[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker C: 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 458 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me three other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Free shooters here.
[00:00:49] Speaker D: Hello. I'm still very sick, as you can probably hear, but it feels better to talk than it did last week, which is why I'm here.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: We're glad to have you back. We've also got Mike of many names.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: My throat doesn't feel anywhere near as bad, but it still might be hard to talk.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: Fair enough. And last but certainly not least, we've got Pillow Pet.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Hi, I'm just here. No throat problems, just here.
[00:01:17] Speaker D: Lucky.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: We're glad to have you guys. We are the Forwards podcast. We have a community Discord. The link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games.
I'll talk about briefly in a moment. Why? But I'm going to be playing a lot more like random normal games with viewers and listeners over the next week and a half. So come join the Discord so you can get in on that shit.
Some of us do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV. JackSome free shooter can be found at Twitch TV. Free shooter, that's right. There are three E's in free play.
[00:01:55] Speaker D: I actually stream today. Yeah.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillow Pet and Mike of many names has done his first Stream at Twitch TV Katsura444. So join the Discord and bully him into doing more.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: And that is why throat recovery is such a problem. Don't do a six hour stream for your first stream.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: Not unless you're used to talking for six hours already.
Like maybe if your job is as like a customer service rep or something, that won't be like overwhelming for you, but.
All right guys, shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robigon for supporting us at the shout out tier. Thank you guys so much. You make the show possible. Now if you want to get shouted out or just want to support us in general, we are on
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All right, do we want to kick it off with our rework discussion, or do you want to have me vent for a couple minutes first? I've just done a bunch of talking.
[00:03:31] Speaker D: Let's just jump right into it.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Okay, so we're going to talk about reworked champions today, guys. And to be clear, there's no immediate, like, there's going to be a rework next patch, but we've had some minor reworks this year, and in the past couple years have had some very major reworks. So we just kind of want to take a little bit of a retrospective look at some of the champions that have gotten major reworks.
Not all of them, just the ones that we have opinions on, basically, and discuss what we think were successful and unsuccessful about those reworks.
Where do we want to start, guys?
[00:04:15] Speaker D: I can start.
I want to start by talking about one of the good reworks, one of the best reworks in my opinion, because I took a champion who was fundamentally unhealthy for the game unfun to play against and made them a bit better, a bit more, you know, maybe not, like perfect, but just more fun and also fits the identity of the champion better as well. And that would be Warwick. So Warwick got reworked a couple years ago. Now, the gist, the biggest part of his rework was honestly his ultimate. Those who don't know, Warwick's old ultimate, it was still a suppression, but it was targeted. It was point and click. He was just this big, goofy werewolf that would walk werewolf that would walk up to you. He presses R and he just teleports to you and suppresses you. It was so unhealthy for the game because, like, fundamentally it did the same thing, but there was just, like, almost no counterplay to it. Besides, just don't be in range. It was like, worse. Malzahar Alt, because you couldn't do anything to stop him, really.
They reworked the rest of his kit around it as well. And while he has a little bit of health problems with the Or a little, like, health for the game problems, particularly around his, like, excessive life steel. That was still kind of the identity champion they kept around. But I don't know a lot of people who say they want old Warwick back. I think Warwick is one of the most successful Reworks they've done.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: I can agree with that New Warwick just. He has more skill, expression. He feels stronger when you do well with him, and he feels a lot less oppressive to fight against even when he's doing well.
[00:06:11] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: And I think one of the most fundamentally good things about him. He is not someone who is an absolute just broken champion with this rework. Every single thing has counterplay to it.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:30] Speaker D: I say, like, the most broken thing about it is the weird latching cue interaction of, like, that following dashes and flashes. Just because there's, like. There's not really a lot of other stuff like that in the game. But if you know how to play around it, both as the Warwick and against the Warwick, you can use it to your advantage.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You can beta Warwick into places that he should not be.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Yep. You can also absolutely catch people when they think they're escaping, and it's so glorious when you do.
[00:07:00] Speaker D: Mm.
And I will say, few things feel better than Xayah Ulting a Warwick that's flying at you.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: I could see that.
Okay, so if Warwick is a great example of a took everything that was good and was liked about this champion and just called the fat and then made the champion feel better for everyone universally, let's go the complete opposite direction.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: I'd like to take this one with the champion that we complain about possibly the most out of everything. This is my hated champion. This is my perma ban. I hate her. I hate her rework. I hate playing against her, and I don't like playing her.
I hate rework to Kali.
Okay, this is. This is bad rework as well. Not just.
[00:07:54] Speaker D: I want.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: I want to preface this with.
Are we talking about when she was reworked and had her true stealth shroud, or are we talking about the state she's in right now?
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Both. Because the current state that she is in does so much damage with nothing.
[00:08:16] Speaker C: Okay. But that's a balance concern, and we're not really.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: But that's a balance concern today. Her. Her initial rework section where she became bad was just unhealthy. That is the worst that has ever been. When she had her stealth shroud and could hide from.
