[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 B: Here to help you move forward and lead.
Hello, and welcome to episode 448 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me just two other wards today to help you move forward in league of legends. Mike of many names is here.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: How's it going?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: And we've got pillow pet.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Hello. I'm back.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yes. We're glad to have you back. Fuck that. One week. Were you working overnights over the weekend? That's a horrible schedule. I feel bad for you.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds physically painful.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: All right, guys, we are the Forwards podcast, and as I mentioned last week, we have a discord. Now, the link is in the episode description. It's the very first line of the episode description. I'm putting it right at the top so you can't miss it. Come join the discord. Come hang out. Come chat with the hosts and the other listeners. And I, we're making sure it's a safe, inclusive space for everyone of all skill levels, of all nationalities, of all whatever. We don't care. It's a safe place.
Come hang out. It's a great time.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Come play games with us.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Yes. I want to get, like, some Jackbox games going.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: That'd be fun.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: That's my goal. I want to get enough people interested that we can set up, like, jackbox time and play really silly games.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Come bombard us with questions, too.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Yes. All right, guys, we do stream on Twitch. I can be found streaming, like, half the week, approximately random days at Twitch TV. Jackson Pillowpet can be found at Twitch TV, pillowpet, and Mike still doesn't stream.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: We can turn that into a stretch goal.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: How many listeners need to join the discord to make you start streaming?
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Let's start small. My first stream will be 20.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: All right, you heard him, listeners. If 20 of you join the discord, Mike will do a stream, and we'll plug his. His twitch and set up a date for it. I don't know what he's gonna play yet. We'll find out.
All right, we got some shoutouts. Shoutout to Codex, Ninja, pillow Pet, and Robogon for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys so much. We could not do this without you. Your guys money keeps the lights on, keeps the hosting paid for. It is greatly appreciated.
Now, if you want to support the podcast head on over to patreon.com. the Forwardspodcast one dollars a month just tells us that you love us. Dollar five a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show, and $10 a month will get you shoutouts just like Codex, Ninja Pillow Pet and Robogan get last but not least, listeners. We have a few questions, so you're not getting chewed out this week, but you're getting carried by robogon.
So I want to see more people besides just robot. Thank you for the questions, Robon. I want to see more people write in to theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
Alright, first topic is not going to be a long one, but it was brought up in the discord by one of our patrons and I think it is a good topic for us to discuss briefly. And that is account security.
I'm sure everyone, if they haven't experienced it themselves, has a friend who has had their account hacked in at least a video game, if not League of Legends specifically.
It sucks. It's a miserable experience. Even if you get the account back. They may have fucked with shit. It's a pain in the ass to get things back. And the account may not exist anymore because they may get themselves banned before you're able to get it back. So here are some steps you can take to make sure that you keep your account secure and hackers can't steal it.
First of all, this should go without saying, but do not share your account with anyone.
Do not let your friend log in to play on your account. Do not let your siblings log in to play on your account. Don't let your parents do it. I don't care who it is. Do not share your account. Accounts are free. They can make their own. You can make your own. Do not share.
Second of all, is whatever your password is for your riot account should be unique to your riot account. You should not use that password on any other account or service at all.
Should not be the same as your steam password. It should definitely not be the same as your email password. It should not be the same as your password. To get coupons from a coupon service, does not matter what the service is. Do not reuse your passwords anywhere.
Do not click suspicious links. Now this can mean if you're watching a stream and you see someone post in that streamer's chat a link to get free RP. That's a suspicious link. Don't fucking click it. You're not going to get free RP. You're going to get a free account. Hijacking this can mean a message from a friend saying, hey, I saw this cool game and I think you should try it. Here's a link. And they send you the game.
Unless you know this person personally and have confirmed that that is actually what they say it is with the person through a different communication medium, like literally call them up on the phone.
Don't trust that link. Your friend could have been hacked and is now trying to hack you because it's not actually your friend, it's a hacker who's hijacked their account.
Always be suspicious. Do not click links. You do nothing. Absolutely trust with unquestioning certainty.
Don't use public wifi. I know this one sucks, but don't log into any account you care about while you're on public wifi.
Just don't.
Public Wi Fi is not safe.
Bad actors can and do sit around in places that have high traffic public wi Fi just to steal account passwords.
They may not be targeting your riot account, but if that's what they find, they'll take it because they're just looking to profit off of your shit.
Now that's a lot of don'ts. I have a couple of do's.
Do use a password manager. Remember I said don't reuse your password. It doesn't do a lot of good if you have similar passwords everywhere because you can't remember them. If your password is four words and you use the same password everywhere and you just add a one, a two, a three, or a four words riot, four words. Gmail, four wards, discord. That is not a secure password.
But also as a human being, it's really hard to remember good passwords. So use a password manager. I personally use bit warden and I highly recommend bitwarden. Bitwarden is free open source software. It is a great password manager. It'll sync across your phone and your computer. It's phenomenal. I use it in my personal life. I use it at work.
If you want other perks with it, Proton has a really good paid service that does include a password manager, so that would be my if you want more than what bit warden has to offer. But in both cases, this means your password manager has a password and that's the only one you as a human need. Need to remember.
