The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 462: Farewell to 2024

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker A: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. [00:00:13] Speaker B: And you're listening to the Four Wards. [00:00:15] Speaker C: Podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 462 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Pillow Pets here. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Hello. [00:00:50] Speaker C: And we've got Mike of many names. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Howdy y'all. [00:00:57] Speaker C: That's it. We're kind of low energy guys. [00:01:00] Speaker B: It is like I'm still stuffed with food. [00:01:03] Speaker C: It is December 30th. We're recording later than usual. Mike's eating way too much. But we're still gonna bring you a podcast because we love you guys. Now guys, we do have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, come play games, come talk. Got all sorts of channels. Talk about whatever you want. Talk about league, talk about other games, talk about anime. Link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. We do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman, where there's been a lot of Super Metroid lately. Mike streams at Twitch TV Katsura 444 and Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet. [00:01:47] Speaker A: I will start streaming again soon, I promise. I said it last time, but I will get there eventually. [00:01:52] Speaker C: We'll bully you into it. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Even I'm streaming. [00:01:56] Speaker A: You have to if we get to 10,000 Discord members. I'm just kidding. [00:02:05] Speaker C: No. All right, so we got some stuff to tie up some loose ends. We got a shout out Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robegon. Thank you guys for supporting us at the shout out tier. We appreciate you so much. If you want your own shout out or just want to support us, head over to patreon.com theforwardspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. $10 a month gets that feed and you get shouted out at the top of each regular episode. Last but not least, listeners. You guys did write in this week so you're not getting chewed out, but we need more questions. We always need more questions. Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. Alright, Being that it is the end of the year, It'll be the 31st when most of our listeners listen to this, we decided for today we're going to talk about 2024 in review and we're leaving this real open ended. We're just going to let each of the hosts just talk about their experiences this year, their thoughts this year, what new shit they tried or what new shit they hated, whatever it might be. And I'm gonna make Mike kick us off because I can do that. [00:03:28] Speaker B: I can kick us off. So the main thing this year is I've started playing ranked again because people have decided to play ranked with me. I've got a couple people who've done ranked with me, a couple different people who've done ranked with me, and for the most part it's an enjoyable experience. Apart from the fact that I am now being part of Jax's curse. [00:03:51] Speaker C: You were always part of my curse. Be fair, you're just now a different form of part of my curse. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so, so it's, it's actually enjoyable to play ranked with people, even if sometimes we get that ultra frustrating problem. One of the big things that I've actually done, another thing is, as you may have noticed, I bounce around roles like crazy. I've started to shift that role back towards mid and top as opposed to being jungle and support. And there's been a lot of reasons for it. A lot of the champions that I really like have started to show up. A couple of the new champions that have popped up have been really enjoyable. I've loved playing Embessa. Recently I've started to play Tahm Kench a lot because he's, there's, there's a ton of little things that I'm not used to anymore. Not playing certain roles and trying to figure them out. So there, there's been, there's some bits and pieces that I've been like, yeah, this is, this has been going pretty well. And then I've sort of slowed down in the amount of Aram I was playing because it used to be pretty much I'd pop in, I'd play a ton of Aram. And to be honest, part of that is I don't like how they did the new map system. Mostly because I don't like the system that they have with the, the inhibitor where it empowers a team not evenly. Each of them is a completely separate empowerment and I don't like how that system works. I've, I've really, really liked some of the changes that they have done to just champion balance in general as opposed to last year going into this year having no more mythic items was a huge boon. It's been significantly better. It felt like item diversity for the most part has drastically improved. I've been able to in the Tahm Kench games. I'll use an example. Recently I've had four different start items and even then they don't always fill into each other. I've been switching between parts deal and I need to spare. I've had some Sunfire games but then there's people like Volear who are still tied to Rift maker Quick Blade. Also got a good game in that was pretty great. [00:06:42] Speaker C: He's just hardbound to Quick Blades. It's not even Riftmaker specifically it went. [00:06:48] Speaker B: From that game was a perfect example of what happens once Volobear gets Quick Blade. I was facing a Darius, an aggressive Darius Flash Flash Ghost who got a kill on me pre 5. He got a very early kill on me, pushed his aggression, came back with three long swords and a refillable pot so that he could consistently fight me and beat me down. And then we just played it neutral, played it, even backed away. You could tell he really wanted to go in for the kill. And then I got Navori Quick Blade and then I could duel him forever and never lose. It was. It was astounding how quickly that flipped on its head. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's so binary. [00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So like the. The main difference for me is the amount of league that I have been playing which as a general note has had a significant upturn since I joined the podcast and since the discord has popped open because a lot of people have been asking to play sometimes after we record, sometimes randomly throughout the week. It's. It's been a significant upturn in the amount of league that I have played. Which also means that I've gotten to do a lot more with other people which feels almost like not coaching but like being the. The other player that can be like, yeah, no, I'll happily go do this with you. What do you need? You need a hand? Do you need some help? I'll come in. I'll help out. It's been. It's been a good system for league for me this year. [00:08:36] Speaker C: Fair enough. Any other thoughts you want to share before we move on? [00:08:44] Speaker B: I'm going to give you your warning for the end of the year. Everything is about to change. [00:08:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:52] Speaker B: They are doing drastic changes to the Rift to potentially items and probably to challenge balance. So if you are in any form of push to yourself measured paces. Remember if you. If you know what you can do now, remember it and do it now. And don't think that next year everything will be the same. There's going to be a significant change to the rift. There's going to be a significant change to what objectives are around and how things are being played around. So get ready for a revamp and let this, let this be a time to get excited about league again. Get a couple games in where you, you know what you're doing and then get ready for something new. [00:09:43] Speaker A: This is probably the biggest revamp they've had since they added the elemental Drakes, like in where they affect the maps. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Void grubs. Void Grubs. I think because that that's fundamentally changed how people play around the map top and bottom. [00:10:04] Speaker A: I feel like this is more drastic with rejuvenating towers. Oh, it's gonna be huge. Back to life, a whole new giant mini boss and much, much more. The teleport change itself, like is a huge system change. [00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah. The, the changes that are coming soon, they're going to be big. They're going to come in quick. We don't know when exactly they're coming. They're obviously not going to do it immediately on the first. It's not going to be a brand new first thing pop up. It's gone. So within the next probably month you're going to see a shift. I don't know precisely when that will be. I know the season ends in nine days as of the 30th, so probably about. On about on the 8th. Yeah. 7th or 8th. That's gonna be probably when they decide to shift it because they're gonna let you end the season off a little bit into the new year. Other thing. [00:11:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:05] Speaker B: That I've learned now that I've been playing a lot more. Know when to take five minute break. That is huge. There have been several games where I have been so frustrated that I have spiraled down. I have been a problem in some games, knowingly. And then I went, I need to stop playing for like five, ten minutes. This is a lesson that I thought I knew. No, it. It can get. You can get you still. Once you notice you are dipping. Stop that game. That game's your stop point. Stop. Go do something else. [00:11:40] Speaker C: Yep. I actually did that literally with Super Metroid the other day. I had a really bad fucking seed of the randomizer. [00:11:48] Speaker B: I'm playing so you wouldn't play ranked. [00:11:51] Speaker C: I went and played League of Legends. I was so fucking mad. I was like, nope, time to do something else. Let's go play league it was the worst seed I've ever rolled. It was absolutely absurd. [00:12:07] Speaker B: The only other thing that I'm going to say is it's not league related at all. It's just end of the year is going by, take a look at how you've gone where you are, take a look at where things have gone. Try and figure out how you want to put video games as a whole as your life coming into the next year. Yeah, as a whole. Video games are a large part of my life because they are what I do when I relax, they're what I do theory work on, they're a part of where I went to school and how I do a lot of my time away. They are what keep me in a positive mood even when I'm angry at them. So know what you have access to and slot out some time for yourself. Even if you're having a long time and you just miss playing games, slot out an hour for yourself a week and do a game even if it's not league, even if it's just an idle game in the background that keeps you happy for a little bit. Slot out some time for yourself, make yourself a little bit happier. [00:13:17] Speaker C: I mean even if it's just literally like bust out a Switch or a 3DS or whatever portable you've got and just play a game. When you go take a break and like other people go take smoke breaks, just go outside at work and take, take a 10 minute game break. It really does help. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Games are not just for kids. There are so much more and it is so weirdly fulfilling to be able to go out of work, gonna go talk about games with friends, gonna go talk about the dumbest things about these games. The mechanics, the story, the lore, the history. [00:13:59] Speaker A: It's funny you mentioned that the whole games are not for kids because 90% of the games still made today are targeting like our generation anyway. Not that like I would. 90% is probably pretty drastic. But most of the game, at least all the majority of a target us as the audience because most of the newer generations like mobile iPads. They don't know how to use a controller, they don't know what a controller even is. [00:14:26] Speaker B: I have a story about that. [00:14:29] Speaker C: Is this the pirate software story? [00:14:31] Speaker B: There's that one, but no, there's something recently, okay, I was out with my cousin in my family this week a lot. We've had family come in for Christmas time for the holidays so that we can go and see people. [00:14:47] Speaker C: Right. [00:14:47] Speaker B: She is 22, she's not too young to be in the Zoomer, age of let's see all the iPad stuff. But she didn't grow up with a system like we did. She didn't grow up playing video games and doing lan parties, etc. So she has a 65ish year old dad who really decided that he loved how Breath of the Wild looked and he knows how to use the controller and she doesn't. [00:15:22] Speaker C: Oh my God. [00:15:25] Speaker B: She can play the switch for other things but she can't play that game because she can't get the control scheme down. He is, I'm sorry, 75, not 65. He is in his 70s and he is wandering around. I watched him do a boss that I never thought of as a way to do it. Running in circles, doing little teeny plinks and then go back to just climbing a hill and staring off into it because he thought the game was gorgeous. [00:15:54] Speaker C: Like we don't think about it now, but there's a whole generation of people who when they were teenagers at their most like developmentally interested in new shit, were playing Pac Man, Space Invaders, Galaga. They know how to use a fucking controller. They know how to play video games. At least some of them do. The ones that were in the arcades in the early 80s. He's pre that are now like 60 plus. [00:16:27] Speaker B: Yeah, he, he is pre that. He is someone who grew up just going outside and reading books, never actually touching, having black and white tv. He was able to pick that up faster than she was because she's only ever used her phone or used an iPad for the most part. And the control scheme baffles her, but also wholesome. There's a 75 year old who never played games who absolutely adores how one thing looks and he plays it because he just likes the look of it. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Yep, that is pretty awesome. Like another game that's been announced that it's coming out. That kind of blows my mind that it's not going to be on console. Is the Game of Thrones open world, like Game of Thrones game? Like it's coming out on mobile and I guess PC from what I heard. [00:17:24] Speaker C: I was gonna say mobile explains everything. [00:17:27] Speaker A: Mobile and like PC from my understanding. But. [00:17:32] Speaker C: And the PC is only because it's an easy cheap port to do, I guarantee. [00:17:36] Speaker A: Like that kind of just like confused me. But then I started thinking about like target audiences and they're not going after the console gaming or PC game or market. [00:17:48] Speaker C: See, I think more confusing is that there's a Game of Thrones game coming out in 2025. It got a Game of Thrones fall off being relevant. [00:17:59] Speaker B: It got a massive resurgence with House of the Dragon. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah, House of Dragons came out recently. And, like, I rewatch Game of Thrones every year, but this isn't a Game of Thrones podcast. But I watch it every year. That's because winter is coming. [00:18:15] Speaker B: That's a reason. [00:18:17] Speaker C: I checked. It's actually only been five years since the last season of Game of Thrones, apparently. I thought it had been longer with. [00:18:25] Speaker A: A season like that. It ended on. It definitely feels like it's been longer. [00:18:30] Speaker C: I thought it had been, like, eight years. [00:18:33] Speaker B: That's because the directors had to fall off the face of the earth. [00:18:39] Speaker C: All right, so that's Mike's thoughts. Since Pillow suggested this topic, I'm gonna make you go last. I'm gonna talk for a bit. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Good. I'm gonna listen for a bit. [00:18:52] Speaker C: My ranked journey this year. My league journey this year has been interesting. Not even just ranked. I can't even just blame it on ranked. I ended last year Emerald. I did not make it to Emerald in the first split of 2024. I ended it plat 4. I made it to Emerald in the second split of 2024, which, in my opinion, is where I belong. So I actually achieved my goal in split two, making up for the horrible trolling I received in split one. And then I'm ending this split platform. It's been fucking brutal. I'm ending it with a positive win rate, but the split is close enough to over. I didn't want to risk getting demoted out of Plat four and having to climb back into Plat if I got trolled again. So I stopped, which is really fucking frustrating, having three splits and that feeling of it's not worth the energy to try to keep going because the punishment, if something outside of my control happens, feels too bad to keep going. Sucks. It really fucking sucks. I have played so much League of Legends this year. You guys. You guys do not understand. These guys play, what, 10 games a week at most? [00:20:28] Speaker A: No. Hello. [00:20:29] Speaker C: Doesn't even play that much. [00:20:30] Speaker B: Maybe two or three times added on busy weeks. [00:20:34] Speaker C: Right? But then in busy weeks, you're not even playing half that. So let's say 10 to 20. How about that? I have played in the past. How long has this split been going? [00:20:50] Speaker B: 2 months sounds about right. [00:20:52] Speaker C: Two and a half months, something like that. [00:20:55] Speaker B: I think it's 80, 90 days. [00:20:58] Speaker C: So let's say three months. I have played 350 games of solo, queue or flex. That's not counting all the norms that I've played or arams or anything else. I play a lot of League of Legends guys, Twitch tv, Jacksonman I stream most of it. It has been a wild ride because I don't stick with one champion for very long. Most of the time I have a roster of champions that I rotate between. I rarely will repeat the same champion more than twice in a row, but I have built some trends. Apparently my winningest champion this most recent split was Warwick, most of which was played before the big buffs that just happened. He was already strong before he got buffed. There's a reason he's gotten hotfix nerfed twice. He did not need buffs but the quality of life is great so I'm not complaining. But IQ is mid primary and the first mid laner that shows up in my list for the most recent split is my fourth most played champion which tell you that I'm playing too many different mid laners. But what I thought was interesting is I've actually picked up a new champion that I never really played before 2024 which for me is unusual because usually the only time that happens is when they didn't exist prior to current year. Everyone old I generally just know whether I like or dislike so I either already play them or don't pick them up. But for Some reason in 2024 I started having a lot of fun playing LeBlanc and I've played a fair bit of LeBlanc this year. I don't know why, I don't know what changed but something about LeBlanc. I'm having a blast playing as her. She's a lot of fun and that's weird. Yeah why the fuck didn't I enjoy this champion for the last 14 years? [00:23:24] Speaker B: Because she's evil. [00:23:26] Speaker A: I enjoyed LeBlanc when she was the static shift LeBlanc. That's when I played her. [00:23:32] Speaker C: That's when I no that I. I did play her briefly during that but that was cuz she was op not because I enjoyed her. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah that's the only reason I played her. [00:23:42] Speaker C: That was dumb. I'm so glad that doesn't exist anymore. [00:23:46] Speaker A: Oh wait till next season I'm sure. [00:23:49] Speaker C: Oh they'll break her again I'm sure. [00:23:51] Speaker A: But. [00:23:54] Speaker C: It'S I've never really enjoyed the mid lane assassins very much. I play Talon and Fizz occasionally. [00:24:04] Speaker B: But. [00:24:05] Speaker C: Mostly in mid lane. I tend towards more like control mages like Ziggs Lux brand type champions or Sylas who's kind of all over the place. So it's weird for me to Actually be playing like a dedicated for real Z's assassin in the mid lane. And what I've learned in 2024 is that I can still hand check people. Guys, I may be 38. I got the old man hands. It don't matter. I can still hand check the scrubs. I get matched against consistently, and I need to just play more aggressively and take risks that I haven't been taking because the enemy will make mistakes. And that's the biggest thing I've learned in 2024 is just how to force my opponent to react so that they have an opportunity to make a mistake. It works surprisingly well. And if you play a norm with me, you'll see it in action. Because if we drag the average MMR down and I'm against someone I definitely outclass, they will make mistakes consistently, and I will just push the lead, which is fun. It's definitely a change from how I play like Ziggs, for example, where I'm just wave clearing. Bonk their tower, walk away. Wave clear. Bonk their tower, walk away. I like it. I also played a lot of Zeri when her prestige skin came out, but holy shit, you guys. Supports are so stupid. I had so many lanes just hard lost by my support, forcing a fight we could not win. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Yep. We've had. We've had a lot of interesting games with. With people doing things you. You don't think they should be doing. We had a fiddlestick support. Not exactly where fiddlesticks is good at all. It was a thing eight years ago when he had a completely separate kit because fiddlesticks support works really well. Because fiddlesticks could silence you for, like, three seconds and it would bounce like crazy. New fiddlesticks doesn't work that way. New fiddle sticks doesn't work that way. So having a support fiddlesticks isn't particularly useful. And we almost won that game. [00:27:00] Speaker C: We really. [00:27:00] Speaker B: But he. He kept doing really bad engages that someone would then follow up on, which would make all of us have to follow up or we all lose anyways. [00:27:12] Speaker C: Yep. [00:27:13] Speaker A: That's like. You're talking about, like, supports and just bot lane in general. You know, just. I'm gonna throw them into a pot here. A lot of the times as a top laner, I'm on the opposite side of the map. I'm in my own little world. And sometimes I'm disassociated completely of what's going on in the bot lane other than hearing double kill, you know, most of the time. And then I'm just. I'll Just sigh and be like, okay. And then 15, 20 minutes into the game, I'll be like, okay, my tower's gone. Or I took the enemy tower. I'm gonna roam, see what's going on. And then I run into a 20 or 15 kill or a 10 kill ADC on the enemy team. I'm like, oh, well, I'm. I'm 01 or I'm 2, 0. Like, whatever. I'm like, oh, I thought I was doing good, but apparently my bot Lane wanted to die 17 times in the first 10, 20 minutes of the game. Like, Jax, we had a game the other night where the gin on the enemy team, like, I was playing volley bear in the top lane, and I was, you know, going against a Tom Kench. I was doing fine. Like, I had my, like two or three kill lead and I took my tower and I was like, all right, I'm going to roam and take other towers. This gin was already like 12, 13 kills in. I'm like, okay, what happened? We ended up winning this game because Jax was playing LeBlanc and able to one shot. Everybody, I think, on their team, even the Tom Kench who built, like, armor. But, like, it's just amazing to see. And, like, I understand. Like, I have been there. We have all been there, and we've all fed our laners. It's just amazing to see. Like, I don't understand, like, why, like, you just keep going in after two or three times of dying, you just go in and repeat like, the same mistake. It just blows my mind. But I say that as I just. [00:29:12] Speaker C: Went and looked up that game. It wasn't just me. It was also the Zyra who. [00:29:17] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we had the Zyra. I remember when don't ping me was the guy's name. It was hilarious. And I told him at the beginning, I was like, hey, man, I won't ping you, I promise. He's like, good, because I need to concentrate on my game. And the guy popped off, I guess his jungle Zyra. But like I say this very hypocritical because I've had games where I've rage split and I've died multiple, multiple times. But it's just very frustrating. It happens in every single game. 95% of my games that I played probably had a losing lane in it. And they didn't just lose gracefully, they lost dramatically. [00:30:01] Speaker C: It's just I don't care if my games have a losing lane or two lose lanes or even all three lanes are losing. If they can lose gracefully, if they are Losing the minimum if they're getting advantages when the enemy tries to push their lead elsewhere, they go take the turret, that kind of stuff. But no, what I get consistently and what you have had to deal with recently. I'm sorry. Somehow my curse is just contagious is