[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz and you're listening to the.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Four Wards Podcast here to help you.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Move forward in League.
Hello and welcome to episode 475 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 Pillow Pat.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: And we've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Howdy Howdy.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Guys. We are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. It's a great time. We got all sorts of channels. You can ask questions in the Discord instead of sending us an email. If you really don't like email for some reason.
Link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there.
We also stream on Twitch I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksoman where believe it or not, I have actually streamed League of Legends twice in the past week.
I also streamed more Super Metroid. But yeah, Twitch TV Jackson Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet have you been streaming anything recently?
[00:01:41] Speaker A: A week or so ago I streamed some of the Shadows of Doubt and got stuck on a case forever. So I didn't get to do as much as I wanted. But yeah, here and there I pop.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: In there and then Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames I haven't.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Really had much of a chance to stream. I've been out of town and then going to a party. I'm only finally getting a chance to relax. But I've got two things on my list of things I'm going to be trying to stream in the near future. I think I'm going to go in and do a Sekiro run fresh. I never got to finish the game. I need to actually figure out how to fucking parry and then last. Epoch's getting a big update soon so I'll be playing a lot of that.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Fair enough.
And of course we have 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 without you. Now if you want to get shouted out or just support us in general, head on over to patreon.com theforwards 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, which in this case is like 20 minutes of us telling stories of the past couple weeks of our lives.
And $10 a month will get you that feed, and you'll get a shout out at the top of every episode. Last but not least, listeners, one of you wrote in this week, so you're not getting chewed out, but we need more questions.
Send questions to the email the4wardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. Or, like I said, if you're really averse to email. We do also take questions in the discord, but I prefer the email because it's easier on me from an organizational standpoint.
TheForwards podcastmail.com okay, it's a patch. Episode Patch 25.07 is here, and we're gonna get the shenanigans out of the way first. Guys, this patch came out on April 1, 2025.
That means it has silliness. April Fool's 2025 is here, and there's a lot of silly stuff they did this time. First of all, if you have played any game with Garen in it, his base skin has been replaced. What he is, he is Pengu Garon. This even applies in Ranked, by the way.
It is adorable. I really hope they keep Pengu Garon available after April Fools. Yeah, make it a skin that you can just buy.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Like, I love that they did this because there's so many other, like, skins that they could put into the game. Like, the first one that pops to mind is, like, Gwen with her little doll skin that she gets in tft and it's. I. I would love to see, like, more of these skins that change like, the what the Champion like, completely looks like. Other than just, like, the theme. I would love to see, like, the Penguin or a doll or anything. I think it would be awesome to see more.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: I enjoy the more transformative skins that feel a little less restricted by the vanilla portrait shape.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: I absolutely need to see this Peg o Garon thing.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: It's great. It's. It's very fun. So that's. Like I said, that's even in ranked. If you play as Garen in ranked, you can be Pengu Garen. The rest of these are not available in ranked. They only show up in normal games because they would absolutely fuck with everything.
They added a new type of dragon for Summer's Rift called the Party Drake.
The Party Drake gives you bonus movement speed when you're near your allies. That's what the soul gives. And then for every 5% bonus movement speed. You get 1% bonus ad and AP, which is insane. On Hecarib. I'm just gonna say, like, if you.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Were scared of a Darius Flash and Ghost to catch you, try having a Darius Flash ghost with like seven stacks of the Drake.
The Drake movement speed. It gets insane. It's fun.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: So that's the other thing is when you kill the dragon, the actual buff you get is actually kind of a throwback to Old League. You get a party favor that gives you a random amount of gold between 150 and 250. The old drake used to give 250 gold per person or 300 gold per person. I can't remember which.
So it's kind of like how old Drake used to be before we had Elemental Drakes.
But this one also gives you a skill point.
This works the same way as the skill point from the Inspiration Tree that you can get on Triple Tonic. It does not change your maximum level. It just means you reach capped skill points sooner. And then your last few level ups don't give skill points.
And then the actual like change to the map is what Pillow was talking about of it spawns disco pads. And if you step on them you get a stacking movement speed buff.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: I'm just gonna throw it out there. About the Drake. It's a really good Drake. Like whether it was an April Fool's joke or not. Like the what it does is just an awesome idea.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yep. I. I would even be fine if they just toned down the gold or removed the gold and just had a Drake that gave a skill point.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Or even just like the movement speed when you're near an ally. For the soul. Dude.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: They should make chemtech soul. Give this instead. For the soul.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: I love how it's. And it's a good amount of movement speed. What is it? 30%?
[00:07:47] Speaker B: 30%. The point of it is it is much faster than Cloud Drake when you are near allies.
But obviously not all the time. So it doesn't help with rotations the way Cloud Drake does. But like your whole team can escape from fights much better. That kind of stuff. Or engage fights better because you're all together.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: It's a good time.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Yeah. There. There's some other shenanigans with Shaco boxes you can open up that give you stuff. It's very silly.
And then if you're an Aram player, they made it so Summoner Haste has been increased to 200%. And cap a juice only costs 300 gold and has no limit. So you can have as many caps as you can afford, which is just fun, right?
