Episode Transcript
[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. And you're listening to the Forwards podcast, here to help you move forward and lead.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to episode 451 of the four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got free shooter.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Hello. I'm a mid laner now.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get to that. I'm gonna give you a storytime moment to explain that one. But first, we've also got Mike of many names.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: I'm still here.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Indeed. Alright, guys, we are the Forwards podcast. Come join the discord. We have a discord link is in the episode description. Come join it. Come hang out, ask questions, play games. It's a great time.
Shout out to Codex, ninja, pillow, pet, and Robogon for supporting us at the shoutouts here on Patreon. Thank you, guys. We could not do it without you. You are paying for our hosting, and we appreciate you.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Speaking of which, we have a Patreon. Head on over to patreon.com, the forwardspodcast to support the show. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month will get you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show, which sometimes is actual prep, and sometimes it's just us shooting the shit about whatever the hell we feel like.
And $10, we'll get you that exclusive feed and you'll get shouted out every episode for as long as you maintain the subscription.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: You want to hear our thoughts on the world championships that have been going on.
That was about half this pre show.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, this pre show is literally us discussing the swiss stage that just happened. I'm actually going to be putting a spoiler warning on the episode that there is discussion of the world championship, so I don't accidentally spoil it for any patrons that haven't fully watched the games yet.
Last but not least, listeners, we did not get any questions this past week. I am disappoint. Send us your questions to theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer them on the show again. That is theforwordspodcastmail.com.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: And every single site, every site, every email, everything four is always spelled out f o u r. Yes.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: All of these links are also in the episode description?
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Okay, free shooter. Why are you a mid laner now? What happened? What happened to our marksman boy.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: So I have this story goes back to 2017 when I first played on a fives team in an amateur league.
Since then, I've been kind of off again on again playing on fives teams, mostly just subbingdez. Cause, like, after that, I kinda got a job at weird hours, so I couldn't really play full time and scrim.
But we decided we were getting the band back together. But when the team leader put out the call, because he's had multiple teams, we kinda had to figure out who was going where. And it just kinda worked out with the divisions all of us are in. Like, there's a better mid laner than me, but he had hit diamonds, so, like, we didn't all wanna play in a Diamond League. Just kind of worked out that I was, like, with everyone's primary and secondary, I just got my mid as my secondary and everyone else got their primary, so we did that. So I'm going to be playing a lot of mid lane over the next probably six months.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: I just find it hilarious because we have crush. Went from being an ad carry main to a jungle main. You've now gone from being an ad carry main to a mid main. And I went from being a mid jungle main to playing ad carry for, like, 50 games this season.
I know how you are.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: Mid was my original main role, but this was, like, I probably switched to ad carry nine or ten years ago at this point. Like, when Jyn came out, whenever that was, that's when I switched to being an ad carry maintained.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: God, has shin been out that long?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: It's probably been eight. I would conservatively eight years.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: But you are correct. January 21, 2016.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Yeah, so in, like, a couple months it'll be nine.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that was bad.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that's around because it was. I played mate, but, like, as, like, my friend group of league players was still growing at that point.
Everyone played mid and we were just trading off constantly. But no one was, like, a dedicated ad carry player. Jhin came out and I already really liked Ezreal as well. So I was like, you know what? I like this Jhin champion. I'm just gonna start playing ad carry every game. Like, you guys trademark. It's one less person. And then I got stuck with it.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: I can't believe Jhin's already been in the game for eight years. I feel so old. He feels like a newer champion to me.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: That was me when the Aatrox rework happened because that was the first champion that got reworked, who came out after.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: I started playing to be fair, like, he is still a relatively new champion in the grand scheme of things because he just don't release very many now. Yeah, like, he's still, I think, in the newer third.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Most of the first hundred came out in, like, the first five years.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: The first, like, two years.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: They used to be on the 40.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Initial ones in 2009, and then it was, like, every three weeks, there'd be a new champion. So we were at, like, 100 champions within the first couple years.
All right, let's actually talk about this patch, by the way. It's a patch week episode, or patch 1420 came out this week. And there's a decent amount of changes. This is clearly a follow up on a big patch patch, but, like, there's still a decent amount in it.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Do the big changes first or last?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Oh, I'm gonna make you talk about something first because you're leaving marksman roles, but you've picked marksman as your things to talk about.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Cause, like, no changes.
Okay, so I'll start off with the one that didn't get changed enough. And that's actually Jin, who we were just talking about.
