[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven, Jerks and Velcas. And you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in league.
Hello and welcome to episode 476 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me three other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Freeshooter.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Hello, I'm back again for my semi weekly appearance.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: We've also got Pillow Pet.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Hello, I'm back again.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: And Crush you has graced us with his presence tonight.
[00:01:07] Speaker D: I do still live. I am alive.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: He is alive.
Guys, we're the Four Words podcast. We have a Discord. The link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, come talk about Pokemon or vent about the games you've experienced, which we're gonna do a little bit later today in this episode or just whatever the hell else you want to talk about. It's a fun time. We look forward to seeing you there. We do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksoman, where it's still about 5050 of League of Legends or Super Metroid Free Shooter can be found at Twitch TV Freeeshooter. Still streaming. Elden Ring stuff?
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much. When I do stream, that's what I'm streaming. It's been a little as far as the last couple weeks, but that's because work picked up a bit and I've been tired.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yup, Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillow Pet, you streaming anything yet?
[00:02:08] Speaker C: Not since my last stream of Shadows of Doubt.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Okay, and then Crush can be found at Twitch TV CrushYou. Have you been streaming lately?
[00:02:21] Speaker D: No, I've actually just been watching my brother doing streaming. He does Super Mario World. Kaizo.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Plug him. What's his Twitch?
[00:02:29] Speaker D: I wasn't going to, but sure. His Twitch is Twitch tv. Germdove. G E R M D O V E.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Go tell him that the Four Wards podcast sent him so he can be very confused.
[00:02:43] Speaker D: Yeah, that would be extremely amusing because he does not play league at all.
He's playing a bunch of. He. He does a lot of Mario Kaizo and some other variety games. He's recently been doing Zelda 2 speedruns or randomizers.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Is he one of the people who has his picture in Grandpa World 3?
[00:03:05] Speaker D: I believe so.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: I was like, I've heard that name outside of you mentioning it before.
[00:03:11] Speaker D: I know I've seen his picture in a couple of the Kaizos he's done, but I couldn't tell if it was a smaller hack or not. But I know Grandpu World is one of the bigger ones, so I'm not sure, but it's possible.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Anyway, listeners, we gotta give a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robegon for supporting us at the shoutout tier on Patreon. That's right, we are on
[email protected] the Four Wards 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. And even if you're not a subscriber, go check it out. We have a couple of the back episodes are free and depending on how this one goes, it may be free too. We'll see.
And there will at least be a preview on at least half of them so you can get a feel for it.
And then last but not least, $10 a month gets you that shout out in the main show along with that exclusive feedback.
Listeners, this is the point in the show where I have to turn on Disappointed Dad Jacks mode again.
We haven't gotten any new questions since last episode.
What are you doing? We're going to run out at the end of this episode. We need questions. Write in to the four wards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show or join the Discord and post them in the Question and Answer channel. We have a channel specifically for that. If if the thought of actually sending an actual email just bothers your zoomer brain too much, join the Discord and ask in Discord. It's fine, but we need questions.
Okay, with that out of the way, we're going to talk about our recent experience playing League of Legends for you guys tonight and Crush. Since you're the one who kind of introduced this topic, I'm going to let you kick it off.
[00:05:08] Speaker D: All right, so the reason why I had been talking about recent games is because I actually learned things from my recent games. I was like going back and looking at them, which because what had happened was that in a few of my games I was like, why is the enemy Jungler? I'm still maining Jungle Primary, just Nocturne all the time. Because Nocturne's great.
But I was looking back and being like, why was my enemy Jungler ahead of me? Despite me killing them twice in the early game and also taking some of their camps through through the mid, mid late game, it's like, wait a minute, why is the enemy Jungler up two levels on me? What happened?
So what I did was I looked at the VOD for that game, just went and reviewed the recording that it has, which if you don't know where it is, it's under Match history and there's a little download button on the right side of it. You click that button and you can watch the replay of the, of the match. And what I did was instead of following my own perspective, I followed the enemy jungler's perspective was like, okay, so I know this happened, but then what happened? How did they get back into the game? And I pinpointed where it was that they got ahead of me and was like, oh, that was the problem.
And once I knew of the problem, I paid attention to it in future games and it stopped being a problem.
My contribution to this general topic is VOD review is great. If anything happens where you're not sure why this thing happened or you need some more information as to like maybe you were on a ward looking at VOD reviews is extremely good.
Mostly.
While you can use it for many different purposes, the primary purpose I use for it, the thing I do going into a VOD review is what was I doing with the information that I had and was that the correct thing to be doing? Not necessarily like, how well did I play this fight? Or whatever. It's more of why did I choose to take this fight? Was that a good choice? Sort of idea.
But so that, that's, that's, that's my contribution of recent games and how I have determined a problem in my playstyle and I'm trying to fix it is vadreview.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Fair enough?
So I'll go next because I play a lot and I want to emphasize listeners remember I'm talking about specifically my experience at the times I play on North American solo queue in low platinum mmr. Because that's where I have been for a couple months.
Much as it pisses me off and I've had the fucking ringer sent after me. I'm on the plus side, the games where I do well, I do really fucking well. I met like 82 unkillable demon kings. Now I need, I need to get to 100 to have that be a challenge or tier token.
