[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, Jerks and Velkoz and you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast. Here to help you move forward and lead.
Hello and welcome to episode 455 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and unfortunately it's a two man show this week. We've only got one other award with me tonight it is Mike of many names.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: It me. I am slowly becoming ever present.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: It's true, you are well on your way towards that title.
So yeah, it's just the two of us tonight. We're the only ones who were free. Free Shooter has a work crisis and Pillow Pet is in that cycle of his work where he can't make the pods. So such is life. Unfortunately, it's probably not going to be the last two man show of the year because we got holidays coming up in the near future.
So heads up listeners. There is a real chance that there will be a missed episode during the holidays. I'm sorry in advance.
Join the Discord and you'll know what's happening when it does happen. So link is in the episode description. Join the Discord Seriously, we'd love to see you there. We'd love to hang out, chat about all sorts of stuff. Come join our Discord. It's a great time.
I do stream on Twitch at Twitch tv Jacksomen and enough listeners joined the Discord that Mike is going to be streaming. Mike, what is your Twitch handle?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: I think it's just Katsura. 444 K A T S U R A444.
Okay, it's been long enough that I don't remember.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: I think it's that, but I'm not sure if it's 444 or 44. I'll have you confirm before the episode goes out so I can have the correct link in the episode description.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so there will be an upcoming stream within next couple of weeks.
Within the Discord. We're going to have people sort of vote on what I'm going to be playing. Maybe it's just going to be more ranked league. Maybe I'll be doing a run of a game I've never done. Maybe you'll want me to do something I've done a ton of. Who knows, we'll find out.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: I want to make him play Hell Taker.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: There's that. There's 400 games in the Steam library. Who knows Maybe you'll ever want to make me do something I really don't want to do. But I'll have to join the Discord.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: So you can tell Mike what he has to play on stream.
All right guys, we do got a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robagon. Thank you guys so much. We could not do this without you. They have supported us at the ten dollar tier on our Patreon which can be found at patreon.com the forwardspodcast. Now if you join the Patreon, one dollar a month just tells us that you love us. Five dollars a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month gets your name in lights like Codex, Ninja, Pillow, Pet and Robagon. Last but not least listeners, you're not getting chewed out this week. One of you did send in a question, but we need more questions right into the 4 wards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
Alright guys, a patch dropped this past week and me and Mike get to talk about it. So patch 1422 is here and there's a whole bunch of changes.
There's a couple of big champion changes, a lot of smaller changes. I want to kick it off with the only change we have in our entire list that is not champions of the things we want to highlight.
A couple ad carry items got significant changes.
Those ad carry items are Static Shiv and Untold Wild Arrows.
Static Shiv got reworked in order to.
Their statement is to make it be more straightforward and make it a good early game item.
It has less ad, it's less expensive, it has less attack speed and now it has an on hit effect. Your first three attacks fire Chain Lightning hitting up to five targets for bonus damage. The cooldown shrinks all the way up to level 12 at which point it is a 10 second cooldown.
If you get a kill or assist, it instantly refreshes the cooldown. You get three more procs instantly.
Static Shave is a really good first item for many marksmen now.
It's pretty core for like Zeri. I think it's really good on Ash.
What I found is a little bit clunky with it.
The lightning does not trigger until your attack actually lands so it feels delayed.
It's fine. It's just. It's one of those things like it takes a little bit of getting used to. It doesn't feel as smooth and responsive as you'd expect.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a. There's a Couple of champions where it will feel better based believe based on projectile speed. So like Jhin it works really well with. Because his projectiles come out so quickly.
[00:05:41] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: He also doesn't attack fast. So the three attacks within eight seconds is not a limiting variable like it would be on someone. Like for example, it's good on Kaisa but it doesn't feel as good when three autos out of your 12. You'll fire in those eight seconds. Get the bonus.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And it has a real impact. It is very good for lane dominance. You don't need to do much to get really impactful chip damage on someone now.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: That's why I think it felt so good on Ash is with her longer range. I was basically every wave just poking the enemy for 180 Magic damage.
Which is. That's kind of strong.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I was playing a game and the enemy Jin had rotated into mid where I was holding the line. And by the time he was done doing his pop 34 attacks. His Q I was chunked relatively severely. So this is like level 1015. So you'd probably add an item and a half by then.
[00:06:54] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: All right. So the other ad carry item that got changes. It's not just Statikk Shiv. They wanted to make sure that Crit ad carries had a starting item instead of what we've had for the past 10 months of crit ad carries having to buy Statikk Shiv or Kraken Slayer and just be weaker in the mid game than they used to be.
In case you were wondering why, Most of the ADCs we've seen in 2024 have been on hit ad carries or ones not bound to Crit like Ezreal for example.
This problem is a large part of why so what Yun Tal got it has less ad. It's now a 3000 Gold 50 AD item. It has 25% attack speed. So a little bit less attack speed. A little bit more AD than Static Shiva. But it's also a little more expensive.
