[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up? 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 469 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. We've got Free Shooter.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: I'm only half the reason we're late this week.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: It's true. We've also got Mike of many names.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: I'm the only reason we would have been able to film earlier Film or whatever.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Record podcast now.
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Alright, so our topic for tonight is we're gonna talk about the feats for a bit. Because we have seen a lot of games lost. Not because of the feats themselves but because of how people behave around the feats. Feats.
So we're going to talk about them for a bit. We're going to explain how they work. First and foremost. In case you just missed it from the when we covered the the big patch for the the season.
There are three feats in the game. Whichever team gets two of the three first completes the objective and gets a bonus. The bonus is your boots. Get slightly.
[00:03:42] Speaker C: This is the game's replacement for First Blood and first Tower interactions. They've decided that giving extra gold early was incredibly powerful in the one lane if you got it. And pretty much pointless for everyone else otherwise.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Yep.
So these challenges are the first team to get three kills.
The first team to get three monster epic monster objective kills. Which is Dragon Baron, Otacon, Rift Herald, or all three of a set of three grubs.
That is an important distinction.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: The entire set. Not one grub from one and two grubs from another. You must kill all three from the same spawn.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Exactly.
So that. That is why it's such an important thing. Because you can't split it. If you split it, no one gets anything. Which is fine.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: And first tower is the other one.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: First tower is the other one. Whichever team takes a turret first in its entirety. So like if you get four plates and then the enemy team kills a turret once, 14 minutes pass, they get the first tower, not you. Even though you got four plates and all the gold from those four plates.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: So you've noticed probably a little bit of a mismatch in in what those things are. Getting your first tower usually is an endeavor that things go down, but it's only one tower going down. Then you have three objective kills which may or may not take place before 20 minutes. Who knows what happens. Sometimes people just don't take them.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: I think that's physically not possible before. Like 14 minutes.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: The bare minimum that it can take to get three monster objective kills is 10 minutes. That is you kill dragon on spawn. You kill grubs on spawn or on spawn. Doesn't matter too much for grubs in this case. And then you kill second dragon on spawn.
That is the fastest you can possibly get the monster objective. In an absolute perfect game where you shut out the enemy and just do whatever the hell you want. It'll still take 10 minutes.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: And then with these two decent objectives, you have get three kills which can happen in the first two minutes of the game instantly.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Better than it was.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: So better than it was. Much better than it was.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Let's talk about what these feats give you, because this is where I think people are losing their mind over feats when it's just not a thing worth losing your mind over.
The initial. Hey, you got the feats, you get the. The bonus. What does it do for your boots? We said it upgrades your boots.
Well, it gives you five of whatever the stat on your boots are.
So if you have Berserker Greaves that give attack speed, it gives you five additional attack speed. If you have steel caps, it gives you five additional armor. If you have Merc treads, it gives you five. Five additional. Mr. The only exception is Sorcerer shoes because they give a much more powerful stat. I think it gives two magic.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: It's two or three.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: It's two.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: I just checked.
So that is the one exception. It gives less of the stat because the stat is much more valuable.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yep. And both the Swifties and Symbiotic Souls, I think they're called, just give more move speed.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Yes.
And that's the first part I want to address. If you are buying any of the boots that give a stat. So Berserker Greaves, Merc treads, steel caps, Ionian boots, any of those, you're getting about 100 gold worth of stats.
That means that the feats as a whole was worth 500 gold split across five people.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: It's about the same as getting First Tower's bonus or getting First Blood's bonus. That's it. That's in about 80% of games. That's all that's getting happening.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: It's barely more than one kill.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: That's all feats are. It's one kill's worth of gold. One assisted kill.
Because an assisted kill is 450 gold, this is worth 500.
It is a little harder to quantify when it comes to Swifties, Symbiotic Souls, and Sorcerer's Shoes because they give stats that you can reach a cap on how much is available before you actually hit full build. There's only so many flat pen items in the game. There's only so much movement speed you can get.
So you can make an argument that it's more valuable than its raw gold value for those boots simply because you just can't get more of the stat unless you get this.
But it's still not very much actual raw gold value.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And then as, as you probably remember, each of these boots has an Upgraded stage that takes place only after you have two completed legendary items and it costs money to buy.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's kind of the intended purpose behind the feats is giving a late game bonus or an early game set of objectives. Essentially that was their stated goal with feats. Which kind of leads into.
