The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 450: Doing the Splits

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast. Hey, what's up? It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, Jerks, and Velcaz. [00:00:13] Speaker B: And you're listening to the Forwards podcast, here to help you move forward and lead. Hello, and welcome to episode 450 of the four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me two other wards to celebrate this momentous occasion. I've got pillow pet. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Hello there. [00:00:53] Speaker B: And Mike, of many names. [00:00:55] Speaker C: You switched the naming convention. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Well, you joined at the same time, so it's not like I have one or the other who has got seniority to get named first. [00:01:06] Speaker C: We had perfect alphabetical order. JMP. [00:01:13] Speaker B: What? [00:01:14] Speaker C: Jumpman Jack's mic pillow. [00:01:18] Speaker B: No, I got that. I'm just. Anyway, my joke didn't land. It happens. That's. That's the risk you take when you're a podcaster. Sometimes your jokes just will not land. [00:01:31] Speaker A: I enjoyed it. [00:01:31] Speaker C: I guess m also works for Mario. [00:01:36] Speaker B: So, guys, we're the forwards podcast. We have a discord now. Come join the discord. Come hang out. We're gonna be setting up. We don't know when yet. We need to coordinate with people. So join the discord so you can help us figure out when it should be. But we're gonna be setting up a night for people to just play some casual, non ranked League of Legends with other members of the community, with the hosts, whoever's available, and just have some fun. So come join the discord so you can help us figure out when that should be and then be a part of it. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Come stream. Snipe. Jax, when you're facing him, please don't stream. Snipe me. [00:02:14] Speaker B: Just come support my stream, because I stream at Twitch TV Jackson, where you can see how freaking horrible the curse has been. Pillow pet streams at Twitch TV, pillowpet. And we're still trying to bully mike into streaming. But not enough of you have joined the discord to make him stream yet close again. Yeah, you heard that, listeners? If enough of you join the discord, that's what's going to force Mike to start streaming. [00:02:43] Speaker C: I will open it up, I will bring up my steam menu and let you choose the game I play. Or you could just make me play league. That works, too. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Yep. So come join the discord. It's a good time. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Tell him you want to see ranked. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:58] Speaker C: That. That would be the true punishment, wouldn't it? [00:03:01] Speaker B: Make him stream ranked. Do it. Do it, listeners. I know you can. I believe in you. All right. We also need to shout out to Codex, ninja, pillow, pet, and robogon for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. We could not do this without you. It pays for the hosting so we can have a podcast. Thank you. Now, if you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com. the four Wards podcast, $1 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. Sometimes it's actual, like planning and prep. Sometimes it's just us bullshitting for 15 minutes or so, but you get to listen to it. If you subscribe for at least $5 a month, and then if you want your name shouted out, then $10 a month is how you get to do that. Last but not least, listeners, you get disappointed. Dad Jacks, this week we did not get any new questions. Write in to the four wardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. Luckily, we have leftover questions from last week, but we need more. Please write your questions in so we can answer your questions. Cause we're too stupid to fill an hour when we don't have questions. You've seen what happens. It goes off the rails fast. Speaking of off the rails, do we want to start with our ranked check in, or do we want to start with talking about the splits? [00:04:34] Speaker A: Let's rip the band aid off. I think let's talk about the ranked. [00:04:38] Speaker B: All right, well, Mike hasn't really played ranked, so we're gonna let you kick it off pillow. [00:04:44] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I've only played two games this season, and it has been the worst two games that I can remember having probably in the last year. It has been full of. I even purposely waited till just yesterday, which would have been from the time of this, the 5 October to start. Because I like to wait until I get started on my ranked journey because usually at the beginning of a season, it's just like full of Smurfs and it's just harder. People are just not pleasant to play with at the beginning of a split or a season. So I always wait. So I finally jumped in my first game. I was going against a level 30, I'm assuming Smurf, I can't say just assuming based off his playstyle, ended up going like, I don't know, 26 and one as a talon. And my team just didn't know the map awareness or whatever. I can't fully blame my team. I mean, I also died to this talon several times. But he, by the time he finally visited me and little top lane, he was 70. Not much I could do there. And then my second game, I did fine. You know, I beat my lane opponent and I was doing what I was supposed to do as a top laner. And we had, uh, I had enemy or fellow laners that decided that they wanted to go like zero and twelve that game and feed their laner. It's just been all over the place and it hasn't been a pleasant start. But I don't have a good sample size because I only have two games. Who knows, I might win out from the rest of here, from, from the rest of the five. [00:06:25] Speaker B: You might. Or you could be like me. I currently have a sample size of 65 games since the split began. Holy crap. I seriously have no life. Of those 65, I've only won 29 of them. I have a 44% win rate. And listeners, I've streamed most of these games at Twitch TV. Jackson, I promise you it's not hyperbole when I say the majority of these games are nightmares. I had a skarner who lost his mind that I missed like the second cannon or something. He was the support, I was the ad carry. So he proceeded to flame me for being a new zeri who's just playing with the prestige skin and doesn't know how to play the game and proceeded to fuck off to other lanes to feed them and ruin the entire game. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Let me just throw in that serious. [00:07:17] Speaker B: Yes in the game. Yeah. The zeri skin is fire skin is so good. [00:07:24] Speaker A: It's so good. I loves to the skin design. Like, it's awesome. [00:07:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. I literally unlocked the skin and played zeri six times in a row just so I could enjoy the skin. And me, I don't play a champion six times in a row. That's generally not how I work. [00:07:44] Speaker C: The fright knight skin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:07:47] Speaker B: The prestige fright night skin specifically, it's usually, I don't like the prestige skins. They're usually white and gold. They're very gaudy. This one, the gold is just accents. It's very subdued and tasteful. The rest of the outfit is a good purple. The particles are this awesome, like almost semi translucent purple. Everything on it looks great. It is a phenomenal skin. Ten out of ten was worth buying the pass so I could get 2000 tokens to unlock the skin. [00:08:22] Speaker A: I will throw out. This is my favorite time of year, I think, for skins. I love the Christmas stuff and I love the Halloween. Like, I love the skin lines. They come out with the fright knight. [00:08:34] Speaker C: Skins this year are really creative. There's some good ones. The regular frightened zeri skin is pretty good too. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Regular fight night Zeri skin is kind of a like mad scientist vibe. And then the prestige one is more like a almost Harley Quinn type vibe. [00:08:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks really good. [00:08:53] Speaker B: So yeah, I've had to deal with that. I had a Zerith support in the same stretch of zeri games who never came bot lane. He went mid and stole mids experience, so they were behind. He went top and stole tops experience, so they were behind. He died a lot of and made the game completely unplayable. [00:09:12] Speaker A: That just feels really bad for a solo laner. Cause that's what you count on. Like your whole goal is to try to get that level spike so you get that quick advantage in a lane that might help you win. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Yup. And he just put all three lanes behind. And that's the kind of shit I've been dealing with. So currently, from my peak of Emerald four last split, I'm currently at silver two and I'm losing as much as I'm gaining. That's actually roughly where my MMR is now. So I've got quite a climb ahead of me. On the plus side, now I've dropped down into silver. I wildly outclass my opponents every time. I don't have straight up trolls. I literally had a game against a yasuo in a malphite bot lane where I was playing Malzahar mid where I got unkillable demon king. Because guess which two players did not know what Mal. What Malzahar passive does? I definitely blocked a malphite ult. I blocked a yasuo Q three with my passive and then just ulted them and killed them and laughed because they didn't realize that it blocks CCDH. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Feels bad. [00:10:30] Speaker B: No, it felt great. Feels bad. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Feels bad for them. [00:10:32] Speaker B: I don't give a shit. Hopefully they learn. [00:10:36] Speaker A: We'll take free dubs. We like LP. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. The funniest part is that was the game where someone on my team in champion select was like, malz, you better not suck. At the end of the game, I was like, well, I went 90 four. Was that good enough for you? [00:10:58] Speaker A: That's funny. [00:11:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been a journey. I'm at least back up to silver two. I was silver four yesterday. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Hey, life is about the journey and you just get a more difficult one than some people. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Yup. [00:11:17] Speaker C: Life needs things to live. [00:11:21] Speaker B: And Mike hasn't started ranked yet. Again, listeners, join the discord so we can Bully Mike into playing ranked, you. [00:11:27] Speaker C: Can force the issue. [00:11:30] Speaker B: I'll get on my Smurf and duo queue with you, Mike. [00:11:32] Speaker A: I will tell you, Mike, I've only got to be fair. [00:11:35] Speaker C: At this point in time, I could duo queue with your main account. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Oh yeah, you could. [00:11:41] Speaker A: I only have two of my five placement games done. Like you could jump in and do my last three and then you just got two left. [00:11:47] Speaker C: If you can get a time with it, I'm probably more than willing to duo with people. That's my main thing. I just don't like soloing. [00:11:56] Speaker B: I don't blame you. I don't like streaming it. I probably wouldn't play nearly as many games. That's a lot of it is just like, I have nothing to do on Saturday. My wife's at work, so I'm like, oh, I'm awake. I watched worlds. What do I do now? Uh, guess I'm streaming for 8 hours. [00:12:17] Speaker C: Speaking of worlds, now that you've mentioned it, this is a good reminder we've made this important. The patch has changed. This is not worlds anymore. That patch is a different patch with wildly different items and wildly different balance changes. What you see in worlds does not work here. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Please do not try to emulate your favorite pro player just because you saw them do something at worlds. It may or may not still work. You need to evaluate it on its own merits and figure out whether or not you can even replicate it in the first place, and whether it's applicable to the disorganized, chaotic, kill focused solo queue environment as opposed to an organized, objective, focused, professional environment. They are not playing the same game that we are. Please don't try to imitate them. Just because you saw someone pop off on twitch doesn't mean you should play twitch. Just, yeah, that's. We give this reminder every year because it's relevant every year. But seriously, please. You can learn things from pro, but worlds is not usually the time to learn from pro. [00:13:35] Speaker C: The thing you should take away, yeah, is positioning mechanics, outplays. You're looking for what they're doing, not how they're doing it. Because how the gameplay works in a macro micro level is very different. But you can learn how to play a champion by watching them do it. That is the key that you're going to be taking away. Where do you go, what to do? [00:13:58] Speaker B: I mean, it was many, many, many years ago at this point, but watching pro play is how I learned about fizz going into his troll pole and then flashing to change where he crashes down. [00:14:09] Speaker C: That's how we learned about a bunch of the exploits, like how smulder can go down into the walls of the bottom of the world. Much like. [00:14:16] Speaker B: Yep. [00:14:16] Speaker C: How we also figured out, oh, if Smulder does it, then I bet Kain can too. Yes, he can. [00:14:21] Speaker B: Kane, I already knew, could do that. It was not realizing that smulder could do it. [00:14:26] Speaker A: Wonder if Skarner can do it. [00:14:28] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:14:29] Speaker C: I bet you he can. [00:14:30] Speaker