The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 457: Three Mini Reworks For Three Wards

[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 Velkoz. [00:00:13] Speaker A: And you're listening to the Four Wards. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Podcast here to help you move forward and lead. Hello and welcome to episode 457 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward. In League of Legends we've got Mike of many names. [00:00:51] Speaker C: How's it going guys? [00:00:54] Speaker B: He's very tired after his first ever stream. For six goddamn hours. My eyes hurt and tired for a different reason. We've got Pillow Pet. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Hello. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Guys. We are the four Awards podcast and even though we're tired, we do stream on Twitch. We can be found at Twitch tv Jacksomen for me. Twitch tv, Pillow Pet and Mike of many names has now streamed so he gets plugged. Twitch TV, Katsura 444. All of those are linked in the episode description along with the link to our Discord. Come join the Discord and hang out. Come tell Mike what he should play next on stream. [00:01:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I could use another topic next time. [00:01:45] Speaker B: Something other than League. I'll make you play Ease. [00:01:47] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe that'll be the next one. [00:01:50] Speaker B: All right guys, we are also on Patreon shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robagon for supporting us at the Shout out here on Patreon. Thank you very much guys. Now if you want to support the podcast, head over, head on over to patreon.com the forwards 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 you that exclusive feed and we will shout your name out like we do those three. All right, last but not least, listeners, one of you wrote in this week so you're not getting chewed out, but we need more questions right into the forwards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. And with that we have a topic for tonight. It's very straightforward. It's a patch week. Patch 1423 came out and this is a weird patch. There's a few very major changes and then a lot of little shit. So we're gonna go through it and we're gonna pick out the things that we thought were either more major of the little shit. And then we divvied up the three actual major changes. So who wants to kick it off. [00:03:15] Speaker A: I will kick one off with a very small change, because we talked about the little rat last week, and that's Teemo. Teemo got a really small change and adjustment in the jungle riot goes to explain. The reason that he was so strong in the jungle was his monster modifiers to his E. So they are knocking that down from 150% damage to monsters to 125%. Not saying they said this isn't going to take him out, but it's going to balance him a little more in the jungle. So a lot of people should be happy about that. [00:03:52] Speaker B: And anecdotally, I have not seen a Teemo jungle since the patch hit it. [00:03:57] Speaker C: It fundamentally drastically changes his first clear, which is the most important clear. And it means that, like, he can't do as many shenanigans as he could get up to in the beginning, which is probably why you're not seeing a lot of them, because you sort of started off because of the shenanigans. [00:04:16] Speaker B: His pick rate actually dropped by 50% from the patch. [00:04:19] Speaker A: That's hilarious. [00:04:22] Speaker B: In jungle specifically, it's still playable, but. [00:04:26] Speaker C: Like a lot of the AP Junglers, it's now no longer optimal to do that. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah, there's just better choices. I mean, he was just very strong. People were taking advantage of it, and now he's not as strong. So there's better options. [00:04:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. All right, speaking of very strong, I'm going to talk briefly about the Armordillo Ramis got one change in this patch. So his Q, his. His rolling around at the speed of sound used to scale from 16 to 6 seconds as you ranked it up. Now it scales from 12 to 6 seconds as you rank it up. I think this is actually a major change because this means he can Powerball between every camp, basically, with rank one Powerball, I don't see a point in putting more points into Powerball on Rammus anymore. Like, this is enough of a lower cooldown at early ranks, and all the ranking it does is change the cooldown and the damage you deal when you impact. I'm going to be maxing W second, and I'm maxing E first. [00:05:45] Speaker A: And I'm. [00:05:46] Speaker B: Just rolling around at the speed of sound and got places to go. I got to follow my rainbow. [00:05:52] Speaker C: I mean, the only reason that I would say to Max Q now would be, if you're playing AP Rammus, you're going in for the big bonk. And that's it. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's please stop maxing Q. They buffed the early cooldown specifically. That tells you this is not a first max anymore. [00:06:20] Speaker C: You should be like, fundamentally, if you're playing ramish jungle, your goal is to gank a lot from weird angles. So you want your taunt up very high very soon. [00:06:30] Speaker B: And also the duration goes up per rank. [00:06:33] Speaker C: So you want taunt probably as your first max. And then you're taking damage, you want to take less damage and it helps your clear faster. If you're. You're doing the shell, though, well, the. [00:06:47] Speaker B: So the defensive ball curl just scales the multipliers on armor and Mr. When you rank it up. So it should never be your first max. Do not max ball curl first, you. [00:06:57] Speaker C: Know, but by the time you have finished maxing your taunt, you have enough armor and Mr. That that scaling becomes obscene. [00:07:07] Speaker B: Yep. So, yeah, that's why I felt like highlighting this is previously, people were putting usually two to three points into powerball minimum if not full on maxing it. And I think you just don't need to anymore. All right, Mike, it's your turn. [00:07:26] Speaker C: All right, I'm going to talk about a change that means nothing because Caitlyn got a damage nerf on her ult ratio. It went from 150 bonus ID to 100% and it means nothing. Caitlyn is not strong because of her ult. Caitlyn is strong because the items that you build allow her to headshot crit you in the face for half your health. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Yep. [00:07:51] Speaker C: It's just really nice when you get to also ult them and they die. I don't think this is a problem. Having less damage on the alt is not a not a problem, but it's not why she's picked. [00:08:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:05] Speaker B: For context, a four item Caitlyn still is doing like 1500 damage with her ultimate. I know from experience because that's what the tooltip said in the game we played earlier today. [00:08:19] Speaker C: She has such high base damage on that. And you're building raw ad for the most part. [00:08:27] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:28] Speaker C: With the occasional bit of attack speed. And as your later items or a lower item, armor shred, you're gonna have 300 AD by four items. You're doing so much damage. [00:08:45] Speaker A: If I was to make a guess on this, the only thing this is really going to affect, and I don't know about you guys, but when I play Caitlin, I always go first strike. It's going to reduce a lot of that benefit from just arring just for the first strike gold. I mean, it's gonna, it's gonna knock down the gold. You get by not a whole Lot by just. But just a little bit. It's the only thing I can really. [00:09:09] Speaker C: See this affecting from what I've seen from most players. They don't start alt and then go in to fight you. They usually almost always wait for the end or you're playing Aram in which you're building lethality. Caitlyn. And the alt is on like a 20 second cooldown. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Well what I mean is like with first strike you would just throw your old out just to throw it out and get free gold a lot of the times. [00:09:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I can see it. [00:09:36] Speaker B: That's. I think the biggest thing is this change. Shunts hurt more towards the fleet footwork lane dominance and less towards the first strike. Farming extra gold. [00:09:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think it's worth doing that first strike build. [00:09:53] Speaker B: For what it's worth, I played her as fleet when I played her today. [00:09:57] Speaker A: I do love fleet on her. [00:10:02] Speaker B: Pillow. Tell us what else you love. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Well, I am going to move into my first big change which was with Aurora and I'm happy to see some of these changes on her. Especially the change on her passive. She no longer gets the bonus movement speed at all on her passive. It's gone. They removed it and that was a very oppressive passive ability that she had. That movement speed was insane. That she would get her Q, her two fold hex. The big change here for me that I'm noticing just right off the rip is now it automatically will recast. You can still recast it but when it runs out much like like an urgot or will work, it'll automatically recast itself regardless. Wait. [00:11:02] Speaker B: Ergot ult recasts automatically if it times out and they're low enough. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:11:07] Speaker B: I had no idea. [00:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Unless they've changed it. Unless they've changed it. But yeah, I'm gonna look at time out. Okay. But yeah if you now that you have no choice in it. So if you're trying to in the top lane playing Aurora and you're trying to like do some wave management up there, you better be careful where you're standing on that recast of Q if you're not trying to mess up your wave state at all. Also her cooldown it went from 8 to 8 seconds to 6 seconds. Now it's going from 9 seconds to 7 seconds. So getting a little bump up there. [00:11:45] Speaker C: One second at all ranks. Yeah. [00:11:47] Speaker A: One second at all ranks. Range went up 50 units. Barely gonna notice that. The W has a new effect now. It now grants 20% scaling to 40% bonus movement speed. On a cast. So that's where her movement speed from her passive is getting moved to, I believe. [00:12:07] Speaker B: Yep. [00:12:08] Speaker C: I think it needs to be there. I think this is a better place. [00:12:10] Speaker B: For it, her movement speed. So instead of her just running fast the entire fight, she gets to run fast briefly after casting an ability. [00:12:19] Speaker A: It's a lot healthier. You know, it's now tied into. It's less reliable. It's. It's on a cast now, which I think is a good idea. Small change on her E. Her range went from 800 to 825 range. Again, you'll barely ever notice that. And her R its duration is getting a one second increase. It's going one and a half seconds to. Or I'm sorry, one and a half seconds. It was one and a half to two and a half seconds and now it's going from two and a half to four seconds. So duration is getting a pretty big push forward. But the big change in it is it no longer traps enemies inside of it. It'll now slow them when they get to the outside of the ring and go to exit for one and a half at rank one, 1.75 seconds at rank two and then two seconds at rank three. And it now grants the same amount of movement speed granted by W. Instead of amplifying your current movement speed, which I didn't even knew, it amplified her movement speed. [00:13:31] Speaker C: So it's basically no difference on the movement speed she gains. Maybe a little bit more. Overall it just empowered her. Her passive before. I don't like this change specifically because I think her ult was better the way it was. I think having a weaker version of a. Oh, what's her name? [00:13:59] Speaker B: Camille Ult. [00:13:59] Speaker C: Camille. That's it. Camille was just a really interesting way let's have a cage match. Anyone can get out of it if they have a dash. [00:14:10] Speaker B: I much prefer this version because it lasts longer. Because it now does not hard trap them. It's allowed to last longer. So now she actually gets to do things with the. When she tries to leave it and it zips her around, you do get. [00:14:25] Speaker C: More bouncy, weird shenanigans with that. [00:14:27] Speaker B: I feel like this has more like skill expression opportunities. [00:14:34] Speaker C: I think better 1v1 and worse in a team fight. [00:14:39] Speaker A: I always felt like her all was. It felt very lackluster just because of how short it was. [00:14:47] Speaker B: It was basically just a damage cast pretty much. [00:14:51] Speaker A: By the time that it casted fully expanded, it was gone. Like it didn't last nearly as long enough. So I think definitely the Increase on the duration is gonna be nice. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Also, I did check. You are correct, Pillow. One of the conditions for fear beyond death automatically recasting is if the ULT itself would kill the target. It automatically just recasts. And then if they're below the threshold at the end of the duration, it automatically recasts. [00:15:22] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:22] Speaker C: Oh, if you just shoot. [00:15:24] Speaker B: If you just snipe someone who's below 25%, it just auto recasts. [00:15:29] Speaker C: I've always just slammed click it. No, never mind. I guess I was wrong. [00:15:33] Speaker A: Well, there's a lot of people that'll hold on to it till they need that fear if it's. If they can get the fear in. [00:15:38] Speaker B: And as long as the enemy doesn't have a way to heal back up out of the threshold. [00:15:43] Speaker A: And then I've seen plays of hitting your r and then TPing to a fight and then dragging them across the map and starting a fight with a fear. [00:15:53] Speaker B: That's hilarious. [00:15:56] Speaker A: It's. It's. It's hard to do. It's got to be perfect situation and the stars got a line. But it's. Yeah, it works. [00:16:06] Speaker C: You basically have to TP aft right after you throw the projectile. [00:16:09] Speaker A: Immediately. Immediately. [00:16:11] Speaker B: That's so funny. All right, sorry. This isn't actually an urgot discussion. I just. I didn't know that it auto recast until literally right now. I assumed that if the team was able to CC Urgot so he couldn't actually do the recast, then they could save the person from getting munched by him. And I learned also while looking this up, no, he can do the recast while affected by cast, inhibiting crowd control such as silence stasis suppression. [00:16:44] Speaker A: So it works like Trinor can be cast no matter what. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Trinity Tryndamere can't can't cast during suppress or Sargots recast on his ult, can he? [00:16:55] Speaker C: Also can't cast during the silence. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's insane. So sorry for the tangent. Different tangent. This kind of ties into what Mike was talking about earlier. This is why these changes mean nothing to Caitlyn. I'm going to briefly touch on collector got slightly more expensive. That's it. It gained 50 gold in cost. But Yunta Wild Arrows, one of its competing starting ad crit items, got massively buffed. First of all, they reduced the price by 100 gold. Second, they reduced the cooldown on the proc. That gives you the extra attack speed. And then just for good measure, they also made it so when the proc goes off, it now lasts 6 seconds instead of 4 seconds. This thing literally went from 10% uptime, not counting the refund mechanic to 20% uptime, not counting the refund mechanic. It's absolutely strong as fuck. And it's cheaper. Yes, this is. This is now cheap enough that it is like competing with static shiv levels of cheap. It's slightly more expensive than static shiv. It still suffers from having to buy a BF sword, which sucks. But Yun Tal is strong and champions who have strong synergies with it like Tristana and Caitlyn are strong right now. [00:18:27] Speaker C: One of the reasons why Caitlyn's Ult mechanic just doesn't matter that that Nerf does nothing. [00:18:31] Speaker B: Yep. She literally got compensation buffs in the form of Yun Tall getting buffed. She still likes Collector. [00:18:41] Speaker C: I can continue with another mechanic that to change the doesn't mean anything. Tom Kench got some AP ratio nerfs. Does anyone build AP Tom Kench? Does that matter to just about anybody? [00:18:57] Speaker A: Rift maker big it's actually a good viable item on him. [00:19:03] Speaker C: He does a lot of magic damage baseline but like you weren't using AP Tom Kench to try and get a big shield out of it. Is our devour or no? It does some damage with his passive but a 0.5% AP per 100 change does nothing. Tahm Kench just does too much damage and he's so hard to run from. And this is like a support Tahm Kench on a negligible gold income can absolutely just stonewall a team. [00:19:45] Speaker B: Yep. I have as a mid laner with mid laner economy been soloed by a support Tahm Kench. Just out of nowhere he pops up underneath me. Cool. My flash was burned two minutes ago so I'm just dead to Tom Kench. It's frustrating if you don't have a. [00:20:03] Speaker C: Glad you can't get away from him. [00:20:06] Speaker B: I'm glad that the the AP build got nerfed because the rift maker Tahm Kench is stupid. [00:20:14] Speaker C: I don't. [00:20:15] Speaker B: I don't think her to be strong. [00:20:16] Speaker C: To be fair, I don't think it does anything to the rift maker build at all. This. This is not a real nerf to it. That was to the shield ratio on his R not to any damage he does. So that only matters when you're eating someone else, in which case the Riftmaker doesn't care. And then 0.5% AP per 100 bonus health. [00:20:37] Speaker B: All right, that sounds small. Is not small because you have to. [00:20:44] Speaker C: Have 100 bonus health so he gets a lot of bonus Health. [00:20:47] Speaker B: Yes. The. The top lane builds are going heart steel. They're getting thousands of bonus health, which means he's still losing a quarter of the ratio. [00:20:57] Speaker C: That he's losing a quarter of the ratio. But he wasn't building enough AP5 to think it does much. Yeah. [00:21:06] Speaker B: But, yes, per 100 bonus health, 5% AP when he has a thousand bonus health, when he has the 3500 bonus health he actually has, it's like 20% AP ratio lost. Like, is it enough to stop him from building Riftmaker? No, but it is meaningful. [00:21:24] Speaker C: If he actively built AP, it might actually matter a ton. But 20% versus 15% of 180 at most is a negligible number, which is why this Nerf doesn't matter, because even though he's building a lot of ap, he's not. It's. It's not what he's getting. He's building so tanky, and he's doing so much damage because of his tankiness. [00:21:58] Speaker B: And it doesn't do anything to fix the current problem he has of his W having too short of a cooldown to where his correct way to play is to just pop the W shield earlier. Thick skin, the E to pop the thick skin shield super early just to block some damage and then pop it again after another few seconds to block some damage. [00:22:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you should. Like, when you're fighting with Tompkins, your E should always be on cooldown. Like, you should just always use it. [00:22:29] Speaker C: There's. There's one way that you don't, and it's if you know you're gonna win the 1v1, in which case you just don't even bother popping it, and then you walk away and heal your entire health bar back up. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, the right way to actually play Tom Kent is just right click, and then you can go, like, use the bathroom or something. [00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Come back and you got 300 gold and a tower. [00:22:52] Speaker C: It's. It's. It's a champion that both of his roles are too potent with where he is, and I don't see enough people playing him. [00:23:04] Speaker B: I'm genuinely shocked his play rate is as low as it is. [00:23:07] Speaker C: If I'm starting to realize, I would be. [00:23:10] Speaker A: He has very obvious weaknesses, and he is very good in a 1v1 situation. But if he gets caught, like, if he's in a team fight, yeah, he can protect somebody, and he can do a little bit appealing, but he doesn't bring a whole lot to a teamfight other than his shield on his R, the slow on His Q and the knock up if he can hit it. But after he's used his knock up, like, he's just very easy to kind of like play around. Like when I play Tom Kench, if it's if. If my team is in a position where they can. What's word looking for. Hold their ground in a team fight. Like Tom Kench cannot carry a game from what I've seen. But if the team's already ahead and strong and like even he's going to add a lot to a team fight. But he is not strong enough, in my opinion, to carry a teamfight. [00:24:14] Speaker C: I think it depends entirely on if the AD carry can get away from him and kill him. Because if you have two tanks who are just walking at each other, yeah, he'll beat that other tank. If you have two tanks are walking past the team to take the carry down, he's one of the better tanks at killing carries. Because now you don't have to worry about throwing all of that tongue slap too slow. You can save it for stuns. You can get an eat off on an enemy. It does like 20% of their health. You can just wreck. Kind of like Mundo can. If you let Mundo just get past you, he does so much damage. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Yep. Don't get hit by his cue and run away. [00:25:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:25:08] Speaker B: All right, well, how about someone else that's hard to run away from? Hello. [00:25:14] Speaker A: Oh, my notes closed. Let me pull the page closed. I forget what else I picked. [00:25:18] Speaker C: It's because they can't see him. It's because they can't see. [00:25:20] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Okay. Rangar, he got a little bit of a. A little bit of a change. So Rangar got a change to his R. His armor shred went from 12 to scaling to 24, just flat armor shred to 15 to scaling to 25. You're not going to really notice a whole lot on the. [00:25:44] Speaker B: The. [00:25:44] Speaker A: The end there with the one armor shred. But his bonus damage got doubled from his toll from 50% to 100% of his total ad. And that's your. When you're coming out of the R. [00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say that's the initial jump. [00:26:00] Speaker A: Right, the initial jump. Your. Your Q usually is what people are going to be leading with with that. So you're gonna. That initial jump, that's where you're gonna get that big burst from Rengar. So he's gonna be a pretty scary kitty coming out of his R. But after he's out of his R, he's exactly right where he was. So I don't I don't know if this is gonna do a whole lot for. It'll probably bump his win rate a little bit because he's gonna be one shot in some people. But I don't know if it's gonna fix him in the jungle where he was before this. But I haven't looked at his stats since this patch came out. [00:26:45] Speaker C: Yeah, Rengar. Rengar is just. If he's allowed to one shot people, there's nothing you can do to stop it. And this makes it easier for him to one shot people. So I don't like it. [00:27:02] Speaker A: So I don't like it. [00:27:03] Speaker C: I don't like assassins being able to one tap combo. [00:27:06] Speaker A: You as of right now and this is going just off you, G.G. well, he's still sitting at like a 46.73 win rate, so I don't think it did a whole lot to him. [00:27:21] Speaker B: No. [00:27:23] Speaker A: There's still some work that needs to be done. He. He used to be just dominant in the jungle. Just scary. And I just don't think right now is his time to shine. You know, he needs. [00:27:35] Speaker C: I think it's the item changes. I think with the way items have changed. The thing that used to make him super powerful was what was going on with the last Mythic system. [00:27:48] Speaker A: And he doesn't have that blade on him. Was insane. [00:27:54] Speaker C: Yep. [00:27:54] Speaker B: I'm so glad Duskblade is gone. [00:27:57] Speaker C: Duskblade was disgusting. [00:27:59] Speaker B: Fuck that item. I hope it never comes back. [00:28:05] Speaker A: But I will say the in the what's the fighter build on Rengar is still pretty fun. [00:28:16] Speaker B: Bruiser items. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah, you're building him a little bit more bruiser. You'll get like the what's the stride breaker builds and just the healing because his W is scaled off. His. His healing, it's just a percentage based healing. So it's pretty good on higher HP builds. [00:28:46] Speaker B: I'm not gonna lie. I've only ever seen Rengar's playing just full lethality builds. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Oh yeah. It's always. [00:28:56] Speaker B: I remember the Lion Lane Police. [00:29:01] Speaker A: I've done that a few times. [00:29:04] Speaker C: AP Rengar is stupid. But thankfully also gone. I think. I think you're up, Jax, with this next one. [00:29:20] Speaker B: All right, so I'm gonna talk about the little dragon that could smolder. Got a major set of changes this patch. And the fundamental goal of these changes is to make him scale better with items and worse with stacks. Because Smolder was in a state where he barely cared what items he built. He really just wanted stacks. And that was where all his damage came from hence why we kept seeing like Liandry's on Smolder. [00:29:51] Speaker C: This is not to say he does not care about stacks, because he still does. [00:29:55] Speaker B: Oh yeah. [00:29:56] Speaker C: But now items actually what you're building drastically increases his damage. [00:30:02] Speaker B: Yep. I think the days of Liandry's smolder are just dead with these changes. For example. So going through it real quick, his Q now does less damage to the splash targets. Like where the extra fire bolts bounce when you're at a 125 or higher than it did before. It now scales better with AD and worse with stacks. And then the big change to his Q is that it refunds 15 mana if it kills a unit. Smolder actually can fucking cast in lane now. It feels incredible. If you're not having to regularly spam your W and E, you just do not run. Period. Which is what it felt like he needed to feel good. His W has much better ad scaling than it had before. Both for the initial glob and the explosion. If you hit a champion. And it no longer has a modifier to boost its damage against minions because of the better ratio, it just doesn't need it anymore. His E. The flap, flap, flap didn't really change much. It again, higher ad ratio, lower stack ratio. The nice thing on it is that the damage indicator now shows the combined damage. So you know how much damage your E actually did in a fight. Which is nice. Here's the other big one for Smolder. His ultimate mom now has a 50% minion damage modifier. You can't just instant clear waves by just casting R anymore. It might kill the casters, but the melees will definitely survive. [00:31:56] Speaker A: Now I got a question. Why? Why is that? Why do you think they added that? So let me get you the same reason. Go ahead. [00:32:05] Speaker B: For the same reason that Ezreal doesn't clear minion waves anymore. Because having a long range ultimate that clears waves on an ad carry encourages non interactive play styles. [00:32:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I just ah. I don't know. I kind of like. [00:32:27] Speaker C: So beneficial to be able to just rock a wave that you're nowhere near. It really encourages rotation. It really encourages. Also in this case like