Don't immediately buy the upgrades after you have two items. For the most part.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Seriously. Seriously don't. In almost every case you are spending 700 gold for something that is worth way less than 700 gold.
Even the shield ones which I think are some of the strongest upgrades. The steel caps and the murk treads upgrades where it gives you a damage shield against that specific type of damage are worth slightly more health than a ruby crystal in terms of actual defensive value. And only against one damage type.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: For 750 gold.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: I would put this at the same point as buying one of the potions. There's no reason to buy this until you're capped. Unless you are positive you're in your final game push and you have just a little bit of extra money and you can't buy a real item.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yep. If you have the choice of I can spend 750 gold on these boots to teleport or walk into what I believe will be the game ending play one way or the other. Yes. Upgrade these boots before your full build.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: I'm gonna caveat that even more you will basically need 1250 gold. Because I almost think you should always take your potion first in almost every scenario. You would rather have the potion stats than the upgraded boots.
Almost.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: I. Yeah. I kind of disagree with that. A wash. Yeah. Mostly because like move speed on its own is an incredibly valuable stat that's undervalued a lot.
[00:11:12] Speaker C: Most people very powerful and all of them do give slightly more move speed when you upgrade them.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Yep. And a couple of them give benefits that also increase. Like you know if you have swifties you get an extra 4% total move speed.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: That's pretty.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: That's significant.
And also the Berserker Scree's ones you get the like decaying bonus move speed on attack which also pretty good. There's an argument for getting that like third or fourth if you really are in a like kite heavy game.
Yeah.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: There. There are arguments to get these in certain scenarios. But let's go nine out of ten times. This is your absolute last thing. This is like getting in or an upgrade. You don't care about it. I will say the very end.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: I think the strongest argument is the upgraded SORC because getting an extra what? It's an extra 6 flat magic pen and an extra 8% bonus magic pen as well.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: It's an extra 4 magic pen over the triumphant boots already.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Right, Because I forgot you get the 2 from it. So it's 4 flat. It does give 8%. Yeah.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Percentage pen again, a stat that you cannot buy more of. The highest magic pen you can get Percentage wise is 40% on void staff. You can get up to 48% with buying those boots as well. Although I think it stacks multiplicatively, not additively. So it's like 47 or 46%, I'm pretty sure.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Actuality, the only one that I actually would think of would be more towards supports buying. I. I know it's not Moby Boots anymore, but that upgraded Moby boot version, the amount of movement speed that they can get to move around the map to make plays, I think that might be the most powerful of those upgrades.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: The Synchronized souls.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Yeah, Synchronous souls. And that's mostly because they're also on a very limited income and the amount of move speed you get is really worth spending 750 gold on.
If you're someone who needs to move around the map a lot, you need to have a caveat.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Here's the argument I would make for all of that.
Our audience, and this is no offense to you guys, audience, we're a new player podcast. We are aimed at lower elos. I think all of this is true, accurate advice for people in diamond one Masters Grandmasters challenger.
This is advice for pro games. They should not be buying these fucking boot upgrades before they're near full build.
Except in these specific scenarios for those of us in bronze, silver, gold, plat iron, all of the above.
Just don't buy these until you're full build. Just don't waste the gold.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Because your judgment, and frankly my judgment of whether or not this is going to be the game ending fight is hit or miss.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Very true.
A lot of times it's because the.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Value of the movement.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: My judgment of the value of movement speed is lower because movement speed doesn't do anything when you make a mistake and face check into someone.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
So I have one champion.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: General advice for this show, I have.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: One champion and it's Bard.
Mostly because his entire goal is run around the map grabbing his stuff.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Even then.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Even then. I wouldn't admit it more more than often, but he's the like. If I had to push one thing.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: And that's stretching it, especially in our ELO and the ELO of our listeners.
Just buy an offensive or defensive item instead of spending your gold on the boots.
You'll benefit more from it.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: And so all of this is to kind of say, don't throw your game over not getting feats. Don't tilt off the planet and don't go for plays that are like low percentage plays because you might get that third objective. I've lost games doing this before. I kind of realized this about feats of. I was making calls of like, no, we need to fight this. It's our third thing. And we just got totally wiped because we kind of went in one by one and gave them way more gold.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Yep. So when is it worth taking a risk for the feats then? Because I have one and only one clear cut scenario.
[00:15:47] Speaker C: I have two or three, but they're going to be pretty niche most of the time.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: My clear cut scenario, if you as the jungler are in a situation where a dragon decides which team gets feat. So like your team got three kills, their team got first turret and we're down to the monsters is the kind of situation I'm talking about.
