[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the four Wards podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, Jerks, and Velcaz. And you're listening to the Forwards podcast, here to help you move forward and lead.
Hello and welcome to episode 452 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. Mike of many names is here.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: How y'all doing?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: And we've got pillow pet.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Hello there, guys.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: We are the Forwards podcast.
We have a discord now. Come join the discord. Come hang out, come play games. It's a great time. We're trying to build it up. We want to see more of you in there. I played games with a couple, listen with just one listener, I think the other day, and I'm looking to do that more. So the link is in the episode description, but please join the discord. Come hang out with us. Come talk about worlds in our esports channel. Come vent about whenever you have a game. Go south, whatever you want to do. We got, we got places for you. And it is a no judgment discord, whether you are iron or master or anywhere in between. You're welcome. Please come hang out.
Some of us do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jackson Pillowpet can be found at Twitch TV pillowpet. And we're still trying to bully Mike.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Into streaming, if I counted rightly. I believe we are three people behind the goal of forcing me to do a stream. So drag a couple of your friends in.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Alright. And of course, shoutout to Codex Ninja, our very own pillow pet, and Robogon for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys. We could not do this without you. Now, if you want to get your name in lights like those three, or just support us in general, head on over to patreon.com. the four Wards podcast, $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month will get your name in lights like Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, and Robogon. Last but not least, listeners, one of you sent in a question this past week. Thank you. We will get to that question later in this episode. But listeners, thats the only one we have in the hopper. We need more questions right into theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
All right, so our first discussion topic. Weve noticed a trend of the questions lately of a lot of people asking about what champions should they play, what champion should they learn? That kind of question. So we thought it would be useful to discuss our own champion pools. What draws us to a champion? How do we decide what champions to learn and play? And initially that sounds like a challenging topic for us to talk about because two thirds of this podcast are people who play everything under the sun.
Yep, but we're still gonna make it work. So to kick us off, I'm gonna hand it over to the one guy who doesn't play 50 champions. A split pillow pet. What draws you to champions? How do you decide what champions you want to play? What was your journey to finding your mains?
[00:03:48] Speaker A: So my journey to go to get to the top lane and deciding what champions I played, starting off with watching Twitch, streamers and solo. Renekton only is the one that I started watching the first time, and we're both bald. So that's what led me to watch him.
But no, honestly, his champion pool, it was just, I enjoyed it listening to him. He explained it why and how and what the champion did, and it was great to watch. So I started picking up some of them first, starting off with Renekton, and it evolved from there to me mainly picking up champions that have two v one potential. Someone that can like hold their own in lane doesn't have to count on a jungle to bail them out and it just go ahead.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: So my question for you then, Pilipet, how did that result in Darius but not Illaoi?
[00:04:48] Speaker A: So I do play Illaoi.
I don't play her a lot because I don't like her early game so much. I feel really weak in the first few levels, but I do enjoy an Illaoi game and I do play her into certain matchups. I like volibear and a couple more, but I'm not the greatest at her, so I haven't really practiced her a lot. Like lately I've been picking up Camille, trying to learn her a little bit more because she's in a good place right now. She's strong, not very good with her yet.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: So then my question then becomes, because you said what drew you was the two v one potential. The potential to not need a jungler. Camille is not usually what I would associate as a two v one champion. Why Camille?
[00:05:34] Speaker A: She's, she's strong in the one v one. Because that's, I mean, that's where she excels. That's her ultimate, creates like a short one v one makes in a little arena.
She's safe. She can use her dash to her jump, her wall jump to engage or disengage.
And her kit is remnant to like a of lot of the champions that I play. An auto attack reset, sustain and a stun with a dash.
And I like those. I like having those three dash cc and sustain. I enjoy all three of those. And the auto attack resets and good at taking towers and it just lets you split pusher, be a split pusher. Which is another thing I apparently am attracted to is split pushing.
Because I. I don't. Couldn't tell you why. It's just the play style that I've always enjoyed. I'm not so good at playing like the supportive roles in the top lane. Like a shin or that role, like a tank. I don't. I don't play a whole lot of tanks, but I will if like, you know, a mundo is fun, but he's more of a juggernaut to me than anything.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: I was gonna say Mundo to me like he's tanky, but he's not a like tank in the same sense of he. He's not a teamfight CC champion.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: He's no orn.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Even Shen, like Shen taunt is huge teamfight CC. He has his protective ult. Like he's a good split pusher. He has a lot of dueling potential. He does damage like Shen does damage.
But I would term him a tank. Whereas I agree, I would put Mundo more in the same category of champions as like Garen.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: If I had to pick right now to only play three champions, I would say for the remainder of my career in League of Legends, it would be Renekton, Darius and Mordekaiser.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: I do not know if I could do that.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: All three of those.