Make it long, but make it easy to remember things like a phrase like short sentence are good passwords for your password manager. Something that's easy for you to remember, but is not going to be cracked by someone trying to brute force it. And then all of your other passwords, you can just have them be random generated strings of 18 characters and symbols. I have no idea what the fuck my riot password is. I don't have to know it when I need it. I go to my password manager and retrieve it.
And that means that if a service that I use is compromised, whoever compromised it only gets the keys to that service from me. They get that one password, I'm not reusing it anywhere else, so they don't get access to anything else that I use.
That's why password managers are big, because the main way people get your password is either tricking you or hacking the people you use and then trying your password elsewhere because you reused it.
Now here's the last part.
All of these rules I just listed apply to whatever email account your riot account is tied to. If they compromise your email, they'll get into your riot account no matter whether they know the password or not, because they have the keys to the kingdom and they can go through password recovery.
So secure your email account the same way that I'm advising.
Additionally, Riot doesn't support good two factor authentication, which is why I didn't bring it up for Riot. But most email services do so use two factor authentication. This means specifically either a physical code generation device like the old Blizzard authenticators from 20 years ago that you may remember if you were a wow player 20 years ago, or more likely an app on your phone. There's tons of different authenticator apps. Google has one, Microsoft has one. I like two fast, which is an open source one because I'm an open source nerd. But there's a lot of them use them.
Text messaging and email based two factor authentication don't really help because if they get into your email and your email is your two factor authentication, they've just defeated your two factor authentication.
SMS is trivial for a hacker to hijack, but if it's based on an app that is installed on your phone, then they need your physical phone to be able to get into your account.
If they're stealing your phone, you got bigger problems than your fucking riot account. You got bigger problems than your email. Your phone has been stolen. That's the problem. So use two factor authentication.
You guys have anything to add for my security? Ted talk here?
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I throw in, you know, everybody gets a bot in league of legends that adds them. What I recommend, if you get a random person, add you as a friend, right click their name and check their profile if they're level one, block them.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yep.
Unless you know the person, you should not be accepting friends requests from a level one account.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Stranger danger.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I guess I have bit warden now.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not kidding. I've been using it for years. Bit warden is fucking phenomenal. It is better than half of the paid password managers out there.
It's great.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Check it out.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Okay, I didn't want to go too long on that topic, but I do think it's important. Account security is something that most people just don't understand. And everything I said is exactly as useful for securing your online banking and other like, life important stuff as it is for securing your video game account.
Please keep your account secure. It applies to your Steam account. Like secure your Steam account. Steam actually does have good two factor authentication through their app. Like, secure your shit.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: I struggle to get into my own Steam account most of the time.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: All the more reason to use a password manager and two factor authentication. You won't struggle anymore because you don't have to remember your password.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: You just have struggle on the two factor authentication because I forget where to find it because that's what I'm just getting at. It's really good.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: I still had all one of those little authenticators from Blizzard back in the day.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: I literally have my old wow. Authenticator sitting on my desk right now. I don't think it even works anymore. Let's see. Nope, it still generates codes. So if I needed to access my battle.net account, I still can. I still have my physical authenticator. I doubt I'll ever use it because I don't play Blizzard games anymore, but I can. The authenticator still works.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: We're working on him. Don't worry.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: It's matter. We'll get you back on.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: And more importantly, because I have a physical token authenticator tied to my blizzard account, I'm pretty confident that even though I haven't used that account in like seven or eight years, at this point, it hasn't been hacked.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: Virtual.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Okay, that's the. The key there. All right, so our other topic for tonight is we want to talk about macro a bit. And I've been talking a lot. So, pillow pet, you're the one who came up with this topic. I'm gonna let you take it away from here.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure you guys listen to more League of Legends podcasts, and a lot of times they probably throw out jargon and, you know, words that you probably don't understand but you hear a lot and macro is probably one of them. And I know that it wasn't something that I completely understood. And so I started looking it up and listening to more, you know, guides and things on that. But macro, very, very simply put, is it's a collection word for all your high level decision making based gameplay, which involves rotations, recall, timings, tempos and etcetera. That is literally the definition that you can google. And that's what it gives you. That is defining it. To me, it is when you get into the chess game of your game, this is where all your decisions, to me is what will carry out and determine the outcome of that, the rest of the game. It, what decision you make at that point is going to change what happens next.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, so, so basically the, the main distinction is macro versus micro. And those are the two common terms you'll hear.
Micro is anything you're doing right now, your active gameplay. Macro is your decision, gameplay things. You're the looking in the future.
That is, that is a very simple way to put this on the back step because you're going to hear a lot of things talking about decision making, about what your sort of roles and where the game is going to go. A lot of macro phrases can just boil down to anything that you're going to be doing in the future that isn't a second by second decision.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: It's a scary word.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: It's big picture movements, it's big picture actions.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Macro is a scary word. When people hear it, they think, oh man, I'm never going to understand this. You guys hear us talk about it every week. I guarantee it. We mentioned something with macro. It's as simple as positioning, cs'ing, wave control, tracking, a jungler, just things along that. We mention it every week. And it's, it's just, like I said, it's just one lump word of macro. And it's a scary word. When people first hear it, they're like, oh gosh, I'll never understand that. I know my buddy, you know, who's, you know, when he first started out and I was like, oh man, you got to learn, you know, some macro. And he's like, what's that? That's scary. It is scary, but you learn it right from the start.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: It's economics, it's scary.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: It's extra scary if you know enough to have heard the term in a totally different context. Like if you're a economic worker who's used Macros in Microsoft Word or something, you're like, oh God, I have to like install macros and set up like programs. No, that's not what it means, but that can be like the initial fear and that's why it's important to define it.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: The first time I heard the term was at 08:00 a.m. in my economics class in college.