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Bringing all.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Mike hasn't gotten to play on April Fools, but me and Pillow have Pillow overall thoughts on the April Fools this year compared to previous years.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: I mean, this is the best April Fools that I can remember. Like, I'm enjoying it. Like, the game changes are fun. They're silly. Like when you see someone running at you at a thousand movement speed or you see like a Ramus with tons of movement speed, it's just silly. Like, no added items needed. And the buff lasts a while. Like, passively. It's like a barred passive.
Like, with the movement speed, it stays on for a long time.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: The disco balls also work like a bard passive in that it refreshes the previous one each time you step on a new one so that. That you can actually stack it.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: And like, to me, that my best part and my most favorite part is that, I mean, Chef's kiss to riot are the April fool skins. I think every single one of them, they hit the mark on them. Like, they look great.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So let's. Let's tell the listeners what these skins are because they are fantastic. So I don't have Pengu Garon.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't have.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: Is that one actually a skin you can buy?
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Not currently. It currently is a replacement of Garen's base skin. I'm hoping next patch they just make Pengu Garen something you can buy. It's great. It's very cute.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: But I can speak on. The one that I know for a fact that I just bought is that's Glizzy Dog on the Fury. It was just too funny for me not to get. It's. You're a hot dog with other hot dogs.
And it's great with like ketchup and mustard across. Ketchup, mustard, pickles, mayonnaise, spicer, pickle spinaries. Yeah.
Some lettuce, probably.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: A little bit of everything on that Glizzy Dog.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: It's very funny. So the other ones they've had is Cat in the Box Shaco, which is probably the least creepy Shaco skin.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: It's the least horrendous Shaco skin I've ever seen.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: It's got great animations.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: It's very much in the same vein as like the cat and dog skins of years past.
Pretty much Pool Party Malphite, which is just malphite as a sand castle.
[00:11:02] Speaker C: Looks fantastic.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: It's great.
Urgot the Clogfather, where Urgot is like a super plumber.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: And it's great if you look in the background. It's got fucking corporate mundo in the back. Just like, come on, work for faster.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Yep. And then the other one that everyone is like, no, this skin is actually amazing. Grill master Braum, he's got a full on like oven for a shield. He's grilling. He's got spices across his chest in a bandolier. He's got tongs and spatulas in his belt. It's fantastic.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: His gloves are a little up admits. I think he has a towel over his shoulder or something.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Yes. It's genuinely a fantastic skin. And that's what I think is great about these April Fools skins is they're silly, but they're genuinely good skins. They have value beyond just, oh, we made a silly skin.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: Anytime there's a grill skin, those are instantly fun. I love the grill ones.
Adding in more pool party stuff. Pool party has always been a cool aesthetic and they took this one to a very logical, very smart one. Like of course Malphite would be a giant sandcastle.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: And then continuing on with the weird job things like, yeah, we had. Why not have a plumber? That's a great joke. That's a great joke.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd have to hats off to riot for this. April Fools. They really hit the mark. I think is is his ultimate.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: A plunger. Do you shoot a plunger at someone and pull them in?
[00:12:44] Speaker A: I haven't.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: I think so.
I think so.
It's great. Anyway, that's enough about April Fools. Let's talk about the actual for realsies changes that will still be around next patch. Obviously the the skins will still be around, but let's talk about the for realsies changes. I didn't have this on my list, but I'm gonna briefly mention anyway. LeBlanc got a visual update.
I hate it. She's hideous. It looks so much worse than the old one. And also the animations feel clunky and shit. She actually has dropped winrate to one of the lowest win rates of all mid laners with no numeric changes because her animations and everything feel so much clunkier than they did before.
I hate it.
Okay, that was all I wanted to talk about on the block pillow talk about an actual like intended change.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: So I'm just gonna rip off the band aid here and I'm gonna pull out the big one right at the start because there is a lot to go over.
So York got a pretty big adjustment in all of his abilities and his passive. But I would say the biggest change out of all these right now Comes to his armor growth, it went from 5.2 to 4.5. It's a massive change. And that. That is a joke.
So there's a lot to go over. So I'm going to almost summarize it the best I can.
So his. His ghouls, his Pat with his passive shepherd of souls. It is now his passive grave count when minions are killed is now more spread out over levels. Instead of like being level 1, 7 and 13, it's 1, 3, 5. It's all the odd numbers up to 13.
You get a grave after your passive kills go up. So you'll get. It starts with eight kills. Seven, six, five, four, three and two.
And that's when like a minion dies around you. The attack damage on the ghouls is getting a base nerf with a 20% bonus ad instead of total ad.
The attack speed is now based off Yorick's attack speed. No longer 8% per level.
The health is changing. Going from 100 to 300 based on level.
Trying to see. Oh yeah, the big part of it. The biggest change I feel like is they are no longer one shotable by melees.
Instead they now take a hundred percent increased damage from melee attacks. So this means that at some point there might be a time where you can't just turn in one shot.
York schools, which I think's kind of nutty, so myself.
[00:15:44] Speaker C: So the thing that I've noticed with with a lot of these, he's shifting a lot of stuff from total numbers to bonus numbers. And then this. This health thing really means that like if you are building tank Yorick, your minions won't die quickly because your minions are going to maybe have 5, 600 health by the end of this game.