Yeah, I would not be happy with it because I also like to play a different champion every game. But if I had to shrink my pool down to, if I truly wanted to climb and get proficient with three different champions, those would be the champions I would pick. I couldn't tell you why. I just enjoy those three the most.
[00:07:58] Speaker C: That was an interesting point. The three champions that I would only play well, I mean, Viego and Silas would then be there so that I could play other champions.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: That's honestly not a terrible reason.
I like that.
Alright, so well then, Mike, since you and I are pretty similar, let's go back and forth a bit on this one. You and I play fucking everything. Like, we literally play every role. We play way too many champions in every role.
But I do feel like, between the two of us, you definitely specialize more than I do.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Yeah. So I sort of.
Most of the time, I don't take an active role in actively choosing my position. I sort of take, hey, what do people need to fill up? And most of the time, that seems to be either jungle or support, because those seem to be the two positions that people want to play the least. And then within those two positions, I have dozens of champions for each of them that I enjoy playing, but there are some that I distinctly, like enjoy playing more. I have a couple of absolute favorites in each of those roles, sort of based on what they do. Like, if I really want a tanky champion, I usually move towards Leona as a support. If I really want to do an enchanter slash mage, my goal is seraphine.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: I was gonna say, usually when I think about your champion pool, the champions that stand out to me are Senna and seraphine.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: Senna's up there too. Yeah. And then, like, in the. In the jungler, I'm. I'm usually more of a tanky person than I am a, uh. An assassin. So I'll. I'll gear towards volibear.
I'll gear towards, uh, Sejuani.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Is it bad that now I want to see you play kha'zix? Cause I don't think I ever have, not even in all the Arams we've played together.
[00:09:56] Speaker C: That's a shame. I love kha'zix.
It's actually. He's actually in my top ten mastery champions.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Damn.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: I don't have high mastery on a lot of champions because I play way too many different things.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Yes. So go ahead.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: I was just gonna say, I am not a fan of the cockroach.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: I think he's pretty bad currently, but he's fun.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: He has such a different playstyle from so many other assassins. Because you are fortunate, forced to go in there to do anything. So you have to get creative in your pathing, you have to get creative in your decision making, or you have to be able to sit in there and go, I found the one person who's trailing behind everyone else. You're mine, and you have to commit.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: And the difference is, like, every other assassin can dive in the middle of a team and blow someone up if they are ahead.
Kha'zix cannot do that.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: I have a question, and I. It might have been a fever dream. I don't know. Like, remind me, was there a point in Kha'zix patch history where every time he went into a bush, he had temporary stealth.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:13] Speaker C: That was evolutionary on his ult.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: It was a very short time lived time. And I said to this day, like, I'm like, did that happen? Was that a fever dream?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: It was so incredibly broken. If you took Moby boots and you your runes for movement speed in the little ways you could, you could get to a point where you could actually like traverse from bush to bush and cross the entire fucking map without ever being visible.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. You were stupid, invisible and you were fast because you got a teeny little speed boost when you did that as well.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And this was before the, the blue smite that we have now. It would have been even more broken now.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: I'm glad I wasn't just imagining that because like I could just be like, when did this happen and when did it go away? Because it was very quick. Very quick.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: I believe Khazix is still like my number two mastery or number three mastery champion of all time still. And I haven't played him in years because I don't think he's very good.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: When he gets ahead. It's just gross. Just gross. Like, I did not enjoy having a khazix in my game because I just. It's feast or famine and if it's feast, then your game's over.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: A kha'zix that ahead is one of the most terrifying dueling nightmares imaginable. He is incentivized to fight you alone and if you come to him and he's ahead, you're just going to explode.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Wow. Kha'zix has fallen to number four for me. Holy shit. That's wild.
Apparently my stint on Tristana last split pushed her up to number two from number four.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: Ooh, who's three?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: So.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: So even though I'm a top main, Akali is still my most mastery.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Oh my God. Dude. I've just been banning Akali every game. I'm alright. Mini tangent rant.
I hate how reliable Akali's ludicrous damage is.
She basically just has to hit e and if she hits e, basically everything else is hit. Confirmed. And she has the highest burst damage combo in the game of anyone. And it's not close.
Like if she misses e, yeah, she doesn't do a whole lot, but the moment she hits e she just kills you. Fuck it.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Colley for. For context on this, to beat her burst combo, one ability, one q, one e, one combo of ulta and her passive hit, it takes vigor. 1300 or yeah. 1300 Ap. It's like 1375, which is like full.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Late game stacks with multiple kills to amp your stacks up even more. And full build.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Don't listen to these haters, Akali.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Nah, fuck that champion.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: Ever since she got her rework, she has been an absolute balance nightmare. And they never get her right.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Yep, she's.
