[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 Velcaz.
[00:00:13] Speaker C: And you're listening to the Forwards podcast.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Here to help you move forward and lead.
Hello and welcome to episode 446 of the four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me three other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Free shooters here.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Hello. I've returned from my den of sickness and flu.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: We're glad to have you back. We've also got Micah, many names.
[00:00:58] Speaker D: I'm still in my den. I just never leave.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: And pillow pet, do you ever leave your den?
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Uh, only when I have to.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Perfect. Guys, we are the four Wards podcast, and some of us stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jackson, where it's a mixture of League of legends, pain and super Metroid map randomizer. Free shooter can be found at Twitch TV. Free eshooter that's right. There are three e's in free.
And pillow pet can be found at Twitch TV pillowpet currents to try and.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Make it more stream friendly because I'm not very good at streaming. I don't understand it. So I'm figuring it out because I.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Want to stream more. That's why listeners come stop by when we're streaming and help us figure out what you would want to see on a stream. Because we're idiots.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Alright, speaking of listeners, we have a few to shout out. Big shoutout to Codex, Ninja, Pillowpet, and Robogon for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. We appreciate you. Now, listeners, if you want to get your name in lights just like them, head on over to patreon.com. the four Wards podcast, $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each episode. And $10 a month gets you into that shout out tier so you get your name in lights.
Last but not least. All right, listeners, it's disappointed dad Jack's time.
We did not get him a single new listener question this past week.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Shame not one.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: I'm disappointed. We checked the email definitely works.
So I want you guys to write in write into theforwordspodcastmail.com with questions for us to answer on the show because the show feels real empty without a q and a segment.
Again, that is theforwordspodcastmail.com. seriously, listeners, I don't want to see that mailbox empty again?
[00:03:09] Speaker A: There's no silly questions.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. I don't give a shit if we've answered it before. If you haven't heard the episode where we answered it, ask again. We'll answer it again.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Or for our answer you didn't understand.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Like, yeah, maybe the answer's changed since the last time we answered it.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: Maybe we went on a 20 minutes tangent. It didn't actually answer the question. Cause I know that's happened before.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: That's definitely happened before. So again, the
[email protected]. right in. So we can answer your questions on the show.
All right, I'm done being disappointed, dad. It's time to talk about something different. We are going to talk about aggression.
Um, I want to start with, let's define aggression because especially if you're inexperienced or you're coming from, like, shooters or something, a lot of times aggression in other games is just killing people.
Aggression and league sometimes means killing people, but it's a lot more than that. Aggression is about playing forward and forcing your opponents to make decisions and take actions so that there is a chance of them making the wrong decision or not reacting in time and therefore being punished because they made a mistake.
That. That is how I would like to define what aggression is in League of Legends is giving the opponents an opportunity to make a mistake.
[00:04:45] Speaker D: This can come in a lot of different flavors. So, like, one of the main ones for mid lane is you're gonna move a little bit further forward in the lane. You don't necessarily have to try. And all in someone, you can just move forward, throw a skill shot at the enemy, or throw a targeted ability at the enemy. Back up, go back to laning. That's aggression.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: Sometimes it's. You don't even have to throw the ability. Like, if you have more minions than them and your lane is pushing in, you can. Especially on range champions, you can kind of step forward past your, like, even with their minions slightly past, um, and just kind of your presence and the threat of you throwing out abilities at them makes them miss. Yes.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: I always called it posturing.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Uh, try to string as part of.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Posture yourself to even if you know that you probably wouldn't win the one v one. Act like you're going to win the one v one. Show confidence in that, and you're going to make the. Your enemy opponent be like, ah, you know, maybe I don't want this. So they're going to lose resources.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yep. So posturing is a large part of aggression, because it can also be things like using your abilities to trade in a way that is hard to trade against. For example, against a mage that maybe has delays in their damage coming through. Fizz can just kind of use q on someone, hit them with a wooden, and then when they try to turn and trade back, you just troll, pull away, or alternately e in, and then use the q to disengage out. Basically just the in and out trading pattern. That's aggression.
