[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast.
Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz.
[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 460 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 be.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: Woohoo. Gambling time.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Sure. We've also got Pillow Pet.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: It's relevant.
[00:00:57] Speaker D: Hello. I'm also a gambler now and we.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Have Mike of many names.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Apparently it's a gamble on whether or not the mic's going to go to the right place.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So I mean, you and I are Path of Exile. Two players. We were already gamblers.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: This is true.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: All right guys, we are the Forwards podcast. We have a discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, play games. Chit chat. It's a fun time. Link is in the episode description.
Some of us stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksomen, where thanks to Mike being the tiebreaking vote, I streamed Cyberpunk 2077 yesterday.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: Hey, I also voted for that.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Oh, you were the other cyberpunk. Okay, so the reason I had to play cyberpunk, I'm not complaining. I just think it's funny that it was the two of you.
Free Shooter streams at Twitch tv. Free Shooter. Are we getting more Elden Ring in the near future?
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Probably.
My throat feels better, so probably.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: That's what I like to hear. Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillow Pet and Mike has been streaming off and on at Twitch TV Katsura444.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: When I eventually Discord. You'll get discord.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: You'll get notifications for all of those when we go live.
All right, shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robigon for supporting us at the Shout out tier. Thank you guys. We cannot do this without you guys. We are on Patreon at the Forwards podcast. If you head on over to patreon.com the forwardspodcast, you can tell us how much you love us. $1 a month does just that. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show, which in the case of this week is like 40 minutes. Just saying. There will be a preview on this one if you want a sample before you try before you buy. And $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and we will shout you out just like we do for Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robagon.
Last but not least, listeners, you got bailed out by Reigns again. But we need more questions right into the forwards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
All right, you love it. It's time. It's a patch week. Patch 1424 is here. This is the last major patch of the year if past years are any indication. There will probably be a minor B patch that is just number changes and it's probably going to be three weeks from this patch before we get, you know, a regular patch again. So yeah, we got some, some changes we want to highlight. There's a couple of major ones and a bunch of minor ones.
And since it's annoyed him so much, I'm gonna kick it over to Free Shooter to talk about the setting he turned off at the start of this episode.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Yeah, so the whole item queuing features, in theory I like it.
In practice I think it's dumb.
But the worst part about it, which you can now turn off, is the ability where when you would like double click an item, it would auto buy the components.
You can turn that off now. Which is good because I've definitely had times where I double clicked an item when I was like one gold off and then like took the portal in Aram and realized oh, I just bought a long sword instead of the full item crap.
So you could turn that off now thankfully. But it was dumb that you couldn't before this and now item queuing just kind of does nothing.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: It already like this is. This is the feature that I do not understand why they added it in the state they did. Because in theory this should be a I click this item to put it in the queue and every time I hit fountain I buy automatically whatever parts of it towards the next item that I want that I want to complete.
In practice, it's just a way to manually auto buy the components towards an item in an automated way that is often not optimal.
I don't get it.
It's not queuing anything if you still have to click to cause it to buy things.
I don't know what this purpose the purpose of this feature is supposed to be.
[00:05:46] Speaker D: Yeah, I've. I've yet to really even use it because I've had it burn me one time so I stopped using it. The same reason that, you know, with free like me, I back as I'm backing I open my shop screen as long as it's safe and I'm under a tower, and I spam click the item I'm going to buy, and then I leave. That's. That's my item queue. That's always been. My item queue is just spam clicking the item that I'm going to buy.
And that's how I've always done it. And now I don't like you said, I don't like how it will buy the little components and then buy the big component. It's just. It's weird.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: It consistently feels like when you want to buy the little components, it'll buy big components instead, and when you want to buy big components, it'll buy little components instead. And I don't fucking understand why.
So just. Just buy your items manually. Don't use the item queuing thing. Turn it off with the new setting.
All right, should I talk about the big change I've got or the little one?
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Go for Brooke. Let's go for big.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: All right, we're going to talk about everyone's favorite werewolf for a moment here. Warwick got some major changes now. He's already been hot fixed as the time we're recording this because he was way too strong. Shocker. When you give a champion who's already strong massive quality of life improvements that are also power improvements, he becomes OP.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: He was at, like, 58, 59% win rate.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, he was already a strong champion. Prior to these changes. He did not need buffs, but these are good quality of life changes that make him feel a lot better to play. So I'm glad they made the changes. But he needs the numbers nerfs probably more than what I'm about to talk about.
So what they did here, they did lower his ad by 2, which is whatever. They gave him a little bit of extra range on Q.
The big quality of life improvements are the way his W works.
