And we have pillow pet.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: All right, guys. We are the Forwards podcast. Our website is in the episode description, and some of us stream on Twitch. That's right, it's plug time. I can be found at Twitch TV. Jackson and Pillowpet can be found at Twitch TV, pillow pet, and Mike is Katsura with some numbers, but he doesn't stream, so it doesn't matter.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: It's conveniently.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: 444, is it?
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Actually, yes.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: That's hilarious. Alright, for this episode, you get the Twitch shoutout. Twitch TV, Katsura 444. I'm not putting it in the episode description, but because it happens to match the episode number, you get the shout out. All right, speaking of shoutouts, we have patrons that are subscribing at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys so much. That's right. Shoutouts to Codex Ninja, our very own pillow pet, and Robogon for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. You guys are awesome. I really appreciate knowing that we actually have money to pay for hosting for the next month or two, so thank you very much.
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Alright, now that we got all the plugs and bookkeeping stuff out of the way, our main topic tonight is one we prepped a few weeks ago but didn't get to because we talked for too damn long. You guys love it. Don't complain.
We're gonna talk about roaming this week.
I'm going to talk about what is roaming, when to roam, how to roam, how to defend against Rome, all the above. So let's start out with, first of all, let's define roaming.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: So basically a Rome is when you take time away from your lane to go outside of it. And I usually you either help another lane to try and get a cankoff, or sometimes you roam to try and get pressure into a jungle to try and catch out someone who's moving out of position. Maybe just put some vision down.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: So I think the key here is roaming is something that happens strictly during laning phase.
It is not considered roaming if 30 minutes into the game your top laner wanders down into a fight in mid lane.
Uh, so roaming is laning phase 1st, 14 minutes typically.
And it is when you leave your lane to do something else.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: The jungler is not roaming.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yeah, jungler, literally by definition is not roaming ever. Their role is to always be roaming because they don't have an assigned lane.
Um, so you kind of started hitting on it of what, what is your goal when you're roaming? What are you trying to accomplish when you leave your lane?
[00:04:35] Speaker A: So I put in like when I think that your, your goal of roaming is to always create an advantage wherever you're going, whether that be with numbers, number advantage at an objective, or getting summoner spells. If you're doing a gank or even kills or assists, try to create some kind of advantage on the map, even if it's just vision.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: All right, I'm gonna push back a little bit because you said even if it's just vision. Vision is a huge advantage in roaming. Even.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I'm not discounting like, I'm.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Just objecting to the word just cause, like wandering into the enemy jungle and dropping a ward down means then when they pass over that you know where the jungler is, your players on the other side of the map now have the freedom to be more aggressive because they know they're not going to get counter ganked by the jungler if they do like, vision is a huge part of the goal in roaming. I would argue in most cases, other than mid lane roaming, vision is the primary goal.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: He's already hit on an interesting point. There is, there are different goals for different positions in roaming.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yep. Support roams usually are for vision.
Top roams usually are for vision. Although they're, they overlap a lot more with mid of, like, top roaming down to mid to try to get a kill, and mid lane roams, kill focused.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: I'd say one of the most common rooms you see from a top lanere is just going into the enemy jungle with the jungler to try to secure vision or secure an objective with it being a jungle camp or getting a.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Kill, or if they have a huge advantage, even just wandering in without their jungler, because they know they crashed a double stacked wave, and they have 30 seconds to go ward up camps and kill the enemy jungler if he's there.
Top laners love doing that, and the junglers hate it so much, it makes the map feel so small for the jungler when the top laner does that.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: I think I had a game a week or two ago where I probably kept a jungle off of his camp for, like, 30 seconds because I stacked a wave, and a top laner does not want to leave a wave under their tower. So I just harassed him at his camp for a good 30 seconds and then went back to lane.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: All right, I have an example of. This is the most, like, toxic example of roaming to abuse a jungler I've ever had. A. I was playing, like, Kha'zix or someone who's really strong early in, like, isolated scenarios, and I ganked the enemy jungler at his red when he was level two and I was level three because I cleared faster than him. He was playing something slightly off meta.
