The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 468: Super Bull Disappointment

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker C: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. And you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 468 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Mike of many names is here and I'm disappointed. I am too. We'll get to that. And we've also got Pillow Path. [00:00:57] Speaker A: Hi. [00:00:59] Speaker C: Just hi. That's all they get. Alright guys, we are the Forwards podcast. We do have a Discord. If you come join the Discord, you'll get chances to play games with us. We play Norm drafts, we play Arams and Urf and whatever else people want to play. I personally will play damn near any video game if I own it or it's free to play. Like come join the Discord. Come hang out. It's a great time. Link is in the episode description. We also can be found on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv, jacksonman, Mike can be found at Twitch tv, mikeofmanynames and Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv, Pillowpet. Those are also all linked in the episode description by the way. Alright guys, we also do have a Patreon. Now if you want a shout out like Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robogon, you can support us at the shoutout [email protected] theforwardspodcast $10 a month gets you the shoutout, but if that's too much, it's okay. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. And $5 a month will get you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes it's actual prep work, sometimes it's just us talking about nonsense. Sometimes it's the super bowl and Path of Exile. And last but not least, listeners. All right. Last week you got disappointed, dad. This week the arms are crossed. Now I'm upset, dad. Jacks, we have no new questions. Need you guys to open up your email client, click that new email on your phone and send an email to the Fourwards podcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer your questions on the show. I'm sure there's shit you guys want to know about. There's no way every listener of the show has now learned everything they need to know about League of Legends. So write in so we can answer the shit you want to know instead of us having to make it up. [00:03:04] Speaker B: It can be anything. It can be a champion interaction. It can be, hey, I just picked up a champion. What are the cool tips about? Can be anything. Anything related to league and very occasionally something outside of it. [00:03:18] Speaker C: Yes. So Write in theforwards podcastmail.com so we can answer those questions. You've got burning. Burning questions. We want some burning questions. All right. So since we have no questions, you guys just get the topics we came up with. Fortunately for you, it's a patch week, so we didn't have to think too hard to come up with the main topic. We're talking patch 2025s 1, 3. And I'm going to kick it off with a systems change because Riot has changed the attack speed cap. We have had a cap of two and a half attacks per second, with a couple exceptions here and there globally for 15 years. As of this patch, the base attack speed cap that every champion is limited to, unless they have an exception, is now being moved from 2.5 attacks per second to 3. The funny part is this doesn't affect most champions and builds. I can think of two cases where this is actually meaningful. One is something I've already been playing a lot of, which is Warwick. Warwick has the highest attack speed steroid in the game. If you are below 25% when he's hitting you, he hits this new cap easily. He was basically always at the old cap if you were below 25%. So he just gets extra attack speed that he couldn't get before because he was capped. The other one that comes to my mind is Jinx when she gets excited. [00:05:08] Speaker B: Well, the jinx gets excited. Already exceeds the attack speed cap. [00:05:11] Speaker C: Yeah, she was already over the cap, but she's limited as to how much she can go over the cap. And now she's limited based on. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Oh, she's not. She can get like nine attacks per second. [00:05:22] Speaker C: She definitely, when they changed her get excited to not stack off turrets, they were like, okay, she can go this far above the cap. Let me look this up. [00:05:30] Speaker B: I think it's. [00:05:30] Speaker C: While you talk about one of your changes. [00:05:32] Speaker B: Well, I've got another one we can do then. This is Varus. When Varus kills something, he gains an attack speed steroid which stacks on all of his other because you're building Varus attack speed attack speed and he easily exceeds the cap. If you have anybody who has an attack speed steroid within their kit and you build any attack speed you're almost assuredly going to either hit or exceed this. It's. It's pretty great. [00:06:01] Speaker C: But Champions without an attack speed steroid it's much harder to hit this cap because there's just not that much attack speed on items. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah. You need to be building some form of attack speed in your kit to hit this cap. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Which remember time. And I might just be, you know, remembering wrong. But I used to be so easy to reach attack speed Cat. Like they used to have so many attack speed items with damage on it. [00:06:31] Speaker B: A lot of items used to have a lot more types of stats on them. They've explicitly pulled away on a lot of that. [00:06:38] Speaker C: They have explicitly pulled away on a lot of that. 4 AD carry itemization. Other categories are still allowed to have 3 to 4 stats on every item. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah. But ad carries usually have excessively large amounts of one or the other. And then they have their crit buff. So like they've designed the game around most AD carries. Hitting close to attack speed cap or ignoring attack speed entirely and hitting. Hitting high damage. [00:07:09] Speaker A: I'm excited to see what this does. It's going to change a lot of build paths. I have a feeling in a certain. [00:07:16] Speaker B: Area it opens up more attack speed items to some characters who were just hitting a cap with one or two. Like Kale's on hit now can get another item in there because she would be able to hit the cap and you'd be wasting items in there. [00:07:32] Speaker C: Okay. So I looked up the actual list of ways to raise the attack speed cap. The champions that were breaking the old cap. Basically you are correct that Varus is one and he works the way I thought Jinx works. He gets an attack speed bonus that is allowed. That bonus only is allowed to go over the cap. And that's that Jinx Get Excited and Bel'veth's passive. Allow them to just break the attack speed cap as much as their attack speed allows. While Get Excited is active or permanently. [00:08:07] Speaker B: In Belvest case, I believe Belveth is eventually capped to either 10 or like 25 attacks per second. It's a. [00:08:13] Speaker C: It's a ludicrous 9999. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Although that's interesting. They changed that. It used to be like 30 attacks per second. [00:08:22] Speaker A: How long do you think I'd have to be in practice tool to reach that? [00:08:25] Speaker C: Hours. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Maybe like a full day. [00:08:29] Speaker C: That is such a cartoonishly high cap. It really is. The Wiki says Belveth is the only champion in the game that can exceed both the imposed and technical limitation of attack speed by Default. [00:08:43] Speaker A: Wow. [00:08:44] Speaker C: Meaning she attacks so fast they can't even animate it. [00:08:48] Speaker A: That's insane. [00:08:49] Speaker C: Because the game engines tick rate can technically register up to 30 attacks per second. Meaning one attack per frame. [00:08:57] Speaker A: What if she just stands there? [00:08:59] Speaker C: Yeah. It basically means the animation will break and she'll just deal damage. [00:09:03] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:09:06] Speaker B: As she just hovers. [00:09:08] Speaker C: In a real game, a like really fed late game belveth in a real environment is attacking like maybe four times a second. Ish. [00:09:17] Speaker A: And even that looked ridiculous. [00:09:18] Speaker B: And that's stupid. It's also like a 60 plus minute game. You don't see those numbers. [00:09:25] Speaker C: Exactly. That is a really fed late game Bell. And then here's the one that I didn't realize. Can you guess the other champion who can exceed the attack Speed cap? [00:09:40] Speaker B: I used to know it. [00:09:42] Speaker C: I guarantee neither one of you is going to guess it. [00:09:46] Speaker B: Is it a champion who naturally has attack speed like built in their? [00:09:52] Speaker C: It is a champion that until today I did not realize had an attack Speed steroid at all. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Oh, I can't think. [00:10:02] Speaker B: That's interesting. I'd have to go through and look at him. [00:10:06] Speaker C: Kennen. Kennen is the champ. Other champion that can exceed the attack Speed cap. [00:10:13] Speaker B: What is he? [00:10:15] Speaker C: Lightning Rush? His dad? The dash that makes him run super fast? If you recast it, you get attack speed and that attack speed is allowed to exceed the cap. Similar to how Varus works. [00:10:26] Speaker B: I did not know that canceling it did anything for you. Positively. [00:10:30] Speaker C: I didn't either. I had no idea. This is we alive on the podcast. We have learned something new, guys. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Is this why AD Canon became a thing? [00:10:42] Speaker C: I don't know how long it's worked that way. I'd have to go back in the this. [00:10:47] Speaker B: It feels like we would have noticed this randomly showing up. This has to be like why AD Canon became a thing nine years ago. [00:10:59] Speaker C: I'm. I'm. It looks like this was an undocumented change in 12.19 that it can exceed the cap. And then it was documented on 1220. So it's been this way for like. [00:11:11] Speaker B: Well that it can exceed it. But he still had the attack Speed steroid apparently. [00:11:14] Speaker C: I'm still going back to find out when it got an Attack Speed steroid. If it ever got it. If it wasn't just already baseline. [00:11:24] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:11:26] Speaker C: I had no idea. Like this is actually news to me. Well, I guess usually I'm the one who knows all the random trivia about shit. [00:11:35] Speaker B: I guess while you're searching on that, I'll get with another system change and that they changed a couple of dollars. [00:11:40] Speaker C: It gained an Attack Speed steroid if it damaged an enemy champion upon exiting it in 8.9. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Which was right about when AD Kenin Bot Lane became a thing. [00:11:55] Speaker C: So literally seven and a half years ago. Almost eight years ago. [00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Because 2018. That's Fnatic in world finals. That's AD Cannon. [00:12:06] Speaker C: I had no idea this was a mechanic. [00:12:09] Speaker A: Wow. [00:12:10] Speaker C: And I watched so much of Reckless playing AD Canon. [00:12:17] Speaker B: That's disgusting. I. We did. We need to. We did. So the next change. Next change. Fuck. I need to move on. They changed the power of a couple of. A couple of Dragon Souls. I may have slipped out which one. One of them was there. They. They've noticed that there are definitively best and worst souls. And I tend to agree with both of these. Chem Soul was considered the worst soul for the most part and Cloud Soul was considered the best soul for the most part for pretty obvious reasons. Movement speed is just strong. It's incredibly strong. And so the Cloud Soul movement speed gain is being nerfed by 5%, which fair. It's still going to be fairly strong. 15% is good. It's good. You're still going to want it. But it's not completely overshadowing everything else. And then the Chem Soul is getting. You gained a below half health. You gained a little bit of increased damage and a damage reduction. And they're boosting that from 11 to 13% which good little boost there. That's about it. I think. I think it brings Chemil a little bit closer to inline. But I don't know if it's quite enough yet. And Cloud Soul is probably where it should be. [00:13:59] Speaker A: I got a quick little update me and Jax were talking about last night. NASA's got a little buff and I don't think it's the right buff. But his passive lifesteal went up 3% at its perspective rank ups. I think. What is it? [00:14:20] Speaker C: Yep. It's just a 3% at each tier. It's not like a. It's not like one of the busts where it's like. It gets stronger as you get to the higher tiers. It's just a flat 3% across the board. [00:14:34] Speaker A: And I feel like 3% in a stacking champion like that can get a ridiculous amount of stacks is quite a bit like. [00:14:45] Speaker C: I think you and I both agreed that regardless of whether or not we think Nasus needed a buff, this is a disproportionately win more buff. And I would have rather seen him get like base stats or base damage on abilities buffs instead that don't scale with game time. Yeah, because like a late game. Nasus with like 600 plus stacks and a spirit visage. This is like an extra 50 health on every single queue he hits with that he's doing every second and a half during his old. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah, this was, this was a Nerf that is being buffed back up again. Too close to where it used to be. So like he used to have. I believe it used to go up to like 25%. It may have been more. It may have been up to like 30. But Nasus's healing is not at the point where they had previously buffed it. It's better. It's strong. A late game, Nasus is still going to be a terror to face. And just having a baseline 24% lifesteal on a level 16 NASUs is horrifying when he cues you for 1800 damage. [00:16:04] Speaker C: Yep. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Every one second. [00:16:09] Speaker C: And specifically being lifesteal just means it's easier for him to reach that equilibrium point of he has enough stacks that you now cannot kill him. Like regardless of his ability to kill you, you can no longer kill him. And that's what irks me. I would rather if they, if they're saying he's too weak early, increase his life regen. If they think he's too weak late, increase his like armor growth or something like that. [00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah, like that makes sense to me. But just the 3% flat. Like. All right, here you go. Here you go. Nasus. Here's a crap ton of life still. Like he already had a ridiculous amount of life steal. [00:16:55] Speaker C: Yeah. To put in context, he gets more life steel at level 11 than a bloodthirster gives. You know, like the iconic high life steel item. [00:17:10] Speaker A: It's not really a simple passive, but extremely, extremely strong. Like it's. It's enough to where like that's how NASA stays so safe in lane because they can just auto. Just auto attack and they're, they're typically. They can just heal up. If you don't interact with an asses for 15 seconds, he's back into max health. [00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah, he, he, he has flatline 12% base lifesteal until he's level 11. [00:17:44] Speaker C: Yep. [00:17:45] Speaker B: That's not counting if he got anything else for any reason. Did he get a Doran's blade? [00:17:54] Speaker C: And again, I want to put this in context. A vamp scepter gives 7%. Blade of the Ruined King is 10%, Ravenous, Hydra is 12% and Bloodthirster is 15%. He gets 12% at level one and does not actually have to build Lifesteal because he gets up to 24% at max rank. You ever wondered why you can't kill Nasus? [00:18:21] Speaker A: This is why. [00:18:23] Speaker B: Apparently the dogs just have life steal. Gotta give some to Naafairi and it'd be Warwick, Nasus and Naafairi just healing out the ass. [00:18:32] Speaker C: Warwick does not have Lifesteal. He has two different sources of healing. To be fair, three. [00:18:40] Speaker B: His Ult has a separate healing from his other sources of healing. [00:18:43] Speaker C: True. His Ult also does have its own healing mechanic. You are correct. But it's all healing is more. My point. It's not lifesteal. Which is an important distinction because I'm gonna give you guys a tip. Something that a lot of people don't know. You know that rune in the Green Tree that gives you heal and shield power and then increases healing when you're low health? The heal and shield power does not apply to Lifesteal. The other part does. Does. But the heal and shield power will apply to all other sources of healing that are not regen. Regen is the other one that's not affected. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So like, there's a couple other champions whose innate healing functions off of this. Xin Zhao is one of them. [00:19:30] Speaker C: Well, and the reason that's relevant is I. I objected to Warwick being determined as Lifesteal. [00:19:35] Speaker B: You're right. [00:19:36] Speaker C: All of Warwick's healing built into his kit is affected by the heal and shield power on Revitalize. Nasus's passive is not. It's just affected by the 10% when you're low. [00:19:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:53] Speaker A: Why? [00:19:54] Speaker C: There's a distinction. I don't fucking know. All right, it's my turn to talk about stuff. I'm gonna talk about runes real quick. So Riot took away those other Vision Runes that gave power in the Domination Tree and gave us the current tier of Vision Runes that don't give power. And even after they buffed those Vision Runes, they realized that the Domination Tree as a whole is still kinda weak. So they buffed all three of the Domination Keystones. Electrocute just gained base damage. It's really strong early. Right now at level one, electrocute does 70 damage, which is literally the damage of a spell or an auto attack, depending on what kind of champion you are. So hit three times and you get an extra full strength hit. At level one, Dark Harvest got 10 base damage and two base damage per soul. I still think Dark Harvest sucks compared to Electrocute. In basically all cases. But it's better than it was. And then here's the one that's weird. Hail of Blades had its cooldown lowered by 2 seconds. And then for melee users of it, it gets more attack speed. They specifically said that the cooldown buff will disproportionately affect ranged champions. So they're making it stronger for Mele to compensate. [00:21:38] Speaker A: I go against a lot of people that abuse, like, use the Hail blades. I won't even say abuse it, but there's a lot of champions that it's really good on. Like really good on early. Like cheese kills and just getting a. A snowball effect going. Like, mainly you start taking like Darius. Darius is really good with Halo blades. Like, it's not his best rune by any means, but it's just really good attack speed steroid really early. And Darius likes attack speed because he can get to his five stack really quick. Really quick. [00:22:14] Speaker B: I mean, you said cheese. Twitch. [00:22:18] Speaker A: Twitch. I mean, Tristana. [00:22:21] Speaker C: There are a lot of champions that are able to use Hail of Blades in a niche sense that it's either going to be up more often or it's going to be more potent and up more often now. And a reminder, Hail of Blades is one of the things that has always been allowed to exceed the attack speed cap. So even if you're a champion building attack speed, it still has value. [00:22:46] Speaker A: I like the change. I think all these runes needed a little bit of love. I get. They were pretty. You got a. They got a niche. I will say niche. You know, group of champions that, you know, use them all the time. And most of the time everyone else is going into the Triumph or whatever. The Yellow Tree. That's where everybody usually is at. [00:23:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:09] Speaker A: Now because those runes are super strong. So I'm glad to see that they're putting some love in their Domination Tree. [00:23:17] Speaker C: Absolutely. My issue is mostly just that Dark Harvest still sucks. Don't take Dark Harvest. [00:23:21] Speaker B: You need to be proccing it so often and getting so many kills consistently. Or at least knocking people down to low health so often it's not better than Electrocute. [00:23:34] Speaker C: Until you have 20 stacks of dark Harvest. It is worse than electrocuted. That is not hyperbole, by the way. That is actually just math. [00:23:46] Speaker A: And it takes a long time. I mean, unless you're actively seeking out and remembering to get your Dark Harvest stacks, it takes a long time. [00:23:55] Speaker C: A long time ago when Dark Harvest was much better. A really good amount to reach in a real game was 15. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Remember, you have to consistently be getting people below 25% 30%, 40%, 40% it consistently all the time. That's not reasonable for most people to do consistently. [00:24:25] Speaker C: Do you feel like you have percent now? [00:24:27] Speaker A: Apparently that's a lot champion in mind that you could think of that like in the top of my head, like I think Karthus, like you still want to run Dark Harvest on Karthus. Do you have any other champions that you might think that. [00:24:42] Speaker B: I wouldn't run Dark Harvest. [00:24:44] Speaker C: I wouldn't run Dark Harvest Dunkarthus either. The key here is where Dark Harvest is supposed to shine is on champions who do large single hits. Meaning Electrocute is hard for them to trigger and they are poking you. So a champion like Xerath would be an example of a perfect candidate for Dark Harvest. Xerath is never gonna land three hits for Electrocute. The problem is that in almost all cases Comet is just better. The Dark Harvest feels like the. If the Domination Tree is better for you, then I guess you take Dark Harvest as a like consolation rune. [00:25:24] Speaker B: There are. There are a couple of junglers who are pretty gank heavy who might take Dark Harvest eventually. But like 90% of the cases still you're not getting the stacks. [00:25:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Outside of Karthus, all of them are going to be better off with Electrocute or Halo blades. And with Karthus, he's better off with First Strike significant. [00:25:45] Speaker B: It just. It just amps his damage by a lot. [00:25:48] Speaker A: I've been playing too much urf. [00:25:51] Speaker C: Yes, Dark Harvest is good in