But when I play something weird like brand mid or I played swain mid yesterday, I tend to just crush people in plat. Do not understand how to play against something that isn't meta if they haven't played against it a hundred times. They might as well have never played against it kind of thing.
Which is wild to me. As someone who is used to playing against weird shit all the time, I don't understand how these people don't play against other weird shit and be used to it.
I don't get it. But I've been succeeding. When I play exotic shit. When I play meta champions, my teammates just fucking rage quit. I literally had a game where we had two people on my team, Rage quit.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Two.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: They obviously must have been a duo, but they just both just were like, fuck this and peaced out.
And it's like, well, that game has now ended. Mind you, they peaced out because one of them was the support and one was the jungler. And the enemy, AD Carry ended this game. 17, 9 and 3. No one could stop him.
[00:09:54] Speaker D: Oh, the enemy.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: They were shit.
[00:09:55] Speaker D: Yeah, I was very much like, why would you leave if your ad carry is 17 and 9? That sounds like a great idea.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: That's who fed the 17 and 9.
They kept trying to kill him and sometimes succeeded, but gave him a double or triple every time.
[00:10:11] Speaker D: Once again, it's really crazy to me that this is. This doesn't. This seems unintuitive. Right? As a jungler, you don't go to the losing lane, like ever.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: You shouldn't like. And that leads me to my actual what I've learned. And my conclusion, which is the exception is bot lane.
Not because you're going to make your AD carry able to win the game, but because if you don't, theirs will be a completely unstoppable monster that you do not have an answer for.
And it frustrates the shit out of me. So what I've actually learned is I need to be better about roaming to bot when I play mid. I need to be better about ganging bot when I'm jungling because the game is decided by which bot lane feeds.
And again, this is very specific to when I play in my elo. I do not know that this transfers to anyone else if I have to.
[00:11:16] Speaker D: Point a finger at anyone else in the game. And for the record, I generally don't like pointing at someone else and being like, this is why I lost.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: And I'm not saying AD carries specifically. I'm saying something in the bot lane causes a loss consistently.
[00:11:35] Speaker D: So I, I don't like pointing out other people in. In my games.
But like it's one of those.
The.
The stone around. Around my neck was X. This game, it's most commonly the support right now.
I'm not sure why. Like, it's either the support of the top laner. It's very rarely the ad carry, the mid laner.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: I will answer that part of whether it's the support of the ad carry later when we get to a listener question that pertains to that.
[00:12:05] Speaker D: Fair enough.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: But the bot lane as a combined package has by far the most power to dictate who loses the game.
Because when one team's bot lane feeds, they are funneling so much more gold into the best gold scaling role on average on the map.
Whereas if your top laner or mid laner feeds their ass off, it's one person funneling gold into one other person who probably scales decently well.
That's why I've decided I need to start practicing more on actually going and ganking bot lane, playing around bot lane and babysitting these fucking morons who keep losing me games.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: That's the biggest thing is like a top laner is like you're just, you know, being two chill guys going against each other in the top lane and one of us is going to look down and the bot lane, one of our bot lanes is going to be fed and one of our bot lanes is going to have fed.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: And you're going to be like, oh, I don't matter this game. Okay.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: See, it's funny because I feel that a lot of the times about top lane of like, I can actually come out like even or slightly ahead in lane and then I look and it's like, oh, my top laner is.07.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: That's because you're coming out of lane even or slightly ahead or even slightly behind experiencing. Sure. But you're within a reasonable range of your opponent because you actually play bot lane, you're not experiencing the absurd feast or famine bot lanes to the rate that we are. Because you are not stupid and will actually play safe, minimize losses, not put yourself at unnecessary risk when you fall behind.
And you're frankly not a very aggressive player. So you don't tend to like snowball giga stomp lanes very often. Unless the enemy presents really dumb easy opportunities because you're not taking those kinds of risks in the first place.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, I can kind of transition that and like, I haven't played in a little bit, but this is still kind of true of like the lessons I was trying to learn at the beginning of the split is trying to like play at the pace of my support sometimes where like, if I have a support that's being really aggro sometimes I just gotta match that and like either trust, like I just gotta trust the thresh to hit the hook sometimes and like play a little bit against my style. But also like it's not playing to not lose but like I've been a lot better I think in the last year. Just in general it's something I've gotten a lot better about of just like accepting that I'm not the main character. This game of like, you know, I talked about this on the pod when it happened, but I had a game where my support just took smite and double jungled and I just had to accept, okay, I'm in a 1v2 lane. My job is not to win my lane. My job is to just survive and leech xp, get gold where I can and ended up coming out ahead because of the other team like making some bad plays and I got a couple kills under tower and it worked out like, you know, even though I'm pointing it playing, playing ad carry the best gold scaling role.
Sometimes it's like oh, I have a 7 and O top laner or my jungle is popping the off. Okay, like that's my job. This game then is to just not feed my opponent to not make the job more difficult.
Now that can be hard. I've had games where like yeah, I'm coming out of lane like 1, 2 and 1 and my support is like oh, 7 and 2.
Sometimes there's just not much to be done. But yep, you know, that's how it goes.