It is almost always worth throwing away your life for a dragonsteel in that circumstance.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: The reason the feat itself is worth at least the gold value of your kill unless you have a massive shutdown and your team gets a dragon buff. So the feats are a neutral state at that point because you've given over a kill. But you go plus one dragon.
That's a net positive. That's a good play. Objectively. Every time. It's the only time I think it is a clear cut. I can tell you this is always correct to take a risk for a feat. Like a significant risk, not a mild risk.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a significant one. I have a little bit more of a mild one. And it is still mostly a jungler trying to throw their life away. But it's in the same sort of scenario. Like the.
They're about to grab six grubs and they're a pushing team. Go in there and take a grub.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: If you have the power to take one grub from them. Denying six grubs is immensely powerful.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly that like many.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: I was gonna say many jungle champs have the ability to just smite a grub and leave.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yep. I was gonna say that's kind of unchanged from last season of like. Yeah, last season was super important to try and at least deny a grub or two. Now it's just like you get a little bit of a bonus for Denying a grub or two. So it's just like that much better to do it.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yep. So if you're not the jungler, should you be paying attention to feats?
[00:17:49] Speaker C: Yes, somewhat.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: And well, I say yes. And here's the reason not everyone who plays this game listens to our podcast.
A lot of people are going to care a lot about feats and are gonna tilt if your team doesn't get them.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: It doesn't mean. Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: That is, in my opinion, the number one reason that I actually do care about feats. It's not about how much power they grant. It's about I need to manage the mental of the four unstable children that Riot has decided to put on my team.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's. That's the big reason. Two character feats. The one reason to not caring as much is that there are times when you need to go, I need to play this for my own health and not try and look at everyone else. If you're one of the people who turns off all chat and just ignores everyone, not looking at feats is going to be the same sort of thing. You're going to be looking at objectives, not looking at the feats. You're looking at objectives.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: And here's the other thing you may have seen statistics on. Like, the team that gets feats wins, like, 70% of the time.
This is not because feats make you in seven times out of 10. This is because seven out of 10 times, if you're going to win the game, you will have also gotten the feats anyway.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: The things you do to get feats are the things you do to win games. So in general speaking, you care about feats because you care about winning, because you care about the objectives that are on the field. So you should be paying attention to the objectives and not caring about who's getting the feet.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: And that's why, like, the feat of warfare with the three kills is kind of a bad feat. Because it's. If they have one person who's like, honestly, kind of feeding, like, you can just get three kills on that person and get it. Or if you're in a really bad lane matchup and like, the level one goes bad for you and you die twice, all of a sudden you're probably not getting help from your jungler because they're mad at you. Like, that's the big thing, at least with that one, is I just try to not die in the first three. Or if I do make it a trade to not have a target on my back for My. From my team.
[00:20:09] Speaker C: Yeah, all of us, all of us have caveats on that one defeat of warfare where we think something is wrong with it and we know it needs to be fixed, but none of us have an exact solution that they can take. We've got a lot of interesting ideas, but who knows if they'll ever listen to them.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: I will say it is painful when the teams go three and three in kills and whichever team got the feat is determined by like one second difference from cross map fights.
Yeah. And it's just like really, really. It had to come down to just which team had their inter die first.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: I had a heartbreaking one where I got. It should have been a double kill and a 1v2 dive, but I never got an auto on the other person. So it was a kill and an execute because of it.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Oh, all right. Is there anything else? We want to talk about feats.
[00:21:10] Speaker C: Just. Just one little thing. And this is pretty much the same as a jungle thing. Pay attention to your jungler because we're caring about feats. You need to care about what your jungler is doing, which means you need to actually like watch to see if they're going in alone, if they're wandering in alone to go do a dragon.
Maybe it's worth skipping a couple of camps to go help them do it Waves simply because if it's gonna get given over anyways and given a free kill, it's worth it to lose some minions to go help them. This is just a true thing no matter what for. For dragon and. And other objectives.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like you want to be helping with the objectives or if it's clear, like, hey, we see their jungler on grubs, our junglers on dragon.