[00:08:29] Speaker D: But we'll.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: We'll get into that in a second.
That was a fundamentally terrible rework for the game, and they knew it, so they took it away.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So to be clear, it was exactly like a current Akali is, except her w. Let her be stealth from towers.
[00:08:46] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: The vision that you get from Red, your sweeper didn't pick her up, nothing could.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Yep.
If you hit her, you'd see a shimmer, and that was it.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: That is one of the worst ideas in a rework ever on one of the burstiest assassins possible.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: When that rework came out, it was the most broken ability in the entire game. Yeah, it just like. And I think each time she appeared and reappeared, it extended the duration of that shroud.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: I believe so.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: I think.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Or like, step out and back in or something like that.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: It seems it is probably the single most hated ability that League of Legends has ever seen, and there's a reason it doesn't exist anymore.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Now, to be fair, the current one is still terrible. I don't think it's healthy.
[00:09:51] Speaker D: I also.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: But it's significantly better than it was.
[00:09:54] Speaker D: One last point on the true stealth, because I want to just make clear this wasn't something that was in for, like, a patch after the rework. And then they took it out six months. It was a full year. She got reworked on 8:15 and got taken out on 9:14.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Jesus Christ.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Now there's more than that. Like, I don't think it was just full stealth. I think, like, things canceled their targeting for her like you would for untargetability. She just didn't exist.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: Yep. It was incredibly frustrating to play against, and she's still frustrating to play against when she gets ahead. We've talked on this show how basically, if she hits her shuriken flip, most of the rest of her damage is point and click.
But that version of her didn't have to hit the shuriken flip. She just had to hit W and dance around waiting for Q cooldowns. It was horrible.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Her Q did more damage. It healed her, like. But back then, they have taken away so much from this Akali rework that even still, we think it is a busted champion, but healed her.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Back then.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: It was disgusting that with, like, the hextech Gunblade was ridiculous on her.
[00:11:08] Speaker C: Yep. Omnivamp still existed as a stat you could just have without having to wait four seconds of combat first.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Was it omnivamp on it or was it spelled?
[00:11:17] Speaker C: It was omnivamp.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Gunblade was omnivamp. It was the only source of it.
[00:11:24] Speaker C: So, yeah, we all agree that one was bad. However, I actually don't think it was the worst rework they've ever done because there's a couple champions on this list that the rework was fully reverted back to the previous version of the Champion.
And that's to me, that's the sign that you Know that it is a bad rework when they don't rework to something new again. But just, no, let's put the champion back to the state they used to be in and then from there we can figure it out.
In this case, I'm talking about LeBlanc.
If you were playing a long time ago, this happened in eight point something is when it was reverted. I think she was made into the rework in like seven point something she.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Would have done in the same assassin rework that Kali was done.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Yeah, that assassin rework was one of the biggest failures they've ever had.
They just fucked everything up.
She used to when she cast R. It works like, for example, Heimerdinger's R where you could then pick one of your other abilities to cast. She had all sorts of shit going on. And they just. It was such a flawed design. There was so much delayed damage that made her frustrating to play against and frustrating to play as.
[00:13:03] Speaker D: It was like a huge jumping back.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. It was just bad. It was so bad that two years later they said, no, you know what? We are un reworking her. She is just getting reverted to the way she used to be and she's been that way ever since. Turns out Original LeBlanc was actually a pretty good design.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: I'm digging back into my brain here and I know that one other point, they changed her R pretty massively in. Correct me if I'm wrong, her ahri. Like, they changed it to one point to where it would actually create her clone. Like it was her passive.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: She could just cast it to spawn a clone globally that walked toward the nearest enemy champion and pantomimed a version of one of her spells.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: It was very hated because it was like useless.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: It was. It was really good at getting people to waste cooldowns. You could mind game with it really well.
And that was it. And it was just. Everyone hated this design. So much of her damage was tied to the chains. Being able to pop the chains to where the LeBlanc players weren't even happy.
[00:14:11] Speaker D: Yeah, I think. I mean, at the right before she got reverted, she was like, by far the least played champion in the game.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: It just goes to show you. And I know we're going to get into it a lot more that like someone at Riot was just like off their gourd with some of these reworks, like just sitting. I don't even know. Like, it's. Some of them are just. Why nobody asked for this. Why are you doing this?
I. Some of these are just insane. That we're going to get into.
[00:14:41] Speaker D: Yeah, it's back during a time when they would do, like, whole class of champion updates and it was like, too much at once.
I think a good example of that that we could kind of pivot into because this champion falls a toy. Kind of a mixed bag of. They had a really bad rework into what's now actually a pretty good one. And that's Mordekaiser, because board's been reworked three times. I want to say I think he's.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: Gotten two major reworks.
[00:15:14] Speaker D: Two majors. Okay. The first one came during the Juggernaut update where it was like, him. Gangpoint got major ones, and then Darius and Garen got, like, minor reworks at the same time.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: The champions that owned worlds 2015.