And then my bot laner, like my support, my bot lane was pushed up, so my support wandered into their blue quadrant and put down wards. So then I invaded him at his blue quadrant when it respawned and killed him again, because I had vision and knew when he went in there and was ready for it. And then my top laner, on seeing that, had the lane pushed in and wandered back into his red quadrant, put down more wards, killed the guy again. Like, this dude died four times in his jungle in the first, like, six minutes of the game. It was glorious for me, but I felt so bad for him, because that is just when, as a jungler, you're just like, team diff. I can't do anything.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Ways to win a game when six.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Minutes, that's an extreme example, but that's what roaming can get you, is we knew where he would be. We were able to predict his movements and outnumber him and kill him repeatedly because of that.
And they were making sure to set up their wave, which we'll get to in a moment, of how to set up a wave. To Rome so that they could do so with minimal losses to themselves.
And I think that's the other key to roaming, is you're roaming to get an advantage, but you need to make sure you're not giving over an equivalent or bigger advantage to your opponent by not being in lane.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Nine times that. Well, 99 times out of 100, you're not leaving your lane when your opponent has a two stacked wave pushing in on you to try and do a roam off. Unless you are pretty sure you're going to die anyways, it's not worth it to lose all that XP and gold you want.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: That's a good.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: You want to have a reason to leave that isn't going to cost you.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Yep. And that one time out of 100 is where you will be dove and killed. And your choice is stick around, die, lose the double stacked wave or roam. Lose the double stacked wave and maybe get something out of it.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I would say, like, your biggest risks of roaming, which I think is our next talking point with it, is like getting caught or falling behind and losing any advantage that you've gained in lane and that you fought tooth and nail for because you're giving away, like, if you lose an advantage, you're just giving the enemy team an advantage for free on that. You don't want to lose xp or gold when you leave, like the best you can. And it's really hard in mid lane because those, those waves crash so quickly. Yep. So you're, you're ahead giving. If you, if you go to Rome and you're sitting in a bush for 30 seconds, you've lost a wave whether you've crashed it or not. Because I think wave spawn what, every 30 seconds?
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Every 30 seconds.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: So if you go down and you're waiting in a warded bush near bot lane to try to get a gank off, you're going to lose a wave because it's not going to. You're not going to have enough time to roam back. If your enemy laner sees you on that ward, he's going to shove like that's. That's just what the right thing to do is. And then you give them a free back, and then now you're going back to answer to clean up what scraps you can and your enemy laners back with a gold advantage.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: That, that's not entirely true. There is another thing that they can do to punish you. And if they're, they're playing this correctly, they can freeze on you after a.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Realm less applicable to mid lane because again, it's a short lane and most champions.
Yep.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Oh, you'll see it all the time in top lane.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Top lane especially. It's so easy to fuck yourself by roaming at a bad time and handing the enemy a freeze.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: If you get stuck in a freeze. And this is just a little side tangent, if you get stuck in a freeze, ping someone to help you out because it's if you like even just two minutes worth of a freeze and you're getting one or two minions a wave, you're going to lose so much gold on that freeze where you're usually going to like if your jungle just shows up, you're going to be able to shove that for free.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: And this is one of those situations where as a top laner, this is when you should be roaming is if you can't get your jungler to come help, you can't get your mid laner to come help. Cool. Peace the fuck out. Go help them because you're not getting shit in your lane while the enemy has a freeze anyway. By roaming you will force them to break the freeze because they can't afford to keep freezing while they're rest of their teams losing.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: One thing you still can do just to push back a little on that is you can still collect XP, which is almost just as important.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: That depends a lot on your champion too.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: And depending on there are some champions.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Who can freeze with them in between you and the wave and then you can't even get XP.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah, so like a lot of times, you know, you'll see people hide in a bush just so the enemy will be like okay, they left. Still try to shove a wave. It's all mind games. Or you'll decide in a bush to safely collect XP. And that's a whole other situation of wave management and mind games.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yup. I have definitely had games as top lane work cause I'm autofilled whenever I play top lane. Typically I've definitely had games where I'm like cool, I'm just gonna play Maokai and play weak side because I don't play top lane. Cool. I'm stuck in a freeze. I guess I'm throwing saplings into the bush and trying to stay in experience range cause I'm behind and I need the saplings to a make sure I don't get flanked and b bop the wave from a safe distance so I can try to break his freeze.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: I think the longest freeze that I've ever held was with a Darius when I was playing Darius and I think I held the freeze for like 15 nah, that's probably too much. Like ten minutes, I would say. I held a freeze on this guy. He was level four to my level seven or eight.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Darius is one of the nightmare top laners, where if he gets a freeze, he can just stand in between the wave and you, and he's ahead because he was able to freeze. And you just don't get experience anymore because if you try to get an experience range, he kills you.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah. You just go. He just ghosts at you and kills you.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: The other common one is with the range champions in top, when they can pull you out and push you off it, and then they're just, well, you come near me, I'm just going to smack you six times.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: They at least usually can't afford to tank the minion wave while they kill you. Darius often can.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Well, Narcan.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, yeah, that's some of the risks of roaming.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: And I guess ad Nidalee top, because that's coming back.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I hate that Merwin is bringing this back. I don't want to see it in my solo queue. Please, for the love of God, do not play Nidalee top. Your name is not Merwin.