When you attack an enemy you get 30% bonus attack speed for four seconds.
And then the thing that's like the key that makes untold work.
It will stack up to eventually give you 25% crit. The stacks just on attack and it takes 125 attacks to fully stack.
A lot.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: But it's on anything. Attacks on wards count. Attacks on turrets count. Attacks on minions count. Attacks on champions of course count.
So the point of this is basically to say you don't get the full 25% crit for about five minutes after you complete the item.
That's it. That's. That's all it is.
By virtue of being an attack speed ad item. That means this is now a decent one item spike for crit marksman because it has the stats they need to function early.
That then also will give crit. By the time you get your second item to where your second item, you're still at 50% crit and you're a real champion.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: It's a much smoother first item than a lot of ad carries have had for a while. It feels really, really good, especially on specific champions where it feels phenomenal. If you had anybody who had a quick play pattern, you go in there, you hit four or five attacks with something, you walk away. They are so good. Tristana Varys.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Tristana, I think, is literally the biggest beneficiary of this item. It fits everything she wants to do perfectly.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: It's also like you. You. I don't remember if you mentioned the item path, but having it be another BF sword item.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: It makes it so that it is.
Most people try and stay in lane until they get around 12, 1300 gold. So it's now got one of those heavy power spikes when you go back first.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Incidentally, that also means if you're having a rough lane, it's really hard to get enough gold for the BF sword in the first place. It makes this build path really punishing.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Mm.
So there's. There's give and takes in this one. And if you're having a rough early phase, you might want to transition into a different starting item.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Maybe Static Shiva.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: They both build out a scout slingshot.
Just saying.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: They're also getting more things with Scott slingshot in there.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Now that it's actually worth the gold it costs.
Remember when that thing was 700 gold and you're paying 200 just for the proc.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Yes or no?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: It was 800 gold because daggers were 300 at the time. They made daggers cheaper and made scout slingshot only 100 gold premium.
So now it's actually a functional item.
All right, your turn, Mike. You got three champions on the docket. Pick one.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: We'll do the big one first. So most of the changes have been really small, little finicky things that have pretty big impacts. Swain got a nice big sweep of more numbers tweaks because he got his massive tuning pass change last.
Last patch where they sort of reworked how Swain functions. They've noticed he's still a little weak. That he. He was pretty much more tuned around being a support before and they really would much rather him be a mid laner.
So he's getting more magic resistance resist growth just as a baseline help him fight more mages in mid.
His Q is just getting raw base damage increases both the base damage per bolt and the max damage.
His never move is getting a shorter cooldown baseline and then scaling to the same as where it was before.
And then Demonic ascension is getting a better heal per second ratio.
It's now from the bonus health. It's not much but you have to tweak those small otherwise healing gets absurd.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Especially since he remember he is a champion that scales bonus health infinitely just in his kit. That's how his passive works.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: So they really can't tune that up too much at once.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: So he should feel significantly better in mid lane.
The. The damage nerfs that are buffs that he got are not small. A 20 base damage increase by max which is your first max. Your max in Q first is really meaningful and he has good AP ratios on these things.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: Y.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: I think he should hopefully be someone who can be your he. He's not like a standard control mage, but he sort of fits a frontline mage.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: He's. I. I should honestly just start playing him mid now that he's gotten these changes. I hadn't like fully read the patch notes before.
These changes sound fucking great.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I think he's going to be when.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Combined with the like mechanical kit changes. Last patch.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: He's going to be a teamfight monster once he's gotten two, three items.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Oh yeah. So I am going to say something I have one wanting to do, but just haven't played him because I wanted to. I saw how weak he was when the rework came out. Malignance is really busted on Swain in general.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. And with the changes to his ult. Oh boy.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So for those who don't know Malignance has a three second cooldown.
As long as they're stuck in your ult you just chain proc malignants every three seconds.
You go like Malignant's Rylais. They just can't escape and they take tons of bonus damage. It's absurd.
Like I almost think you can actually on Swain just go like malignant ry lies into Leandries and then tank for your last two items. You don't probably like actual tank items.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: He's not a burst mage AP champion. He's meant to do long duration fights.
So he's not Someone who's hardbound to Rabadons and the storm surge. So he. He can get a lot of the utility items and still deal a lot of damage.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: All right, well, since you took the big change you had, let's do some of the quick changes that we've got and then I'll wrap things up with the other big champion change. So I want to talk about Wukong briefly.
Wukong was apparently weak, can't say that I saw it myself, but they gave him 30 mana, which is whatever.
And took four seconds off the rank one cooldown of his last max. The W, the dash. That is a stealth. That is like your main way to outplay people.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: The 1.14 seconds is huge.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's huge. That's with how much ability haste he builds. That means you'll reasonably be able to use it twice in a fight before you actually start putting points into it.