[00:15:31] Speaker D: Yeah, except Garen, because Garen was actually ass. But the others were really strong.
But the Mordekaiser that Rework was was intended to make him a melee bot laner by, like, playing with the amount of xp. Kind of like current Nilah passive, but, like, to the extreme, to the point that he was like, incompetitive pro play. Absolutely broken. Must ban every game. He was only countered by Gang Blank.
But in solo Queue, he was atrocious. Like, that was a bad Rework because of it created that disparity between, like, organized play and solo queue play. Like.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So that Mordekaiser rework made it so that that XP change was that he was at the level of a solo laner.
[00:16:26] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: If he got the xp. Oh, he was not. Another. He didn't count as a duo laner.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: It was basically a more powerful version of the experience sharing that Nila does. Right?
[00:16:37] Speaker D: Yes.
Also, I forgot about the most broken part of that rework.
If you took dragon, you got a pet ghost dragon that flew around and followed you that he could use to.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: Solo baron at 20 minutes, as long as he was level 11.
[00:16:53] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: There were several times where I would play Bot Lane with one of my buddies and he would go, York. And I would go. This was New York.
And I would go, Mordekaiser. So I would get. We would have dragon maiden and ghouls. All this is way before you would get, like, Bel'veth Champion. Before that came in like that. Just the swamp Elaine. It was insane.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: Absolutely. So that rework was terrible. Everyone hated Mordbot Lane except for me, because I got to solo baron at 20 minutes as Mordekaiser.
And people never knew that Mordekaiser could heal his allies. Because, by the way, that was part of that kit too. He could heal his allies. It was stupid.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: With the shield.
[00:17:45] Speaker C: So then they reworked him again into the version we have now. And I think especially now that they've like rebalanced him around not being able to just be countered by qss. I think most people would agree Mordekaiser is strong, but like in a mostly fair way.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say he's. He's. He has as obvious as weaknesses, but he's got his obvious strength. He's in a good spot. He's not just a one pick wonder.
[00:18:11] Speaker D: You know, I forgot he was like that for four years.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: Yep.
Four fucking years of being able to just solo baron with dragon ghosts.
[00:18:23] Speaker D: Granted. It's because after that first Worlds where he was a dominant force, he. They kept him in the dumpster for three years.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: They did. They did not let him become strong again.
People still played him because people playing him. But like he was never allowed to be profiable again because of how disgusting people let him through in like three games.
And in those games NA beat Korea and China, things like that.
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Yep. It was absurd.
All right, so we've talked about a mixed bag. We've talked about a couple of bad ones. Where do we want to go next? We want to do something maybe a little more recent that maybe some of our listeners might have actually experienced.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Yeah. I would say to preface this, like we've had or you've heard like this. This one did not get received greatly at the start.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: A lot of people were pretty upset. A lot of mains.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: So you want to tell the listeners who it is and.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So our most recent one, Skarner, the most recent rework, complete overhaul from where he was.
I personally thought it was great. I think old Skarner was just very boring.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: That's a point I want to touch on is a lot of mains were upset with the rework. No one was upset that he got a rework. Everyone unanimously agreed that the previous versions of Skarner needed to go and he needed a new version entirely.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Multiple. Yeah, he's had multiple versions and all of them have been kind of poor. This one. I think the reason it was a mixed reception is because they fundamentally changed what Skarner was from a brawler into a tank. And so no longer could you be the I'm going to build a T force and and fight you to win.
[00:20:24] Speaker D: That essentially wasn't a juggernaut before. He's not anymore.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: He is a full on tank and he is really fun to play.
[00:20:34] Speaker D: I actually played him for the first time this Week because I had to sub jungle for my team and we play fearless. I don't have a big jungle pool. So I first time Skarner in a scrim. We won. He's fun.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: So what makes the current rework mixed reception initially was due to the.
It just not changing the identity. What makes it an actual good rework.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: What made people, I would say get.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: Over their initial reception.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: I would say just right off the start to me like his new R, it kept his identity of his old R but just made it better.
Just made it a better ability.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: Making it not a point and click hurt for a lot of people.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: I think when you change ultimate abilities to not being point and click gives a lot more skill expression to it adds to the game which makes it a better. You know, you get more interaction with your champion.
[00:21:36] Speaker C: And they did it absolutely correctly in that it's not a point and click. It's a skill shot. It can be missed, enemies can dodge it, but also the reward is higher. You can snag more than one person, whereas old Skarner could only grab one person. So everyone from Skarner players to people playing against him enjoys the new Ult more.
[00:22:00] Speaker D: It's very similar to how they changed Warwick Ult because Warwick Ult was a point and click when they made it. Not in point and click. Sure, it only hits one person, but there's a lot more skill expression because it has that like giant jump range that increases with your move speed.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: So you can do it like a mouth idol and dash out of categories. It's. It's a more versatile ability now.
