[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 Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league.
Hello and welcome to episode 481 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends.
We've got Mike of many names it.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Is I.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: And Pillow Pets returned this week.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Hello, I am back.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: We've missed you buddy.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: I've missed you guys.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Guys, we are the Forwards podcast. If you head on over to our Discord link is in the episode description you can come join and talk and hang out and play games and tell us about your favorite anime. And we have a questions channel if you don't want to write into the email. So come join the Discord. We look forward to seeing you there.
Now we do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman Mike is at Twitch TV MikeofManyNames and PillowPat is at Twitch TV. PillowPat.
We got some shout outs. Shout out to CodexNinja, Pillow, Pat and Robegon for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys. You are keeping the lights on for the podcast now of course we also do have a Patreon. If you want to support the podcast head on over to patreon.com 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 $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and also you get a shout out at the top of every episode like Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robogon get.
Last but not least listeners.
I'm disappointed. Last week I told you guys we didn't get any new questions and I was disappointed and none of you wrote in.
I know y' all listen to the show.
Where's our questions?
So I want to see our inbox ballooning out of control. I want to see it explode with questions.
Write in to the4wordspodcastmail.com or drop a question in the questions submission channel in the Discord so that we can answer your questions on the show because we are going to run out tonight and if you guys don't send in questions, the next week is going to go off the rails in not a fun way again. That email address is theforwardspodcastmail.com alright, our main topic for tonight, Patch 2510 has hit the Rift and this is not nearly as big as the last patch, but it's got some significant stuff.
There is a new game mode. We're going to talk about it after we talk about the main patch changes. Because this podcast is primarily focused on Summoner's Rift.
So let's talk about what changed on Summoner's Rift. This patch I'm going to talk about a really simple change that I think is one of the largest buffs in the patch. And stats show it. Because so far, with three days on the patch, his win rate has spiked up 2%.
Smolder got a massive buff to his Q scaling per stack from point 3 to 4. Which means for every 100 stacks, every Q he does does 10 more damage than it did before.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: That does not sound like a lot. 0.1 per stack. Yeah, you generally end games at 3, 400 stacks.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Yep.
Which means that that is a late game base damage buff of like 30ish.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: And his Q's on the very short cooldown.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah, just to the cue that he's spamming every second and a half.
And that's not hyperbole, that's actually about what the cooldown gets down to. They also buffed the burn damage. It went up by about 25%.
That one, while also meaningful, is less important because that only kicks in late. Whereas, like at 100 stacks, you're still getting 10 damage more than you did before. And 100 stacks is early to mid game.
And then the other thing they buffed, and this one needs a little bit more explanation, they buffed the ratio on his E per stack. It went up by.02, which sounds like nothing.
I realize this doesn't hit like seven times.
It hits more than that.
Smolders E hits five one per hundred stacks times.
So that means at 200 stacks, it's seven hits.
Where each of those hits now scales a little better. With stacks, basically, the more stacks you get, the more everything scales. It's that ability because it scales the number of shots per stack as well as scaling the damage per stack, it just kind of grows exponentially. Every 100 you get, the E suddenly does a lot more damage.
It adds up fast. If you've ever had a smolder in the late game just kind of flap at you and kill you you.
This is why this ability does deceptively high amounts of damage.
So yeah, Smolder's win rate went up 2%. This patch. He's actually Strong.
Just make sure you're building him correctly because he's also really easy to fuck up the build on.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: I mean, yeah, he.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: He's a crit scaler now.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: He's been getting like, he needs crit.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Very small minor buffs. Like, they look small on paper. Like, consistently, I would say.
And I feel like he's a menace in the Summoners rift. Like, anytime I see him, like, I don't have to deal with him directly for quite a while. But when I do look down at 15 minutes, this folder has already got the 225 stacks he needs. And I'm seeing him one shot waves at 15 minutes. Like, it's. It's insane.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Just when you're playing smolder. Build the Essence Reaver into Infinity Edge.
Seriously, that's the build.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: I think you can stall Infinity Edge if you don't want to, because Infinity Edge doesn't scale him as much.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Like, if you're. If you're worried a while back.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: No, no. Like, it's still it. I know it gives him the extra damage, but it's not as potent as just a raw Infinity Edge.
You might want. Like, you mean you move your defenses, so you might want to put something else there. That one is subject.
You want the Essence Reaver first.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: You always want Essence Reaver first. Do not build man immune on him.
The most common build on him is Shojin into rapid fire. After that, it is 2% lower win rate than Infinity Edge into rapid fire.
[00:07:52] Speaker C: I mean, it makes sense.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Build Infinity Edge, then rapid fire. You will.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: You don't need a spirit at all.
[00:07:59] Speaker C: Well, I mean, makes sense is wrong with when you're getting crit scaling and ie gives you. What is it, 40%, 25%? I forget. That's 25% crit, 40 bonus damage.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Both of those scale his Q.