hey, there's two people pushing a turret alt down the wave. I get some stacks because there are a couple people there and the wave is not mine. [00:32:53] Speaker B: Yep. [00:32:54] Speaker C: They want him to have a weakness. And that weakness is being near people. [00:32:58] Speaker B: You'll notice the champions who are still allowed to just ult and clear a wave are champions like Miss Fortune. Who puts herself in danger to do so, and champions like Gangplank, where a huge amount of his kit's power is in his ultimate and it has a really long cooldown. Well, Luxury Lux is the big exception, but she's also not an AD carry. Mages are supposed to wave clear. [00:33:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:33:31] Speaker B: So, yeah, big takeaway these changes is stop building Liandry's entirely and strongly consider whether you should still be building the Shojin. I think the correct build on him is honestly just Trinity Force into crit because his Q actually scales the ratio based on crit chance in a way that is really useful for him. So I've been going like Essence Reaver with Trinity Force. Essence Reaver first because Mana and then like Yoon Tall, Shield Bow, Mortal Reminder or Lord Dom's. Those kinds of items. Whatever makes sense in the circumstance. Because the. The Qad ratio is fucking huge when you have crit and you don't need Infinity Edge. Because crit damage doesn't do anything for the Q. [00:34:30] Speaker C: His Q does not crit like other other people's doing. Like King like does. The other thing is because of what his crit is, his. His Q is an aoe. It means he benefits from life steal significantly less than other ad carries do. [00:34:44] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:45] Speaker C: Because you're spamming your Q as your primary damage source. So you don't need your non crit item to be a lifesteal item. [00:34:53] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. I've. I've literally just been playing like build all of the random AD crit items that make sense in the circumstances of the particular game I'm in with a Trinity Force and Essence Reaver. And it's been great. He's still good with manamun builds, but I think he's better with the crit builds. Honestly, I just did the math. If you can reach 100% crit on Smolder, that brings the AD ratio on his q up to 227% bonus ad. That's insane for a spammable basic ability. [00:35:39] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, that's. That's pretty nice. And I mean you're easily going to get to that hundred percent. Well, I can't say easily, but you're. [00:35:51] Speaker B: I mean, that's the end game build. And again, because you don't have to commit to an Infinity Edge, which is super expensive, it's more attainable. You're looking at a bunch of like 27, 26, 50 to 3,000 gold items. But Shield Bow is glorious on him. [00:36:12] Speaker A: I must admit, I don't play a whole lot of smolder because it's not very. Not very good in the top lane. [00:36:22] Speaker C: Well, a couple patches ago he's still. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Good in some matchups where he's allowed to free farm because they can't punish it. [00:36:29] Speaker A: Oh yeah. If. If it's a. If it's a decent smolder that knows how to do the stacking and stay out of position of getting themselves killed. Yeah, I. I just don't. The only time I ever see him is in the top lane and it's. I. I just go. Someone that I can just run him down with and not have to worry about him. But at the end of the game, he's still going to be a monster because that's just how stacking champions work. And you just got to close out the games early. But that's just discussion for another time. [00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And you also do not have to go 100% crit on him. You can still go like a Shojin as well and be at 75% crit and you still have like a 200% ad ratio on all your Qs. It's insane. Smolder is still really good, guys. All right, Mike, I think it's time. [00:37:27] Speaker C: All right, we'll talk about the last big change here. They did a sort of not a fundamental rework on Rell, but they changed how almost everything she does interacts. Their stated goal is to try and give more outplay opportunity to counter play, which for a while, if you did things correctly, there was nothing you could do if you got caught by Ralph. Boom, boom, boom. Everyone's gone. The CC duration is insane. It still has a good duration, but the amount of stat changes across the board and shifts that they've made have made it so that it is no longer as reliable to get such a long chain going off on a ton of people. So they did a lot of changes to her base stats. We don't need to go over most of them, but there are two that I think really matter a ton. She got a loss in movement speed 330 to 315. That's huge. [00:38:34] Speaker B: Oh yeah, that's 15. Movement speed is insane. [00:38:40] Speaker C: And this one really matters so that they sort of all go together. The attack speed work changes. She got a better growth. She has a different wind up on how her auto attack goes off and they changed her animation scaling with attack speed. So now as she's gaining more attack speed growth throughout the game so levels really care about this, her auto attack animation will go significantly faster. [00:39:06] Speaker B: Should make her feel smoother. [00:39:12] Speaker A: I'm just the 315 base movement speed. That's insane. You're gonna feel like it's one of. [00:39:20] Speaker B: The slowest champions in the game. [00:39:22] Speaker C: It's because of. It's because of her E. Well, we'll get there. We understand why there's. There's a couple of major changes that have done things to it that really matter. [00:39:33] Speaker B: So I just checked. That actually does make her straight up the slowest champion in the game other than dismounted kled. [00:39:43] Speaker C: Most of the time. Now there is a distinct difference in what's going on with when she changes her character. This is if you don't have a certain ability because her base movement speed only matters when you don't have W because that fundamentally changes how fast she moves. Her passive just now does percent shred instead and now has a good minimum. Her Q lost 0.1 seconds on the stun duration. This is to help smooth out those times. But they've also done some shenanigans with how her W works. She no longer is slowed when she's dismounted. So her ferromancy, her W has two modes. When you jump off of the horse and start smacking people and when you jump back on your horse, both of them have a CC within them. Now when she jumps off she stuns you and knocks you up. The knock up is shorter and now she has close to a second stun. She gains slightly more armor and Mr. She loses or she gains slightly less attack speed. Cooldown is slightly faster. Same thing with the cooldown for mount back up. The knock up duration, same difference. The stun duration got fairly lowered. So now she's only ccing you for one second total. When she comes back up and she has