It scales down to the same point. So if you're reaching level 18, you're still going to be just the same cooldown as you were before. But this is a buff until level 18.
I'm happy about this. I love Wukong. He's genuinely fun and has a lot of fun skill expression in how you can like manipulate people's expectations of things.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: It makes him better in lane and it gives him a ever so slightly faster movement around the jungle. Considering most of the time you could reach that cooldown early on.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Alright, Mike, pick one.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: The next one we're gonna do is Kayle. Kayle received one minor change and it's just a ratio, but what it does is it directly impacts how you're going to be building her.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: They basically changed a couple of her ratios on her passive.
They doubled them, which is her attack speed per 100 AP ratio.
They want you to build AP at hack speed Cow.
That's pretty much it.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Specifically they want you to build like gnashers into high ap, like Death Cap type builds.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: That's what this is trying to shunt her to. Because I think her best performing build prior to this was like it was the on hit Nashers Rage Blade Terminus type builds.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Yes. And your prop of those items, you're still gonna get a Nashor as that's her most important item. I think the one you lose is Rage Blade because Terminus is probably her AP item, her shred item. You still do meaningful magic damage.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: I think Terminus is the one she loses. You can go Void Staff for shred.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: You can, but the extra attack speed feels really good. Rage Blade attack speed is going to feel good too. Yeah.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: It's one of those speed from your ap. So it's.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: It's basically you're cutting one of them and depending on what's happening, you're. You're pretty much getting two attack speed items that are going full ap. Because it's now more beneficial for you to go full AP than it is to go that hybrid attack speed.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Exactly.
And I think this also is the final nail in the coffin to Crit Kayle, which I'm not surprised, but I'm still a little sad about because Crit Kayle was fun.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: For those who don't know Kayle's passive waves that she starts shooting out at level 11, they can crit.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: It's why Crit Kayle's a thing.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: It does the most damage potentially. But possibly not anymore. Possibly not anymore. Because of how the AP ratios worked. She's always done a lot of AP damage.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: And she needed extra attack speed in her kit. In her kit to fulfill that sort of wave destruction. Now her passive should fuel enough attack speed for this to work.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Now I think you're literally going like Nasher's Lich Bane death cap type builds.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Lich Bane's really powerful on her. You're going to be weaving a lot.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Of powerful on her. And the fact that it's 115 AP when that means now she gets an extra 6% attack speed just from the Lich Bane.
Like it's. It's meaty. All right. Let me talk about some weird changes.
Because Maokai got a buff.
Some of these are just straight buffs. He gained 30 base health. He gained 5 movement speed, which movement speed is really strong. Like in and of itself. That's huge.
They also changed something about his E that I think a lot of people didn't even know was a thing.
So Maokai's saplings move speed used to be based on your boots.
They had 400 move speed with no boots scaling up to 445 for typical boots or 460 if you had gone swifties.
That's no longer the case. Now they have linear scaling from level one to 13, 400 to 460 movespeed. Now what this means is Maokai is no longer punished for not rushing boots.
He's no longer rewarded for rushing boots.
And if you weren't going swifties, his saplings will eventually move faster than they did before at by level 13. Probably like by level 11 actually, because that's about where it would be over 445.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
There's. There's a weird thing with how they've written it down that makes it so that just looking at it doesn't make a lot of sense. Because boots don't work like that. Boots don't have the same sort of level of tears normally, but it's based on types of movement speed.
[00:21:04] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: This also means that as a Maokai, you no longer feel like you should go swifties to make your saplings faster, which. Good. It's nice being able to go Merc treads or plated steel caps or Ionian boots without worrying about it.
There's no longer a downside to taking the correct boot for the situation.
So that's.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's a good change.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: I mean, really. He gained five move speed at all times. He's happy regardless. That's so huge. Especially for jungle. And jungle is where I like playing Maokai.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
So I'll take over with a less good change. At least in our opinion.
Because neither of us like facing Irelia. And it's a real small change. It's not something I like.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: It just is not a small change. It's just a subtle change.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: It is a small thing. It has a large impact.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Her stacks now refresh upon attacking structures with her passive. And they now deal that damage at 50% effectiveness versus towers.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: So I feel like we need to explain what Irelia's passive is real quick because unless you play Irelia, you probably have no idea what that means.
She gains a stack whenever she hits an enemy champion or non champion with her abilities.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah. When she hits non champions. Its abilities.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: This refreshes whenever she basic attacks an enemy champion, large monster or now Structure.
And what these stacks give her is shitloads of attack speed. It scales from 30 to 100% attack speed at max stacks, depending on level and on hit damage, with a 20% bonus ad ratio as well. So not only the level scaling, which it's good on hit damage, it's almost a wit's end on its own. But also it scales with whatever AD she builds.