He got a very minor hit to his ad growth from 4.7 to 4.4. Appropriate. And the minimum damage on his curtain call at ranks two and three went down by. I don't want to do the math, but, like, 50 ish.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: A meaningful amount. Yeah, that's part of the nerf.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: It's not enough. This champion's still stupid strong. You should still be playing it. I bounce when I'm playing bot. When I get it. I still bounce between banning him and banning Draven. But it's mostly just like, you know, if someone else on my team's banned Kai'sa, I'll ban Jin because he. That's my pick in the jin. But, yeah, he's too strong.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: I ban Jin because he's in a quarter of all games.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: True.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: And he's.
He is in a quarter of all games, whereas Draven is in 5% of games.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Holy shit.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Jin is in 27% of games, and Kaiser's in 32% when I play.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Popular.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: It's been for a while. Whenever Jin is good, he's popular, like, because he's one of those champions that, like, there's not really another champion like him. So he has a lot of mains, but, like, he's also not that bad to pick up. But it's. So when Jhin is good, the Jin mains play a shit ton of jin.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Also to be fair. Like, you don't have to learn how to orb walk with Jhin. The attack speed is just too slow.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Yep, true.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: And I will say I still think Kai'sa is the best ad carry in the game. Like, she should be getting banned more. But I think just so many people like playing her that like, neither ad carry wants to ban her cause they'd rather play her.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yep, that's why I don't ban her.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Is she still the highest Pentakill champion in the game? I think she's still high in the.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Game.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: In 32, almost 33% of games. Basically a third of all games.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Literally in a third of all games. It's absurd.
All right, so Jin got a love tap. He's still strong as shit.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Mike, it's your turn.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Alright, well, let's continue with the ad carry trend. And I've got some quirky talking to do.
And for the most part, actually the entirely, it's very minor buffs.
They went from his q being 80 mana permanently to 60, growing to 80. They did a very, very minor tweak to the mana cost with Gatling gun where it starts at 50 and then it ends at 70 as opposed to starting at 50 and ending at 90. And then they added an ad ratio to his Valkyrie.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: They really want you to use Valkyrie to damage people. And I don't understand it. I don't need you have to dash over people to deal damage with it pretty much.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: And I'm pretty sure it leaves a little. That thing on there, right?
[00:09:52] Speaker C: It's more. I think it like, it disincentivizes people just like chasing after him if it does more damage, but like, it's not really long enough to matter that much.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: They want you to play Corki more like people have been playing ezreal aggressively. You want to be putting your Valkyrie in. You want to be going in with dark ang shift to maximize his damage. And, you know, now that. Now that pro has pretty much put Corki aside, they're allowed to buff him.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: And I get that. But the way to do that is to buff Gatling gun, not to make Valkyrie do meaningful damage because that just means you do more damage when you're running away from people.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah, but their buffs, I think are the right way to do current quirky buffs mess with the mana, not with the damage outside of the valk damage because this gives him a significant amount more actual poke at early levels. 20 off early ranks of fast bomb is really big.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: All right.
My changes kind of tie in together so I'm going to make free shooter talk about Caitlyn first.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: Okay. Caitlyn got buffed, and the changes to items that Jax is going to talk about are bigger buffs to Caitlin than what these buffs are. But these buffs are still significant.
Her attack speed ratio went up. It was 0.61. It's now 0.625, which it's not a lot, but it's meaningful because, you know, when the numbers are that bad, adding anything helps. And Caitlin, on purpose, has bad attack speed ratios.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: But I think that actually puts her basically on, like, the average for attack speed ratio now. Yeah, she just has a low base.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Attack speed of and, like, it's noticeable, like, at higher levels of, like, oh, I'm actually, like, auto attacking, like a normal ad carry now and then. Her Q piltover peacemaker.
The damage to secondary targets, it was only 50% of the initial damage. It's now 60% of the total damage, which is significant because it means you kill the backline minions a lot sooner than you used to, I believe. It's like if your Q is Max and you have a finished item, you're one shotting the backline.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: I think so. So explain to our listeners what secondary targets means in the context of Caitlyn Q.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Right, so when you fire Caitlin's Q, it passes through everything it hits the first thing it hits, whether it's a champion, a minion, whatever, takes the full 100% damage. Everything else takes the secondary damage.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Okay, I just wanted that explained. Cause secondary damage. Sounds like an esoteric thing. It really is. Just the pass through damage.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker C: Good call.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Okay, so as free shooter alluded to, I'm gonna cover some item changes that happen this patch. These affect basically every ad carry building crit items. Cause almost all of them are using one of these. But it especially affects champions like Caitlyn and Jhin that are fairly heavily bound to collector, and champions like Xayah, Lucian, etcetera, that are pretty heavily bound to essence Reaver.