And it burned its way into my mind. And that's why they could see me giggling for the last five minutes as I did this.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: The first time I heard the term was in 1998. Starcraft.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: I didn't watch it wasn't even brood war yet.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: I didn't, I didn't watch this wasn't.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: In pro, this was just someone talking about it.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: I'm hoping, I'm hoping my goal today is for us to take this scary monster known as macro and make it into something that you can understand the basics of and start to build up on. And now that you will kind of understand the basics of it, we can't.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: Go over all of it because macro is most of the game. But we're going to sort of boil it down to the simplest forms of macro for each position.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: So I'll start from the top.
Speaking of top, we'll start with top lane. So the most important in my opinion, you know, in this, you know, take it with a grain of salt and you might have a more important one that you think or you've heard different. But to me, wave management and wave control is the top, most important macro in the top lane. Because that a lot of that wave management determines your game and that you let you take control of that lane and you're making all the moves and you're having, you have your opponent on defense the whole time and you're just getting in his head. So wave management to me is the top macro for top lane. And again, it's a whole other topic of itself. We don't have enough time today to definitely go over wave management and it's boring as sin to listen to.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: I would say. Let's briefly address why I wave management for top lane. Yeah, wave management is what allows you to do other things.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: So waves come out in 32nd increments. And every, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, every third wave is a cannon wave until later in the game. But we're, but with late game it, wave management's not really important.
I mean it is, it is when you're doing split pushes and things like that. But we're talking about laning. So you, you know, you got a cannon wave coming up and you know that you're going to shove him into his tower and then you know that he's going to try and shove back. You now have extra time because there is a cannon coming to your way and a turret.
It takes ten shots, I believe, from a tower to take down a cannon. Minion, eight or ten, I can't remember precisely off the top of my head. You have extra time now is what I'm getting down to. So you can time your backs based off that extra beefy minion in the front of your, in front of your tower eating all those shots. That's just a very basic of it. It allows you to roam. It gives you time to roam. It gives you time to do other important macro decisions, you know, with vision and just. It gives you a pillow and a cushion to be able to step back. Gives you extra security because they can't fight you in a minion wave most of the time. Early level, because minions do a lot of damage.
It just gives you security. It's a security blanket.
It'll give you extra defense and stuff in the top lane.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: I could probably talk for another 30 minutes on wave management in the top lane.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure you could talk for several episodes in a row on that specific topic. It is top lane in a nutshell.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: It is my favorite topic because I love talking about it.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: I want to jump around. I'm going to jump down to the bot lane because this is the reason I have started playing bot lane as an ad carry. Specifically, the number one thing you contribute to macro is map awareness.
Cause your job as an ad carry in the early game is to farm and not die.
Your job as an ad carry is to be aware when the mid laner has disappeared. Maybe don't step up to trade with your lane opponents. Maybe don't step up to take that plate because the mid laner could be there to kill you if you do.
You don't know if they are or not.
And that's the big picture decision, is recognizing what do you gain if you step up versus what do you risk losing if you step up and they are there. That's the macro, that's the decision making part of it.
[00:21:38] Speaker C: And that's where I come in. Because support is the next portion of that. And realistically, the main thing that a support is doing early in the game is vision. Your job is to make sure you have that bubble open so that you can give that ad carry that free space. There are other things that you're going to do as a macro and as a support, and those change on the type of supports. So I'll give real generalizations.
There are some supports that even really early in the game, you're going to be roaming, you're going to be moving around the map, just seeing what's out there. Some supports are just going to be defensive. Your goal is to keep your ADC safe and that's it. And then there are some that are hyper aggressive. And your goal is to push the enemy away, or if you can find it, get the kills, set up kills. And that's the basic macros of support, is mostly vision. And then your second priority.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: All right, pillow pet, you want to talk about mid lane?
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah. So I would say the, one of the most important macros that you'll be able have to learn as a mid laner is your roam timing. And that's, that's just one of what mid lane does. 90% of the mid laners want to roam and want to get that kill and hope that the ADC is not doing their part and having that map awareness so they can put a advantage on their side on their team.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: I'm going to push a little bit. I think that that is a major portion of their macro. I think the most important thing that Mids can do is lane priority. Keeping your positioning into a point where you have the ability to move first. Whether that means roaming, whether that means defending, whether that means helping your position matters a lot more than anyone else because you can get to anywhere else on the map faster than anybody else.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: And you're typically one of the highest level people in the game. In the early game, you and the top laner should be the highest level people on each team.
And levels matter a lot. Each level is worth 600 gold worth stats.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Plus a skill point. So, yeah, it's very much priority. And using that priority to roam or to counterplace.