Are you looking to hundred to zero them? Generally? No.
The goal of aggression in the early game is to force them to miss cs, force them to miss experience, make them have to take bad recalls to put them at a disadvantageous position.
That is what aggression in lane is for. Now, sometimes they're just gonna fuck up and you're just gonna actually be able to 100 to zero them. You should take those windows when they happen.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: A common example that I see all the time, and I do myself, is top lane. You got those. You get a long lane, and you get those. The bush that's closest to their tower that they're going to walk through. If you're playing a champion that has a very good level one trading, you can chunk them down before the wave even crashes. And now they have to make a decision. Do I spend the hundred gold and pots that I have in my inventory and try to stay, or do I back and miss cs, or do I just try to survive? And at that point, if they've used their pots to get full health again, you're now at an advantage with more sustain.
[00:07:55] Speaker D: And, Elaine, so this, this concept of aggression that we're talking about here is one of the reasons why certain champions are so incredibly popular in the meta and where you see them in a lot of places. This is one of the reasons why Corky mid has stood the test of time. He comes up to you, he throws out three abilities from within the wave, and if you try and fight him back, you're fighting into a wave. So he has the ability to put aggression on you from a relatively safe position.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: You want to be in control of the tempo that's in your lane. You want to control that tempo. You don't want them to be calling the shots and you reacting. You want them reacting to you.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Exactly. This aggression can mean creating space where they then have to back off. You kill a wave and it crashes, and now you have time to roam. It can mean causing them to miss cannons. It can mean you create incremental advantages because you're the one dictating the pace of the lane. You're the one dictating the decisions that can be made because you're forcing the enemy to make choices now, especially in laning phase, it's very easy to be over aggressive.
I played a game today.
Sadly, the game went south, but I was playing against a hyper aggressive fizz. I was consistently able to bait him into turret diving me, and I was Lissandra because he was just too aggressive and he didn't seem to understand that his troll pole won't save him if he's held in place for 3 seconds first.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: I can't tell you the number of times I've thrown advantages on like Caitlin or Miss Fortune or even Ezreal, where we have push on them, we push into their tower, and I just go for that little bit of extra poke and take a tower shot. And now all of a sudden, I'm not at an advantage position anymore because I'm at about the same hp they are.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Yep. Or those lanes, especially in bot lane where it winds up being. You're just throwing waves at the turret and they just collect the waves and they're like, cool. I get a free pass through the early game. They can't punish me.
[00:10:12] Speaker C: Yup.
[00:10:13] Speaker D: There's a specific thing with bot lane that's a little bit different than any other where you can have desynced aggression, and this can cause the biggest problems, and it's one of my biggest flaws is I'm an aggressive by nature player, so I like playing aggressive by nature champions. And a lot of the times when I try and move forward to get in places where I see a good play, they will not try and follow up with it because either they're trying to stay far back and farm, not push the lane, or sometimes it's just because I've gone too far.
This is one of those, those points where bot lane alone has the responsibility of actually measuring with the other person.
And that's probably the biggest skill that you can do with a bot laner is finding out how to match your aggression with your lane partner.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: I'm still. This game is like maybe two years old at this point, but it's still burned in my memory of we were mf rel. I don't remember exactly who we were against, but I remember the support was a mage, like some kind of poke mage. The only way we win that is by being aggressive on them and, like, forcing them low so they couldn't really trade with us. Like, we had to do that early.
And I think Rel spent the entire laning phase, like, behind me and we just got pushed in over and over, poked off of our turret. Like, that's a. One of the situations of, like, our aggression was not synced. I would try and go in for poke. They would poke me back. And by the time rel was even with me to maybe engage on them, I was too low to continue the follow up. Speaker zero.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Yep. The key there is if they're a poke champion, their aggression is non committal.
And you had a rel who has committal aggression. And that's, I think, where a lot of the confusion lies is a lot of people think aggression means diving in, no, stepping up and throwing a lux e that does 200 damage to the enemy champion and zones them off. A wave is aggression. You're stepping up, you're using abilities to cause damage to harassment.