So essence Reaver got its cost reduced by 250 gold, and for that, it lost five ad in five ability haste, yuntal wild arrows, that item everyone forgets about, also got its cost reduced by 250 gold. It lost five ad and ten proc damage. Yoon Tal, I think, is still not that great. It's very situational, but at least it's now very situational at a much cheaper cost.
The collector is honestly the biggest winner of this. It got 450 gold cheaper, and it lost ten ad.
For context, a longsword is ten ad, and it is 350 gold. The item is literally more gold efficient than before, no matter how you look at it.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: And.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: And there's a secondary benefit that all three of these items got. They don't have BF sword in their build path anymore.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: Yup.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Which is enormous because it means you can back 875 golds to buy a pickaxe and have a meaningful power spike in the laning phase. Instead of having to save up 1300 gold in one shot for a BF sword and being in a power trough in the laning phase, every single marksman that had to first item. One of these is just stronger because of these changes.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: And these are two really popular first items collector is really commonly taken by people who have crit builds and anyone who has mana deficiencies ever wants to get an essence reaver in that build.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Yep. I think. I actually think this is enough to push smolder into essence Reaver builds again, making it this much cheaper. And this is enough to make Xayah is genuinely good again because she can actually two item spike on 6000 gold plus boots. Whatever she spends on boots, which is the pace she needs to be at to be good like this is enormous.
And riot wants these changes to impact these champions. But because their current builds don't go crit until third and fourth item, they don't. Yasuo and Yone got buffs as well. Both of them. Their crit damage on their QS now matches their basic attacks. They do 90% of a normal champion's crit damage, which is the trade off for them getting tons of crit from one item.
And then Yasuo also got extra bonus armor penetration based on his crit from his ultimate. If you werent aware, Yasuo's ultimate gives him armor penetration, but only based on his critical strike chance. So the bruiser yasuos that you see are not getting any armor penetration from their ult.
The problem with both of these champions is that the best build for them still on this patch is blade of the ruined king stridebreaker shieldbow. Theyre not getting any crit until third item, and that severely inhibits how much those buffs are actually meaningful. But late game, they're even scarier.
So have fun with that. I've been enjoying it on yone.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: They're still going grasp even with the grasp nerf, right?
[00:16:44] Speaker B: They are since that wasn't in any of our lists. Yeah, grasp got changed. It's now more about healing based on your max health and less about increasing your max health.
The intention being if you have more than 3000 max health it is a buff. If you have less than 3000 max health. It is a nerf.
So buffer tanks basically.
And set, I suppose.
[00:17:17] Speaker C: Boo yah.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Boo.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: Fuck.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Set. I hate that champion.
Alright, I said my piece. I talked about items, I talked about the wind shitters.
When do you guys talk? I think it's Mike's turn.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Okay, um.
I'm gonna keep going with champions for a bit here. I'm gonna talk about Poppy real quick. Cause I think they have fundamentally changed where Poppy's base role is with one change. But she has more than one change.
Her passive gotten her cooled on from 13 scaling with her just after ultimate from one, seven and 13 from 13 down to seven. From 16 to eight. So it's harder to proc her passive in lanes, which is important because she gets.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: She gets it less often. It is the same difficulty to proc just. Yes, she gets less of them.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: It's a incredibly important for trade pattern in top lane and as a support, that's how she does her early poking. And then she lost ten base damage on her heroic charge, which I believe.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Is to both the initial damage and the wall slam. So it's 20 if you're hitting a wall.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: But the big change, the very potent change for her is the damage cap for monsters on her. Qemena went from 30 to 150 to 50 to 170 per proc because Q hits twice. So baseline, that's a 40 damage increase at level one.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Yep, at all levels that's. Yeah, but the level one is where it matters the most.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Fair.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: She is a primary support or primary carry jungler now that this is where you play her first.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: I already felt like she was better in jungle than support, although I know that people disagree with me on that. This heavily skews her towards jungle. This is a buff to jungle and a nerf to top and support.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: It's a very minor nerf to jungle with the heroic charge one. And your passive isn't really important at all in the jungle.
But it's a huge buff for your clear speed, which is her main fault is clear speed because she has amazing ganks, amazing utility.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: The biggest problem has always been clearing and that's a huge buff to clear speed.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Incidentally, don't build sundered sky when you're jungling on her. Build a sunfire first, then you can go sundered sky if you want.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: It's almost never appropriate to rush damage as poppy first, unless you are like so far ahead. You have three or four kills. But by the time you go back and no one is being a tanky person. Your job is to be the tank.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: You're the wall in between them and you.