[00:22:20] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: I think the other one that. That really Skarner players really kind of latched on to and sort of latched on to other players because Skarner's new E where he can run through walls and slam.
That ability, I think is what eventually got people to love Skarner in this rework. It is so fun.
[00:22:41] Speaker C: As the resident Kane Main, I can confirm walking through walls is fun.
[00:22:47] Speaker D: It also just got rid of the dumb pillar minigame. No one liked the dumb pillar minigame.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: That's why unanimously the old version had to go. Everyone wanted to see his spires removed moved.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: I would say. Yeah. His E definitely was the.
The highlight of this rework. Just the bit just going through the walls and just slamming somebody into terrain. It's. Everybody loves a good terrain interaction ability.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: It's one of the reasons why Poppy is so such a good rework as well. We're not going to talk about her, but that's one of the other successful Reworks. We can't talk about all of them. Having a just wall slam like that always feels good.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: Okay, so where do we want to go from here? We've talked about a couple of successes and why they were successes.
Actually, I take that back. I know where we want to go from here. I want to talk about another failed rework. This is one of the very few straight up reversions that League of Legends has ever had.
Way back when, in season five, kog'maw got reworked and Riot had the right idea. They were like, cool, we're going to make it. So one of his abilities, the idea was to have him like plant in place and do psychotic dps, but not really be able to kite anymore because they doubled his attack speed and attack speed cap, you could attack up to five times a second.
Here's what.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: For those of you who've played Lethal Tempo, this was before that.
[00:24:37] Speaker C: This was before Lethal Tempo. And because it doubled his current attack speed, it meant if your normal attack speed was two and a half, this just put you at five in and of itself in the hands of like a mid skill regular person or even in the hands of like a high skill person who's actually playing the champion. It actually wasn't a bad rework. The idea of I'm gonna plant and have psycho dps and you have to either kill me or run away is fine.
The problem was they didn't actually have him Root. He didn't actually become a siege tank from Starcraft. So scripters ruined this version of kog'maw, as it turns out, with frame perfect inputs from a program, instead of being piloted by a person, kog'maw could just run at nearly normal speed while shooting five times a second.
So that version of kog'maw lasted I think less than a year.
[00:25:45] Speaker D: Yeah, I didn't even know. That was the reason.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: This was the reason why it was averted. Because not even professional players at the highest degree could get that kind of power out of Kokmaw.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: This was people tight with him a little bit, but like it was like being slowed by 50, 60% when a pro player did it. The scripters were like slowed by 20% at best.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: It was one of the most noticeable scripts ever. And if you were hit by it, you went, I'm dead. There's nothing we can do.
[00:26:14] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: And yeah, because his DPS was the best in the game.
[00:26:19] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:26:21] Speaker C: Yep. It didn't even last a year before it was fully reverted. And like I said, this is one of those I Still to this day think they could have just made it so he self rooted during the duration of it and you could cancel it to turn off the root and also turn off the attack speed and it would have been a balanceable ability.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: I think even if you wanted to do that, you could like you are forcibly reduced to 90% moves or 90 of your percent movements due to reduction. So you only have like 10% so that you can walk very slowly while shooting. But they can do something like that and have it be like a very fundamentally low movement thing. You can. You can just stop this with multiple different programming options.
But that would completely change the idea.
[00:27:07] Speaker C: But riot in 2016 was not ready or equipped yet to do that. So they just fully reverted the ability back to the way it was. And to this day, kog'maw is more or less the same champion that he has been since original like release.
[00:27:25] Speaker D: Yeah, I could see a version of this coming back on a new champion. I actually want to because I thought it was fun. Like it was a different identity for an ad carry and like the plant.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: And now I do massive damage. Run away or die or kill me is fine. They definitely failed in the execution. I think really high attack speed isn't the way to go. I think they should literally make it like a siege tank from Starcraft, give you massively increased range, massively reduced attack speed and do tons of damage.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: There's a couple of options for this one. So one of the abilities that I think like fundamentally works like it, but only has overdose reduced movement speed. So you know how Smolder has his E where he moves to terrain, jumps around, but has an automatic projectile speed.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: Yep, yep.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: If you did that, you have a fundamental. This is your new movement speed, this is your new attack speed. These are the projectiles that are going.
You can do something like that.
Change the numbers, change the damage, change the movement speed to either be nothing or maybe minor. So you can have slight shimmies.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: And you suddenly have what they wanted.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: Fortunately, the vibe of what they wanted does still live on a little bit in both Jinn and Xerath's alts.
[00:28:51] Speaker D: Also kind of in Aurelion Sol a little bit, now that I think about it.
[00:28:56] Speaker C: Kind of plan to do damage.
[00:28:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:00] Speaker C: So there does exist bits of this that the DNA of it has bled into more modern designs. But yeah, that version of Kog'maw is the fastest revert that has ever been and also one of the only reverts that's ever been. Because almost always when a rework fails, they then rework it again. They don't just revert it back to what it used to be.