URF despite I think it has an URF specific nerf to it. [00:25:56] Speaker B: The. The best place for Dark Harvest and where you will be seeing it the Most is a RAM. You can reasonably get 3040 stacks in any RAM game. [00:26:08] Speaker C: Yep. And it is nerfed in Aram, but it's still good in a ram. [00:26:13] Speaker B: So is almost everything else. [00:26:15] Speaker C: Yes. [00:26:19] Speaker A: You have any ideas that you think this is really going to impact like the Electrocute buff at all? Like I electric on my head. [00:26:27] Speaker B: I thought specifically LeBlanc electrocute is big on some people. [00:26:31] Speaker C: Yes. Electrocute specifically is going to make mid lane assassins and combo mages much more viable. The ones who didn't necessarily care about going for Comet before and just took it because it was their best option out of the shit. Options they had are now going to be like cool, I can go back to electrocute. [00:26:52] Speaker B: Electrocute's also LeBlanc really good on those jungle assassins. Kha'zix loves Electrocute. [00:27:01] Speaker C: Yes, the. The ones that aren't auto attack coded because lots of the jungle assassins just want Halo Blades. [00:27:07] Speaker B: That's true. [00:27:11] Speaker A: I'm excited to see what it does. [00:27:14] Speaker C: Yeah, we'll. We'll see how it goes. All right, Mike, your turn again. [00:27:21] Speaker B: All right, next one is another fundamental change to a lot of things they're not getting quite right. And this is voracious. Out of Congress, out of con. Well, it's. It's tuning is a little bit too strong before they at least got us. [00:27:38] Speaker C: To a point where we can see him in solo queue. [00:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I've seen various staticons now and it's the stronger buff by a considerable margin. And they've decided to tone down how strong that is in two incredibly meaningful ways and one that actually doesn't matter at all. The first one is the most important one. The extra gold you gain on takedown went from 40 to 25. This was every single person who got a touch on a kill. The assist or the kill was extra gold. Extra gold. Not something that you're splitting amongst the team from a gold bounty. Just pure money. They tone that down to 25 much better. The other meaningful change, the withdrawal, the stasis instead of being five and a half seconds, is 15 seconds. It's taking you longer to get back on the map once they take you down. That's the change. It's really strong These. The buff is still going to be probably the stronger buff, but it's not going to be overwhelming you. You actually have a chance once you take down someone to do something on the map. You can maybe get a reciprotory turret. If you are fighting around a dragon, you have time to take the dragon. That. That's it. That's. That's a good change for me. [00:29:19] Speaker A: I mean, I feel like at this point, the attic give it 200 gold to kill and you send them back to base for 15 seconds. At this point, I just. I don't. I feel like they need to change that whole Attican and just give it a whole different buff. [00:29:36] Speaker C: Yes. Because at this point it's just like you get 2/3 of a kill. Like death timers at that point are already like 30 to 40 seconds. It's like cool. It's a 15 second death timer instead. And you give up 200 gold instead of whatever your actual kill bounty is. [00:29:52] Speaker B: Yeah. The reason it exists is to hopefully push people to be more aggressive because it's the not aggressive one. And I've noticed a lot of people being significantly more aggressive once they get it. So it's doing its job. [00:30:06] Speaker C: I have noticed people being suicidally stupid aggressive when they get it and throwing away their 200 gold bounty. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Thankfully, it's. It's. Considering these have been a lot of our enemy games for getting them, they're throwing themselves away because of course, the enemy's always getting out of con. [00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, like, I understand the concept of it of wanting to promote, like, hey, you get a quote unquote get out of jail free card to go die. But it's not that anymore. Like, it doesn't feel like that's what it is. But I mean, it might be to some people. They see that little shield around, we're like, oh, cool, I can go die. Let's go be aggressive. But again, like I said, it's. At this point, it's not. It's not a get out of jail. [00:30:46] Speaker B: Free card anymore, depending on your place. So if you're a person who's a KDA chaser, it's a KDA buff shield. It still does that for you. So it allows you to be a more aggressive person. If you're keeping a KDA, that doesn't count as a death. 15 seconds is still like, by the time you're getting this 45 seconds almost that you'd be gone. It's like 35. So it's. It's a meaningful amount of time that you're saving. And if you guys have T.P. still, you're back on the map before you would even be able to walk down a lane. [00:31:25] Speaker C: True. [00:31:28] Speaker A: I mean, without thinking about it, I would say if they want to maybe keep its identity of like not counting as a kill and getting you back on the map faster, maybe just give it two charges or don't let it expire. I don't know. I just. I'm trying to think of ways to maybe improve it so it doesn't feel like, all right, why would we even risk going for this buff? Like, if you're not really. You're saving 20 seconds on a death. [00:31:57] Speaker B: Timer, you're still missing the. The biggest part of this is still the golden. It's still worthwhile simply for the golden. It's in the Less Killy games. But the extra gold you generate from kills is still