B: Probably. I don't know how Skarner's wall passing works, but I'd be willing to bet he probably can go off the bottom of the map too. I've never tried. [00:14:42] Speaker C: I want to try this so bad. [00:14:44] Speaker B: Okay, so we've given our world's reminder we've done our ranked check in. Our remaining topic is I mentioned how I did in split two, but let's talk about splits themselves. How do you guys feel about there being splits? Two splits versus three splits, all of the above. How have splits worked out in your opinion? Good and bad. [00:15:10] Speaker A: On paper? I know why they did it. It keeps interest, you know, it keeps interest in the season. It keeps more people coming back because there's nothing more exciting than those initial promo games. I for one don't like the split system. I always enjoyed the one season and doing my ten promo games at the time and I always enjoyed doing it and watching my rank climb and then climbing from the start and seeing where I end up at the end. But I know why they do it. I just always, I don't know. I just look forward to the, here's your, here's your season and then at the end of the season the big patch with the many, you know, adjustment and rework patches in between. Kind of like what we still get now. But you don't get that real big patch, I feel like anymore. I mean you will get one occasionally, but I don't think we got a really big rework one last year, did we? For preseason? There is no preseason. I miss preseason. [00:16:14] Speaker C: Yes, there was. There was a pretty big rework for items this year. [00:16:18] Speaker A: I really miss the preseason and getting to play with all the changes before ranked even open up. Like you get to go into normals. Like there's no problem. There's no, there's no consequences to going in and trying out new meta stuff and coming up with your own ideas and just playing around with all the changes now you just kind of. There is no preseason and I don't know if they'll ever go back to a preseason, just a continual like rank system. And I don't I mean, I like the break also that came with no splits. [00:16:51] Speaker B: So for me the, the. I agree. The purpose of the splits is to keep engagement up. That's really all it is. The. The purpose of this, the reason we have three splits now is so that there is a strong incentive not to just go, oh, I got my rank. It's March. I guess I'm done playing league for the year, which was a problem in the old system. And I get that. Here's my problem with it. The resets are artificial. And what I mean by that is if you were, let's say, platform, you will start the next split like silver three, silver two ish. But you still have platform, mmrdhead. If you maintain just a 50% win rate, you'll be back in platform 40 50 games. Just as is. It's all fake. And that's what annoys me is that reset is just an artificial reset to make you feel good because you're climbing, because you're gaining LP and it's all just nonsense. What I missed. Once upon a time, decay existed for all ranks. Decay is where you didn't play. So your rank starts going down gradually because you haven't played. I would strongly there is a good thing in the split system, which is it now tracks what your peak was. I like that. That should stay, but everyone should have decay instead of these false resets. That way people need to continuously engage with ranked to maintain whatever rank they are. Getting boosted doesn't work because you will fall back out of it because you have to play enough games to stay at your rank. Boosting was a lot less of a problem when all of the ranks had decayed because you would decay out of. [00:18:55] Speaker A: Your boosted rank with the snapshot of your highest rank. Like that gets rid of anybody being scared to continually play rank because they're afraid to drop too, you know? Like, I like that change. I do. Like, like if I peaked in Emerald but then I had a really bad run and now I'm down in platinum that I don't get the emerald rewards at the end of that, I guess split now or season. [00:19:17] Speaker B: Yep. [00:19:17] Speaker C: That does however mean that boosting to reach a peak rank is still a thing. [00:19:23] Speaker B: And here's the thing. It is still a thing. But my issue isn't that those people are getting that rank. I don't give a fuck what they get. That's irrelevant to me. That's between them and their God that they've cheated their way into getting video game rewards for a rank they didn't earn. Like I don't give a shit. What I give a shit about is forcing them to play games and get demoted back down to where they belong to before the next season begins. Because the season changes are when they actually do a soft MMR reset so that they're not then ruining games when the next ranked season begins. I want them to get demoted back down so that they are out of the games that they don't belong in. [00:20:07] Speaker A: Because that ruins experience for everybody when someone that's truly will say, we'll say some guy bronze, or even someone who. [00:20:17] Speaker B: Belongs bronze for iron one ish, and. [00:20:20] Speaker A: Gets, like, boosted up to Diamond, diamond one, you know, so you got someone now that's way below ruining that person's game because they don't play mechanically on the same level. [00:20:34] Speaker B: It means that there's going to be five people who are thankful they got a free win, but they didn't have a good game of league, and four people who had a game that they could not win, that they are just. They're miserable for 15 to 30 minutes because this boosted guy showed up in their game. [00:20:54] Speaker C: So how quickly from someone who is boosted, how many games do they have to lose to push them down? Well, they're gonna have to go down meteorically to be into their actual rank. You decide how many games have experienced to be dropped out of a rank. [00:21:11] Speaker B: Speaking from experience, if you lose too many games in a row, your rank starts dropping really goddamn fast. [00:21:17] Speaker A: I don't know if they still do it. There used to be a system, like, if you won too many and it was good wins, like, they would jump you several, like, yep, several ranks up, and they used to do the opposite. If you would lose plenty, they would be like, all right, you don't belong here, man. Just get out of here. And they'd kick you out the door into the lower community. [00:21:37] Speaker B: So they don't do the skips anymore. But LP gains and losses start getting more and more disproportionate if your rank is massively below your MMR, which is what happens if you just win every single game. Uh, your MMR will skyrocket. Your LP gains will start skyrocketing, too. You'll start getting 30 35 a win and losing like, 15 a loss until you even out. And if you lose every game, you'll start losing 30 35 a loss and only getting, like, 15 a win. [00:22:11] Speaker A: I'm sure there's someone out there that's done the math, but I'm sure that there is a system in place that if you win and win and win and win. Your MMR is, like, multiplicatively, like, climbing at that point. [00:22:24] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Whereas in if you're winning one, losing one, winning one, losing one, I'm sure that might reset it somehow, like, the. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Yep. [00:22:31] Speaker A: Multiplication of it. I'm sure there's someone out there that's done the math that can be exactly. [00:22:34] Speaker B: I don't know exactly how much it impacts things. Like, I couldn't give you a number, but if you win ten in a row, it absolutely weights that more heavily than if you win ten games out of a batch of, let's say, 15. Even if you lose the next five, like, if you go ten and ten wins and then five losses and then go 50 50 after that, you will be higher rank than if you go ten wins out of 15 games spread out, if that makes sense. [00:23:09] Speaker A: There's a lot of math to it. [00:23:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:12] Speaker A: You should be able to go. Kylie used to be able to go to a website, I think. What was it op Gg that used to tell you your. No, it was like, what's my MMR? Or something? [00:23:21] Speaker B: Many websites trying to estimate MMR, but it was an estimate. What they were doing is they were looking at the LPD of all of the people around you in every one of your games and using that to extrapolate out, like, law of large numbers average to figure out approximately what is your actual matchmaking rating. Because MMR is hidden. [00:23:41] Speaker A: I don't know. I doubt it. If any of you guys that are listening are from Riot, can you guys just, like, tell us what our MMR is? They won't do it. [00:23:51] Speaker C: MMR is something that you don't want to have everybody know, because that's a demoralizing feature to understand for a lot of people. [00:23:59] Speaker A: I'll pay you. Tell me. [00:24:01] Speaker B: Also, Riot doesn't want there to be that level of transparency. [00:24:05] Speaker A: No. Yeah, it's. They. They probably don't even understand the system. How are we supposed to. [00:24:11] Speaker C: Well, I mean, one of the engineers definitely does. No one else. [00:24:15] Speaker A: It's probably one guy that's got, like, the code to some folder that tells him then whole math, and he holds on to it so he doesn't lose his job. [00:24:23] Speaker C: He's the one who created LPD. Oh, God. That was a good. I prefer that system. Way back in season one and two or three, where it was just a static number. You had a static number, and that number goes up and down. And where you are on that number directly, like, approximated. I'm 1500. I'm in gold. I liked that. More than having a gold one through four. [00:24:57] Speaker B: It certainly had its pros and cons. [00:25:00] Speaker C: Big number. Feel good. [00:25:02] Speaker B: I like MMR being publicly displayed, but that system also had the downside of, oh, you made it into the threshold for gold. Well, your next loss kicks you back out. [00:25:15] Speaker A: This isn't the first time assistant's changed, and it definitely won't be the last one. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Like, we'll get more versions ranked. [00:25:22] Speaker A: It's always going to evolve. It's always going to change. They're going to be like, hey, you know what? Let's throw in a. Let's throw in a. I don't know, a. Give me another metal tier and put it in there. Tin tier, ten tier. There you go. Bronze. Well, we already got bronze. [00:25:39] Speaker C: I mean, let's just. Let's just go right ahead. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Make it wood, copper, ten be higher or lower than iron, is the question. [00:25:45] Speaker C: Lower? [00:25:48] Speaker A: I mean, technically, I can guarantee that one lower. Iron is like one of the strongest metals, so it's about value. [00:25:55] Speaker C: And tin is also lower than iron in value. [00:26:01] Speaker A: But they'll never make a wood tier. [00:26:04] Speaker B: They should know it's because it got memed on. They'll never do it. [00:26:09] Speaker A: Now, that's funny, though. [00:26:12] Speaker B: So I do want to point out there are some positives to the split system. We get more victorious skins than we used to. [00:26:20] Speaker C: This is true. There is a valid reason for making you want to come back. Multiple splits, and that is you can get multiple sets of Victoria's skins. And if I didn't hate solo queue so much, that would have been my incentive. There have been a couple of skins that I really liked that I just couldn't bring myself to get. [00:26:41] Speaker B: I mean, Mike, just. You're on a podcast now. Just do well with people. [00:26:47] Speaker A: I wouldn't mind the Victoria skins so much if they would put, I feel like, a little bit more effort into them because some of them are mostly pretty bad garbage to me. [00:26:58] Speaker B: And personally, no, I agree. They're in the same boat as the prestige skins of, oh, it's this skin, but with the gold accent, the Victoria skins are, oh, it's the character in gold accented armor or platinum accented armor or whatever color chroma you're using because of that, the rank accented armor, and that's it. It's not. They're not the fun, whimsical, cool skins that people actually want to use. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Give me an obsidian rank and I'd stay on it just for the color. [00:27:40] Speaker B: What we're learning today is that pillow pet is an edgelord. [00:27:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it was never a phase. [00:27:48] Speaker C: I did miss the one Victoria skin I actually truly like. And it's the Morgana skin. That's a great skin for me. [00:27:55] Speaker B: It's alright. I don't use it ever. [00:27:59] Speaker A: I always use her bewitching. I love bewitching. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Ever since I got that one. That's my default now. It used to be, I used to do the baker one where she burned the cookies. I got bewitching and bewitching is just better. [00:28:14] Speaker C: Blackthorn. [00:28:16] Speaker B: Blackthorn's all right. I don't like the particles on it. [00:28:23] Speaker C: Okay. The trimmed beer one actually looks good. [00:28:26] Speaker A: I will say. Yeah, I use that one. I use that one. But I got nightmare too. And nightmares really good too. [00:28:34] Speaker B: All right, you guys have any other thoughts on the split system? [00:28:38] Speaker A: Nothing good as a whole. [00:28:41] Speaker C: Splits have more negatives than positives for me as a person. But I can see for the company and the system as a whole, it's actually more beneficial for a league in a ranked environment to have a system. [00:29:01] Speaker A: Riot's a business and they got to make business decisions that give them more money. At the end of the day, I mean, that's what it's always going to come down to is money. [00:29:10] Speaker B: I did remember one other thing that I think the split system