Alright, I'm gonna talk about one more. And this is the one that I think is the most misunderstood macro as the jungler.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Mm hmm.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: There are two main things as a jungler that are your job beyond just farm objectives. So this is specifically referring to dragons and rift scuttlers or rift grubs. Void grubs. That's what they're called.
[00:24:44] Speaker C: Yeah, void grubs.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: And ganking.
Ganking is hard because it's different every single game.
Sometimes you're gonna have an idiot who just gets killed in their lane and is crying for help. And you know if you go there, you're gonna be a level three, let's say volibear, for example, against a level five illaoi and a level two Darius. And there's nothing you're gonna do to turn that around.
You don't wanna go there. That's a macro decision. You're choosing. Nah, this dude fucked his lane. I can't fix it. I'm gonna invest my resources elsewhere.
You're gonna take your ass down to bot lane where they're also level three, and you can turn it into a three v. Two of three level three people against two level three people, and you're gonna stun their asses and hopefully kill them. Ganking is important. As a jungler, it is really hard to win games where the jungler has zero kill participation before about seven minutes.
Yeah, it's actually just hard to win games. You don't have to get the kills. Assists are fine and in many cases preferred if you have a choice, but you need to be making ganks. One thing I've had a lot of success on any champion that has, like hard cc that is reliable. Like volibear is an example with his q.
I gank a lane, maybe I get their flash walk away just out of vision. Wait 10 seconds, gank it again.
People are goldfish. They do not have object permanence in this game. You can see this literally happens in pro games all the time. Worlds starts this coming week. Watch worlds. I guarantee you'll see this done in some of the games where Jungler just reganks, Elaine, they just ganked. People will die to it.
Yes, it's a lot of time invested, but you will be shocked how often it works.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: You said the phrase, and this is, I think, the single most important thing with jungle. Your macro is time investment, where you put your time.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Exactly. So the other part of jungle is objective management. That's the other bit of jungle macro. Mostly what this comes down to is, oh, you ganked bot lane successfully, dragon is alive. You should have the priority now to take Dragon because the enemy team doesn't have a bot lane right now. They're either dead or recalling.
But this also means being aware. If your bot lane got out with 50 gp each, you can do the dragon, but you're gonna be alone. You may not actually be able to get it even though your gank was successful lot of times. Jungle macro is just, oh, they made a play bot side and they're gonna get dragon. I get void grubs. Oh, they're going for void grubs. I'm gonna go make a play bot side and get dragon. Like, that's a lot of times what jungle macro comes down to. Is recognizing game state and getting something back so the enemy does not get an advantage for free.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: I'd like to throw in before we get too far away from it. Jax mentioned earlier, and this is probably going to cover another, and I'm just throwing this out there, a term that you've probably heard, maybe didn't completely understand when he was talking. Like a weak top laner that's just helpless, like you're not going to be able to help him at all. That's what we call weak side.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: You go strong side. That's another term you've probably heard a lot. I'm just throwing that out there is when you focus on your winning side, that's called strong sighting. And when you're going to kind of just leave your other side to the world they created for themselves, we call that weak sighting.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Your job when you are in a losing lane matchup, either because of events that have happened or because your champion just gets shit on by theirs early, is to stem the bleeding. Lose as little as possible.
Don't die.
That's the macro decisions, is just don't die, walk away.
I played a game immediately before we recorded this podcast. I got unkillable demon king on it. I was a 30 four varus.
I got fucking carried. Our master Yi popped off. But that lane was unplayable. And I didn't die. I walked away when the enemy was setting up for a dive. I just said, cool, you can have the tower and fucking left.
We won the game.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: Just before that game, you were playing a different one. I was watching with Tristana and his lane.
You had a, what was it? A pike.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: A pike.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: And the game started great. You had a couple of kills and then he refused to back away. And that bot lane, what brand? Nami.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Yup.
[00:29:40] Speaker C: They just fed on him and kept taking kill after kill because he had.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Bad macro and didn't recognize when he had windows of power early on. Like, I literally had a serrated dirk at three minutes. He did not understand that we're powerful now and he can keep making aggressive plays. And got poked down to where. Then I just had to sit on the back foot and I'm like, cool. I don't get to play the game even though I'm ahead. I'm just gonna try to farm as best I can because that's the best macro decision I had.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: And that was it. I saw you back up and him not. And then him die.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Cause it wasn't like he was making a play. He was just getting poked out and caught out because he didn't understand the game state. He didn't understand the big picture. He was only looking in the moment.
Alright, let's talk about some listener questions, because Robogan sent in a whole bunch. So again, guys, we need questions from people other than Robogon. Send them to theforwordspodcastmail.com or join the discord and post them in the q and a channel. We have a question submission channel.
Come join the discord. It's another way you can submit your questions.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: As you'll find out, no question is too stupid.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Yeah, seriously, you guys should see some of the questions I wrote in before I became a podcast host.
I used to be bad at this game. It's amazing that thallium put me in jail.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: Every single person was bad at this game when they started.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yep. Alright, so Robogon writes in, hey guys, great podcasting. Can't wait for the discord. Wink wink.
So question one, skins. Is it possible to get the new expensive skins by rerolling three skin shards?