I get these people who think they have an advantage when they're 05 and they play like they are ahead and then they get their ass handed to them and now they're 06. I don't understand it. [00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to take over. I just want to throw in my side tangent there. [00:30:49] Speaker C: I was basically done talking about 2024 in League of Legends. I wanted to briefly touch on. I play a lot of games other than League of Legends. Guys. Highly recommend branching out like talked about. I play a shitload of league. Play a shitload of Super Metroid. I played Cyberpunk 2077 this year. I'm playing the New Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown right now. [00:31:14] Speaker B: Fantastic game. Check it out. [00:31:16] Speaker C: It's a good game. I played Helldivers 2 this year. I picked up Songs of Conquest. I'm gonna play that. Like, there are a lot of good video games and that's not even counting all the Path of Exile I play. [00:31:30] Speaker A: When my son was born February 16th of this year, Helldivers 2 was just right at peak. Right there at peak. So I was camping out on the couch for three weeks because that's. My son was right there. My wife was right there. She was recovering. I was. I was doing my job and I was the night shift. Go ahead. I'll go. Okay. Like I was. I was doing my night shift and I would stay up and I'd play Helldivers 2. And that game was so good. So good. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:13] Speaker A: And I stopped playing it because, like, I wasn't bound to the couch anymore. It was just. I had so much fun. It was so high. Like. Like everything I did impacted the game. Everything I did. Like, it was great. It felt so good. Like, I got really good at it. I was playing at the highest difficulty. It just. I didn't run into any toxic people while I was playing it. It was a great community. And I don't know if the game fell off. I did a bit of both. [00:32:47] Speaker B: So it had a couple of balance patches that changed a few things that made people quite angry for a while. And then other things came up. Other games came up that came really big. [00:33:00] Speaker C: Sony made some very bad decisions that they backtracked on that. [00:33:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:04] Speaker C: Pissed people off on the PC version. [00:33:06] Speaker B: Yeah. They were gonna do some. [00:33:07] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:07] Speaker B: Some serious things that we. I stopped playing for a while because of and then I came back because they retracted. They were gonna force you to do Sony accounts. [00:33:21] Speaker A: P.S. [00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:23] Speaker A: Yep. That's. That's roughly around the time like when the mech suits and all that came out. That's when I like stopped right. To go back to. [00:33:32] Speaker B: And you'll be happy to know they just released an update like 2 weeks ago right when the game awards came out. And it's really fun again. They added the other. They added the third faction from the first Helldivers. So the aliens are back. [00:33:44] Speaker A: Telepathic ones. [00:33:45] Speaker B: Yeah, the aliens are back. [00:33:46] Speaker A: Awesome. [00:33:50] Speaker B: I think I'm gonna do a little bit of a hijack real quick. I'm going to give you. I want you to name your favorite game this year that wasn't League. Something that everyone else can maybe pick up as this was something great to try and branch out. Mine is very easy because it came out very recently. I'm not giving a dlc. Otherwise it would be a different game. [00:34:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I know what it would be. [00:34:19] Speaker B: I adore Warhammer Space Marine 2. Space Space Marine 2 and its predecessor are some of the most cathartic games of all time. You walk up, you beat the crap out of things. You have a very fluid switch between melee and ranged. It's a little bit clunky if you don't understand the system and then you can change the things around but. But you feel like you are a 15 foot tall man in. In armor shooting grenades as a regular bullets. It's beautiful. It's fun. [00:34:59] Speaker C: Nice. What about you Pillow? What would your personal like non League of legends game of 2024 be? [00:35:07] Speaker A: I. I can't say mines as exciting as Warhammer. I play. Me and my wife play a lot of phasmophobia. You know it's. I like playing that game. It's pretty fun. Another game that I'm just really good at because I spent a lot of time playing it and like I don't know if I've. I never hear a lot about this game but I enjoy Shadows of Doubt. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it or played like it's a really fun. Like you're a detective who just got like. I think if I remember it's been a long time since I've went through like the story of it. Like you're detective that like got evicted. You're. [00:35:45] Speaker B: You're. [00:35:47] Speaker A: You're a freelance detective. So private investigator kind of type and like, you get evicted from your apartment and you start, like, with like, no money. So you're just starting from, like, ground zero, zero reputation. Nobody likes you, nobody will talk to you. And you got to, like, solve murders is the main thing. Like, you'll get, like, murders happen. Live in the world. And like, it's a fully, like, what's the word? Procedurally generated, like, cities with, like, the same buildings just sometimes in different places. And like, one citizen, like, they're living their own lives. They got their own houses, their own apartment. They're homeless, like, whatever. And you gotta figure out who murdered who. And based off fingerprints and evidence. And then in the meantime, while you're waiting on that, you're doing, like, small jobs for, like, hey, follow my partner around and see who they're fooling around with behind my back. Or go do this to this person. And you just. Just make some money. Your reputation raises. You buy a. Get an apartment, you know, high rise, penthouse suite apartment. And that's the base of the game. I enjoy it. It's fun. I've sunk a lot of hours into it. [00:37:01] Speaker C: Fair enough. All right, I'm gonna give a couple because again, I play a lot of video games. My personal 2024 game of the year is the Legend of Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom. The game's only fucking good. [00:37:21] Speaker A: I have a Legend of Zelda tattoo on my hand. You know, I'm getting ready to get one on my forearm Wednesday. I'm a huge Zettle fan. I never played it. I never played it. [00:37:31] Speaker C: You should play Echoes of Wisdom. It's so fucking good. The combat is intentionally kind of clunky in the beginning, and then eventually you get the hang of it and get enough, like, different things you can interact with. The puzzles are some of the best puzzles that the Zelda franchise has ever had. They actually feel like environmental puzzles, like what Tears of the Kingdom teased could be the case, except they just didn't really have puzzles for some reason. The puzzles in Echoes of Wisdom are fantastic and also just you get to play as Zelda and you get to save Hyrule and it's fun. It's. It's a genuinely good Zelda game. Highly recommend. I did enjoy Helldivers 2 a lot. I considered when you said favorite game of 2024. I put a lot of hours into the Castlevania Dominus collection, but those are all old Castlevania games that got re released. I love the franchise. I love all of those games, but I'm not going to pick it as my actual choice. I want to highlight something that's free. Every single person listening to this go on Steam and search for a game called Awaria A W A R I A. It is free. It is made by the person who made Helltaker, which is also free. And if you haven't played Helltaker, you should. It is a cute little game. There's not much to it. I played it on stream. It was maybe two hours of playing, and I beat the game and was done. It's very cute. It's a lot of fun. Highly recommend you get to fix machines and kiskos. It's great. And it's literally. It's free. You don't have to pay a thing. It's not free to play. It's just actually freeware. Fair enough. Yeah. All right. So how did your actual 2024 go? Pillow. You've kind of talked about it a bit. Is there anything else you want to touch on? [00:39:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm gonna make it real quick because I'm excited to get to some of these listener questions. My 2024 league experience in my. What let me look. 19 games of ranked serious grind have been fine. I mean, I ended in gold, too. I'm happy with that after 19 games. You know, that's respectable to me. It's not where I was from Emerald last season, but my. My main thing that I had fun with this year is I've learned, like, I stepped back. I stopped taking league so serious, you know, and in my spare time when I was playing league, I like to play it with listeners. I like to play it with people. I like to play it with. I like to make it a social event for me. You know, that's. That's where I'm having fun, and it gives me a chance to pick up new champs. And, like, I got three noteworthy champs that I want to, you know, kind of briefly go over that. I enjoyed playing, and it was Gragas, you know, I started playing Gragas because he's just really fun. We've talked about him a lot. You can go back and hear it. But, like, great. Just a great champion for me, like, to enjoy. He was fun, big highlight reel kind of champion, and I enjoyed that. Another one was Maokai, because he's just the item of unending despair and spirits. Visage and thimble. Winner combination on him just made him fun. And I like being that tank that just can sit there and fight three or four people at level 11 and 12 and just live forever. It's fun. And last but not least, I. I just recently, recently picked him up. Victor. Victor like you know, I was like ah, okay, I'm gonna fall into this, this arcane fad. I'm gonna pick him up, see how he is. I gotta admit it is the visual updates great. His auto attack animation fantastic. Just as basic autos. It blew my mind how smooth they were. But I noticed his E the E auto very clunky did that did not feel good. Like a lot of times I find myself like preferring not to use E on a cannon to get the execute because it was just very clunky. I. I just felt like I did a lot better timing just auto like his, his auto animation was fantastic. Probably the best auto animation on a range champion that I have played like on a mage I should say. Like it was amazing. That's a weird thing to like think was cool. But as someone that like there's you know, CS being super important on especially Victor for all of his hex, cores, fragments, whatever. Like it's very important and it felt so good, so good. But like I don't have much to add into A league for 2024 because I slowed down. I. I throttled back. I didn't dedicate as much time as I did. You know, I didn't even finish my split reward timeline thing. You know normally I had my split rewards finished in the first week of the split. [00:42:53] Speaker C: Like enough points saved up. [00:42:55] Speaker A: I know I just was not interested in playing by myself. I just rather play with a group and I, I'm glad I did it. I brought more enjoyment to league with me this year and it was just a good year as far as social gaming with league. [00:43:14] Speaker C: So what I'm hearing is it's my responsibility to make you play more League in 2025 by getting you to do it with me. [00:43:20] Speaker A: You know, let me see how this map turns out because I might be retiring after I got to kill a Nexus Tower 18 times. [00:43:33] Speaker C: God, I hope we don't get games that go that long. [00:43:36] Speaker A: It's. I could just. I see it now. You know, just long drawn out games. Turtles on both sides. Nexus towers keep respawning. I'm sure they'll eventually implement the towers get weaker and weaker and weaker or something like that. If I was to guess it would be they have to do something like. Otherwise it's just going to be a nightmare. I do not enjoy the, the one hour long games. I don't mind them in ranked but if you put me in a norm and I'm playing for one hour in a game Just to lose. I give. I get. I get sad. [00:44:11] Speaker B: So, I mean, the thing that. The thing about that is, is there will come a point where as long as one person is alive, they can kill the tower. [00:44:20] Speaker C: Yep. [00:44:21] Speaker B: And then end the game because everyone else has a respawn timer that's so long. [00:44:26] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, eventually they will. Like, the game will end. But I. I'm not gonna be a huge fan of them intentionally trying to make games go longer. Like, I feel like we're in a pretty sweet spot now. Like, 30 minutes, I would say, is just a good average for like, that's what I feel like. They usually go anywhere from 25 to 35 minutes. [00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I prefer a little longer, but I like scaling champions more. But that's a personal preference. I want to see my Asel with a thousand stacks. [00:45:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my 20, 24. Nothing too exciting, but I'd rather just hop on over to some couple listener questions in a couple weeks. [00:45:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:15] Speaker C: All right. So we're going to start with one from Robegon who writes, hello, sexy wards. I just posted something in the general chat and it gave me an idea for a question submission. You know, in my 10 plus years of playing this game, I've heard a lot of people complaining about teammates in bad elo, losers queue, and so on. My question is, at what point should you start looking at yourself and realizing and ask, maybe I am the problem. Maybe I'm the reason I lose so many games? So question 1. How can you reflect on yourself to find your own mistakes and improve? When should you start realizing that maybe you're the problem? [00:45:49] Speaker B: I said it earlier. I did it earlier. I was at a point where I noticed my. My play was slipping dramatically and I went, I need to stop. And that's the best way to try and help yourself from being the problem. Don't play when you're angry. Don't play when you're pissed. Don't play when you're frustrated. Back away. Second thing. [00:46:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:46:17] Speaker B: When you have three times more deaths than your kills plus assists, unless you are specifically dying for someone else and you're like the support who is dying to keep other people alive, you are the problem. Find out why you're dying so much. Go into your reviews. Why. Why was I here in this position? Why was I taking this fight? When. When was it the wrong time for me to. To push, to try and do this duel? At what point do you say, I need to stop? Let's play a different style. [00:47:07] Speaker C: So for me, I really enjoy playing Zeri. I think she's one of the most fun champions Riot has ever made. After 23 games on Zeri, I realized that even though I had some pop off games, overall I had a 30% win rate. Now, I didn't feel like it was because I was piloting Zeri badly. It was because I did not know how to play with the level of teammates I had in that ELO as Zeri. Zeri is a very short range in your face kind of ad carry. She needs teammates that can actually brawl with her so she's not taking the brunt of everything. And I was not recognizing when those windows actually existed or when it was appropriate to play Zeri because my teammates would then just not pick around me. So I stopped. And my win rate on Zeri is fucking terrible, this split. But that's because I recognized that, oh, I could play more and bring it back up. But I'm literally hampering my team because I'm not piloting this champion the way my team expects me to. Because other series in this elo pilot it like that. I wanted to brawl, I wanted to fight, I wanted to get in people's faces and my team would stand behind me. [00:48:30] Speaker A: So, like, I got like a quick answer to that to, you know, Mike touched on a little bit. Go review. Go review your vod. Go download the replay and watch because nobody is going to be your biggest critic other than yourself. And like, it's very easy to watch how someone's playing in the game and criticize their gameplay. And if you go and watch your game from start to finish, and I wouldn't say do this every time, it's, you know, my recommendation is go through, find five total plays, you know, make sure they're good and bad. See what you did good, see what you did bad. Fix that in the next game and then watch they see what can I fix in that game and just keep building off that and note, recognize, give yourself credit on what you did good. But go