helps alleviate, that we used to experience a lot. It used to be the last like three months of ranked was just the worst experience in the world. It was miserable. Now with the split system, that's like the last two weeks of each split. Instead it's divided up and there's much smaller periods where you should play ranked. [00:29:38] Speaker C: It's actually a little bit more different than that in that the time when you go through like the middle of the year, ranked queues would spike in the length for ages. So the other really healthy thing about it is you are in queue a lot less long. I used to do in June and July, 1415 minutes. Queues regularly. [00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah. If you, if you were playing on off peak times is a popular role. Yeah. So that, that's the other thing. The split system has helped. It is very nice having shorter cues and having a less period of time where you just should not play ranked because it is miserable. [00:30:17] Speaker A: Let us know what you guys think in our discord and tell us what you think in the general chat. [00:30:22] Speaker B: Give us your, I'm literally thinking of this right now and just pitching it live on the show. Should we just have a discord question of the week, like discussion topic? [00:30:32] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be fun. [00:30:34] Speaker B: We'll play around with that and maybe set it up afterwards. Guys, join the discord. The link is in the episode description so you can join in that discussion topic. So we're going to move on to speaking of discussion topics. We got questions from listeners that were sent in the last couple weeks that we're going to answer again. We didn't get any new ones this week right into theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. But for now, we got some questions from Robogon, who writes, what is the easiest way to stay one step ahead of the enemy in solo lanes and Jungle? [00:31:15] Speaker C: Those are wildly different questions between Solo lane and jungle. With Jungle, there's two ways to answer that, and that is either you need to have a good idea on pathing both yours and theirs, where should you be going and where should they be going, and the speed at which you farm those two things determine being one step ahead as a jungler and being able to predict things as a solo laner, that's significantly more individual. Play by play. [00:31:49] Speaker B: There are so many games that I have played as jungle where I just ping caution on one of my lanes because I know the enemy jungler is about to gank them because that's what I would be doing if I were them. And sure enough, about 10 seconds later, they get ganked. Sometimes my ping saved their life. Sometimes they're a dumbass and ignored it and they died of the gank and then flame me for it. But at least I tried. [00:32:12] Speaker A: I will say the easiest way, just the easiest way to stay ahead of the jungle, assuming you're a laner, trying to stay ahead of the jungle is just warding. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Don't give them the opportunity to get free gold and take resources from you and to try to stay ahead of your solo laner. I will say, assuming that you're already ahead, don't take stupid fights that are going to cause you to lose your lead. And you can just maintain that lead and try to get through lane without throwing that away. So just don't take, don't. What's the word I'm looking for? The phrase don't, uh, don't limit test. [00:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:56] Speaker A: If you want to maintain a lead. [00:32:58] Speaker B: The easiest way to throw away a lead is to go, oh, we're super far ahead, we can just dive him. Don't do it like there are times and places for dives, but be mindful of it. I was gonna say, for solo lanes, the easiest way to stay one step ahead of them is to ward where you think they will be exiting from. So if they're a top laner, warding the river is not just good for you to see the enemy jungler coming, but also good for you to see when the enemy top laner, after they crash you into turret, ward the river, ward the closest bush as they're pushing in. So you can see if they are they backing, are they setting up for the next wave? Are they roaming down to grubs? Same thing for mid lane. You're warding the river so you can see are they roaming or are they just waiting for the next wave? Uh, you're trying to predict when they back, because if you know they backed and you have high wave clear, you can crash the wave into the turret and force them to either TP or lose a wave. So it's, it's about knowing what they're doing is how you stay ahead of them in the simplest terms. Uh, so question two, how to deal with counterjungling. What do you do when you're getting counterjungled? I'm assuming from this that you are not able to just fight the enemy in your jungle. Cause that's the easiest answer is if you can beat them, just fight them and kill them when they invade you again. [00:34:30] Speaker C: There's like two or three options for this. One, if you see them in one side of your jungle, you head to the other and take what you can. You see they're on one side doing your things. See if you can go into their jungle and take their jungle. If it's not, if you are, like down all your outer towers, that's not something that's possible anymore. So you need to be careful when we say what we're doing on this one depends on the situation here. If you can't get vision in your own jungle, because they have now taken over your jungle, that's not your jungle anymore. Your job is now to follow laners around. [00:35:10] Speaker B: There have been so many games where I have just been invaded by mid and jungle in my red quadrant as blue pl, as blue jungler. And I just have to walk away from the quadrant and ping my bot lane. Hey, caution. You guys are about to get foremanned. And frequently I will type in chat, care bot, potential foreman or something like that. Because if they sit under turret, there's a chance they can fight it off. But when they do what they inevitably always do, which led to me picking ADC back up and push out despite this warning and then get four man in the middle of the lane, they're always dead. [00:35:48] Speaker C: The way to recover from being counter jungled requires someone else to help you if you can't win that fight. And if they aren't able to help you, you are no longer a jungler. You are now just another support. [00:36:03] Speaker B: Yep. [00:36:04] Speaker A: I will say, in my experience, I'm not a jungler, so I can't put a whole lot of discussion on this. But when I have jungled and I am getting invaded, I try to create an opportunity in lanes to like, okay, I can't get my, my camps, so maybe I can go gank this lane. And I try to push and put it a, I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank, an advantage in another lane. [00:36:33] Speaker B: I'm much more willing to go for riskier ganks when I have no other options