I love t force poppy. T force poppy is not where you go.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: No.
All right, then. You guys have some item changes to wrap up the patch. So free shooter, talk to us about the dot items.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So faded ashes and liandries both got some minor nerfs to them, and it's both to the damage per second to monsters. So faded ashes went from 25 to 20, and liandry's the cap went from 50 to 40. Um, this is just further trying to push some of the more oppressive AP junglers out. So, like, you know, Zyra, brand are the biggest offenders. Um, not trying to nerf those champs directly, but, um, just trying to lilia lily as well. Yeah. Um, but, like, lily is supposed to be a jungler. Zyra and brand are, like, fair.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Zyra and brand were changed a while back to become junglers, and the faded ashes was part of that. They are supposed to be junglers now.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: I don't know if they're supposed to be.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: So. Over the top.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Like, Zyra should not be the highest clear speed champion in the game.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah, they essentially items made them, made these type of champions the highest clearers in the game by far.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Like, I think I saw last week somebody clear their entire jungler as Zyra go over, get a gank off in bot lane before crab spawned.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yep.
Zyra done perfectly, I think, had, like, a two minute 42nd six camp clear. That's change way too fast.
Like, and this change doesn't even affect that. Her clear is still psychotically fast for the first clear.
But, yeah, these items were basically, like, they were warping the AP jungler meta because you had to play an AP jungler that wanted a liandry's amumu.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: That's the jungler I played recently. That champion. So much fun.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Who is pretty good too.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Yes. And amumu builds Liandry's because the clear speed buff is way too high not to. The only magic damage junglers that don't build Liandry's right now are Evelyn cause she's an assassin, and Diana, cause she's an assassin, is fucking broken.
[00:22:58] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: Yes, because she's an assassin. But in her case, it's cause her passive has a 300% monster damage multiplier. So she goes nashers instead of.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Yeah, makes sense.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Like, she's a very special case. Like, Diana's clear speed after getting a Nashers is the highest in the game.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: I think it becomes pretty nasty with that every three hit proc going insane.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: So yeah, hopefully Brandon Zyrus specifically and to a lesser degree, amumu, maokai and every other builds a liandry's jungler you've seen be a little less impressive.
Makai is a champion, and his jungle builds often included a liandry's for clear speed or I've been seeing people other than me play jungle Mordekaiser recently and he goes, Liandry's for clear speed.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Karthus doesn't need the extra clear speed with it, but I mean, he still wants it. It's one of his best items.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: He still builds it everywhere.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: The only other AP jungler that wouldn't would be Nidalee.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: And even knew there was right now.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: And if you're listening to this podcast.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Oh, I guess Nunu as well. I forgot.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Nunu is not an AP jungler. He is a tank who sometimes builds AP. That is different.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: Tell that to the nunus against me in my game that try and just one shot me with snowballs all game. I hate that champion so much. And I'm so mad I got picked in pro because now I just am seeing it more and I hate that champion.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: It was such a good game too, Mike.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: I'm just gonna point out, three of her five winningest builds include a liandry's within the second item on Nidalee.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Oh, that's disgusting.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: That's how strong these items were. And that's after the Nerfs.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: So I'm glad they got a nice tap down. Now, Mike, you wanna talk about the other half of mage items?
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So the other half of mage items is.
I lost my place. Hold on, gotta get that back up. Here we are.
And the burst items were way out of control. Yeah, they. They buffed Ludens and storm surge way too high, so storm surge, much simpler. Buff nerf to it. They took the AP down from 95 to 90 and squall damage from 150 with a 15% ap to 125 with a 10% ap raw damage nerfs. And it needed it. That burst was disgusting. Now, the other item that, like, if you could get it as a burst mage, you wanted it. Ludens.
Ludens has a much healthier playstyle. Now, the fire damage initially goes up from 64% AP to 75 5% DP. But the repeated fire damage, so the extra little bursts went from 50% to 20% of that initial damage.
And I want to max single target damage got massively dropped.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: So I want to explain that. Cause I think a lot of people don't know how Ludens works. Basically, Ludens has an isolation mechanic built in. It has six hits that it deals. If there's six targets around, then it deals the full damage to each target. If there's one target, then it does full damage once and then reduced damage five times.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: And obviously, as I was just saying, it has a cap on how much damage it can do to that single target, which also got very heavily dropped. 60 damage off of its base and then another 4% off its ap ratio.