through and watch your game, like, pick some notable plays you remember and watch yourself, like, did you get ganked? [00:49:22] Speaker B: Lock on yourself. Make sure you're focusing on. [00:49:25] Speaker A: Watch, like, watch yourself play and be like, oh, wow. I clearly, I was just keep shoving mindlessly under towers and didn't respect the jungle, that there was a jungler on the team or just anything like that. Just be like, oh, if you're watching yourself, you're gonna be like, why am I not moving? Like, why am I not recognizing this? And then it'll start to click a little more into your future games. So I would just always recommend just going to watch the review because the chances of you going through an entire game and not making a mistake, not making dozens of mistakes is very low. [00:50:00] Speaker C: Like I don't know what you're talking about, Pillow. I'm infallible. My team is the entire reason I lose every single game. [00:50:06] Speaker B: Okay. [00:50:07] Speaker C: That syndrome game, it was entire really my team's fault. [00:50:10] Speaker A: Like there is none of us except for Jax that plays perfectly and like at our caliber, at our elo, like I probably make hundreds. There's thousands of decisions made a game. I probably make hundreds of mistakes. You know, just little small things like my placement, my ward placement, anything like that. But focus on the stuff that got you killed first. Find out. Look at where you died and figure out why you died. And don't do it the next game. [00:50:37] Speaker C: And just work on it for context listeners. I played a game of Syndra with Pillow where I got Giga camped by the enemy support and I did not recognize that I was just gonna be chain ganked by a pike. And I played too far up and I died a lot. [00:50:55] Speaker A: Was that the Yasuo game? [00:50:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I was against like that pike was fucking smurfing on us. But after the second or third time you'd think I'd fucking learn that. Oh, I'm under my turret. Pike is probably still going to hook me out of it and kill me in 100 to 0. [00:51:17] Speaker A: And let me throw another little tidbit in here because it just clicked in my head. You're never going to change your teammate's mind and you're never going to make them play better. Worry about your gameplay because that's all you can do. Like you can offer coaching lessons but you're probably going to be get told to like shove something where the sun don't shine. [00:51:38] Speaker C: Yep. [00:51:39] Speaker A: So just worry about yourself. [00:51:42] Speaker C: Robogon gave an example in this about a Jinx Jungle. When you have someone playing Jinx Jungle, they're the problem. Just dodge those lobbies. Don't. Don't play with the Jinx Jungle. Like there are off meta picks that are worth giving some like okay, this guy knows something to there's some weird text. [00:52:03] Speaker B: You can. You can see things like Yona Jungle, Shen Jungle Shen support plus Yumi Jinx Jungle ain't it. [00:52:12] Speaker A: There was a time where Ash jungle was a thing I played that. It was pretty fun because you could just long time across the map. It was fun. You just gank from across the map with your enchanted arrow. But yeah, if you see it, you don't want to play with it. Just dodge the lobby. Just be careful how many times you dodge, especially nowadays. [00:52:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Alright, let's get to the next question because Iamsquid's got a quick one. Iamsquid writes, what is the most pay to win skin? You know, I use green chroma, black frost Vel'koz because he blends into bushes and becomes hard to see, at least when facing away from the camera. [00:52:52] Speaker B: I know three. [00:52:55] Speaker C: Okay. [00:52:55] Speaker B: One of them is eye blitzcrank because he fundamentally has a different visual than where his hook is. It is different than every other blitzcrank. The second is Atlantean syndrome, because her orbs blend in with the river so you can't see them well. And the third, this is a. It's a visual clarity one. And it's. It's Hwei's skin. It's winter bless Hwei. It denies easy access to knowing what Hwei is doing. [00:53:34] Speaker A: I know we've talked about it before, but I will always go with. And I don't know if it still interacts this way. Was the project Mordekaiser because his E was virtually invisible when it was casted. [00:53:49] Speaker C: And it was almost like, no, if it still is. [00:53:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I just. I normally I ban Mordekaiser. Now. It was a lowy. Now it's Mordekaiser. You don't see the skin much anymore because it's not everybody's favorite. But when it came out and everybody was using it, you just could not see the E when it got put down. You didn't see the E till it grabbed you. [00:54:09] Speaker C: Yeah, there. There is actually an easy answer to this because not only is it pay to win gives you actual competitive advantage because it's to see for your opponents, but it's also a whale skin. [00:54:25] Speaker B: Elementalist Lux, she does have the ability to completely shift her color to something that you can't see, change your colors. [00:54:33] Speaker C: To whatever is hard for the opponent to see. So if your game is going around the river a lot, you can go water skin. If your game is in the jungle a lot, you can go the green skin and make it harder to see. But also because she has so many different particles and different colors, it's hard for the opponent to just be used to what her shit looks like because it's different than the last time they played against an Elementalist Lux. It's. It's literally. It's one of the skins that is banned in Pro play just because of its clarity. Most of the skins banned in pro play are banned because of exclusivity. Players can't buy them, so pros aren't allowed to use them. This one is not. This one is banned because it is just straight up op elemental Lux is dumb. It is actually pay to win and Riot should fucking fix it. [00:55:33] Speaker A: Also. [00:55:33] Speaker C: I just think it's a fucking hideous skin in the first place. So I just want it to not be op disagree. [00:55:39] Speaker A: But okay, I got it for free. [00:55:42] Speaker B: Me too. [00:55:45] Speaker C: Fair enough. All right, we've. We've got another set of questions from Grundy and this is where we're gonna wrap up. So Grundy9 writes, Dear wards Grundy9, here, I've written before to talk about how I love AOE damage champs. Could you talk about Ebesa's kit again? Mobility Creep is real, am I right? Nah. My real question is about auto attack resets, animation cancels and or orb walking. Are these all the same? Isn't there a danger as you try these things that you will start to cancel your auto attacks accidentally by doing them too quickly and putting the second action before the first has actually got its damage off? [00:56:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:56:20] Speaker C: Everyone said yes. That's why it's a learned skill. These are all the same idea. They're executed differently. And that's. I'll break down the differences in a moment. He does comment. Everyone says you have to be a one trick to master an animation cancel. Heavy champion like Riven is Ambessa in that camp. [00:56:46] Speaker B: I'll explain the Ambessa portion real quick. No, because Ambessa's animations always go through fully. You cannot cancel her animations. What she does do is if you put an input as if you were trying to do an animation cancel, then she does her little hop afterwards. It's all completely timed out and it does not change its static. [00:57:14] Speaker C: She's like Kalista in that regard. [00:57:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So she's significantly easier even if you just spam click your way forward while pressing buttons that will automatically start doing her hop. And Bessa is so much easier than Riven for this. She has a very high skill ceiling for different reasons, but the difficulty of how to actually use her isn't one of them. [00:57:42] Speaker A: Now correct me if I'm wrong on this because I am nowhere near a master of like the animation canceling and things like that. A lot of that is going to be based off attack speed too. Correct. Like you're captive. You cannot exceed your attack speed based off animation canceling. So like if you get like a nasus against a ribbon and