Because like 100 increased damage at level one is basically 100 health. You can one shot a minion almost immediately. Anyone who's in that lane, you'll have 60.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Any melee champ. Yeah. Ranged champions are losing out big against Yorick.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: Yes.
This is only melee attacks that do 100 increased damage.
It doesn't say that melee or that ranged doesn't instantly kill anymore. So if range attacks doesn't also we. I've not seen Yoricks and none of us have actually gotten to play this one yet.
I don't think range will instantly kill. If it does, it means that he's got a lot more like ranged weaknesses than he did before.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: I think ranged attacks just do normal damage the same as single target damage does.
[00:17:08] Speaker C: Yeah, that's. That's the assumption right now.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: So like It's. It's hard. I'm reading it and I'm trying to understand in my head and I'm probably reading it wrong. I feel like now his ghouls will end up taking more damage from AoE. Or is that less damage? I'm trying to figure that out.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: Depends on the point.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: So it was AOE damage would just be a 50%. 50% flat, like it did 50% of the flat damage. Now it's 66 scale into 40, so.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: So that is how much damage they are taking, not the damage reduction. So in the beginning of the game, they will take more damage from Aoe and they will take less as the game goes on. So eventually they will be tanked.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Reading that right. So, yeah, they're gonna end up being tankier. At the end of the game, York can no longer back and this is irrelevant, but back while fighting jungle monsters. So he's getting a nerf down there in the jungle. Well, no, that just goes on with his passive.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Yeah, you can still back the jungle. The Mistwalkers will stay there in the jungle and fight is what that means.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sorry, I misread it. You're right. You're right. I thought they were saying that like he couldn't back. Sorry, I missed it completely.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Technically, it's a tiny buff because it means he can back while still fighting a monster as the minions try and kill it. But Jungle Yorick got a little bit of a hit anyways, so I'm not sure you're going to want to.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: So there's a lot of number changes on his passive, so I definitely recommend going and looking at it if you're a York player.
I think now a huge change on his Q.
So always a big issue. I felt like when I played York in the early game is, you know, you can't use your Q to trade because you wanted to save your Q to last hit minions so you could get Graves. Well, now no longer is that a problem. You now get a grave on champion and large and epic monster hits. As soon as you use your Q on it doesn't have to kill. It doesn't nothing. You get a grave. It's good change for me. I think personally, that's a great change. Damage got a AD ratio buff from 40 to 50%. The cooldown got a hit down about a 3/4 of a second at max range rank.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: No, no, it's. It scales perfectly. It went from 6 to 4 to or 7, 4 to 6 to 4. So it ends at the same one and it's slightly faster early game.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Oh, I missed that last four. Oops. I. My reading is just spot on tonight, guys. I'm sorry.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: It's totally fine. I was just wondering if he still has the healing on his cue. When he cues one, he does. So the cooldown buff on this is big.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: This became probably that. This might be absolutely his most potent ability now, as opposed to his E. Oh, it's great.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: It's great. This fact that he can get Graves now just by hit it. Queuing you in lane. Like he can trade against you now. So it. It's beneficial for him to walk up and just hit a Q on you because now he has a grave. It's gonna be good for him. So his E. And that was what you would cast to. You would hit them. And the Graves ghouls would pop out of the ground and charge.
So they no longer increase the Ghoul's damage by 20% for eight attacks, but it now shreds armor from 18, scaling up to 30 for four seconds. And I actually think that got a hot fix.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: It did change. I think it's your bunch of hot fixes. Yeah.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: 25% York and his summons now get 30% movement speed instead of 20%. The flat damage went.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: This is.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: This is AP scaling. So from 70% AP to 100% AP.
And I don't think there. Yeah, it doesn't do the current HP damage anymore.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: That's huge. Like, no longer can he just throw his E out and do a shit ton of current HP damage.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: So it's gonna get a little damage is gonna go down. Unless for some reason he's building ap, which I doubt you're gonna see.
Maiden on his R got a huge buff, in my opinion.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: I agree.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: So the damage was 0, scaling up to 40 on the base damage with a 50% AD ratio. And now it's 50, scaling up to 100 on base with a 30% AD ratio.
[00:21:48] Speaker C: Bonus AD ratio. Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: His health was 400. The maiden's health was 400. Scaling to 1650 based on your level plus 60% of your total HP. And it is now 1050, scaling to 3200 based on level with the same bonus HP. Or now it's 60% bonus HP instead of total HP.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: This is one of those nerfed at low level, buffed at high level things.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Because Maiden's gonna have a ton of HP.
[00:22:20] Speaker C: You would have a thousand health by level six usually. So 60% of that 600, you'd have about the same amount of Health on it. Going from that to so much higher of a base and then plus 60% of your bonus health. Bonus health is a crap ton of health, unlike bonus ad. So I think she took a damage nerf but got a health buff.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: So yeah, I mean that was going over a lot there just to briefly, you know, ghouls got buffed, his Q got buffed, his E got an adjustment and now does armor pin which I think is going to be nice.
