[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz and you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league.
Hello and welcome to episode 489 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me three other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Hello everyone.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: We've got Codex Ninja.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Hi.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: And we've got Pillow Pet.
Hello guys. We are the Four Awards podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, come play games, come chat with us. It's a great time. Link is in the episode description and some of us stream on Twitch. Now that I'm back from Canada, I'm streaming again at Twitch tv. Jacksodman Mike can be found at Twitch tv mikeofmanynames and Pillowpet can be found at Twitch tv Pillowpet.
And we're gonna give a shout out to Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet and Robegon for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you so much guys. We do have a Patreon. If you want to get a shout out or just support the podcast, head 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 will get you that exclusive feed and you get a shout out at the top of every episode.
Last but not least, listeners, you got saved by Discord users. We didn't get any new questions in the email this week, but Discord did send in some questions, so you're only getting mildly chastised. We need more questions. Send your questions to theforwardspodcastmail.com or submit them in the Discord question submission channel so that we can answer your questions on the show. Alright, that's the intro out of the way. Let's get to our main topic tonight. It's a nice easy short one. We're gonna talk to you guys about the practice tool because it is an underutilized resource for getting better at League of Legends and I want to kick it off. Let's actually just educate you on how the fuck Target dummies work in the first place. Who wants to kick that off?
[00:02:38] Speaker C: I do not actually know.
[00:02:41] Speaker D: I say. I. I'm not too, too versed in the Target Dummies, because I don't utilize them as much as I probably should. But when I do use them, you can. You can stack armor and Mr. On them. It's a slow process, if I remember, because I don't think you can just set like a type of set number. I think you got to add a little bit at a time.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:03:06] Speaker D: And I'll use it to like, practice my builds. Like, okay, so if I'm playing, you know, we'll just say renekton in the top lane. And I want to know like, okay, which one of my builds is going to be better suited for an armor stacking tank in the top lane versus a health stacking juggernaut in the top lane bruiser.
So I'll go in there, I'll try different builds out and see which ones I get the most damage on per target. And I'll play around with it that way. That's. I've utilized that a few times. As far as with the health and armor, you can use it to.
For a bunch of different things too, to see how, like, abilities interact with certain skills and so on and so forth. But that's usually what I use it for.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: What I like them for is testing different builds on burst Champions specifically. So it's really easy to figure out, like, what build does the most DPS organically because you can go hit jungle camps. Whatever does the most DPS on jungle camps is going to do the most DPS on anything else. But it's a lot harder to figure out, okay, do I have the ability to 100 to 0 this guy? So I like when I'm practicing a burst champion, loading up the target dummy with different amounts. Like, okay, do I think this is like a tank or a bruiser or like a squishy? And figuring out what builds let me burst them.
Is it worth going horizon focus or should I be going shadow flame kind of thing?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: It is a very awkward process to try and add health and armor and Mr. To that target dummies. And like doing it, you do not get to choose either armor or Mr. You add a ton of resistances at a time.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: And it is specifically 10. So you get very linear numerics to how much things are.
So like, you will only ever see 250. 250 armor and Mr. If you do this, which means you'll have a very good idea what that number does. And people are generally gonna have not quite the same amount, but you'll have a good idea.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Yep. I would generally say if you're looking to test like how much damage do I do against a squishy champion? Set the armor and Mr. To anywhere from 50 to 100. If you're looking for how much do I do against like a bruiser said, it's like 100, 150ish. More than 150. You're trying to test tank stuff generally. There obviously are some exceptions of some champions who just get a lot of resistance stats like Graves for example, where he gets armor for free.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: But builds lethality anyway.
So that's the. The gist of how target dummies work. You. You can use them to get a feel for like how abilities interact and you can use them for testing burst mostly.
So other than the target dummies, because target dummies are like a. A very obvious part of.
They're an obvious part of the the kit. What else can practice tool let you practice that you can't practice by just going into a game of League of Legends.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: So the. The first one has always been looking for interesting and weird mechanic interactions.
Like when you. When you load up league, you don't always have the ability. And if you play a game, frankly, you don't have the free time to just sit there practicing.
I'm gonna test out how this works on this wall and this works over here. Because if you waste abilities and waste mana, you can get caught and killed easily. So you shouldn't be doing that in a regular game. But you can do things like are these the walls that I can jump over with Briar? Okay. I can do that with this ability.
What is the interaction when I do this? Plus flash. Oh, okay. Etc. That. That's one of the main tools. And actually pretty much the main tool I utilize practice tool for is figuring out unique and interesting champion interactions, which has begun even easier since now Practice tool has become a multiplayer scenario. You can actually test individual champion mechanics versus another person if they join with you. Which is really fun for things like how does this interact with this champion? What can Silas Alt do when I steal this person's salt? What is the perfect interaction when I do this on this character? It's great for that.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Perfect way to test that stuff. Perfect way to test how do these abilities that both shred armor stack? For example, you can have a buddy go stand with armor and you can just use both abilities and test it.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: Yeah. One thing I do whenever a new champion comes out, I like to test out like, especially if they have a dash like which walls. What is it like a thin Part of the Dragon Pit, that kind of thing.
