[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven, Jerks and Velcas and you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in league.
Hello and welcome to episode 492 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I should be clearer today.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Huzzah. We've also got Codex Ninja.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I. I am.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: You are. Alright guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast.
We have a Discord link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. We've been doing a lot of normal games lately.
Hopefully that will continue.
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Alright, so now that we're through the intro, it's a patch week. We're talking patch 25.15 and this is on the smaller side of patches. But there's still some changes that we think are important to highlight or interesting. And I want to kick it off with one that is neither. But I wanted to talk about it anyway because it is confusing. Bel'veth got changed. Specifically they nerfed the PvP damage of Bel'veth's Q by 10 damage at all ranks the base damage and then they changed the curve on her passive. Because you don't have a lot of stacks. It's not really noticeable at early to mid levels, but at levels 16, 17 and 18 she has noticeably but not tremendously more attack speed per stack of her passive. If you have a game where you are able to pop off despite the nerfed Q damage in PvP and you get a lot of stacks fast when you're at those late game points, you will be even more of a DPS monster.
But until then, she's literally nerfed.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Alright, one of you guys go. Who wants to talk next?
[00:03:57] Speaker C: I will take.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Go for it.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah. So our good friend Mr. Corki got a.
I. I think it's pretty neutral, but he. His Q phosphorus bomb, which is the. The big circle that he throws out a big Q for, has dropped 20 damage at the the max rank 15 damage and it's scaling to to 0 at first rank 1.
The bonus AD ratio is 10% increase though, so in looking at this, it does look like pretty neutral, especially after you get your first item.
It might affect his levels like 1 to 4, but otherwise is by and large a generally power neutral adjustment.
Go ahead.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Oh yeah, a little bit of a twist on that one. It's about four to eight where that's going to change you because level one obviously there's no change in damage and it's actually a higher ratio.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, slightly better at level one.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: It's slightly better at Level one because of the ratio. And then it just. It's just four to eight.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: It's going to fall off. Okay. Okay. All right. That actually makes more sense. Sorry, I was just kind of like looking at the numbers.
His R missile barrage, which is the big long. He gets two of them or can carry up to two.
They're kind of like Jinx. Qs right is going from 90 to 250, which is remaining the same. But the. The ratio, the bonus ad ratio is going from 80% to 85% which is just a strict buff.
Like I said, I still kind of feel like this is. This is a fairly like nothing Burger change.
It is going to affect if you're building Corki from Trinity Force into Manamune, but it will. It will theoretically favor Corky builds that are. That are building actual traditional ADC items that are high ed, but other than that, theoretically is pretty neutral.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: So, yeah, they're. They're just slightly toning down how oppressive his, like, early mid laning phases.
So, like, because a lot of AD carries with playing Corki build training Force first. It's really low AD item, but it's great for the after hit.
You're gonna see a little bit weaker damage on the Q if you were maining Q as your priority. Sometimes Corki puts points into E first, and that means you sort of skip that power trough. And depending on who you're facing, I think that'll be the right choice. Corki is one of the very few champions who actually has flexibility in what he maxes because. And what he builds. Yeah, because it's a choice and what.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: He builds because, I mean, all ADCs are usually very hardbound into a specific path.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: And he scales with crit, so you can. You can kit him out crit and get lower cooldowns on your R and get significantly more R damage, but you are missing the instant burst that you can get with a Q auto R with you go Trinity Force Manamune. So, like, it's. It's a. It's a meaningful difference in what he does. And this is a meaningful early laning nerf if you're building that way because you're not getting a lot of AD with Trinity Force. I think this is good. Doesn't. Doesn't kill him. In fact, actually makes him better in certain situations.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yep. All right, Mike, it's your turn.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: All right, let's continue with the Singletara talks and let's talk about Rek' sai real quick. Rek' Sai is getting a bunch of adjustments, so it's not really nerfs or buffs. She's getting shifted around in what she's capable of. I think overall it becomes a buff, but as a whole, it could be interpreted a little bit.
Her base armor and her armor growth is getting very slightly nerfed. She's losing less than half a percent on the armor growth and one on the base armor, so it's not that big a deal.
Your. Your W unborough specifically is getting a scaling cooldown reduction with level as opposed to just being 10 seconds. This is your last max, so it's not really the most important thing. You're not going to feel that until late game. But in late game, that's going to be pretty potent to actually have CDR on. This is the knock up lockout. So you get more CC as the game goes on into the late game, which is very, very potent on her.