Nice trade off for that 15% max HP damage or current HP damage. And Maiden is just going to be a tanky monster at late game.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: So a question. Do you think this shifts Yorick's build from the like 80 bruiser? He was already going into something more like a Heart Steel build where he stacks a lot of health because it would make his zombies actually like hard to kill.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: We were briefly going over that. Yeah. In the pre show, actually the pre, pre show me and Mike were talking about in here and I mean there's definitely going to be some openings on that build for Heart Steel. I think it's going to be a decent build on him, honestly. I mean it doesn't lock him out of anything. Like he might trade it for something else. But it's going to be a good item. I in my opinion on, I think.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: He goes, I think Health Bruiser and like his only mainstay damage is going to be T Force. You've got such a low cooldown on that queue and it's popping great. Yeah.
Because our little male is going to help you be Tank here.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: He's going to build like Mundo. I feel like he's going to build like Mundo.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: Mundo with a T Force.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: We'll have to see what he does with like mana costs now because he may start running out of mana with how much he's queuing.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Then I will say how much he uses attack speed change on his ghouls. That is going to be a huge part too. Late game. So Instead of having 8% per level, it's really like if he has. If he's building no attack speed, the ghouls are gonna hit super slow. So which will make him a little bit more manageable, I think is another.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Another bonus for D Force there. Like get some attack speed on him.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: See how his builds change.
So I think that's it for York.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: That was a lot.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: There's a lot.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Me and Mike have some quicker hits. Mike, tell the people about. Let's go with Xerath. Talk about like your most complicated one of these.
[00:25:20] Speaker C: Okay. Xerath as a whole is getting shifted, generally speaking, more towards AP oriented builds over base damages. They're a little bit tired of him being a support more than a mid laner because he really is like if you think Xerath, you think he's supposed to be like maybe the most iconic artillery mage that that's kind of what he's built for, to be the longest range artillery mage around. And so they're. They're giving him more AP ratios on his. On pretty much every one of his damaging abilities across the board is getting a better AP ratio or a slight shift in damage. Like the one that's not giving more AP ratio is his E. Which realistically that was like your bread and butter as a support. So nuking that damage down just a tiny bit. 10 per level. Fine.
Every other ability is either just like Q only getting an AP ratio buff of 5% or doing what like W does, which is you're losing 10 base damage, but you're gaining 5% bonus AP.
Same thing with each hit of arcane red. Of the arcane. So like they want you to be more of a mid laner.
And 5% AP ratios are meaningful, especially when you start getting to the ones like his Q is a 90% ratio.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: And to be clear, a 5% AP ratio means it takes 200 AP to do as much damage as it did before on the. He lost 10 base damage on his W and his R. Yeah. So at 200 AP, he does exactly the same amount of damage on his W and R as he did before. 10 less on his E and 10 more at that AP threshold on his Q.
[00:27:12] Speaker C: That's 1.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: 200 AP is the break even point.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Yeah, you're getting that in like one and a half, two items depending on what they are.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: This is a straight buff post two items.
And frankly it's probably still a buff for support because Support Xerath was still building high AP and just. Yeah, getting his gold off kills and assists.
[00:27:36] Speaker C: It costs him a lot longer to get there.
So it's a meaningful nerf to the early game because 10 damage early game on a lot of those abilities. Super meaningful actually. He leveled up Q still, didn't he? Because it's the lowest cooldown. So Yep, it's especially meaningful because W and E, you're never gonna cap both.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Yep. I mean you just lose 10 damage at all ranks on the other two abilities regardless.
And on the ult.
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Yeah. So like it. Realistically, this is just a raw buff to AP Xerath outside of the very early game.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Butcher Bread and Butter is just better.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: I think they feel confident in buffing Xerath now because they're cracking down on scripters.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: So that that helps a lot.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: I just would have rather see bigger base damage nerfs to actually push him out of support because all this is going to do is just mean he's better in both roles.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: He's just better 100 they they should have done it to his Q. Knocked more base damage out, give more AP ratio. I would have said 20 base damage and 10% AP because that is massive meaningful. And 10% AP again, 200 AP. It's right there at level one. It'd be a meaningful hit. Which means his early game would be even weaker. But by like level six or seven, you're close.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: All right. I would say it's some good changes overall.
Like you said, if you want them, get them out of the support lane, hit those base damages. If not.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: I mean you're not gonna fix the problem. You're just making him stronger.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Yep. Which is what they did. Alright. I'm gonna briefly talk about the sword boy that has been drawing attention lately. Yone got some changes this patch. One is a buff and one is a nerf. The buff is just like Yasuo. He no longer has a crit damage bonus on his passive. He just does full critical strike damage.
This change is mostly to try to make sure he's actually building 100% crit by three items. His build now is pretty consistently Bork Shieldbow ie.
That's the main build you'll see on Yone's now. The stridebreaker has been pushed out of his build because of this change.
The trade off Yone gets for this power is they have made his E a lot less frustrating for everyone else.
Yone's E is his soul unbound. That's the ability that lets him dash away from his body and fight you and then snap back.
They removed its CC cleanse entirely.
So previously if you cc'd Yone when he saw the CC coming, he could snap back and just not be cc'd at all.
Now, if you go to CC Yone and he snaps back, he'll still make it back to his body, but he will have to eat the rest of the duration of whatever CC you hit him. Wherever his body was standing, he does not get to move until the CC has expired, which should make him way less frustrating to play against. While the crit damage bonus will make him more satisfying for Yone players to play against. As I think These are good changes.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: This is.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: I say that as someone who plays yone.