[00:08:16] Speaker C: So I mean, it's obviously, I feel like it's going to be a better item all around. Always be situational, I'm sure. Like, I doubt you would probably go that in a team full of tanks, but I could be wrong.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: No, that's what you do as well.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Because he does the percent bonus damage into there and he shreds.
So the only other thing, like you could go the armor shred, which wouldn't be a bad idea, but it's probably not as much raw damage.
And then if you're worried about people catching you, that's when you go with rapid fire. If you're worried about people who you can't escape from, that's when you go for Shield bow.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Also, I realize I misspoke a little bit earlier. I had said, oh, that gives him like 10 base damage per hundred stacks. That's before the crit scaling. That damage scales with crit as well.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: The.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: The base damage does up, but like you're building crit so it's going to be more.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Well, what I mean is like your. Your stack bonus damage scales with critical.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: So they just raised that baseline by a shitload.
So yeah, build crit. Okay, that's enough about Smolder Pillow. What do you want to talk about first? You got his champion changes.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: I think I'll just talk about Cho' goth first.
So they are trying to make changes to cho' Goth to try to push Sheem out of the mid lane. They've been doing this for I think for a little bit now and they're doing minor changes to try without interrupting his top lane.
So what they did this time is they took the damage on Q and they lowered it by looks like 20 at max rank.
So it was 80 scaling to 320 and now it's 80 scaling to 300.
And the E damage is getting a minor touch up. And you know, we talked about it in the pre show. This is based off three attacks. So you get this on each attack out of three. So at max rank you are now getting it looks like.
Let me make sure I'm reading this right.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Point four. So 1.2.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Yeah. 0.3. It looks like 0.4.
Okay. 0.4 at max rank. Yeah, sorry. There's a bunch of decibels, a bunch of numbers. So 0.4 at max rank percent.
And that's three times. So it was two and a half percent scaling to three and a half percent. Now it's two and a half percent scaling to 3.9%. And that's of the max targets, the target's maximum HP.
So they're just. It's very small. I don't think this is going to do anything to push him out of the mid lane quite yet.
It might incentivize more play and top lane, like into tanks because that's when it's going to be more meaningful.
It doesn't matter going against like a mage or something in the mid lane when they're not building hp. So this just is going to push him to want to go into the beefier opponents in top lane.
It's not solving the problem of what he's got going on mid lane, which is knock up with your Q run at you very Very fast with Shurelyas or whatever it is.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: And silence Ichu three times and Ichu.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
That's not gonna solve the issue there.
I mean, they're trying to take baby steps without ruining him as a whole.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: I mean, the only way they're gonna fix that is to either destroy his AP scaling so he can only play tank or remove Shurelya's from the game.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The other option is the actual change.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: They should do because he's basically the only user of Shurely's in its ability.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Abusive as an abuse case. There's plenty of people that I still see as supports who use sh is.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: It's so infrequent. I just see any support who's building actual support items. I'm just seeing the. The healing ones.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: But like the.
I've done chath since the change.
He feels good. Up top versus tanks.
You are significantly like it. It incentivizes you to max E before.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Q, which is already correct in top lane against any melee champ.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: You can't always do it depending on what you're facing. So like we were facing a.
Oh, what's his name? K' Sante.
And they just knocks me off the wave. So if I can't even get to the wave because I can't do it, then you need to level Q anyways.
And it hurt a little bit, but it's a matter of time before Cho Goth is too tanky to fight.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: So that was a weird game. I don't know that that's representative of.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Much of anything that was. That was a weird game. They focused me for like 10 minutes and then ignored me. And then I just stopped dying because they stopped focusing me and became too tanky for them to kill.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: And I was against a Yorick Mid As Rise. It was weird.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: It was a very weird game.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: All right.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: The. The only other way that they can fix this, like to fix the abuse is to take away the slow on his Q, which I'd be fine with.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: It doesn't need to have a slow when it's also a long duration knock up.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: It's. It's dumb, it's brutal, but it's also like.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: And he has a slow on his E.
All right, Mike, Speaking of weird, talk about Senna getting the same changes she always gets.
It's weird that it's actually been over a year since the last time they did this.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Yep. So they're. They're changing how. How often she gets her souls based on auto attacks again.
This time they're buffing it by almost half. They're going from 8.4 to 14% when you kill a minion, not when a minion dies near you.
So that's a little push to be a little bit more on the AD center side or to like actually grab a couple of souls here and there. Because Senna frequently only used her her shot to do poke to get her passive going. Now you might actually want to kill a minion or two and give the gold off to your. Your teammate. But they're also upping the Crit Chance per 20 stacks by 2% back to.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Where it used to be.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: It's. It's a good change. They're. They're trying to bring her back into the ad scaling builds as opposed to the enchanter AP supports.
And to that end they are knocking off 10% on the AP ratio on her Q for the heel, which good.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Senna should be built as an AD carry.
She should be either an attack speed.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: AD carry or lethality AD carry. I don't care which one is better. Right now she should be building ad. It feels wrong when she's building ap.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: And to be clear, like eventually that just wins you games.
If you don't lose by 35 minutes, Senna just becomes a second AD carry.