You know, if your waves all the way push to tower, maybe in your bot in bot lane, go throw them a few autos, you know, get your extra legend stack. But you don't have to.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: That, that, that does remind me there is a thing to pay attention to with feats and that is if you have the ability to get a feat easily, no repercussions. Take it. And I say this as one of the main things is taking towers. We saw this very recently in a game in Pro where one jungler stayed and helped kill a tower to get that first turret and the other wandered off to go take the enemy gromp or Krugs and then walk back over to help do it. And because of that movement to go take an extra little camp there. Lost. They lost by two seconds.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Help get them if you can, Jungler.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah. If you do that in solo queue, your team will probably be very mad at you.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: I mean, let's be real. Your team doesn't need a reason to be mad at you in solo queue.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Especially if you're the jungle for things.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: That have nothing to do with anything in game whatsoever. I have literally had people in solo queue decide the gender of their teammates and start flaming them for their gender or ethnicity.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: That was recent.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: What the hell that has to do with their ability to play League of Legends? I couldn't tell you.
People in solo queue are wild and not in a good way, unfortunately.
So don't be like those people.
Instead, be like me and Mike, who were testing some interesting interactions before the show.
Mike, do you want to explain what we were testing?
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Sure, I can go on with this.
Mel is interesting, and the Mel's W does a lot of very interesting things.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Her W being the reflectability.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Yes. So there's a lot of unique mechanics in the game and a lot of them that we were able to check because I have a friend in another discord who was playing a game with Brand and I think he said he had this weird interaction, and I went, I need to see what's going on with this. And so he was talking about how used E, which is if you know Brand at all, it's a targeted ability that pops a dot on you, hits you with his E, applies passive, and then throws out a little bit of fire to any thing that's near you. I think it's like 300 units, but it's a targeted ability.
However, Mel's W can completely reflect the Y's extra projectiles that it spawns. And all of them go back to Brand.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yup.
[00:25:02] Speaker C: So you can instant proc. Brand's own passive on himself.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:25:11] Speaker C: This is not the only interesting interaction that Mel has with Brand.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: No, but that one's really funny because it's one of those things that we don't even think about being a projectile.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: No. Yeah. He spawns extra projectiles if he hits something and there's other targets around it, which means if you get hit by a bunch of extra projectiles, there's other people there if you can't see them.
The other weird but interesting interaction is with Branzolt, which has a bouncing little fireball.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: So let me explain real quick how Brandzolt works. Normally he launches a fireball, it hits a target, it bounces four more times, as long as there are valid targets for a total of five hits.
However, as we learned it Turns out when Mel reflects pyroclasm, she reflects it as if she had just cast the ability. Meaning if it bounces four times and the last bounce goes to or from Mel and she reflects, will now immediately fly straight to Brand, regardless of distance. And then bounce four more times from Bran.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Yup.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Which is fucking wacky. Because other abilities do not work this way. If you reflect a Ziggs bomb that has bounced twice, it bounces off of you, hits the ground, and explodes. Because it explodes on the third bounce, Brandalt seems to be relatively unique. We obviously have not tested every ability in the game, but it seems to be relatively unique in that it resets the state of the projectile when she reflects it.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: Brand is unique for a couple of reasons here, in that his projectiles seem to come off of you as a target, which does mean Mel also has longer to interact than any other time. Because it doesn't matter when within that, as long as it would hit your W whether or not you've already taken damage from it and it's bouncing off of you. Or if it hits you before it happens the entire time, that projectile will bounce and go back to him, which.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it like sticks on you. Hit it for a second.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Yeah. If you hit it a fraction of a second before something is about to hit you, it'll hit it and it'll bounce it back. If you hit it and it's. It's everything within that time. Remember this. So if there are multiple spells that go off all at once, she reflects all of them.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Yup.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: He has a reason. This ability has like a 17 minute cooldown.
[00:28:07] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: It's actually not a very long cooldown. Late game. Because you build so much ability haste on her, it's literally a like 10 second cooldown.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Like baseline. It's like 45 seconds or something. 35. Whatever. It's huge.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: 30.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: There. There are other fun abilities to reflect with Mel, such as Samira old, where she just mercs herself.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Yes. Did you know that Samira's old counts as projectiles? I found that out recently did.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Because I knew it got blocked by.
[00:28:34] Speaker C: Wind wall and all of them instantly. So the weird thing with Samira is she does everything all around her. Every projectile that could be in that area will hit the Mel shield and immediately go back to Samira. So she will almost always just kill herself if she Ults on Mel, unless.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: It is literally a 1v1, in which case she'll just reflect her entire Ult for the duration of the reflect. But like, if she jumps into a group and then Mel puts up the reflect and just stands on top of her. Mel insta kills her.