Just. Just don't. I'm sorry. Just. Just don't.
I did want to touch on briefly because you mentioned leaving the wave at a bad state, punishing you. This is what champions who are bad at roaming want to do when you roam. One of my favorite things is when I'm playing Zigz mid and I'm against, like, a talon or a Katarina who's gonna be roam happy.
And my laners actually respond when I ping that they're on their way. So I just get to wipe the wave, bop the turret for a plate, because I'm Ziggs and I take plates like candy and then walk away before they get back and rinse and repeat every minute because that champion just wants to roam. They don't actually want to sit in lane and try to, like, trade poke with me.
It's great, except when my laners don't listen to the pings. And that's kind of the transition into our next part of roaming, which is how not to get roamed on. This mostly applies to bottom lane, because, frankly, mid laners view you guys as sacks of gold to go collected.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: I'd say about 80% of roams head to or from bot lane. Either the support is leaving bot lane to go off and do whatever supports feel like doing, or they're being roamed upon because your levels lower than everyone else. And you're much squishier.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yup. And you're not. And you're gold dependent, not level dependent. So the mid laners that are higher level than you are drastically stronger than you at the point in the game where roaming is in play, that's typically how it works. Occasionally you'll see roams towards top lane. That's usually because the mid laner has written off their bot lane and they're like, okay, I have to do something.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Or it'll be like a roam towards objective control.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll roam top sometimes just to make sure we get six grubs.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: I love those fun.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Because top laners hate when ganks happen for them. They see the mid laner show up top, they start fuming.
How many times have you seen your opponent mauled and rage quit because they got ganked by the mid laner pillow pet?
[00:16:30] Speaker A: I would definitely say I would see a mold probably 70% of the time. If they see a support or mid lane come top lane and they just gotta throw out an all chat. Oh, what do you need? A camp? What, you can't one v one this lane.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Need back more time.
But I mean, so all my experience that I'm gonna the spit or use like and talk about is going to come from a mostly top lane experience and occasional mid lane experience. So top lane, if you get roamed on, you have the longer lane. And if you don't have good wards, there are like avenues you can take depending on what the situation is. So the best thing to do if, like, if you're in a solo lane and you're caught. Like, you're caught, there's no escaping this roam or getting away from this gank. Like, you have a couple choices and you want to isolate a fight, like, and maintain a one v one for as long as you can to try to create an advantage that would allow you to possibly escape or get a one for one out of this, try to get something out of you dying.
Like if you, if, for instance, if you're playing, I like to, you know, talk about him because he's good at Darius. You want to create a one v one before that gank shows up. If you're caught for many reasons, one, you get a five stack going, you can now two v one. That whole, like two v one them. Like, you could, you can do it.
Mordekaiser. You don't care really because you create a one v one.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: It's a one v one.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: It's a one v one. Illaoi you hope that they try to gank you, because you can turn that into a two v one.
But to avoid ever having to get into a situation that you're going to die or get caught, the best way to prepare or be ready for a roam is just vision. And the deeper the ward, usually the better.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: That's. That's. I think the key is it is not enough to put the vision in just the bush right outside the lane in the river. That's too shallow. Yeah, the pixel bush, that's too shallow. You do not have enough time to react unless you are in a defensive position already, in which case you're not really worried about getting roamed on, you're worried about getting dope, which is a different thing.
[00:18:54] Speaker C: So probably the best place for a vision that will do something for you. If you are on red side in top lane, you want it probably right above their blue buff, in that little spot where you can see blue and gromp, because they're almost assuredly going to check their camp, come up and go after you. Either take their camp or see if they can't grab you, then go backwards.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: If you're able to get two wards up or you buy a control ward, you should be buying control wards.