[00:16:16] Speaker D: I definitely have similar experience with that as a jungler because like Nocturne is not strictly speaking a carry jungler. Like I can have pop off games but they're relatively very rare.
It's more often that I find the fed lane and make sure they don't die and then get picks when I can.
So my playstyle is generally more of a enable someone else to carry the game for me.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: So it's always okay not to be the main character. You don't have to be that guy in every one of your games.
[00:16:54] Speaker D: How long ago was it where league had that like what kind of player are you thing where it was over the choices?
Can't remember. It was. It was a while ago, like three or four years ago. They gave out some icons for it.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: I do not remember that.
Yes, my turn.
So the last time I got a chance to play league was like the four or five days ago I played with Jax and.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, you did.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: There was one notable game that I can think of is I played Scion Mid because I thought I was going against an echo and I was just like, okay, I'm just gonna play a tank so he can't burst me. And I'm just going to farm waves because that's what Cyan likes to do. Well, he was their jungle. And so they locked in Aurelion Soul.
Sion does not do good into an Aurelion Soul. It's Aurelion Soul is just a counterpick to him. So I counterpicked his counter pick by going lethality scion and just smashed him all game because he couldn't handle lethality Scion damage.
If you build health against Aurelian Sol, you just going to melt just as quick as if you build no health. So I'm better off just being able to kill my laner faster and not give him the opportunity to kill me. And it worked out. It worked out really well.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: And somehow you still only died three times.
[00:18:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I was looking at it.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Squishy Sion.
[00:18:31] Speaker C: I was. Once I. Once I got my ghostblade and I got my boots of swiftness, I could just walk up to the Aurelion Sol like he couldn't run away anymore at that point.
And I just went across the map that whole game, I think. Yeah, I even had top CS that game. I just went to every lane that was available, took all the cs, roamed back because I was just fast and caught all the CS I could. And think I participated in most of the team fights that, I mean, maybe not. I'm not sure looking at it, but at least a third of the team fights, if not half. But. Yeah, I mean, it's just being able to make your decisions on the fly. It's important be like, okay. Instead of being like, all right, well, this game is going to be a drag. I'm going to be counterplayed all game. I'm not going to have any fun. I was just able to make slight adjustment and build. And we've talked about it in the past, adjust your build on the fly. And it worked out.
Don't know if in that group there was.
You know, Garen's a very hot pick right now in the top lane because of the penguin. And I think I went against Garen's all night that night.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: That was like the one game where you didn't.
[00:19:52] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. Because I played middle and I got filled into mid for that game.
So I just picked Malphite. I just been picking Malphite into Garen and it's just been. That's usually how I Deal with a Garen. I just walk up Q, walk away, get my manaflow stacks, Q poke. Just make sure that he doesn't get his passive and then at a chance I can, hopefully my jungle comes up and gets a kill or I all in him when he's low enough. Because Garens don't like to leave lane.
Even if they only have 1% of their HP, they just won't leave the lane.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Well, you're a Malphite. Surely you couldn't possibly have lethal on them.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I think I just went tank and just ran all over him.
Then I got stomped by a gangplank. The game after that and we won't talk about that one.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a tragic game all around.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: But I think out of all those games, we had a bot gap in most of them.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: That was why I said that was a tragic game all around. Our Lucien Pantheon Lost Lane Level 1 and 2 against a Kog'Maw Alistair.
I remember understand how that's possible.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: When kog'maul locked in, Jax was like, oh, a cogma. You don't see him very often. I was like, oh, man. I was like, this isn't good. He's either going to get Super Fed or he's just going to get like. He's going to be like, oh, and 12. He got super fed. He was like 14 and 2.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Kogma is one of those Kog'maw Alistar special. It's like, it sounds like the Lucian Lane just didn't bully them hard enough. Level one, because that's a lane you have to bully.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: They lost level one.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah. That shouldn't happen. Level two, I can see level one.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: No, it didn't get better from there.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: They were both truly awful.
There was. There was nothing that we could do to play around that bot. Lane to try to recover.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Would like to go back and touch on crushes reviewing VODs and just make sure I say, like, that is super important to go back and look if you're like, how did I lose that game? What happened? Like, if you ask yourself that question at all, just go look like you're going to learn something. On every VOD review. You will learn something.
[00:22:32] Speaker D: I think it's.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: I mean, I don't do it enough, but it's a very important habit to get into.
[00:22:38] Speaker D: I think now that I'm thinking about, like, VOD reviews, like in retrospective, I'm like, I think I generally only VOD review if something happens with my specific Lane opponent. Like right now, I'M juggling so it's did something how did the jungler get ahead Kind of thing. But when I was doing ad carry, I also do the same. I also did the same thing. I was like, how did the enemy ad carry get ahead? So I generally look for the mirror when I'm vod reviewing more than anything else. I don't know if that's good or bad. It's just something I noticed.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Fair enough.
All right, Freeshooter, since you're the one who played the least, you put a trinket tip in here that we're gonna have you do. What's the trinket tip this week?
[00:23:22] Speaker B: So trinket tip is something we've definitely been saying ad nauseum on this podcast, but it got brought up again in the Discord this week, so I figured it bears repeating on the show if your team gets feats of strength.