[00:12:36] Speaker D: So there, there, you said a couple things there that really, like, kind of point at me. There are champions who are more designed to be aggressive champions. There are champions who have play patterns that make you need to go in to have those play patterns. You said one of them very early. Fizz. Fizz is an aggressive champion. And when you pick a champion, you need to sort of fit your playstyle to the champion you are playing. Otherwise, for the most part, a fizz who doesn't have an aggressive streak isn't going to do as much as a fizz who is actively going forward. Not someone who's diving too far, but who's actively trying to push that boundary forward.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So we've talked about it in laning phase a bit.
What about when laning phase ends like 14 minutes onwards when turret goes down.
What does aggression look like in the mid game?
[00:13:36] Speaker D: This depends on what your team is doing. If you are in a teamfight, heavy team, someone who's going a lot towards dragons, someone who's pushing a lot of towers together, someone who's trying to go for objectives. It's being the people who are essentially there first. You want to be the ones who are setting up so that you have the advantages that give you, like, vision advantage, so that you can sort of zone away people. That's one of the main benefits of an aggressive team, is you now have the power to set a threat zone, and when they enter that threat zone, then you can jump on them. You can have a really powerful rel team fight. If no one knows Rel's there, Rel can obliterate a team by getting four people in a knockoff.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: Yup.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: Yeah. It's also making like proactive decisions. It's not waiting for the enemy to go to dragon to fight them. It's putting vision in their jungle. So when you see their jungler there, you can make that decision. Okay, let's go kill that guy, or he's on the other side of the map. Let's go start the dragon ourselves and be ready to fight. When it's like aggression in both actual action in the game and also in your decision making of, instead of sitting back and waiting for the opponent to do something and reacting to them, it's. You're the one making the first move. You're starting the fight.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:05] Speaker D: The other one that can be done is pillows. Probably going to be doing it is splitting. Knowing when towards towers. I knew you were in there.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: I was getting ready to say, like, one of the most aggressive things that I do usually is not a four. It's a passive form of aggression. I am always on that map. They see me. Like, they always see me. I'm always in an attacking position. Like, I'm always on their brain, like, okay, he's pushing, he's pushing. They always have to react to me. And then I can go help the team. I can go. I try to create that advantage for my team that like, okay, I have to go defend this tower. And by the time they get to that tower, I'm already halfway to an objective.
[00:15:48] Speaker D: That's a really important point. Being seen on vision in their territory is an act of aggression. You are pulling information towards you so that people have to now respond to what you are doing.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: There is. League is a very fast paced game. If you are not making a decision every half second in the game, you are going to fall behind. You have to constantly be it. This is why it's such a mentally taxing game. You have to constantly be thinking, okay, what am I going to do next? What am I doing next? And know what your next five steps are to. To never stop moving. You don't ever want to just be standing idle, like, you always want to be doing something that's going to help you and your team. As far as going and getting wards put down, going to scout the jungle, you don't want to ever just be sitting idle unless you have a plan. Like, if you're sitting idle in a bush because you're going to jump the support as they're going out to put vision down, that's one thing you can do to try to catch the jungle, but you don't want to be just sitting idle. To sit idle.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Absolutely agree. So I guess then the. So that's, that's the mid game.
What about when we get to late game? When you're at like 3rd, 4th Dragon, Baron is up.
How does aggression change when you get to, like, the, the usual team fight phase of the game? Because, like 15 to 25 minutes is like skirmish heavy. Late game is usually a five v five or four v four brawl.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: So I have an anecdote from a game I played this week that will help illustrate a, basically a downside of, like, not being aggressive enough.
We were in a game. It was a close back and forth game, and we got a pick on someone mid. They over committed into us. Our split, pushing kale teleported in and we got the kill. It probably wasn't actually right for the kale to teleport. We could have got it without, but because she teleported in, it's like, okay, we picked there. I think it was their top laner.
Let's go to Baron. Whereas if she hadn't teleported, we could have pressured mid instead to, you know, basically get two turrets with how the map was situated. But because she teleported, we were like, okay, let's go to Baron.