And it's impossible to stop if you don't end the game early.
Because she doesn't technically need items as much as she needs souls, she can get 100% crit by one item late game.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: That's why the lethality build is so good on her. Because you just get crit for free from stacking souls. And then you go, oh, I'm at like 70. Let me build an infinity edge with all this lethality. And then you just two shot carries.
Yeah.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: So build more ad. Senna, stop going enchanter, please. Please stop going enchanter. I hate this build.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah, alright, I'm gonna talk about more things you hate.
Support. Fiddlesticks.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yes, I do.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Still exists because this nerf is not enough.
So they made some changes that are intended to be roughly power neutral for jungle, but nerf support for fiddlesticks.
So the Nerf part is they reduced the duration of his fear.
They reduced the damage on his fear, the damage on his empowered fear.
They buffed the AP ratio on the damage. However, that's the part that's supposed to be compensatory for jungler versus support where you don't get as much gold.
And then they also buffed the AP ratio very slightly on his drain.
Again, intended to be to try to keep Jungle power neutral. When they're taking a ton of power baseline out of his fear, they knocked a quarter second off the duration. Like that is meaningful.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:37] Speaker C: It'S.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: It. I don't know if it feels like enough.
Just baseline Fiddles Fear is still one of the scariest things in the game.
Two seconds is a long time.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yep. I have seen support fiddle since this change and he fucking dumpstered.
He was a fucking nightmare to deal with. It was horrible.
I have not seen a jungle fiddle yet.
I hope that when I do, he's on my team because I think it's really strong.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: I also feel like. And I might be wrong number wise, but doesn't Fiddlesticks have the strongest ultimate in the game damage for like, duration One of mf.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: But Fiddlesticks is up there.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Fiddlesticks is one of.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Yeah, that's his base damage. Just on his R alone is what makes him scary as a support. Like, hi, I'm trying to do Dragon, but, oh, here comes the fiddlestick support that's just now level 6 and just did 1200 damage to me.
And he doesn't care that he dies because he's already 0 and 4 for being in the support role.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: So max rank it. So if you're in the full duration of his fear, that is 20 ticks at.
At max rank 87.5 plus 12.5% AP.
That's a lot of damage.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: That's a lot of damage.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: That's a lot of damage. Now that requires.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: That's like 1700 damage.
That's. Yeah, that's like 17, 1800 damage.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: And that's without like no AP. Yeah, no AP. Like that's a lot.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Like I said, I think MF ult, if you just sit in, the entire duration of MF ult is higher. But they're both fucking psycho. They're balanced around the fact that you can just walk out usually.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: But yeah, I mean, go back to the changes again. It's the whole cho goth thing. They're trying to change something to hopefully incentivize playing elsewhere. But if you're not gonna fix what the real problem is, why, if it's. If you're having success playing Fiddlestick support and it's not really getting gutted, like, why would you change? This is incentivizing you to go away from it if you're climbing with it.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: So they did say they don't have a problem with Support Support Fiddlesticks existing or being more popular. They have a problem with him being clearly more Powerful.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: So that's the intention of this change is to tone down support. Fiddlesticks. They're okay with him being a niche support or even just being more popular in support than jungle as long as it's not pure power difference.
So I think that's why it's a light touch.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: It is. It is impossible to tell how strong MF Salt is.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: It's based on her riot.
All right.
How about a champion that's easy to gauge. The power of Pillow. Talk to us about Vi.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: So Vi got some small minimal changes.
And it's just. They're trying to bring her into the jungle a little bit more. That they say that she's. Their words exactly is this has a stale jungle presence.
So they're upping. I'm sorry. They're lowering the minimum damage on her Q. It was 45.
Scaling to 145. And now it's 40 to 160. Or I'm sorry, 120 with a 60% bonus ad ratio. Where it was 80.
And they're buffing the maximum damage. So it was 90 to 290. 160 bonus ad ratio. 160%. And now it's 100 to 300 with 150% bonus ad ratio.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Now that the cool actually buffed what she starts building.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Really? And now the cool cooldown when canceled will be refunded. More responsive. I don't. That's just added in there. I. I'll be honest. I didn't even know it got refunded.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:06] Speaker C: When I like. I've just always never held it, I guess long enough for it to be canceled. I usually just go in or dash away.
So then another change on her is our R is just getting a flat 100 mana cost on all three ranks and the damage is getting nerfed.
So it was 150 scaling to 400 and now it's 150 going to 350. Losing 25 damage on rank 2 and 50 damage on rank 3.
I don't see how this is going to change her stale jungle presence.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: I mean, their stated goal.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Hail of blades and just one shot. Squishies.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Their stated goal was to try and make it so that she plays more as a bruiser and less as an assassin.
What? No.
These changes don't do shit to that.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: Yeah. I don't. I don't. Really. Again, another change that they're trying to make without doing too much. They're afraid to do too much because then someone they're going to get flack for it. So they're just doing very little changes that seem on paper don't make a whole lot of sense.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Well, VI is a very easy jungler for people to play.