Don't buy the tier 3 boots until last item.
Maybe 4th maybe don't buy it before.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: There are two main situations in which buying the boot upgrade early is correct.
When you believe that the next fight is the last fight and that is the best 750 gold you have available to spend because of inventory constraints or you don't have enough for the next component for your item. Whatever.
You have a choice of spending 750 gold to go into that fight at full power or not spending and going into that fight with a lower chance of winning the fight that you believe to be the final fight of the game.
Yeah, buying boots at that point is fine.
[00:24:22] Speaker D: I remember the last time I bought tier three boots because Jungle Nocturne doesn't have the kind of income required to get it get past item four.
Yeah, like the only exception I've found has been like the only boot upgrade I would take before fourth item would be Swift Foot boots. And even then.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Yep, it's that was where my other exception comes in is if you're playing Hecarim and it's Swifties and you're at three items.
Yeah, three items. I think it can be worth upgrading the Swifties to the the top two Swifties.
[00:24:59] Speaker D: I remember why the other exception jungling I will occasionally when playing normals play Darius Jungle because it's hilarious. Darius Jungle actually does want the Swift Foot boot upgrade after the third item and the reason is he doesn't have any other way of getting into the fight move speed is extremely important on Darius Darius Jungle so you'll know all.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: The exceptions are around Swifties.
[00:25:29] Speaker D: Yeah.
And it's because Swifties have the best.
It's hard to say. So they all have equivalent gold value. But the reason why Swifties are the exception is because move speed can't be picked up anywhere else and because Swifties.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Are non conditional move speed.
[00:25:50] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: The other boots that give move speed when you upgrade them for the 750 gold are movement. When you do a thing, Swifties are just movement.
[00:26:00] Speaker D: Yeah.
It's actually quite funny because if you were to. I don't take this position, but I think it's a valid position to take.
Getting the Tier 3 upgrade on boots on Swifties on every jungler that takes Swifties is probably correct because move speed is so important for junglers.
Clear your camp faster generally. Yeah, I don't do that, but I can see an argument to be made for that.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: All right, let's get to some listener questions because we do have some leftover questions that we didn't get to last week. Again, listeners, you can send us questions on the discord or Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show.
And our first question tonight is very relevant to that. This comes from Codex Ninja who writes I'm gonna throw a low brow question on the table. What is your personally favorite type of question to talk about for beginners? While I get that to a certain extent this is just something for content and to give you all something to talk about. But what kind of questions leverage your experiences that newer players can learn from? For example matchup questions, system questions, build questions, tempo questions.
So my favorite I like the system interaction questions. I like when people are like how do you do the thing?
[00:27:31] Speaker C: I like to talk about laning in general because that like specifically in laning I like talking about wave management because that is such a strong tool as a solo lanerate answer. It's such a top lane answer. But I mean it's recently changed and it's a lot harder now to get decent wave management.
And I'm still figuring it out. But I'll get asked sometimes by just I'll take use my buddy for example. I was talking to him the other day about when we were talking last week about how you get out of bronze or silver and my answer was just very easy like you got to work on your income which is going to be your last hitting and it's going to be getting more experience in gold than your opponent and that's going to carry you farther than getting kills.
That's what is going to ensure your success. So I always enjoy Talking about like laning or just even matchups Like I was talking tonight. Like matchup experience.
[00:28:46] Speaker D: Yeah, my favorite question type is is the matchup questions. Mostly because matchup doesn't matter very much for jungle. So I don't need to. I don't have. I don't get to talk about matchups pretty often.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Fair enough. What about you, free shooter?
[00:29:08] Speaker B: I like the matchup questions as well.
I think that's a lot of fun. But I also do like, I don't know I like any questions like, but I think matchup and system are the two biggest ones. Like just being able to talk through like a lot of specifics. Like I like when you give examples from your game so we could talk through those situations. Like I also like draft questions. I think those are a lot of fun and we get those every now and then and usually go on for a long time about them.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Fair enough.
All right, thank you for the question codex. Our next set of questions comes from Radio. Who writes the AD carry Support, Love, Hate Relationship is the reason the bot lane is in my opinion so interesting and complex. Set aside the endless combinations of matchups that can happen, the different playstyles and skill sets that players bring to each game in the lane make it a new experience each time. I've experienced the good and bad side of this in the game as support has been my main for some years and I have recently transitioned to playing AD carry to achieve my goal of getting better at the game as a whole. So wards here are my what is your experience with the bot lane in game from your lane's perspective or first hand?
We already touched on this a little bit in the earlier part of my experience is that bot lane is where games are lost.
Sometimes it's where games are won, but more often than not it's the lane that causes a loss for either side. I'm not just saying every time I lose it's the bot lane's fault. No, almost half of my wins are because the enemy bot lane were fucking stupid and just hard into it and gave me a free fucking game.