he just presses wither, Riven's not going to be able to animation cancel really against you as well. [00:58:06] Speaker C: Effectively it changes the timings. [00:58:08] Speaker B: Yes. She can still animation cancel. It just changes how she does it. [00:58:13] Speaker A: Like so like yeah. So essentially like animation canceling is just maximizing your attack speed. So a lot of these people that master this animation quite is just. You don't think just taking full like. [00:58:27] Speaker B: So most of the time the animation cancel is your killing the auto attack animation to do something else with it. You are starting the animation and then doing something else. So you're actually sort of slowing down and just cutting off the extra portion of the animation. [00:58:42] Speaker A: Well like you're cutting off the animation to like a riven ability to do the auto. But to be able to do like it properly I feel like you have to be comfortable and know like what your attack speed is like going into. Like when we talk about like or walking and stuff like that. Like you has to be based off. You can only attack as fast as your attack speed. [00:59:03] Speaker B: So it's, it's based on her animation over the attack speed. So there is a. There is a point where even if you have a higher attack speed, you won't get a full attack because the animation plays differently. So like some people just have different raw capped attack speed because they can't attack that fast because their animation doesn't work that way. Or they start literally clipping their animation in the game to try and fit it in and which you can't do animation canceling when that happens. So essentially there is. There's more activity. [00:59:36] Speaker C: You automatically are canceling an animation when that happens. [00:59:40] Speaker B: So the fundamental to the difference between auto attack reset, animation cancel and orb walking is pretty simple. Animation canceling revolves around what an auto attack is. An auto attack has three parts. The wind up, the hit and the recovery. You are doing the first two and killing the last. [01:00:01] Speaker C: Yep. So to be clear, an animation cancel is when you take that recovery and use another ability during it. Orb walking is where you cancel that recovery with movement. They are the same thing. It's just a different thing that you're covering up that recovery period with. And the term or blocking comes from Warcraft 3 where orbs were a specific category of item that modified auto attacks has nothing to do with anything. You can think of orbs in League of Legends. It's just a legacy term. [01:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And the auto attack resets, those are things that fundamentally ignore the auto attack speed. So the second you have completed an attack, you can hit another one. And it completely ignores attack speed. [01:00:56] Speaker C: Yep. In most cases, Auto Attack resets will simply just start you at the beginning of the Auto attack cycle. Again, they do not like inject a free hit in the middle, but then still weight down your cooldown the way abilities do. And that's the difference. So like, let's say you can attack once a second. If you attack and then cast an ability to cancel that attack one second passes, you can now attack again. If you can attack once a second and you cancel the backswing with an auto attack reset 1 second from that Auto Attack reset, you can attack again. Not from the original attack cancel. [01:01:36] Speaker B: No, not quite. Auto Attack resets In almost all cases, Auto Attack resets immediately reset it back to the baseline. Once you have finished that animation, you are auto attacking again. [01:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah, like I was. [01:01:48] Speaker C: You're misunderstanding me, Mike. The Auto Attack Reset attack goes off and you are now in the backswing of your auto attack again, the same as if that was just a regular auto attack. So let's say half a second in you use your Auto Attack reset, you can now auto attack again at 1 1/2 seconds, an animation cancel at half a second, you can still auto attack at one second. That's the difference. [01:02:12] Speaker A: I'd say like the biggest Auto Attack reset champion that I I play is like Renekton. And that's where I do a lot of my. Like Renekton's got these funny interactions that. [01:02:25] Speaker C: Has both Auto Attack resets and animation cancels in abundance. [01:02:29] Speaker A: So are you talking about like his R with empowered W or W with empowered R? Yeah, so. [01:02:34] Speaker B: So that's part of it. [01:02:35] Speaker A: It's so why it's like it's. It looks like an animation cancel. All it's doing is like you. So you're still locked in on you self. Cc yourself as Renekton when you cast your W. Like you cannot move until it's done. So a lot of what a lot of people do and I don't know, you know, maybe you guys don't know this trick the listeners. So if you cast in empower W and immediately follow with the R, you get your R animation off while you're still locked in. It doesn't free you up. They, they, they fixed this a long time ago. Used to be able to free you up immediately and you could get out, but you're able to buffer while your self cc'd to cast your R. So you get it all done at the same time in one smooth motion. While yourself cc'd, you get the R off. [01:03:20] Speaker C: Yep. You're basically just combining the cast times to be together. So you're only standing still for one cast instead of two. [01:03:27] Speaker B: So Renekton is an example of one of two different types of auto attacks resets. Because I know his works fundamentally differently than Trundle's does. Renekton, when he auto attack resets on his W, he then has the full wait period and then he does another auto attack. Trundle does an auto attack. Does his Q immediately falls with an auto attack. [01:03:52] Speaker A: Renekton will still auto immediately after the W. Like it's a it like going into towers. Like if you're taking towers. [01:03:59] Speaker B: No, no. [01:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah, you, you, you can. In both cases, Mike, you have to wait after the auto attack reset your full auto attack timer before you can auto attack again. The difference is Trundle gets a lot of attack speed, so it feels very fast and responsive because of the way his W works. If you cue something without your W down, you wait before you get to auto again. It does, it does work like every other auto attack reset. All of the auto attack resets work that way. [01:04:30] Speaker A: It feels, it feels like you're getting an auto like right afterwards, especially like with Renekton because of the cast time, the auto, the swing time with the auto reset. Even though it's instant. And then, I mean it's just one second. We're just, we're just talking one second here. So you're basically autoing, spending a half a second to cast your W and get that animation off and then you're immediately autoing again. So it feels a lot faster. But like I'll throw, you know, I always throw NASA's in here like Darius. Here's another great example example with his. His W is an auto reset and he loves his auto resets because that's how he just five stacks you like immediately. Like if you're going against analysis and he casts a wither on you and now you're 90%. You know auto attack is slowed or however much it goes up to, if you try to do that same auto reset, it does not work because you are so slow. So what your muscle memory is going to tell you when you're doing this auto reset, you are just doomed because you're going to miss and completely clip an auto like it's a nightmare going against analysis when you rely on resets. [01:05:44] Speaker C: Yep. There are a couple other weird interactions around auto attacks and I want to say resets, but that's not actually what this Is in this case, Yasuo and Yone's Q behaved like an auto attack in every regard, except that if you CC them during it, it cancels the ability and it just comes off cooldown when the CC is over. I didn't know that you can interrupt their Q in progress with cc. Oh, it's really aggravating as the Yone and Yasuo player to have a queue interrupted because you don't get the stack like they get. [01:06:17] Speaker A: A cast bar isn't there when you cast your Q. [01:06:20] Speaker C: Okay, it's very quick. But trust me, as the Yone or Yasuo, you get tilted very