Because it applies so many stacks of Mel's passive. It just one shots the Samira. It's hilarious.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: I have a new Samira counter. Good to know.
[00:29:17] Speaker C: This is. This is another point that we found out from the Brand interaction.
Because you're reflecting Brand's projectiles and Brand's projectiles inflict Brand's passive. Bran's passive dot stacks will land and give Samira stacks or Mel stacks.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Mel.
[00:29:36] Speaker C: But you'll give Mel stacks. Yes.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Yep. Each individual one will apply Mel stack. She can three proc. Brand's passive and cause the explosion to happen.
And it deals damage for her to everything around the target as if she was Brand.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: That's interesting that it actually procs the passing.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: It does everything. It breaks it. It will explode and kill minions.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: That feels unintended.
[00:30:02] Speaker C: From targets, you get the. Everything functions like Brand had cast it, only it comes from Samira.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Mel.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: Mel. God said the Samira thing and this is just messing with me.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: All right.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So go ahead. It's the intent. This is intended behavior. In most cases, Mel's reflect is supposed to mimic all functions of and copy the behavior of the original missile. Unless otherwise stated. This includes every aspect and effect of the missile conforming to the attack or spell from which the missile originated. So that's why it applies Brand's passive. Because Brands ult applies Brand's passive.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Gotcha. Okay. That does make sense.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: Then the thing we didn't test and that I wasn't paying attention to it because we weren't looking. Does she copy the spell as if she cast it or as if they cast it as in items. So theoretically theirs.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: So that it's theirs. Reduced by Dodge.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Okay. It gets even fuckier. It is theirs, except it uses Mel's damage modifiers and magic penetration, not the original sources. So damage modifiers are like the percent damage on Liandry's. Not the burn, but the like amp that it has.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: Yeah. It will reflect and use Brands Liandry's slash blackfire torch and apply those dots as well, giving her even more stacks.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Yes.
It's a funky ability. It's extremely powerful.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Playmat also weird note. So we mentioned when we covered Mel that Sylas's ult just fizzles if she reflects it.
Apparently she can't reflect Draven's ult, which seems like she should be able to.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: That feels like a bug because wind wall stops It.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: And then she also can't reflect Allowy's test of spirit. It just fizzles instead.
That's Allowy's tentacle grab that puts. Yeah, like creates a clone and she beats up the clone and makes tentacles smash you.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: I almost. You know, I would almost say that's probably intentional that it fizzles because it's. I could imagine that just breaking the game somehow. Like the spaghetti is there enough that I could see them just being like, we're just gonna not let that happen.
[00:32:27] Speaker C: I bet she fizzles the Draven alt because of adoration stacks.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: I don't know the actual reason, but that's the way it works. Which is weird.
[00:32:42] Speaker C: I want to steal Draven's gold so bad with that adoration stack.
That has got to be why. Because it would steal his iteration stacks.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: There are other interactions I've noticed with Swain. You can reflect the claw as it's coming out from Swain, but you cannot reflect it when it's coming back to Swain. You'll get rooted anyway.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: That makes sense. Actually.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: I don't know why that is a function. Because the second it hits a target, when it's reversing back, it becomes an explosion.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: I would have expected it to follow. The missiles are destroyed, but not replicated rules if that was the case. Not root mel. Anyway.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Yeah. What was the interaction? What was the interaction? We talked. I feel like it's like the. The Syndra stun situation of like it.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: It. It functions exactly like the Syndra stun. Syndra's thing blocks and sits there. It's the same thing with that claw. It's going to sit there and instantly pop it.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I guess I am actually surprised it doesn't explode.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Free.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: You have a quick story. Apparently.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I was looking because I was trying to find that game with the like 1v2. Because I was like, oh, yeah, that was kind of an interesting game to talk about. And I'm a preface of I don't actually know what I think the moral of this story is. Like, sometimes it's okay to trust your teammates when they do weird things, but don't do this. I'm gonna preface this. Don't do this. But don't always just default to your teammates are trolling.
So I locked in a went into a game ranked. And my jungle and support, I guess were duo cute jungle locks and Diana. Okay, That's a jungle pick the support locks in Nunu. I'm like, oh, God. Am I getting trolled, but I think I'd already used a dodge that day. So I was like, okay, you know what? Just pick Ezreal. Play safe, play it out. The nunu has smite.
Oh, I think I know what's happening.
This is the first time I've ever had an actual true 1v2. I did not have his support. He did not like they were just double jungling the entire time. I was Ezreal into vain and Lulu.