You put your stealth ward in between gromp and blue, and you put your control ward in the bush by the river to the side of blue, basically towards mid lane.
You can now see basically every avenue. They are likely to approach your lane 10 seconds before they get to you.
There are ways to gank you, but those are. Those are the main ways. That's 80, 90% of all ganks towards top lane will come through that pathway.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Knowing how to use vision two is very important to prevent roams and ganks. A lot of times I'll see people use, like, control wards in the wrong way, especially in like, a top lane. Like, I'll notice, like, and I've done it before, too. I'm guilty of it. Putting my pink ward in that pixel bush right outside of the lane when I don't have wave control.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: And you're just giving away gold at that point.
I don't care if the enemy jungler comes and takes that pink ward, because I know then that the enemy jungler is right there and I know I can play safe.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: It's done its job. It's giving you the information it's supposed to give.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: That is. That is a good place for a pink ward. The pixel Bush is a great place to leave a pink ward and just have control of an area that way.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: You know, zone when you have control of the lane. Which is what?
[00:20:50] Speaker C: When you have control, when you aren't essentially just giving up free gold to lose it.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. You have to have control of that lane to use a pink ward, or if you're wanting to put up. If you don't have control of the lane and you don't have a sweeper, and you have no way to clear vision, you can use a pink ward to check that so that your jungle knows whether or not. Yeah, I can come gank or don't.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: I was gonna say one of my favorite baits is to use a control ward to clear that ward when you do not have lane control, when it's pushing towards you, knowing that the enemy top leader is gonna walk right over and be like, ooh, 30 gold. And you have the mid laner and jungler lying in wait just outside. A vision of that.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: And he just goes to start whacking the ward and maybe uses his auto reset ability. And then two people come out of the woodwork, and he's just like, oh, I'm in danger.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Yeah. But we didn't, we didn't, we didn't cover the. The blue side one. So the. Probably the best place for a blue side ward is right at that little avenue where the. Behind Red Ward. Red buff. And from Red Buff, that little section there, it's not in a bush, but, yeah, you have a regular ward. You don't need it there.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yep. Also, the. The highway in between Red Buff and the baron pit is really high value to get a warden to, because that's where a mid laner is going to come from, to come gank you.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: And then if you. If you really need to put vision in the river, usually put it in front of the objective, either in front of the baron pit or in front of Dragon Pitae. That way you have vision on. If they're doing the objective, you have a nice long highway of vision. It's far enough away that you have.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: A chance to react, especially against champions who have low, cooldown ways to hop the wall. You need to have vision in that pit, or they can sneak the objective.
So what about. That's topside. What about bot Lane? They're the ones who get roamed on and do the most roaming. So how do you prepare for and respond to enemy roams as bot lane?
[00:23:06] Speaker C: So, bot lane, most of the roam.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Owners blame the jungle.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: It's fun with the jungler, but it's actually sort of on the support. It is their job to sort of keep a safe bubble of vision around the bot lane. Your ad carry is going to pro, hopefully purchase one pink ward, because they only ever want to purchase one pink ward. Let them put that in your tri bush, because that's, that's their thing that they can keep vision on, and it's relatively defensible.
And then your job is to put the deeper vision in. It's obviously more dangerous, but you're a less economy character. So your job is to try and ward out the dragon pita. Put vision either on camps or near camps so that you can have a little bit of a forewarning. Again, right by where the little blue buff can see gromp is a great spot. The bush right by red buff is great.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: So here's the, here's the other key. Be willing to step away.
The number of times that I have seen bot laners die to a roam that was pinged, that they knew for a fact was coming, because they greeted for a cannon minion, or they greeted for a plate. It's like, congratulations, you got 90 gold from that cannon, or 125 gold from that plate. You gave the enemy 450 gold for an assisted kill, and now you lost an entire wave of farm while you were in your death timer.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: I'm very guilty of this. When I get auto filled in the bot lane, I need that cannon. I need that cannon, man.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Especially when the lane's going well, it's really easy to be like, oh, I'm just dominating these guys. This is great. Let's just keep them locked under turret and deny farm and take plates. And then you forget that, oh, it doesn't matter how far ahead you are, the enemy ad carry the jungler and mid laner will murder you in a second flat.