[00:31:19] Speaker C: Yeah. The thing is I think this is. I say this is a buff and I said this. I missed a word for low skill players.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. This is absolutely. Yone is stronger below like emerald period.
And even in emerald and diamond, he's probably still stronger. I think his win rate did go up.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: There were. There were like two ccs that properly followed him wherever he went. And him like Annie's was slow enough that if you didn't time it perfectly, you were stunned.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: And then there was people mistiming Zoe Bubbles. Pretty much it.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Yep. The other. The other one is if you snapped back through a veigar cage, you would still be stunned at the end because the cleanse happened when you snap back, not during the snapback.
[00:32:06] Speaker C: So yeah, three. Three abilities.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: That's the one that doesn't change. Vhagar Stun will still work exactly the same way on him that it did before Zoe. Players will be very happy because he can't just freely cleanse their sleep at will. Same for Lilia.
[00:32:24] Speaker C: Mm hmm.
It did not interaction. It did not cleanse the damage amplification.
I don't think. I have no idea from Zoe's. But she also like almost always missed the ability then.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: So I think it did because you didn't get that unless they were asleep. It was an on wake effect.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: So I think it shouldn't have worked that way.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: I think this is a good change.
I mean it. I don't know if it was ever, like you just said, intended for it to happen or if it's just been a bug they've turned into a feature.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Yep. But now it's been removed, thank God and he's been buffed to compensate so that everyone should be happy.
All right, pillow, let's get some of your quicker hits out of the way.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: All right. So Shin is one of my first big changes or not big change, quick changes.
So Q now he will get the flat damage buff when he's hitting Towers. Not it will not do HP damage on Towers. It only does the flat damage. So it can take Towers a little bit faster. Good for him.
And Gwyn got a small little change.
Her Q is damage went down looks like by 10 at all ranks.
And the W early the resists are weaker base wise but stronger with an AP ratio from 5% to 7%. And now it gives you 22 base on the resistance stats.
So I'm glad to see that they're knocking Gwyn down A little bit. I don't know if 10 base damage is really going to do it.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: But it's not enough.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: They realize that when we talked about her a couple weeks ago that she was going to be a monster be with her changes, that she was indeed a monster. So now they're dialing her back a little bit.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: All right, I'm gonna talk about someone who is definitely not a monster right now. And I think this change has caused people to build him wrong.
So Volibear got one very simple change.
His W, his bite gained an ad ratio, specifically an ad ratio on how much it amplifies the damage based on your bonus ad.
So his W, if you bite the same person a second time in a row, does 50% more damage. Now it's 50% plus 15% bonus AD. So if you have 100 AD, it's actually 100 bonus AD. It's actually 65% amped damage.
This is good because what I think was the most fun way to build Volibear was heart steel tank with a overlord's bloodmail.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: Titanic.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Yep, Titanic Hydra, that kind of stuff. But it's been just worse than AP Tank builds for a while.
So this helps level the playing field a bit. Now, unfortunately, what this has resulted in that I've seen twice in this patch and I've only played like six or seven games on this patch.
Don't build fucking Eclipse on Volibear. It's shit.
So mad that I've seen that twice. It's bad. Don't build Eclipse. You still need to be building health. You still need to be tanky. Volibear's damage does not kick in until your second cast of W on the same target. Which means you need to live long enough to get a second cast of W on the same target.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: Yep.
I got another extra. Like this is exactly what I would have would have done to to amplify his damage as an ad target. Maybe add a little bit more ad ratios on some things or change a couple things out a little bit. But like this is pretty much where I would have gone. It's exactly what I wanted to see.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Alright.
What else are we doing?
[00:37:04] Speaker C: I'm hitting Naafiri real quick. So we have a lot of numbers changes on her and she got a hotfix. We'll go quickly here.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: So explain just broad strokes of what this is doing.
[00:37:14] Speaker C: Naafiri became the best jungler in the game and by far the best assassin and possibly just the best champion on the patch. With her rework. She's stupidly strong.
Their stated goal right now is tap down the jungle a little bit, buff up the mid lane a little bit and tap down her overall power just a little bit. Which pretty good from what I can see.
The Q got an assortment of damage nerfs. So basically they. They actually touched both of the ratios and then they hit the percentage bonus to Monsters but gave it more percent bonus to Minions.
Her W gained lower, higher cooldown base scaling down to the same Her E same thing.
Slightly lower second hit damage by the end, slightly lower cooldown.
And her alt just got a bug fix from for Sylas pretty much that's it.
Which really nice because not fair that Silas could be unlock targetable.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:38:40] Speaker C: That's good. That's just straight good changes. She was too strong.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: I think she still might be too strong with these changes though.
[00:38:49] Speaker C: She's still very powerful. Her Q is her Q's bonus, like the damage bonus to Minions just means she's still strong in the mid lane.
The way that she was changed means she's still really powerful in mid and she's not weak in jungle. Like losing 10% damage to monsters is a hit, but you did most of your damage by yourself and then you could have them dogs get some kills in there. Basically the best part of dogs was instead of having to wait for an absolute perfect tick at the end of a fight to try and walk away, you could walk away much sooner and let the dogs kill things faster. So she had insane clears. If you knew what you were doing and when to leave, between her bleed, her dogs and the jungle item, you could like walk away at 200 plus health and it'd be dead.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: I'm enjoying her in jungle.