These are big burst nerfs and they needed to happen.
There's still some pretty disgusting burst AP items out there. Lich Bane is one of them that didn't get touched. But, like, these were probably the two most built. Cause Ludens is in almost every build path that you want, that needs mana, and storm surge is in every build path that just wants to explode.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: And unfortunately, this doesnt address the core problem of Ludenzov. It just has massively more ap than the other AP mana options to where if you need a mana item and you are a burst champion of any kind, whether its an assassin, a control mage, doesnt matter. You must build Ludens. I feel like Ludens is near mandatory on Ziggs, for example, which is someone who should not be bound to burst assassin type items because it's just way more ap than the alternatives. Yep.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: To give it your perspective, it's 20 base AP.
Almost higher than the next option.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yep, exactly.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Counting archangels. Passive. But almost no one builds archangels for burst. They build it for defense.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: And almost anyone who's building it is using it for the tier and not for archangels.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:28:03] Speaker C: I play hui. You do it for both.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, archangels technically is a higher ap item because you just have more ap because of the mana conversion.
However, it doesn't give you any of the damage benefits of Ludens.
[00:28:22] Speaker C: Sure.
Yeah. Luden's still good, but definitely deserve nerf.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Absolutely.
All right, free shooter, you gave us a trinket tip. You want to share it with the class?
[00:28:43] Speaker C: Yeah. So we've definitely given this tip before, but seeing as I've been playing more mid, and specifically, I've been playing a lot of Neeko. Um, when you're playing against Niko and she is not on the minimap on your screen, when the minion wave comes in, count the minions.
Because every single game I have played Niko at least once, I have disguised myself as one of the range creeps walked up and gotten my full combo off of my lane opponent because they weren't paying attention and didn't realize there was four of them. So if you're against Aniko, count the minions.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Also Niko players, if you ever get a chance to do this, it is the funniest thing in the world.
Kill a small raptor, let the raptor camp reset, or a small wolf. Same idea applies then once it's reset, go and be the replacement of the camp. Go be the minion, the monster you killed. It is so funny. You'll basically get a kill on any squishy jungler when they go to clear that camp because they'll often junglers typically use their movement skills to get into camps to clear them faster.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: It's the funniest thing in the world. Nico as a champion could be a never ending trinket tip discussion the amount of intricacies that are within her kit are one of the highest in the game. We could keep talking about interesting things about her forever. The one downside to Jax's thing is when she's a jungle creep, she takes increased damage from jungles.
Yeah, so you better pop that burst quick.
[00:30:20] Speaker C: The one other, which I think with Niko, which is when you're playing her, I think this is more known when you send out your clone. If you tap b to start a recall, the clone will do the full recall animation and even stay out longer than its timer so you can use it as like a pseudo ward for 8 seconds.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Yep, it's pretty silly. All right, let's get to some listener questions.
These were sent in a couple weeks ago because again, listeners, we did not get any questions this past week right into the four wardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
So Leon is the one who wrote in and Leon writes, what should I be doing in this situation? I'm Ain jungle. The other team has a strong split push fighter champion that excels in a two v one, something like Nasus, Fiora, Illaoi, Tryndamere, etcetera. Say we already have enough damage on the team and we need more cc and utility on the team. Should I pick a fighter or assassin jungler to stop the enemy? I could pick Shaco and tilt top with an early gank. Otherwise I can pick a tank to round out the team. If top loses, we end up losing the game because Im often forced to either match the losing lane one v one or be forced to gank the losing lane. Then even if we lose the two v one, the game is pretty much over. There's even games where I put the enemy top behind only for them to still dominate the game.
What are macro decisions I should be making and when should I pick tank or fighter or assassin in solo queue?
[00:31:46] Speaker A: There are a lot of answers to these questions. The main one really is do you have a primary carry on your team?
If yes, that should be the person you try and focus your attention towards.
Primarily. If you have a very good ap scaling, like, I don't know, Ryze scales, incredibly. Cassiopeia scales, incredibly. They're good gank targets. If you have an incredible bot scaler, kai'sa, they're great gank targets.
Your goal should be as a jungler to put your team ahead as much as possible. Most of the time, that's going to be ganking for the person who scales the best.
You can't always bail out a top lane that's really bad in a two v one. But the situation with the fighters on top side, a lot of that depends on what your team has into it. If you've got Nasus and you're facing, your team has, I don't know, Darius or something, because we love pillow pets. Darius over here, that might still be a good lane to go into. And Gank Darius ahead is real scary. But if you've got, like, an orn on top side, that's going to be a losing lane. They need to know their goal isn't ever to win fights. Their goal is to hold.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: More importantly, that is going to eventually be a losing lane. Ornn can destroy most of these champions early and even mid game, but he will always fall off in the one v one in the side lane. Or is a team fight tank?
