The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 486: You're Pumping Him Full of Light

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. [00:00:13] Speaker A: And you're listening to the Four Wards. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 486 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Howdy, howdy, howdy. [00:00:53] Speaker B: And we've got Codex Ninja. [00:00:55] Speaker C: Hi. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Apparently you're just gonna make noise today. How are they supposed to know what your voice sounds like if you're just making a noise? [00:01:03] Speaker C: Oh, I don't know. [00:01:04] Speaker A: That was a high. [00:01:05] Speaker C: I felt it was a high. [00:01:09] Speaker A: It cut out a little bit, so it was a little different. But I'm here. I am. [00:01:19] Speaker B: All right, guys, we are, we are the Forwards podcast. We have a discord. Come join the Discord. The link is in the episode description. Come hang out, come chat, come ask questions. We have a question submission channel. Post pictures of your pets in the Critters channel. It's a fun time. We look forward to seeing you there. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman, where there's probably going to be like one stream this week and then I'm gonna be gone for a week. So I'll see you guys in like 2 weeks on twitch tv jackso mike can be found at twitch tv mikeofmanynames is it still Night Reign? [00:02:01] Speaker A: That game still holds my soul. Still playing some league, but if I can play Night Rain, I'm enjoying it. [00:02:08] Speaker B: There you go. Alright, and shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robegon for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. Thank you guys. Now if you want a shout out or just to support the podcast in general, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Or just us bullshitting about anime for five minutes. And $10 a month will get you that exclusive feed and we'll shout out your name during the intro of every episode. Last but not least, listeners, none of you wrote in any questions this week. We didn't have any new ones in the Discord. We didn't have any new ones in the email and I'm disappointed. Thankfully we're eating well because you guys Wrote in questions on previous weeks. So we still have questions. But I don't want to come back from my vacation next week and be told by these guys. Yeah, the listeners didn't write in any questions. I expect to come back from mid season invitational with them going, oh my God, Jax, we have so many questions. We have to do a full all questions episode. [00:03:25] Speaker A: Send us so many. We have to do one before he comes back. [00:03:29] Speaker B: No, you're doing patch next week. You don't get a choice. [00:03:32] Speaker C: Dude, if we get like 10, like maybe I'll stream. I'm just saying we Gotta get like 10 though. I want like 10 questions. [00:03:42] Speaker B: There you go. [00:03:43] Speaker A: This was how they forced me to stream. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, in your case it was people joining the discord. [00:03:49] Speaker C: Yes. [00:03:52] Speaker B: So yeah. Listeners, please Write in the 4wardspodcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel. Send so many that Codex Ninja has to stream War Thunder. All right, we actually have two smaller topics for you tonight. And our first one kinda ties into topics we've talked about recently. Sometimes you're just gonna have games that feel or are completely lost. Like there's nothing you can do to actually turn around the win loss state of the game. But you can't get out of the game. Either your team won't surrender or you don't want to surrender. In the off chance, the enemy throws really hard. Because even the most dire games sometimes just get thrown. I have lost games from a 10,000 gold lead before. [00:04:44] Speaker A: I do not surrender ranked games. It is not a thing I do. [00:04:47] Speaker C: Yep. [00:04:49] Speaker B: I pretty much will only do it when people are actively trolling. Like if the game is going poorly, it is never getting surrendered. If the dude is hard inting, yeah, I'm gonna surrender. So when you have these lost games where it's going poorly, not necessarily the hard ending, we're going to talk a little bit about how to keep your enjoyment and mental up during those games and maybe in some edge cases be the difference that leads to a turnaround when your enemies make a mistake. Because let's be clear, if the game is in a state where you think it's lost, it requires your enemies to make a major mistake for you to come back. [00:05:34] Speaker A: So there's a, there's a great example that happened to us today. We had Codex and I, a couple buddies, we're playing a game earlier and our top laner just disappears. Leaves it, I don't know, 15 minutes or so. Yeah, like 15 after dying four times, five times. So he fed the top lane enemy, top laner and then AFK mid lane and then gave him another kill because he afk mid lane and then never came back. And that became. Well, we like playing with our random here, and the lanes are doing pretty good for us. [00:06:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:15] Speaker A: But it's a 4v5. We're gonna lose. [00:06:18] Speaker C: Yep. [00:06:19] Speaker A: Because they're not incompetent. How. How do we have fun here? [00:06:24] Speaker C: Yep. And what I was kind of having was noticing was that. Yeet. One of the Discord people had hopped onto the Discord, and he was making, like, this incredibly, like, complicated backstory as to why the guy afk'd. He had this huge thing about napkins and how he had, like, spilled coffee on his keyboard and he had to go get napkins. Then it went into this long one where he had to go to the store and get napkins for his keyboard. And, like, I don't know. Like, I know that that seems simple and like. Like, dumb, but in a weird way, like, it changes, like, the overall feeling of, like, how we as a team, like, it changes the tone. Right. Where we're just sitting there kind of laughing about this hilarious, crazy story. Whereas, like, I don't know, like, you could also be all uptight. Darius was so stupid. There is also so stupid. He left. Right. [00:07:25] Speaker A: And I don't know, like, I. I was. I was mad he left because if he didn't. If. If he had just stayed there as a body. We won that game. [00:07:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:33] Speaker A: We were just. I destroyed the enemy mid laner. [00:07:36] Speaker C: Yep. [00:07:36] Speaker A: And we were able to win out fights. 