She's. Her win rate is suppressed by how easy she is to int on.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: I miss being stealthed under towers.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: No, that was broken and should have never existed. I miss when she had healing innate in her kit. I distinctly remember kleptomancy years ago where I had a duel with a maokai where neither of us could deal damage to each other, but I farmed like 300 gold over 30 seconds. Just the two of us beating on each other.
It was glorious. Bring kleptomancy back. Riot.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: I love Klepto.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: I remember Olda Kulli when I could jungle her.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Anyway, this wasn't really supposed to be a trip dad memory lane topic.
Let me just talk about then real quick.
Some of the champions that I currently play and what drew me to them and why champions like Khazix have fallen out of my most played. Even though like if I think he's good, I can still play Khazix just fine. I'm quite proficient at him. I just don't think he's good right now. Same actually. For my most mastery, Kayn is my number one mastery.
I haven't played Kane in any meaningful amount for at least two years.
And the reason is because with the item changes that have happened over the last couple years, I don't enjoy Red Kane anymore. He's extremely feast or famine, which is supposed to be blue cane and not supposed to be red cane as much.
But now it's Red Kane as well. So I just have moved away from him. I'd rather play someone else.
But what drew me to Kane initially? Like, I look at Kane and on the face, he should be a champion. I hate he's an edgelord. He's clearly designed for 13 year old boys to have their shonen power fantasies.
But his kit feels so good to play with. The way you can use his q to skip over short walls, the wall, walking on his e, the ult to dodge things. Everything about Kayn feels phenomenal to play in terms of raw mechanical feel.
And that's why I enjoyed playing Kane. That's a lot of what draws me to champions is satisfying gameplay elements. Cause, like, I'm looking down my list, like Kane, satisfying mechanics. Tristana, when you get the the rocket jump resets on her bomb. It's so goddamn satisfying.
Jax is my namesake, literally. I've been Jax on the Internet for 22 years. Of course I play Jax.
Kha'zix super satisfying kit when he's actually able to use it, when there arent a million effects that reveal him in his ult so that he cant actually play the game.
Kassadin riftwalking everywhere is super fun.
Ezreal all skillshots all the time and he has a blink. I love skillshots.
Yone is kind of the same boat as Kayn. Hes super fun. Mechanically, I dont care about his identity and then it keeps going like almost everyone is either. They solve a frustration of mine like nocturne is in my list.
I hate the time management puzzle of jungle of I always feel like I have camps I need to farm but also my idiot teammates need me. Nocturne solves that. I will ult on cooldown and otherwise fuck them.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: I'm noticing a trend. And you like movement generally.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: I will point out Ziggs is in my list. Morgana is in my list. Malzahar is in my list. Brand is in my list. And none of those are movement heavy.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: You also like heavy skill shots.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah. So each of the two of you have pointed out a champion that, like, really drew you in with the mechanical portion of it. And I've mostly gone with theme or desire. So I'm gonna put a champion of mine that I absolutely love the mechanics of. And I don't get to play her a ton anymore because I don't get to play mid lane a lot. I love Vex.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Vex is so much fun.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Vex is a champion that is such a.
It's. It's not as much of a puzzle, but it's much of a. You can bend a team fight to your will so easily, you can control the battlefield whilst also having a little bit of poke in there. You've got some safety in there. She's just mechanically fun.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Dude. I have won teamfights as Vex by simply landing an ult on the enemy backline and then killing their frontline with my fear while the rest of them try to peel back and protect the ad carry that they assume I'm about to jump on.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: I would say the hardest.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: No, don't need to. We won the fight.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Now, the hardest thing about Vex is knowing when to properly use your passive.
[00:19:28] Speaker C: It's a difficult thing to know how to properly manage the passive, but also knowing how to quickly receive the passive back up being able to properly farm with her without using up too much mana, not having Lee syndrome.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Also, she's a cute goth yordle with hilarious voice lines. Like, what's not to like?
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Oh, her voice lines are great.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: Her first line has some of the.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Best voice lines in the game.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: She has one of the most fun personalities in the game. It really helped that she showed up at like, one of the pinnacles of the time with league with the whole thing with the Shadow Isles event that was going on. That was a really fun time. And then Vex pops up at the very end of it. Oh, so fun.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Let me ask you guys, what if you could pick one champion that you would be like, super proficient with? Like, we'll say top ten in the world in proficiency with this champion. Which champion would you pick? Like, it could be any champion.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Ziggs.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: Viego.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Mine's a little funnier. Mine's Groggus.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Groggus is your funniest champions in the game. I love.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: He's hilarious. I just want to bomba, everybody.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Are you getting the new music fan? Gragas skin? Kda gragas?
[00:20:44] Speaker A: No.
Maybe. Depends. But I. I don't buy skins much anymore. Unless it's an akali skin or a Renekton skin or Darius skin.