So she's got. She's got very good clear.
She's got easy patterns and she's got a nice simple click button alt.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Here. Here's my issue.
These are Riot's words. I'm going to quote Riot here in the patch notes. We'd like to re add some variants in her gameplay without making her strictly weaker in the average case.
Every single one of these changes is a strict Nerf.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: The only non strict Nerf is the maximum damage on Volt Breaker, which is a strict Nerf.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: The moment you start building items because it loses ratio, it is weaker from one item onwards forever than it was before.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah, 10 bonus ad is not equal to 10% bonus ad because you're going to have more than 100 bonus ad. But so it takes two items before this is weaker.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: All right, fair.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: But. But yeah, it's weaker at two items. So like this is technically everything is a Nerf except the mana cost on alt, which also you're a jungler.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: So like I. I hate when Riot is squirrely with their wording. Just say she was too strong. We wanted to nerf her a little bit so she stops one shotting carries quite as easily. I'm fine with that. I have no objections to that being the premise or how they do it. I don't think these changes inherently are problematic at all. I just get really annoyed when they say that they're trying to make her not weaker in the average case and then they literally make her weaker in the average case.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: There is no build path that she plays in which this is not weaker.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Because she also never built Pure Tank. So like if she built Pure Tank, then maybe. But no she doesn't.
[00:25:21] Speaker C: I mean she goes typical.
What is it?
[00:25:25] Speaker B: 80 bruiser.
[00:25:26] Speaker C: 80 bruiser.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: Trinity Force. Sundered Sky.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Sterex Shield item.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Black Cleaver.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Sterak's.
[00:25:33] Speaker C: No.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Or are you thinking of eclipse Hex.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: Plates sometimes Eclipse eclipse into sundered sky and all. Yeah.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: My eclipse into sundered sky. That's 180. That's damage neutral.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Unless you're the boss and you're playing or lethality top.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: True. All right, Mike, we've saved the biggest change for last.
I think we'll all be chiming in at some point. But mage items as a whole got restructured this patch.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: If you play AP Champions you should listen to this part, listeners.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: You should be happy for almost all of those. So we'll start with the easy changes quickly.
Rabadons got 100 gold cheaper. Nashers got a hundred gold cheaper. Brello's got 100 gold cheaper.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Yay.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Those are the simplest and easiest ones.
Next ones. Landry's lost 10 AP.
Good change. It shouldn't have as much AP because it's a burn damage vs tanks scaling.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Damage vs tanks and it's a percent damage amp from its other part of the passive. Yes.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: So like this good change. It means that you're not going to see as many double dot builds if you're on a high AP champions. You're only going to want one of them if you're building ap. So this might change. Like Cassiopeia's build. Who would always build Leandries into the blackfire into Liandries. Maybe not anymore because now Cassiopeia wants more ap.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: She. She still will because she's probably still will because she.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a. It's a good thing for her. But like this is one of those. No longer. You don't need to pair the two together.
The next very simple burn.
Yeah.
Next one's malignant. It gains 5 AP.
Great. Even better as a first item for most cases.
In fact, I think if you were.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Firmly of the belief malignants on anyone whose ult is not an execute or like otherwise very niche malignant should just be your default AP mana item.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Now for most. For most alts, malignance is fantastic. There's a couple people who just There.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Are some specific champions that it sucks.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: You don't use it because you don't utilize the passive of malignants. So eh, you use something else instead.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Serifs Rise Rise would be a perfect example of don't build Malignant.
[00:27:55] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Serifs. They changed how the shield works from a base shield plus current mana to just 18% max mana. This is a huge buff for anybody building Seraphs.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: This is a huge buff for Kassadin. It is a minor buff for other Seraphs users.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Honestly, the reason it is a big.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Buff for Kassadin is because Kassadin can dump his mana in ways that every other serif user cannot.
Kassadin is likely to be low mana to where this change is extremely valuable for him.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Unless you were being killed before you used all of your mana. This is a buff for you because you were more than likely going to be at 3/4 to half mana minimum when you get your shield popped. So this is a buff for most of you.
And now we'll get to what I'm.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Thinking more is like for example, Ryze could not spend all of his mana. He was building it because he scales off mana.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah. He never. He never used it.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Only spends all of her mana if she just lets her ult run.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: But she does.
You should see more anivias. They do that all the time.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: True.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Okay. And now we're into the meaty changes. There's a lot of these.
We'll be quick on this one. Ludens has a slight tooltip change, but also 100 gold cheaper.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Yay.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Basically, it just. It better tells you single target damage.
Lich Bane lost 15 AP.
They slightly changed the recipe.
So now that it has a blasting wand instead of a needlessly large rod.
And because of those changes, it dropped 300 gold.
It's neutral for gold cost, but it also has a better build path now.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: So I think Lich Bane is already a strong item. 100 AP is a lot of AP.