That now applies at half strength to structures. And she sustains the attack speed for as long as she's hitting structures she shreds.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Isn't her passive also how she does her healing?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: No, that's on her last hitting with Q.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Right. Right. Which is how you get passive stacks usually anyways. But yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Aurelia could max stacks. It was only 4 stacks Q on top of you and you are suddenly taking 30 more ad per hit.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Irelia, it's Psycho is so potent. This means a lot for Irelia, meaning that she can just fight under towers now easily.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: And it means if you leave Irelia alone with a turret, she is going to get the wave, kill the wave to stack up her passive and annihilate.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Now, it doesn't say that she gained stacks from attacking structures, it says she refreshes them. So correct. She will need to have wiped a wave and then gone into the tower, but she will most likely have done that.
So it's likely she'll have these. But you can, like in a siege situation, stop an Aurelia from getting those stacks on.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: Hopefully.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: All right, I got one more change that we're going to talk about, and this one is weird and complicated, so that's why I'm saving it for last, so I can actually go over it. Warwick got a minor rework.
First and foremost, they made him 15% bigger, which is cool.
They made it so when you recast his E, there's less of a lockout before you can auto attack again, which just makes him feel a lot smoother.
They made his ultimate have a larger hitbox, but it's only in front of him, so you'll no longer accidentally grab people with your ass. However, you will also actually grab the people in front of you instead of landing at their feet.
So I think Warwicks will be happy with that overall.
It also means that people behind you can't accidentally body block your ult, which is something I definitely had happen last patch.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it also does the. You can't as easily do it right in the middle of a melee because now you might just miss it if someone is in your model fighting you.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: But it also means it's easier to use it to escape, of course.
So then here's the other change Warwick got, and this is the part that's not as clearly like Warwick's will be happy about these. This, even though the old has some edge cases that are nerfs too.
His W got changed significantly.
First of all, it costs less mana. It has a shorter cooldown until you max it. It's the same cooldown at max rank.
If the enemy is really low health, the bonus kicks in slightly sooner because it gives a bonus for targets below half that is unchanged. And then another bigger bonus when they're really low.
That bigger bonus is smaller, but it triggers at a quarter health now instead of a fifth of health. So pros and cons, I don't think that that's really? That's power neutral. But it means you maybe get an extra attack at the higher attack speed so you actually feel it more often.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: It only really matters against super tanks.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Or objectives like this. Will get several extra auto attacks if you're doing a Baron without your whole team nearby kind of thing. Or like soloing Elder, that kind of stuff.
The part that is weird. Oh, there was one other thing, which is now he actually triggers his W if a spell brings the target below half. Which means that when he uses Stridebreaker or his Q and that's the damaging effect that brings them below half, you'll immediately start getting the benefits of Blood Hunt.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: It's smoother. Yeah, it's much better.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Really, really nice. Instead of having to get one slow auto attack off before you start getting your speed.
Um, his W used to have a mechanic prior to this patch where if no one was currently being hunted, the cooldown would cool down twice as fast.
That has been removed.
Instead, if you press W and no one is in range and it does not put a hunt target on someone, it instantly refunds 30% of the cooldown.
Now, on its face, this is weaker because 30% is less than 50%.
However, what wound up happening most of the time as Warwick is you would press W to look for people, no one would be found. But there would be some dude on the other side of the fucking map who's low health. Because they were fighting. And therefore because of that, that you were nowhere near and could not benefit from or interact with.
Your cooldown is going to last the full duration and there's nothing you can do about it.
It is now something that is actively in your control. You're either paying the whole cooldown but you mark someone, or you are getting a refunded portion of the cooldown because you didn't mark someone. Regardless of what else is happening on the map, Warwick players should be happy about this.
That's the part that is weird and why I wanted to actually explain that if you're playing against a Warwick, the big takeaway mostly is he's gonna be more reliable. So he's gonna be a scary wolf that's gonna hunt you down.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: This wouldn't normally matter unless you're fighting someone, like at full health too. You can press your W while in combat with someone now.
[00:29:29] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Which is a huge benefit in certain cases.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Usually you would want to be pushing it once you're visible anyway so that you can run into them faster. So it's. It's one of those. It barely matters. Most of the time it matters to.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Lane Warwick, which we've seen a lot of.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we have seen a lot of Lane Warwick, which is weird, but it is what it is.
[00:30:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Being able to mark people while you're actively in combat has a few edge cases that it is useful in. So, like, it is a positive for Warwick. It feels good, but it's the smallest of these changes, in my opinion.
All right, so before we get into our listener questions, we have one other actual topic to briefly touch on, which is Ambessa has come out, by the way. Arcane Season 2 is here, so if you have Netflix, go watch Arcane. It's fucking amazing. There's three episodes right now. I think they're releasing more weekly for the next couple weeks.
Ambessa would be the noxian like advisor that joined the Council in Piltover in season one of Arcane.
She's now a champion in League of Legends. She's been added to the game from Arcane, so she's been out for a few days. As of when we're recording this, we're not going to have a full, like, here's how to succeed with Ambessa, because we're not there yet. But what's your initial impressions, Mike?