Yeah, I died twice total that whole game. Once was the tower dive I mentioned and once was at the nexus.
We won that game.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: To be fair, you were like the best 1v2 AD carry that exists. And yes, I know you are willing to sacrifice your own ability to farm to not die because you're not a dumbass.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I went down like shortest range.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Ad carries in the game.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I went down like 30Cs in lane at by the end of the game I was down 15. Like sometimes when your teammates are doing weird, don't just give up and feed. Just kind of try and play safe and go with it and it might actually work out because let me tell you, their amumu had a bad time. Their Katarina mid lane had a bad time. Kept getting double ganked and then every now and then when they would like push up and try and tower dive me, they double gank me and I'd pick up a double stacked wave. Like sometimes just, it's okay to actually just play safe and trust your team.
Also don't play this double jungle stuff because it's more likely than not your ADC will just feed their ass off and you'll lose. Don't do that.
[00:36:12] Speaker C: I have to assume those two were duo queued.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Oh, they had to be for sure. They actually, I know they were because they were speaking another language to each other in chat. I don't remember what language it was. This was two weeks ago.
[00:36:22] Speaker C: But yeah, so this is, this is a cheese strategy that two people are doing to try and get under somebody's skin and it seemed to have worked very well.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:31] Speaker C: However you need to. Yeah. If you're gonna even attempt this, you better be in a call with someone else and telling your team. We are doing this to mess with them so that you can play safe.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Yeah, they didn't say anything ahead of time. I'm glad I kind of figured it out and picked as real because if I, if I picked anyone else and also if they didn't have a Lulu as a support and they pick like an engage support, I would have been screwed. But you know.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I just want to hear that.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Story because that's the wildest game I've played in like two years.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, do we want to get to some listener questions since you guys actually wrote in? Thank you. Right into the 4 wards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
[00:37:17] Speaker C: So for the first question of February.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Yeah, seriously, we're over halfway into February and here's our first question of the month.
These questions come from Harley who Good evening. Wards Harlow here. Long time listener, but this is my first time sending in a question. I figured I would do us all a favor and break the silence in the inbox so you all don't have to continue being increasingly disappointed. Angry dads.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Yay.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: For the past couple years I have been avoiding ranked matches and enjoying the game more casually. After watching Ludwig achieve his climb to Plat, I was inspired to return to ranked this season with the goal of hitting gold for the first time. In the past I have mained top lane, but I've always been one to play a different role and champ nearly every game. Whilst it has given me a decent understanding of each role in many different champs and matchups, I feel it has also held me back from climbing to my highest potential. My peak rank was Silver 2 in 2022. This season I have decided to main support with the intention of keeping a very small champion pool. Support has always felt more fun to me and I enjoy playing champs in a role that benefits from roaming and the playstyle seems to be much more accepted nowadays by low elo ad carries. I assume this is because they see that type of play in pro games now. Yeah, you're not wrong.
I just started my grind this week and so far I've only allowed myself to play when I am in a good mood state of mind. This has been very beneficial and so far I have a 64% win rate with seven wins and four losses.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: Good. So far so good. Let's get to the actual questions.
Question 1 Do I follow the rhetoric that I hear that support is not a viable role to climb in low elo and swap back to top lane? No, no.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: If you think you are able to benefit your team from a support lane and you have a good win rate so far, it seems you're in a good mood with it, you're doing a good job and you're honestly sounds like you're having a good time with it as long as you feel you're having an impact on the game.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Do you Yep. I can tell you.
Yeah, I was gonna say just I can tell you that like, especially in like lane phase, a good support can just dominate a lane. I've had games that I have won because my support is just the best player in the game. I have games I've lost because their support is clearly the best player in the game. Like a good support because if you win that lane, you're up in two out of five positions on the map. If you roam and get an advantage in another game, you're now up in two out of five positions on the map. Like you impacting other lanes. It's like almost as much impact as a jungler. You helping your jungler, like, adds so much to the game.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I will say the reason that Reddit rhetoric exists is that playing an enchanter support that does not roam in low elo is not a viable way to climb.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Because in Low Elo, one of the two AD carries will be the worst player in the game.
50% of the time it's going to be yours.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you're not.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: So.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: Yeah. So part of your question in this first one actually matters to what you say in this second question. And I'll get to it when he's done the question part of that.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: Okay, so let's get to it then. Question 2. Do I continue to main Thresh? Who? I have concerns that I can't always take over the game to carry if needed, but have a solid 57% win rate on or do I swap to a champion with higher carry potential?