Not because I necessarily play them, although I am going to play the new one coming up. But like, I think that just knowing that Sejuani can jump over the back of Baron Pit when you're playing against them just helps with like being surprised a lot.
So like, I don't know, I just feel that, that, that if you see something that you're surprised by, like that's another good thing that the practice school can help with is like how did they do that? Like, yeah.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: All right. So you can test how abilities work. You can test target dummies. What about like practicing farming?
[00:08:51] Speaker C: So I am the farming champ, right? So like ADCs are 100% based on their goal driven ness.
I personally don't feel that that farming in practice tool is very helpful, but I did used to do a drill for the first three waves.
So like early, early, early farm.
Because champions between levels one and three are a little bit simpler. They are more auto attack based.
So it's just, it's okay to do farming drills in my opinion for the super early stuff. I just don't think it's valid for like get into games like, like don't spend so much time in the practice tool like expecting to like massively improve your game CS with it.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: But unless you have a buddy who you have willing to just fight you for all the farm, like it could be really good if you have a friend to have them go on the other team and be like, okay, your job in this is just to deny me as much farm as possible. And my job is to farm. Do however many waves you want to practice that and then reset and do it again.
[00:10:04] Speaker D: I'd say ideally if you're going to use it to practice farming, it's probably best to use it to practice farming under a tower.
So you can get used to last hitting minions and get used to how towers are aggroing. Because towers, towers have like a set aggro. Like they aggro the closest minion I think to the tower.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: No, it is what type of minion they are first.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:10:27] Speaker D: Okay, so it'll go cannon, melee, caster. But when it's on all melees, it picks the one that's closest to the tower. Is what I mean.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Not exactly. And that's why, that's why it's confusing.
So generally, yes, but it picks it by literally doing a like sweeping scan around it and picking the first valid minion that it hits.
So if you watch for example like as all the casters line up on a turret. Once it finishes with the melees, it will always go to the, like, leftmost caster. Or depending on the position, it might be the rightmost one.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Depending on it seems you also favor weaker targets because it likes to kill off things that are weaker.
[00:11:13] Speaker D: So what I.
Not particularly what I meant earlier, what I was talking about, it picks the closest minion to it because sometimes they don't just line up perfectly and they're little, right. You know, semicircle. And it used to happen a lot when you used to be able to pick up minion aggro under tower.
So the minions will shuffle and move around. So if you got a ranged minion that's closer in the line, then the rest of them that are sitting behind it, it's going to pick the one that's closer to the base of the tower. And I mean, I could be wrong. Unless they've changed the whole, like, way of thinks. But I mean, like what you're saying.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: If one of them is closer, but frequently with casters, they're all the same distance. And that's why it's not intuitive. You'll see it target like the rightmost caster because it entered the aggro first, and then switch to the leftmost caster and then just work its way down because it does that weird sweep.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: It's fucking weird one, just in case someone here hasn't actually thought it through. And I know this sounds a little dumb, if you're having trouble with getting the enemy minions under your tower, all you have to do is set up a dummy on the way too. I didn't think about that. But someone is just like, oh, you can just put a dummy there and they'll just pile on the dummy like, yeah, forever.
Which is. I know that sounds kind of dumb because I actually wanted to practice like last hitting, but I could never get the wave of her on my side because, you know.
And so, yeah, you just shut up a dummy. It'll fix everything.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: So yeah, it'll just accumulate minions trying to kill it.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yes. And it will eventually, like, pile up too many, and then it will pile.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Up in like, frame rates will just start dropping. But it takes a while. Like it, it. It's.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah, but if you start noticing you're having problems, if you toggle minion spawn off and on, it will kill every minion on the field and just delete them.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Also, toggling minion spawn definitely do that because, like, one of the things that that I. It's a small bug that they haven't fixed yet. But when you say like get it, basically there's a. There's a setting in there. If you. If you're peeling through like the thing on the side, the little menu on the side.
There's do all my runes basically. Like, you know, like. Like bring it to. To top. Like I have. I have finished X, Y or Z. There's a bug in there though, that the boots one won't spawn. Like the. The little like semi magical boots, whatever. So I have to wait.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Like complete feats of strength.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: No, it's not complete feats of strength. It's the.
There's a rune that gives you semi magical boots that are like boots plus.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Yeah, but you have to take. Take like the time go down. But the thing is, is that like I don't have like I'm in a practice tool. I ain't doing takedowns. So like I just wait 10 minutes while it goes super fast. But you need to make sure to have your minions untoggled for that.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah, so that is because the.
That rune specifically only fully stacks. Legend, mana, flow, band, domination, vision, and hunter runes.
