The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 473: Who Let the Dog Get Reworked?

[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 473 of the Four Awards 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. Mike of many names is here. Hi, I've returned and we've got Pillow Pet. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Hello. Hope you guys are enjoyed your break. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. We are back from our one week hiatus. Sorry there was no episode last week. We just could not get a crew together. Life happens sometimes. But that's okay if you want to join the Discord and be able to talk to us. If we ever have another impromptu break, that would be the way to do it. Link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. Come talk to us. Ask questions, play games with people, chat about anime, whatever you want to do. It's a good place. Now some of us do stream on Twitch. Go ahead. [00:01:31] Speaker C: I was about to say it seems that might be our incentive to get some of you to ask questions. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we do have a channel literally for that that we go and pull questions into the document for the episodes. If you're uncomfortable emailing in for some reason, go to the Discord and drop them in the question chat. We literally have a question submission channel for that. Link is in the episode description. Please join the Discord. We'd love to see you there. Now we do stream 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. I saw you were streaming yesterday, Pillow Pet. [00:02:10] Speaker B: I did. I decided last night I was like ah, you know what, I'm gonna go play some Shadows of Doubt and try to remember how to play. So I decided to stream it on my head. [00:02:28] Speaker A: Fair enough. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it. [00:02:32] Speaker A: All right. So we also do need to do some shout outs. Shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robegon for supporting us at the shout out tier. We appreciate you guys. We could not do this show without you. You guys keep the lights on or metaphorically speaking, you literally are paying for hosting the show. So we can continue to deliver it to you. We appreciate it. If you guys want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com the Fourwards podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes more serious, sometimes more story time. It varies and $10 will get you that same feed and you'll get a shout out up at the top of the episode. Last but not least, listeners, you guys answered the call for questions, but that doesn't mean we're done. We need more questions. Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. I guarantee the ones we got will not last us more than two weeks. We need more questions. So yeah, right in theforwards podcastmail.com or join the discord and pop them in the question submission channel. Alright with that guys, it's another patch week. Patch 25.06 came out a couple days ago and we're going to talk about some of the stuff that got changed in all of this and I'm gonna make pillow kick it off. Pillow, what do you want to talk about? [00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna be mentioning and talking about Gwen. So Gwen got all of her abilities adjusted and the reason for doing this is she was playing like a hyperscaler and where she was just a late game monster at the end and they're trying to push her to be a a light scaler being like Fiora or just just scales as she goes. And how they're doing this is they are nerfing her passive by 0.05% per 100 AP of a target's max or targets HP and they are nerfing 5 base damage on her monster modifier. So to me that's. We were talking about it earlier. It's just kind of like a tickle. It's not going to be a whole lot.05 is not going to be noticeable at the very at all. Her Q got a buff. It went from 60 scale into 160 and now it's 70 scaling to 170. Her AP ratio is unchanged and that's for the final snip. The final snip damage. Her max damage went from 110 scaling to 310 to 120 scaling to 320 with the AP ratio being unchanged. So a little bit more damage on her Q, her W got a her resistances and that's her shroud got a nerf. So it was 22 scaling to 30 with 7% AP ratio and now it's just 25% every rank plus 5 base AP. Yeah, 25 base plus 5% AP ratio. [00:06:05] Speaker A: So I'm gonna look it up like that sounds like it's now an actual like hard one point wonder. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's just like. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:13] Speaker B: I don't know why it still gets. [00:06:15] Speaker A: Bonus attack speed per rank. [00:06:17] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. They didn't take that out. They just didn't add it or. [00:06:20] Speaker A: No, that's on the E on the. [00:06:21] Speaker B: W. I don't remember that cooldown. Okay. So it's just a cooldown reduction. It's gonna be. Her resistances are gonna be higher early game until she has to start putting stuff into it and then it's nerfed. So it doesn't. I'm not. We'll get to that in a second. We'll start with her, go back, finish with or go to her E. I'm sorry. So the cooldown was 13 scaling to 11 seconds and now it's gonna be 12 scaling to 8. But the kicker to all this was the cooldown refund. So after you cast her E, if you autoed something, she got a refund. Back on the cooldown it was 25% scaling to 65% and now it's just 50% flat at all ranks. [00:07:06] Speaker A: It's. [00:07:06] Speaker B: That's. That's crazy. That's crazy. [00:07:08] Speaker A: That is a massive. [00:07:10] Speaker C: For the record. It about breaks even at that cap. From the cap of 11 seconds, 65% is about four seconds of a total cooldown. 50% off of eight seconds is four seconds. So it's, it's. It tunes it to be about the same, but it gives you more refresh early on and it's just a lower cooldown. [00:07:31] Speaker B: Like this is your second max. So you're gonna feel this pretty early with a 6 second E Cooldown. As long as you're using it like autoing afterwards and not just trying to run away with it. But anyways, the last part of it is her on hit damage was 15 with a 20AP ratio. 