[00:40:49] Speaker C: Don't you dare swap. You stay on Thresh. I'm going to tell you this. A good thresh is one of the best things to carry any game on. It doesn't matter how much damage you do. It doesn't matter how much you help one lane. A good thresh can win a game at any point. You're saving people. You're doing a lot of good jobs in team fights. You have immense utility. You can get really big tanky. You have options on how you build thresh at the high level of play. Or even just someone who knows Thresh and plays it well can win any game.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah. At a high level of mastery, I.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: Would say with Thresh, basically you're gonna go, okay, is my AD carry a potato? Oh, they're good. Cool. I'm gonna make sure that they are protected and I'm going to pick people for them to murder.
Oh, my ad carry is a potato. Cool. I'm going to go mid or I'm going to go follow my jungler around or I'm going to roam top and I'm going to find the person who is good on my team and I'm going to protect them and peel for them and pick people for them to murder.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: Congratulations. You now win a lot of games.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: As Thresh is my ad. Carry a potato, let me throw this lantern out and if he grabs it, he gets to save his life and then one less free kill for them. Thresh is so good at this. You, you're doing God's work playing Thresh in low elo. Learn it well and enjoy your ELO climb.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: Yep, we are big fans of Thresh on the four Words podcast. Play more Thresh.
So question three. How do I decide how big a reasonable champion pool should be and what champions would be most beneficial to add?
[00:42:38] Speaker B: So in general, it depends on role because I think different roles, it's like you want might want a couple different archetypes. So for support, I think three to six, depending on how many champs of each archetype is a good size pool.
If you only want to focus. So you play Thresh. If you only want to focus on those, like on hook champs or like, you know, hook engage champs like that, then you could probably just get away with three of like Thresh, Nautilus and Blitzcrank.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: I'm not Pike.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't really recommend people playing Blitzcrank because he's such a.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Like, he's so feast or famine.
[00:43:20] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:43:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: So is one game you will have.
There's more opportunity. So with Blitzcrank, the problem is one game you will have the God hand. You read the enemy's movements, you hook them every time, and you are just an absolute beast. And the next game, you will still be just as on fire, but the enemy plays differently. Not better, not worse, differently. And your hooks go super wide and you look like an idiot and you are the most useless person on the map.
[00:43:48] Speaker C: Or you accidentally grab the wrong person and suddenly there's a horrible person in there.
This is one of the reasons why we continue to say Thresh is the best hook champion in the game, because you don't immediately pull everyone in, but you mess them up.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: Yep. Thresh is the least committal of the hook champions because Thresh has the agency to say, oh, I hooked the person. I wanted to let me go in on them and flay. Or oh, I hooked the wrong person. Let me let that time out.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:44:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: And I think Nautilus is second there only because he's the tankiest of the hook champions. So even though he pulls both of you together, he can just press W E and auto you and then kind of walk away.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:31] Speaker C: So we're pretty much there. You have three at three to six in your primary role. You're going to have a secondary role. You're eventually going to have to play your secondary role to maybe three champions that you know you can play.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: And that's pretty much it. You're not likely to as a support because support is going to be reasonably of those roles that you're going to get a lot.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: Yep. I, I would say for a support player, pick a secondary role and one champion that you're going to play in it.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: I'll be honest.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Can't play that champion because you think it's an unplayable matchup or because it's been banned or picked away and you are in your off role. That's when you dodge.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Here's the thing, here's the thing. As a support, learn to play Lux as a support and put your secondary as mid. And if you ever get mid, play Lux.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: We'll get to that. That ties into one of the later questions. Okay.
And as far as how big a champion pool should be, I would say since you're a Thresh player, diversify. Play a mage such as Lux.
Play someone who is more of a like hard tank champion. Leona, Leona, Alistair, Leona, those types of champions.
Or play an enchanter like pick a couple of those to round yourself out.
[00:45:55] Speaker C: Yeah. There will be times.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: Play every hook champion.
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Thresh is one of the most diverse supports you can get because he sort of fills each of those roles non committally, but you probably want one of each of them in case Thresh is banned or picked up on the enemy team. And that way you have something to use in any situation with any ad carry so that you have a mage to do a nice kill lane, you have a tank to go in for your engage, you have a, an enchanter to buff up, a kog'maw, etc.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Yep. So question four is what factors are you looking for to decide which of your champions to play during the drafting phase of the match?