Half of us made that choice. The other half kept pushing mid.
The two that pushed mid died. And we didn't have the DP's to take down the baron because we weren't decisive enough in our decision making. We didn't make the, like, aggressive play of, okay, we've killed someone, go to the Baron. They were trying to be like, okay, no, we don't have enough pressure. Like, we've only killed one person. It's not enough. We can't get Baron off of that. Like, it was that kind of split focus, that, like, playing the safe option. But because not everyone played the safe option, they ended up getting picked and we fell even farther behind.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: I would say, like, this is where I struggle the most, is late game aggression. Because, like, one of my biggest things that I still, like, I know how to fix it. I just don't do it. I don't know how to close out a game with aggression is I'm constantly, like, trying to feel like, the best way for me to get objectives. And I start stop thinking about the team and I start thinking, I get greedy and I start thinking of, well, how, what can I do? What is me, me, me. And I, I fail to close out games. Cause I'm like, okay, Baron's the right call when it's not the right call. Like, I could have just went up mid and got an inhib or I could have did something like, this is where I struggle the most. I feel like, and I feel like if I could figure out how to close out games better with late game aggression, I would climb even higher. I just, I let games, I give them a chance to come back. And so this is one of my struggle topics is late game aggression.
[00:20:19] Speaker D: Aggression really depends on your position in the game. In the late game, if you are the team that thinks that they are ahead, if you feel ahead, you feel like you've got an advantage. Your aggression should now be to deny the enemy as much as you can.
Go into their jungle and take their, their camps away from them, deny them vision, push forward into their lanes and set up.
The less that you can give them, the more of an advantage you start to build, the easier you can win a game out of that. That's how you keep your gold ahead. But also that's a way for people to pick you if you're trying to do this alone. So you generally need to go as either a group or have a good systematic set of vision behind you that you can start making these little plays and these things.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, finish up, sorry.
[00:21:20] Speaker D: These things start building on your advantage to snowball, which is really what you're trying to do in the endgame, is you're trying to make a big enough snowball that you can walk over the enemy.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: So one of the biggest things with closing out games, and it's something that I see all too often, especially on teams that have Baron, like, you've already taken Baron and you're going to siege down their turrets. Just because they've cleared one wave doesn't mean you need to leave. If they had to use all their ultimates to clear that wave, stay, you might be standing still for a couple seconds, waiting for the wave to come in.
That's okay, keep sieging, keep up that pressure. Like, get a couple autos in every wave on that tower. And, like, the more resources they're having to commit to clear the wave, the less they have to actually fight you with. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see is people take Baron. Everyone recalls, even if we're at full health, you know, buys item, walks up the lane, slowly push away. And by the time we get to the turrets barrens, like maybe half overland will like, push one wave into the tower. They use a lot to clear it, and then everyone leaves and like, goes to a different lane and we end up using like two, maybe three waves of baron minions total. Like, just because a wave got cleared does not mean you need to leave.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:50] Speaker D: So that's the offensive side of this. There is a defensive side of aggression. And the defensive side of aggression really revolves around knowledge. You are trying to get knowledge out, whether or not it's safe vision or you know that they're taking a baron and you see one person out, you go kill that one person.
You, you know, essentially your aggression from behind is knowing what chances you can take and taking them.
[00:23:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: One thing I would add is when you get to late game, there is going to be someone on your team that has like, been the established shot caller. Like, that's the one. Like, there's normally at least one guy that's going to be or someone on your team that that whole game has been the shot caller. And normally it ends up being your, it normally ends up being your jungler.
Try to listen to that guy and follow ups so you can make team plays.
Don't think like he might be making the wrong calls. Like, that's, that's a possibility if he's making the wrong calls and stop listening to him. But usually at a late game, if you've made it this far and you're winning, you're in a winning position. You're going to have an established shot collar.
Try to follow suit so you can be with your team in a winning position.