Those are the only runes that it auto fully stacks.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Oh, well, it should do boots too.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Like, it specifically says that. Yeah, same thing with stack items. It. The item 1 explicitly item version things.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
Right, right, right, right.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: But you can like increase the game speed.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, increase the game speed and all that stuff. I haven't actually used increasing the game speed. I thought that would be kind of weird because like is.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: But you can also. There's two ways to do this. You have the increased game speed, which is like you can double the game speed, half the game speed, etc. But there's also fast forward.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: Oh no, no. I'm talking about fast forward. When I'm talking about my thing.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: There's fast forward 30 seconds and fast forward 10 minutes. You have no control over that going on. It just activates and moves forward that time. So you just like watch if you have the minions go on Minions move around the map and spawn and do things.
It's very music awkward, but it is amusing because they. They can't predict what would happen in 10 minutes, so they actively just speed up the game until it gets there.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: I just kind of felt like if I ever played with that, that I would get like my clicks would get off. You know what I mean? Like the click move, the attack. I didn't want to mess with that. So I never. I never messed with the.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: I I do want to point out that if you skip ahead 10 minutes, all of the minions are stronger because minions do get stronger over game time.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, that's good to know. I'm usually using drills like if I'm doing skip 10 minutes, I'm usually doing practice dummies anyway. So.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah, the other reason to do this is it also you have the full functionality within the client without having to completely reset things. You can reset the game, you can just win the game, you can kill your character if you need to know something about how your character goes up when it dies, etc. So anything.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Just want to practice like scions death form.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: So across most things, you have full control to do them in the game. Some things are a little awkward to do, but like the most awkward thing is the.
The dragon spawns.
[00:16:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think they've got that figured out. They really need to because you can.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Only do specific dragon spawns at times because obviously dragons don't spawn that way.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: Yeah, they don't.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Okay. Well, speaking of dragons, another thing I think the practice tool is actually useful for is practicing different jungle clears.
If you are like, hey, I want to play this champion, I watched a guide that says to do this clear, go into the practice tool and try to do that clear. And then reset it and then try to do that clear. Until you get your time down to where it ballpark of where it's supposed to be.
This is a good way to practice the basics, the mechanics. When you are not needing to divert and go gank someone and you're not getting invaded. You just get to do your six camp clear to practice, making sure that that fundamental is reliable and consistent on your champion in a way that you can just immediately reset and do it again. As opposed to like if you go to a cop versus AI or a normal game, you have to play out the rest of the game before you can practice that clear again.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: And if you, you. You can like, as we were saying there, you can just redo that first clear again and again. Because you can reset the game without having to reset the. Without having to quit the game, reload and redo another.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I am kind of curious. So I. I myself have jungle like in a serious way, especially not with practice duel the way it is now.
One of the things that I'm aware of is that as you kind of get better at it, you start using like the. The default F1 keys to like check like how lanes are doing as you are going through your clear.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Some people do that yes.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Can you set that up with dummies? With Ally Dummies?
[00:18:44] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: Okay. Because I think that would be really interesting because like if I was ever seriously going to try and jungle, I would absolutely use the practice tool for clear speed. Just like dude, that just makes sense. But I could see where I would want to use it to practice camera discipline.
Like over time.
But at the same time that's like really hard.
And yeah, I don't know.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: I'm not someone who uses the F keys to look around. I just click on the minimap if I need to.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Yeah, that kind of makes sense.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: The F keys are an awkward reach. Whereas mini map, I flick my mouse over click and then hit spacebar to recenter on my character. But a lot of people do find the F keys to be better. It is entirely personal preference on how you do it.
[00:19:33] Speaker C: I actually had them bound to Z, X and C for a while, but it just, it didn't make sense to. To keep it there.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: So that's what I have my level ups bound to is zxcv.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: We should do, we should do a keybinding comparison at some point.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Like yeah, we will save that for a future episode. Yeah, I, I just have my level ups bound there so I can instantly level up a skill without having to contort my hands to like control, whatever. Okay.
So we kind of talked about comparisons of builds damage a little bit when we were talking about target dummies.
But what is attack speed drills?
Put this in the dock. I don't know what this means.
[00:20:19] Speaker C: Yeah, so here's the thing. Like again, I'm an attack speed oriented like role.
So one of the things that is really, really, really important with ADC is to not drop autos.
And I was really confused on how to improve this and it took a long time. And so one thing I started to realize is that I actually start dropping autos at 1.5 attack speed range. So what I will do is take my. It's usually two items, sometimes three.
So I will just go and I will, I will do do kiting around a dummy like one way, kiting around a dummy the second way and just I'm. All I'm doing is auto attacking at the higher speed level and you start to hear the rhythm of the attacks if that makes sense.
And I don't know, I personally feel that just, just doing a couple dummies walking around like doing it from different.
Another thing is that if I ever get upset about a specific scenario where I Think that I failed and started dropping autos a lot. I will try and like, like especially like in a skirmish, right, like we're fighting over dragon in the river somewhere.