15 flat damage with a 20AP ratio. And now it is scaling 12 to 20 damage with a 25AP ratio. So her on hit damage is going up and not just a little bit by quite a bit. Like 5% with an on hit when someone already has a ton of attack speed is going to be a lot of damage. [00:08:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Lastly is her R. So her R was 35. This is per needle scaling to 95 with a 10% AP ratio and now it's 30 to 90 with an 8% AP ratio. So knock down a little bit there on the damage. Her slow is now 60% of all ranks. And the reduced slow is now 25% of all ranks. So a lot going on there. Just for us to tell you that she is getting a laning buff. She is stronger in lane early. [00:08:50] Speaker A: This is a buff to everything except her extreme late game. [00:08:54] Speaker C: Yeah, this is a huge jungle buff. Massive jungle buff. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:00] Speaker A: The cooldown refund on the E makes it a massive jungle buff. The passive Nerf is only really felt when you're at like death cap 4th item levels of build. Until that point, it's. [00:09:12] Speaker C: Yeah. For. For the record, it's about 5 damage per 100 AP. She didn't scale like 700 AP. [00:09:23] Speaker A: It's a percent of your max HP per hit. Hit is the problem. [00:09:27] Speaker C: I'm sorry. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Yes. [00:09:28] Speaker C: So the. The 5 out of 100 or if. [00:09:32] Speaker A: You had before, if you had 500 AP, you would do 4% max health on every proc of the passive. Now you'll do 3.75% max health at 500 AP per pro. [00:09:46] Speaker B: I mean the. The passive buff to me or Nerf is just doesn't even matter. Like they might as well not even done anything to it. It's. I mean in there they might. Right now they. They're probably just starting small like they're trying to head into a direction and they don't want to do too much, take too much away. Because once you take too much away, it's hard to add stuff back in. So they're just taking a little bit at a time and seeing where it's going to put her play rate. I foresee her going to be a very early game bully like she already has been. I mean if you're playing a tank like Scion already struggles into her. It almost forces a Scion to go the lethality build, but that's a whole different. Building health into her was always a nightmare and it's still going to be a nightmare because she's going to be a more of an early game bully, which is going to get her to that late game earlier because she's going to get strong early. I just got a feeling her win rate is going to go up. Her pick rate is going to go up. If you didn't like seeing her in the past, it might be a good time to consider putting her in your. Your ban list. [00:10:54] Speaker C: Most of these changes drastically increase your early game power. They're shifting things around to be better at early game and scale a little bit worse. Apart from a couple of instances where you actually scale better. [00:11:09] Speaker A: All right. I pulled some numbers from OP GG, last patch Gwen was the 31st winningest top laner. Want to guess what she is this patch 10. [00:11:22] Speaker B: But let's say. Let's hear it, Skip. She's probably top five almost. [00:11:26] Speaker A: She is the sixth best top laner. [00:11:28] Speaker C: That's close. [00:11:29] Speaker B: That's a big jump. But I mean it makes sense. We've been kind of in like a Tank and fighter meta, so. And she excels in those hp. [00:11:40] Speaker C: Has her jungle pick gone up? Because I think with the E change that's a big power for her. [00:11:47] Speaker A: Jungle pick rate has gone up. Win rate is completely flat. Okay, she went up ranks but with no meaningful change to her actual percentage. [00:11:56] Speaker C: I mean if her pick rate went up and her win rate did not meaningfully drop, that's a good thing. [00:12:03] Speaker A: And there are several high profile jungle champions that were above her that are no longer this patch which is the reason her actual rank went up even though her win rate did not. [00:12:14] Speaker B: Exciting. I complain about. [00:12:16] Speaker A: I'm so mad that they are doing it this way. Like you want to fix Gwen Riot? Remove the percent max HP scaling with AP from her passive and buff the ratios on her actual fucking abilities. [00:12:30] Speaker C: Yeah, just, just remove the ratio. That's it. Just make it a. Make it a flat percent and then give her a ratio. Give. Give her more ratio with her. If you want to give her more damage against tanks, make her true damage in the center of her Q something that scales significantly better or that that has some more interaction with percent health. [00:12:51] Speaker B: I don't. Yeah, I don't mind her being like a tank counter, but it's not just tanks that she counters like it. [00:12:57] Speaker C: She's a team fight menace. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah, she is just strong. Her W gives her a ton of power when you can't target her. I mean she's just an all around, just strong champion. And I complain about her all the time. You just don't see her a whole lot. She's usually picked as a counter into a tank. I mean, you go against a good Gwen, you're not going to have a good time. And now it's going to be even worse. [00:13:24] Speaker A: All right, let's. Let's move on from Gwen. We're clearly. We agree she's buffed as hell on a change that wasn't slated to be a buff. I think Riot just missed the mark. So I'm going to talk about something that makes me want to rant because Riot made some changes to Singed and on the whole, I think these changes are good. He got a base attack speed buff. He Lost a little bit of health growth. He lost a tiny bit of AP damage on his fling. Those are all irrelevant, honestly. What they changed is they made it so that his Q now has the special rule if a minion would die to another minion while affected by poison, trail singed gets the credit instead. And I want to let that sink in for a moment. That just means if you have the enemy poisoned as singed a minion and you poison it, another minion can cannot steal the kill from you just because you have the debuff there, you automatically get the credit instead. This is the correct and best way to implement this. And I want to see this change now backported to Malzahar, Morgana, Anivia, and any other dot champion that I've forgotten. Lillia, Every DOT champion, every dot champion should have this rule. Brand should have this rule. All of them should. [00:14:55] Speaker C: I have one champion that should not