where the power behind this buff is. [00:32:16] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, I mean, I could see like the gold at 40 was good. I.25 to me, is not impressive to me because you get that for killing Laui Clone. Like, it's that to me, 25 gold isn't enough reward to the. [00:32:31] Speaker C: The way to think of it is the old one meant if you death balled as a team and five man killed someone. Your team gained 200 gold per five man kill. They now get 125. So like extrapolate that. Okay. You get a five for zero wipe. Your team now gets an extra six hundred and twenty five gold instead of one thousand gold. [00:33:05] Speaker B: To get this into perspective, two kills where your team participates is equivalent to killing a tower. [00:33:14] Speaker C: Yep. [00:33:16] Speaker B: That's how. That's how much gold it is. [00:33:22] Speaker C: Voracia's just so heavily incentivizes just group and Death Ball and now it does that a little less. It's still the correct way to play when you get voracious most of the time. Alright, Bill O. How about someone who doesn't necessarily want a group in Death Ball? [00:33:41] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Let's. Let's talk a little bit about Teemo. Timo got a little. Little hit to his E. Got a. [00:33:48] Speaker C: Slap on the wrist. [00:33:49] Speaker A: I got a slap on the wrist early. It's much more significant in ranks. So it's. This is your level one ability. It's your auto. It takes five damage off of your on hit damage at level one and then later ranks. It's one damage at max rank that it takes off and it's negligible at that point. The scaling AP scaling still the same. This is just trying to tone down his level one harass to give the top Laners a little bit of chance when they're going against the little devil. So I'm not mad about this change at all because he is very oppressive early. Especially when he's running press the attack. I mean it hurts. You take one bad trade with him at level one and you're already at. [00:34:33] Speaker B: Half health levels one through five are significant because it's five, four, three and you're not. You're actually always getting a point in. Qw. You're not double putting in in E because you want the movement speed and you want the blind in there because that's your extra poke harass. I don't know anybody who is double shotting into E. So it's a meaningful amount of damage lost for a long time once you hit six. Seven. Fine. Two damage per level. One damage per level. Nada. This is massive for his early game fighting. Yeah. [00:35:17] Speaker A: I mean it's going to take a lot of damage away from him which is what they're aiming for because he is very. Like I said, very oppressive. Like you can't. You just can't lane against him as especially like a melee top laner. Like you just hate to see him and you're just like all right. Well, cool. I don't get to interact and it's just time to farm under tower for the rest of the game. [00:35:35] Speaker C: Yep. [00:35:36] Speaker A: My. [00:35:36] Speaker C: My alternate perspective on this though is this doesn't change that. Because the reason he bullies those champions early is they don't have a tool to get on him or pull him to them yet. And he's still going to audio. He's still gonna bully you. It just might take one extra auto before you're dead. [00:35:52] Speaker A: Yeah, like it's. No, he's. His playstyle is not gonna change one bit. It's still gonna be, as I imagine, his first max. I mean, it has to be. [00:36:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Unless. And I mean there's some niche cases on him, but 99 of the time it's going to be your first max. [00:36:08] Speaker C: In matchups against melee champions, it is always his first max. In matchups against ranged, it is first max 90% of the time. [00:36:16] Speaker B: There is one caveat against that, and that is people who are attack speed against him. Someone who has an ability to get on him and hit a lot. Someone you're not going to see a lot of master E top. But something like that. Your blind duration going up with Q matters more than your on hit damage. [00:36:35] Speaker C: True. I was thinking more like vaynetop is the situation where he would max Q. [00:36:40] Speaker B: Yeah, something like that. Exactly. Someone where their attack speed attacking on him and they have the ability to fight. [00:36:46] Speaker C: It's a bigger Nerf. It is a bigger Nerf in those matchups because he's on this Nerf until later. [00:36:54] Speaker A: But long story short, happy with it. I think it'll be. I think it's a pretty good Nerf. We'll see what it does to him. [00:37:02] Speaker B: It doesn't kill the champion. [00:37:04] Speaker A: No. Yeah, it's a healthy Nerf. [00:37:07] Speaker C: All right, I'm gonna talk about some more healthy Nerfs. There's a couple of champions that over the last two patches have skyrocketed in pick rate. These are champions that are historically like medium popularity at most. When a medium popularity champion suddenly becomes the number one and two most picked champions in their role, that means they're overtuned. Just plain and simple. We see that all the time when an unpopular or mildly popular champion suddenly skyrockets. So Viego got a 3ad nerf, which does almost nothing. Wukong got a more significant Nerf. Wukong got a cooldown nerf on his stealth dash ability. That also leaves a clone behind. And he got an attack speed Nerf on his E, which is on par with the 3 AD that Viego lost. Does this nerf them to be bad? No, these champions are still like a tier. But you can see if you look at the pick rate stats for these champions, they immediately plummeted back down significantly. Neither of these champions even shows up in