I will actually set up the. With target dummies and stuff like the scenario and, and we'll. We'll try and auto it. Like, like just come at it from a different perspective because I just think, think that it just helps with some of the muscle memory and like letting go of certain situations sometimes when you get really heated.
But yeah, that, that, that's just what I do specifically for attack speed drills is, is to. To get better at higher levels. But.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: So I did have one thing. I know we kind of briefly touched it. I really love it for interaction checks because. Because again it's multiplayer now, right? So you can actually get, you know, like Sylas and X Champion, right? And actually see like how things actually interact.
And that kind of brings me to the tricky tip that I have is that. Okay, so we have two champions, Briar and Mel, right? Briar throws out her Ult and says Imma get you Mel.
And Mel uses her E to reflect or uses her W. W. Right, yeah.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: W's to reflect.
[00:22:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So she uses her W to reflect the ult. What happens is that if it hits Briar or another champion. Well, theoretically it would only be Briar, but you know what I mean.
Mel will start flying towards the champion. It is Briar's old, right?
Mel can cancel it by casting her E the same as Briar can cancel her Ult by casting E.
That's what so funny. Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Do you mean the auto attack portion?
[00:23:30] Speaker A: The. The Berserk.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: The Berserk.
[00:23:31] Speaker C: Yeah, the Berserk.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Okay, that, that is. That is something I did not know.
[00:23:35] Speaker C: Stop the.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: The way that you. No, you can't because once you click it, you're gone. You're going to.
[00:23:41] Speaker C: Oh, okay. All right. And I didn't know if it was the flying portion or the auto attack, but I know that you.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Briar has to arrive before she can cancel the Berserk.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: Okay. She has to arrive anyway. But yeah, so you arrive at Briar's place, but you don't have to start auto attacking her. You can just.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Cassie, that's so funny.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: That's a good to know interaction into.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: The practice tool with one of the four wards which we would be so glad to show you.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: So that is so funny. I love that they thought to make her E cancel the Briar alt because Briar Z is how she cancels it.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so funny.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Okay, well, I learned something today that.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Must be true with Silas as well.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Um, I don't know. We'll have to test it after the podcast. All right, but before we go testing that, we have a whole bunch of listener questions, some novels and some quickies from the Discord. So let's, let's answer some of the questions you guys have sent in.
Our first novel tonight comes from Rains, who writes hi Wards, Long time listener, long time contributor. I had to take a long hiatus from the game due to life circumstances changing. But now I'm back and I'm finding the game more and more difficult. I used to peek at Bronze 1, but right now I'm having trouble even escaping iron. I feel like chalking that up to my consistency at playing the game and not a reflection that I'm genuinely iron now. But alas, my questions are aimed at trying to find a more comfortable playstyle that works for me. So here goes. Which playstyle is more effective to climb in solo queue between the roaming playmaking mid laner or the split push only top laner? I've generally been focused on gaining leads than team fighting when I play mid or top, but I'm not finding LP gains consistently. So I'm just wondering if I need to persist or try to change up my playstyle.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Of those two, the playmaking mid laner who generally walks around and roams because 1 mid laner has more agency in general and 2 the champions in mid are very geared towards split. Also, split pushing is not exactly a consistent strategy to winning, especially if a team understands how to play against it.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: You're thinking too high level. True, it's much simpler than that. The answer is the the roaming playmaking mid laner because the most reliable way to win in low ELO is to get ahead early.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Also true.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Everyone in low elo, including every one of us who's there, makes a shitload of mistakes constantly. The more ahead you are, the less likely those mistakes will be. Game losing mistakes.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: The one thing that I don't like in the split push top laner style is that I as an adc, you know, whatever has happened in the game, the split pushing top laner is the only reason why we're still in it. But there is a super critical important fight that they need to show up for at 44 minutes at our base and they're just off to split pushing. Like you can't just have your fucking foot on the gas the entire Time you do need to actually participate in the game. And I have seen so many low elo split pushers like not be there at absolutely critical fights. And they are. They are keeping us in the game. I'm not. I'm not saying that their strategy is incorrect, but there are just key moments that you have to understand. Nah, dude, they're gonna get soul. If they get soul off this, we are boned.
Right?
[00:27:08] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: That's. That's not where you need them.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Correct. If you are in a situation where your four cannot handle four of them and your split pusher is your big advantage, you are giving that soul. You are giving Elder. You are giving Baron. The only time that split pusher should ever fucking show up is when the enemy is at your base ready to knock down your Nexus.
[00:27:31] Speaker D: There are.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: He has to be there for that fight.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: There are very few champions who can win a split push war versus an enemy team. Unless you have like the gods of holding off waves. You have Anivia, you have Sivir, you have a combination like style that can clear waves like crazy. And you would also need to have like a NASA so Tryndamere, somebody who has a good auto attack reset.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Like I would say just straight up just an Assis because he's the fastest turret destroyer in the game consistently.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: In the late game.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: But you need to be someone at that level to be away to try and win a game versus a rush to the end of the game that that's the champion you need. You need to be one of basically three champions.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah. But yeah, like no matter what, you must show up to the fight where they take your Nexus if they win.