And the Lich Bane proc. If you weave your auto attacks at all. I think a Lich Bane is a good item for you.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Core users of Lich Bane are happy despite losing 15ap because they lost it. 15ap worth of gold cost as well. And they don't have to save up for needlessly large. They come back on 850.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Let's see. Storm surge got a 100 gold cheaper.
Gained 2% move speed. But they took away the gold on Preemptive Knockdown and the move speed on Squall.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: You know.
Oh. Oh. Well. I think this is a good niche for Storm Surge.
It still has. It still has the explosion.
It still has. You're still getting move speed. It's still a same ap. It's a good item for anyone who is building it. Now you're just not getting your free gold and you're not getting the extra bonus move speed.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: And for context, that gold only happened if you overkilled someone so hard that you didn't get the damage out of Storm Surge in the first place.
In games where I was playing burst champs like Annie and was really fed, it might have equated to 120 gold.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Frankly, the hundred gold cheaper is worth it.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Plus. Plus you got to move speed buff baseline, which I think is just worth it.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: That was where I was going with that is you're saving the gold up front instead of having to reacquire it after you build the item.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: It's just a Good change.
Go to Horizon Focus next.
This is another really good one.
It's gaining 35 AP. Going from 75 to 110. And they're completely changing what it is that hypershot damage amp. The. The thing where you either had to do extra range shots or get some CC in there to get a damage up that's just gone have more ap.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Hypershot does still exist, but it's purely for vision now.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
The gold cost went up by 200, gaining 35 AP. It's well worth it.
And the. The recipe is changing to a double fiendish and a code and a double fiendish codex and a blasting wand.
It's a better thing.
You're barely changing. You're going from an abtome to a blasting wand.
So slightly more, but you're gaining a crap ton of ap.
Crap ton of ap.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Good change.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: It's now, I think tied for second highest AP in the game behind death Cap.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: I think you might be right along with.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: I think 115 is the banshee's and Zhonya's threshold.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: What's the one that gives you crit on low health?
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Shadow Flame.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Shadow Flame. That might be one for two as well.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: We have the power of the Internet. Talk about the next one. I'll look it up.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Okay.
Rocket belt. Rocket belt's getting a bunch of changes. It's getting 10 AP, losing 50 health, gaining 5 ability haste.
The recipe's changing a little bit.
Still an alternator. Still a fiendish fiendish codex now instead of a Kindle gem plus a ruby codex or ruby crystal.
It's a decent path and it's 50 gold more.
I think 10 more AP plus 5 more ability haste is worth losing 50 health and making it 50 more gold.
Most people care more about the AP and the haste than they do about the health when they get this.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: I've. I've been building this on Annie. A to gap close so I can tibbers people and B, to break banshees so I can tibbers people.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: It's a good item.
[00:33:56] Speaker C: Does this still give the movement speed after use or is that like nothing's.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Gonna change on that's Given that this.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: Year, I'll say if it.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: If it hasn't. Given that nothing else has been changed about the item.
There's a little tooltip that says items may now be manually cast with a click to confirm. Which I think that's a UI thing. It's not something I know about.
So.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it does not give any movement speed anymore.
[00:34:22] Speaker C: Okay. That must have been what it was. A mythic.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Next item. Which. This might be my favorite change out of everything because it gives more options to more people.
Script Bloom gained 15 AP lost 5% on the ratio for its heal.
They slightly shifted its recipe and it costs 150 gold more.
This is worth it. This is worth it. Now you have a choice between what you want. Now that the AP is within a close group, it still has the exact same magic pen that it had before the percent pen. So it's not as powerful as a Void Staff.
But now it has enough AP for it to be worth it for supportive mages to want to build CRYP Bloom. If you're not a burst mage, if you're not an assassin who builds AP CR Bloom's a good option in team fights.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: And even if you are, if they're not building heavy Mr. To where you need the extra damage of void staff 20 ability. Haste is a lot.
And you get a heal proc like I build this on Annie sometimes if I'm into squishier teams.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: It's. It's a.
It's a more potent item for more people. More than just three champions are going to want to build critbloom now.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a real choice.
It is not right or wrong to go either way.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: And the next thing that I think is another good change.
Blood Letters Curse is just getting a strong buff.
It's gaining 5 AP. It's gaining 50 health and the magic Shred per stack is going up. Even though the max shred is unchanged.
[00:36:18] Speaker B: It now takes four magic damage instances to cap at 30% instead of six.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: It's great.
Puffs to Blood Letters Curse are good.
If you were getting it before. You're definitely getting it now.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: All right.
That's it for the mage items.
There's one more thing I didn't notice on here when I was scrolling through before that I want to mention.
Unsealed Spellbook got buffed tremendously.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: We were talking about that.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Please consider it as a rune if you're someone who could use it.
It's now a four minute cooldown for the recharge of your unsealed spellbook. And you can when you are at maximum swaps, you've swapped around spells a lot. Gets down to a 1 1/2 minute recharge cooldown.
You can use summoner spells all the goddamn time with Unsealed Spellbook. It's kind of awesome.