the top 10 when they were literally number one and number two. Last patch. [00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it was a needed. These were needed nerfs like big time. I got tired of seeing Wukong. I got tired of seeing Viego. [00:38:47] Speaker C: If you enjoy Wukong or Viego, you should be happy that your champion is now getting banned a lot less and picked a lot less and you can actually play that more. [00:38:56] Speaker B: The 380 nerf nerfs do not change anything. All it does is tip him down. It's stronger than it sounds because of his two hits from from the queue, which isn't exactly an 80. Yeah, I know the second hit is a based on total ad plus number for him, but even still, three ad really early on for a jungler is meaningful because it now slows down your clear, which is probably the biggest thing. He had an incredibly quick clear. [00:39:31] Speaker C: Yep. Now he has just a regular quick clear. And to be clear, his. His mark that he pops, that applies a second hit does 20% AD is literally. Is less than one damage reduced. [00:39:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's 20% AD. 15% AB is not important. [00:39:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it does not reduce that by any functional amount. It's just reducing his initial every auto by three, which adds up. It adds like, I think this Nerf adds like two or two and a half seconds to his total clear time in the jungle. [00:40:04] Speaker B: And considering a lot of people are clearing the jungle at or before spawn of the crabs, it matters a lot. And if we, if we want to keep going with some champion nerfs, that really needed to happen. And yes, in a, this might be riot, actually doing exactly what was necessary to Nerf a champion properly for a degenerate build that had been happening. A lot of you may have noticed Tank Jace existing and being really, really terrifying to deal with. They've done everything correct to deal with it. They have significantly reduced the base damage on his Q in both forms, His W in melee form and his R in the transformation. The Q especially is getting a big nerf by max. Almost 45.35ad just knocked off entirely and they're putting 15% bonus ad on there bonus ad, which means you need to build 80 pretty much across the board. They're giving him bonus ad up base damage down by meaningful numbers. These are incredibly good and these are Meaningful amounts of damage to be losing Q is your always first max. [00:42:03] Speaker C: And to be clear, they do say that this should be roughly power neutral for adjacent and a nerf for anyone who's not building AD on Jayce. This is absolutely like these things always do gonna result in also an increase in snowballiness for AD Jace. Because if he snowballs and gets ahead, he catches up to his former power faster and surpasses it faster. That's just how these kinds of changes work. But he shouldn't just be this durable bruiser anymore. He should actually be a glass cannon. [00:42:38] Speaker B: You should be able to kill him now. [00:42:44] Speaker A: I guess I got lucky and I never ran into the Tank Jace during the time of Tank Jace. So I'm fortunate for that. [00:42:51] Speaker C: I've run into it several times played by people who have no idea how to play it right. [00:42:57] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:42:58] Speaker C: To run into anyone who knew how to play it right. And now it's gone. So I don't have to worry about it anymore. But it has been a monster in pro play. [00:43:09] Speaker B: I mean, it's been. It's been so bad that it has gone from pro to normals where Jace was not really present. [00:43:17] Speaker C: Yep. [00:43:18] Speaker A: I just want to say this is the main. One of the main reasons that I love this game so much, that it's a constantly evolving and people are always finding fun, different ways to play champions. That's one of the main reasons I love this game. [00:43:32] Speaker B: Finding the degenerate playstyle is great right up until everybody else figures out the degenerate playstyle. And then it becomes really bad. [00:43:42] Speaker A: It just. It's just an amazing thing that this game is just constantly changing because players are like, huh, let's try Tank Jace. And it was just. [00:43:50] Speaker C: Yep. [00:43:51] Speaker A: Turned out being ridiculous. And it. I just love it. [00:43:54] Speaker C: And I checked. His pick rate dropped 2 1/2 percent. This patch versus previous patch. Good. [00:44:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:06] Speaker C: All right. Pillow, take the patch changes home. [00:44:10] Speaker A: All right, last but not least, just wanted to talk about Swain a little bit. So Swain got nerfed recently and he was feeling the pain. So what they're doing is they're giving three max health per stack from 12 to 15 on his passive, and his E damage is going up by 10 of the AP ratio. So they're just trying to make it to where like, hey, you can build more AP now because we're giving you a little bit more hp. So you. There's trying to trade off there. So you're gonna see Swain's building more damage and less health. That's what they're hoping to see what it rarely does. We will. We'll find out. [00:44:54] Speaker C: They're trying to skew him from full Tank Swain, which is a lot of players, have just been building Rylai's into full tank. [00:45:04] Speaker B: And he's not bad at it. He didn't do a ton of damage, but you get like Rylai's maybe a not a blackfire. [00:45:15] Speaker C: The other unending despair. Oh, malignance. [00:45:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you just waltz through the enemy. [00:45:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's just a drain. He's a drain Tank. That's all he's doing. [00:45:26] Speaker C: And that's the key is Swain hit a point where his ult doesn't cost mana. Literally. If you just have a Rylai's and they don't have a dash, they can never escape you, and you will eventually win if they can't kill you first. And that's why Tank Swain is a thing, because he just ults. It is just this slow zone that no one can escape or kill. [00:45:47] Speaker A: Constantly malignant proced under your feet. And it's. It was. He's a fun user of a malignant. I. I enjoy champions like this with malignants that are constantly proking the item. [00:46:00] Speaker C: Yep. And to be clear, I still think we're gonna see swains that are building Rylai's malignants into Tank, but they're gonna be building Rylais and malignants, not just one. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah, good change. We'll see where ends him. You know, none of these changes are ever going to be perfect because if they were, we wouldn't have much of a show. We wouldn't have patch notes to talk about every couple weeks. [00:46:26] Speaker C: True. All right, before we get to Mike's trinket tip that he prepped last week, but we didn't get to reminder listeners, we have no questions in the queue. Write into the 4wards podcastmail.com and we will literally be able to get to your questions next episode. Right in. Seriously not kidding. Okay, Mike, tell us about Pantheon and the tip. [00:46:56] Speaker B: So a lot of you have probably noticed that Pantheon is strong, and he is. You should play him. Pantheon is strong for a couple of reasons, but this one is a little unintuitive. Yes. So one of Pantheon's base items. Oh, I need to remember the name of it. [00:47:21] Speaker C: Sundered Sky. [00:47:22] Speaker B: There we go. Sundered skies effect means that the first time you hit a champion with an auto attack, it automatically creds. Now Pantheon's passive is that he sort of empowers something as he gets Full stacks on it. So if you empower his W, your next auto attack hits four times. Ish. But it is coded as a single auto attack that hits multiple times, like Ash, which means all of those critical. [00:48:02] Speaker C: Yep. [00:48:03] Speaker A: I didn't know that. I thought it worked like Renekton W. Nope. [00:48:08] Speaker C: Nope. I did too. It's very silly that it works this way, but it does. [00:48:14] Speaker A: I'm gonna be abusing some pantheon. [00:48:16] Speaker B: He's incredibly strong. He's very, very good at jungle and support right now. [00:48:27] Speaker C: Yep. And to be clear, this is why Sundered sky is a core item for him. [00:48:32] Speaker B: Yeah, this should be. I don't think it's first or second. [00:48:34] Speaker C: It doesn't have this interaction. [00:48:36] Speaker A: Now, let me ask you. I. I. The crit interaction. I understand. Because it's all coded as one attack. Does he get the heel on each hit or just the first hit? [00:48:45] Speaker B: It's all one separate. The heel is something that happens whenever you. [00:48:53] Speaker C: Whenever six seconds. [00:48:54] Speaker B: Your combat. I think it's a proc. Yeah, whatever it is. But it. It's based on the damage deal. I think I'd have to look at the item real quick. [00:49:03] Speaker C: Sundered sky makes it so that your next basic attack is empowered to critically strike and heal you for a flat amount. 8 second cooldown per target. [00:49:14] Speaker B: I believe the restores health function is a numeric number. Like this is a percent number that you heal, not a percent of the hit. [00:49:27] Speaker C: Yes. And the reason it works this way is that the empowered attack is a single hit, even though it says it's striking three times. That striking three times is for the purposes of Black Cleaver. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Yeah, you. You instantly. It also is why you really like Black Cleaver. You instantly block Proc. Black Cleaver almost immediately with Izzy or a W. Yep. [00:49:53] Speaker A: Okay. I was just making sure there wasn't some weird interaction where he healed on each of the hits, like how he crits on each of the hits. I was just making sure there's no weird interaction, like, oh, I'm healing on four hits. But now it probably just goes on cooldown after the very first hit. All right, I got it. I just wanted to make sure running, like, builds in my head, like, ooh, what else could I abuse with this? [00:50:23] Speaker C: I mean, you literally just build Sundered Sky, Black Cleaver, and maybe Eclipse. That's all you do after that. You build Tanker Bruiser Sterak's is good. That kind of stuff. [00:50:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Typical stuff. [00:50:41] Speaker B: Mm. [00:50:44] Speaker C: All right, do we want to talk about feats real quick? Fill up the last few minutes of this episode. [00:50:50] Speaker B: I don't know if they deserve it. [00:50:54] Speaker C: I don't know either. Maybe if they wrote in to the Fourwards podcastmail.com and asked us some questions they might get more discussion about feats. [00:51:03] Speaker A: I say we're going to need something to talk about next week. [00:51:06] Speaker C: True. So with that this has been episode 468. Seriously listeners, we have no idea what the hell we're going to talk about next week. Please bombard us with questions theforwards podcastmail.com or drop them in the Q and A channel in the Discord which the link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. That's it. [00:51:29] 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 4wards podcast and of course send your. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Questions to the4wards podcastmail.com so we can. [00:51:46] Speaker A: Answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.