I earn them and unlock them in the. Whatever it is through the loot system. Yeah.
[00:21:04] Speaker C: Oh, wow. He looks fantastic with that bandana. Oh, he looks fantastic.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: I want that skin when I haven't. Is it out? I have it.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's out. What? Why gragas?
[00:21:16] Speaker A: I just like his goofy. Like, his trade patterns are just goofy.
And they're like, if someone's dashing at you, you can just belly bump them and just negate it completely.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: See, that's what I love about Gragas is he embodies old league of. Oh, here's this dude in this game where we have fucking like, fox demons and literal dragon gods.
Here's just a dude who's just a drunk fat guy.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Like, I love also.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: He's gonna kick your ass.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Oh, man. Yeah, he's. It's just. He's so strong. He's got such a fun play style. Like, oh, you wanted to move your champion? No, no, thanks. Let me move him for you. And now you're under the tower. And now you're stuck because I belly bumped you.
[00:22:04] Speaker C: He has 14 skins.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: And just the fact that his body slam has prio over basically every other similar ability is just so funny.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: I don't know. An ability that he doesn't have.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Prio over the unstoppable ones. That's it.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Yeah, those do not count.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Right. He has the highest priority of non unstoppable dashes. Basically.
There's a few that will hit him as well, but he still interrupts them.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: His iceborn build with grasp. I hate it. I hate everything about it.
[00:22:39] Speaker C: Well, he's also an incredibly versatile champion. You can build him as a bursmit. You can build him as a pure tank. You can build him halfway in between.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: So to tie us back to our intended topic, why haven't you put in the practice to become a Gragas player?
[00:22:55] Speaker A: I just haven't wanted to put in the effort. I mean, I'm lazy about it. I haven't wanted to go through the normal grind because I refuse to take anything into ranked until I become halfway proficient with it, because I don't want to bring someone else's game down and I don't want to ruin my game. The only time I would consider bringing it into ranked is if I'm doing flexed with it other people, and they're okay with it. Like, I will. I always ask.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: So what I'm hearing is, listeners join the forwards community discord, play force pillow pet to play normal games with you so he can get his Gragas reps in, so he can start bringing it into ranked.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Just let me just. I won't take the trademark slang of Bomba. I just won't. I'll come up with something else, something funny.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Can I just say, the esports fan, trundle just looks like Wukong, like a Ganondorf Wukong a little bit.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: It's his weird hair.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: I'm so sad with how they reworked Trundle and how bland he is now. I miss old Trundle.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: He's boring.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Old Trundle was like, I understand why they had to rework him. No one wanted to play this weird, gross leper troll thing, but the weird, gross leopard troll thing at least had personality. He doesn't have any personality now.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: No, yeah, you're right.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: I really wish they could have found a way to give him, like, an actual personality when they reworked him. And by the way, for listeners who haven't been playing this game for a billion years, Trundle got a rework at one point.
He used to be a weird, like, joke troll character.
He still had more or less the same ult, but the rest of his kit was a little different. His ult and his pillar are the parts they kept, and he was very, very goofy. When I say leper troll. I literally mean, his entire tribe had leprosy. So he took the entire tribe's leprosy onto him through magic and just cursed himself. And his existence was suffering. That was his lore.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Yeah, he had the strongest regeneration of all trolls. And he's like, I can take everything. And then he hated everyone.
Cause having all your leprosy sucks.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: I still use traditional trundle whenever I play trundle so that I can have the old voice lines.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: That is the only trundle skin I have.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: I love it. I don't think that skin's available anymore, but for those who have it, it lets you have the old voice lines where instead of him yelling about how he's the troll king, you get to hear him say that he's not heartless. He loves beatings.
It's great.
So we've talked about what draws us to champions and all that stuff.
Now let's talk about, okay, we've picked who we want to play.
How do we then evaluate the situation we're in? We've picked a champion out of our pool. Our teammates have picked champions. We're up against an enemy. How do we figure out how are we going to win the game, and how does the enemy want to win the game, and how do we prevent them from achieving their goal and we achieve ours?
[00:26:15] Speaker C: The biggest thing is you need to have, like, a fully beyond fundamental understanding of what your champion does, what you are capable of doing.
And this really determines, like, what your role in a team is, how you fight with your team, how you fight against an enemy team, depending on what it is. And, like, if you've. If you're building a team in champion select, does my champion fit our team comp? Does mine counter theirs?
These are like the baseline questions you need to have an answer for before you really start bringing a champion to full potency. So I'll give a good example.
We talked about Seraphine earlier. What is Seraphine really good at? Well, she's pretty good at lane control. She's very good at as a support, being on the forward portion of it and helping push an enemy back. She does a lot of damage for a support.
She's really good at counter engage.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Yes, she is the. Oh, they dove in. Let's fuck them over now. Champion.