And that's the problem with the split push strat is if you're not creating advantages across the map, it's a pure coin flip on what which team will be in that position. If your team gets ahead, cool. You get to split push and they do their own thing. And you will win that game if your team gets behind.
It's a question of can you split push their Nexus dead before your team loses the team fight and your Nexus goes boo. And that sucks. So I'm really.
[00:28:50] Speaker D: Okay, go ahead just for a quick second. It also really in. You know, we briefly touched it. It depends on the timing of your game. Is this like a complete stomp and you're fighting at Your base at 20 minutes? Your split pushing is not going to necessarily be fast enough at 20 minutes to really make it a huge impact. You're not going to really be Able to. You're not strong enough, most likely your minions aren't going to be strong enough most likely to really, you're not going to get much out of it.
So it's almost better to abandon your. Your split push at 20 minutes because again, like at that point what NASA's probably has 600 stacks, 700 stacks. So he probably would be all right at taking towers. But you know, I'm thinking in my head like trundle, trundles really good at taking towers. But at that point in the game he's probably. If it's 20 minutes and you're getting smashed, you're probably 0 and 7.
Like you've been picked off on the sidelines because the enemy team is super far ahead.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:49] Speaker D: So you need to abandon probably your split push strat and try to gain an advantage somewhere on a teamfight or try to make help your team make a pick.
That's where I like mentally I would be. But if it's a late game and you can take towers in like three seconds because you have plenty of CDR and plenty of attack damage and auto resets and all that.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:12] Speaker D: Unless you're getting ready on the cusp of losing the game. The answer is if you see an opening, take it and take their base.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: I think the two big. The two big names who can just. These are the split pushers are Camille and Nasus. Nasus because Nasus does what Nasus does. His Q is a monster. And Camille because she converts her Q damage into true damage, which is one of the few things that can obliterate a turn.
Yep.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: And she gets a low enough cooldown on it that she's literally like auto Q. Auto Auto Q turret is dead.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah. She gets multiple Trinity Force procs out of the same Q if she does it perfectly timed.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Yep. Okay, let's move on to question two. Can you guys suggest champions that have a good balance between non committal poke but good all in potential. I'm looking at a hybrid between Lux Poke and Garen, all in which I thought was Gragas, but I can't seem to get him to work for me. So I'm trying to branch out at the moment. My current pool is setting Garen top Lux and Pantheon mid and MF Bot. If I get filled there. AP Kai' Sub mid felt like a potentially good option, but I keep getting worried she's not good mid. That's because she's.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Are you looking for a mid laner or a top laner? Because there's very different answers for both.
[00:31:22] Speaker D: So I looked at this question last week and I have a really good answer for you. Top lane. And this could also work. Mid lane. I think Vladimir is great at all this. He has sustain, he has poke, he has, he has safety.
I think Vladimir is a good choice. The only problem with like Gragas is your E. Your escape tool is also your biggest engage tool. And once you've used that, you are stuck deciding whether you got to walk away and take auto attack damage and ability damage and minion damage as you walk away or you're all inning.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: I have, I have two for this one.
Jax, what do you got? You do you have, do you have anything interesting there?
[00:32:01] Speaker A: My thinking for mid was to pick a champion like Ahri who has decent range. She can poke, she can go for an all in with her ult, but it's non committal until you decide, okay, I win this. So you can literally just oh, this lane's going poorly. Let me spam Q, wipe waves, use W, look for charms. And my ult is an escape tool. And then you can go, oh cool, we got a pick. I'm now ahead. I used my first charge of my ult after we got a charm or to get in range to charm to follow up on an ally. I now have three more charges. Let's go kill someone else. Like she's versatile in that regard. She's not the greatest all in in the world. She's not the greatest poke in the world, but she's a great hybrid.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: I have a top laner and a mid laner. A top laner I think is Mundo. Your Q is one of the easiest just non committal poke you can get. You can get lifesteal back from it if you hit properly.
It's very long range, it does good chunks of damage. And when a Mundo gets strong and goes all in, that's hard to stop.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Just for the love of God, don't be like the Mundo I played against today.
Understand when you can't beat your opponent and run the fuck away, Mundo does not win extended fights against people who can actually damage him down.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: And the one in mid, which I'm surprised none of you said was Gallia.
[00:33:23] Speaker C: I mean he already has really good.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: Non committal poke with Q and wonderful all in. He has one of the best all ins you can get, man.
[00:33:31] Speaker D: I can agree with that.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: Very, very teammate dependent is my concern there. Yes, I, I, I definitely lean towards champions that can work with complete autonomy. Especially when recommending something for a lower elo player. Because I Have had the experience of, oh, my teammate went in, let me galio ult on top of them. Oh what, they're now just farming minions and I'm just sitting here doing nothing while the enemy team is shooting us both. What the fuck is happening?