[00:39:51] Speaker C: It's been fun.
But this needed to happen.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: I got one more talk to us about singed.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: So singed got a little bit of. A little bit of change.
His passive, the one that gives him movement speed. It's 10 seconds now instead of 8 seconds per target.
His R, you lost 5 of your bonus stats at each rank. And his Q, they actually gave it a 2 1/2% buff on his AP ratio.
Base stats are unchanged. It's now 42 1/2% of your AP ratio. Nice little bump in the right direction. I think. You know, giving them a little bit of love. They didn't overdo it. Two and a half percent is a lot when it's a constantly ticking dot IN a scenario.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Two and a half percent per second for however many seconds you're poisoned.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: So he's a little bit Stronger now. Not noticeably unless you're chasing him. So just oldest rule in league, don't chase Singed.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: Yep, pretty much. Yeah.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: All right. I'm actually gonna throw it back over to Mike to talk about our last champion change. And then me and Pillow got some item things to close out the patch.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: It's a really simple change. They only did one thing to this champion. They made his passive better versus the jungle brand. Jungle is never been bad since they made him a jungler, but with the nerfs to pretty much every jungle clear for for casters, he's been out of it. He could still jungle, but he just no longer was the best jungler. And they're buffing him up now that the items that he used to exploit probably more than anybody else have taken a sizable hit. So they're boosting his damage.
Damage cap per tick versus non epic monsters. So how much damage he does per stack of his passive.
They're just buffing that by a little bit.
And they're boosting the explosion damage cap 20 plus tall rank. So like that this is just base time level one.
Instantly a lot more damage.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: So what I'm hearing is that Brand is going to delete void grubs even faster when he was already one of the fastest void grub takers in the game.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: Yes.
He's going to demolish void grubs and he is going to be able to jungle at the the fast pace. He's going to be one of the premier clearers.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: Again, cool. For those who don't know, the trick with Brand is you just cue one of the void grubs and then you can E and W all three. This will set off the explosion on the first one that you queued which will then trigger the explosion on the other two. And you get three Brand explosions on the three void grubs and just annihilate the camp.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: It does shit tons of damage. If you pull them to the right spot, they'll all explode on top of each other and then you can hit your W and your E on them very easily. If you stagger it just right, you can have never ending explosions. Basically one will pop into the other, into the other, into the other until one of the void grubs is dead.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Yep. But you also don't need to do any of that. You literally just need to make sure you lead off with Q and you will get the chained explosions and kill the camp super fast.
[00:43:25] Speaker C: Yeah, he is.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: That was true before. Now it's even better.
[00:43:28] Speaker C: He's. He's Just good. Yeah.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: All right. I'm gonna talk about some item changes real quick. We only had a couple.
The first of which Mike thought was really funny. In the pre show, they changed Catalyst of Aeons.
Instead of building out of just a ruby crystal and sapphire crystal and 600 gold combined cost. Because by the way, that's what it was. It was bullshit. They've decided to make Catalyst of Aeons suck less in laning phase. It now builds out of two ruby crystals and a sapphire crystal and 200 gold. Which is exactly the same total cost but a much better build path.
It also gives 75 more mana than it did before. Meaning it actually gives more mana than the ruby than the sapphire crystal alone now.
And they buffed up the mana restore when you take damage.
That change also got applied to Rod of Ages. There are no other changes to Rod of Ages.
[00:44:30] Speaker C: So they gave a better health build path and all the mana stuff went up.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Yes. Which is funny.
But the point was that it now gives more mana than the base item builds out of instead of the same amount.
A little better.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: I could see why they made this change because it felt bad going back to base and getting a catalyst over a blasting wand.
But it felt bad.
And so now that they're giving it a little bit more power, I felt like it was always weak. Catalyst was, which. I mean, it's intended to. It's a. It's not supposed to be super strong.
[00:45:16] Speaker C: It's a sustain at a power arm.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: This also means a better build path. The champions that were not mana gated but were building Rod of Ages for other reasons. Such as Veigar Annie where they can just buy two ruby crystals and be able to survive early laning phase better.
It's all around a good change. The other item change is Umbral Glaive.
Umbral Glaive got a cost reduction by 100 gold and gained 5 AD.
This item was already good. So what did they change to compensate for that? Well, they nerfed the cooldown on its ward destruction passive. The one that pops when a ward sees you and lets you kill the ward and see the ward. They nerfed it from 50 seconds to 90 seconds. It is now a minute and a half cooldown.
I fucking love this change. Umbral Glaive was way too good at healthy.
[00:46:14] Speaker C: Beautifully healthy destroying.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Umbral Glaive was way too good at destroying. All vision across the map. It's now much worse at that, but still good at it.
And it's a more cost effective item.
[00:46:27] Speaker C: It still lets melees one shot the wardrobe. Unless you have the three health four health wards.
Because you only do three hits as opposed to four which means yep, it's still two hits for range because it's two hits per ranged hit.