[00:27:29] Speaker C: I think there's maybe two champions that are better at counter engage than she is, and both of them don't have the same utility that she brings in her kit because she also has healing and shielding.
So she has a broad skill kit that suits itself more towards being a bit of a lane bully and playing into teams that want to engage on you. That's not to say she can't be an engaged champion, she has quite a long range with some of her abilities.
But you are almost always better served having a team fight into you than you going into them.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: See, by comparison, when you asked me if I could main one champion forever, who would it be? And I said Ziggs. When I'm playing Ziggs my win condition is to siege. Ziggs is godly at sieging. He just wants to throw skill shots, bomb the enemy, prevent them from being able to walk at him in the first place and then take their turrets.
And you mentioned the fundamental understanding when I play Ziggs is where I run into teammates not having this fundamental understanding a lot of the time.
Im sure every listener whos played a handful of games has experienced the situation of enemy. Mid laner roams and gets a double kill bot and they rage at you for not following.
When im playing someone like Ziggs and Im against someone like lets say syndra or echo, you cannot follow that because that person has the freedom to stop in every single bush on the way and then kill me because they I can't see them and they get the jump on me and always win because that's how their champion is designed. So their win condition is to have a successful roam or catch me following them. My win condition is to take their buildings.
So I ping it out and hope that my teammates aren't idiots and sometimes they are. I'll throw an ult if the fight's in river or otherwise close enough. But my goal is to get the turret, to take the turrets down fast and then rotate to their lane and take their turret down too.
And that's kind of the like understanding win cons of what does the enemy want to do matters a lot for not just your own role. Cause if my teammates had understood, oh, Syndra's into Ziggs. She's never gonna push him in and take his turret. She's gonna look to Rome. Ziggs is gonna play too far back to be killed. She's gonna roam on me. I should be mindful of that. And they consistently don't evaluate that.
But that's the. The evaluation is Syndra only has one play there. She can play just a farm game, but that's not what she wants to do. She can roam and look for kills with her. All I would say, like the lead, syndra's oppressive.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: For me, it comes down to in top lane, you're gonna face, I'd say, one of three common themes. You're gonna face a tank, you're gonna face a all in bruiser, or you're gonna face a ranged top laner. At this point, for me, most of the time, I'm always facing an all in someone who's just wanting to fight all the time. And if I see that, if I get the opportunity to pick after them, I'm always going to try myself to play someone who scales, outscales and can do it safely. And my pocket pick for a lot of these all in champions is nasus that I can sit under tower. I got life steal, a good amount of life, steel I can farm safely, I can and Athenae, ten minutes into the game, if I've been hitting my queues and getting my stacks, I can take anyone on in the top lane anymore because wither is the strongest ability in the entire game.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Okay, pillow pet, you're gonna appreciate this. I still remember this game. I played a game years ago where I played Jax, top lane, and the enemy picked Darius.
So you're a Darius player. You know how miserable that is for the Jax early, right?
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I do, too. I'm familiar with that matchup. So I consistently kept a ward in a safe place near my turret so that when I stepped up to farm, I could use counter strike to block Darius's attempts to combo me and then jump away.
And for 15 minutes, Darius had a minor CS lead, but zero kills.
You know what that Darius did?
Tried to turret dive me and it was 15 minutes and he was not ahead because he had zero kills. He died under tower. And that's an example of playing to my wincon. My Wincon was to not feed Darius. Jax will always outscale Darius if he doesn't feed Darius early.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's a complete, like, if that Jax knows what he's doing. It's a, it leans towards jacks always. If the Jacks doesn't know the matchup, great. The Darius does like he can for me. If I go against the Jacks, I wait for the counter strike to come out, I e him as the stuns about to come off come out. And now he's stuck near me and he cc'd for the amount of time that I'm stunned. And I mean, that's just how the play, matchup plays out. It's, it's going to come down to understanding the champion. And I would say a lot of times it comes out to be skill based.
Or like Jax says, play safe. Like, just play safe and you don't have to worry about it being skill based.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I knew that no matter what, eventually I would win. I made sure that he could never freeze the lane on me, and I just kept disengaging. Whenever he tried to pick a fight. It's like, oh, you pulled me. Cool. You get counter struck during the poll animation. So now your w that you're trying to hit me with doesn't work because I have counter strike up. Because you can reactively put up counter strike when Darius goes for the pull if you're paying attention and predicting it.
And then, okay, well, you pulled me already, so now I just jump away during the stun, and there's nothing Darius can do unless he catches me with a pull when I don't have counter strike up or I use counter strike too early.
[00:34:06] Speaker C: You mentioned something that. That's really only relevant to bot lane in the situation, which is you mentioned being a scaling champion versus someone who really fights early on.