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Now, what should you pick in these situations? Again, a lot of that really depends on your total team composition. If your team has a ton of damage and you need cc and utility, I would always go for a CC utility jungler.
Sejuani Skarner, Maokai.
These are champions that are always useful, even from massively behind. They can get things done quickly, and they have a surprising amount of damage out of nowhere.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Yep.
I would say the answer is always gonna be, you should play someone with CC. If you have plenty of damage in mid and bot already as the jungler, you don't need to be a third carry.
But what kind of CC that takes place? Like, sometimes the correct answer is gonna be, play Diana. She has CC. Her ult pulls everyone in and vacuums them. She also blows people the fuck up.
Sometimes it's gonna mean play hecarim and dive the backline. His ult is cc, his e is CC.
But you're there to be another damage source. Sometimes it's going to mean you are the primary engage. You need to play something like amumu or Sejuani and your job is to start the fights.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: I think that last thing is the important part. Your team should have some form of engage on it. If you don't have a form of engage, you need to probably provide it. This is. This is not like a bard can sort of do it like an engage with this little thing. That's not really an engage. Same thing with Braum. A lot of these things are more disengaged, even though they have cc and utility in their kit.
Ornn is a very heavy engage champion. You don't need another engage with an Ornn. But if you've got, oh, I forgot the champion name, continue.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Well, what I was going to say is, and the reason you need engage is those split push champions.
Their win condition is to stay in an isolated one v one and have their team not die while they win the game.
[00:35:34] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: You need to be able to have tools to engage onto the remaining four with your four, while your top laner, probably, maybe mid laner, depending on the game state, holds as best they can against the split pusher, they might die. But if the split pusher tower dives them and kills them while your team kills their four with your four, you still win that fight. You may now have to back and stop their split pusher, but you win the fight.
[00:36:05] Speaker C: You know what is who's a great jungler in this situation?
Nocturne, because you can hover between both sides and make the decision on who to help.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Even if you're not going to the split pusher, they're still going to back off because they don't know that for the first couple seconds.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Correct. With. With Nocturne, the build path on that determines whether or not you're a primary or a secondary engage.
So that's another bit of things. Sometimes you don't have to make a.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: Decision in champ select.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. On Nocturne, you look at it and go, oh, we have lots of damage on our team. I guess I'm playing a game where I go stridebreaker and Sterax and I'm kind of like the primary. Dive in and start the fight, or you go, oh, we have a lot of CC on my team and they're squishy, but we don't have a ton of burst. I guess this is a game where I'm going lethality. Like, you get to make that choice after the fact. On Nocturne, I think Nocturne is the perfect answer for this.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: This is the first time worlds is giving me an answer that I think is great for this. There have been so many ezreals played at worlds that people just couldn't kill because they couldn't get on top of them. Nocturne is the answer there. You can't run from that. He just follows you.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yep. It's an answer we've actually seen at worlds quite a bit. I know last week we literally said don't copy what you see at worlds, but it's the understanding of why they're picking things is when you can copy them.
All right, any other thoughts for jungle selections and decision making regarding split pushing side laners?
[00:37:44] Speaker C: I will say just not to this question specifically, but to the listeners. Ask us questions like this, of like, hey, this exact situation, we love answering these, like, and if you have something like this come up, like this is bread and butter question, we will answer these all day long.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: Especially like Leon, I greatly appreciate this is clearly something you encountered in a specific game that prompted this question, but you have generalized the question for us so we didn't have to. Like, I actually really do appreciate that you've narrowed down the the category of top laner instead of picking a specific champion. You've said you have enough damage on your team without naming the champions that you have on your team. So you've, you've laid the groundwork for it to be a broad, like help guide you to the right decision question instead of a hey, I had this game, what did I do wrong? Yeah, if you have a hey, I had this game, what do I do wrong? Join the community discord and post it. We have channels specifically for that. You can post clips from your game. You could just post the match info and ask for feedback.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: There is one more thing we can talk about with this one, and that is really that top laner is your top laner is probably going to end up losing in the late game.
They're going to probably end up being because this is solo queue, I'm assuming they're going to be a little bit toxic if you haven't been helping them out.