[00:31:25] Speaker A: My initial impression is one you can stop worrying about. The A Million Dash champion.
She's more than balanced around her dashes, much like Kalista is.
The main power she has is really she is a lane dominant top laner versus Tanks who has a good amount of stickiness and no real hard CC art from her ult.
So she's okay into bruisers, she's good into Tanks, and she's nowhere near as fast as everyone was fearing she was going to be. I did a test the moment she came out. After checking it out, it takes one second of difference for her to go from base to the outer tower, just walking there as it does, trying to do the dash hops because meaning the.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Dash hops save 1 second or meaning.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: They'Re 1 second slower it at tier 2 boots, you are 1 second lower.
So it's a faster way of hopping a little bit with tier one.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: But it's meaningfully dead, essentially. Essentially what happens is we should explain how her hops work and that every time she casts an ability, if you cancel like Auto attack move, she casts the ability and then does a little hop in the direction you want to move.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Kind of like Kalista does with auto attacks.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Functions exactly like Kalista, except she is hard stuck doing that movement and she does not move during her ability cast.
So she's nowhere near as dodgy as people think she is. And she's nowhere near as fast as people think she is. She is, however, very good at maintaining damage while fighting you.
She can keep up really easily.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: She will chase you down and murder you. I. I liken her to Riven. She's Riven 2.0.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: She is a slower Riven that does more damage to tanks and less damage.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: To squishies and has healing built into.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Her kit and armor. Pet. Yeah, but most of those are with her ult.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: I mean, they're passives on her.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Passives on her ult? Yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Not just the active. The reason I compare her to Riven is she has a lot of dashes that are very useful when she's already in combat. She has a shield that scales with her offense. So late game. It is a gigantic fucking shield. Yes, she has hard cc, but not a lot of it.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: She has one thing of hard cc, I think, and it's her ultra.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: In Riven's case, it's mostly her W. I think the stun.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: The W is a stun. And then she has the knock ops on Q. Yeah.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: So like they're very similar.
They also both empower their next auto attack when they cast an ability.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: And Bessa is an energy champion.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: She functionally has infinite energy if you're weaving those attacks in. Otherwise, if you're not getting her auto attacks in, she has massive energy problems.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: And. And that's why I think she feels hyper mobile in combat is an embessa who knows what they're doing and is weaving autos correctly, is dashing nonstop.
But again, it's not like she's not going super fast. She's just constantly dodging in different directions.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Yeah. She's a skillshot champions nightmare. But if you are a lot of. A lot of bruisers in top lane really just don't care about how her movement works because they're either auto attacking or sitting there with massive aoe hitting everything in front of them.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: So yeah, that's our initial impressions. Any other thoughts you want to share right now when we've had four days to experience her?
[00:35:51] Speaker A: I think she's hard locked. Get a spiro shojin. It makes her feel significantly better. That should be your first item. I know a lot of people have been going eclipse a couple other things.
Her cooldowns feel long early on. Spirit Shojin just makes her feel better.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Okay, here's my question. Do you actually think she's hard Locked Spear of Shojin. Or do you think Black Cleaver is a good alternative? It's 5 less ability haste but it would give her the armor shred against tanks.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: If you go into a Hyper tank you can probably go for the Black Cleaver and then they functionally don't have armor against you because you will have almost 30% armor shred from your ult by 16 and the black cleaver shred.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Yep, it's pretty fucking brutal.
So that's why I'm like I think if she's into tanks like Orn Top Lane is a key example of this. Like she just rushes Black Cleaver and they don't get to play the game for the rest of the game.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah but if you're facing another bruiser, you want spare.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I could see that his spear does also give the bonus damage on abilities.
All right, that's our thoughts so far on Ambesa. Like I said, we'll have more when we get the other guys on. I especially want to hear Pillow Pet's thoughts on her. So once we get him back we will definitely talk Ambesa more.
Until then, let's answer some listener questions because we got questions from several of you.
Our first one comes from Rains who writes why are some of the older champions still viable but some aren't and which fall in the Garret Ash category of very good to hard carry in solo queue. For example, Ashe with her dated as hell kit is still very viable and prevalent in both solo queue and pro play. Garen is still a solo queue monster along with Yi, but then like Vain has fallen off and or has a very niche player base. He gives a couple other examples that I'm choosing to ignore because I think he's wrong on those and I don't want to call them out too bad reigns.
So the key is older champions tend to do less things. Just that's how champion design and league has evolved. As new champions do a lot of shit, the ones that have stay stuck around as being viable do the specific things they do really God damn well to the point where they're worth picking even though they have more glaring vulnerabilities. Like Ash is very immobile and very easy to kill if you can jump on her.
Yeah so carry with hard CC and if you can't jump on her she does insane DPS and slows you so you can't run away.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: So basically a lot of a lot of old champions, you said it correctly there, they have the niche and that niche is theirs and because that's there and they've been here forever, no one else has really ever taken as much power into that niche. So like, no one's ever going to have permanent attack speed slows like Ash Will. She is very quick on that.