[00:37:16] Speaker C: I've always loved when I would come across the build that used unsealed spellbook. I always enjoyed it as a rune. It was always fun to like be like top lane. We'll say like Scion or something and you're running like Barry or Heal and Ghost and you get run down and smite. It was just always fun to have.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: This is super cool for champions up top lane and and for supports to be like, I'm gonna start the game with ignite. We're gonna go in, we're gonna fight. Level one. We're gonna fight. Oh no, I lost it. Better switch it to TP and I can get back in lane now.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Or other way around. You take TP and then you swap to other spells to fight people in the mid game. If you're a like spike at six champion, like let's say you're playing K' sante. You take unsealed spell book, you go, oh, I'm level six. Let me swap to Ignite. I'm gonna kill your ass now. And then I still have TP to get back afterwards or to go bot and kill someone there.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: I could see this coming into a lot of top laner builds.
I see it's going to be working. I might mess around with it tonight.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: A lot of support builds too, especially the roaming supports. Bard. Yes, number one.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: I think Bard loves this shit. Supports in general love this shit because they can swap to smite.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: And actress my.
It's never going to be the powerful smite. It'll still be the 600 smite, but no, it scales. It scales.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't remember what off, but it scales. It's not locked to the 600.
Let me look.
Hold one moment. I did spell book.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: That's. That's news to me.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Its damage is based on the number of swaps.
At two swaps it goes up to 900. At three swaps it is a full 1200 smite.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Well, okay.
[00:39:04] Speaker C: Probably have your smite finished before the enemy jungler.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: You need. No, you need to be. You need to be swapping like on cooldown and it's. Is that swaps to smite or is that just swaps in general?
[00:39:16] Speaker B: It just says based on number of swaps. I think it swaps in general.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Okay, so like you can't do your base one for 8ish minutes. If you're doing it on cooldown for the first two swaps.
You're not going to be swapping on Cooldown. Most likely you could. You could have 1200 gold smite before a jungler.
If you are doing this on cooldown.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Your first swap is after five minutes and then after that it is the buffed change. Now it's every four minutes. So at nine minutes and then it's actually gonna be about 12 and a half minutes because you've swapped twice at that point.
So at about 12 and a half minutes you can have.
You've now swapped three times. If your third swap is 2 smite, you get the full strength smite.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: That's.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: It's kind of spellbook is fun.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: That's second dragon.
[00:40:16] Speaker C: That's gonna be insane.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: Or rift herald.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: All right. I think I'm gonna be playing with some unsealed spellbook tonight.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: It's a fun rune regardless of its power level. I think with these changes it's actually like low key op and people aren't figuring it out yet that I've not been seeing. Unsurprise.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: You have to actually utilize your.
Your summoners pretty much on cooldown. You need to constantly be using them actively, not trying to save them, not trying to hold them, which is one of the things that a lot of people don't do.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: You know, you know who loves this shit?
Zoe.
Because she already gets extra benefits when she casts a summoner spell through her w and now she can just do it even more often.
I've also, I always liked unsealed spellbook on Veigar because he just doesn't really need a keystone and that lets him grab defensive stuff in the mid game.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: I mean it just opens up a whole new one for everyone. It's a great thing.
[00:41:17] Speaker C: Whenever I would use it, like if I was in top lane or something and it had to the came to the point where I needed to use my summoner to get a new one. I would just randomly throw my ignite on my opponent and be like, here, take 300 damage.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: All right. Yeah.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: So we're gonna briefly talk about the new game mode Brawl that came out. This patch pillow and I have both played it. We have opinions. Let me explain what it is first. So this is an Aram like game mode.
As in it is one lane and it's five on five fighting in the one lane.
However, unlike Aram, there are no turrets. There is no nexus to kill.
Instead, each team has a team health bar.
Killing opponents reduces health.
Enemy minions going all the way to the enemy's edge of the map deals damage to their health.
And until late game killing enemy minions deals damage to their health.
So this is intended to be a fast game mode where you just fight and fight and fight and then a team Wins it's Team Deathmatch.
In addition to the one lane which has bushes on either side, it's. It's a lane just with no turrets.
There is a jungle. There's two red buffs and two blue buffs and then two other camps in kind of the middle on the sides of the lane.
And it's YA Brawl.
You fight a lot. That's all you do. It's just you fight people.
Pillow, before I go into my tirade, what are your thoughts on Brawl?
[00:43:07] Speaker C: I'm enjoying it for the simple fact is like as we're gonna get into ear to, there is definitely OP strategies to it and there's stuff that can be abused.
But what I enjoy most about this game mode is not only like the Team Deathmatch format of it is, but it's also being able to just pick a champion and do any ridiculous build you want to.
And there's really no negative side effects to it because you're gonna be max build at, you know, eight minutes in this game and you're gonna be able to try a bunch of different stuff. I think it's really fun to experiment because it is going to give you practice for stuff like in a ranked game that you could potentially bring over there with the hectic with the team fight. It's not going to be exactly the same obviously, but it gives you a good chance and it gives new players a good chance to practice a champion.