have it, and that's Cassio. Cassio's meant to be farming with her E, not with her Q, not with. [00:15:02] Speaker A: Her W. I'll agree with that. Even though I would still say just fucking give it to her. There's no reason not to. It is so aggravating when your dot gets sniped by a minion. It's completely out of your control. Every DOT champion should work this way. [00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Every dot IN the game should have this interaction. I mean, even if you buy a Liandry's or something, it should still like, even with that being such a small.it's still out of your control. Like if it takes for seven damage. [00:15:33] Speaker A: I'm okay with liandries and black Fire Torch not getting this treatment because they are items, because you're usually wiping the wave with champions that are building those anyway. But any champion who has a dot IN eight in their kit should get this. [00:15:47] Speaker B: So there was a fun little farming dot, a little bug that I saw with this actual singed poison trail. It was a trandamere with alt. Got auto'd by a minion in his poison trail and died while in his alt. [00:16:05] Speaker C: Oh, that's a beautiful. They need to bring that back. Put it back. [00:16:10] Speaker B: It was. It was definitely interesting. It's. It was fun to watch. I. I won't lie about that. Yeah. [00:16:20] Speaker A: All right, so that's singed. Good change. Now backport it to every other dot champion. Mike, you want to talk about the big one or the small one? [00:16:32] Speaker C: We're going with the big one. We're talking big changes first. Let's talk big changes. So this this patch has been unlike our previous patches for the last couple months in that they're actually doing things and now they're doing a very large one. They're doing a not full rework, but like modification rework to Nafiri in the same vein that they did Tom Kench, where a couple of her abilities could be better served as a different ability. So they shifted them. And by shifting them, they have to of course shift their power budget. And what they do. So how this worked is they decided to shift her ultimate and her W her ultimate, which gave you more dogs, gave you some movement speed, and allowed you to do a little bit more damage plus a shield. And then her W, which was her pretty much the thing that you knew Naviri for. It was, I'm targeting you, I'm running at you. And she just flew at something and then was intercepted by doing this flip. Their power budget has to change with a couple of other things. Her passive now has to be able to give her more dogs because it's not an ultimate anymore. You're just not gonna get ultimate dogs anymore. So you need to get more baseline. So now, as opposed to getting just 2 and 3, at 1 and 9, you get 2 to 5 and 1 to 15. So you're gonna have more dogs on average, which means they're gonna change the scaling of the dogs pretty heavily. We're not gonna go into every single scaling on the dogs. [00:18:14] Speaker A: And importantly, the first break point is still level nine. You're still stuck at two dogs until level nine. [00:18:19] Speaker C: Yes. But then you rapidly gain more dogs. Nine, 12, and 15. [00:18:25] Speaker A: Yes. [00:18:26] Speaker C: The other thing, the the important number change they did here is that now your dogs do 165% more damage to monsters, which means she has the ability to potentially jungle anything that scales. Increased damage to monsters means you may be able to jungle. It's a check trying to figure out what the numbers are. We're not 100% sure, so I'm not going to give it a vote of confidence yet. Her Q just got some more damage to minions. 60 to 80%. Not a big deal. So now her W, what used to be her ultimate, which was give you a crap ton of dogs and then give you movement speed has been changed to give you two dogs. You always get two dogs. But when you cast this now, you become untargetable for one second. So you now have a fizz. A fizz pole. Instead of gaining a bunch of bonus ad plus percent ad, you just gained 20% bonus ad. The buff duration went from really long. Which was 15 seconds to 5 seconds. Because now you have a little shorter cooldown. As far as I'm aware. It doesn't say it on here. It may still refresh on kill because you used to be able to scale dogs into more dogs into more for kill. [00:19:56] Speaker A: No. Will no longer reset the ability's buffs on takedown. [00:20:00] Speaker C: There it is. Okay. So she just flat out no longer gets the extension. It's always five seconds. She has instead of massive movement speed 70 to 100. It's now 20 to 30, but it's a longer. And it's just guaranteed when you get there. The big thing is it's on a 20 to an 18 second cast or second cooldown. So you're gonna be doing this when you want to go in and dodge an ability. You're gonna throw this out and do some damage. This is going to be functioning like a first troll pole. It's probably going to start as a one point wonder. It's pretty much a one point wonder. Yeah. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah. There's no reason to rank this until you've maxed the other 2. [00:20:52] Speaker C: 2. 2 seconds off of it isn't. Isn't a big deal. And nothing else as far as I can tell, has major scaling. The mana cost is static at 60. [00:21:02] Speaker A: So the movement speed scales up slightly. [00:21:05] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a little bit of movement skied that. That's. That's it. It's, I think, a great change. Now they are. What was once a bunch of dogs is now you do the hounds pursuit, which is I'm going to target a champion and we're going to that champion. Which means it is now no longer blockable. This is now where you get your shield again. So when you cast it, you gain a shield, but it only happens on the second cast, which you can get when you score a takedown within seven seconds of using it. The cooldown obviously is now at like 100 seconds to scaling to 80. The mana cost is now 100. The range got bumped up to one of the larger ends, so it's now 900. It's the larger range it has. I. The. The damage numbers, they've been scaled up to ultimate numbers. It's 150, 350 plus 120% bonus plus back mid damage. Yada yad. [00:22:06] Speaker A: All the number stuff is just. It is now what you'd expect from an ultimate. Numbers wise. [00:22:11] Speaker C: Exactly. And the. The big change to this, which is a meaningful