No one is ever going to have the same sort of ridiculous survivability as a Mundo will.
These are. These are their things that are. That are stuck into them. They're simplistic kits also mean that they're very good beginner things, which means they want to keep them at a decently high win rate so that people who are learning the game with new and easy champions don't feel frustrated because they're underpowered.
A couple of the other ones that you mentioned, they are actually just skill expression champions that are very good into chaotic situations, but in better and better skill ranks, people have much easier ways of shutting them down. Vane and Yi, they are low level terrors because they require coordination to be.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: But at the same time, when you have that coordination, they just die.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
Of the champions on that list, the ones who just are never going to go away, they will always be prevalent are going to be Ash, Garen, Yee.
Ash and Garen are just going to be really, really, really potent because they're just pretty much the best at what they do there.
And Yi has no complexity early on.
You can just run at them and attack. And if they don't find a way to coordinate against you, he will kill a team.
[00:41:10] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: I would also say in recent years, which admittedly is not very many champions because they just don't release very many anymore. Like we have gotten two champions in 2024.
Smolder and Bess and Aurora.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: I forgot about Aurora. Yeah.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: They've started doing simpler champions more often. Like Smolder is pretty simple. He doesn't do much. He's very mechanically straightforward. Naafiri intentionally designed to be a beginner friendly assassin. She's very straightforward and simple. You're probably never going to see much Naafiri in pro because she doesn't have a lot of. She's in the same boat as Vayne of what she does. She does very well, but in organized play, she's very easy to shut down.
Vex is very straightforward and does a couple things really well and that's all she does.
So they've started going back to these older style designs at least some of the time.
Because it turns out that just specializing in one thing is kind of a timeless way to design champions.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: It gives champions that fun niche where you play them. Hey, I know a situation. I've got a champion I love. I'm gonna play it. And some of them are just, just so fun.
Naafiri, despite being really, really simple, is really fun. Vex is really fun.
[00:42:43] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Smolder is really fun.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: We got a quick question from the Discord. I Am Squid writes, I'm having trouble getting back to Emerald with Vel'koz support. What are some of the biggest mistakes that mage supports make?
And I've left off the ELO that I Am Squid is currently in because I don't think it actually matters to the question.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: No. Yeah. So the biggest one, I was answering this for them back there, but we decided if we're asking a question there, going to answer it here anyways.
And it's. You roam too much sometimes. A mage support is generally speaking designed around a dominating lane. Your goal is to absolutely make sure you are in that lane. Denying the enemy as much as possible.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: They're. They're often really good combo cc, but they usually don't have the damage because you have a support budget or CC duration. Because mage 200 to 0 someone on their own.
You get less out of roaming than you do being with someone. And what I see mage supports do a lot of the time is wander into the jungle and die because they think they're strong enough to fight people.
[00:44:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: It's almost every mage support is designed to just be like, hey, we're in 2v2 and we murder you.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: Yeah. So most. Most of the time the biggest mistake is leaning living phase too early and roaming too much.
[00:44:27] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: If your other opponent decides that they're going to go roam and take the map by storm, you push, you take a tower, you as a group move to a different lane. And now both of you are in a PowerPoint pushing another lane because you should be significantly ahead. That is the biggest thing I don't see is people pushing their advantage essentially.
[00:44:54] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: So the other thing that I've seen a lot and this one I have specifically seen in Golden Platform, I think it's because they get egos is the mage support who gets several kills and is personally ahead. So they start taking farm.
I have lost so many games and won so many games because the mage support on one of the teams was like 5 and 1. So they started just going to a side lane and collecting waves instead of being useful to their team.
Here's a tip. When you have a support item. Yeah. That Zazak's realm spike is actually really a lot of damage for Something that generates gold for you.
It also has a penalty. If you farm too much, you start getting less gold from the farm. You are actually reducing the gold your team collects from the map.
Please don't do that.
You can get a few CS here and there, but, like, please don't actually.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: If a tower would take the farm, go ahead and take the farm. If there's someone coming into lane behind you, let them get the farm.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: Just last hit.
Last hit. Until they get there.
It's. That's something I've seen a lot specifically, I think, in golden plat because they have egos. They go, oh, my ad carries an idiot. He's useless. The gold will be better on me because I'm a better player. And yeah, if the gold was equal. But you're looking at giving yourself 10 gold versus giving them 20 gold, which one's going to be more valuable to the team? Probably 20 gold on the idiot.
As much as I hate that answer sometimes, because sometimes it does feel wrong, and I understand and sympathize.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: It's less about knowing that you can have an impact and more about realizing other people also have an impact because their champions do something. There is a correct time to steal farm. But it's so rare. They have to like, actually be feeding.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: For you to be like, no, it's mine now.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: And when we say that, we don't mean like, oh, they're. They're 0 and 5. This dude's feeding. We mean like, oh, they are literally sprinting it into a turret and suiciding over and over. That is the time when it is appropriate to steal farm from someone.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: If someone is probably on the map actively taking farm from other people, that's when it's okay to be like, no, this person doesn't get farming.