I mean it's just a really a sandbox that you can go into and try anything out. It's a practice tool essentially where you could practice these team fighting.
So I mean last night I was doing some ridiculous stuff. Like I went in and did like AP Thresh because it's, it's ridiculously strong and fun. I've done other ridiculous builds.
It's unique. I like the, the it's in Bandle City area. I really like that they added the like the portals in the trees and stuff. I think it's really fun but there are negative sides of it. And Jax, I'll let you take take over on that one.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: All right. So one of the things they added to Brawl is a buff debuff called On Fire.
If one player kills four enemy champions in a row without dying, not like a quadra kill, but like just they have not died. They're on a four kill streak.
They become on fire.
Someone who is on fire gains increased damage dealt and bonus movement speed, but takes increased damage and has a kill bounty in most champion cases. I actually don't think this is a problem. It encourages oh, we gotta kill the king of the enemy team, basically kind of gameplay which is good for Team Deathmatch.
The problem is because this is League of Legends and there is a class of champions that if you give them a whole bunch of extra upfront damage, they become oppressive and that's Assassins.
If someone like akali, Fiz, Zed, etc.
Gets this on fire buff, they become oppressive.
This is not hyperbole, but when I played a game of Brawl as yone, someone who theoretically is dangerous with the on fire buff, the enemy Akali got on fire and hit a shuriken flip and a Q on me and killed me instantly from full health.
Instantly from full.
This buff is fucking stupid and it ruins the fun of the game for me when Assassins are able to hundred to zero people with literally half their kit because then she just hits shroud and no one could kill her back. You know, the whole point of you also take increased damage that you can be killed in return didn't exist.
That's the main thing I hate about Brawl. Other than that, I think it's fine. It's not my cup of tea. Like this is not a game mode for me period.
But if you're looking for Team Deathmatch and you don't mind that Assassins are bullshit, go play Team Deathmatch. Brawl's fun for that.
All right, we're going to finish out the questions that we got from OR carry on last week.
By the way, listeners, reminder, write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com or drop questions in the question submission channel of the Discord.
We need questions. We're running out tonight, so Orcarion writes question three. My biggest problem is map awareness. I frequently annoy my jungler by not moving appropriately to support them in the river or reacting to them positioning for a gank. It's not on purpose. I'm not choosing to farm or be safe over helping. I just don't look at the minimap enough and I'm not aware of what's going on when that happens. The best outcome is that I never receive another gank. And the worst is that they tilt and quit, which feels terrible. It seems like you need to be looking at the minimap anytime you're not trading or positioning to trade. But I find it hard to take my focus off the immediate surroundings. Do you have any advice for fixing that issue?
[00:47:49] Speaker A: I have a good piece of advice for you.
Do you drive?
One of the things that you do as you drive is you Constantly, or at least very occasionally. Pop. Take a look at your mirrors. Take a look at your side mirrors.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: Or you should please, for the love of God, tell me that you're a driver who checks their mirrors every few seconds.
[00:48:11] Speaker A: That's the same.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: If you're not, you should be. Literally, that could save your life.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: That's.
That's the, that's the thing you have to train yourself to. Every couple seconds, take a peep at. That doesn't have to be every couple. You can do every 10, every 15. But like, you should be taking a look. A good way of doing this. Set an alarm or like a timer that goes off every 15, 10, 30 seconds. You can drain yourself long and then short every time that thing goes off. Take a look at the map.
[00:48:45] Speaker C: Yeah, like, I've heard you guys before I even joined.
This topic comes up quite a bit on map awareness.
And I don't know if you've already said it.
Metronome.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:49:00] Speaker C: That's what I've always. That's what I did personally to get used to looking down in the corner of my screen. Make your mini map bigger.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: The other thing is, like, know the time.
So, like, you need to know when things happen, when objectives happen, when spawns happen. You should have a good rough idea on when things are spawning. You're told the game will tell you exactly how long away things are.
When you hit tab, look for those. You should be checking to see if your jungler wants to fight around objective timers.
These are things you need to be looking at.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: Yup.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Now, that doesn't. That doesn't always mean it's a good idea to go to them.
That's a whole different story.
But even if it's just to know when things are going, practice that, like this is. If you can. If you can drive, you can do this.
[00:50:06] Speaker C: One other thing real quick before we move on is there was one other thing that I do and I catch myself doing is you watch your favorite streamer or your favorite person, you know, playing league, a video or vodka recording, and you'll probably always catch yourself looking at their mini map, trying to see what's going on.
So just, just do, like get in the habit of do. When you're watching your favorite streamer or your favorite, you know, content creator, look at their mini map and that'll just. That will translate to your games because you'll just. You'll just get used to it. That's something else I've done.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: Yep.
All right, question four.
Also, my expectation is that if I take Mid tower. Then the bot lane will move mid to farm and I'll move bot and split push, which then lets me get back into the game pretty effectively. But that doesn't always happen. Is there something I should do to get the bot lane to move mid?