[00:24:09] Speaker C: This is something we've brought up before, but typically, if you are the person on your team that's ahead, even if everyone else is behind, and actually, especially if everyone else is behind, people are going to be more likely to listen to the calls you make. So, like, you got fed out of bot lane, but your other two lanes fell behind. You're down on dragons and you think, okay, we should, like, be going to this baron, we have ults up weak. Like, this is our best shot. Ping it and start going. And your team, like, will follow, should follow if you're the person doing well, like, we're kind of programmed to do that. If that person's doing good, I should listen to him and follow him or her.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Yup.
It's, it's one of those like, monkey brain things where we just don't even realize we're doing it a lot of the time.
It's just how our brains are wired.
So that kind of takes us into our next topic, which is kind of the opposite of aggression, which is, I've titled this section the art of losing Lane gracefully and being carried.
Now, maybe this is, oh, this matchup is unplayably bad. Maybe this is I fucked up at level three and now he has an advantage and I'm at a disadvantage. Doesn't matter what the cause is, we all will lose lane. We will lose lane in about half of our games on average. That's kind of how it works.
So what I see people doing a lot when they lose lane is spam pinging, requesting ganks, typing in chat, saying, hey, hey, I need ganks, I need help.
And overextending for cannon minions and dying.
That is not how you lose lane gracefully. This is an actual skill. There is a skill to losing lane. You can lose your lane and win the game if you do so gracefully.
So the opponent has gotten an advantage, they've played aggressively, they've pushed you off. You can't get that cannon minion anymore.
What do you do now?
[00:26:32] Speaker C: Sit under tower and cry?
[00:26:35] Speaker D: Try and keep an experience range.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Yep, that's a big one. You are behind. You are going to get denied gold no matter what you do. But if you can avoid being denied experience as well, every level is worth an average of about 600 gold worth of stats depending on your champion and the specific level in question.
Plus, you get a skill point.
Stay in experience range whenever possible.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: And just know that eventually, in every game, if you make it late enough, every advantage evens out.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Yep. If the game goes long enough, everyone hits full build. You can't get stronger from there.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Where's the ceiling? Something Jax touched on earlier, which again, really common. Um, even I do this, like, without thinking a lot of the time. If your opponent is just mindlessly pushing waves into the turret, let them. Don't try and poke them off when they're not under tower. Just sit back, let them keep pushing. Just collect that money under the tower. If they're not going to stop doing it, they might try and dive you. It's going to happen. But the odds of them messing up a dive are a lot more, are a lot higher than the odds of you killing them out in open field.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: And at that point, you're playing a numbers game. You're playing what are my best chances to stay in this game and collecting gold under turret. And them 50 50 ing a dive is better odds than the 90 ten of you walking forward and getting Leona comboed.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: So when you are at a disadvantage like this, the most important thing is changing your vision strategy.
Put your trinket wards in the positions that someone would come in to set up a dive.
Stop trying to Ward river. Stop. You don't care about that. You're not stepping out there, you care about making sure that they can't get behind you and cut you off at your turret and force a dive that you can't win.
That means if you're top lane, you now want to be warding behind your turret where the jungler is likely to come in to set up a dive. Mid lane wants to ward the approaches behind tier one turret or your Raptor pet.
Yes, Raptor pit's a big one, especially if the enemy jungler is someone like fiddlesticks who can jump walls, but they're all ward that shit.
Bot Lane is kind of the same as top lane of like, you're warding tri bush, you're warding like back a little bit more. You're just. The goal is to make sure that the enemy can't dive you effortlessly. You want it to be the riskiest dive they can do if they're able to get a dive on you. And sometimes that vision lets you see things far enough in advance. You know what the correct place sometimes is, and it really sucks.
[00:29:27] Speaker C: Walk away.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Walk the fuck away from your turret and lose that double stacked wave to it. Let it go completely to waste, because oftentimes it sucks. But like, what I see people do is they go, oh, I have to stay. It's double stacked wave, they get dove, they die. Now, they still lose that double stacked wave and they gave over a kill.
It's just worse.