than I am when I have plenty of choices I can make. [00:36:43] Speaker C: The other thing you can do is sell your life dearly. And that is if you are someone who I know for a fact I'm not going to survive going out here. I'm going to risk it to try and get us any advantage. Because at this stage, we're dead no matter what. I know they're doing, Baron. Right now, I'm going to dive in to die to try and take that Baron or maybe snipe a killing while I'm in there. You will be surprised at how often that actually works. Well. And if you can get that steal off, that is a game changer. [00:37:16] Speaker B: Speaking of earlier, my troll streak, I had a game where I played Diana Jungle, where I was the strongest person on the map for it was a 45 minutes game. I was the strongest person on the map for 35 minutes. But they had an Aurelian soul who got to freeze Stack, and we had xxdaddy xXD playing Heimerdinger who fed a Darius at level one. That was not hyperbole. I don't understand how that's possible. But he managed, which made the game impossible in the end. Because once Aurelion Sol hits a certain threshold, he kills everyone. He just does too much damage. I had 150, mister, in 4000 life, and he killed me in a second and a half. So, uh, a lot of times what to do is to just try not to get in that situation in the first place. What should I have done? That game ganked the aurelion soul a lot more, a lot earlier. Oh, well, let's go to question three. Question three is, uh, what items should you buy when you're ahead versus what items should you buy when you're behind? I see a lot of teammates building the same items on the same champions, no matter if we are winning or losing. So I'm going to caveat with. I want to caveat this to start. [00:38:42] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:38:43] Speaker B: Some champions don't really have a choice. Most ad carries builds are going to be close to set in stone for the first three items. [00:38:53] Speaker A: For example, I will say like top laners, we get a little bit more range on the items that we can start off with. For me, for example, I like to take power away from my enemy laner. So. So say I'm facing someone that's an auto attack heavy champion. We'll say Jax, Renekton, any of those, those champions. If I get super far ahead enough to where I can back fairly early with enough gold, I am buying like still play to boots because that takes so much power away from those auto attacking champions and that just the lead that you can get from just those boots completed boots is huge. Now. If I'm myself, like most of my power budget needs to be spent on attack damage or something like that. If I have enough gold, I'm buying a BF sword when I back. If I, if it's in my build, like I'm just going as strong as I can and I am bullying the heck out of this laner until he's just ready to quit. Like I do not stop that tempo and I do not stop that momentum. If I am able to just, if I'm that far ahead, if I'm far enough ahead, I am just keeping buying whatever I can to keep tempo momentum going. [00:40:15] Speaker C: Most champions have a first item that they are going to go for. This is their best synergistic item in the game. Almost every champion has one of those. That's their start. And then depending on mostly role and then sometimes in that role champion, that's when you can start maybe tailoring yourself to the enemy. It's more common to see in tanks and it's more common to see in supports than it is in any other role. Assassins usually want one or two three core items. Ad carries want the three item power spike. Mages want their their burst, their mana, their. [00:40:59] Speaker B: I have another example because again, I've played 65 games since this patch dropped because I am a crazy person. I played a game where I had a top laner who threw a tantrum and lost us a one game. We had huge leads in mid and bot. I was so far ahead on Zeri that I bought a collector outright at, let's see, that was 18 minutes and then the next completed item was at 23 minutes. It was almost immediately after. And that was the second item. I had a hurricane at seven minutes. I just straight up skipped Statik Shiv because I was so far ahead. That's an example of what you can do when you're ahead. And if our top laner hadn't literally hard ended, like ran to every lane and gave over kills just to make sure that the game was unwinnable, like ran under turret and waited to die, that game would have been an example of where I adjusted my build, skipped the static shiv because it meant I could hit that late game threat sooner by building this way. [00:42:02] Speaker C: Instead, I watched that game. That was horrifying. [00:42:06] Speaker B: Yeah. You agree then it was a very much a. This game is unlosable unless he does that. [00:42:13] Speaker C: It was impressive how badly he wanted you to lose. [00:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Now let's say you're on the other end of it and you're fault. You're way behind. I will say you get more options. I feel like when you're behind than you are when you're ahead because you're following a standard build path when you're ahead, like we've mostly said, except for a few, few exceptions here and there. Now I say when you're behind, you can start thinking about different items. So for like AP users, I see a lot of them that might decide to go route of rod of ages if they're going to be behind. Um, like if you're now, if you're also a fighter slash tank top lane and you're building heart steel, you're not going to go heights. Heart steal. First item, like you're going to go into a more defensive route, sunfire or something along that line that's going to give you more of the surviving stats then they are. Then it is going to give you your fighting stats. [00:43:08] Speaker B: Yep. It's also. This is where you'll see things like, oh, they have three crit champions. I'm gonna adapt and build randuins on my kog'maw. [00:43:20] Speaker A: You can do it. [00:43:22] Speaker C: There comes a point where the enemy team's composition does dictate what you build. If there are four enemy champions with the same damage type, you build the best version of that that you can get in. If there's a bunch of physical damage on the enemy team, your mid laner should have a zhonyas. If he's an AP champion. [00:43:45] Speaker B: Yup. That game that I gave the example of that should have been unlosable. Enemy team was full magic damage and then an on hit varus, who is again half magic damage. I built a maw. That was my third item as zeri. It wasnt enough because of the trundle, but like until the impact of him feeding set in too hard, I was just able to just ult in fights and just blow people up because they couldnt kill me fast enough because I had a defensive item my champion normally wouldnt have. Its quite valuable. [00:44:23] Speaker A: You might lose power going into more defensive items, but if youre not dead, youre still useful. [00:44:29] Speaker B: Exactly. And especially when