change because it is an ultimate now, is you cannot cast it on Minions anymore to jump into some other situation or jump away from another. [00:22:25] Speaker A: One and you can't. It can't be blocked anymore. You will always reach your target. [00:22:30] Speaker C: Yes, it is unstoppable. [00:22:34] Speaker A: That's the biggest one is its reliability is massively up. Whereas the previous version of Naafiri she would was extremely unsafe despite being the quote unquote beginner assassin. Because if you pushed that button anyone could just intercept it and you were just dead. [00:22:50] Speaker C: Yeah. It's a great change to Naafiri in the very similar vein that I think Tahm Kench's chain was a great change because those abilities are much better served being different. So like I'm not gonna go into what old Tahm Kench was. But suffice to say it used to be Eat and his little puddle jump. Eat is really strong when you have it on a like 20 second cooldown. Much like the ultimate is much better served being on a longer cooldown. I think these are very positive changes. I think she will become a better assassin. She also got like a bunch of mid patch little buffs. She got a little bit stat scaling that increased. So she's. She's got a little bit more stats than she did as well. [00:23:43] Speaker B: So I had the. I played her once before I even realized that her kit had been changed and I got in and I was surprised. But it felt really good having that W as like the escape tool with your. With the untargetable and the movement speed felt really, really good. I don't really miss the jump on people so it feels really good to have that as you are. I wish they would buff the range maybe a little bit. It doesn't. It still feels really short. But in her it's. It's. It's really strong. Especially if you get all your pack mates. You get ton of extra damage. So it felt really good. First impression was really well on this remake. Felt good. [00:24:33] Speaker A: Nice. Good to hear it. All right, let's hit some of the quicker changes. We've got pillow talk to us about Fiora. [00:24:41] Speaker B: So Fiora has a. Had a huge issue mid mid game I'd say mainly and early early in mid game her Q had a lot of mana cost to it and it was spammed like crazy. So now they're just making the mana cost on her Q just 20 at all ranks really quick change. It's gonna feel really good. I think at the top lane you're gonna see her a lot more. She's really underplayed now. So I think it's a good change. I'm excited to see it. I like playing Fiora. [00:25:17] Speaker A: She basically was always managated until Blue Buff started going to the whole team. It was horrible. [00:25:24] Speaker C: I mean, basically she was managated since they took away the mana from Trinity Force. [00:25:30] Speaker A: True. Alright, so Fiora is happy. Less mana costs. She can spam her dash more often. Mike, you want to talk about Smolder? [00:25:42] Speaker C: Sure. Smolder. Got a couple of minor changes and a good change. We're gonna go backwards this time. The ultimate went from 120 to 120, scaling to 100. Cooldown reduction is always good. The big change I think really is E damage. It went from 5 to 30 to 10 or to 25. 10 to 30 plus they gain 5% damage per bolt. So every single hit, 5 more damage and 5% more AD per bolt. Very good change across the board. Very powerful for early game. Very powerful for late game when you have a lot of stacks and you get more bolts. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Yep. [00:26:26] Speaker C: And then they changed where the power is on his W again. They shifted it so that he does 60 to 100 on his little glob damage and then shifted the explosion damage down to compensate from 30 to 110 to 10 to 110. So he does a lot more up front and then a little bit less on the explosion. [00:26:54] Speaker A: It should be about the same on a single target. On a champion, if champions are clumped up, it's less damage and if there's no champion there, it's more damage. [00:27:04] Speaker C: Yes, it the. The big thing about this is that they've been shifting him around since they've been shifting his builds around and they're in the point where, okay, his W is no longer absolutely horrendous to deal with now that you're not building random ap. Random major damage so it can get some more upfront damage. Good change, good changes all around. [00:27:31] Speaker A: Alright, speaking of good changes, I got some quick hits for junglers. Yorick lost some damage on Jungle Monsters. Darius lost some damage on Jungle Monsters. Kha'zix gained damage on his passive Procs. So actual PvP change and they doubled the AD ratio on his jump from 20% to 40%, which is actually a meaningful clear speed buff. You very frequently are using this to jump over walls to get to camps faster and you now deal meaningfully more damage to those camps when you do it. [00:28:10] Speaker C: 20% bonus damage is no joke. [00:28:13] Speaker A: I actually think that's the bigger the two changes. [00:28:17] Speaker C: If. If you it makes it so that you are now a little bit more incentivized to maybe scale the E Again, as your evolve. Because a lot of people just ignore the E evolve. Usually it was the E or the W evolve that was no longer required. [00:28:34] Speaker A: You basically are picking between do you want a strong slow which you might be saying you don't need that anymore with the Serylda's changes. This patch or if you want a longer jump and resetting jumps because the other two you're always taking. You always want the Q because your clear speed sucks without the Q of all. [00:28:53] Speaker C: Absolutely require Q. [00:28:54] Speaker A: Your objective control is there. And the ult getting an extra charge and making it last longer is just so strong. [00:29:02] Speaker C: Yeah, these are. These are just flat out good changes for Kha'zix that might Might make him viable. Maybe he's been pretty. He's been in a rough state. [00:29:12] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see. All right. Pillow. I'm gonna make you talk about Serildas as well as warmogs. Talk about items for a moment. [00:29:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just thinking that. So initially I wanted to just bring up warmogs. Really quick change. Gold costs went down 200 gold. So now it's 3100 gold and you get 2% more bonus to all your bonus health. Pretty happy to see that. It. It didn't feel like I saw it a whole lot. And I don't know if this is going to be a big enough change for it. But 200 gold cheaper is going to feel good. Now we're not worrying about supports getting it. That was their big push. So they can make it a little bit cheaper. Now Shilda's got 5% more armor pen bringing it up to 35% and the ability haste got a little bit of a nerf. Went from 20 from 20 to 15. So more armor pins. [00:29:59] Speaker A: That's why I mentioned it. [00:30:03] Speaker B: Big takeaway on. That's the armor pin on that. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Assassins should be happy. [00:30:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Having. Having a 35% armor pin item is massive. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Yeah, 35. I mean that's. It's no small number. [00:30:17] Speaker C: I mean I'm pretty sure that's now equivalent with the crit items. [00:30:25] Speaker A: I believe so. [00:30:26] Speaker B: I know I've seen it recently and we. Every time we do a patch I think we see a lot a little bit about Shurilda. [00:30:32] Speaker C: So yeah, they keep changing the the armor pen. I'll just go to a quick check on that. [00:30:38] Speaker A: All right. While you're doing that, let me talk about some changes you may have already encountered if you've been playing the last few days. If you are in a game that with a confirmed cheater and you lose that game because of the cheater, and that cheater then gets banned. Later, you will get a notification in the client saying, hey, you lost due to a cheater. They've been banned and we're giving you all of the LP back that you lost due to the cheater. [00:31:08] Speaker C: Massive good change. By the way. It's now equivalent to mortal reminder. Again, Lord Dominic is still the premier armor pen item where it should be. [00:31:21] Speaker A: So in addition, if you're on the winning team, you win with a cheater on your team. As long as you aren't queuing with that cheater, it's just some random who happened to be on your team, you get to keep the lp. If you're queuing with a cheater, you're getting banned too. Go fuck yourself. [00:31:39] Speaker C: Oh, good. [00:31:42] Speaker A: Yes. So that is, that is the important distinction. Like if you are inadvertently, through no fault of your own, benefiting from someone else cheating, you get to keep it. If you're intentionally benefiting from someone else cheating, you are getting the same banhammer the cheater got. [00:31:58] Speaker C: If you are unintentionally queuing with someone who is cheating and they're intentionally cheating, that's on you for like, hey, even if you don't know, you should be encouraging, not cheating. [00:32:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:32:12] Speaker B: My favorite part about this. Sorry, go ahead. [00:32:17] Speaker A: The notification now explicitly tells you that the cheater has been banned, has been punished. [00:32:23] Speaker B: Even if I hear, I say, yeah, it's funny. [00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Even if you don't have any LP to refund, then there's a different notification. It still says, this specific named individual you reported for cheating, they have now been banned forever. Literally. The message says, this account has been banned for the rest of one eternity. [00:32:44] Speaker B: And one of ternity is that. That's, that's what got me giggling. And the fact that they call out the person's name. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I love how you have done this. Here's the thing. These changes don't actually change anything about those of us who weren't cheating. What they do change is the visibility of people getting punished when they cheat. Because there has been an attitude in League of legends for 15 years, oh, that riot never punishes the cheaters. Riot never does anything. They get away with it, which encourages more people to cheat. [00:33:30] Speaker C: They being very. [00:33:31] Speaker A: Every player who has. Yes. When they've been proactive, people still had that attitude. Now every player is going to see these notifications. If they experience a cheater in a game, they're going to see, oh, that cheater got banned. Which is going to lessen the likelihood of People who are curious about it going well, it seems like no one ever gets punished. Maybe I should just cheat, too. [00:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really happy about notifications. [00:34:02] Speaker C: There's no reason to hide the name of someone who's cheating. There's no reason. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Fuck them. They're cheaters. They deserve the name and shame. [00:34:09] Speaker B: I mean, you'll. You won't be able to see them again for at least one eternity, so. [00:34:13] Speaker A: Exactly. All right, guys, we got a quick trinket tip, and then we're gonna get to some of your questions. Our trinket tip is real simple. Keep your food and drink at a safe distance from your peripherals and computer, so if you have an accidental spill, it doesn't ruin your gear. [00:34:29] Speaker C: Yep, I dropped something on my keyboard, and thankfully it wasn't food. [00:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah, especially drinks. Like, drinks are the most dangerous because electronics and liquids do not mix. But food can get gunk up. Your stuff gets. Get it all sticky and make the buttons not return correctly. Like, just keep the food and drink at arm's length. Don't make it where they can fall on your stuff. [00:34:52] Speaker C: I have an addendum to this. Get something either canned air or, like, something to blow out your keyboard so that you can keep crumbs or extra detritus. Something to clean out the inside of your keyboard. You should do that moderately regularly, for that matter. [00:35:11] Speaker A: If you have a mechanical keyboard, get a keycap puller and pull the keycaps and clean your keyboard every once in a while. Doesn't need to be often. This is like a once every year or two kind of thing. You will be truly horrified how much gunk is in there, and it will reduce the likelihood of one of those pieces of gunk preventing a key press from going through. [00:35:35] Speaker B: I used to have one. I don't know where it's at now. [00:35:38] Speaker A: I have two keycap pullers on my desk. [00:35:41] Speaker C: I don't have any keycap pullers on my desk, but I