[00:31:32] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: Mostly yes.
Some skins are locked out of the loot system. They can only be gotten by whatever thing you're supposed to buy to get them, and that's that.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: Those are usually event based skins or things that are under the gem system. The mythic skins.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: No mythics. You can get just fine out of rerolls. I've done it. I got a hextech poppy out of.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Not the Hexec, the specialty ones, the prestige skins. That's it.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yes, prestige skins, special skins like the faker skins, those kinds of things are usually excluded from the loot system. But other than those, yeah, you can reroll three skin shards and get any other skin.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: I have gotten two ultimate skins. By rerolling skins like that, you can get the most, the second most expensive skins in the game because fakers, elementalist.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: Lux, I got elementalist Lux. And what is DJ Sona? I love those guns.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Yep, get them that way.
So, yeah, it's a.
I knew people that were hosts of other league podcasts many years ago who were rich and at the time, there were a lot less skins at the time, to be fair. Owned every skin in the game, every patch, they just rerolled their skin shards to get the remaining skins, the new ones, because they were the only skins that were possible to randomly roll into at that point, which is fucked. But I mean, if you want to spend a, when the loot system came out, like $6,000 to buy every skin, then you can get every skin afterwards for free.
Yeah, that's not hyperbole. It was like $6,000 and they've come out with hundreds of skins since then.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Think of the savings in the long run.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: I mean, they probably, if they've continued to do it, they've probably gotten 10,000 plus dollars worth of skits.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a shame he's a piece of shit, or I'd actually shat him out.
Anyway, question two. Is skin to win a thing?
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:44] Speaker C: Sometimes there's a joke answer to this and a real answer to this. The joke answer is yes.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: Had a skin that came out and I think it was his. The. Which. Which one is it? The project? I think maybe.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: I don't remember. I just played Mordekaiser because why would I use anything else where his q.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Indicator was basically invisible? Yeah, and his e. No, it was his e. I think maybe it was kind of hard to tell his e range and his q and you could never dodge it because you didn't know where it was coming from. I think they fixed it, but that's.
[00:34:25] Speaker C: The second portion of this one. There are some skins that are banned from competitive play because they give you an advantage. They change something. They're too visually unclear. They look too much like the map.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: They look too much like other champions in a couple cases, etcetera. So for pro, they do ban for the viewers visual clarity.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: So 100% you can skin to winter.
To change things up visually, that is a thing I can do.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: I know there's some skins and the one off the top my head is the blitzkrieg.
[00:35:00] Speaker C: I. Blitzkrieg.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: The doggy eye blitzkrieg. Skin. Oh, dog.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: One of those where they different grab location.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: It actually changed some of the emotes that they use look like abilities.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Like Zedd has one, I think, where it looks like he's throwing fresh has one.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Oh, you mean the, like joke and taunt? Yeah, those are two.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Yep. Some skins, their. Their custom silly animations look a little too much like actual abilities. That is absolutely a thing. So is skin to win a thing? No, it doesn't make your character any more powerful to have a skin. You can be just as powerful using the base skin on every single character. Is skin to win a thing? Yes, because some skins have visual clarity issues and occasionally are bugged and actually have different hitboxes. But usually it's just visual clarity, even if it looks like it's a different hitbox.
Question three. Is it possible to obtain rare old skins that are no longer available through.
[00:36:04] Speaker C: Rerolling most of the concept. Yes.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Same concept with like, the more expensive ones. There are some that you can't get that just are too, too rare and they don't want to take away from the achievement of them players getting that one. I think black Alistair is one of those that you'll never be able to get in rerolling.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Like the pack skins specifically, it's ones that are tied to a specific past event. The pack skins are exclusive. The championship skins from their year cannot be got. Again, the ranked skins, the ones that you get for getting gold or better, cannot be gotten unless you get them the year that they come out. You cannot reroll into them later.
Frickin I have Silver kale. You cannot get Silver kale.
Silverkale came from purchasing a physical copy of League of Legends when it came out.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: There's another kale skin that I have that I know you can't get anymore. I can't remember.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Just a car.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: There's just a car.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: So that one was for using the tribunal. Back when the tribunal was a thing.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: I was a snitch.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Me too.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: Use the tribunal if it comes back. Report.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: King Ren is a special skin that you can't reroll into, is right?
Yes.
Was tied to social media accounts and linking them to your riot account back in the day. Along with a garen skin that I can't remember the name of was for a different social media account.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: And there was one other. Black Alister was the third one.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: I think black Alistair you got from Beta or Alpha?
[00:37:47] Speaker B: No, Beta and Alpha were King Rammus. Black Alistar was one of the social medias and Tristana was a second one and garen was a third one. But I cannot remember which were which anymore. It's been many years.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Yeah. To answer your question, yes, you can with stipulation.
[00:38:04] Speaker C: Legacy. If it's not one of those, are the ones.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: If it's not one of those, if it's just one that's been taken out off of being for sale because it's old and kind of shitty, you can reroll into those or you can just straight up get the skin shards for them. That's a thing too.
Alright. Robogon has more questions that are not about skins, though. Low Elo climbing.