Prior to this patch, when you got the enemy below half health, your next auto attack against the target is supposed to grant you the attack speed buff until they go above the health threshold or they die or they drop to the lower health threshold and trigger the next attack speed buff. That's what it was supposed to do.
For whatever reason, Q didn't apply for this, even though it applies on hit effects.
And it didn't apply for the hit that dropped him below half health. And it frequently would take a second or two to kick in for no apparent reason.
I don't know why it worked this way. All of that's now been fixed. He gets the attack speed buff on the attack or spell that puts the target below the health threshold. So Q now works for it.
And his attack speed is now granted on the first attack on a new target that is below the health threshold. So you can swap targets if they're in the health range and keep the attack speed.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: This also means that if you ult and they fall below half, you automatically have that attack speed buff.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Yep. Whereas before it would frequently take a second or two before it applied. Now they had to hotfix Nerf him because these changes are insanely strong. Plus one other change that I haven't yet touched on because it was oppressive for top lane specifically.
So I want to talk about those. His Q mana cost went up at low ranks.
This only affects top lane. This does not affect Jungle Warwick at all. And the cooldown went up until max rank. This affects all versions of Warwick, but again is mostly focused on top lane.
And then for his W. The other part of the change is he keeps the attack speed for a duration when he hits a target that is not eligible for it. This used to be three quarters of a second. It is now one and a quarter seconds down from the two and a half it was when this patch went live.
The reason that had to be nerfed back down is because top laners could auto attack a minion that was low health and then immediately turn and get like two hits off on an enemy target before the buff fell off.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: It was last heading made fighting a nightmare.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it should have never worked that way.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: It's brutally strong.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: So I'm very glad for these changes. I don't think they're enough. I think Warwick is currently the best or second best jungler still, even after these hotfix nerfs.
But he feels so much better to play. So I hope they just nerf his numbers further and don't revert the changes.
Like he actually feels good to play regardless of his power level.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: I think they're being wary with numbers. Like, as you'll see with a lot of stuff that we've talked about, numbers have not changed a lot in almost anything. We'll have a couple other changes. They're very minor numbers changes. It's been minor number changes for months now. They're waiting pretty much until next next year. We're closing in until they do major changes because they're not sure how whatever new systems they're going to implement are going to affect everything.
So don't expect huge changes.
Expect little tweaks. And he might get another set of tweaks because he's pretty strong.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: I think he needs another set of numbers tweaks. I would not be surprised if he receives nerfs in the B patch. I'm happy about all the quality of life improvements and I'm ready for his numbers to get nerfed. For context, guys, this is my most played champion. Prior to this patch, I had a 69% win rate out of 26 games.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: He was already really good and he just, he feels so much better.
So I hope he gets nerfed down to where I can keep playing him because right now he gets banned in a quarter of all games.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah, having a 58% win rate where you are picked or banned in like a quarter of all games, that's too much.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: If you include picked, he's in a third of all games.
It's crazy how much his pick and ban rate skyrocketed.
[00:12:16] Speaker D: Yeah, I've last night playing a few games, his ban rate was 100% in all my games.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:23] Speaker D: Nobody wanted to see him.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Especially since you're in the top lane and top lane was where he was the worst.
[00:12:29] Speaker D: Nothing I didn't, I wasn't banning him. Like I'm, I'm a die hard illaoi banner for life. Like I, I don't like Warwick, whatever, you know. And someone else will ban him.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: For context, he is still the number one top laner and like number one or number two jungler behind another champion that I'm going to talk about when we get to me again.
But for now, pillow Mr. Top Lane himself talk to us.
[00:13:01] Speaker D: I'm going to talk about the only top lane change that I see that was halfway relevant and that was within Bessa and as far as I've known from everybody else's opinion, these are needed changes. I don't see it. But that's probably because I haven't been playing a whole lot lately. So her shield, her w. The duration and her values on the shield have both went down. The duration went from 2 seconds to 11 and a half seconds and the shield value, the bonus HP went from 175 to 150 and the base values went from 85 to 350. Scaling now it's. I'm sorry, not scaling. 85 to 350 and now it's 50 to 320. So 30 base shielding at max rank went. Got nerfed.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: That base value nerf at rank one is actually insane. It lost almost half of Its total value, rank 1.
[00:14:01] Speaker D: The rank 1 shield is pretty much going to be irrelevant now. It's just Going to be used as a dash, probably.
And I think it's her last max, isn't it?
[00:14:12] Speaker B: I have no idea.
[00:14:14] Speaker D: I think. I think her shields are last max, so it's gonna be pretty big going into it, especially with the bonus ad loss.