That is one of the things that, as a duo, you need to pay attention to, because there are so many instances where one of you wants to fight early and the other does not.
This is a very key component to bot lane.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: Dude, yesterday I had a game where I'm Zeri and my Leona hard engages level two into an Ezreal Shaco. Shaco threw a box in front of me, and I could not deal damage anymore. And they two v one the Leona.
And it's like, well, yeah, what did you think would happen? I'm a level two Zeri. What the fuck do I bring to the table yet?
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yeah, this is only relevant in bot lane, because bot lane is the only one that you have to pay attention to what both of you do. If you have Caitlyn seraphine, there's no fun way to play that. For the first five levels, the enemy is doomed.
If you have Zeri and Leona, you may have some, uh, sync synchronization problems.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: It was just one of those. Like, if she had just waited a couple levels, we could have found all ins and killed them. But she went so early and so hard and then tantrumed because a level two zeri couldn't do as much damage with Shaco boxes blocking her autos as Shaco and Ezreal could do to her. Yeah, and it's like, literally Shaco counters me. What do you want? I literally cannot auto attack through boxes unless I burn my dash, which means then I get killed because I can't escape the fight anymore.
[00:35:55] Speaker C: Yeah, so, so that's. That's really a.
Pay attention to your team comp and understand that. That is another part of the understanding your champion, understanding where you are strongest. Early game, mid game, late game.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: People try to all in a Darius or draven at level two. And it's like Draven wants to fight you at level two. Why are you giving him the fight?
[00:36:20] Speaker A: I always. When I get autofilled support, the first question I always asked are we being aggro or are we playing safe?
I always ask no matter what. So I know exactly what to expect from this guy.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: That's why when I'm autofilled support, I just play Morgana because she can do both.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: I just need to.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: No matter whether I'm going to say for playing back, I'm going to be looking for cues. I'm going to be puddling anyone who gets hit by a q. And I'm going to be black shielding my ad carry when they get attacked by shit.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: It's just good to know if you're going to hit a bind. Is your ADC gonna be like, oh, yeah, cool. Or is he just gonna be like awesome caster minion with low health.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah, true.
All right, any other thoughts on how to identify the win conditions so you can play to them?
[00:37:11] Speaker C: If you are having trouble understanding where your champions PowerPoint is? Like, there are a couple of them who have a little bit of a muddy location sometimes they're very good in. In certain situations and they sort of teeter off a little bit but don't exactly disappear.
Then realistically, your goal is then to find whatever that biggest power point was and always hammer into that point if you have a hard time closing out again. There's another example of this, which is Lucian as an ADC. A lot of people pick him for lane in mid game. He's surprisingly strong in the endgame, but he's nowhere near as good at tank killing as other ad carries are. So people play him primarily to win the lane and then win the early mid game. Hard enough that they can close it out.
But he can be extraordinarily powerful late game.
His PowerPoint isn't actually that he is a powerful early to mid game champion, it's that he is an exceptional duelist. Ad carry.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Yep.
Alright, so let's just give a trinket tip. That kind of is a good way to cap off this topic. We've said it before, we'll say it again because it continues to be relevant. A champion you are proficient on will always be the better choice in draft than a counter pick or a pick for your team or draft that you are not proficient on.
If one of the champions you play happens to fit a draft better, by all means, play it.
But just cause the enemy team has a master Yi doesn't mean you should first time Lissandra or Malzahar, even though those are really good picks into Master Yihdin.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Okay, so I, before we get going, I forgot to mention earlier, I've actually already decided the next champion. I've learned. I'm learning. Oh, I am going to be watching videos and playing how and playing Riven.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Oh, dear God.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Because of how strong and she is.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: But that was a technical champion to learn.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: That's why I'm starting off with videos and going into practice.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: Tool Riven is the ultimate highlight her in Vayne are the two ultimate highlight reel champions. There are people who can get to the top of the world based on one champion, and Riven is one of those. If you are good at a certain champion, sometimes they can take you forever.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: If you have the hands and are willing to put in the time to learn Riven, she's literally one of the best one trick champions that leak has ever had.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: So join the discord and follow my journey as I punish myself into learning a mechanically tough champion with old man hands.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: As a fellow old man hands, I'm with you. Half my top champions list are mechanically intensive.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: I'll have a fun little tidbit of information for you for Riven here. She is the first champion they ever released to only have one type of ratio. She is the first champion that only had 80 ratios.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Time to make history.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: The way you said that I feel like is incorrect because there's lots of champions that don't have ad ratios at all. But I know.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, there, there are multiple champions who had multiple different types of ratios all across the board. Tanking, scaling, AP ad. She was the first one they released only ad ratios. Exactly.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Gotcha. The way you said it initially, anyone who had only AP ratios would have fit the bill.