[00:25:03] Speaker C: The biggest thing that I am guilty of is greeting to kill the damn warden. If you have a sweeper and you got it, or you get your pin cord and you are, hey, I found the enemy vision. I need to get rid of it.
If you don't see where the people are, you should be leaving. I am very bad at this. This is my biggest problem, my biggest vice. I want to clear that vision. I shouldn't, I should be leaving.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: Yep. And I want to be clear, you do not need to have a giant bubble of wards to be allowed to step up and take a plate or to take a trade that is advantageous to you. But what you need to know is, where is the enemy team?
If you know that the enemy jungler ganked top lane 10 seconds ago, and the mid laner is visible on the map. You can step up and take that plate or go for that trade.
If you haven't seen the enemy jungler in a minute, you better damn well have a good bubble of vision to know it is unlikely that they are anywhere near you before you step up to take that plate because that's when they are gonna gank you like as a jungler, we are aiming for you. When you greed for plates, that is our window of opportunity.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: So specifically for bot lane as your support, there are certain champions that are much better at roaming than others. These are champions that either have very heavy cc to get the ganks off, they have high mobility so they can run around and get vision, or they have just raw tankiness that they can afford to get into situations that other supports can't.
The examples of these three that I really big on nautilus is probably one of the biggest. Hey, I've got all the cc in the world. I'm going off for a gank. He's pretty quick to move around the map because of his hook. He's got a lot of and it.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Drives mid laners nuts. When a nautilus hook comes out of nowhere and they just die, then you.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Have your bards, your lulus. These are the ones who have really high speed mobility and can get around the map very quickly and aren't punished for leaving the lane to roam. To put vision down and then come back. And then the other one is pretty much Leona and Ralph. They are the premier. I'm going to be a tank supports.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: And Alistar and Alistar.
So there's the other aspect to support roams, which is who is your ad carry? You have way more freedom to roam as a support. When you're laning with an Ezreal, a Tristana or someone else who's particularly self sufficient, it is rough to try to find windows to roam where you're not leaving your kog'maw or your jynx out to where they can't touch the wave anymore, they can't get farmed, they can't get experience because you're not there with them.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: The general rule of thumb is for the support roaming. If you are heavily facing the two v two, if it's consistent fighting, you should probably be there with your ad carry because otherwise they're going to collapse on him a lot.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: If you are facing a another tank heavy, another CC heavy support and your ad carry isn't Ezreal or Tristana, you need to be a babysitter.
Your windows to roam are when you've pushed up and you're not attempting to take a bunch of plates.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Yep.
When, when your ADC backs for an item and you're still healthy and have mana, those are great opportunities for champions to roam in those kinds of lanes.
[00:28:52] Speaker C: The best time to roam is right after our reset because you have now absolute freedom to go to any lane whatsoever. Plop some vision down, throw out a CC, see if it lands. If it doesn't, you can head right back down to your ad carry and on the way you can put more words down.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yep.
All right.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: So I do have a couple broad things to how you can respond to roams map wide.
This will help with like getting objectives. We were talking about creating advantages when you notice that like a support or a jungle or someone roam top, you now have numbers advantage on the other side of the map and are free to take objectives. So that's a good time to do dragons or if you're an enemy, or if your enemy junglers top lane. That's a good time for junglers to invade with a support. You now have a numbers advantage on whatever side is being roamed on. So just. That's a good thing to take into mind.
I just wanted to make sure I added that in there because it's. That's game wide for every lane.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Yep. Absolutely.
All right, well, I bounced your, your trinket tip from last week, pillow pet. So give us the trinket tip you prepped last week that I made you wait for and then let's get to kind of questions.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: It's a kind of segues into the whole topic that we had. So I had a trinket tip that make sure that you're timing your backs with killing opponents and leaving a wave that is slow pushing to you. Try to leave it to where that wave is slow pushing to you so you have time to back walk back to lane, back walk back to lane and then catch that wave that you left yourself.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: And to be clear, slow pushing to you means enemy minions outnumber your minions slightly.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Yes. On the if they, if it is a wave pushing on their side of the map and they have the advantage or numbers advantage, it is going to slow push to you. What if it's a one or two minion advantage, it's going to slow push to you. If it's a whole wave advantage, it's going to fast push.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Yup.