And another ability that got changed was her E.
And it also got Its bonus ad percentage went down 20% from 80% to 60%, and it went from 40 to scaling to 140. In the base damage to base damage didn't change. Okay. The base damage did not change. Just the bon. Bonus ad changed at ranks three, four, and five. I'm reading that. And six or, I'm sorry, two, three, four, and five all changed. Okay.
But yeah, the bonus ad Percentage is down 20% at max rank, so I'm guessing that's one of her most spammed abilities along with her Q. So it's gonna be losing a lot of damage over time.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: It's. It's a big damage. Nerf.
My personal frustration with these changes is I feel like they're going to do the thing that they do with all champions with overloaded kits. She's going to receive numbers, nerfs after numbers, nerfs after numbers, nerfs. And then in a few months, they're finally going to figure out, oh, wait, most of the champions that are supposed to be good against this champion use slows. And because of the way we designed her dash, she effectively is immune to slows. Maybe we should fix that and do the same thing Kalista does of making her dash shorter when she's slowed.
And then she's going to be absolutely unplayably weak because of all these numbers changes she didn't actually need because they weren't addressing the real problem.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: So because her dash is not tied into her movement speed that currently does not have a functionality to it, they'd have to fundamentally change how Ambassador's dashes work, which may make her much stronger and then weaker.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: But again, I think that's what they have to do to make her balanceable. That is how Kalista's dash, the most similar ability in the game works, is that slows affects the dash distance.
[00:16:25] Speaker D: It makes sense to me.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
So it's. It's a change that's gonna have to be completely fundamental on how she. She works. It's not going to be quite so simple as. Let's add that in. They're gonna have to change some major things to make that work. But as of right now, the number changes are needed. She's.
She's got Very few losing matchups. And those matchups are few and far between.
And a lot of those she can just sort of ignore and just walk away from.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yep.
Alright, so Mike, what can't be ignored?
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Well, you kind of can't really ignore that. Victor got some, well, mostly major visual changes and most people don't like it. I'm okay with it.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: See, I was trying to get you to segue into Poppy because she's even stronger sitting on you. But you can talk about her later. Talk about Victor.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: No, no. We're all getting the big changes out of the way first. We're getting Victor out of the way. All right, so the big one with.
[00:17:32] Speaker C: Victor is that his icon sucks.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I hard to disagree. I love it. I love it.
[00:17:39] Speaker C: It looks like Zed.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: I love spindly.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Not only does the icon suck, but they didn't even use the icon in the patch notes.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: I know.
I don't even mind the model in game. I actually think the model looks fine in motion. It's just the icon for me. I hate it.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So as you may be remember this. Victor got a pretty massive visual update. Complete overhaul on how he looks. A lot of animation things are smoother and vfx and he got minor tweaks to go along with it. Apart from one moderately big change to his ult.
They've changed a little bit in how he's supposed to gain his passive glorious evolution stacks. They really want you to get cannons and they want you to care a little bit less about getting takedowns. So they doubled the amount of points you get from cannons and they took a fifth of the points away from when you get a takedown. Yep, that's it. Short and simple.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: Aram, Victor in shambles.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. He's still gonna get it in like two seconds. It's pretty quick.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: His QAM modifier on the amount of fragments he gets from takedowns.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: I think he might, but I don't know.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Or he might now, but he didn't before. It was just still the same.
[00:19:03] Speaker D: I mean now this is just saying you gotta assist with a pentakill or get a pentakill to get a level up.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much His Q got a better shield, just bigger base, bigger final, no AP ratio.
The gravity field has some weird switches changes to it.
Its slow is slightly stronger to begin with. That evens out later on.
But how the slow works into a stun was changed and then you can't be slowed once you've been stunned.
So basically to sort of even it all up.
You will get stunned more quickly once you are in Victor's field.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Usually.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Usually.
But if you are stunned in the field, you are no longer slowed afterwards.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yep, that's significant in some cases. I do want to clarify the stun bit because years ago this is like season, I want to say five or six or something. They fundamentally changed. There were a ton of abilities in this game, like Cho'gath Q for example, that had a variable amount of time before they happened, which was specifically a like server tick optimization. They only checked for these effects every X number of server ticks and they realized, hey, our servers are powerful enough now we can afford the performance hit to have these checked properly and have them last the correct duration always instead of this variable duration.
Somehow Gravity Field survived like a decade while still functioning the old way. That was clearly a server performance optimization and not an actual like design decision.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So like, it's a broad range. It's somewhere between 1.1 and 2 1/2 seconds. Yeah, they just went, Nope, 1 1/4 seconds.