Uh, you can't make the idiots do what they're supposed to if they don't move. Just keep farming mid.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: Honestly, you're in a better place if you're stuck mid. Mid lane is the best lane to be in. If they don't want to take it, keep it.
[00:51:18] Speaker C: I mean, you could also wait for them to back and just go bot lane.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: That's also a thing you can do.
[00:51:23] Speaker C: You just.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Or you can shove with them and take a tower, do a gank.
So like that. That's the other thing. Like if you've taken it, you now have all the power to roam in the world.
So look for gank timings, look for good points to push a tower.
If you're really unhurried, you can just keep farming.
You got options.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: Yep.
Alright, so we have a couple questions from the Discord to round out this episode.
The build path to Rod of Ages was recently changed and it's popped up a lot more on champions like Ahri. Is it actually better than it used to be or is just. Is it just getting built more because of the more forgiving component costs?
In the case of Ahri, it's both.
It's getting built more because of the more forgiving component costs. And also Ahri was just OP with like AP Bruiser builds. They rebalanced Ahri a couple patches ago to deter this somewhat. It's wrong on her now. Go back to building malignance.
[00:52:34] Speaker C: Didn't they also just change Rod of Ages too?
[00:52:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: Nerfed Rod of Ages since then.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah. This is. This is. This is the downside of us having checked this.
We've been a bit lax in answering this one. It's not the same as it was. The Rod of Ages is weaker, so this was still being built on people even after the RE changes. So they even nerfed Rod of Ages and Rite of Ages. There are definitely people who want Rite of Ages.
Ahri's not one of them, but it has a lot more for Gamma. Gamma component costs. So it's. It's a healthier build for more champions.
But you should be taking your first item pretty much.
Almost all cases you have a first item for your character.
There are very few people who have options on that first item.
Unless the game is very different.
As in like you're not seeing an enemy mage or anything. It's a full tank game or a full ad carry game.
Those are like out of normal games. That's when you should be shifting from a static build that you have at least your start item.
[00:53:55] Speaker B: Yep.
All right. Our last question comes from Cinder who writes what are some tips versus Jungle Yi? They seem to snowball out of control.
[00:54:07] Speaker C: So yeah, biggest advice on Yi can be he is not susceptible to slows because of his ult. The only thing to stop a Master Yi is hard cc.
And because you can't really slow him and peel them unless you have a hard cc. And the problem with this is is if you don't have a click and stun like say Leona, he can dodge it with Alpha strike. So you have to time your CC after his Alpha strike or while it's on cooldown and it's very hard to judge.
The best advice to stop a I'm assuming that you're in the jungle versus A Yi is to try to know where he is and if you're. If he's ahead you can avoid him and you can try to track him in the jungle and try to get stronger yourself or play a champion that does have the CC to where you can kind of hand him and manage him better. But there's just really no good answer to a Yi. I mean he is a low elo terror.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: The good answer to Yi is in champion select. It's Ramus.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
But in general just reliable cc.
So something that's a skill shot. He can dodge with Alpha strike. He can sidestep because he runs really fast.
But he dies if you point and click CC him.
[00:55:46] Speaker C: Fear is a pretty strong into him.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Incredibly heavy burst is good at the Yi.
There are almost no champions who can out fight the Yi 1v1 as just an auto attacker. There's very few. Kayle's one of the few.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Kayle Tryndamere, maybe Ajax.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: Most of those have some sort of trick that they use to help them fight that win. Yee's really hard to 1v1 when he gets going.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:56:16] Speaker A: So the best way to beat him is to blow him the up.
And usually this is a team effort now. So the best, the best way to face Yi if you're it's an out of control Yi group get two or three of you at the same time.
He'll blow Alpha strike. One of you will CC him after Alpha strike and then try and time your cc. Keep him in that that stun zone, that root zone. Don't let him move once he's stopped.
[00:56:45] Speaker C: Yeah. The only counter to Yi is CC and Teemo.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: Teemo is actually the single best thing against Yi in the game. I had forgotten about that. His blind is essentially permanent as long as he doesn't alpha strike it. You wait until after he alpha strikes, you blind him, he can't get you.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: It's like three seconds of cc. It's not reduced by tenacity. And if you have enough ability haste, you can then just do it again when it expires.
[00:57:13] Speaker A: And then his his only course of damage against you is his alpha strike and you've been Q auto ing him, maybe using mushrooms against him the entire time. He has got nothing on you then.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
All right, that's it. You guys don't get a Lucian top this week because you didn't write in any new questions. But we have exhausted our question pool. So again, listeners, Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com I hope to see so many questions in that inbox that we could have done an all questions episode next week and still not gotten through them all.
That's the challenge. If you guys can achieve that, you'll get Happy Jacks next week.
Okay?
Okay.
I've been Jack Sohman for Mike and many names for Pillow pet. Have a great night.
[00:58:05] Speaker C: Good night.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
Thanks for listening to the four Wards Podcast.
[00:58:13] Speaker C: If you want to support the show.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: Directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast.
[00:58:22] Speaker C: And of course, send your questions to.
[00:58:24] Speaker A: The Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