I was plat last season. This year I got placed bronze. I am silver now and I'm having a hard time getting out. I'm a support main. How can I have more impact in the game to get the win as support?
[00:38:39] Speaker C: Here's the main thing. One every time you are a higher rank for your previous season, expect that to fall two ranks minimum. At the start that's gonna happen, you're placed significantly lower because they expect you to climb.
Second part of that as a support main, the main way to climb as a support is to play a non traditional support. Do something like brand something like something that can carry a lane because you can't trust your ad carry to carry for you. That's, that's the problem with a lot of those things. So having someone that can have a high impact on the game and can actually win you trades is a great way to climb as a support.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Make sure you're competent with that champion too, before you just select it. Make sure you have a little bit of knowledge with him, uh, with them. Because if you just go in, be like, oh, this is easy, easy support, I see it's got a high win rate. Has a high win rate with people that can play it competently.
[00:39:44] Speaker C: Get playtime on your belt before you bring anything into rank.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Get some, get some playtime going before you bring in, you know, understand the champion, understand what brand does and what makes his abilities and all that work together. Understand what, you know, any of any champion does before you take it in. Don't just think it's a free win because you saw someone on TikTok or YouTube play it.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: And I think the most important thing for support, specifically to climb, remember that you are the team's support, not just the ad carry's support you lane with the ad carry so you can get experience and gold for your support quest early, not because you are their bitch for the entire game. The number of times, especially in lower elo, that I see supports follow their ad carry around like a lost puppy dog. No matter how poorly the ad carry is doing, no matter what the ad carry is doing, if the ad carry is sitting under a tier two just catching waves and trying to farm their way back into the game, go somewhere else. Help your mid laner, help your jungler, help your top laner. They don't need you to farm.
They're either not able to get the wave because they're getting dove at tier two, in which case you're not going to fix that, or they're going to collect the wave and you want them to get solo experience and get the gold and get as relevant as they can, as fast as they can. You being there slows that down.
[00:41:10] Speaker C: Essentially, yeah. Your goal once laning phase is over is no longer I must defend ad carry, it is I must defend team or I must initiate for team, etcetera. Your goal becomes team oriented as opposed to ad carry oriented.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: Alright, lets go on to question two. How can I help my teammates get the win the ff 15 after Topps gets killed one v one and jungle dies on a mid gank, my team usually gets mad. What can I do to help the team stay positive? Alright, im gonna break out an oldie but a goodie. I am not gonna credit the author of this because the person is a piece of shit, but what you do is called dick sucking theory.
[00:41:56] Speaker C: I remember this.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Yep, yep. So what this means is anything that goes poorly, take the blame onto yourself. Say in chat, I fucked up, I'm sorry. Like paraphrase, like make it relevant to the situation. Man, I missed that shot. That's my bad. Something like that.
Anytime something goes well, whether you did good or a teammate did good does not matter. Tell your teammates how great they just did.
If you're smashing your opponent and your jungler comes in and steals that kill from you.
Nice, secure, good job.
Let's get plates.
Be disgustingly, sickeningly positive because your teammates mental is fragile as fuck and you need to massage it.
Hence dick sucking theory. Suck their dicks a little bit, they'll be a lot happier and a lot less likely to run it down.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: And just remember, the mentals on the enemy teams are just as fragile their mental dude.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: Okay, again, because I've been playing a lot twitch tv, Jackson. I stream most of it.
I had a game where I had a graves, who was possibly the worst graves jungle I've ever seen. Like truly did not understand how to play. Graves had a graves name. This dude named himself something like graves crimes or something like that and just sucked and was super toxic, blaming everyone else on the team while he was personally the problem.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: Then I played another game.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: If you're listening.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: No, if he's listening, fuck off. I don't want him as a listener. He was an asshole.
But then the second game, I got him on the enemy team.
So after he had died like twice, nothing had been said in all chat at all. But I just pop into all chat, okay, be honest. How toxic and shitty is that graves being right now?
The whole enemy team erupts in all chat, complaining about how horrible he is and how nasty he's being to them. Apparently even worse than what I experienced. He started calling them slurs and telling them to kill themselves.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Ooh, Ed, don't listen to our podcast if you like that.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why I was like, no, this guy's a piece of shit. I don't want him as a listener.
But the point was, because I knew how he was, he had just ruined a game and ruined my team's mental. I was then able to, a, make it a little less painful for the enemy team and B give my team a huge morale boost by having their team tell us how horrible their team's dysfunction was. And my whole team was like, cool, we got this, let's go.
Because we could suddenly see the disarray that they were experiencing. That is often invisible.
This is why I leave all chat on. By the way, I do not recommend leaving all chat on, but for moments like that, that's the reasons I personally do it.
[00:45:20] Speaker C: You need to have the thickest skin in the world to leave all chat on consistently. You cannot let what people are talking about get under your skin to actively leave Allchat on or it is an active detriment to you.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Yep. And to be clear, I'm streaming, so, like, the all chat and the people flaming me is still content for my streams. So that's another reason I leave it on.
If you're not being an entertainer, you might want to just turn it off anyway.
But yeah, just suck your team's dick a little bit.
All right, let's get the last of Robogan's questions in here, which is, are there any recommendations on champions to play to climb for support? Other lanes, we answer this a lot, but for support, my answer is always Morgana, because she does a little bit of everything.