do have an electric air blower because specifically, I was tired of buying canned air. I'd done like three or four of them between all the keyboards I'd have because I eat at my desk, so I do get crumbs things, and I'd like to clean it out. And it's. It's worth, like, you're gonna go through 10, 15 bear bottles before you get the equivalent of that. But you can use it for more than just canned air. [00:36:09] Speaker A: So, yeah, I still have some canned air behind me on the shelf. So I haven't bought one of those blowers yet, but it's on my agenda. When the canned air runs out, I'm gonna replace it with a blower instead of more canned air because the blowers are also safer to use in your electronics. Canned air can blow liquid if you. [00:36:27] Speaker C: Hold it at the oh yeah, those can actually hurt you too. If you're not prepared for them. You can get freezer burn. [00:36:33] Speaker A: Yep, all right. Questions Our first set of questions tonight comes from Codexninja who writes hey Wards, One of the things I've been doing for the last year is evaluating composition of teams in lobby to better prime myself for playing team fights and generally having a better game. As an ADC I will evaluate the general 2v2 in my lane and note if there is any high threat abilities for example a Lux Caitlyn. Next I will count how many super healers on the enemy team are. If there's one or more I generally opt in to mortal reminder Overlord Doms, but other than that I kinda don't think much past that. What do you all do for comp analysis? [00:37:09] Speaker C: You've started with one of the most important ones which was identify threat. Where is the big threat in lane or is there someone who is going to be impossible to kill? That's a huge one. The next thing that I look for is do they have a huge tank? Do they have someone who can absorb all my abilities? And after that it goes probably more importantly how much CC do they have? Because these are sort of the very important things that you want to get information on early. [00:37:48] Speaker A: The number one thing I'm looking at when I'm evaluating a draft in solo queue where expectations frequently fall apart is I'm looking at what may I need to adapt in my build. So the super healers is a perfect example if they have a Aatrox and a Soraka. It doesn't matter whether my teams build heal cut or not, I'm gonna need to build a heal cut no matter what role I am, no matter what champion I am. Because it's solo queue, I don't trust my teammates to build it and apply the damage at the right times. If the enemy team is five squishies and no tanks, I don't need to build a Serylda's, Lord Dom's, etc. Necessarily. I might build a lethality item or just skip it entirely instead. [00:38:46] Speaker C: CC amount for Merc treads whether or not you want them, here's one that you don't really have to deal with as much because you're an ad carry As a primary search person. But anyone who builds any form of defensives, you want to check out damage profiles. Where is the primary amount of damage? Do they not have any magic damage? Is all their magic damage in their support? [00:39:08] Speaker B: So my process is a little different. Fortunately. Being a top laner usually, usually I get the benefit of being last pick on my team as adc usually you have to get the first pick. So you're at a disadvantage there not being able to select a champion based off what the team is. So I get the advantage of being able to choose one of my champions. I have to best counter the team comp that I'm looking at. But other than that, I do the same steps. If I see a healer, I get a. If I see like an aatrox, I mean I immediately am going into a healing cut early because that's where his healing is most affected is going to be in his early game. Late game. It's grievous wounds doesn't even matter. But yeah, I'm looking at a healing cut. I'm looking at whether I need to do like the. The pin just like both of you guys said or do I need to build tanky? Do I need to build ap? Do I need to do the hybrid or I'm sorry mister, do I need to do the hybrid like a hybrid of both. It's yeah my. But the decisions that I of items I'm building are always going to be dictated about what the enemy champions are playing. I try to stay away from the the cookie cutter builds because it doesn't benefit a whole lot when like if the team is all ap, it's super easy. If it's all ad, it's super easy. And if I'm going into a vein, we'll say I'm playing a tank and I'm going into a vein. It doesn't matter how much armor I have in the world at that point, I'm looking at getting into SHIELD items because shields are the biggest counter to vayne. So I just try to find the best item that's going to work for my champion against the team I'm going against and that's going to give me the most benefit overall. [00:41:03] Speaker C: Now this, this won't always dictate what your first item is. Most of the time your first item is pretty set in stone. Except for like some mid laners will change their first item based on man, there's a lot of really healthy people in here. I can't safely do ludens. I need to go blackfire instead or something of a similar nature. Most of the time your first item, maybe two is pretty set what you're gonna build and then you've analyzed, you're gonna figure out where you're going. The other thing really is where you're fighting. Does this look like a really good teamfight champion? Does this look like man, their jungler is scary. We're not going to be able to hold item objectives which might change based on how the gameplay goes out. You're going to shift what you do based on how the game goes. But this gives you a good idea of where you're going to find the strengths and weaknesses of a team comp to counter it. [00:41:59] Speaker A: Early on that was the other thing I wanted to touch on is the other thing I'm looking at. Once I figured out any item deviations I need, I'm going to need to make is I'm looking at the draft and I'm going okay as the jungler or if I'm in a mid lane where I can't just straight up dumpster my 1v1 opponent, where do I want to spend my time? What lane should I roam to? What lane should I gank? Because if I have a tank in the top lane, like a defensive tank, like let's say they picked Maokai as my team's top laner. I'm not going to get anything out of going up there. He's either going to win lane on his own and be a God tank or