[00:29:50] Speaker D: This is something that is a little bit more champion dependent. If you are someone who can actively clear that wave at the cost of your life, it is not always worth it, but it sometimes is. If you have been killed three, four times because they're diving you, you're no longer worth as much. Getting gold is now worth more than them killing you.
[00:30:13] Speaker C: I have mf ulted a double stacked wave and died for it. And it is actually a gold positive play.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: It happens.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: It does happen.
[00:30:22] Speaker D: Yeah. There's a little bit of a hidden thing with losing lane gracefully.
And you're gonna want to do it almost all the time mute, because people are going to rage at you for things that you have no control over anymore. Give one information you can, especially if you're a mid laner. This is going to be common because people are going to push aggressively and then roam away. You're not a champion that can match those roams. Give warning while you can. Clear what you can and mute if people are being people and then cry.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: When you ping the exact path that the enemy mid laner took 30 seconds before they show up continuously. Ping to back off to your bot lane that's sitting under the enemy turret. And then watch as the mid laner walks over wards in tri Bush, walks past minions in lane and your bot lane still hasn't noticed. And then they die to the mid lanere.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Statistically speaking, like, you're going to lose half your games.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: To understand, to know, you got to understand that you cannot win every game. It's just not going to happen. And you don't have to like winning, but you don't have to be a jerk about it. If someone on your team specifically caused that loss by mistakes that they've made, and I've been that teammate that has made bad mistakes and caused loss, and I say, my bad guys, that's on me. I got overzealous. I thought I could do something and I couldn't overestimated my abilities.
Just don't be toxic. And like Mike said, just mute. It's okay. If you, if they're flaming you, that's okay. You're never gonna see these guys again. And if you do, I mean, most likely they're gonna be muted.
[00:32:08] Speaker D: One of the best things you can do when you are losing a lane is actively tell your teammates, hey, I'm having a rough time with Elaine. I'm not able to match it. Either I'm not skilled enough or something else of that nature.
I'm sorry. You're going to have to deal with someone who's a little bit stronger is a hell of a lot better than trying to rage at the jungler because he couldn't do anything. Now you have people who are more on your side. I'm a lot more willing to try and help someone who has actively gone, hey, guys, I'm sorry I fed. I was just, like, not able to deal with this person.
They can rally back much easier than someone who has absolutely lost their shit at a loss.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: And I think this goes without saying. If you're having a tough time in league and it's starting to affect you outside of the game, it's time to take a break. At the end of the day, League of Legends is just a video game. And nobody like, nobody likes losing, whether it's in a video game or a sports anything, just. But if it's affecting you outside in your life, this is just advice. Just take a break. Take a couple day break or an hour break, whatever it is. I just. I think it's important to know. Did not let what's affecting the game affect you outside of the game. Same goes for don't let what's happening in real life affect the way you go into a game and don't try to take that aggression out on some random person that might not be having the best game.
[00:33:47] Speaker C: Yeah, don't rage queue.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Yeah, just don't.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: But I would like to touch back on, um, you mentioned the ward on the diving. Uh, another thing you can do as a bot lane. If you see the enemy jungler showing up to set up a dive on you, just turn on enemy jungler. They're the bot lane. Their bot lane is going to have a hard, lot harder time getting to help them, getting there to help that jungler than you are just walking up to them because they're on your side.
And you most likely you have a better chance to win a two v one than you do a three v two.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So we got one more topic for tonight, but let's do our trinket tip first.
[00:34:37] Speaker D: So, this comes from a bit of a place where I have noticed this quite frequently in my games is when someone just doesn't ban at the beginning of the game.
Guys, there's 165 plus champions, and you're only getting rid of a total of 20 of them at a time.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:35:03] Speaker D: As long as if you don't have something you don't want to face. If you're pretty good all around, you can ask your team, hey, did anyone have anything they don't want to see? Sometimes people want two bans, but they can't. Sometimes you just ban the most popular thing because you don't want to see it. As long as you are not denying someone on your team their pick, I don't see a problem with just banning something at complete random, as long as it's just a ban. Do anything. Just ban something.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to ban for your own lane.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Yeah, if.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: If you don't know what to ban, your ad carry isn't hovering him. Ban Jyn. He's the most popular champion as of this patch. When we're recording, it's not even close. He's in a third of all games.