Alright, let's answer some listener questions.
Our first question tonight comes from Pac, who writes hi wards. I have a weird email address. So you can just call me Pac. But I was listening to the podcast and was curious about y'all's take on lane identities. For example, the top lane is generally considered the split push lane, but in my experience, it's not as cut it and dry. This is especially true with Bot Lane and jungle, where the gameplay is very different depending on the champions playing in that lane.
So lane identities, I definitely agree. Top laners take the brunt of split pushing responsibility in most games.
[00:31:48] Speaker C: So identity is a little bit of a weird one here because identity is more champion dependent than lane dependent.
So for the most part, people would consider Tryndamere to be a split pusher. Whether or not he's played in mid lane like he used to be, or top lane, he is someone who wanders around.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: You say used to be, you say used to be, had mid lane Tryndamere as a, like, meta pick two months ago.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: It still is.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: He's. He's not meta. He's like edge of meta now. He hasn't fully fallen off, but he's fallen off partially. Thank fuck. I was literally banning it for a while because it was so prevalent.
[00:32:31] Speaker C: But yeah, it's sort of identity is a very champion focused thing your champion is in. Generally designed to fulfill a certain role. So the identity is sort of. Do we want to define what kind of major identities there are?
[00:32:49] Speaker B: It's more identify what kind of identities show up in each role. So, like, top Lane is gonna have the split pushing duelists typically, and it's gonna have team fight tanks. Those are the two main identities that show up in top lane.
I would say mid lane is where basically all assassins exist nowadays. Cause jungle assassins, while they do exist, are definitely nothing. The priority right now.
Most assassins come out of mid lane, but it's also where you're gonna get lots of control mage players, lots of like, oh, lots of, lots of magi. I'm just going to nuke waves and make it so you can't actually find an opportunity to fight in the first place.
Whatever you want to call that. That's like Anivia Orianna type champions.
Jungle right now is pretty heavy on fighters and tanks and AP junglers, but most of the AP junglers are also fighters, like Diana, for example.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: Lilia.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's jungle is very much about skirmishing gameplay right now, about finding fights. Often Bot Lane's identity, you kinda touched on the types of supports earlier, and that's true for support for marksmen. Their identity is and has always been, I am the role that enables us to take objectives in the late game.
Some marksmen excel more or less at that than others. Some marksmen are better at PvP. Some have bring CC to the table. But all of them, literally every marksman, including the mages that get played in Bot Lane, are there because they are good at taking objectives. Dragons, barons and turrets in the late.
[00:34:48] Speaker C: Game, there are subsections of them. Like, there are subsections of support. You have your hyper carries who are there to just farm up until you hit the end of the game. And then they hit three items and they can blow up a team. You have sort of the duelist marksman, like, like Lucien, who can usually one v one of almost anyone at certain points in time, they're there to just out fight you.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: This is why veinspotting is a whole thing, because she's in that category and attracts a lot of the types of people that try to limit test, even when they shouldn't be.
[00:35:26] Speaker C: And then the other major one that is there is poke. Ad carries your varus, your jinn, your even ash to a certain extent. As Asriel.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:35:42] Speaker C: They sort of fit the identities because that's where they are safest. Sometimes you'll see them split up into other locations, but for the most part, you get the sort of role identities that become lane identities because that's just where they fit best.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Yep.
Hopefully that makes sense. You have any other thoughts, pillow, before we move on to this novel we got from Prince of Winters?
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Um, no, not really. Um, I do know we touched upon when to split push and when not to split push a few episodes ago, so that's a good one to go back and, uh, catch up on. If you missed some of that discussion, we went pretty in depth on it.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. Speaking of which, that's kind of how Prince of Winters starts his question, which is, uh, Prince of Winters writes, piggybacking off the when to split push discussion. Often I find myself grouping too long, and when I look at my champion level, I will be extremely underdeveloped. But my team will flame me for catching waves and they will go for dumb engages, forcing me to stay grouped, even though it's counterproductive.
What do you think of this idea, given how often players misunderstand the importance of wave management and setting up slow pushes before grouping? What if Riot used the quest event system to reward laning longer, and he goes into a long explanation that basically can be summed up as support quests, but for other roles?