[00:34:01] Speaker B: But at least in a lane, a lane thing alone, ignoring his ultimate he's very good poke with Q. EW is very, very good at going in and making sure you're felt all in. And he's a very strong lane in mid lane especially versus a lot of what the main mid lane champions are.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: That's fair. Speaking of what the main mid champions are, that's why you should not play Kai' sa mid. She's terrible against the mid cast early.
She gets bullied, she gets all in. She gets blown up by way too many mid laners. She will never be more than a situational pick against champions. You know, can't bully you because of that in middling.
She has some of those problems in bot lane, frankly.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
Just as a heads up because I'm seeing like and MF bot. If I get filled there, if you bounce Q if it goes over the estimated time, while you will wait longer, you will get your priority first roll almost always. Yeah. Like, like. I just want you to know that in the 18 months that I've been doing this like, like, like three games a day kind of style, I have gotten mid lane twice in you know, six hundred to a thousand games.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: You are playing a role that is much, much easier to get your lane on.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: True, true, true. And I know that the top wing.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: As AD carry, you will get a fill ad carry game one out of every like 20 to 30 reasonable length.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: Even with top mid. I. I'd be surprised by that.
Like top mid.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: It doesn't matter.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: You'll.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: You'll get ad carry once in a while. I get ad carry once in a while because of that.
[00:35:48] Speaker C: Okay, well, is probably the. The best for it, but.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It is just actually that much in demand right now.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: It lost a lot of its popularity.
[00:36:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Because it sucks.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: And it's. It's only just gaining its popularity back because frankly, IDs are monsters right now. But visual perception is not always game perception.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Yep. All right. And then we kind of already discussed question three, which is just what other ways can I improve at the game besides doing CS training?
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Watch people.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Go ahead, Codex.
[00:36:25] Speaker C: I did have one small piece of advice because I am the only person here who's actually climbed out of iron recently.
Iron is a different elo.
It is it requires different strategies than any other ELO in my that I have encountered the most. Like I kind of consider iron to be like a door. It's an iron door and it has three locks on it. The first lock is the economy lock. And for an EDC, this is. Am I getting consistently like 7-8Cs per minute, right.
For you know, for a top laner or a mid laner. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but it is your economy lock is about am I getting non risky income?
Um, so for example, like one thing that I did to boost my income significantly was that I started taking jungle camps as, as I was going to objectives and that kind of thing. When I could not contest mid wave and I had to just catch it, I would go and grab raptors or we go and grab wolves.
Like you will maximize your income very, very, very quickly if you start taking also like, like if I'm on the enemy side. We've killed them, we've taken their tower, but we need to reset grabbing their Krugs, right? This will massively increase your income and you will start to just take, take your wallet. You just start killing them with your wallet because your, your income is just so significantly better than your opponents that you don't. It is not even really based on your mechanics anymore. You just do so much damage.
The other one I don't want to take to have this, this one being taken out of context.
But so when I say kda, what I'm talking about is trading things. You're trading your life for stuff. If you are generally speaking trading like you're dying once every three kills or like assist takedowns, that kind of thing. Like one for three, you are trading significantly better than your opponents who are just dying all over the place, right?
If you are trading multiple flashes, multiple ults, all of those things, you start to understand the. And it is, it's like an economy thing where your life is its own like economy sort of the final lock for me is what is your like role really supposed to do? So for adc, the only thing that I am supposed to do is deal fuckloads of damage.
So when I look at my damage charts, am I absolutely smashing my opponent consistently across 20 games, right?
Am I absolutely crushing my lane out of 20 games? Any given 20, 20 games? Am I crushing my lane in laning phase? Like sure there's gonna be like a matchup where it's like yeah, that matchup is ass, right? And that's okay. But crushing Your lane for an ass lane is like, nah, dude, I was 000 and I was even, even CS like against, like, I don't know, super poke. Like. Like Zig Zig Zerath. You know, like endless fucking poke from 800,000 miles away. And there's just nothing that I get to do in the lane. Right.
If you start to see that you will climb out of iron.
It's just. It's a question of do you understand the wallet? Do you understand the life? And do you understand your role?
Which for for ADC is significant. Damage profiles.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: So that's fine. So Reigns sent another novel after that. We're going to save that for next week. Reigns, appreciate your novels, but we want to get to some questions from Toast, who also wrote in.
So we're going to do that. So Toast's first question is, is it worth it to try to have an AD and an AP Jungler in my pool or should I just not worry about that? Is it?
[00:40:43] Speaker B: We're going to give a short answer and a long answer.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean the short answer is yeah. If you enjoy an AP Jungler and you enjoy an AD Jungler. Cool. There. That's a good balance.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: If just what you're trying to do is climb, you should probably have one of each.