And he adds a little bit of context. I've played 10 games as Mel's support, two in ranked in both wins. But I've heard you all say there are other supports who do what she does, but better. That's the Lux that we were talking about. Just play Lux Support. It's literally better than Mel from the support role.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: I play Malphite in the top lane, so I've thought of adding him to my pool. Poppy has been very strong in pro play and I've seen her flex to support, so I've considered adding her as well.
And then we'll get to the bonus question at the end.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Poppy support's hilarious because that is a role that you can actually just hard carry the game yourself by just running at people and killing them. Like, for the first 10 minutes of the game. I've seen lethality Poppy support get giga fed, but you have to be really, really good at Poppy in, like, one.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Trick or even tank poppies. You just go blood song into tank items because the support sheen item is really good on her.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: Poppy is a great choice when you are against Dash Heavy champions, especially Dash Engage Champions. If they pick Rakan and you're like, cool, I'm going to play Poppy into that. And their ad carry is like a vayne. You're happy.
[00:47:59] Speaker C: Yeah. So. So this. This is definitely part of that Major factor in this question is you're not looking for just what your team has, but what your enemy team has when you're. This is just a fundamental rule of champion select. If you have a minorly diverse champion pool champions for slightly different situations, you'll be able to go, all right, they've got a really dash heavy team. Poppy support looks like a really good idea here.
Oh, man, they've got a really immobile ad carry.
Thresh is really good into mobile ad carries.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: Leona is really good into a mobile.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: Leon is really good into mobility carries. We have a kog'maw. All right, I've played. Lulu would absolutely buff the crap out of that kog'maw.
That one is a little bit more.
You have to put some trust if you're doing that, and that doesn't always work out in your favor.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: And there's also. It's totally valid to say, oh, I have a kog'maw. Let me play Thresh and peel for him and lantern him to safety. Oh, I have a kog'maw. Let me play Leona. And anyone who tries to kill him is gonna eat a shield to the face. Like, yeah, you don't have to play an enchanter because they picked kog'maw.
[00:49:18] Speaker C: So the other thing that you're gonna be looking for as the support is what is your team missing?
So if you're not picking early and you're one of the Last couple picks. Does your team have a tank? It's time to take a look at maybe putting yourself as a Leona there. Do we have almost no magic damage?
Lux is a great idea.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Now, I will say that is generally from my experience, support usually goes in the first three picks. Like, usually it gets traded up almost always. Yeah. It's one of the defaults of like, hey, support, trade me up. Like, you're probably. It's more likely than not you're going to be blind picking pretty early in.
[00:50:00] Speaker C: The draft as support most of the time.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: And that's why you just default to your thresh or whoever it is that's your default champion.
And the other ones are situational based on circumstances around that. And I think for support especially, that's the best way to do it. Just you are going to play your support champion unless one of various criteria are met that are the reason you would play something else.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: And one thing to definitely consider, make sure you know that, like, one of the champions in your pool is good against your main. So make sure one of the champs you play is good against Thresh in case it gets picked away and you have to default to it. I definitely struggled with that for a while of. I was like, one tricking Ezreal for a bit. But, like, if it got picked away, like, I wasn't. Whoever it was. His best counter in the meta I wasn't actually good at and I had to, like, adapt and learn. But, like, yeah, if your best champ, especially if it's a popular champion, make sure you're good at, like, one of their counters.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Like, don't pick Leona if they pick Threshold.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Whatever you personally struggle against when you play your champion is a good champion to learn to play for when it gets picked away from you.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: So we're gonna wrap up with a bonus question from Harley, which is, what do y'all think of Lucian's support XD.
[00:51:38] Speaker C: In the right circumstance? It's terrible, but I love it.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: Don't. Don't play Lucian's support. Just go top lane with him instead and steamroll the lane.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: There's worse ad carries to play support.
I'm having a hard time thinking of them, but there's probably one now.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: Lucian's a carry. He needs gold. He needs resources. He needs to be murdering the minions along with the turret and the champion in the top lane.
That's gonna be it for episode 469.
Thank you guys for actually writing in questions. We do still need more questions. We have one in the hopper right into theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. We'll be back next week to talk about the next patch. In the meantime, I've been Jack Selman for freeshooter and for Mike at Many Names. Have a great night.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Good night.
[00:52:35] Speaker C: Good night everybody.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you liked what you heard and you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com the Fourwards podcast to give us some support. We appreciate you and of course, listeners. Please don't forget to write your questions into theforwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them on the show.