[00:37:07] Speaker A: So my quick response to a team flaming you for doing the right thing slash mute all. Yes, that's the, that's the best thing you you want to catch waves if you're in a solo laner for sure you want to catch waves to keep up because you will quickly fall behind and get even and lose your level advantage and gold advantage that you've created in the first part of laning phase, you want to try your best to stay between eight to ten cs per minute.
If you find yourself falling off that and your team is flaming you because they're constantly fighting, just slash mutall and play the game that you want to play.
[00:37:51] Speaker C: This is a very rank dependent thing. You will find much more often in lower ranked games. People like to group together and death Ball.
You'll find a lot more people capable of catching waves and then moving back and forth between team fighting and wave management.
That's a very important skill for higher ranked players to possess and it's one of the things that knowing when you can bounce between I can get this wave and bounce back into a team fight that's going to help push your rank up.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Another thing you can do is use the ping system provided, like if you're leaving, just spam ping, careful, careful, careful, careful. And ping that you're on your way to a side lane. And then once you clear that wave, like Mike just said, just go back to your team and hopefully they didn't fight three v five and sometimes they will.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: And this is part of what makes league a impossible to truly solve game is that sometimes you just have to make the wrong decision because it turns into the right decision because of mistakes that people make.
I've definitely had games where the right call wound up being to let a double stacked wave take a turret uncontested because I had to be there or else we would lose the game.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: If your team is consistently team fighting, you are probably going to want to team fight unless you are specifically designed for split pushing to take advantages quickly. Unless you're playing tryndamere essentially, or Yorick, you need to be with. Yeah, you need to be with your team because otherwise you're going to lose the game. If you have teleport, you have a little bit of a more leeway, you can be alright, they're going to go off. I have a chance to go collect waves, push off and the second you see them starting to do something stupid, teleport over.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Yep.
Hopefully the fight won't already be lost by the time you arrive.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Why? I like the creativity and the idea of a quest item for every role. It would essentially turn the first part of the game into an PvE situation. And not a lot of people were gonna like that. So I mean, I myself would opt out of it and just go into a longsword if I had to buy a quest item. And because I'm not a pve er when it comes to league, like, the.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Laning phase is already too pve for many people. Like, it's very pve a lot of the time and it frustrates people. They want to be brawling at level one or two.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Now, there is some advantage to the idea. It would help train farming so people who can get this quest item whilst also Pvpingen, that's gonna be something that the higher you go, the better you get at this. You're gonna start learning how to actually get those 8910 cs a minute because that's going to really develop with something of the system. But to have a new quest item going for every lane because each one would have to be individual. It, it's more work than I think ride is going to have to put in in any case.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Cause like if you were designing that, you generally would design the top lane one to like give turret damage when you max it out. You'd want the ADC one to share experience better when it's maxed out. The mid lane one. You might want it to give better solo experience when it's maxed out. Like, you would want different things for each role.
[00:41:41] Speaker C: There is sort of a jungle one already with the jungle pets and that was the support one.
Those ones work so well because they have such nebulous sort of jobs. Essentially, a jungler is going to do farming and then they're going to try and move around. So you're always going to have someone be able to level up their jungle pet. The support is going. They've gotten this wrong several times, which is why they've sort of shoved it all into one item and let it branch out into whatever you need. They've sort of decided these are the playstyles that supports usually do. Let's mash them all into one. And this is now the support quest. That's a lot harder for most other roles.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: And you're never going to stop the early grouping and terminating laning phase at 1011 minutes in the game. Unfortunately, like Jack said earlier, that's just the nature of this game. This is what happens when you get a game that is based off humans and not a written computer program where it's supposed to run a specific way. Like, this is the nature of the game, it's going to be different every single game. And that's the really the true beauty of the game. And that's why so many people enjoy playing it. Because if it was the same match over and over again and ran a script by a script, it would get fairly boring very quickly.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:43:11] Speaker C: But of course, if you want to just have that easy game system, you can just take Jhin into the top lane, and every fourth shot is just a dead turret, essentially.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Clearly, we just need quest items for two more rolls so that there can be four total quest items.
That's right, guys, it's episode 444. We're shouting out Jhin, please don't actually play Jin top, but we wanted to shout him out because episode 444.
With that, I've been Jack Soman for mic of many names for pillow pet. Have a great night.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: See ya.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: See you around.
Thanks for listening to the four Wards podcast.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: If you want to support the show.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: Directly, consider checking out our
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