That's my experience with bot lane is it is where games are lost.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: Yeah. As I said earlier, I mean that's how it is for me in the top lane. Like I get super excited if I see my ADC getting kills early because I'm like who? This game just got a lot easier and then just vice versa. If I see him dying a lot I'm like okay, this game's going to be a lot harder to win. Let's hope that the enemy doesn't know how to close it out.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: I mean crush, you used to be an ad carry main and free shooter. You still are.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean I experienced this even with people I play with regularly. Like, there's people that I play with that I have good synergy with and people I don't where. Like I have. And that's what I was saying earlier of like I have to change my play style sometimes depending on my support. Like one of the people I play with a lot of, like, you know, they play support very passively. So I have to because they're used to playing with people who like to sit back and scale. So I have to make sure I'm playing that way.
You know, one of my best friends plays support super aggro. So it's like, okay, I'm, you know, not picking jinx when I play with you. Or actually jinx is about example which inks aggro. But like, like, yeah, you, there's some like even some picks I'm like, okay, like knowing my playstyle with this supports playstyle, I have to go for these picks and in solo queue it can feel like rolling the dice sometimes.
Yeah. And I know on the support side too, you like, I have support main friends. I complain about a lot of like they're making opportunities, they're hitting hooks and their ADCs aren't following up on them. And that's like, that's when you start roaming us as a support. Honestly.
[00:32:58] Speaker D: With me. So one of the things that you said jumped out at me as like the endless combinations of matchups because bot lane is a 2v2 lane. There are so many possible matchups, it's not worth it to try to have matchup knowledge. It's one of the reasons why one of my biggest holes is still I don't have good matchup knowledge in top or mid lane, partially because I don't play the lanes and partially because I played bot lane where knowing matchup knowledge is worthless.
Instead in bot lane, you just need to know sort of a binary, like, am I aggro or am I passive?
Do we win long fights or do we want short trades kind of thing? Like it. It's one or the other and it. So it's like, are you playing gin?
[00:33:56] Speaker C: You.
[00:33:56] Speaker D: You with fleet footwork, you win short trades. You don't win. You don't win long fights.
Are you playing Caitlyn with lethal tempo?
[00:34:08] Speaker B: You.
[00:34:08] Speaker D: You win long fights. That is your entire purpose.
So choosing when to all in or not is is important to know based on your. Your support, based on your ad carry.
It is interesting to me where you can't really have a good experience. You can't really know matchups very well in bot lane.
And from the jungler's perspective. The reason why I switched to jungle is because I had a hard time winning games from the ad carry role.
I was fine with not losing them, but it was in my experience that even if I was super ahead, it didn't matter.
And I have found that that still is the case. I have had.
I've had games on either side of the bot lane, winning or losing, and it didn't seem to matter either way.
With the caveat of I am playing nocturne.
Generally speaking, if the ad carry ever steps out of line, they die.
So even a fed ad carry generally will die in my games specifically because I'm playing nocturne.
But that's my most experience with the lane. From the jungle perspective is the same as with every lane from the jungle perspective.
The state of the lane determines whether I can get neutral objectives around that lane.
So if bot lane is doing well, I can take dragons. If they're doing terribly, I don't get dragons.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, next question is, do you find this lane to be toxic?
[00:35:59] Speaker D: I will tell you that I have had the most complaining in my recent games. From supports.
[00:36:05] Speaker C: I would say 8 to 9 out of 10 games that I have, there is going to be a toxic laner in the bot lane. And I would just chalk that up to statistics because there's two people, two random strangers trying to get along and la with two different play styles. So it's. That's just. They're not dealing with just themselves or getting mad at just themselves. They're going to immediately start blaming the other guy, whether it's their fault or not. So it's always going to breed toxicity. So I would say 8 out of 10 games, yes, someone in that lane is going to be toxic.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: My experience has been that the bot lane is by far the most likely part of the map to tell me as the mid laner or the jungler, where they believe I should be focusing my efforts.
Top laners cry for help, sometimes mid laners cry for help, sometimes people in the bot lane will regularly be like, you should be doing dragon. You should be ganking top. You should be ganking bot. Like, it's not just crying for help me, help me. It's like trying to order me around. Like they think I'm a fucking unit in their rts.
[00:37:17] Speaker D: What's really funny to me is that like, again, I've had the support whining the most and they've been trying to tell me what to do and I'm like, that's the wrong call. Like, not only are you spending time away from your own game to tell me what to do, it's also wrong.
You're wrong twice now.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Telling people what to do. Like, that is not going to result in them playing better. It's going to result in them playing worse because now they're mad at you. You are literally sabotaging your games when you do that shit. And I don't know why they do it.
[00:37:52] Speaker D: Quick, quick tip for how to get people to do something you want them to do.
Use plurals that include yourself. Don't. You should take the dragon. No, no, no. It should be we should take the dragon.
It's weird that one little change from changing it from you should do this, you should do that to we could do this, we could do that.
That one change helps so much and it's weird how well it works.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Yep.
So kind of tied to that. Do any carries or supports troll more games.
[00:38:30] Speaker D: Supports, Supports.
[00:38:32] Speaker C: I would say supports unless you're dreaming.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
Okay, so I'm going to emphasize that I'm taking troll in the literal sense of intentionally cause the game to be lost.
Yeah, supports a thousand percent. Yeah, Supports lose their fucking minds if the ad carry is not God's greatest gift to ad carry dumb and will just decide to go and fuck over the other solo lanes with the worst ganks imaginable and then just sit there soaking their solo laners experience. So now your solo laners are behind. They'll force bad plays and die. But now your team is committed.