[00:29:25] Speaker D: Well, there's one that we have listed as kind of a mixed bag that actually kind of did get reverted, but also kept a lot of the changes. But the major change went back and this one is also actually very recent. So listeners probably aware of this. I'm talking about Corky.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:44] Speaker D: Because Corky finally recently got the package removed from his passive.
[00:29:50] Speaker C: Oh, yes. I hated that though so much.
[00:29:53] Speaker D: Yes. So fundamentally they did put Corky back.
Like it is a bit of a revert, but they didn't actually change his passive back to what it was. They just gave him a different passive which is converting.
[00:30:06] Speaker C: Actually you have reminded me that's actually his old passive way back.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: This is his original passive.
[00:30:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Except it's now true damage instead of bonus magic damage. But this is in the room where there is more.
[00:30:20] Speaker D: Okay, that. Okay, but I mean even making a true damage is kind of changing the identity of the champion like a little.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: It gives him some non reducible damage. Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: The only thing like I hated about the package on Corky was there was just no way to be able to perfectly time like okay, do I pick it up now? Like are like you just. There was no timing for it.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: It basically amounted to you held it until you were setting up for a dragon and then you grabbed it and then you used it for that dragon and then you did it again on the next dragon. And anytime they desynced it from that, it just felt bad.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that or you were a pro player.
[00:31:00] Speaker D: The timer wasn't synced up to that either because I think even at the shortest it was like a seven minute timer.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: @ the absolute shortest it was a perfect time with dragon. It spawns exactly at dragon timer.
[00:31:12] Speaker D: Feel like that didn't last long.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: But also literally the patch Corki was added. Corki's basic attacks deal 20% additional true damage was his passive.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Oh, was it true? Well, I thought it was magic at the time. Yeah.
[00:31:25] Speaker C: Yep. He literally has his old passive. Once again he is. Okay, well, they go more reverted than most people realize.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Sometimes it's best just to go back to the basics.
[00:31:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:37] Speaker D: Honestly, I didn't hate the initial rework of like converting his AD to true damage or sorry, his ad to AP or AD to magic damage. Sorry.
I didn't honestly hate the idea of that of like, hey, you have a magic damage threat that's still building like an adc.
It was just the package itself that made that yeah.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: And weird. And that's. I think why we have him in mixed bag is he's been reverted. He is basically the same as he was in like season one when he was added or whatever. Other than numbers now. But there were parts of that rework that we liked more.
Yep.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: I think he was in the package. Yeah. The biggest problem, even when package was removed and they made him more of a magic damage person, the biggest problem was always trying to balance around how he does poke versus sustained dps. And allowing him to exist outside of pro play was the healthy decision for Corky.
Now he's the elder Kirky.
[00:32:43] Speaker C: I. I just miss being able to actually like get a Void staff and buy Cirque boots and do magic damage and play an ad scaling champion that did magic damage and all of that is gone.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
However, speaking of champions that have been only balanced for pro play brings us into another one.
[00:33:02] Speaker C: Oh, God.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: And it's possible. No, I don't think it's possible. It is the most reworked character that they have ever made.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: This is the one that gets memed about reworks.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: He has had five or six fundamental reworks of how he works Ryze.
And you know what? Each time he's had a rework, it's been sorta good. Some parts of it were good, some parts of it were bad.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: And Ryze is at the stage where he's not balanced around your games. He has to be reduced in damage to be not the most broken champion in pro play.
[00:33:45] Speaker D: Oh. This is literally his sixth rework.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:48] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:50] Speaker D: It happened in season nine. But yeah, yeah.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Rises, his current state is probably the most fun state. People have been finding new tricks and things to do with him. And then I was slowly taking some of those out.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: I don't know that I want to say his most fun state. I had a lot of fun with the press R to aoe spam your eq and it bounces everywhere.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Version of Rise, that was a visual nightmare, but it was great.
[00:34:26] Speaker C: It wasn't fun to play against, but it was the most fun to pilot of all of his versions, I think.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Yeah, but. But as. As a. As a rework, Ryze is now in this sort of mixed category because he's still a. It's still fun to play him. That's why they haven't done another rework to Rise.
[00:34:47] Speaker D: I like him a lot.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: So, like, his abilities feel good to. To use, but he can't be strong numerically or he will take over the world.
[00:35:03] Speaker D: Yeah. He is one of those of, like, high skill. Cap will take over pro play if you're strong because his Ult can be such a playmaking ability in a coordinated environment.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:13] Speaker D: And.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: And this. They've done small tweaks to, like, some of his abilities since this rework six years ago.
Like, you used to be able to Zhonyas while you altered and just.
[00:35:25] Speaker D: Yeah, that was the most broken state.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: That was found out in a pro game at Worlds.