Like, I'm serious. Just literally ban whatever's popular. Here's why those champions are popular. You're not banning for strength. There you are. Banning for the likelihood of taking an opponent off of their comfort. Champion.
That's really all it is. Just ban what's popular. That is the highest likelihood of having an impact, and two thirds of the time, it's the same as banning nothing but one third of the time. You got that number one most popular champion and they were gonna play it and now they can't end their sad.
[00:36:28] Speaker D: If you don't care what the enemy's playing, ranked isn't really relevant. I mean you can play anything, help your teammate. Sometimes they want another band down there.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: Yeah. Like and all. Or maybe it's like there's a champion that you never see but like the one of the thousand games that pops up, you're just like ah, I'm screwed.
Span that. Like I have a friend who has for three years straight just banned Evelyn every game because they don't want to deal with an Evelyn in their game.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I love that you have one of those, don't you?
[00:37:05] Speaker A: What was it someone. Oh yeah. Lauihe. I always Ban Illaoi.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And to be clear, Illaoi has like a three and a half percent pick rate which is fairly high compared to her usual.
She's not a popular champion.
But if he hates going against her, it's a worthwhile ban.
[00:37:25] Speaker C: I actually, if I get auto fill top lane I ban Yorick. Cause I don't know how to deal with Yorick. I've had to lane against them and I don't know what to do. No one plays them. But the one time I got out of Phil top I was against the Yorick and got my ass beat. I don't want that to happen again.
Tryndamere is another good one because Tryndamere is something people just kind of can't deal with even if they think they can.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: For me, like with allowie, it's just super easy to counter allow. You just dodge the e. But if you go against an allowee that knows how to play allowie and she's hitting her ease, you're not going to have a good time. So there was a take away that risk. And I just banner for the same.
[00:38:04] Speaker C: Reason of like allowing e. Cause his skill is very similar. There's a full season where I just banned thresh every game. Cause I probably got hit by 80% of thresh hooks sent at me. I just had a mental block against like I could spot Dodge blitzcrank hooks. I could never dodge a thresh hook. I don't know what it was.
[00:38:21] Speaker D: For five years my band bot lane was vain.
[00:38:25] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:38:26] Speaker D: Because it didn't matter if we beat her in the game, somehow it would hit 25 minutes. And it doesn't matter how far behind Vayne is, it's still a Vayne.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: That's kind of how like that's the kind of thing of why the like 00:10 Yasuo meme came to be because he's another champion that when he hits his core items, all it takes is someone landing a knock up and he ults and they still get the kill.
So, yeah, just for the love of God, please don't be that guy. Just ban something.
Besides, you can use it to faint. Especially like, if you're playing a champion that's ambiguous on roll. Maybe you're playing a top laner who also regularly jungles like wukong, for example. Volibear Ben a jungler. So that they think, oh, that must be a jungle wukong. That must be a jungle volibeare. And they don't realize that you're top lane.
So like, just, just ban something.
[00:39:29] Speaker C: And, you know, if it's really like. And everything we've thrown out here, you're like, nah, I can deal with it. Like, I think there's only one viable situation to not ban a champion, and that's if you're picking lucian top because you counter everything in the game.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Exactly.
Alright, guys, this has been episode 446 of the Forwards podcast. I'm gonna tell you again right in to the four wards
[email protected]. ask us questions so we can answer them on the show. You'll notice there was no Q and a segment this week, listeners, that's on you.
[00:40:04] Speaker C: Remember, four is spelled out, not the number, the forward.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Alright. With that, I've been Jack Soman for free shooter for my committee names and for pillow Pet. Have a great night.
[00:40:20] Speaker D: See you around.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: Bye.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the four Wards podcast. If you liked what you heard and you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com, the four awards podcast to give us some support. We appreciate you and of course, listeners, please don't forget to write your questions into
[email protected] so we can answer them on the show.