[00:21:09] Speaker D: So I was looking at that. That kind of cracks me up. It's just like, yeah, you'll get stunned somewhere between one and two and a half seconds. Somewhere there you'll get a stun. Yeah, you'll get hit by it. But we don't know when.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: It's one of those things that makes sense. In early League when this game was much smaller and they didn't have billions of dollars to throw at server hardware, they had to do everything they could to make their scripts run less often so that the server had less things to check every tick, which I believe this game operates at 20 or 30 ticks per second, so that's a lot of calculations the server had to do. Mm, I get it. But we're like a decade past when that should have changed.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. So Viktor should feel smoother with the gravity field. Then you'll be getting stuns quicker.
His e just lost 10 meta at all ranks. Nice and easy. Good for you. The arcane storm.
Here's where it gets.
I'm going to call this really fun. I think this is really cool.
It functions exactly the same as it does. You throw it on the alt, it chases people.
Now, once you've evolved, everything else, once you get you, you can now do an evolution on your ultimate again, because that used to be a thing as well.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: It was a thing in the previous version of him, but it worked differently.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Than it just automatically updated once you had all three updates. Now you have to actually upgrade the arcane storm. So you're going to have a fourth upgrade. It's going to be your arcane storm.
When you get that, it means that every time someone dies that's been hit by your alt it's going to grow in size by 40% up to 6 times and gain duration up to 6 seconds.
[00:22:59] Speaker C: And this is where Aram victory. It's good. I saw this today. It was nuts.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: This will cover more than a lane. Yeah.
It is huge.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: The Victor got like two kills and it was almost the width of the bridge. It was nuts.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: It's awesome.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: I love it.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yep. And to be clear, the old one didn't cost the hundred fragments, but it also just gave move speed when you. Yeah, it on the storm.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it moves. Moved faster. So now you're not getting that extra boost speed. I don't believe that doesn't seem to be part of it. It does not say so since we don't know if you gained the power from the previous evolution. It doesn't say in this tool tip.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: So the wiki does say it moves 25% faster. I do not know how accurate that is.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: So is updated for the takedowns increasing size and duration.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: It could very well still do that. So it will move chase down faster. And if it gets kills or someone just dies while they've been hit by it, they don't have to be in it. They just have to have been damaged by it. So if you toss it down and someone runs away and they die to a tick. That thing is getting bigger.
This is massive for how good it's going to be in a team fight now.
I think Victor with this is scary because Victor was already one of the biggest Burst champions in the game.
[00:24:29] Speaker D: So other than like being Renata Art. How do you get six size increases?
[00:24:34] Speaker B: How do you passive when defending the Nexus wonder?
[00:24:39] Speaker D: I do wonder if you get altered by Renata and you want your teammate dies while your R is up.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Was so Renata's it wouldn't count as a takedown yet actually die.
[00:24:52] Speaker D: Huh.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: It might work. Oh, you think it's like zillion old.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: No, I think the actual case of where you can get 6 is it's.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Pretty much auction someone action revives TP. It's totally plausible.
[00:25:06] Speaker D: It just seems like a weird number to add in there. Six.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: It's. They just wanted to put six in so that they're ready if they bring Hex a kill back.
[00:25:14] Speaker D: I was gonna race say it's also totally plausible. Hexakill's coming. Confirmed.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah, you heard it here first. This patch means hexakill is on its way.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: I think this means that Victor is going to be insanely powerful.
He's already like one of the strongest burst mages you can find.
He synergizes really, really well with the strongest AP items.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: I. I just checked OP GG. He only has a 50.8% win rate.
He now has a 25% pick rate and a 32% ban rate.
The patch before this.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Before, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: The patch before this, his pick rate was just under 5% which that was already boosted by Arcane. It was 3%. The patch before that and his ban rate was 1%.
[00:26:12] Speaker D: I'm just going to throw in there. I am glad that with all the arcane, you know, hype that they during the first season and this season that they haven't fundamentally changed any of the champions involved in that show. Other than Victor's visual update. He is still the same champion. Like they didn't. I'm glad they did not take the identity away from these champions.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Like, yeah, that's the thing. All this rework. He does the same things he did before. You don't have to relearn how Victor works.
[00:26:40] Speaker C: Also, I did just check the in game tool tip. It does still mention the storm moving faster in game as well.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Then that's going to be real good.
It means you don't get it as quickly though. So you. You're gonna not have it immediately. You have a full extra upgrade to. To evolve towards.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Yep. So he gets. He gets the upgrade later than he did before, but it is stronger. And everything else like his other. Everything just got stronger. Like these are just buffs across the board.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:14] Speaker D: I say essentially, as long as you don't miss Cannon, you should get an upgrade every five minutes.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. With zero takedowns just from Cannon minions.