fast when your Q doesn't go through because you got stunned and now you don't have your Q3 when you were planning to because of that. It's very aggravating. Grundy does actually continue, so let's briefly cover this because it ties into what we're talking about. He says many champs have a built in Auto Attack reset Trundle Q. His bite, for example, can interrupt his Auto Attack's wind down animation, speeding him into his next damage sooner. Correct. The Active on Tiamat Adams is also a reset. Correct. It doesn't feel the same way as Trundle Q, for example. What's the difference? [01:07:02] Speaker B: Only one is. [01:07:05] Speaker C: Titanic is an Auto Attack reset. And the reason it doesn't feel the same to you is is it doesn't have a special animation. It just plays the regular Auto Attack animation. And every champion Auto Attack reset has an animation difference. So the Tiamat, the Titanic Hydro one feels funky because it's literally just an Auto Attack reset. As far as the animation goes, it's not the most intuitive visual thing. It's not very well telegraphed, and it is only Titanic. The other three Tiamat items do not reset your Auto attacks at all. And as a matter of fact, I don't even think they animation cancel anymore. They used to pillow Pet briefly mentioned being able to cancel Renekton's W. That used to be a way to do it. He used to rush a Tiamat item so he could cancel his W with Tiamat to be able to. [01:08:02] Speaker A: I forgot about that. [01:08:04] Speaker C: That used to be a thing doesn't work anymore. The. The Tiamat will go off, but it won't interrupt your character's animations anymore. [01:08:11] Speaker A: Gosh, I forgot about that. [01:08:13] Speaker C: That's. [01:08:13] Speaker A: That was what, two, three years ago? [01:08:15] Speaker C: Maybe more than that. Gosh, it was like five years ago. [01:08:19] Speaker A: That's when they took the original Tiamat away. Or the original is right when they change ravenous to be like on hit. And they took away the Actives completely, didn't they? [01:08:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I believe so. That was only like three years ago, but they changed the. The animation canceling from them longer ago than that. [01:08:40] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Gosh, it's been so long. [01:08:43] Speaker C: It's. It's been a long time. So. Yeah, they don't interrupt animations. To my knowledge, the only items that interrupt animations anymore are rocket belts and zhonyas. I think those are the only two items that actually can interrupt animations on their own. And obviously Titanic Hydra that we just mentioned is an auto attack reset. I could be wrong. There might be something I'm forgetting, but I think those are it. Mike, you're the the one of us who's played the most Ambessa. He asked for some advice on how to maximize Ambessa damage. Do you have any advice for that? [01:09:30] Speaker B: There's a couple of ways to maximize Ambesa damage, one of which is really knowing where your points are. You need to know like explicitly knowing where the sweet spot is on your. Your Qs. That's really important to maximizing Ambassador's damage. If you're not sweet spotting, you're missing a lot of damage, which means a lot of the time you are going to get into their face in a moment. You're going to try and hit them with your Q to move in on them. And sometimes you hold that. You don't always use both, both portions of your Q at once because they have different types of sweet spots because the second Q is whatever is closest to you. So sometimes you're going to be doing your Q and then your W to jump in and then your E to jump in so that now you are as close to them as possible. No minions in your way. And then you're queuing again. You want to be weaving your auto attacks in when you can, as much as you can because they do a lot of damage, they give you your energy back and realistically you run out of energy completely if you aren't doing it. Don't use your alt just randomly. It's very easy to dodge. If you can use it from a bush, it's much better. Outside of vision, it's much better. [01:11:00] Speaker C: And if you can use it on someone who's cc'd already by someone else, that's the best because then you don't miss. [01:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And the other thing is, she is a damage dealer. She's not a tank. You should be heavily prioritizing damage in. In your item build. She doesn't have true CC in her kit. So you're not going to be doing. You're. You're not even a bruiser, really. You're not scaling with health like a lot of other bruisers are. Your goal is to do as much damage as quickly as possible. So for the most part, your goal is to get items that drastically benefit you. Doing damage quickly in quick bursts and then nothing. Because you're not a long in propped out engage fight. You like doing short 10 second engages. Maybe you want to go in there, do your do your combo and then back out. It's usually like five seconds. So like your sweet spot items are going with Eclipse because you get your shield to help save you having one of the Titanic item or the hydra items to get another auto attack reset to do a lot of burst damage in that short window. Very potent. And here's another one. She goes very well with things like Cyclo Sword. She can build like an assassin. [01:12:40] Speaker C: Yep. [01:12:41] Speaker B: And because she has percent armor shred in her kit and percent max health damage, she can still fight tanks while doing this. Plus she has Lifesteal built in her kit, which is actually spell Vamp. That is. That is the second point. And here, here's another one. Your spells only have pure lifesteal on champions. They do 100 of that spell Vamp steel. When you hit Champions, it is full vamp. When you have your alt, we're talking about your alt healing. So your. Your alt has a passive to it that gives you spell vamp. That 100% works on champions, significantly reduced on Minions. But also this means she is much weaker with Lifesteal in general because she's not doing auto attacks and because she's primarily aoe and the AOE gives you significantly reduced healing normally. So she does a lot of damage. You want to do prioritized bursts. And if you can do a quick trade, you want to be like popping your W up because your W does significant amount of shielding for how good it is. [01:14:09] Speaker C: All right, Any other thoughts around Ambessa? [01:14:15] Speaker B: She probably still needs a change. [01:14:18] Speaker C: Yeah, she does. All right, Grundy, you also did leave us a P.S. about the website and I want to briefly cover that the website you linked in your email Grundy is not our current website. Our current website is in every episode description. It is theforwardspodcast.kastos.com with hyphens between each of those words. The one you linked is from earlier this year when we were tied to the League rundown podcast. We are not anymore. We do in fact, have the Discord link at the top of our current website. It is already there. You made me check. I went and checked. It is in fact for sure actually there. So if you saw the old link somewhere on a current feed, please let me know. Ping me in the Discord, send me an email so I can get it fixed. That link should not be there anymore. So please let me know if you see that old link anywhere other than episode descriptions of old episodes. Because I'm not going to go back and edit all the old episodes. I will fix it, but I need to know where to find it to fix it. So thank you. But yes, it is there. Guys, go to the website. Click the link for the Discord at the top of the page. Come join the Discord. It's great. You know what else belongs in the top of the page? Lucian. He belongs in the top lane. That's it. That's. That's the Lucian top I'm going with. Deal with it. [01:15:54] Speaker A: That's a good one. [01:15:56] Speaker C: Alright guys, that's it for our question pool. So you guys are on notice. We need new questions next week. Theforwardspodcastmail.com I've been Jack Sohman for my many names and for pillow pet. Have a great night and happy New Year. [01:16:17] Speaker A: Be safe. [01:16:17] Speaker B: Happy New Year everyone. Good night everybody. [01:16:21] Speaker A: 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. [01:16:39] Speaker B: Answer them live on the show. [01:16:40] Speaker A: That's the four Wards podcast at gmail com.