4v5. [00:07:39] Speaker C: Yep. [00:07:40] Speaker A: And if we just had someone there to absorb a second, two seconds worth of extra damage. [00:07:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:46] Speaker A: We win those. We win those team fights. We win that game. [00:07:49] Speaker C: Yep. [00:07:50] Speaker A: So I was kind of mad. And then. And then we had our. Our Discord member pop in telling us the story, and it. It changed it from kind of grumpily winning to. We were giggling as the game is ending because he had this. You know what? Or maybe he's. He's just. He gotta go somewhere so he's run on it. He had to leave. He had to go out and grab more. Drive somewhere and go grab something. And it became so different. [00:08:18] Speaker C: Yeah. So for me, personally, change the mood when I'm. When I fight 4v5s. So someone. Someone is legitimately AFK for longer than 60 seconds. Right. Because, like, every once in a while, your Internet just does a fritz. Right. And that sucks, especially when it's in the. In a team fight. But, like, if they're. They're, like, actually gone Especially like in lane or something like that. What I have a tendency to do is that I really put it on things that I'm trying to get better at at league. So this, this, this game is just like fundamentally it is just lost. So I will go hard on my mechanics. Can I actually trade into. Into a 1v4? Can I actually. Can I actually kill someone in that? Because. And I know that sounds like oh my God, Megan, you're inting. [00:09:12] Speaker B: But. [00:09:12] Speaker C: But it's not. It's how long can I stay alive in. In something that is absolutely like I'm actually trying to limit test something as opposed to like it's not me running down mid into four people. It's more of like how. How far can I be on the outskirts still auto attacking one person but still like able to do it? I don't know. [00:09:36] Speaker A: And you're now in a different scenario. You're not pushing the game to. We need to win the game you're at. Well, I'm pretty sure this is a lost game. Let's see what I can do. Let's see if I can't push myself to be a little bit better. Because limit testing often looks like inting. [00:09:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it's really hard to figure out the difference. The one thing. [00:09:59] Speaker B: I was gonna say, I'm not gonna lie. I've been playing a lot of Annie lately and what I've done in some of the giga lost games, it's literally just wait in a bush for a squishy guy to walk up and just trade my life for his. Make sure that we're gonna lose. But I'm gonna make sure that that guy does not get to get an unkillable demon king because he doesn't fucking deserve it. He got fed by morons. [00:10:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's. Generally speaking. The one thing I always want to do is I like denying people unkillable demon king. But like this, this game, as it turned out, she did limit testing. My goal was make sure the TF has a bad time. [00:10:35] Speaker C: Yep. [00:10:36] Speaker A: My. My lane opponent lost hard. I wanted to make sure he never recovered. [00:10:40] Speaker C: Yep. [00:10:40] Speaker A: So I did as much as I could to follow him around and kill him. [00:10:44] Speaker C: Yep. So I am curious because we were talking about it a little bit in the pre show like at. What do you actually consider is a quote unquote a lost game? [00:11:01] Speaker A: There are two things that I consider a lost game. There is. We have officially speaking lost a person that is not coming back. We've noticed it's been more than five minutes and the enemy is not making critical mistakes. They are consistently doing the right thing. They are consistently keeping themselves in relative groups. They're not going off alone doing solo missions, or if they are doing solo missions, they're doing them as like smart split, pushing to keep us away from them, pulling us side to side. So if they're playing us and we are down a person, I think that's a lost game. The second thing is, if you heavily outscale us with champions and we are down what I would think is about 8 to 10k gold, I think that's a lost game. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I've had these games where neither team drafts much cc, but one team has Kayle and Master Yi and then Kayle and Master Yi are both five zero by like five minutes. And it's like, oh, this is hopeless. [00:12:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:12:20] Speaker B: Because it's like you don't have the tools to stop them. They weren't drafted and they got a lead early on. The hyperscalers. [00:12:30] Speaker A: If you see a smolder with five kills before 10 minutes, like things like. [00:12:36] Speaker C: This against Amalzahar, who's fed him against Amelzahar, who's plenty of minions, can't stop pressing the W button. [00:12:46] Speaker A: God, I love that game. [00:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing for me when a game is lost is when we are behind and my whole team is visibly tilting. [00:12:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:12:58] Speaker B: If. If they don't need to have rage quit. But like when they are bickering amongst themselves, spam pinging each other, following the jungler around, trying to steal the jungler's farm. [00:13:10] Speaker A: I did miss one. You're right. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Making stupid plays where they're like turret diving when they have no business being near the enem enemy turret repeatedly. [00:13:19] Speaker A: You. You jumped on one. I think is actually probably my worst one. Which is one person has decided this game and they're going to ruin it for everyone else. [00:13:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:30] Speaker A: They're following you around. They're intentionally taking cs. They're walking under tower to do things. If one person has said this game, that is. No, I'm. I'm considering it a lost game. Because they're going to do everything in their power to make sure you lose. [00:13:45] Speaker C: Yep. [00:13:45] Speaker B: And it is because someone trying to make sure their team loses is way more powerful than people trying to win. [00:13:52] Speaker C: So I have a. [00:13:53] Speaker B: You can have the four best players in the lobby. All four on the same team, and then one guy trying to lose. And that team will. Will lose 99% of the time. [00:14:02] Speaker A: And it's way more powerful than having a lost teammate if that person just Left the game, I'd be happier. [00:14:07] Speaker C: Yep. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Yep. [00:14:10] Speaker C: So it's interesting because I have chat off so I don't actually see bickering or anything like that. But what I do see is what I call like kissing your tower. Well, they'll go up, they'll walk to tower for. For just a sec and then they walk back into lane. So like they obviously are typing. Right. [00:14:29] Speaker A: So they walked away to type. [00:14:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they walked. They walked away, they said their piece and then they walk back to lane. It's just like, okay, bro. [00:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah. The more your team is typing, the more likely you are to lose. [00:14:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Because they aren't. They aren't thinking about the game. They're just thinking about how mad they are. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And when. When you've hit that point, when you've hit the. The person who's intentionally trying to ruin your game, that is the hardest one to try and have fun in because they are now not just losing the game, they're gonna hold you hostage too. They're going to not let you surrender that game. [00:15:08] Speaker B: Yep. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Nine times out of ten. [00:15:12] Speaker B: And they invariably have a duo who will vote no. So you can't even four to one out vote them. [00:15:17] Speaker A: So. Yeah, your. Your new goal becomes find something, anything. Maybe it's. How well can I CC with this person messing with me me? What can I do to make them distract someone else? [00:15:33] Speaker B: Maybe annoying can I be? [00:15:35] Speaker A: How much can I annoy the person who's been intentionally feeding? Because you're not that that's no longer a winnable game. They're now intentionally killing that game. You've already reported them for feeding. It's obvious when the replays go through. Oh no. Yeah. This is hard ending. [00:15:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:59] Speaker B: So what do you do when someone's doing that? You're locked in there. How do you keep your mental up so you can keep playing as opposed to do you just. Is that a forced. You must take a break now because you had a game like that almost all the time. [00:16:14] Speaker A: Yes. But there's a couple things that are like if you can find one other person to have fun with in the lobby, I think you can salvage it. [00:16:24] Speaker C: So I'm a weirdo. I actually enjoy like morale manipulating people a little bit. So like I fundament. [00:16:35] Speaker B: That's funny since you play with chat disabled. [00:16:37] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I don't need no chat to like influence people. So for example, what I'll do is I really enjoy because one of the things that happens a lot when people are overwhelmingly winning, they get really sloppy and fuck dude, even I do this. Like, they get hella sloppy, and they're just like, oh, I can just stump you forever. What they don't realize is that as the game goes on, even if you. You were.06 at 12 minutes. Right. And they were 5,000 gold ahead of you, what they don't understand is that if you consistently are just following them in, money, like, being 5,000 gold up at 35 minutes doesn't really matter as much like it does. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but it also kind of doesn't because, like, percentage wise, you were, you know, two times what you were in lane. You were twice as big, whereas now you're like, 10% as big. Right. [00:17:46] Speaker A: So, like, you're exaggerating that a little. You're under exaggerating that a little bit. Like, 5. 5,000 gold is an item and a half ahead. That's usually an insurmountable loss. [00:17:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Well, okay, so 5,000 gold for one. [00:17:59] Speaker C: For one person. For one person, especially a carry, who doesn't usually have the tools. Like, dude, if you just die to carry, if four people die of a carry, they die. End of story. They do not have the tools to be able to survive that. [00:18:16] Speaker A: That's not what we do. We've seen some. We've seen some plays, but it's real hard. [00:18:20] Speaker C: It's real hard. You. And I'm not saying that there isn't situations, and I'm not saying there is an outplay, but then you actually have to just be good. Like, as opposed to just, like, I win because I guess what, I have an item lead because I got six kills by 12 minutes. Right. And again, I am saying 5,000 and not three, but, like, I am trying to get at, like, as time goes on, gold. The price of gold goes down. The value of gold goes down. That's why they. They've recently upped it so that, like, it actually kind of scales with the game. Right. [00:18:54] Speaker A: So one. I guess. I guess the thing is, is if the game continues to stretch out for another 10 minutes after you've said that it's an impossible win game, you have a chance. [00:19:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:19:06] Speaker A: It's not as big, but you have a chance. For every five minutes that game keeps going, your chances improve. [00:19:13] Speaker C: Yep. [00:19:14] Speaker A: As long as you don't have a complete lever, most of the time, you have a very good chance. [00:19:20] Speaker C: So usually I wander around with like, two, like, like a mechanical goal and like, like a CS goal. Like something that's just passive income. I would say that. That it's It's a lot easier to handle like the quote unquote unwinnable games when you're. When I'm focusing on is my mechanics. Am I playing it really as well as I can? Am I representing myself as well as I can on the Rift, right? And then can I, you know, at least find my way to that? You know what? You got all of this stuff, but guess what? You didn't get as much CS as I did. Like, you know, can, can I at least, you know, take them down a notch? But anyway, sorry, I, I did want to like come back to morale manipulating Anytime that you dogpile some big 15 and, and, and two Darius with all five people and finally manage to kill him. Dude, you got a fist bump that because we just fucking killed the 15 and 2 Darius who's like plowed his ass through top and I don't care if the support took the kill. Doesn't fucking matter. What matters is that we killed that brother and that we did it together. And then everybody's like, yeah, we got him. Y' all are just stupid people. [00:20:37] Speaker A: But we got, we got Darius rule. There's an exception to this rule and it's Darius brother Draven. If you take that kill from Draven, he's gonna rage more and run away. [00:20:48] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Well, this is why I play adc. So I don't have a Draven. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Yes and no. Because if the Draven is super behind because the game is going poorly, there's not gold for him to get on a cash in. He shouldn't freak out nearly as bad. [00:21:00] Speaker C: But it is Draven. [00:21:02] Speaker B: There's a big difference between I had 50 stacks and didn't get the kill. Yes. But in Draven Mental, there's a big difference between I had 50 stacks and didn't get the kill. I'm a little annoyed. And I had 300 stacks and didn't get the kill. You're actually trolling you. I'm now going to it. [00:21:19] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:21:22] Speaker B: It doesn't matter that the second response is still completely wrong. That's how Dravens think. Alright. So related to this, but slightly different. Sometimes you get those lobbies where people are bringing in baggage from previous games. People are upset or just you're trying to get into a match and it keeps getting dodged at the last pick over and over. And you've been in queue for 15 minutes and haven't gotten into a game yet. [00:21:58] Speaker C: Oh my God. [00:21:59] Speaker B: And the other people in your lobby are having the same experience. They're saying. So you see messages in the lobby chat like, God, can we just actually get a game? [00:22:11] Speaker A: If you recognize a name consistently, well. [00:22:16] Speaker B: In ranked, you want to. [00:22:17] Speaker A: In rank, you want to. [00:22:20] Speaker B: What should you do in this circumstance? [00:22:24] Speaker C: So I'm gonna throw out a spicy take. I do not think that you, Unless you absolutely detest the champion that was selected in the previous queue, I do not think that you should try and like, like, snipe ban them. Now. That being said, if I see a yumi in that and then I the Q pop. Yeah, you bet. Like, nah, that champion. I hate that champion. [00:22:48] Speaker B: I think it's more people who are good at yumi and are maining yumi are exponentially worse on other champions than any other champion. [00:22:57] Speaker C: Yep. It teaches you the wrong things. It's actually kind of the sad part. [00:23:03] Speaker A: So a bit of that one. Like, if. If you're in a lobby and you have been in three, four lobbies in a row and you've noticed the same picks, the same bands, you can now switch up your bands to notice and take out those picks. That's totally doable. Also know they have that power to you. If you're seeing it on their side, they see it on your side. Yep, that's. That's totally one of the things you can do. If it's like we had again earlier today, we had about 10 minutes because we got in the queue, got in the lobby, got a full thing down. One person dodged, got into queue, got in the lobby, started it. The person who was the support just forgot to confirm their pick and we got pushed out again, got into queue, got in the lobby. The same person that we saw from the other side is now on our team begging us to ban the person that was on his ad carry, but he won't do the ban. [00:24:00] Speaker C: That's the other thing. Don't beg for bans. If everybody gets a ban now, we. We aren't on that. Like, you know, the first three people or whatever get. You all get a ban. Don't ask for more. You can ask, hey, I don't care. Do. Do you have a preference? But no, if you have already. [00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah. If you've already banned someone and someone is not banning anything, you can go, hey, do you mind banning blank. And if they say no, that's okay too. [00:24:33] Speaker B: So I have a little bit of a different take. First of all, I want to emphasize this. Don't be part of the problem. Don't dodge just because there's been chain dodges and people are like, oh, my God, when Are we going to get into a game? However, if you are at a point where you are noticing the same picks and bans or someone is mentioning in the lobby that there have been a lot of dodges and then someone dodges immediately, cancel that queue. Do not let it re pop. Do not play with the people that are there because they are entering the game in a negative mental state. They are pre tilted because it took so long to get into a game and you want to go find fresh people who aren't tilted by a 10 to 15 minute champion select Q chain. [00:25:24] Speaker A: It does suck the higher up and rank you guys because it takes longer. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Because the two times get longer. [00:25:29] Speaker A: But sometimes it's just worth it. So if it's been six cues and things are not getting better, you're seeing the same people, they're pitching around. Get out. [00:25:44] Speaker C: So I do have a question. Don't rick you because like I don't, I don't listen to chat anymore, right? So like I'm completely shotless the second I enter lobby. I start muting people immediately. And that includes Mike and Jax. Like I do not want to see any of that shit. So okay. I had a horoscope that if there was chatting in lobby, it would be a lower win rate. Any chatting, any chat whatsoever that if it wasn't dead silent there was a lower win rate. Do you agree or disagree? [00:26:20] Speaker B: Generally there is an exception. Every once in a while you will get a lobby where there is positive chatting where people are like discussing strategy or like planning a level one or telling funny jokes and just generally actually being cheerful and positive. I feel like those have a higher win rate than normal. Everything else we're chatting is occurring has a lower win rate than normal. [00:26:48] Speaker A: So you'll, you'll occasionally see people who will like, I'd prefer to do voice chat. Let's pop a Discord server in. And you don't have to join that you're not obligated to. And if you decide to join, I've done it plenty of times. Sometimes those are great games. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Yep. I, I click that Discord link basically every time. I've only regretted it once when someone started spewing slurs and I was like, cool, we're noping out of here now I don't want to be here. Fuck you. [00:27:20] Speaker A: And then you just ignore the server afterwards. Delete it. [00:27:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I immediately just leave the server. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Or if you really like it, friend him. Like sometimes, sometimes you find a friend from that. [00:27:32] Speaker B: I have a section of my friends list just for randos. And they all have the note. Friendly rando. I've replayed with a few of them a few times. [00:27:41] Speaker A: I have 33 of them. [00:27:45] Speaker B: All right, Mike, you said you're. You came up with this trinket tip based on your interactions with your friend. So I'm gonna let you read it. [00:27:54] Speaker A: Right Guys, when you get in a game and you're not like, you know what a champion does but you're not intimately familiar with them, read the tool tips. Read all the tooltips, your passive, your abilities. My buddy was playing just really well on the champion but he didn't know what the passive did, so he didn't know that I'll talk. It's Mel specifically. So he did not know that every one of Mel's spells stores a charge for her next auto attack so that she can get even more damage. He didn't pay attention to that. Yeah, he didn't. He didn't know that existed. But he was still playing the champion really well because he's competent at the game but still read your tool tips. [00:28:44] Speaker C: Yeah, no, especially in Aram because like usually you're not playing a champion that you main. Right. Unless you're maining them right, then you don't need to read the tooltips. I just want you to know that I always go like whenever I go into Aram, I'm playing something I don't usually play well. Except for Kai' sa. I love Kai' sa. But yeah, no, no, no. Always a good time for just a refresher because guess what? You don't get a lot of opportunities to play that champion. Read, read your tool tips. [00:29:13] Speaker B: Here's the thing. I don't give a fuck. I read the tooltip anyway. [00:29:19] Speaker A: Yeah, sometimes you get a. You'll figure out an interaction or a number ratio. [00:29:25] Speaker C: Mm. [00:29:26] Speaker A: But sometimes you just need to remind me how much damage it does. [00:29:29] Speaker C: Yep. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Or just to remind myself what the cooldown on something is. [00:29:32] Speaker A: Cool down ranges. [00:29:33] Speaker C: Ranges are on there. [00:29:34] Speaker B: Like yeah, whole thing. For example, I have 224,000 mastery on volibear. He's one of my most played recently champions. I still regularly check the cooldown on my e. Check what the the actual cooldown is going to be when I ult when I have downtime in the jungle. Like I'm just looking at tooltips and gleaning whatever information might be useful out of them on a champion that I play all the time that I have played this month where I've barely played league this. So yeah, read your damn tooltips. Alright. It's listener question time and we got a novel from Grundy9. Thank you Grundy9 for writing in so many questions here. Grundy9 writes info about Me My main is currently Trundle Jungle and I've written in previous years with questions about Zyra voli jungle with AP and my overriding love of AoE damage. With my age and work life balance in commute, I get to listen to a lot of league content but watch and actually play comparatively little. Luckily it's summer and I should get to play more. Hurrah. Jax, You've mentioned your 70% win rate on Diana. She has always been a nightmare matchup for me over the years. I've tried a few games with her but it's almost like I left those games understanding her worse than I went in. Why is she a nightmare when played against me but I seem to do no damage when playing as her. Maybe I got unlucky matchups in my small sample size. Could you help me understand her better? What is her identity? When does she spike? How should a 1v1 versus another melee jungler play out? And probably more importantly when? Is she good at invading? Is she best at skirmishing, ganking objectives, team fighting, diving or what? Just really not sure what I should do except build Nashors and jump on things. [00:31:30] Speaker A: One of the cores Nashers is a core build. You got one thing perfect. [00:31:35] Speaker C: So I would like to to answer for the ADC people real quick because my stuff is short. The thing you need to understand, I believe it's the E. The dash. The dash. The dash has two. There are two dashes in that that dash and I did not know this as an adc. Well sort of. So here's the thing. You can do this super long dash that is like 900 units and she can come from eight screens away and just start slapping you on the face. I just want you to Understand it is 800,000 units. [00:32:05] Speaker A: It is so far it is much shorter than she's saying it is about your auto attack range. [00:32:11] Speaker C: That being said, if she has her moonlight passive on you, she gets a second dash. [00:32:17] Speaker A: So that's the core. [00:32:19] Speaker C: That's the key, right? [00:32:20] Speaker A: If she throws her Q out, she marks you, right? And her E consumes the mark to refund the cooldown. [00:32:28] Speaker C: To refund the cooldown. [00:32:28] Speaker A: Otherwise it's about a 30 second cooldown. [00:32:31] Speaker C: But as as an AD carry it suddenly made sense why Diana will always get on me at all times no matter what. Because. Because again that E is huge. [00:32:42] Speaker B: So I want to clarify some things on that, the cue mark does not have to already be on the target. It has to simply be applied by a Q that was cast before the E so she can throw Q and immediately dash to you. The Q hits you after she arrives, but she still gets the reset. [00:32:59] Speaker A: They happen simultaneously. The speed of the queue happens simultaneously to the speed you could potentially E. So if you dodge it, you can still dodge it and get out of it. Like if you flash and do that, you can get away. But if you were going to be hit by it, naturally, the speed is such that it will proc it and you will get another dash. [00:33:21] Speaker B: It deliberately has forgiveness in there to make sure she always gets the reset. If she cues you successfully and ease regardless of timing the cue. Here's the other crazy thing. [00:33:32] Speaker C: The Q does get vision. [00:33:34] Speaker B: Her E has 825 cast range, which is longer than any AD carries auto attack. If she is within 400 range of you, she will dash through you. If she is outside 400 range, she will dash to you. And I think that's the other thing people don't realize about Diana is when they're playing against her, they don't know when she's going to appear behind them from the dash and when she's going to appear in front of them from the dash. Diana knows. [00:34:02] Speaker A: So yeah, Diana's damage in the jungle is primarily done through her passive. You're getting your three hit procs. You're doing a lot of them. She duels incredibly well versus many other solid junglers. The ones that beat her are usually the health ones. Anyone who is like gaining health in the jungle, Briar can do it. [00:34:27] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:29] Speaker A: Etc. Yeah. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Briar, Warwick, Xin Zhao are the big like she just loses to them in. [00:34:34] Speaker A: A 1v1, but versus most other. Like other fighting ones, she beats the crap out of them because she does serious burst. Your Q does a lot of damage. Your W is a increase in shield. It gives you a shield on that. As it pops it, you get more shield. [00:34:56] Speaker B: Your E has damage her E, her dash. You can cast the shield during the dash. So while you are traveling to someone, you can throw the shield up and it just pops and you get the full shield. Basically, yeah. So that's part of why she's so bursty is she can just kind of throw Q ew and then ult when she lands and all of her damage is just womp all at once. [00:35:20] Speaker A: If you are fighting around other people and you may not know this one, Diana's alt Does significantly more damage the more people there are. [00:35:29] Speaker C: Yep. It scales on numbers. [00:35:31] Speaker A: Four people. She's doing over a thousand damage. [00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah, specifically based on how many people she pulls. Okay, so she pulls four people and three of them blink out. That fourth person is still taking four person damage. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Which is another thing people don't realize. So I want to move on to the next question, but I briefly want to touch on builds. Diana has two builds. One of them always builds Nashors first. That is the Bruiser build. That is what I think is the best build for her. This is Nashor's Riftmaker. And then take your pick, can be Liandri's. After that, it can be actual tank items. You are building Bruiser with that build. This version of Diana does not 1000 burst people. She just stat checks them. She dashes in on you. She has a shield. She has Conqueror. You can't out stat her in most cases. Unless you're playing like Master Yi or something. The people who can outstat her. You should play Assassin Diana instead. Do not bother building Nashers on Assassin Diana. Assassin Diana is Lich, Bane and as much AP as you can get. You want Shadow Flame, you want Death Cap. You are taking Electrocute instead of Conqueror and you are a suicide death bomb. And then ysonia's afterwards. [00:36:58] Speaker A: We've said it a lot. Horizon Focus is really powerful. It's really good on her. Ton of ap, ton of haste. Doesn't have the health, but like she loves the haste. She loves the ap. [00:37:11] Speaker B: We're going to agree to disagree there. She does not give a fuck about the haste. Diana is one of those champions that needs a little bit of haste so that she can maintain her passive at all times in the jungle. [00:37:24] Speaker A: What if she has that much AD with enough haste? [00:37:28] Speaker B: That's the thing. She doesn't need other haste items because her Lich Bane or her Nashors, depending on which build you're doing is enough haste. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Lich Bane, I don't forgot Lich Bane gave haste. [00:37:37] Speaker B: You don't need more than that. So then you should be going like Shadowflame Death Cap instead. If you're going Assassin or Riftmaker into Tank or Bruiser items. If you're going Bruiser, it's probably a. [00:37:48] Speaker A: Good 4th or 5th item. Still like it's a late. [00:37:51] Speaker B: It's still probably fine as a fourth or fifth on Assassin Diana, but I'd rather just go Banshees and Zhonya's. [00:37:57] Speaker C: So before we move on, which have. [00:37:59] Speaker B: Similar AP and help her stay alive. [00:38:01] Speaker C: What is The Trundle versus Diana matchup. Like. [00:38:06] Speaker A: Like in jungle, Trundle loses early and then wins late. [00:38:10] Speaker B: Once Trundle is 6, he should be able to duel her forever. [00:38:13] Speaker C: Okay. [00:38:14] Speaker B: Regardless of which version she is, he needs to build a little bit of Mr. [00:38:19] Speaker A: The. The burst version. She gets her lich Bane first. And then once he gets another like the. The Trundle needs a tank item to survive that. If he gets. If he starts with a bork, you still win. Yes, he needs to start something bruiser tanky and then. And then Trundle will win. [00:38:44] Speaker B: But like also that bruiser tank, he can literally just mean build a stride breaker. [00:38:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Which is a really good item on Trundle. Anyway, to be clear. [00:38:53] Speaker A: Uh huh. He already has slow. [00:38:55] Speaker B: Give him more and it gives him clear in the jungle and it helps him stick to people because you pillar them in and you beat them up. And then when they get clear of the pillar, then you hit the slow. So like if you're against assassin Diana on Trundle, build a stridebreaker. If you're against a bruiser Diana as Trundle, build whatever the fuck you want. You just beat her. Once you have your assuming equal power levels. Once you have your ult because she's not nearly as bursty. And your ult means you win the extended fight. [00:39:31] Speaker C: Out of his Cool. Is there anything that really does counter Diana Jungle? Because we got Sarah volley and Trundle Volibear. [00:39:39] Speaker B: Volibear just shits off. [00:39:41] Speaker A: Volibear is one of the champions that if you've built the quicksilver, the. No, not quite silver before a quick blade. [00:39:49] Speaker B: Blades. [00:39:50] Speaker A: Yeah, flicker blade. That thing. Once Volibear gets flicker blade, it doesn't matter if he was losing matchups. He wins matchups. Volibear does down a full item and still win people. [00:40:04] Speaker B: Yep, he's tanky enough that she's not gonna burst him. He has healing out the ass. He has shields as well. And he has a single target stun. Volibear destroys Diana. [00:40:14] Speaker C: Okay, interesting. [00:40:15] Speaker B: He's like my go to pick if I'm against a Diana. Okay, let's move on to question two. Other early jungle matchups that punish me include Brand, Lillia and Udyr. If I had to lump this problem into one bucket, I label them as fast clear AP champs that show up somewhere early or unexpected, resulting in me fighting them ineptly in comparison. I love the little bubble. Meaning Kayn is about to show up. I sidestep his W and engage eagerly in the 1v1 as a recent example of my ineptitude as Trundle jungle. I am full health in a river bush and have just taken the scuttle crab and I see the enemy brand that is about to walk into me. He face checks my brush I auto Q for a third of his health. I pillar the opposite side of him. So he's trapped here with me and Auto again w setting up my frozen domain. But he responds with two abilities at point blank range that light me on fire and stun me. After which he flashes my pillar and freely continues to hit me from range. I barely escape alive, still burning down with no HP while I only hit him with 2, 3 autos and a bite. So he's still at half health. Sure, if I had been brush camping Garen instead that silenced brand is totally dead. But like, what else was I supposed to do as Trundle? I totally had the jump on him and still got absolutely wrecked. [00:41:25] Speaker A: Don't pillar right away. [00:41:28] Speaker B: Trundle's weakness is getting kited. I agree with the don't pillar right away. If you're bushwhacking him like he's going to panic, he's going to stun you. When the stun wears off, then you pillar him. Now he has to flash. He's now too far away to threaten you and you can walk away without having died. [00:41:46] Speaker A: Your biggest thing here is you need to be getting CC reduction boots early. You need the boots one for the speed, two for the CC reduction, two before right as they're about to check that bush. That's when you pop the W down. You want as much damage as possible up front. You're not getting long extended trades so you want as many auto attack as many cues as you can get in. If you think you're not gonna be in any long