mounted movement speed while in her W when she's got her horse and that changes her base movement speed from 335 to 380 out of combat based on ability, rank, how things are going. So she doesn't really have that slow movement speed. Well, she's not doing that. Her crash down used to cost her so much movement speed. Now she's just slow. And then they did a bunch of messes with her E. More importantly, that. [00:42:04] Speaker B: Should make slows themselves more effective against her when she's dismounted. Because previously she was a self applying a 10% slow and only the strongest slow applies. So it was just nuking that when you slowed her. Now she's got the lower base movement speed and eats whatever your slow is. [00:42:25] Speaker C: Yes, and it does mean she can move faster while she's baseline. While she's no longer on her horse and she's tankier but she's much more susceptible to slow and the CC duration is shorter overall. So now her E they changed a little while ago to be a pretty big movement speed bonus to you and a buddy. And then you do some damage when you hit them with your next ability. There's no longer a movement speed ramp. That's just gone. The cooldown went from 15 flat to 14 to 10 scaling based on ability rank. The damage got pretty fundamentally shifted from a base damage plus some AP ratio plus some max health to a scaling percent max health plus 3% per 100% AP. That, that part doesn't really matter too much. The damage cap shifted from just 150 to 150 to 300. And now you just have flat movement speed initially and with your max movement speed both running towards and away from people instead of having it scale. So now you're always moving 25% faster towards always moving 10% faster away. [00:43:58] Speaker B: When you cast E, when you cast. [00:44:00] Speaker C: E, there's no longer a rank, there's no longer a warm up time. You're just moving faster. Which means she's a little bit slower by max rank. But not having that scaling that ramp up means she's probably moving as fast overall. I like the changes. They need to be a major difference between her and Leona. Leona takes one target and says no, you're not allowed to do anything. Whereas Rell takes one team fight and goes. Everybody here doesn't move for a very short amount of time. [00:44:46] Speaker B: Yep, it's AOE champions for CC generally have lower durations or our special cases. Rel was getting the best of both worlds so they've taken that away and made her more in line with other AOE CC champs and then given her some power elsewhere. [00:45:07] Speaker C: It's a fundamentally healthy change. Almost everything here is. They've taken a lot of the convoluted information out and started putting much more easy to understand things here. Overall. A lot of the numbers are buffs for her in general and she's just baseline because of the base stat stuff. A little bit smoother to play. [00:45:29] Speaker B: Yep. [00:45:29] Speaker C: They also didn't change her alt at all. [00:45:31] Speaker B: Yep. To note for Samira and Yasuo players you have a much smaller window to react to the crash down to get the knock up. So pay attention. [00:45:42] Speaker C: Yes. [00:45:46] Speaker A: Be interested to see. You know, Rel is one of those champions that has got the original Kasante treatment. Where this is I think is her like fifth or sixth or even maybe even more I think this is her third, like, rework. It might maybe her third, but it just, like, they. There's just. They can never figure her out. I feel like they're just not able to, like, pin down her identity. [00:46:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I think this does a lot to solidify her identity. As the AOE engage support, I will say, looking at stats, she definitely seems to have landed on the weak side. I wouldn't be surprised if she gets buffed next patch numerically. [00:46:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:46:33] Speaker B: But I think the mechanical changes are good. [00:46:35] Speaker C: I don't think they'll be doing much to change the duration of her cc, because her CC duration, this is healthy, but they may give her a little bit more tankiness here, a little bit more damage there to compensate. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Yep, I sure hope so. All right, we're gonna go in, I guess. Talk about my last change that I want to note. It's very small, but just so you guys are aware, you ranged people who build Ghostblade, you are getting a nerf on the Ghostblade. You got your guys'out of combat movement speed is going from 20 to 10, and the active movement speed is going from 6 seconds to 4 seconds. So very small. But range don't get the full benefit anymore. That is only offered to melee. [00:47:33] Speaker B: I mean, to be fair, there were very few ranged champions who were using Ghostblade before. [00:47:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:47:39] Speaker B: But I'm happy about this, honestly. Like, I don't want Lethality Jin and Lethality MF to come back. [00:47:47] Speaker C: That was the person who I was thinking of first was Lethality Jin, because the amount of movement speed he gets already is disgusting. [00:47:55] Speaker B: I don't want any of those coming back. So I'm happy to change like this. Just acting as an extra deterrent of they have less item options that are full value for them. [00:48:05] Speaker A: I wasn't here on the patch note when you guys when this happened, but when I first saw that they brought back the out of combat movement speed on Ghostblade, I was so excited for that. Just. I don't know why I don't build Ghostblade on hardly anyone, but just to see. It's just such. It's finally. It's good to see, like, items getting back their identities that they used to have. [00:48:31] Speaker B: Yep. And out of combat movement speed is one of those stats that you can actually feel. [00:48:36] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I love. [00:48:38] Speaker C: It's hard to quantify, but easy to feel. [00:48:41] Speaker B: Yep. You just feel like you're zooming. All right, Mike, you want to talk about Ambessa for your trinket tip? [00:48:51] Speaker C: This is a pretty quick and easy trinket tip. I found that out during the six hours of play today. Amessa still gains her empowered passive auto attack even if she's interrupted or stunned out of her dash the second she like. So if you're doing this through a poppy W or if you are just trying to do it and someone ccs you midway through your e, you still count it as trying to move so you still gain it. Very easy, very simple. It really helps when you're dueling. [00:49:35] Speaker B: Fair enough. All right, let's get to our set of listener questions, which all come from Reigns tonight. That's right, Reigns is the one listener who wrote in Listeners, we need more questions right into the forwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the podcast. But Rains writes hello Wards, I am screaming, crying, throwing up at the recent T1 news. Whilst I am a diehard T1 fan, I will not be flaming either