you're behind. A lot of the times it's. That's when you want to build the like iceborn gauntlet as a tank so you can slow people and appeal better. You want to build randuins because again, it has a slow and lets you survive. The Fed Crit champions who have all their crit because they're fed. Whereas maybe if they weren't fed, you wouldn't need to build randuins yet. You might be able to postpone it to like fourth item because they don't have enough crit for it to matter. Lots of mages build zhonyas when they're behind. When they're ahead, it's usually not poor unless you're playing like Morgana. [00:45:10] Speaker C: Don't think about pro builds. They build situations that are very different. You'll see way more zhonyas than you will see in any other game. [00:45:19] Speaker B: Yes, I'm talking a lower elo solo queue experience. Most champions are not building zhonyas unless they're behind. Same for Ga. You're usually not building Ga unless you're either behind or you are the core of the team. That if you die, the game is over, you're either behind or really ahead. Those are the times to build Ga. [00:45:44] Speaker C: That is a good transition into the next portion of this. [00:45:48] Speaker B: Sure. Which is, uh, how do you deal with a super fed enemy? Cece? [00:45:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll say. I feel like this question, like when you're super far ahead, most likely you're going to take riskier plays too. And that's where you're going to throw your lead and you can bait the super fed person. Assuming that they're not smart and fighting with their team, then they're probably going to be off in a solo lane because they feel like they, they're the main, main hero of the story. You can take their, their ego and make them try one of those riskier plays and then you can get the shutdown. Last night I went against a Galio that was eight and one at like 13 minutes and then at like 20 minutes he was eight and eight. Like you can. You can take them thinking that they're unkillable and just ruin the rest of their game. Like someone, one person being fed. Like, it doesn't matter usually who they are. They can't take on five players usually. So try to catch them. [00:46:56] Speaker B: Try to get it's CC and outnumber and catch them being cocky. They will be cocky. I think I've talked before about how to deal with a Darius top. Just don't let him kill you. And eventually he'll try to turret dive you and then you kill him. [00:47:11] Speaker A: It's frustrated. [00:47:13] Speaker C: The only other thing is if you have better scaling champions, you can wait it out. And eventually how fed they are doesn't matter when everyone's at six items. [00:47:25] Speaker B: Yep. It really doesn't. It's if everyone's full build, then everyone's full build. There's no being more fed than that. God, I played a game. Sorry, just tangent. Because of the Darius mention. I upset Adarius so much by just refusing to ever actually stand and fight him. I was playing yone. So I would just always e in fight him for two to three stacks of his, bleed on me and then snap back and walk away. And he couldn't do anything about it. And he was so angry and eventually tried to just ghost flash on me under turret and I'm like, go get cc'd, nerd. [00:48:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Darius's have to be fighting all the time. It's an unwritten rule. They have to always try to fight. [00:48:13] Speaker B: You for whatever reason. The people who are attracted to that champion and want to main that champion are just the most call of duty, brain off people I've ever seen. [00:48:24] Speaker C: It's both of them. It's both brothers, Darius and Draven. They want blood for the blood. [00:48:30] Speaker A: God, not me. Sitting here with most of my games as a Darius top laner, it just. [00:48:36] Speaker B: Means you know I'm right. [00:48:38] Speaker A: Oh, it's we have to fight because he is a feast or famine champion. He has to be ahead. If he's not ahead, then you're building full tank on Darius and you're doing absolutely nothing. [00:48:49] Speaker B: Okay, so this kind of tangents into the last question we got from Robogon, which is how do you place wards when your team is behind versus when you're ahead? [00:49:00] Speaker A: Quick answer. I would say it doesn't really change. Like you, you. If you're behind, I would say you'd want to cover more of your. Your blind spots that you would normally not be worried about. Like your tri bushes and deeper vision. But those are always good warding spots to begin with. [00:49:22] Speaker B: They are. But what I would say is when you're behind, you want to be warding the entrances to your jungle. When you're ahead, you want to be warding the exits to their jungle. [00:49:34] Speaker C: This depends on when in the game we're talking. [00:49:37] Speaker B: Yes. I'm assuming early to mid game, because late game, it doesn't change much. [00:49:44] Speaker C: There's more. The main thing is for when you're behind, you're covering your ass. When you're ahead, you're scouting for them to do something. [00:49:52] Speaker B: Yep. [00:49:54] Speaker A: And this old, this comes back to like, and I'm glad you said that because I didn't even think about covering the. The enemy's jungle. This comes back to. The thing I always say is try to keep that momentum. Try to always stay ahead. And if you can, if you're the aggressors and you're winning, as the aggressors continually continue to be aggressive. [00:50:17] Speaker B: Perhaps that's why I. The simplest way is when you're ahead, you ward their exits to their jungle. And when you're behind, you ward the entrances to yours. Realistically, you're just warding the opposite sides of the river. But it's the answer of, are you worried about, okay, let's find what they're doing and proactively counter it. Or are you worried about, okay, I need to make sure I don't get caught. That's the difference between the words. [00:50:43] Speaker A: This is how you're getting countered in your jungle. Back to your first question is because they're being aggressive with their warding and they're probably ahead. [00:50:51] Speaker B: Yep. They know which side of the jungle you're on. So they know where they can invade you and take your shit or kill you. God, the number of times where people just blind invade because they don't have wards and then just get collapsed on by three because we had a ward and saw them walk in to and it's like, gratz, you got the red buff, now we get grubs because you died. Those are great wards. Win games. All right, shall we get on to this question from Oscar? Yeah. All right. Oscar writes, hey, wards. I find myself struggling a lot with itemization as an ad carry. What are the key differences between on hit crit and lethality builds? And how do I decide what to go for in certain scenarios, for example, against health stacking tanks or against high resistances on the enemy team? All right, I'm going to start with. I'm assuming you are playing one of the