This is just good like that. The umbral Glaive gave you vision superiority. If you had someone who could build it, you would never have problems. Because you're getting this. You're having a ward stone and you're getting your sweeper because you got sweeper. If you had this vision was just. If you had someone to keep you safe and you weren't going off on solo missions, you had vision superiority period. If you had numeral glyph.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Yep. This should be roughly power neutral for champions like pike that were building this.
This should be a straight up buff for like assassin junglers and assassin mid laners who choose to build this. And I think this making it so cheap and more ad like that actually makes this just a viable buy for assassins in general. Not just supports that this is now actually effective.
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Huge jungle assassin buff and lane because.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: Like if you're roaming from mid lane you just rush umber glaive and now all your roams you know when you've been spotted and you're cost effective so you're not losing combat power.
[00:47:49] Speaker C: But they had better gold economy than Jungle usually did. So like getting the extra jungle gold economy big.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Also because it's such a cheap item, it spikes fast. So it's good to get your spike before your lane opponents and then be able to use it to beat the shit out of them.
[00:48:05] Speaker C: Pantheon Jungle is going to be strong.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: I don't even know that he builds this with the changes because he's still on the sundered sky kick.
[00:48:15] Speaker C: He is still really kind of a sundered sky.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Anyway. Pillow, take us home. What the hell's going on with Home Guard? Because it's tied to symbiotic souls as to why they're changing it.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: So I never did it and I never even knew it was a thing or seen it. Home Guards is getting a change where basically the lower health you are when you go back to base, the more healing you'll get in the early game and I guess the late game and then they're. The maximum healing that you can get per second is 8% and the maximum mana you can get percent per second is 10%.
I'm guessing it's saying that mid laners were going symbiotic boots going in, making a trade, backing and running back to lane to help finish their boots quicker. So now, now you're going to regenerate that health a little bit slower. So it's going to maybe make it to where you have to start thinking about your back timings.
So I, it's a good change. I like that they're fixing a, you know, somewhat like an abuse of the system taken out to where you didn't have to worry about your back timing.
The Home Guard speeds themselves are going down by 10% early, 10% movement speed early, and the late game is staying the same at 150%.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: So basically they even said they're, they're changing this because they want to nerf the abuse case without nerfing the actual item itself. So the boots are unchanged, but symbiotic souls are the symptom of this problem.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: I'll be honest, I never even paid attention to how fast my health regenerated in the fountain because I make the rookie mistake and just shop forever while I'm in base and I never really paid attention to it. So I'm glad this taught me something.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: I'm gonna be blunt. None of us were doing this. This was like maximum level challenger level tier play to maximize your output. None of us were doing this.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: The only thing now is you are.
[00:50:35] Speaker C: Going back at low health, you're going out a little bit faster and you're running a tiny bit slower.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: If you were getting nobody, nobody listening to this podcast took advantage of this. As far as numbers wise, the only.
[00:50:48] Speaker C: Reason it would have been someone, one of us going back all the way is if you forgot to buy an item. Because either you're going back at low health because you're trying to avoid something, in which case you're getting out faster because now you're healing more or you left and didn't buy something and you went, ah, fuck back.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: Yup.
All right. Shockingly large patch for an April Fool's patch.
It was a lot to talk about there.
[00:51:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: So let's, let's make sure we get to at least one listener question before we wrap this episode up.
So we're going to start with the one that was actually emailed in. I'm still going to put those in priority.
Sorry. I appreciate you guys on the Discord, but the emails questions get put in first for the week. Your Discord questions will be the first questions next week. Even if we get new questions at the email though, I'm not, I'm not letting the emailers skip the line. They're just getting priority for the same week.
By the way, send your questions to theforwards podcastmail.com so you can get them answered on the show.
Alright, Our first question comes from Logan who writes you keep asking for listener questions so I thought I'd write in I started playing league in August 2023 so I'm still fairly new to the game but I'm not a complete noob. My friends got me into the game after watching Worlds 2022 finals. Hell yes, those finals were incredible.
[00:52:16] Speaker C: Yeah, it was the first SKT final of three in a row.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: That was the SKT drx. That was the one in San Francisco.
[00:52:28] Speaker C: Great final.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: It was good.
So Logan continues. After playing some basic champions mid to start with such as Lux and Annie, I quickly fell in love with Jhin and switched to the ad carry role. I played Jhin for quite a while until last year when I switched to Lucian for a bit. He was fun but I eventually switched to Draven who I am one trick ponying now. I'm currently hovering around Silver four with a goal of gold. Do you have any tips for someone who isn't quite a noob anymore but also not a veteran player?
[00:53:03] Speaker A: You're one.
[00:53:03] Speaker C: Drinking Draven is what I'm getting from on this one.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:53:10] Speaker C: Know your magic.
[00:53:11] Speaker A: My biggest tip that I can give for anyone to get to gold is work just csing. Like your biggest thing is going to be your your gold intake which is going to be csing. Draven has a little bit of a change in that because he can get more gold for going for kills.
[00:53:32] Speaker C: Draven is one of the few who can ignore some CS to gain a lot of extra gold. You're not going.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: But at the same time CSing well accelerates how much of a jackpot you get when you cash in. You still need to be csing. Well I did briefly look at his op GG. He is averaging about 6cs a minute in low silver games. So one or two not bad for that tier.