Doran, Zeus or T1, but just be excited for the future. Despite my disappointment regarding my last email, Jax, you're right. I'm from oce so unfortunately I cannot join Discord matches nor can I usually watch as I'm typically at work when you all play. Alas, I will do my best to find time to watch you guys and join in when I can. Thanks for your responses to my last email. As a result of your recommendations, I decided the best way to attack both questions was to bring out my old main tank Echo but in mid and top rather than just top. I have a couple questions but they may be more appropriate to answer on Discord blah blah blah. With Garen being my current flavor of LP gain in the mid lane, I've learned the power of Power farm then roaming if I can't find kill threat on my lane opponent. My questions are I am struggling with translating the playstyle a power Farm than Rome from Garen to other champions. I play mainly Malzahar. If I'm not confident or if we need AP in the team, would this be more of a practice issue or a champion limitation? That's a bit about that's a practice issue because Malzahar is really good at the farm in Rome. [00:51:05] Speaker C: It's a bit of both. There are some champions, malzahar specifically who can 1 2, 3 throw abilities down and walk away. Yep, he is one of the premier people who gets to just throw abilities down and walk in a direction and it's really just a do I want to try and push this direction? Usually nothing comes of it. You're roaming just to try and make them guess what you're doing. But sometimes you can get a good roam off if they're pushed up and they don't respond. [00:51:36] Speaker B: Oh yeah. One of my favorite things to do on Malzahar is I just make sure I have a control ward in the side bush of the lane. I will walk at the wave when it comes in so that the enemy thinks that they're getting ganked and backs off because they don't want to get ulted weq the wave, making sure now I'm at an angle so my Q hits the entire minion wave, that wave will die. I just fucking peace out walk through my control ward. Like where they can see me leaving lane to the river. Because then I have time. I can judge did the bot lane react to me leaving? Were they pinged away? And I can just loop back around and go back into my lane and farm the next wave and do it again. And I can do that literally every wave. And if I for five times in a row, visibly leave lane and get the enemy bot lane pinged away, then the sixth time I do it, if I actually wander bot, they are not listening to that ping anymore. It's the boy who cried wolf. I'm literally playing the boy who cried wolf when I play Malzahar. And it works so well so often, it's dumb. My Malzahar win rate is currently like 62%. [00:52:50] Speaker C: This is also one of those things that you. You can't immediately start running away from waves to do this until you're like level nine, one full item. [00:52:58] Speaker B: Yep. You need the black fire torch and your max rank E. And then the wave will get wiped. If it's a cannon wave, you might have to cast another spell. [00:53:09] Speaker A: So I recently learned this. And when I say recently, within like the last year or so. I didn't know this, but Malzahar, what is his silence? Is it his Q, his Q or kiss Q refreshes his dot. So it's good to hold that and wait till that dot might be close to expiring to cast that on your wave. So there's a little, I guess, bonus trinket tip. [00:53:36] Speaker B: At least until you get to the point where the wave will for sure die. Then you don't need to hold it anymore. But yes, you can. I've gotten so many kills on Malzahar just by landing a last second Q to refresh the E and then watching them burn to death. [00:53:51] Speaker C: To do this properly, you need to do the proper spell order with him, just to make sure you have the optimal amount of your voidlings to go through. You want to E, then you want to Q, then you want to W usually because that will automatically give the most of them. [00:54:09] Speaker B: No other way around. You want to already set up to have two stacks of your W, then you W E Q. So you're already at two stacks for the next cast. [00:54:18] Speaker C: Okay. [00:54:19] Speaker B: It's a self sustaining cycle when you do it that way. [00:54:25] Speaker C: Yes, it is, isn't it? [00:54:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:27] Speaker B: That's the trick. And that's what I see a lot of Malzahars be bad at. Is they E first and then you have to be in range to cast E to put up your next set. [00:54:36] Speaker C: Of full voidlings in an odd one. This also depends on what your opponent is. [00:54:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:54:43] Speaker C: If they can clear your minions very, very easily, very quickly. You may need to slightly shift around how you do this because otherwise you're not clearing the back part of that wave. [00:54:56] Speaker B: At least until your E strong enough to do it itself. [00:54:59] Speaker C: Yes. So this might also be a. You're not doing it and the opponent can clear it too quickly. [00:55:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:55:08] Speaker A: Another thing to touch on, the roaming. Sorry, go ahead. [00:55:10] Speaker B: I was gonna say, because you mentioned the refreshing. Malzahar's also refreshes the iteration. A lot of people don't know that either. [00:55:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I forgot about that. But I did learn that too. It's amazing what happens when you actually read what spells do. [00:55:24] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:25] Speaker C: If you E then ult, you almost assuredly are able to cast E again when the ULT is done. Because of the cooldown. [00:55:31] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:32] Speaker C: So, like, you can get a strong single dot on a person E. Wait a couple seconds, cue them, wait a couple seconds, E them again. Alt E them again. Once you have a realize they just. They never move. [00:55:50] Speaker B: All right, so what's this about roaming? [00:55:52] Speaker A: Just a small comment on the roam. If you're not sure whether, you know, if you find yourself having downtime and you're not ready to fully commit to like a roam to a side lane, just see what your jungle's up to and see if it's something that you can go help him with. Creating pressure if he's invading or if he's going for a scuttle crab or some kind of neutral objective. You could just go hover around him just in case. If you're not wanting to fully commit to a side lane gig. [00:56:18] Speaker B: Yep. As long as you have the mana, Malzahar takes objectives super fucking fast. It is great. Like if. If you're free because you're shoving in to just roam up and be like hey, Jungler. You wanted to do void grubs anyway. Let's do them real fast. [00:56:36] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:56:37] Speaker B: As long as you have the mana to spare. Trick there is. Just make sure you put the E on one of the little mites that spawns and let it bounce