One primarily of each, at least. But that doesn't mean you have to use them all the time. Yeah, just be comfortable on both and only pull out the other one when you absolutely like. Oh man, they have indexed so hard into one thing. We really need this.
Pull it out.
And as a Jungler, you usually are picking earlier. So you usually get to dictate which you like more.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And keep in mind, like running all 80 or all AP only matters if they have a tank who can capitalize on that. If you're 5 AD and the tankiest person they have on their team is a Graves, it doesn't really matter.
[00:41:42] Speaker C: So I'm not as versed in the damage profiles nearly as much as the other folks here, but my understanding from watching other content is that all AP in really high ELO can be problematic.
But like, if y' all aren't in Master tier, like, you should not be as worried about damage profiles.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: So the reason at high ELO that all AP can be problematic is that ad champions have access to Maw of Malmortius, which is the best anti apartment damage item in the game. And they have access to Mercurial Scimitar, which is another ad Mr. Item.
There is not an equivalent for armor.
[00:42:29] Speaker C: Okay. There. There isn't an equivalent. Okay.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: And there's a. And there's Wit's end. Yes.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: As well. There's. There's so many more ways to index into Mr. Than there are into armor and have damage and.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: And still AD Champions.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: And for AP Champions, that just doesn't exist. AP defensive itemization is about effects, not about the actual stats. Like, you get some armor on zhonyas or some Mr. On banshees, and that's it. The real problem becomes matters if they're attacked.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Kills a tank. Yeah. Who kills a tank? And there are AP Champions that can kill tanks. These are Cassiopeias. These are Azirs. So it's not like you need to worry about them too much, but you still need to worry about them. If you have an entire physical damage team and there's a Malphite and a Rammus, you're gonna have a hard time. Yup.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: All right, our next question comes from Matthias, who writes, is Ryze a good champion in solo queue? I've always heard it's very pro skewed.
[00:43:30] Speaker C: I just want to. I would like to shout out that I appreciate this question because someone actually liked my outro, and there are more outros coming, guys, so get excited.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Yes.
So Ryze is very pro skewed, and that the reason for that is because of the. The warp on his ult is much more effective in coordinated play. Unless your name is Keen.
I was waiting for Mike to laugh at that. There was a play at MSI where Keen, the top laner for anyone's legend, I think, failed to get into Realm Warp, and it cost his team a fight that they should have won outright.
It was bad, but that kind of stuff is why Ryze is not as good in solo queue. He's very pro skewed. He's very weak, even at two items, because his first two items are Rod of Ages and Seraphs, which are not great damage items. He gets strong at, like, four items. When you have Rod of Ages, seraphs, death Cap, and Void Staff, he does damage out the ass.
But because the way Rye's passive works, which is the more AP you have, the more percent mana increase you have. He needs lots of base mana to multiply and then lots of AP to have a big multiplier on his mana. Yeah. So he really doesn't do much until three to four items.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: So, like you. You can index into him. Of all of the pro skewed champions that we've talked about, Ryze is probably the best one for other people to play because he is More friendly than the others. He is much easier to do. He has two targeted abilities and one skill shot that's not always a problem to use. But like I. I played him earlier today and you, you get far behind in the early to mid game and then you get very far ahead very quickly. By the end of that game, I had just shy like 996 AP and 7,800 Mana.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: Yep. And he has AP and Mana ratios on all of his skills. So he was hitting like a fucking freight train.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: I. I could demolish Tank.
What's his name?
The. The. The. The. The Jumpy Boy. K'. Sante. Full Tank. K'. Sante.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: The Jumpy Boy.
I think that's K' Sante's new name now. He's the Jumpy Boy.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: I. I hate playing again as or against k'. Sante. Ksante's a bitch and Ryze can do some of the most DPSing team fights in the game. He does serious damage, but you need to get there and you need to pilot him. But he's easier to pilot than things like Azir Nidalee.
Yeah.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: He has the same power curve as like Kassadin and Kayle, but unlike Kassadin, he's a DPS champion, not a Burst champion.
Also, Matthias literally was in that game where you were the rise with a thousand AP and 7,800 Mana. So I hope he appreciates us reading the question.
All right, let's get some more of these Discord questions done. We got another one from Toast, who writes kind of a weird question when I queue mid as my primary role and jungle as my secondary role. Why the hell do I only get Jungle games? Is it just that mid is so popular?
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Yes.
Yeah, that's just the answer to it.
[00:46:59] Speaker C: It is redonkulously popular. Yeah.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Mid is the most popular role in the game.
Last time I looked at the numbers, you would think there's five roles. It should be 20% for each role. Ish. Mid lane's popularity is so high, there's almost 30% of the player base wants to be mid primary.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: So you'll. You'll also notice when you. Yeah. When you do a queue, there are going to be little like diamond marks over certain roles that are priority rolls. If one of your off roles is the priority roll, 99% of the time you're getting that roll.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Because that means you are going to be someone who does it. Jungle pretty much always has it. Top Lane shifts it off with support and occasionally ad carry.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Yep.