[00:39:15] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Most ad carries when they troll are just rage quits. They throw a tantrum because they're fucking prima donna ad carries. They decide that you haven't spent enough time and energy on them and they're the most important person on the map because they're an ad carry. So fuck you. They quit and they just fucking leave. Or they just rage split forever. I was going to say those are toxic trolling behaviors. They're way less detrimental to the game as a whole than the way the supports do it. And generally they take longer before they go bananas and do this shit. Whereas I've seen supports regularly do it at level three, like they're level three and they have now rage quit the game in a destructive manner. That is how support stroll.
[00:40:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: Most of the Time. It's just always the rage splitting. Like, I mean, that Lucian we played with the other night, he was in a side lane for, I don't know, the whole game. The rest of the man, he never came out of a sideline.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I do find it much more likely with 80 carries.
They're not actually trolling. Like, I don't think that Lucian was trolling. I think he was bad. He didn't know how to get back in the game and was just trying to find farm.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: And that's the important distinction. I don't think he was rage splitting because he was mad at us. And like, fuck you guys. I'm just gonna rage split until you surrender, which is what supports do. Some ad carries do that, to be clear. But a lot of the rage splitting is just. I don't know how else to get farm. So I'm gonna rage split because I can't get farm otherwise quite often. And again, they think they're the most important person on the map. So they think they have to get farm for the game to be winnable.
[00:41:04] Speaker D: From the ad carry perspective, because this happened to me several times where I am now behind, I am a behind. AD carry is basically useless to a fight. Like, they just don't do damage. And that is your entire job is to do damage unless you're ashe or somebody else with hard cc.
And the reason why it's rage splitting is because the mid laner is sitting middle. There's no farm to be had there. So you have to go to a side lane because you can't take jungle camps. Not as an ad carry reliably.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: All right. When I say rage splitting, I'm specifically referring to me as the mid laner tries to go to a side lane and the ad carry goes there too and fights me so far.
[00:41:45] Speaker D: That's just dumb.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's just very common.
[00:41:49] Speaker D: Very common. Yeah. As an ad carry, you should be. You should be going to where the farm is. And where a friendly teammate is is not where the farm is. You should. You should not be there if you're trying to farm.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:42:09] Speaker D: The.
The only thing I really want to add to this is that while supports troll more games, ad carries cause games to be lost.
Often. Like if the ad carry steps out of position and dies because, I don't know, Nocturne flies in and kills them, the game can end very quickly. When that happens, if that was the fed member of the team like that, that can end games and ad carries.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Have the most ability to make a game losing Mistake.
[00:42:39] Speaker D: Yeah, because they're so squishy and they do so much damage, there's such a high percentage of the damage that the team puts out, but they're also such a low percentage of the team's health bar where if they die first, the fight is almost certainly lost.
And if it's a game ending, team fights happen. Those are the things that is true. So yeah.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: All right, Radio's next question is, are supports with carry potential the way to go I. E. With lots of kill threat or damage in low elo without a duo? Yes, just straight up.
If you are not an extremely high ELO where you can trust that your random ad carry has mechanics, playing to protect the random is not necessarily the best way to win. Whereas if you're playing a mage support or a pike, if they prove to be good, you can still protect them and enable them. But if they prove to be a moron, you deal damage, you can still be useful to the team.
And that's the thing is like it gives you that versatile like you can be the carry instead of the moron if they're a moron or if they are a good ad carry, you can just support them and set up kills for them and line them up to just be the most fed person on the map.
Yeah, I can't really anyone disagree with my take on it.
[00:44:08] Speaker C: That's exactly what I would say.
[00:44:11] Speaker D: Just about like I do again, I was playing much of normals just because and whenever I got I would play Phil's when I play normals because I don't care when I got filled a support I would often just play Thresh and it's fine. Like if my ad carry is a moron, I find somebody on my team that's not a moron and I can give them lanterns and hook people for them and all that stuff. Thresh is not a carry. Thresh works fine.
I think you can win as any type of support and it's not necessarily the best play to play Pyke because I believe that the best support to play if you. If you're to one trick a support. Lulu is probably the best one to play as a support outside of the fact that she's banned kind of heavily but and she's not a carry support at all.
And yeah, so while in low elo for sure, being a carry support is definitely a way to feel like you have personal agency over the game. It's not the only way to win the game.
That's all I got to say.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Okay, so kind of ties to that. How do supports like this, meaning with lots of kill, threat or damage, affect AD carries in the way they should play.
Generally the supports with damage also provide some kind of cc. That's why they get played as damage supports.
[00:45:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Follow up on the cc, Lux lands a bind, you better be hitting that person while they're rooted. That kind of stuff.
[00:45:53] Speaker D: So I mentioned this earlier with Jhin.
One of the great tragedies that can happen in a in bot lane is having a Jhin paired with an all in support like Jhin and Leona or Jhin and Pike or something like that, where the pike or Leona goes in right after Jhin fires his fourth shot. Like Jin can't do shit.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Like, yep, he can root someone to follow up and he can cue and by then usually his auto, but he doesn't have his fourth bullet for a while. So still weak compared to everyone else.