[00:41:07] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: All right, let's get to our question writer for the night. Cause Reigns wrote in a couple of questions. Thank you, Reigns, for saving us from having no questions this week. Reminder, listeners, we need questions right into theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show like we're about to do. For reigns, Reigns writes, hello, wards. Despite me dropping off the face of the rift for a few months, I have recently returned to the fray after watching t one make a reverse Cinderella run into worlds with over eight months away, I find myself extremely rusty and unfortunately placed in iron two with a three two placement ratio. No complaints though. I trust in my ability to climb. Here are my questions. In order to both help me and others climb, but also to answer the call for more listener questions, I'll try to keep it as general as possible.
Question one, what champions have a low skill floor, but good skill expression. I'm looking for a champion that is good enough in the early game and can carry mid game. Wukong seems to be fitting the bill at the moment. Do you have any other suggestions? I really like that his kit is simple but it has a lot of options with his wooden.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: I mean, number one, I'm guessing with Wukong you're either in the jungle or you're in the top lane. I would say garen. I mean, you can't get it simpler than Garen. And he is strong from level one to level 18. Oh my God.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: I'm. I am borderline ready to start banning Garen because he keeps showing up in mid. And most mages are completely helpless against Garen in mid lane.
[00:42:40] Speaker C: You mentioned one of them earlier. I think we should put in him again. Gragas, he is incredibly simple mechanically. He's got a heal, that's a damage reduction. He's got a slow skill shot. He's got a fast skill shot. He's got a dash. Very simple. But the skill expression on Gragas. Oh boy. If you've been watching t one at worlds you get to see some of the greatest Gragas plays in the world.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Gragas is, I think a good one.
Again, I'm assuming jungle as well. I would actually say volibear. Volibear is stupid strong right now and extremely straightforward.
And he's just. You're providing CC and tankiness to your team while also being a huge damage threat.
[00:43:31] Speaker C: Another one for the jungle is Maokai.
Maokai has a very simple kit baseline. He's got a very wide ult.
But the amount of, when you use certain, it's much like Wukong. When you use that, that route can change a team, can change a fight.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: All right. And then I'm gonna go with one to wrap up. Question one. The perennial. You're in low Elo. Answer from jungle. Just play amumu like.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Yeah, good choice.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: He's literally one of the best champions in low Elo period. Because low Elo is a clusterfuck of dumb fights. And his ult wins dumb fights.
[00:44:14] Speaker C: And as a bonus, he's very strong right now, so it's even better for you currently.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: And he's straightforward.
[00:44:21] Speaker C: Very.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Make sure you like, write us back another question and tell us what lane specifically, so we can give you more like direct, specific answers.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So question two. How do you rationalize the benefits of roaming or matching your lane opponent in lane context? My team was winning individually in lane jungle was even or losing gracefully, but no one was roaming or going for objectives. I left my lane to fight over towers and dragons, but my mid lane opponent used dimash to eventually push into inhib, which was eventually used to win the game.
I kind of touched on this when I was talking about my own champions and win cons and everything.
It depends on what your champion's identity is. Are you good at roaming? Cause like, if I'm playing Ziggs and I'm roaming, what the fuck do I bring to the table? I bring a little bit of skillshot damage.
[00:45:15] Speaker C: So the answer to this one is actually partially that and partially sometimes. It's just if no one is doing anything, your best bet is just to maintain status quo.
If you are giving up by leaving, yeah.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: If you are winning as status quo, everyone on your team is going ahead.
Keep doing that. Why change what's working? Like, as dumb as it feels to say, oh well, if everyone's just sticking in lane, you should just stick in lane and just win through lane. If it's working, it's not dumb.
[00:45:54] Speaker C: I have seen no towers and no dragons fall before a baron.
It has happened in games.
Sometimes people just don't prioritize them and money is left on the table and objectives are left on the table because they're either too focused in the fighting or the laning.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: And I'm going to go ahead and assume this is with the iron bronze like Elo that you were speaking of earlier. I would assume so. So most of the time you're going to be dealing with just fights anyway and nobody's gonna really prioritize objectives. They're just going to go straight for the red.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: I was gonna say my experience in those elos, if you're not playing someone who can, like solo, win the roam fight frequently, people don't even notice that their teammate has shown up. I've had so many times where I go for a gank and the lane doesn't even seem to realize that I exist. And I wind up stuck in a one v two against bot lane while my bot lane literally just sits there last hitting and it's like really, really, guys? I pinged like five times that I was on my way. I pinged who to target.
I don't know. I don't know what's up with that, but I've seen it many times when I've played in lower elos. I see it occasionally even in fucking gold right now.