Yeah, easy. He's now intentionally fucking up other people.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: All right, we got a follow up to a question from last week. Dota Fan writes in thanks for answering my question last week. To follow up, I want to know how the best way to hit champions with Cassiopeia Ult. So last week, Dota Fan wrote in with a question about turn speed, and we had to explain turn speed in Dota and why league doesn't work that way.
The best and most reliable way to hit champions with Cassiopeia ultimately is if they're already cc'd by a teammate because they can't turn while they're rooted or stunned.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: There's. There's another way. And it's hide in a bush and make sure it's it's clear. Get a red sweeper, get a pink ward. People are walking into you. You will guarantee hit that alt.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: Y.
There's also several champions have abilities that force their facing. If Lucian starts trying to cull you, he can't dodge your ults for example. There are a few others and that's something you'll learn if you start playing more different champions and playing against more different champions. You'll learn which ones have abilities that lock them facing a specific way for the duration of the ability. Maybe for the duration of a channel or duration of where they're shooting whatever it might be. There's bunch of them.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: Eopia maintains her like where she's facing when she flash alts.
[00:49:17] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: This is something strongly recommend practicing and practice tool until you're very confident before you start trying to pull it out. In real games you you can hit al and then flash and then flash.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: To relocate it, but it maintains the direction you were facing when you flashed or when you started alting.
So if you are like someone is going to do a turn face and you think you can flash beyond them and get that, you can do it.
But you should train how to do the flash move. A lot of champions have things like this.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: This is like the famous the Insec. If you're so dota fan you're new enough, there's a chance you don't know what that is. Lee Sin can hop towards.
And way back when in the early days of League of Legends, it was a mind blowing move for Lee Sin to place a ward behind someone, hop to it and then ult them to kick them back into his team.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: That is not the insec.
The insec is when you actually start ulting and then flash behind.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: No, that is the current version. The original one was just the ward hop.
That's what in season one and two what blew our minds and why it's called the insec because he was the one who was doing it at a pro level.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: It has been changed by now to become something new. Yes, but. But Lee Sin is a different version. His changes orientation based on where he is. So if he ults and then moves behind you and then does it, that will change it. So like you need to know champion by champion, what will happen when you flash.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Yep, let's move on to the other questions Dotafan wrote in which is how do I hit skillshots more consistently especially as Xerath and Pike. Some games I will hit everything and other games it's like I'm going against A sidestep God. My philosophy is to force folks to sidestep into a worse position, but my teammates in ranked only seem to focus on what I miss. I've noticed that some champion skillshots like Samira's and Ezreal's Q abilities differ in consistency. Despite looking similar, Ezreal's Q seems more forgiving at the edge of its range, often hitting targets even if they're slightly out of the path. Is this difference intentional?
Yes. And the most infamous example of this is Nautilus hook.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: Nautilus's hook has a lollipop. What we mean to say is, yeah, he has the most noticeable lollipop, which is to say the edge of that hook is slightly bigger and it grabs the edge of whatever it and goes.
[00:51:42] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: So the reason we call it a lollipop is literally think of how a lollipop looks. That's the shape of that skill shot. There is a larger end at the tip of the shot than the whole projectile's width normally would be. Ezreal Q does this. Every skill shot does this. The actual size of the lollipop varies from skill to skill.
To answer the actual how to hit skill shots more consistently analyze people's movements. What I always do every game. My first few skill shots, I call them calibrating skill shots.
I'm firing them directly at my enemy, seeing how they react. Do they dodge left? Do they dodge right? Do they dodge towards me? Do they dodge away from me?
Most people have patterns to how they try to dodge shit. It's just the way the human brain works.
So I'm firing my first several skill shots directly at them to see how does this person try to dodge. Once I think I've figured it out, I start firing my skillshots into where I think they're going to dodge. And it is a continuous adjustment over the course of the game of me trying to read this dude's mind to predict how he's going to perceive my shot and what action he's going to take to respond to it.
[00:53:09] Speaker A: This is why you see people consistently back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, moving at all times in a game. They're sitting there trying to make themselves a harder target to hit.
[00:53:20] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: They're trying to be less predictable. This is also why, like, for example, I'm currently in plat. I make emerald most splits when I play games with listeners where the average MMR is a lot lower. No flame on listeners. This is just my experience.
Hitting skillshots is fundamentally different.
People dodge Differently in a way that I can't put into words, but I can feel when I'm playing and I feel incompetent trying to hit these people half the time, even though I'm a higher rank than they are because I'm trying to predict things that aren't actually going to happen.