to all the mites. [00:56:49] Speaker A: Oh man. [00:56:50] Speaker C: That just gives you your entire mana, Barbac. [00:56:53] Speaker B: If you're lucky and it works correctly the way you want. Yes, it's pretty great. Alright, Reigns actually has a second question, so let's get to it. Are there champions with similar play patterns or playstyles that I could be learning that could fare better in ranged matchups that aren't a high skill floor? The idea is I want to focus more on clear and roam rather than flashy solo bolo outplays. I want to win games and have fun even if it's ugly. [00:57:23] Speaker C: I'm assuming this is Garen and not Malzahar. Something similar. [00:57:28] Speaker B: Just champions that wipe the wave in Rome. [00:57:33] Speaker C: There's a lot. [00:57:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, into a ranged match, like. Okay, just some champions. Like just wipe the wave and run. You can. You know, Katarina could wipe or wipe away even Rome. That's like. That's what she wants to do. But there's a. There's some setup to wipe the wave. And if it's into a raged matchup, most likely you're not going to be able to reliably get that set up. I'm trying to think Cassio. Cassiopeia is pretty good at wiping away later. Like probably. [00:58:09] Speaker B: She sits there eventually. Yeah. She has to spend too much time. I'm thinking more like Syndra. [00:58:15] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Syndra is good. [00:58:17] Speaker B: Syndra annihilates waves with a couple spells once she's got some levels and items under her belt. And her roams are terrifying. And also that's how you stack your Syndra stacks really fast is by roaming and actually finding plays. [00:58:31] Speaker C: I've got a great one for you. And it's someone that has a low skill floor but a high skill ceiling. AP Gragas. [00:58:41] Speaker B: True. [00:58:42] Speaker C: You can burst a wave almost immediately with your qew Qwe. And then you just walk away and go bomba somebody. [00:58:57] Speaker A: I mean, there's another Lux. I mean, we were just talking about. She's got very short cooldown. Like it's. She's very safe, very reliable with the wave clear once you hit level six. I mean, when I play Lux, I only use my R once I hit 6 to clear minion waves. And then I roam pretty much. I don't. I Don't go for kills with my R unless it's like a sure thing. I just clear the minion wave. Roam Ziggs. Ziggs is pretty decent at clearing a minion wave and he can roam down. [00:59:31] Speaker C: The thing with Ziggs is he'd much prefer to push the turret. So he's not as much of a roamer as he is. I would like to shove this wave down your throat and if you don't answer me. If you go. He is a great person to play into. People who roam. [00:59:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:59:47] Speaker C: You get to shove the wave. They walk away. You go up, you take that tower. If they haven't gotten the kill, you can take another tower. If they have gotten the kill and they're low, you can throw an alt in their face. [00:59:58] Speaker B: Yep. [01:00:00] Speaker A: I'm trying to think. I know there's. There's another one that I thought of, but I. Before Lux, if you're wanting like a melee option, maybe I don't know if you want to look into like a melee option, but I mean talons pretty. [01:00:17] Speaker B: Good at clearing away talon roaming entire mo. [01:00:20] Speaker A: Like that's. You get a tiamat and you cast W. It's a little weird. [01:00:26] Speaker C: Sion does a really good job at this too. [01:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not going to recommend Psion mid though. [01:00:31] Speaker C: I'm don't do scion mid. [01:00:33] Speaker B: I. I don't want to recommend this, but it fits the question to a T. Action is hard to punish as a ranged champion. He is ranged. He wave clears really fast and his kid is designed for roaming. [01:00:50] Speaker A: I remember who I was going to think of and I agree with the action, but why it's here on the top of my head. Ari. Once she gets to. Once she gets. There's a level threshold and a item threshold. When you get your lost chapter and I think it might be level five, you should be able to clear the waves within two rotations of your abilities. But here's the trick. [01:01:13] Speaker B: Rotation takes too long. [01:01:15] Speaker C: Two rotations. If you can't do a one wave wipe, it's not a roam timer. Is that. [01:01:22] Speaker B: That's why Garen is the like example he's using in his question is because Garen is against Mids who can't do anything to him. You just run in, slap something, and then spin and the entire wave is dead in four seconds. [01:01:36] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. [01:01:37] Speaker C: I have one. I don't think I want to recommend, but I think it does it well and it can be useful. And I've seen it as something that's popped up at Very high win rate, which is Zack. Zack can wipe away. [01:01:53] Speaker B: We didn't cover it, but he did get nerfed because he's so strong he. [01:01:56] Speaker C: Can wipe a wave. Walk away and gank from who knows what angle because your E has absurd range when you level it up. Oh, we forgot the most obvious one. Twisted Fate. [01:02:17] Speaker B: Yep, Twisted Fate. You get a red card W and a Q and you probably just one shot the wave, like at level five onwards. [01:02:26] Speaker C: Yeah, he's. He is the premier roaming champion, I think. [01:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty great on Twisted Fate when you're able to wipe the wave and look for a roam and then go, oh well, there's no play to be had. Why don't I just gank my own lane? Have your jungler come in from one direction and then you just pop up on your own lane opponent and gank them. It's so funny. [01:02:51] Speaker C: Yeah, but if you're like specifically talking about melee matchups, probably the best ones, Gragas or Zac, they have fairly low skill floors and fairly high skill ceilings. You get a lot more options if you're willing to go ranged and wipe and run away. [01:03:16] Speaker B: Absolutely. So to wrap up for today, we're going to let Reigns himself do our Lucian Top, which is he did write. Much love and warmth to all of you as the holidays come up. P.S. may our holidays be forever rid of pesky Teemo Jungles, Akalis and of course Lusion Top Lanes. Thanks. [01:03:38] Speaker C: It's good that you got that one for us because I didn't have one. [01:03:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thank you Reigns. We appreciate it. Write in again because listeners, seriously, that was it for questions. We need more. Theforwardspodcastmail.com this has been episode 457 of the show. I've been Jack Soman Mike of many names and for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [01:04:04] Speaker A: See ya. And everybody, thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected] theforwardspodcast and of course send your questions to the fourwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the four Wards podcast at gmail com.