he's going to lose lane and there's nothing I can do that will make him tanky enough to make him bring more than just his immediate one rotation of CC to the teamfight. The only so I'm not going to waste my time. [00:42:51] Speaker C: The only reason to deviate from that path is bot Lane has fed so hard I can't go bot Lane. We're going top now, but that's an in game change and that's mostly a oh fuck. Now we need to change what we were doing. [00:43:05] Speaker A: But like if I have a Maokai top, I'm likely to start my jungle clear on the top side clear towards bottom so I can be prepped to gank mid or bot. [00:43:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:19] Speaker A: Okay, let's move on to. I think this is going to be a quick question from Jacob. Jacob writes very simply, how do you deal with losing a game that's very one sided? [00:43:31] Speaker B: My. Yeah, very quick, easy answer. I gripe about it for about five seconds and then I move on. [00:43:37] Speaker C: Yeah, bitching certainly is part of it. [00:43:41] Speaker A: To be clear. [00:43:41] Speaker C: Don't all chat bitch. This is. This is things that we do. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Don't gripe about it in Game chat at all. Gripe about it to your friends in Discord. Gripe about it in our Venting about Bad Games channel on the 4 wards community discord. Vent about it to your stream if you're streaming. Those are all valid ways to get the negative energy out so you can go into the next game. And if you're the type who is tilted off of that bad game, that one sided game, take a break. Doesn't need to be a long one. Just go spend five, ten minutes doing something else, playing something else, whatever resets your mental state. [00:44:20] Speaker C: I have two separate things depending on how bad the game was. Because sometimes it's I had the bad game and sometimes it's everyone else had the bad game and there's nothing I could do about it. If I had the bad game, man, I need to pull myself back. If it's man, everyone else had the bad game, it's all right. I'm gonna just try and do a thing for the rest of the game. My new goal is to kill the one person. We're not winning this game, so I'm gonna kill him. And you'd be surprised how often that works. [00:44:51] Speaker A: My goal becomes Deny the dude the unkillable Demon King. I don't think he deserves it. He's not that good. My teammates are just that bad. [00:44:58] Speaker C: Yeah. So you find a new objective and you make it fun around that. Don't start trolling in your game. Don't try and just run around in circles. Make a weird. Don't. Don't make fun of the game by no longer playing the game to make fun because that will get you reported. You are no longer trying to win a game. If you failed to get the surrender in. Play the game out as best you can. Just do something to try and win, man. I've got this new objective. Man. Fuck the team. It's time to go top and split push. [00:45:36] Speaker A: Yep. All right, let's get to the next question which comes from Oscar who writes hey Wards, greetings and thank you for the great show. I have problems knowing when, how and where to use teleport. I play mid and adc mostly as a mid laner. Let's say Malzahar Flash teleport is recommended. I get the early game use like less gold and experience loss when you die early or a quick back for mana in a lost chapter. At later stages of the game, I find myself sitting on TP and not using it. Because I have no idea where or why I should. [00:46:09] Speaker C: 99% of the ad carries. You don't want teleport. There's two that care about it. [00:46:17] Speaker B: This is a really great question. A lot of people struggle with this, so we'll go off. You using Malzahar. So Malzahar is known to be a good split pusher mid and late game. So a lot of your times you're going to find yourself in a side lane. When you want to be using teleport is if you see your team setting up for Dragon or if you're trying to get the last second push in, or you last second push in to build a little bit of pressure. Then you can TP to an objective, wait for someone to answer you in your split push, and then TP to the objective. So now you're creating a 5v4 situation. A lot of times when I'm using it and I almost exclusively run teleport on all my top lane champions, so minus a couple, I'm using it. When I'm split pushing, I create that advantage where they're like, okay, if we don't answer this guy split pushing, we're gonna lose a tower or we're gonna lose two towers while they're trying to fight for this objective control. So they send one or two people to answer me ATP. So you create that advantage there and then if they don't answer you, you just keep pushing like so you're not in the wrong there to not use your TP if you can, you know for sure you're going to get a tower out of it. If they're not answering you and you don't know for a fact you're going to get that tower, it's best to go ahead and TP to give your team that support, especially as a Malzahar. [00:47:44] Speaker A: A lot of the times on mid laners like Malzahar in the late game, like what Pillow said is correct for mid game. In the late game, you usually need to be there when the fight starts. So what your teleport becomes instead is an ability you sit on for four to 10 minutes at a time until your team wins a team fight. And then once the fight is over, you teleport to Elaine and use that hard shove power that Malzahar has to annihilate turrets while the enemy is in respawn timers. [00:48:14] Speaker C: So think of, think of mid game teleport like, like cc. Sometimes the threat of CC is more important than actually using the cc. Like a blitzcrank, grab a Blitzcrank running at you is scarier because he may be able to grab you. Once he's used it, the threat's gone. So having that threat of TP is a very large threat on your head. When you have, man, I can go onto these side lanes and I can be in. Essentially get this area for free and then go and join a team, fight the one danger. And we're saying to use tp, you need to make sure to back away when you use that tp. Do not do it in their face. [00:48:56] Speaker A: Yep. Malzahar is actually really good for that because you can just W EQ the wave and walk away. And they now need to deal with the wave you are now killing while not being anywhere near it. [00:49:08] Speaker B: I will give you some free advice on how to not