Your goal there, if you have to help them out, isn't to win the lane, it's to keep people alive.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: It's to keep people from tilting. Yes, I I am always so annoyed when the team is like ten and four and those four deaths of the top laner. But we have ten kills and like our ad carry and our mid laner are fed as fuck multiple thousands of gold ahead of our opponent. And the top laner is playing a team fight champion like Ornn and they throw a tantrum and rage quit the game because they're not personally doing well. It's like really? My guy? Really?
[00:39:47] Speaker C: Yeah. It's annoying.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Yeah. The other answer to this question is if he is someone who is tilting off the face of the earth, you may need to put your time up there just to try and keep his mental going.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah. As much. As much as it is the wrong play in the actual game, it's often the right play to make sure the game doesn't become a four V five.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: Yep. And r1. Quick more thing I want to touch on on this question because we touch on of like in general when to pick assassins in solo queue. I'm not a huge fan of picking assassins out of the jungle unless you have a ton of Cc on your team already. Like you have a tank top and like a Lissandra mid or something.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Yes, that's what I was gonna say is you have CC on the support, like an Alistair Braum, something like that. You have CC on the mid laner, malzahar, Lissandra, et cetera, and a teamfight tank top lanere. Those are the times that assassins shine in solo queue. That's when you play blue king, you play kha'zix, you play Evelyn, you play Rengar, and you just steamroll the enemy.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
Your team has utility and you can see that from the get go. You need to help bring up the damage numbers. There are a couple of them, and there are a lot of times when it's useful.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Yeah, don't. Oh, I don't know, say you have a MF, Ash bot lane and Aurora Toppin and Echo mid. Maybe that's not the game to pick graves.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: That's also the game where the enemy team has that picks the graves anyway and then steamrolls my team because all three lanes win and it doesn't matter what they drafted.
[00:41:20] Speaker C: That would have happened if the MF didn't rage quit and then we won the game cause it was a four V five.
I was Lissandra, I was the only one with hard Cc on basically either team.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: Yep, we had a belvef.
Oh God, I believe it. Alright, lets get one more question in here. This one comes from Prince of winners, whos written to us several times recently. Prince of Winters writes heres a few game design and theory crafting questions reducing item base stats is a welcome change. However, a consequence is many items dont give more base stats than their components, causing many items to not be as gold efficient if you dont take their passives into account. For example, Blade of the ruined king at 40 ad now is only 10% more attack speed and 3% more lifesteal than its base components. How do you feel about this? Should fully completed items be 100% gold efficient?
[00:42:13] Speaker C: Depends on their passives. Yeah, Orc has a very strong passive that makes up for the lack of additional stats.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: Yup. But Blade of the Ruined king's passive in particular. A lot of people don't realize that percent current health damage that it deals you life steal from that.
It's really strong.
A ton of the power of Bork is tied into the percent current health damage and the slow that it also provides you over the components.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Having 100% gold efficient items is probably a poor decision as as the health of the game because it's not going to be a perfect way to evaluate secondaries. There's no way of properly evaluating how much gold and extra effect costs.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: All right, counter argument. Items that are more than 100% gold efficient are just opdental. I think every item should just be 100% gold efficient and then whatever its passive does, that is the actual reason you want that item over a different item.
Thats my opinion on how the game should be designed is even stuff like Infinity edge, its 70 80 cool. You should be buying 70 ad worth of items and the crit worth of items and then you turn it into ie because you want the crit damage passive.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: So, so from the components it's 100% gold efficient.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: Yes, that is how I would design.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: The game as opposed to having a.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: And I would have that before. And I would have that before. Literally every item across the board you are paying the combined cost. And the combined cost obviously varies from item to item for the passive, for what makes that item unique to itself, to wherever. That's what the differentiation is. Because otherwise you look at the system and you're like okay, there's malignants, there's Blackfire torch, there's Ludens companion, and there's archangel staff.
They're all more or less the same thing. They're a chunk of AP, a chunk of ability haster and a chunk of mana. What differentiates them? Well, malignance makes your ult better and more frequent. Ludens procs for extra damage. Blackfyre torch is a burn and Seraph's is a shield.
Those are the distinguishing factors between them.
So that's the part that I want to be actually, like, different.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: The biggest problem based on that is champions do not scale equally with each type of thing. And that is why they can't be perfect across the board in every scenario, because otherwise, champions would have to have more generic effects across the board. You couldn't have someone scaling like the Yasuo windjitter brothers. You can't have people who scale out of control with crit if everything is equally gold efficient.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: You need to have something to help differentiate, especially with the broad roster. So it is a complicated topic, but this is a. This is a highbrow game design topic.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: Yeah, it's one of those of, like, to use an example from, like, some of the recent item nerfs, like Isa first item, you can either go kraken, or you could go.