[00:46:33] Speaker D: Right. So it's. It's one of those things where it's like if you're playing the character, if you're playing the support, in that case you have to be careful how you play more than how the AD carry plays.
I'm trying to decide if that's true in general or not. Whether in a vacuum, should the support be triggering off the ad carry or should the AD carry be triggering off the support? And I think it's generally that the support should be trying to match the ad carry in a solo queue environment. You don't have the choice of this. You have to. If you're playing the sport, you have to match off your ad carry. If you're playing the ad carry at the match off your sport, like it's.
You don't have the choice. But like in a vacuum, who should.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Be so matchup dependent? Like so many champions have things that set up the other one, right.
[00:47:25] Speaker D: It's like who should lead is. Is kind of the question.
And I think, I think the ad carry should generally be the one leading, like deciding, oh, what's a good way to put it?
Your stance in lane, right. Whether you're aggressive or defensive posture. If you're aggressive and trying to push past the minion wave to aggress and harass the enemy laners compared to being defensive and staying behind your casters and ensuring that if they try to go on you, they have all six minions hitting them kind of thing like that, posture should generally be determined by the ad carry. I think like if ad carry is pushing up and posturing aggressively, the support should be following as long as it's not Dumb.
I don't, I don't think that like again, in a vacuum, looking at it from outside as if I wasn't any of those two people in, in the game. If I look down and see the ad carry up far and the support is back far, I think the support is doing something wrong.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: That I agree with.
[00:48:36] Speaker D: If I see the support up far and I see the ad carry back far, I think the support is doing something wrong. Like without. Without any context as to like what the matchup is or what the champions are. If I just see icons on the map, that's my first thought as a jungler looking down at the lane.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: Fair enough. Radio's got two questions left.
Is the more traditional support with full supporting or tanking the better option? Meaning like an enchanter or a tank?
[00:49:03] Speaker D: Talked about this a bit. As I said, I think Lulu is probably the best support to play if you're gonna main a support. But they're all close enough right now. Like there's no support. Meta is actually very, very, very diverse right now. It's like as long as you're playing a meta support period, you're probably fine.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: My answer to this is if you are actually just solo queuing, no, don't play a traditional tanky or enchanter support. But if you are duo'd with any role, it does not have to be a duo ad carry and you trust your friend to be a threat in the mid to late game and you enjoy the supportive or tanky playstyle then. Absolutely. Because if you're playing a tank, you can peel for them, you can engage for them and set them up for kills. If you're playing an enchanter, you can peel for them and protect them.
It doesn't matter what role they are, you're gonna be with them in mid and late game regardless. So they don't have to be the ad carry for this.
So it's fine to play those roles. But if you're just completely solo, you're with four randoms. I wouldn't because you have no way of knowing which of those randoms is gonna be worth following around until it's too late. In many cases, if I get auto.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: Filled ADC or I'm sorry, if I get auto filled support, I try to always make a point to ask in draft, do you like to be aggressive or do you play more passive? So I can make like a decision right there based on okay, am I going to play pike or am I going to play Morgana or am I going to try to Protect this guy who's not going to want to fight ever.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: My problem there is my idea of what passive and aggressive are maybe very different than this guy's idea of passive and aggressive. What I call aggressive, he might think is passive or vice versa.
And it's really hard to actually find the same wavelength during champion select. So I tend not to just. I don't want to rely on that. I don't want to trust that I'd rather actually experience in game. What are they going to play like?
[00:51:17] Speaker C: I know when I play adc, I get excited when I see my support play a tanky frontliner because I'm not someone that plays ADC often. So I can find myself in bad situations because I still play with the mentality of a top laner. As in, like, okay, I could take, I can risk it for a plate or something. So I get, I like having a appealing friend around.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: So that is a great segue into our last question from radio. As an AD carry, how do you not die in a teamfight? How do you end up in the right place at the right time?
[00:52:02] Speaker D: Don't start the fight.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: Yeah, generally, yeah. Even if you're ash, you can start the fight with your Ult, but you shouldn't be in auto attack range when you do.
[00:52:12] Speaker D: So I suppose the correct way to say it is don't start in the fight.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:52:18] Speaker D: If you're at melee range when the team fight breaks out, you're doing something wrong. Unless you're like literally Samira or even.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: Then you shouldn't be at that range when the fight begins.
[00:52:31] Speaker D: Nila. That's who it was. I was like, I was trying to say Nahiri and I'm like, that's a different character. It's not, it's not that. Neela.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Even those champions, you're, you're waiting for your amumu to go in and land a three man Ult and then you're going in, you're not in melee range at the start.
[00:52:48] Speaker D: Yep, this is, this is true.
More, more precisely, if you're in melee range at the strike start, that's how you lose a team fight.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:52:59] Speaker D: That's like the fastest way to lose a team fight is starting in melee range.
[00:53:02] Speaker C: If I'm playing like a carry. And I mean this works. I think even as when I play adc, I ask myself or I look, does the enemy team have an assassin? Yes. Okay. Is that assassin showing on the map right now at this team fight? No, I'm not going in.
I'm waiting. Like I'M waiting for the Akali or the Zed or the Diana or whoever it is to show themselves so I can see where they're at and they're not waiting in a bush behind me, waiting for me to focus somewhere else.