[00:54:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So a lot of the highlight plays you'll see, like across the world, are people who have predictive things. They know someone's gonna flash. They throw a hook at that place where the person's gonna flash. They grab them just the last, last second. You see that as a really common one.
[00:54:15] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: You won't see that in lo because people aren't dodging the same way.
[00:54:20] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: When you see those in low elo, it's an accident. Instead of actual outplay.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: Most of the time, people flash in straight lines.
[00:54:30] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: And because you are a dota transplant, the way this differs from dota is that dota is very much about like trying to force a specific action.
Oh, they're running this way. They only have two directions they can go. Let's force a decision. Kind of skillshot prediction.
In league, the only time that really shows up is if someone is next to a wall.
[00:54:56] Speaker A: The other portion, the Samura's Q and Ezreal Q.
When you are taking your look at the ability, check and see, like that visual indicator on the floor, they will have different widths and everything like that. Almost every skill shot will learn that size. A Nidalee Q is very thin.
[00:55:16] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: The width of the indicator is actually relevant.
All right. Any other thoughts about skill shots?
[00:55:29] Speaker A: No, that's. We got pretty much everything.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Okay. We got one last question. This is from Robagon and I think it's very silly. So that's why we're saving this one to wrap up Robogon writes. I have a question. After my last game, had this problem. What can we do as laners when our jungler does not jungle? No objectives, no ganks, just AFK farming.
Well, I had a game that unfortunately I did wind up losing eventually where I was playing Volibear against an Irelia and my jungler refused to do dragon even though the enemy I was mid. This was a weird game.
Enemy jungler shows top. My jungler has no camps. He has one camp up. He can do his crook, his Krug gromp. Gromp. Words. Words are hard.
An enemy jungler just chose top lane. And we have Pryo in mid. We have Prio in bot lane. This dude goes to take his gromp.
So I'm like, you know what? Fuck it, I'm volibear.
I walked down and I solo the dragon because I knew there was no one who could possibly answer it.
And this dumbass wasn't fucking doing it.
We did wind up eventually losing that game because it turns out I just had no teammates at all.
But in the moment, that was a thing that I could do that would make a positive impact on the game. I got us a hextech dragon. Getting that one dragon stalled out them getting soul. They wound up winning off of a bad teamfight that my team took. But it meant that we had more breathing room in a game where we were never getting dragons because our jungler just wasn't going for them.
[00:57:15] Speaker A: So there's a serious answer and there is a let's try and get something else answer in there. The serious answer is track the enemy jungler now.
[00:57:24] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: You need to get some vision down and if you can have priority elsewhere and you know that jungler is going somewhere else, you can just take the objective without them. You'll see a lot of top laners go out and take the void grubs because they know someone else is on.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Botside in their kit or they can just take grubs anyway.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: If you have someone who has enough attack speed and can survive.
A dragon is usually pretty easy to kill, depending on the dragon almost always.
[00:57:58] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: The other, the other part of that is there's no rule that says the jungler is the only one who can gank. I've had games both won and lost by one of the lanes just going and ganking the other one repeatedly.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: This is not a feasible thing for most people because most people don't take unsealed spell books.
If you have unsealed spell book, you can just also have smite.
[00:58:29] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: I have done that before because I do take it on a couple champions. But most of the ones who can solo objectives are not the ones taking unsealed spell book.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: Unsealed spellbook is not usually something that's done for that. But like, if your jungler just isn't doing things, you're not going to be able to get unsealed spellbook randomly in the middle of a game. So you'd have to have planned for it beforehand.
[00:58:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:54] Speaker B: If you are playing someone who uses unsealed spellbook or you use it on your champion, you do have that freedom to switch to smite.
If you're playing cho'gath, you have your ults that you can use to secure an objective despite not technically having Smite.
There's a few things like that that you can do.
[00:59:13] Speaker A: I've never tried it. Can unsealed spellbook. People who start with smite get the jungle item.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: I don't know how that works. You would have to start with smite. And the jungle item does incur a penalty if you farm too many minions.
[00:59:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it wouldn't be a good thing most of the time.
I can think of 99% of the reasons why you wouldn't do this.
But there could be a cheese strategy where you're trying to deny the enemy farm using unsealed spell book and you walk in and try and do a bunch of smite steals as like I've earned support or something. But I wouldn't for the most part. This is. This is a dumb thing. Don't do it.
If you want to do just a strategy that's going to win you the game, just take Lucian in the top lane. It's much easier than trying to get smite.
[01:00:12] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: Absolutely.
All right with that. This has been episode 455 of the Forwards Podcast. I've been Jack Soman from Mike of Many Names. We'll hopefully have more hosts again next week.
Right in. We need more questions, listeners. That was all of them. We've used every one of the questions you guys sent in, so we need new ones right into the forwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them.
We'll see you next time. Bye Bye.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: That everybody.
[01:00:45] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the four Wards Podcast at gmail.
[01:01:09] Speaker A: Com.