fights, you can maybe R them. I wouldn't because usually you don't need to. [00:42:18] Speaker B: But like, and usually they're not the one you want to r. Yeah, but. [00:42:21] Speaker A: If, like if you are alone in a corner and you are like this is the duel for my jungle, you may need to and then you save your pillar for when they are starting to move away from you. [00:42:33] Speaker C: All right, so I am the ad carry mechanics person. So that brand queue is super thin. So this might seem really counterintuitive. But you know that he is going to W Q you, you know him, you know he's gonna go, oh my God. You know that is what he's gonna do. [00:42:54] Speaker B: If he's smart, he's going to EQ you and then w After while you're. [00:42:58] Speaker C: Smart, it's way more damage. But panic. Panic is wq. We know that that is the case. So what you need to do is what I do on Twitch which is when I come out of sight stealth when I am finally hitting him. Oh, I've got you. You hit him once he's panicking and you literally move. That's all you do. You move behind him. That's it. [00:43:22] Speaker A: That's. [00:43:22] Speaker C: That is. That is literally all you do. [00:43:24] Speaker A: If you. Yeah. If you auto Q walk forward. [00:43:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:28] Speaker A: He's almost assuredly going to to try and go forward where you were. If you are moving through him, you are more likely to survive this and get the the stuff down. Now you'll be in the bush so hopefully you had a warden there. [00:43:39] Speaker C: Yep. So and hopefully you have a warden. [00:43:42] Speaker B: You'll be closer to where his escape path is so there's less distance he. [00:43:46] Speaker A: Can create when he flashes of of those other matchups. Lillia, I don't think you ever win against. [00:43:52] Speaker C: Nope. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Because you can't catch her. [00:43:54] Speaker C: Nope. [00:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:54] Speaker A: And Udyr only you're only ever going to beat him if he is pure tank. Otherwise he will kill you. [00:44:01] Speaker B: Yes. Ad Udyr will literally 1000 you in a second. And that's the popular Udia right now. But the common thing that Brandon Lilia have that Trundle hates. They're really good at kiting brand is going to build a Rylai's like second item and you're never going to move again. [00:44:21] Speaker C: Yep. [00:44:22] Speaker A: Lilia doesn't need to build sorc shoes so she really likes swifties. [00:44:30] Speaker C: Yep. [00:44:31] Speaker A: So she's gonna have slow reduction. She's going to be 500 plus move speed dancing around you throwing Q's, throwing W's. You're never gonna fight a Lilia. [00:44:42] Speaker B: Yep. [00:44:43] Speaker C: I am curious. Is any of the school do well against L' ya Zyra volley or Trundle Zyra Zyra. Okay. [00:44:55] Speaker B: So let's. Let's move on. Because he has specific questions about Lilia. [00:44:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:58] Speaker C: That's true. [00:45:00] Speaker B: So for Lillia in my mind she is like Aatrox because there are certain spots she has to hit to max her damage. Q on the edge, W in the center and the E seed rolling in a line. If I get in her face with Trundle I can't recognize or react in time to dodge anything and end up losing badly or asleep. Then dead. And again she's getting away with more than half health. How do I combat Lillia with a melee Chample the easy answer is you don't. She gets so much move speed from her passive stacks on her Q you. Even if she's not hitting the sweet spots, she's still just not going to be 100 to zeroed by you. And then she's going to run away and you're never going to hit her again. [00:45:37] Speaker A: Lilia is one of the best jungle designed champions. She heals when she's fighting you. She's very quick at clearing. She's very quick at moving. So she just outdoes everything you do with all of your champion pool. [00:45:52] Speaker C: Yep. [00:45:52] Speaker A: You may want to like if she's something that you have trouble with, try and pick her up. If you can't do that then like the best things to fight her with are burst mages and range and bans. [00:46:05] Speaker B: Alternate answer. If you are playing Trundle or Volibear or Zyra and you're against Lilia, use your wards. Stay on a warding totem instead of switching to sweeper as most junglers do. Ward her jungle. And when you see which side of the jungle she's on, go gank the other side. Go gank the AD carry who's had his flash blown by your last gank and doesn't have a dash and can't escape your pillar. [00:46:29] Speaker C: Yep. [00:46:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Staying away from the idea you don't. [00:46:33] Speaker B: Need to duel the enemy jungler. I want to emphasize that you don't need to duel the enemy jungler. [00:46:41] Speaker A: There is a. There's one thing you can do but it requires positioning specifically and it essentially you're forcing her flash unless she doesn't have one because she can't get over walls. You can force her into a position where she can't move anymore. She can still heal. But you are now able to sit there and just block her from moving. That is the only way to kill Lilia. Otherwise she will run from you. [00:47:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:47:07] Speaker B: And those positions are really hard to get. It requires a near perfect pillar. [00:47:10] Speaker A: Yeah. You need to find perfect placement. It's not going to happen. [00:47:15] Speaker B: Alright. He follows up Udyr. Compared to the other three problem matchups above, I've played a fair bit of Udyr until I concluded that I'm just not good at him. In my hands, each ability in a 1v1 seems weak and the stun seems negligible. But when his E stun is used against me, it's devastating. Allowing his storm or empowered claws to wreck me. How? It's only 75 seconds. So it seems to me this should be a fair fight. How to get the most out of Udyr in an early duel. [00:47:41] Speaker A: You're not using this passive properly. [00:47:43] Speaker B: Yeah. As we mentioned, if Udyr is building ad, never duel him. AD Udyr, literally, if you are isolated, will do more than half of your health. With two auto attacks from his empowered Q. [00:47:59] Speaker A: It is percent max health damage. It's physical so you can armor against it. But it's. It's a lot. It's a lot and it's. [00:48:07] Speaker B: It bounces to nearby targets if there are any. If you're alone, all of those bounces hit you. [00:48:13] Speaker C: Oh, is it? [00:48:14] Speaker B: So if it's AD Udyr, he is built to 1v1 you. [00:48:16] Speaker A: It functions like the Chandelayan. [00:48:19] Speaker C: Okay. [00:48:20] Speaker A: Except all of the chains will only hit one target if it's allowed. [00:48:23] Speaker C: Okay. [00:48:24] Speaker