[00:35:31] Speaker D: Yeah. Because it channels for 2 1/2 seconds, and Zonias is 2 1/2 seconds. So you press our Zhonyas and you cannot be stopped.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: So. Yeah, but. But this is like he's had some bad. He's had some really, really dumb reworks, and I'd say my favorite healthy. Yeah.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: My favorite interaction with Rise is the Nunu Nunu Rise Ult. That was always my favorite to watch. That was still important. Yeah. It'll still work. Yeah.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: All right, let's explain that real quick. Explain what? The Nunu Rise Ult is so Nunu.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Or, I'm sorry, Rise would alt and it would teleport whoever was in that circle, even minions, anything in your party that's in the circle, to a specific location. I'm sure you guys all know how that works. Nunu can cast his R shortly after Ryze casts his R and be teleported to a location while casting his R. So he would land in this spot, usually a dragon pit, usually a Baron pit, with a full cast. Nunu R and Penta kill your entire team.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So you can. If you don't know, you can see how many things are being teleported before the teleport completes.
[00:36:51] Speaker D: But not what.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: But not what it is.
So, like, if your entire team saw. Oh, no, there's just one target in that rise Ult. Two targets in that rise Ult. I guess we're just gonna kill him. And suddenly there's a fully channeled nunu ult and five people get nuked for 1200 damage. Oh, boy.
[00:37:10] Speaker C: It's. It's very funny.
All right, we've gone for a long time on this. Are there any other reworks you guys want to talk about, or can we move on to some listener questions?
[00:37:21] Speaker D: I think we're good to move on. I think we kind of covered all the bases here.
[00:37:25] Speaker C: Yeah. So reworks have been a mixed bag over the years. There's a couple reworks on the horizon, and we're really hoping they land in the Skarner Warwick category of things.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: As a quick thank you, thank you, reigns for giving us the Discussion topic. Someone who dropped a discussion topic in the Discord for us. So if you have a topic you'd like us to bring up and we don't have something we can think of, drop in the Discord and pop us a topic and you may have your topic shouted out and expanded upon.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Absolutely.
So we do have a trinket tip. Mike, do you want to explain this or should I?
[00:38:05] Speaker B: I'll start it if you want to expand on it. You can expand on it. This is a really simple tip and it comes from a game we had three days ago.
When you're winning the game, just win the game. Don't mess around.
Just kill the Nexus.
This is a ranked game we're playing and the enemy is incredibly fed. None of us can face him as a solo team. He is the only one left alive besides one or two people. And he decides instead of just winning the game, to chase us around our base for two minutes as we slowly kill him and then five minutes later does it again.
He had two chances to win the game on us.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: But despite the fact that other members of his team tried to win the game, he was the only member that mattered.
And he refused to win the game. Because he could have. If he just attacked the Nexus, we would not have been able to stop him.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: But instead, that's how Fed of a Joe got. He was.
[00:39:12] Speaker C: He ran around chasing kills. We respawned. We managed to kill him. He did it the second time. He never got a third time.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: Yeah, the second we got him that next time we pushed because it's now a 40 minute game. We're down your Nexus before you can finish that.
[00:39:32] Speaker D: I have seen, I actually did VOD review with a team. Friend was coaching a team and he wanted me to just do a VOD review with him. Mostly because I think he wanted to show me this. Because I talk, I talk about this point a lot. Like it bugs me when people just like are messing around trying to fountain dive and not just like hitting the Nexus in like one thing or in norms, but like in ranked or in like 5v5s or like competitive fives. So this was a best of three series.
Team is up one zero and they are at the Nexus and they decide to try and fountain die because they think their minions are gonna end the game. They fountain dive. Their minions don't end the game.
They lose game two, they lose game three, they get knocked out of their playoffs because they didn't hit the Nexus. Always hit the Nexus.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: I remember I saw a clip one Time and Electro. Do you know who that is?
So it's just a content creator. He plays league and he was playing.
I forget who he was playing. I think he plays a lot of viego and he got a quadra kill and tried to.
This is when Action first came out. Right there. When Action first came out and tried to fountain dive in action and got his whole team resurrected after he died and they went back and ended the game.
[00:41:04] Speaker C: Oh my God.
Doubly so. Do not fountain dive when Action is alive and you have kills.
Jesus Christ. That's just God.
[00:41:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: So like you'll see pros do this. You're not a pro. They know numbers better. And even sometimes they fail this.
[00:41:25] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: You should be trying to win your games. If you explicitly don't win a game on me in a ranked game. If we're talking normals or arms. I'm more forgiving on this because you were. You thought you had it. You're okay. You're not fucking around too much there. But if we're in a ranked game and you are the reason we lost a game because you decided to fuck around turret time or something.
I'm.
I'm pissed. I'm probably reporting you for inting that game away because you alone have decided we are not winning this game.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: Alright.
So with that let's actually answer some listener questions. Our first question tonight comes from Aaron who writes, are you happy with the amount of brush and vision lines in each part of the jungle? How would jungle gameplay dynamics change if the amount of brush was reduced but the terrain featured sharper angles and more restrictive lines of sight?
I'm going to pause there so we can answer that.