She has protection, some picks, some engagement, she does it all there.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Me personally, like, I always recommend and this is just goes down to what your playstyle is going to be and what you like to do. I always prefer the engage tanky supports. I always appreciate them more because they help me also get in there in the front line. I also enjoy having someone else to frontline with, but that's just personal.
[00:46:47] Speaker C: I have two for you. One is a bit more traditional and one is way the hell out there.
I love poppy support.
Poppy has CC in her kit. She has a nice bonk to keep people from dashing. She has a nice way of glacking people out with her ultimate to change the size of a fight. Poppy can be amazing. She's a little bit out there, but she's still used as support frequently.
The unusual one, the one that I love, that is not going to be used properly.
Pantheon, he provides instant hard Cc, he has high damage. He has easy roaming with his ult. He is a really fun support.
If you can figure out how to play him as a support.
Cause you can't be the same thing as you are when you're a top laner or a jungler or mid.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: And and specifically if your ad carry is on board for playing an aggressive kill lane.
[00:47:49] Speaker C: Yes. Pantheon does not lose gracefully. Pantheon is an aggressive fighter.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: Can he climb with Pantheon? Is that something that you could see him being able to climb with if he duo cues?
[00:48:08] Speaker C: Oh, 100%. Yeah. Duo Q makes Pantheon support so great.
Cause you want communication. Cause yours. Your engages are like that.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Cause with Pantheon you wanna be like, okay, I'm gonna jump on him as he walks up. All right, let's go. Now you wanna be like in comms talking through what you're thinking of doing. Again, that macro side of things of like these are the decisions I'm going to make under these conditions. I'm waiting for it. Okay, let's go. Is information so your teammate can then follow up so that you can then micro out the actual fight.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: I don't support, and I definitely didn't climb as a support. But what I can tell you is what I play when I do get support and I can't. You normally can't go wrong with like, Jax's answer. Morgana, very simple. Hit one ability. That's all you got to do and you're good. If you hit your cue, awesome. If you know how to use your black shield, even better. And you can get more damage down with a W. Fantastic.
[00:49:13] Speaker C: You figured it out for a non ultimate ability. Morgana has the longest CC in game. It's a three second route.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: I also like to play thresh. I like thresh because thresh has a. Oh, my ADC stood up too far. Get her. Get him out of there. Or the flay is a appeal that you usually can't miss. It's wide enough and it's quick enough on a cast. And I would say it's a skill shot, but it's very hard to miss. And the hook is just a bonus, even though that's his bread and butter. But I would say, like, in my personal opinion, if you're trying to climb, find a champion in the playstyle that you like to play. Like, if you like to play tank, don't play Senna. If you like to be an engager or in, like, in the front line, don't play Senna just because someone says that's what's best to climb. If it's not in your play style, it's not going to be your best choice to climb, in my opinion.
[00:50:11] Speaker C: Yes. Of those champions, that we've said. Thresh is the most diverse out of all of them. He fits in more team comps than literally anything else.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:50:21] Speaker C: If that's what you're worried about, trying to fit in and help out. You can never go wrong with thresh unless you don't know what you're doing.
Yes, play normal games.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: I play Morgana. Cause I don't know what the fuck I'm doing on thresh.
Alright, let's get to Prince of winners. Question.
Prince of Winters writes, I just played a game where the enemy team essentially had three junglers, Z mid and a roaming twitch support with Smite. They also had a Heimerdinger bot who was comfortable solo. I kept getting invaded constantly, regardless of wave or lane priority. I tried to capitalize on twitch being underleveled, but my team didnt have the champions to handle the situation. I ended up taking risky camps just to keep up, which made it hard to counter gank. And when I considered duo laning, I was pinged away. Also the Heimerdinger Rossello dragon. Do you have any advice how to manage this type of situation?
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Get lost in the chaos? Yes, there is. It's. It's creating chaos. And that's the whole goal of weird strategies like this, is to create chaos and throw you off your game and to create a tempo that you cannot follow. Stick to your basics. Do your best to farm and try to play from behind.
What? Like we said earlier, try to mitigate your losses. Try to survive long enough to where it all balances out. I'm assuming all these people with Smite didn't buy jungle items if they did their trolling.
But it's. It's easy to get lost in the chaos. And what I can say is, like it. This is just. Don't get lost in it. Don't forget your basics.
[00:52:02] Speaker C: Yep, there's a. I would go hard ways there.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:06] Speaker C: Go jacks, go.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: You don't specify. You say you're getting invaded, so I assume you're playing jungle, but you don't actually say so. So I apologize if that assumption is wrong. This would be a game where you need to keep your trinket ward, not switch to sweeper as the jungler. And you need to be buying control wards because what you're going to do is create zones of vision where you know that they are coming and can walk away before they get to you when you're, when they're invading you.
And then figure out where they're going and attack the other side of the map. Yes, they have two to three people and you have one. But if those two to three people are all ganking mid and you're top cool, you're still in a two v one top side with your top laner against their top laner, you still win that. You can't change the mid lane because it's one v three and you showing up would make it two v three. You still lose that. So get an advantage elsewhere so that they're coming out behind because they're splitting experience between more people. They're splitting the gold between more people for the assist pool, and you're getting the same advantage in another lane.