I mean, you could go bork, or you could go collect.
Typically not still static shift. That's the other one. You mainly go.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:45:52] Speaker C: Because Kaisa doesn't care about critical, so, yeah, not anymore.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: How you might want to know.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: I was going to say I've been considering experimenting with an essence Reaver build and going essence Reaver into more crit marksman.
[00:46:09] Speaker C: Again, I could see it specifically because I know if I'm building a static shiv and I have a Doran's blade, and I'm level nine when I buy the pickaxe towards my next item, that gets me my Q evolve.
That's. I don't think that's the case. If I bought. If I started Kraken, I think I need an extra level or two. And I know for a fact that I have to wait till, like, level 14 to sell my Doran's blade. Cause, boy, did I make that mistake in a game.
So that's an example of, like, or.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: Until you've completed the rage blade. Cause it has more ad than the pickaxe.
[00:46:47] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. So that's, like, an extreme example of, like, champion differences. Like, these minor item like to component to, like, the small number changes mattering a lot on different champions. So, like, the gold efficiency not being an exact way to do it, but I do like the philosophy of, like, just having the stats and then the combined cost is just basically paying for the passive.
I would be interested to see what that would look like for the game. Like, that would be like if the PBE was actually, like, an experimental environment. It would be interested to see if, like, or actually they've done this with like, random game modes of the past of like, hey, here's all these, like, new experimental items or like, rebalanced items to try out in this mode. Like, it would be interesting to see data from that of what that looks like. It'd be a lot of work, and I doubt they would do it because it's probably not great cost benefit, but it would still be interesting to see.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Yup, I just. This is gonna be me going on a tangent briefly.
My second most played game other than league is Path of Exile.
And in Path of Exile, there's like two tiers of items. And if you've played Diablo, you know that there's like set items and unique items and stuff like that that are usually what you're striving for. Those are the goals.
Path of Exile takes a different approach. And that's why I feel like the value in your items in league should be based around the specific unique things they do. Because in Path of exile, unique items suck numerically compared to random items. The point of unique items in Path of exile is the specific effects they offer you. The ones that are just, oh, here's a big ball of stats generally get nerfed if they're actually good. Cause the point is that they want the ones you want your random stats to come from. The rare items and the unique items you're picking for the cool thing they do, like making it so you regenerate health when you take damage or whatever it is in path of exile.
And that's kind of how I feel like league should work is we have, what, three zeal item variants. There's phantom dancer, flicker blades, and rapid fire.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Right now, I don't think there's anymore.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: And you pick phantom dancer for the best raw stats. You pick flicker blades if you want cooldown reduction. And you pick magnifier if you want a range increase.
[00:49:18] Speaker C: Oh, runons the other one.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: Yes. And you pick runons for the. The extra splash damage, basically. So like, you're picking all of them for their different niches.
Phantom Dancer I don't think should exist, frankly. I think you should just have the other three and you're picking do I want the item that gives me cooldown reduction? Do I want the item that helps me clear and fight melee better? Or do I want the item that gives me longer range?
[00:49:43] Speaker C: I hate that they nerfed the move speed because to me, that was the identity of it. Of this is the super movespeed item.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: And it still has more movespeed than the others. It's just, it's a difference of 4%.
[00:49:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: As opposed to it was like it was 7%.
[00:49:58] Speaker C: 7%, yeah. And that it was noticeable.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's where I feel on item design is just, I want each item to do something cool.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: They have had in the past items that are just bricks of stats and almost always they have just been better.
Back when brutalizer was just a piece of ad and some armor penniless, it was too strong. Back when black cleavers were just eighties and some armor pen, you stacked four of them and you won the gunblade.
Gunblade was if you needed AP and ad, you got the gun blade because it had both of them in large amounts.
[00:50:44] Speaker C: There's a reason that they had to make the lethality passive on Dirk unique.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Yep. Because people were literally just stacking serrated Dirks to spike fast.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: So raw stats is actually just almost always better than the secondary effects.
[00:51:01] Speaker C: I think what we're saying is the correct way to play the game is to pick Lucian in a top blade and build six BF swords.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: There you go, I see first.
Alright guys, this has been episode 451 of the Forwards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for free shooter for Micah. Many names.
[00:51:20] Speaker C: Have a great night time questions.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: See ya.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Forwards podcast. If you liked what you heard and you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com, the forwardspodcast to give us some support. We appreciate you and of course listeners, please don't forget to write your questions into the forwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer them on the show.