[00:47:12] Speaker C: For a low Elo player, I think the single most powerful objective is just towers. Playing for towers gets you gold, it gets you advantage in position, it gets you advantage and vision. And you don't have to do almost anything apart from player lane to get them. So if you can, if you can play for towers in an early level, play for towers.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Yep. Alright, I'm gonna read Rains P's because I think it especially does apply to me and might apply to Mike as well.
PS, I'm not sure if anyone else does this, but a large factor of how I pick the champions I play is by the skins available that I either get from chess or my very limited wallet. Does anyone else do this? Uh, yeah. I unlocked fright night Zeri off of the pass, the prestige version, and immediately played like a dozen zeri games.
[00:48:00] Speaker C: Yep. Same, not same skin, but same thing. Uh, when the prestige ocean song Seraphine came out, that skin was so much better than anything I had seen from the prestige line that I instantly played a crap ton so that I could get that because I was nowhere near the mythic essence required for it. It's one of the few things that has sometimes that's one of those things that motivates you to want to play some more is, damn, that's a cool thing that's coming out and I really want it.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, yeah, me and Mike are both in that boat. What about you, pillow pat? Do skins ever influence your champion choices?
[00:48:42] Speaker A: They have for a limited amount of time. If like a new skin came out and I got it, I would play that champion a little more if I, if I got the skin. Like when a new akali skin comes out, I go through stints where I play akali.
If, if it's, if it's one that I just unlocked and got like a really cool skin, I'd be like, oh, cool, I want to go play this champion now and I'll go play it for a while, but I usually settle back to my comfort zone.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Okay, so here's my question then. Since you mentioned getting multiple skins on champions. You have multiple skins. Do you have a main skin that that's the only skin you really actually use or do you actually rotate between them?
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Oh, I got one skin that I use the most, and if you give me a second, I will tell you exactly the ones that I use for each one. So let me get in here and look.
[00:49:37] Speaker B: So the reason I ask is, through a combination of boxes and people gifting me skins a while back, I have, like, all but one yone skin, I think.
But I only use the one skin that I actually care about, which is the battle academia skin.
I think I have spirit blossom, battle academia, Dawnbringer, ocean song, prestige, heart steel, and I just used battle academia.
[00:50:08] Speaker C: I think I have six Nidalee skins.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: What?
Mike, why do you have six Nidalee skins of all champions?
[00:50:16] Speaker C: I've only bought two of them.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Okay, Philippet, you look like you're ready.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: So I'm trying to get my collections to load. Just going off memory here. For Darius, I always use the God king.
Always use God king on Darius.
[00:50:38] Speaker C: I lied.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: I bought two of those for Mordekaiser. I will use the dark Star, mainly, or the.
What's the crime? Not the crime city, the city. One project. Is that his? I think, because my collections are Mordekaiser.
[00:50:59] Speaker C: So many more, Caitlin.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: It's the one that's got, like, the cities in the background when he alts. And I want to say it's his, like, project.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: What that skin is called. It's not project.
[00:51:09] Speaker C: Oh, which champion are we talking about again?
[00:51:11] Speaker A: Mordekaiser.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: I think it is project.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'll use project. I will use Dark Star and those two mainly. I only use God king on Darius, because that's for me. I just love the effects when you dunk on someone. I just love the sound, and I love the wolf. And on a collie, I do crime city. Or the headhunter, because I love the headhunter sound effects with her passive.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: Okay, here's my objection to everything you just said.
Nowhere in there did you say Pentakill or Pentakill three Mordekaiser for sure.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: I don't have those.
[00:51:53] Speaker C: For shame.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: I know I might have one. One of the pentakill ones I can. Again, my stuff's not loading, so I can't pull it up.
[00:52:01] Speaker C: Okay, I don't blame you for it, but. But my rule with pentakill skins is I have to get a pentacle on the champion before I can get the skin.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: And then I forgot to mention Renekton. For Renekton, I always use the black frost or the toy.
[00:52:14] Speaker C: Toy is the best, because I have one on Sona.
No, the champion I have the most skins on, apparently, is Caitlyn. Who I have ten on.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. That is not a champion. I would have guessed you would have a lot of skins on.
[00:52:28] Speaker C: I like Caitlyn quite a bit. No, I bought four of them, and then it became my goal to get as many of these skins on her as possible without paying any money, any more money.
And now I've got almost. I think I've got most of them. I think it's got 15.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: All right, well, for what it's worth, you would be proud of me because I actually finally did use my lucian high noon skin shard the other day so that when I play him in the top lane, I can use his best skin.
[00:53:06] Speaker C: Well, there's the Lucian tube.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: Exactly. With that. This has been episode 452 of the Forwards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Mike of many names. Your pillow pet. Write us more questions. The forwardspodcastmail.com.
have a great night.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Bye.
[00:53:24] Speaker C: Good night, everybody.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the four wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected]. theforwordspodcast. And, of course, send your questions to theforwards
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