I don't want sharper angles because that creates more opportunities for people to fail. Dashes and stuff like that.
Just up front. I don't want more jank. And that would create more ability jank.
[00:42:47] Speaker D: Agreed.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Second part of that, more restrictive lines of sight.
They did something a little while ago with a dragon that's now back that they've fundamentally changed called Chemtech Dragon. It was the worst thing in the game.
They completely changed. Like your jungles no longer had proper things. They had this weird fog in them that was just weird line of sight stuff. It was horrible.
[00:43:13] Speaker D: Everyone hated it.
[00:43:15] Speaker C: It was the most unanimously hated change Riot has ever done was adding that version of Chem Tech.
It was literally unanimous. They literally had to like apologize in the patch note when they removed it.
[00:43:32] Speaker D: Yep.
That would say this is actually the fastest change that's ever been reverted. Was that yeah.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: It only lasted what, two months and.
[00:43:41] Speaker D: Not a month and a half.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: Nightmare of the zombie on everybody.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: Not that wasn't even like the thing that frustrated most people. It was strong. But that wasn't the frustration. The frustration was just that the way it distorted the vision in the jungle. And that's. I think the big danger is they reworked jungle bushes a few years ago with the current version of Summoner's Rift.
There is a large risk with any vision changes in the jungle of frustrating a huge amount of the player base.
Any changes they make in the future around the vision lines in the jungle, I think needs to be for a very deliberate specific reason.
[00:44:25] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, and they did that.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: There are additional bushes in water Drake you. There is more. There's more vision lines restricted depending on how Drakes play out. Completely changes line of sight in the jungle. So having I think this portion with the changes of the amount of bush would be something that fundamentally breaks per every dragon.
[00:44:48] Speaker D: And they did do a bit of that at the start of the season. Like they changed vision lines, they expanded some corridors, like move some things around. And I don't like generally it like it kind of opened stuff up more but also added a few more bushes into like have a little more opportunity for plays around there. And I think that's like I'm all for making changes if it's not like I don't like when it like narrows things in and makes more like tight quarter jokes.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: Yep. And on that note, Mountain Drake used to make the jungle more tightened up and have smaller corridors and sharper angles. And it doesn't anymore.
[00:45:25] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: Because it was a. It was frustrating for people.
[00:45:31] Speaker D: Mm.
[00:45:32] Speaker C: So he does continue of if the terrain was made more restrictive lines of sight and sharper angles, would that create more opportunities for Peakers advantage while still giving defenders more time to react? Would it encourage more invades and skirmishes or less. So let's explain Peaker's advantage. That's a first person shooter term. Does anyone want to explain that or can I? Should I?
[00:45:58] Speaker D: I mean, I haven't heard but I assume what it means is if you're the one like peeking around a corner because you're initiating the action, you have the advantage because you're expecting something to be around the corner and you know.
[00:46:12] Speaker C: When you're moving exactly that that is exactly what it is. Whereas someone responding to your peak has to a notice it be react to it and they didn't know that it was coming.
I generally think that right now there is no Peakers advantage There's a lot of defensive vision advantages, and I think that's a good thing for the kind of game League of Legends is.
It should be risky to approach where the enemy might have vision.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: So with this idea, it's still sort of a thing. People not paying attention to the map, people not looking at certain things.
But you have. Unless you're putting down a ward and people are hiding in a bush, checking into a bush is always going to be advantageous to the person in the bush because they get to have hidden vision.
[00:47:13] Speaker D: Yeah, this is more like coming around a corner to, like, I don't.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: I don't know if that's so much of something that we should be worried about in league as much. I don't think it really is as relevant because of how much people just hide in the bush.
[00:47:29] Speaker D: And it's also with the, like, length of vision and champions, like, generally just like, getting vision of someone around the corner. Like, even the longest range, like, engage tools, you would typically have to flash on them.
So I see, like, if there were more, like, sharp angles, that would create, like, more opportunities. But I. I just don't think it's healthy for the game. Like, like Jax is saying, I think, like, invading in where, like, yeah, where the enemy might have vision should be like, high risk, high reward.
And like, as someone who like, doesn't main jungle but plays it occasionally, like, getting consistently invaded over and over is one of the most frustrating feelings in the game.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: It's.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: I don't want to encourage it is. However, the other thing that this would do is it would. If you're encouraging a lot more invasions, you're just going to have both teams invade and it's going to be a neutral state potentially, as both people just decide they're switching sides.
[00:48:37] Speaker D: You have more faith in your solo queue teammates than I do.
[00:48:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: All right, So I briefly want to, like, touch on an opinion I have on, like, if you removed bushes from, like, the game. Let's say we just removed all the bushes from the game and you only counted on, like, like, blind edges, like fog of war.
It would. It would be very hard for 97% of the player base to actually learn what their line of sight is and what their fog of war is and what angles create what. So that's why I think, like, bushes themselves are just very healthy just to create a static fog of war area.