[00:53:13] Speaker C: My best advice for this one is talk to your teammates. I'm guessing you were doing a solo queue one here. The best thing you can do is give early communication. Hey, we're in a situation where there's multiple people consistently invading my jungle. If we can have a collapse, we now outnumber the people who are doing the weird strategy.
The easiest way of taking these things down is to utilize the advantages you have, one of which is it's your side of the map. Unless all three of them are coming into your side at the same time, you should have numbers advantage. You should hopefully be able to get your team to come and collapse on them. And if they keep doing it over and over again, you have a steady source of some extra income.
If they are, however, and that will.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: Make up for some of the income loss that your team is going to give up because they don't have waves in good positions to roam.
[00:54:09] Speaker C: It's a hard situation when someone does something out of left field. The best thing you can do is break down what they're doing and figure out where the little bits fault. If they're consistently breaking off as three to go, stop you from doing one thing in the jungle over here. Ping over on the other corners over there. Hey, I've got three people over here. At best, there's two people in Bot lane. Shove off downside, roam down, get a kill, get towers, get plates.
Your jungle is almost always worth significantly less money than lanes. If they're pushing lanes afterwards, you are getting a hard gold advantage across the map.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Yep.
So, yeah, just collapse on them or attack where they're not. That's really it. Those are your options. And unfortunately, in the chaotic low communication environment that is so acute, these strategies work because people panic and make wrong decisions. They make bad macro choices because they don't know what to do.
All right, we're about out of time, but before we go. We're going to do. Robogan sent us a bunch more actual questions, but he started with a bonus question. So we're going to answer the bonus question.
Robon writes, I will start with a bonus question for you guys. What was the most random and strange tv show anime you watched on tv as a kid that would never fly today for me, it's Shin chan.
What do you guys think? What are some shows you watched as a kid that you think wouldn't fly by today's social standards?
[00:55:45] Speaker C: I don't have a show. I have a movie. And it actually, it's more of a director.
[00:55:49] Speaker B: Movie works.
[00:55:51] Speaker C: Blazing saddles. Mel Brooks is a comedic genius from. From his time, and a lot of the stuff that he did does not work in comedy today.
[00:56:02] Speaker B: A lot of his stuff just doesn't hold up because social mores have changed and it's more cringe and less funny now. Spaceball's being the big exception to that.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: But my answer would be anything early cartoon network, you. They have very.
They weren't very. What's the word here?
[00:56:24] Speaker B: Is what you're thinking of.
[00:56:25] Speaker A: I'm thinking like, there's Johnny Bravo. Oh, Johnny Alva would not. Johnny Bravo.
[00:56:30] Speaker B: Johnny Bravo has aged really poorly.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: It would not get through today's standards. I mean, you get Flintstones. All of those older cartoons that I watched as a kid would not pass today's standards.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: So one of the ones I was thinking of was actually Looney Tunes.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
[00:56:49] Speaker B: Looney Tunes, merry Melodies. All of that has tons of gun violence. Literal holes are shot in people that would not fly today. They're not allowed to do that anymore.
They have characters literally push up daisies and turn into a ghost and float off to heaven. That wouldn't fly either. You can't have characters die in children's shows anymore. Looney Tunes is hyper violent in a way that is no longer acceptable. But Looney Tunes still gets shown to kids because it's old and therefore, like, it was acceptable. So it gets grandfathered in.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: And unfortunately, a lot of those cartoons back then were also pretty racist.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of characters that I did not realize as a kid were racist racial stereotypes, which I'm actually gonna segue into my other example since you mentioned anime in your question. Robogon, original Dragon Ball.
[00:57:47] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:57:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Not Dragon Ball Z. Original Dragon Ball.
For those who don't know, in original Dragon Ball, Goku is a feral child who doesn't really understand social situations. He frequently whips his dick out in public to pee to, uh, like there, there you can find clips on YouTube that are just compilations of all the different times that he grabbed someone's crotch and said, oh, you are a boy. Oh, you're a girl.
Like, Goku is unhinged in a way that is totally unacceptable now.
Um, but also Dragon Ball has a character named Mister Popo that is literal, just blackface.
He is a racist blackface caricature.
Dragon Ball could not exist today. It got away with it because it was the eighties when that show came out.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: We've thrown a lot of information at you guys today. A lot of macro micro talk, how to climb, what supports to use. I say to hell with all that information we just gave you. Ignore it all and just take Lucian top and just climb that way. Get to get to masters tomorrow.
[00:59:02] Speaker C: You don't need to macro with Lucian in the top.
[00:59:05] Speaker B: The macro is you shove, you kill them. You win the nexus, it's gone.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: You can win pre five minutes.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: There you go. All right, guys, this has been episode 448 of the Forwards podcast. Seriously, please join the discord. Come hang out, come play games. It's going to be a great time. Link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there.
I've been Jack Soman for my committed names and for pillow pet. Have a great night.
[00:59:35] Speaker C: See you around.
[00:59:38] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the four Wards podcast, and of course, send your questions to the four
[email protected] so we can answer them live on the show. That's the four
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