I was going to Say like IQ mid jungle specifically I get jungle about half my games.
It's pretty common.
Mid is just genuinely that popular and.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Like you will eventually get your primary role. Yeah. They do make it so that you do eventually just get it. But you'll notice those are the cues that take a little bit longer. Yep.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: And you're not sure if you're gonna get auto filled instead when you do this.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Also true.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: But yeah, Mid is just insanely popular. Mid is the role.
I have heard of someone getting auto filled mid once.
In the history of my experience with talking to people who play this game.
[00:48:25] Speaker C: The history of autofill, I have been auto filled mid twice in but it's very, very very rare.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: I've now heard of it three times.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Quite literally you just tripled the number of times I've heard of it happening. That's insane.
And autofill has been around for a decade at this point. I don't remember if it's actually been a decade but it's around there.
Let's do, let's do one more. This one's from Rains. We'll answer another Rains question. Low skill floor High solo carry Potential jungler recommendations for low elo Essentially I want to win the game in a similar flavor of how to split push. Top laners don't rely on their team but win or lose a game by themselves. So I want to focus more on macro decisions than micro. Hey, put in parentheses waiting for Jax to say voli lol.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: So the question becomes are you trying to farm forever and then do a thing or are you trying to just have an easy to pilot champion? Because the answer will differ depending on which one of these it is.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: If you want just farm champions and then have low low mechanical things, it's hard to beat Master Yi.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: So this is going to be kind.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: Of really good at low elo a.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: A spicy take and like you know we're all friends here. Okay.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:43] Speaker C: But one of the things that I think is interesting about micro versus macro is that we play a fighting game. This is a micro game.
There are macro related things that make it really interesting and fun. There is a chess flavor. But at the very end of the game, at the very end of the day this is a micro game. And I feel that while I have sometimes mixed feelings about ad carry land, I think that by embracing the micro and just getting fucking good at it I actually started to love the game more. I loved micro and I'm not the best. I'm not.
But I think that when I See questions like this, I really, I want to like push back a little bit and say why don't you just. Why don't you just go ham on micro dude. Do it.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: So there's a. There's a couple things here. That's why I split it off into a couple points. There's the low interaction versus low mechanical interaction.
And the second point is there are just some people who have incredibly one of the main things is ping. If you are playing consistently like a European player playing on American servers, you do not have the mechanical gift that everyone else here will have. It's just not possible to have the same sort of micro skill because you can't interact at the same speed. There are some people who just, they're, they're very new to the game as a whole and they want to just have a low interaction to begin with. I have a lot of, a lot of friends who are very new to the game who are having really hard times doing multiple things at once and they want the easiest entry level to bring them up as possible.
So I don't know where you're at in this situation. Which is why I'm giving you two options here. Because there, there are low interaction champions and there are low mechanical champions and these are different things in the jungle.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: So that's why my, my gut whenever I get a question for low skill floor high solo carry potential junglers for low elo is to pick something that just snowballs out of control. I love Volar. I actually would not pick Volear as my, my example champion.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: Because Volear needs a team to carry late game. You know who doesn't? Diana.
Just Diana from orbit Clear speed. She can duel almost anyone. You can go a full assassin build if that's the correct play for your game or the default build of going in Nashers into rift Maker into more bruisery tank.
And she just kinda is relevant at all stages of the game. She can be very proactive.
She's very resilient against being invaded because she just out duels. Most junglers like don't try to outdo us in Jiao level too. It's not gonna work. But most junglers, yeah.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: So like I say, Master Yi is one of the best ones for this is a combination of both. He's very good at farming forever. He can carry games like nobody's business and he has a very easy to understand kit that has a very high potential skill ceiling and a very low skill floor. Understanding what he does at a baseline, very easy mastering him incredibly difficult because you can do a lot with him. Another one, look, I think this is probably the best PvE champion is Nocturne.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: Nocturne is great because you farm to 6 you ult and then you go back to farming until you have ultimate.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: It's very easy.
You can do the non interactive gameplay. And he is very strong in 1v1s.
Yep. And he's got one of the other really simple kids. Nice easy straight skill shot that you can hit multiple people with targeted CC and just no, you don't touch me button.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: And when you. But they also have something. Yeah, he gets attack speed too.
[00:53:44] Speaker B: And they have very high potential to learn them to a very high degree.
[00:53:49] Speaker C: But you know, if you don't want to like learn a champion, just take Lucian in the top lane. You'll just smash.
None of this like micro focused, you know, macro focus. It doesn't matter.
[00:54:02] Speaker A: There it is. Alright guys, this has been episode 489 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Solman for Mike of many names, for Pillow Pet and for Codex Ninja. Have a great night.
[00:54:16] Speaker D: Good night.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: Good night everybody.
[00:54:19] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course send your questions to the Four Wards Podcastmail.com so we can.
[00:54:36] Speaker B: Answer them live on the show.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