use a tp. And this is really quick. If all the enemies are up, do not use it to teleport to a wave to clear a wave. It's not worth it. It'll never be worth. Is however, worth it if you just like they just mentioned, if you wipe a team and now you can TP to the enemy base and in the game, I don't know if you play. [00:49:34] Speaker C: Terrence, don't. I don't know if you play Assassin's Bid. Yeah. [00:49:37] Speaker B: To catch a wave in mid to late game. Early game. Completely fine and acceptable late game. Do not use it to catch a small wave at all. [00:49:47] Speaker C: No. Yeah, there. There's a. There's another weird side use of. Of TP that we haven't talked about, which is being an assassin or a tank and flanking. This is. You need to know that you're not going to just walk in and die. [00:50:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:03] Speaker C: It's a much more dangerous situation. But it is a situation that assassins and heavy tanks are using it in. [00:50:09] Speaker A: Especially with teleport now having you actually dash across the map. Untargetable. The enemy will see your arrival coming. These are the teleports where you see like a team fight goes long and respawns happen. And then someone teleports behind the enemy team to like catch off the remaining guy. When it's down to like a 1v1, but respawns have come through kind of stuff. [00:50:33] Speaker C: Yeah, these are. These are dangerous now. [00:50:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's a good point. I completely forgot to mention, like, teleporting behind, like as a top laner exclusively, usually behind the bot lane when they've already committed to a fight. Because if they're committed and they're actively trying to fight they're not most likely not going to notice your TP right behind them in one of the wards that hopefully your support put down in the enemy's side of the bot lane. [00:51:02] Speaker A: Yep. [00:51:02] Speaker C: And pay attention where you're walking when you're going through that. You will randomly walk through a tower if you do that. Pay attention. [00:51:09] Speaker A: Yeah. But the main thing is just it's okay for teleport to sit off cooldown ready to use for sometimes a long time. [00:51:17] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean you don't use your Flash off cooldown so you don't have to. [00:51:21] Speaker C: Use your TP unless you are in a hyper aggressive using Flash. Offensively you are not using Flash off cooldown. [00:51:28] Speaker B: Garens are pretty exclusive to using Flash off cooldown, so Annie's as well and. [00:51:34] Speaker A: Malzahar is kind of in that boat to be fair. Alright, let's get to some questions from the Discord. Our first question is real simple. Cinder writes, what's your guys favorite area in Runeterra such as Noxus or Shurima? [00:51:51] Speaker C: I have two separate ones for different reasons. I love the aesthetic of one and love the lore of another. Love Bilgewater. Bilgewater's cool as shit. But I really love the lore behind the Shadow Isles. The whole thing with the Shadow Isles is awesome. [00:52:10] Speaker B: Okay, mine's gonna be Shurima. I've just always had like. I've always loved the desert landscaping in any game that I play. If it's got like a desert vibe to it, that's. That's my area. I love it. [00:52:26] Speaker A: My answer is really simple and I'm sorry it's Bandle City because Yordle girls. Alright, let's move on to the next question. We're gonna get one more in here. This one comes from Iamsquid who writes I'm a Vel'koz. One trick and I'm struggling to make him work in arena. If I try to poke them down and reset, my teammate goes all in and dies before I get a reset. If I go full burst, my teammate is even more likely to try going all in before they are at kill percent. Any advice on how to play the squid on Arena? Tank build is fun, but it gets outscaled. [00:53:03] Speaker C: So you chose a very dangerous person to play in arena. [00:53:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:53:07] Speaker C: Vel'kad is a hard arena player. [00:53:11] Speaker A: Artillery mages. In arena you need a duo. You need someone who is going to play. Someone who can hold enemies in place for you. Someone who's good at keep away. So like you want to be paired with like an Alistar. [00:53:26] Speaker C: Alistar, Leona. Yep. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Arel anyone like that? Anyone who has good ability to peel shit off of you so you can buy time and they need to be in a call with you so that they know that their job is to just play keep away, set up your combos and not just go in and try to murder people. Because that's not how Vel'koz works. [00:53:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Vel'koz is inherently not good in arena because he's inherently not great at the 1v1 2v2s. When you're not explicitly in the lane, he's standardly in Mage versus the laning environment distorts it. So Vel'koz isn't good at what you're trying to do with him. However, you can definitely make it work with the right teammate, especially if you get the right powers. [00:54:20] Speaker A: Yep. All right. Any other thoughts about arena with the Vel'koz? [00:54:29] Speaker B: I mean, I got the obvious answer to how to play Velcas in arena. You guys want to hear it? [00:54:35] Speaker A: Yes. [00:54:36] Speaker B: I think the best way to do is just tell whoever you're with in lobby to just play Lucian and then you're gonna win the arena. [00:54:46] Speaker C: You play Lucian Arena. [00:54:47] Speaker A: Top of the arena. Half the arenas, you run to the top of it. [00:54:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:54:56] Speaker A: That's how you win an arena. [00:54:57] Speaker B: Just a little obscured Lucian Top for you run it in arena because then. [00:55:02] Speaker A: You become the one holding them in place. Because he murders everything. [00:55:05] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:55:06] Speaker A: All right, with that. This is episode 473 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Sohman Mica many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:55:18] Speaker B: Good night. [00:55:19] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show. [00:55:27] Speaker C: Directly, consider checking out our [email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the four Wards Podcast at gmail com.