Is there a tank standing between me and my front line? If yes, then I don't want to be near that tank being peeled off of that tank, typically.
[00:53:46] Speaker A: So that's where I go with this is the biggest thing to figure out as an AD carry to stop dying in team fights is who can protect you. If you're following a tank and they're a dive tank, they're going into the enemy team. They're not necessarily going to keep the enemy team from killing you.
So your job as an AD carry is who can protect you from that Zed or Akali? Can anyone? If the answer to that is yes, you have someone who can peel and protect you. Follow that person around like a lost puppy dog. Stay near them at all times so they can protect you. If that assassin comes out of nowhere and then just hit whoever is in front of you, whoever's in range that you can hit, don't go past the tank to hit their back line because that's how you get engaged on.
[00:54:38] Speaker D: Yep, a lot of. A lot of. So team fighting in general is about positioning, and AD carries are entirely about positioning. If you're in a bad position, you will get murdered. If you're in a good position, you can do damage and win the fight.
Everybody is. That's true to some extent. But for AD carries, that is like the most important skill in team fighting is just being in the right place.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:55:07] Speaker D: I how that. And it's annoying because the question is, how do you get into the right place? And the. And the answer is, first off, you have to know where the right place is. The right place is not in the middle of the team fight. You want to be on the edges. For most cases, again, with the exceptions earlier of Samira and Nila, they specifically want to be in the middle of the fight because that's where their abilities do the most damage.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: They specifically want to enter the middle of the fight after the fight is already in full swing.
Generally there. There are rare edge cases with Nila specifically.
[00:55:45] Speaker D: Yeah, I was gonna say Neela is the only one. Neela is the only AD carry who. If you just jump into the middle of a team fight as soon as it breaks out, I don't think you're actively trolling Samira. Even Samira shouldn't be jumping into the middle of a team fight, as soon as it breaks out, you should try to sack your passive and then jump in.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:56:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think a lot of this can be boiled down to it's not about being in exactly the right place.
Honestly. The bigger thing is not being in the wrong place.
[00:56:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: Like, yeah, because like if the fight starts because you got caught or because they jumped onto you from out of range, you are in the wrong place almost anywhere else you can position to be in the right place by the time like the fight is in full swing.
[00:56:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
I think this is one of those cases where a VOD review can help where if you just go to like a game ending team fight and pause the VOD as the team fight breaks out and just kind of, if you have the ability to draw on your screen somehow without breaking your screen, draw into and like separate into sections of where are the bad places to be? Where, where like two halves of the screen, like this half is the bad place, this half is the good place. And then you can start narrowing down the good place. And I think that's probably the best way to go about it. Like this is the bad place because it's behind the enemy frontline. This is the bad place because it's in range of Darius e ing me into their team. This is the bad place because blitz has line of hook on this place. Like if you overlap all of those bad places then you can end up with like here's the good places to stand. And just doing that exercise, not even necessarily looking at am I even in the right place? Just doing the exercise to identify where the good and bad places even are regardless of where you specifically are. I think just doing that exercise can help.
[00:58:03] Speaker C: I think it's important to know also that the right place is never in the side lane. Like you don't. This is why most ADCs of support will go take over mid lane at some point in the game because you're always going to be closer to the action when it does happen. If you're in a side play a side lane, you're never going to be in the right place. Like you're not going to be with your team. So you might be the last survivor, but that's just because you weren't there. So try to recognize when a team fight, if it's constant your team fight team is constantly fighting, then you know you need to constantly be with your team. If your team is is playing smart and not Thompson constantly team fighting, you need to learn like what the what's causing these team fights and try to recognize it before they happen.
If it is the wrong time because there is a timing to it, like, there is a timing to go in, and if you miss that timing and someone's already died or two people's already died, it's okay to, like, run away with your tail between your leg and survive and defend. Like, you don't have to go in and die just because your team went in and died.
[00:59:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially if you're a wave clear ad carry like, very frequently. If you can make it out, you can then wipe the wave to prevent the Nexus from dying, even if you die.
[00:59:32] Speaker D: So it's really funny because I reread the question and the question starts with, how do you not die in a team fight? And I mean, one of the answers for that question, and is a. Is technically a valid answer, is don't be in the team fight.
If your team picks a bad fight, you don't have to join it, but.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: There is a better answer to the question.
It's your pick. Lucian in the top lane, and you get so fed that there's never a team fight. You just split, push all the way down top lane and win the game.
[01:00:04] Speaker D: Is it still a team fight if it's Lucian versus five?
[01:00:08] Speaker A: Well, you are the team when you're Lucian top.
[01:00:11] Speaker D: Yeah. All right.
[01:00:12] Speaker B: Every fight's a team fight.
[01:00:14] Speaker A: All right, guys, this has been episode 476 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Sohman for Free Shooter, for Pillow Pet, and for Crush. You have a great night.
[01:00:26] Speaker C: Good night.
[01:00:26] Speaker D: Bye.
[01:00:30] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you liked what you heard and you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast to give us some support. We appreciate you and of course, listeners. Please don't forget to write your questions into theforwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them on the show.