[00:27:24] Speaker D: So that's pretty good.
[00:27:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:27] Speaker D: I mean, you can have all your upgrades done in 20 minutes.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Yep. Well, 22 minutes because you have to give the initial spawn.
[00:27:37] Speaker D: Yeah. 20 minutes of leaning.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yes.
So don't miss those cannons. It matters a lot on Victoria.
Alright, I want to briefly cover a couple of changes that frustrate me because they don't actually do anything.
Graves is currently the number two jungler behind Warwick. Despite these nerfs, they took 20% bonus ad off of the secondary of his Q. That's when it comes back that does nothing. It's like the least portion of his burst damage. Like, yes, it does exist, but most of what he's killing you with is Just his absurd base AD ratio on his auto attacks.
And then Even more insulting, LeBlanc lost five base damage on her Q.
That's it.
It's why this frustrates me so much is this doesn't even affect her ability to farm. She gets massive bonus damage against minions with her Q, which was not changed. So she last hits just as well as she did before mana lessly because it refunds mana when you last hit with the Q.
And her single target burst is very, very, very slightly lower. But in a way that is irrelevant.
These changes do nothing. I'll still play LeBlanc in mid cuz she's actually really fun to pilot.
I just don't know why they're leaving these champions in these oppressive op states for so long.
I hate it. I want to see Graves removed from Perma Ban hell. Because seeing him every once in a while is fun. And fine, he's an interesting champion, but he's in every game. If you don't ban him because he's just too goddamn strong.
Quite literally, he's in half of all games between picks and bans.
[00:29:35] Speaker C: Yeah, he's annoying.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Like fuck Graves. He's been my Perma band for several patches.
All right, who wants to go next?
[00:29:46] Speaker C: I'll go quick. Mine's small. Go ahead, Corky.
Corky's been bit of a lane bully in bot lane, so he's getting tapped down again.
His e is losing 20 base damage at all ranks and losing 10% off the AD ratio. It's still a nuts. AD ratio went from 250 bonus ID to 240 bonus ID but you know, still just another tap down on Corky. Ever since they changed him, he's just been getting tapped down and tapped down and tapped down.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Is this still his first max?
[00:30:27] Speaker A: No.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Q is your dueling max.
It's weird, but it is.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: It was a long time, but yeah.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: It looks like it's back to you for a while. QQ went back to being the main max. And it's mostly because you can't guarantee dueling as well with your E. You're. You're. You're gonna do some damage. It's really good early. It's definitely your level one pick.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it looks like last patch it went back to Q max.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: So yeah, it's.
It's very strong as your. Your first three levels or so.
But then Q becomes the main source of your damage until.
[00:31:13] Speaker C: Hits like a truck until you get your.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Fair enough. So do you think this change does.
[00:31:19] Speaker C: Anything Free shooter Taps him down a little bit. Makes him worse in the matchups that he was already losing and like he doesn't win like now if you're like some like get counter picked by a Corky, there's like small window of like you might not die to the all in as hard, but I mean realistically it doesn't do too much. He's still good in the matchups. He's good and bad on the ones he's bad in.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: So long as you don't chase the Corky through his W, you're usually actually pretty strong because the W is where a lot of his base damage is right now.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Chocolate. Yeah, his W hits like a truck.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: So in mid he's a little weaker.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: All right, who wants to go next? We got two changes. Well, three changes left in the lineup.
[00:32:12] Speaker D: I'll knock my two out because they're pretty quick. So first is Master Yi.
They're pretty much just bringing back his crit scaling or upping his crit scaling on his Q. So it was 35% and then 49% with IE infinity edge and it's going up to 56.25% and then 86.25% with IE and a quality of life change just to throw in real quick now your queue will show the total damage done along with the floating numbers individually off to the side. So you know total damage you did with your Q.
And this is from Riot's mouth. So if you enjoyed Item builds from 2009, this changes for you.
[00:32:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I was gonna say that's a big buff to cute image with IE Crit Yi.
[00:33:03] Speaker D: While is now would be a relevant build, they still expect him to be on hit, but we've known in the past for Riot to be wrong. So I wouldn't be be surprised to see a crit Master Yi just dominating the rift.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: I wouldn't be either. He has a lot of innate synergy with Flicker Blade.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:33:25] Speaker D: Not sure if this change was tested or not, but I got a feeling we're gonna see some monstrous Crit ease on the rift.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: I feel like especially in low elo, we're gonna see Crit yeez just fucking explode people. And I am not happy about it.