[00:49:20] Speaker D: And Ivern would be OP ivern would.
[00:49:23] Speaker C: Be OP because he would be the only source of bushes.
If you watched. Was it this year's Worlds where A player smartly used vision to sneak from like the jungle into the bottom middle bush by tier two without being seen.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: That was fake.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it was faker.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: Faker.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: It was fantastic.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: I don't even watch that stuff. And I knew that.
[00:49:44] Speaker C: Yeah, like that kind of shit that high level players can do. The rest of us, there's no way. We're very, very rudimentary when it comes to our ability to understand vision ranges of other things. The way that that is.
It would make the game feel more different in pro play than disorganized play than it already does.
[00:50:11] Speaker D: I actually, I said that this out loud when I was scoring this week. I was playing jungle and I did the thing of like, you cut through like behind mid lane to like cross over to the other river. And as I'm walking through, I said out loud, hey, they might have seen me walking this way. I actually have no idea because I wasn't sure with how far away I was from their minion if I was in range.
[00:50:34] Speaker B: Oh, it was such a perfect play, now that I think about that. But the other thing is you take bushes away and suddenly melee champions are weaker again.
[00:50:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Suddenly give ranged champions a significant advantage and you have to completely rebalance the game.
So line of sight vision.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: Just tying to a question we had not that long ago.
You would have to bring something like turn speed into the game like has, if you didn't have bushes. Bushes are one of the levers league has that allows you to have the snappy instant turn speed.
[00:51:10] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:51:12] Speaker C: Because Dota doesn't have bushes.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: Yeah, they have a lot of. They have a lot of sharp angle line of sight corners.
[00:51:19] Speaker C: Yes.
And a lot of ways to play around it. Including breaking down the walls. Because the walls are just trees and you can destroy them.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:51:28] Speaker C: To create new paths and angles to make plays from Dota's an interesting game.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: There, there. All right.
The jungle in Dota is a fundamentally different thing than the jungle in league.
[00:51:45] Speaker C: Yep. It is the single most different part of a very different game.
All right, let's get some quick questions from Reigns Rains, who gave us our topic. Also wrote in some questions this week. And Reigns writes. Hello, Wards. More generic questions as I figured you could take a break from my long expositional emails as of late. Question 1. If you have a limited schedule for playing time, I only get to play three games a night for maybe two, three nights a week. How do you balance norms for learning champions with playing ranked? I'm gonna let you guys take it away because I play way too much.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: I got this one. So I only play a couple games a week. What do you have more fun doing?
Because your time is what's more valuable to you and I would say whatever you have more fun doing. Do you have the mental capacity to go jump into a ranked game and want to get frustrated or aggravated if that's what your case is like if you're having a one of those bad days, do you want to take that into a game of league or do you just want to sit back, relax and you know, just have fun? I would say it just really depends on what you're in the mood for in my opinion.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: I have a slightly different answer, but I think yours is a good one. I think that is probably the right answer, but I will give you a different one. If you only have time for three games or so a couple nights a week, if you can schedule it with someone else and you know you got time to play with other people, set aside that one night. All right, this one night, this is my friend's night one. Whatever they decide to do, we'll go together. Or maybe you have this is my duo queue night you can do. If you really want to focus on ranked, you can go. All right, I need to have one game to warm up for the day. I'll do my one normal game.
Maybe I do some learning in this game. Maybe it's just a warm up game to get me up. Then I do the next two ranked. Maybe you've had a rough day and you go, you know what, I'll do a couple of, couple of ranked game. One ranked game, start with a couple normal setbirds. Maybe you're like, I just want to do four arms instead of three normal games.
[00:53:49] Speaker D: I do that a lot. Well, I'll just be like, I just feel like playing Aram. Like I want to make progress. Like I'm trying to get the prestige skin. I want to just play the game, get some pass xp. I'm just gonna jump in eight ramps all night.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: But if you have a goal, I want to do this.
Set aside a schedule time. Make one night your raid night or your ranked night. Not raid.
[00:54:13] Speaker C: It's the same concept.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: I play too much. Wow. Yeah, I play too much. Wow. I have, I have two nights set aside for raid. But yeah, you have, you have your ranked night. This is what I'm gonna make sure I do my ranked games and then you set aside your other two days for. This is my learning day. This is my friends day. This is my. It doesn't matter what we'll just have fun day.
[00:54:33] Speaker D: And then Friday is the day that you play Lucian in the top lane because you just want to win.
[00:54:41] Speaker C: There you go. Reigns will answer your other questions next week.
This has been episode 458 of the Forwards Podcast.
I've been Jack Soman for Free Shooter, for Mike of Many Names and for Pillow Pat.
Have a great night.
[00:54:59] Speaker A: See.
[00:55:00] Speaker B: Good night everybody.
[00:55:02] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to the four Awards Podcast. If you liked what you heard and you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com the4awards podcast to give us some support. We appreciate you and of course listeners. Please don't forget to write your questions into theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer them on the show.