B: Yes. By comparison, if it is any other version of Udyr that is not Tiger Max Ad Ultim. Bite him. Yeah. He's gonna be able to run away. If he's ahead, he's going to kill you. But just bite him. With your Ult. You can stat check the other version. [00:48:50] Speaker A: If you're in an even item state, you're generally speaking just fighting each other. You should have the amount of slows to keep him near you. He'll to either force him to use his empowered E to run away or to just continue the fight against a new deer. You will eventually need a bork. Probably third, second or third if. If it's a tankoo deer. If it's an AD U deer, you're not winning. Yeah, like focus on literally win the rest of the game. [00:49:22] Speaker B: He literally can shred tanks in half a second. AD Udyr is a nightmare to duel. No one can duel him. I hope that riot fixes that because that's really dumb. He's literally the best duelist in the game. [00:49:35] Speaker A: It's disgusting how strong that can get. You can. You can destroy him and then that thing will just scale out the ass. [00:49:44] Speaker B: So he has a summary question. Like with Diana, when I try to play these champions myself, I feel the ineptitude grow rather than feeling my understanding growing. Would you guess that I am trying to play them identical to Trundle and totally missing their spacing, timing, damage windows. How do you know when to 1v1 in the jungle stat check someone? Or is it more about dodging, timing, countering key abilities? Or how else would you recommend playing building thinking about these champs? Thanks wards. Number one, you have a mindset issue. Jungle is not about 1v1ing the enemy jungle, period. [00:50:22] Speaker C: Even. [00:50:22] Speaker B: Even Trundle, there are champions that there Are there are champions that are good at it. [00:50:27] Speaker A: There's three champions. Try to. You are not playing any of them. I'm not going to mention them because I don't want to give you ideas. There are certain junglers whose job it is to duel the other jungler. You're not playing them. [00:50:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Your job as trundle jungle is to gank the dude who doesn't have a dash over and over and over. And then in the late game, bring your ult to make their tank or bruiser squishy as fuck so that your team just wins team fights. You are not the top laner, so you are not the split pusher. And you are not supposed to be the dedicated duelist. Trundle is not a duelist. He is just pretty decent at dueling. [00:51:14] Speaker A: He is a counter pick into heavy tank matchups, usually as a top laner, very occasionally a jungler. He's good in the jungle mostly because he has a decent clear, even though he doesn't have a lot of aoe. He's very fast in the middle. He has very good sustain. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Most of what you should be doing on trundle is ganking the immobile person. [00:51:41] Speaker C: The. The one thing I'm seeing here is, like, I do kind of feel like there might be some mechanical leveling up because we're talking about brand. [00:51:49] Speaker A: There's definitely a bit of that. [00:51:50] Speaker C: Like. Like, I think. I think there's a little bit of a mechanical level up that you could kind of go on as far as a journey. I do think, like, when you're thinking about, like, oh, I'm gonna pick up Diana and just try and, like, see, are you giving her, like, 45 games? Like, are you giving her, like, a serious try, or are you just kind of, like, mad and, like, throwing out a game or two to try and, like, do that. [00:52:12] Speaker B: We know the answer to that is no because he said he does not have a comparatively large amount of time. Yeah. [00:52:18] Speaker C: And, you know, again, I'm not saying that. That's like, you obviously understand we're not picking on you. Yeah. Like, if you haven't got time, you have a good time. But I would say that it's okay to just say, you know, I haven't got 45 games to learn Diana, so I'm just gonna. I understand her basics. I've at least. I've read her wiki. I've looked at the tooltips, all of that stuff. I know basically how she works, but more of like, okay, out of my. [00:52:44] Speaker A: But that does not mean you know how she plays. [00:52:45] Speaker C: Yeah. It doesn't mean, you know, just because. [00:52:46] Speaker A: You know how she works does not mean you know how she plays. [00:52:49] Speaker C: And like I said, like, I think that working on, like, Diana, specifically with Volibear, like, okay, we're gonna take fully into this until we can, like, finally try and find the counter. [00:53:01] Speaker A: The. The one thing I've noticed is you keep talking about them is how they like how they are a thing. None of the champions you have mentioned play like each other. Every single one of them does something different, especially as a jungler. Some of them are designed to just keep farming. Some of them are heavy, objective focused. Some of them are heavy gank focused. Some of them are pick and poke. You have like the. The champions that you have described, both you're playing and playing against are very, very different. So none of them are going to be able to be just picked up and moved. Pick one. If you're looking to try and expand your pool, pick one. Pick one. Because it's going to be a very different play style to the one you're doing right now. [00:53:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:53:45] Speaker A: And of the ones, if you're trying to get as close to where you are as possible, it's Udyr. Udyr is as close to what you have right now out of the ones that are up there. Because unless you're talking about the Bruiser Diana. Bruiser Diana is probably as close as you can get. [00:54:06] Speaker B: I think the biggest thing is just shift your focus from dueling the enemy jungler. Dueling the enemy jungler is not how you win the game as jungle, just full stop. [00:54:17] Speaker C: Also true, but you can always take Lucian in the top lane and that will always win the game. [00:54:26] Speaker B: There you go. [00:54:27] Speaker C: It is the counter to all Diana jungles, all Lilias, all the. Wait a minute. What was left? [00:54:33] Speaker A: Udyr can't reach you. You're too busy. [00:54:34] Speaker C: Yeah, Udyr can't even reach you. You've got a dash. It's great. [00:54:38] Speaker B: You're pumping him full of light. All right, I think that is the new episode subtitle or title. [00:54:45] Speaker A: Oh, I like it. I'll take it. [00:54:46] Speaker B: I'll write that down. All right. With that degenerate note, we're ending the episode. This has been episode 486 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Zoman for Mike of many names for Codex Ninja. Have a great night. [00:55:04] Speaker C: Goodbye. [00:55:05] Speaker A: Good night, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.