If you're looking to climb to gold, try to bring that up to about an average of seven per game. 7Cs minute.
[00:54:05] Speaker C: Yeah. The main thing with with Draven is know your matchups. Know when you can be the bully.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: So I don't know a whole lot about Draven as far as like his play style. Like I know his basics but I do remember hearing and you guys can correct me if this is wrong. A common way you're supposed to play Draven is you're supposed to ignore early game kills Completely and stack up your passive until you get R and then use your R for the execute. And that gives you a huge payout at 6. So it requires you playing safe early.
Unless it's an obvious kill. Obviously you go for it. But the way this guy plays and he. I forget his name, but he only played Draven and it's like a challenger player. He says he waits pat stacks up his passive until he gets six and uses it for an execute because it's so much stronger.
[00:55:03] Speaker C: That is a dangerous thing in low elo.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: It is dangerous. But let me explain the logic behind it because I do agree.
Draven's passive. If you get a kill at level one, just like a level one fight happens and you get a kill gives you 25 gold for every minion you last hit. And every axe you catch, add two gold to the jackpot until you get a kill. If you die, you lose. I think three quarters of the stacks.
[00:55:32] Speaker C: It used to be all of it. I don't know if they changed that.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: Yeah, you lose a significant portion of the total stacks if you die. The reason that the optimal way to play Draven is to wait until 6 to go for a hard all in unless the enemy presents a free opportunity is that Draven's ULT has an execute based on his farm stacks of his passive. So if you have not gotten a cash in and you're sitting at 200 stacks, 300 stacks, that's the execute range you've effectively. If as long as you hit the alt have cut that much extra health off their health bar because you just have to hit the ULT when they're below that threshold that it kills them instantly. Yeah.
[00:56:14] Speaker C: So. So this is.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: That is the theory.
[00:56:16] Speaker C: Both hits of that. That ultimate forward and back. If either of them bring them below that threshold, dead instantly. Gold.
[00:56:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:56:26] Speaker A: And this might be a hot take and I might be completely wrong on this. Draven is a feast and famine type adc.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: And at your ELO and bronze one from what I'm seeing here and silver three, I'm seeing two different ranks. So I'm not really sure.
[00:56:46] Speaker C: It sounds like he's had silver and he's trying to work on gold. Maybe he's dropped a little bit since. But.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: So I. I'm not saying get rid of Draven or drop him completely. I would maybe look into if there is a possible ADC in that range that can get you to gold that's more reliable. More reliable in.
I'm trying to best way to frame.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: This, my honest answer looking at the OP GG, your gin looks fantastic with a 5 KDA out of 6 games.
Play Jhin Jin is great from behind because you apply CC from long range and damage from long range with your ultimate. He's a lame bully just like Draven is.
Jhin is just a great all rounder. He. He thrives in the low tank environment that lower Elo tends to be.
I would. I would play more Jin personally, if.
[00:57:53] Speaker C: You just like Draven the most, if he's what you love the most, Draven can easily carry you. You just. The main thing is know your matchups. You need to know them. So know when you can bully. Know who you can bully, who you can't, especially the supports.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: So here's the other thing I want to say though, which is you're not a noob anymore, but you're not a veteran player.
Let's say you know your matchups. You know the other champions that are popular in your ELO that you're going up against.
Read patch notes.
We try our best to summarize them, but we do not cover every change.
And if you're an experienced enough player that you don't consider yourself a new player anymore, which frankly, you've been playing for two years in my opinion, you are still a new player. This game is insane.
But you should now be reading the patch notes in their entirety, not just control f ing Draven and seeing if anything changed for Draven.
Do you need to know every champion in the game and what every change means? No, but you should know who changed and whether it's generally a buff or a nerf. And if there's any major changes you need to be made aware of, like for example, the changes to Yone where his snapback no longer cleanses CC can be relevant to you if you're playing Jhin or Ash or anything like that.
So read the patch notes. You have enough experience after two years of this game that you should be able to at least glean the general gist of what's changed. And staying on top of changes will help you a lot because trust me, your peers do not read the patch notes. I'm in fucking Plat. I've been in Emerald. And people in those games do not read the fucking patch notes. They don't know what's changed. They're not up on meta shifts, they're not up on champion shifts. They're doing old builds or they're doing a build. They saw some streamer do and they don't understand why.
Understand why? Like try to learn the theory of the game. It'll take you far.
[01:00:15] Speaker C: So I got, I got one other major bit of advice now as someone who you are in the higher end of new you're played for a couple years, you got some stuff under your belt now play whatever your roles is rotating free champion for a while.
You've probably not had a chance to experience all 170 champions.
Start experiencing more and more champions consistently so that you have a broader pool of knowledge to build upon. Don't like main them off the top of your head or build other things.
This is building your knowledge case knowing how they play.
But realistically, we've all been looking at it.
It's in your thing. You played Lucian for a bit. Just take Lucian back into the top lane and you'll get to gold just fine.
[01:01:09] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: There you go.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: All right. This has been episode 475 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Sohman for Pillow for Mike. Have a great night.
[01:01:24] Speaker A: Good night.
[01:01:24] Speaker C: Good night, everybody.
[01:01:29] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