few ad carries who actually has multiple build paths. I was going to say the ad carry cast. Your first three items are your first three items. They never change. [00:51:56] Speaker C: That's literally the first thing. Does your ad carry allow you to have a choice? [00:52:00] Speaker B: Are you playing Varys champions with a choice? Varys is the. The big one right now. I don't think lethality Jinn is currently very good, but there have been times in the recent past where he had a lethality path. Miss Fortune has a lethality path. That's fine. So there are a few champions that actually have different itemization choices. But let's assume Varus because Varys literally can use all three. When should you go lethality? On Varyse? [00:52:34] Speaker C: The lethality one is the easiest one option. And that is they are in a squishy team. You do not need to be the one who kills a tank. [00:52:43] Speaker B: Yep. So lethality is just. They're all squishy. You want to keep your distance and play at max range. You're just going to poke them out and then 100 to zero people with lethality because it's big one shot hits, but low DP's. I'm going to go to on hit next because on hit is the opposite end of the spectrum. On hit is what you play for Varus right now it's kind of the default. But the what on hit excels at the most is killing tanks. On hit shreds tanks. That's because on hit gets items like Blade of the ruined king that do percent Max health damage and gets access to terminus. That gives mixed shred. And Varus does both physical and magical damage always. [00:53:34] Speaker C: And they've put a lot of effort into expanding the amount of ad carries that do slightly mixed damage. So terminus has become better and better on more and more champions. [00:53:43] Speaker B: Yep. Kog'maw would be another champion in the same vein of he just goes on hit and it lets him just absolutely shred tank super fast. So that leaves crit in kind of a middle ground. Crit is when you need to be the guy. Crit is I need to kill everyone. Tanks and squishies because Crit is significantly better than on hit against most squishy champions. When you're at three items, it's worse than on hit at killing tanks, but not by a ton. And Crit usually has higher ad, so your spells do more so it's closer to lethality and playstyle. [00:54:27] Speaker C: Here's a good example of a team comp in which the best option is Crit. They have either a tank or a enchanter support. Okay, they have, obviously, the enemy ADC. They have a enchanter heavy mid, someone like Orianna who's keyed to try and keep someone survive another tanker enchanter, jungler, someone like either Sejuani or you've got our tree boy, Ivern. And then another bruiser in the top lane. He can be Renekton. It can be a full tank. Someone who's not like a Yasuo or a yone. That is a team in which you need to be the crit. No one else will be able to take out everything in that team unless. [00:55:16] Speaker B: Your team comp has a whole bunch of percent magic health damage champions like brand, for example. In which case, maybe you can still go on hit for dealing with the tanks. Like, it's all subjective. Crit is very much when you are the primary damage source of the team. [00:55:36] Speaker C: Yes, that too. [00:55:39] Speaker B: At least for champions that actually have choice in the matter. A lot of ad carries you go crit. Cause that's the only build that your champion functions with. [00:55:49] Speaker C: Same thing with on hit. Vayne pretty much is an exclusively on hit champion. Kog'maw is almost an exclusively on hit champion. [00:55:56] Speaker A: Yeah, unfortunately, like, I feel like ADC's get the short end of the stick when it comes to customization options. Like, they don't get a whole lot of choices where your solo laners can build a. Any path they want to. Do they want to be. Do they want to be bulky, for that matter? [00:56:13] Speaker B: I have two different builds. I go on nocturne. If the enemy team is squishy with low Cc, I play lethality nocturne, which plays differently than the regular nocturne build, which is very bruiser heavy with like hex plate and stridebreaker, and then like, hysterics. My goal as lethality nocturne is find whichever of their carries is squishy and on their own, isolated and ult on to them and kill them instantly. Sometimes that's the correct play when your bruiser nocturne. But sometimes they'll straight up kill you if you try to do that. Your job is to turn off the lights, wait for a fight to be already in progress, and then join in the fight and make them panic and have to react to you when they can't see properly. It's a very different game. Any other thoughts on build diversity, when to go one versus the other on a general sense. [00:57:16] Speaker C: Not that I can think of. Pretty much everything would be. It's almost exclusively based on what they do. [00:57:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't really have much more to add because like I said, it's hard for ADC's to go off of that path. [00:57:34] Speaker C: There is another situation. It is when you are so far ahead that your goal is to end the game quicker. Sometimes if you get five kills in ten minutes, now your goal is I'm going to go immediately into that lethality items that I can kill you faster. [00:57:53] Speaker B: That was the lethality Renekton I played against the other day, he got super fed and snowballed and just built lethality instead of normal Renekton items. We killed him in 2 seconds anytime we caught him out, and that did happen because he wasn't that good, but he was so far ahead that he was able to just force plays because he could one shot. Most of us, if we mispositioned even slightly, which a normal Renekton is not. [00:58:18] Speaker A: A one shot champ, like Pantheon plays like that, too. Like if he gets far enough ahead, he's not going as sundered sky black cleaver build. No, he's going lethality and or with a crit item and just killing you. But so that's just the fun of playing mid champions and top champions. [00:58:37] Speaker B: Yeah, of course, the, the other answer is just play lucian top. Then you can build on hit, you can build crit, you can build lethality, you can build AP, you can build enchanter. Doesn't matter. You're lucian top. You'll win the game. And there it is with that. This has been episode 450 of the four words podcast reminder. Discord link is in the episode description. Come join the discord, come hang out, come talk with us. We're gonna figure out a game night for people to play games with us. It's gonna be a good time. Write in the forwardspodcastmail.com. we need questions. Write in so we can answer your questions on the show. I've been Jack Soman, four pillow pet, four mic of many names. Have a great night. [00:59:23] Speaker A: Good night. [00:59:24] Speaker C: See you guys around. [00:59:27] Speaker A: 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 wardspodcastmail.com dot so we can answer them live on the show. That's the four [email protected].