[00:33:44] Speaker D: I mean, you get a Master Yi that gets ahead on hit, you can always expect what the damage is going to be. Critical strike to me is just such a strong stat on Master Yi. Just because of his inerrant inherent attack speed. You can't slow the man and he just his the Q essentially his damage is just going to be absurd with Crit.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm seeing a build of Bork into LDR I. E. Flicker Blade. I mean not many games go that long, but Even the Core 3 of Bork LDR IE is like looking to be pretty strong.
[00:34:29] Speaker D: Tanks are going to be melted. Squishies are going to be blasted off the rift.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: He's going to just giga smash Squishies. Like this change is so much stronger against Squishies than on here is.
[00:34:43] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:34:44] Speaker D: Good luck gamers. When your master E's picked, bring this Morris.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Easy.
[00:34:50] Speaker D: And another small change with was with Twitch. His attack speed duration went from five seconds to six seconds and that's only to match his R duration. So it's mainly a quality of life change.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: His Q. His Q.
[00:35:03] Speaker D: You forgot to mention spell his Q. I'm sorry, His Q. His stealth that gives him the attack speed when he comes out of it. And the attack speed went up 5% at all ranks. So good quality of life change for him.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: The biggest part of this is that his attack speed duration now matches his ult. So if you pop out of stealth and immediately ult you actually get the attack speed for the hold.
[00:35:26] Speaker D: Yeah, I never. I don't play a whole lot of Twitch so I never recognized the alt falling or the attack speed falling off before the alt, but I'm sure it felt pretty bad. So Twitch players I'm sure gonna be very happy with this.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: All right. And a second close this out.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: So you heard Jax mentioned a little bit before. We got a little bit of poppy change.
She's got some base armor changes which essentially boil down to you'll have ever so slightly less armor until level 10 and then you'll have slightly more armor.
And then their little button to keep changing is her Q. What they have done in their stated thing is they've decided that she's too powerful in support, which I can understand. They upped her some of her base damages early on, so she was really strong. So what they have done to compensate is they have reduced the early damage on her Q and given her more late damage. So she went down by 10 base damage early and up by 10 by the time you max it out. And they gave her another 10% bonus ad ratio.
This affects more than just the support.
Also this ends up being a 20 damage nerf early on which is huge.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Early because it hits twice to be clear.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Yes.
So this really affects her early jungle clear really affects her early jungle clear.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: Here's my question is the increased damage later and the Increased ratio later. Enough to bring back Assassin Poppy?
[00:37:19] Speaker A: I don't think so. Because 100 bonus ID isn't a lot.
However, you might see Brawler Poppy coming back. You might be seeing Trinity Force into like Spirit Shojin and the. The armor one.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Sundered Sky.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Sundered Sky.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Like the main item you see on her that has AD is Sundered sky already.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: I think you can definitely start to see some Brawler poppies come in. Because her cue is on like a 2 to 3 second cooldown by Max rank. So she's hitting you a ton with it. So she's procking Trinity Force all the goddamn time.
It's a. It's a pain to her first clear. She can still clear fully. But like 20 damage off of every Q is huge.
And then by the level four, when you get your second rank in it, because you want all three of your abilities before you max Q twice.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: In the jungle, you can get away with putting a second point in Q level 3 and not putting a point W till 4.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: You can do that if you don't think you're going to be dueling anyone.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: Yes.
Not saying you should do that. I'm saying you can get away with.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: And she's very good at early ganks because of her speed boost and the ability to block that and her extra stuns. So most of the time you will get one of each ability.
But you can go for Power Farm QEQ and you're only losing 10 damage then because it's only down 5.
It hurts. It's not going to stop you from clearing before the time is done. Because Poppy had an insane clear early and now she's just has unacceptable clear.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: But it means she's going to be a little bit weaker. She's going to have more health taken. She's going to be not as strong in those duels at level four, but at five, she breaks even. Perfectly even.
It's. It's completely the same ratio there. So.
And you have technically a higher bonus AD ratio. So you will be doing more damage come level five, especially if you're going ad.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: I think the. The AD ratio is the only reason this isn't a gigantic nerf to like top Lane Poppy.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: You could buy a Doran's blade and help offset a little bit of this damage in the first couple ranks.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah. It's still going to be like 16 damage of a Nerf early on because it's not going to be that much of a ratio damage on her. And usually you're facing Other tanks. So you're going pretty tanky.
And she synergizes really well with Frozen Gauntlet as well. Iceborne Gauntlet.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: So you've got some options.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Go Sundered Sky. That's what these changes mean is you should build Sundered sky first whether you're going Tank afterwards or whether you're going Bruiser.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: Yes.
And if you're going Bruiser, go Trinity for a second. If you're going Bruiser, go Iceborne Gauntlet.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: There's options.
All right.
We had a whole topic planned because we didn't think we were going to talk that long about the patch, but we did. So we're going to save that for next week and we're going to answer at least one of your guys questions that you sent in because again, Rain saved y'all. Plus we got a couple questions out of the Discord, so we got questions to answer.
So again, Write into theforwards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. Listeners.
Our first set of questions tonight comes from Rains, who writes, I'm looking to add a burst mage into my intended mid lane pool of Garen Malphite and Gragas. My questions are, are there specific burst mages who actually do well into tanks despite the archetype being generally disadvantaged against them?
[00:41:28] Speaker A: We just named one. His name is Victor.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Victor does well into tanks. Yes.
[00:41:35] Speaker C: Veigar does pretty okay.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Yep. So for very different reasons. So let's cover briefly. Why? Because you don't want to pick them in the same situations.
Victor does well into Tanks because he gets a shield. He can trade well into tanks because of the shield. He could whittle them down and play a more like poke and minor skirmish style into tanks to wear them down. And he also the trades because of that shield.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: He also isn't massively nerfed by taking things like Blackfire into Liandry's. He still does a significant amount of burst building tank shred.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Yep.
Orianna is in the same boat of she has a shield, so she trades well into tanks, but she is definitely a burst mage normally.
Veigar on the other hand, as long as he's not getting 100 to zeroed, he just wants to sit there and stack. He's not there to win the lane. He's there to get strong so he can win the late game.
Most tanks can't hundred to zero him. So he just gets to farm stacks off the wave farm stacks off the tank. And he's a happy little tiny master of Evil.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Most Tanks live in the lane forever anyways. So it. It makes Veger happier because he gets to sit there and farm them for longer.
[00:42:54] Speaker C: And if you're worried about getting burst out, instead of building archangels, build Fimble Winter. It's great on him. You live forever.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Go Go. Rod of Ages Fimblewinter On Veigar. It will frustrate people so hard when they cannot burst you and you still kill them in a single rotation of spells.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Vigor is the burst mage whose item build matters the least in the term in the terms of what you need to build to do damage. Because he will just do damage as a consequence of who he is. Inevitably he's killing something.
[00:43:35] Speaker D: And I mean you did mention a couple of the champions that you already play as Tanks. I mean Malphite is a can be an AP pick mid. I don't know how battle fight can.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Be a burst made.
[00:43:46] Speaker D: And Gragascan and GR and I was gonna say and Gragas both can be burst mages if built that way. And I mean they both have crazy amounts of damage to put out as burst mages.
So you don't have to relearn a champion there. You just have to add a change your build.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. So Reigns has more questions. Let's keep going. If you first pick a burst mage and you find yourself picked into a game against tanks, what should your item priority be in order to function throughout the game and deal with tanks? For example, cooldown reduction for more spells, percent health burn survivability stats. I understand that it will vary from champion and champion, so I'm just looking to understand what types of questions you should be asking in the game.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: The most important question you should be asking what is the rest of your team comp.
Do you need to do damage to the Tanks?
[00:44:42] Speaker B: That's the key is I want to. I want to narrow that question down. It's not just what is your team comp, but what is your job in this game?
Because if you have like let's say you're playing a burst mage. Let's say you're playing Syndra and you have a Kog Maw and Kindred, you don't need to be the one killing Tanks. Your job is just to single out a squishy when a window presents itself.
[00:45:10] Speaker D: I mean that both those are great points because like most of the time, and I would say 90% of the time in my experience, building to counter your lane opponent is not the way to win a game. Like not as to not like you want to build to play against the enemy team, not against your lane opponent.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: Yep. The only time building against your lane opponent feels like it's actually the way to win is in a split push duel where both of you are split pushers and you're just gonna be matching against each other for the whole goddamn game.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: And this is not a common thing in mid lane. This is a primarily top lane thing.
[00:45:50] Speaker B: It's definitely not a common thing for burst mages.
[00:45:53] Speaker C: This actually reminds me of one of the games I was casting this week where one team had Malphite Maokai, Xerath, Corky Milio. So basically two damage threats of Xerath and Corky into Narsage Ziggs, Tom Kench Ash, who on the first team kills Sejuani, Tom Kench Gnar because only Xerath and Corky do damage.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: So you say that, but Corky does a lot of damage. Corky does a lot of damage and he shreds tanks really well.
He does, but he's also in danger when he does.
[00:46:47] Speaker C: Yeah, game didn't work out that way.
I think the Xerath could have adapted and built some like tread because Xerath is very safe. Spammable poke that could just like keep reapplying percent health burn on the tanks.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: Well, keep applying percent health burn. Or more specifically for Xerath, he should have prioritized an early Void staff like second item early to ensure that his poke is meaningful against the tanks no matter how much Mr. They built up.
That's the biggest thing you can do as a burst mage when you your job is to damage the tanks. Remember your job doesn't necessarily have to be to hundred to zero the tanks. That requires you to be very far ahead and or for them to have not itemized heavy shields or. Mr.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: This is really like where the types of burst mages matter. If you are a burst mage whose combo is every 1015 seconds, your job is not to be doing that to tanks. Most of the time you are saving that for someone out of position.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: By comparison. If you're a Veigar who's stacked up a whole lot and you're one of two damage dealers on the team. Yeah, you buy that goddamn Void staff so you can blow up the tanks with your three second cooldown. Q and W over and over and and over.
Void staff is the biggest one for verse mages is against Tanks. Skip the Storm Surge, skip the Shadow Flame, get a Void Staff and Void Staff specifically because it gives more pen than the other one.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
Crypt Bloom is for when you are there to supplement the rest of your team to heal them and keep them alive. Which is actually probably better on Orianna because she's a supplemental Burst Mage.
[00:48:37] Speaker D: Now. What would you guys think about. Instead of. Before you rush though, Avoid staff. Because I don't play a whole lot of Burst mages. But do you think it's still important for them to get the lost chapter first? They're burning through mana.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: The.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: The Void Staff item is your second item.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Yes. You. You're getting a completed Lost chapter item first. Assuming you're a champion who builds a lost chapter in the first place or a completed. Whatever your other first item is. If you're someone like Vladimir. Before you get Void Staff, just. You have to.
[00:49:10] Speaker C: I don't think it's ever a situation where Void Staff is a correct first item.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Even if you're literally against a Gallio in lane, get your completed item first and then get the Void Staff.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Void Staff and Crypt Bloom don't do enough damage on their own to be worth it. You need the AP to be able to actually do meaningful damage through the percent. Because if your damaging spells aren't actually doing a lot of damage, the percent increase isn't enough. You'd be better off having just more raw ap.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: All right. So Reigns has one more question and I think this is going to be a quick one. Are there burst mages with good map pressure to solo carry matches or does that go against the draft function of a burst mage?
Syndra.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Twisted fate.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: I agree. But Syndra is the one that comes to my mind because Syndra can pick people in a way that burst mages generally can't.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: This is true. Syndra's. Syndra's pressure is very long range. It's incredibly high burst. She's one of the highest burst in the game.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: Yep.
It's also literally in late game. Gets another like half death cap worth of AP multiplier and has an execute on her ult.
[00:50:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: And true damage for the most part.
[00:50:39] Speaker C: The burst mage. It's kind of like similar ish to an assassin. Though not as extreme of like the mid game. Like just past laning phase around like before soul basically like out of Laning phase like dragons like three and four essentially. That's the biggest time for a burst mage to be the main carry in a game.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Now to be fair, in the late game, their job is not to be the carry, it's to be the. That enemy carry needs to die.
[00:51:16] Speaker B: Yep.
It's your job as the burst mage is to Say the person who is the core of how the enemy team wins fights, I will remove them from fights.
Sometimes that means you blow up the enemy ad carry. Sometimes it means blowing up the enemy mage. Sometimes it means blowing up the enemy tank. Sometimes that is actually correct.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: There are. There are cases where that's correct.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: I've. I've definitely played games where the enemy team has one tank and we have two to three. And my entire team's job was just, okay, if we can blow up their one tank, they have no front line and their carries collapse. But if we can't blow them up in time, they have more carries and we'll cut through ours.
Sometimes it's just right.
All right, any other thoughts around burst mages?
[00:52:17] Speaker A: They're fun. They're good right now.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, I mean, the easiest answer, though, is instead of worrying about burst mages, just play Lucian in the top lane, and then you just burst everyone.
Tanks, berries, mages, enchanters, doesn't matter. Lucian burst them all in the top lane.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: He does have an AP build.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: He does, but he doesn't need to do it to burst people. He bursts people with every build because it's Lucian in the top lane.
All right, this has been episode 460 of the Forwards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Free Shooter, for Pillow Pet, and for Mike of many names. Have a great night.
[00:53:01] Speaker D: Good night.
[00:53:03] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
[00:53:06] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