They're doing adjustments for how her E works.
So instead of being an empower to damage etc, she has two forces of E based on how much rage she has.
Once you max out your rage, you have the empowered E.
Instead of it being that way, they're now scaling it to be the empowered is the number that you get. And then the unempowered is a 80% off of that. And it's shifting around to lose some of its max health damage but gain a bunch of base damage.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: There's one other change that's not listed in the patch notes, but it's listed in the description beforehand.
The empowered bite deals true damage again.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: This. This. They took it away and they're giving it back. This is massive. And that's why they took away the max health damage. Also, they brought the cooldown down to 6 seconds instead of 10 again. So she does meaningful damage to everybody now. This is. This is a lot like Olafy and that it's. It's true damage that does damage but is no longer max out true damage.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: So is this like more or less before they made the adjustment last time?
[00:09:58] Speaker B: This is probably better than her original one.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: Better than the original with. With the original true damage. Okay.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: And depending on who you're hitting, it is significantly more damage on the E now, even though it did max health damage before base 80 plus max health. The people you were facing with max health built armor and it was a purely physical damage ability.
So it did chunks. But now it's a true damage shot. So it is always hurting them a meaningful amount. Oh, the true damage is only when you're empowered for the record.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: And then they did a rework on how the their ultimate Void rush deals its damage.
First off, it's getting a cooldown change. It's going from 180 to 120 to 80. Because of this little switch, the base damage is scaling down a little bit. It was 150 to 450. Now it's 150 and 350.
Only instead of doing percent missing health, it is now percent max health a lower amount. Instead of 35 missing, it's 25 max.
This is, I think, better overall. It allows her more opportunities to use it and get on top of you and do more damage. So unless you are getting an execute with it, it is now just more damage.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: But there's two portions of this that are significantly better and are really important.
The cooldown interruption from a target dying before you hit them with it dropped from 10 seconds to 5. So now it's only 5 seconds. If you've 5 second cooldown. If you didn't get that hit off and someone died beforehand allows you to just go back and do it on a different target. And this is the big one. It resets her W cooldown on cast. So immediately once you have cast it, you can burrow and knock someone up again afterwards.
You are locked out of that animation beforehand. So you. You actually can get on top of someone very quickly. CC them. Now start fighting. Get the true damage shot off in.
This should be a significantly smoother experience for Rek' Sai players.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: So I have a question. We've got the. The damage is going 150 to 450, 150 to 350. But the again we're going from missing HP to target Max HP.
So missing HP. I'm a little carry and I got four HP left. And she. She Ults me. I get. I'm gonna die because of the missing hp. Like I get that. But like when we make it a max hp. Like is she using this to engage now as opposed to it being kind of more of an execute?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Depends. Can this. This now gives her the option to. Whereas before you only wanted to use it as an execute, now you have the ability to say I want to burst the crap out of that target. We're jumping on them.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: You're not seeing the forest for the trees, Mike. This means she is no longer punished for using her Ult to dodge crucial spells.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: That is also incredibly true because she.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Does become brutally the best way to use her Ult by the way, that is what she should actually be doing with her Ult is oh, they used an ultimate to try to CC me. I'm gonna trade mine and dodge theirs entirely. Fuck you.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: It is still a targeted ability. So you are. You were trading a damage for a damage. Only your damage was always weaker because most of the time you weren't using it as the execute. They were throwing an early game hit at you to try and stop you from doing anything. This now means that you. You're trading even or up because you can dodge. You become briefly untargetable. And then I. The W is. Is huge.
It cannot be stated like I think that is going to be the big thing.
Being able to immediately Burrow and un burrow to CC people is going to be the huge thing with this.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Do you think she brings back Rek' sai support?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: No.
Much like Annie support, she is pretty much hardbound to flash jump only. It's significantly lower range than Annie and significantly lower damage than Annie. So there's no point in even doing it.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: She still has most of her damage tied into bonus ad or total ad ratios.
Which means she needs money.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Money. So expensive.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Rek' Sai is a bruiser assassin in that she needs the income to be able to do anything. Or she's just a minion.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: All right, so that's Rek'.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Sai.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: I guess I'll continue the bruiser talk.
Illaoi got probably the overall biggest changes of the entire patch.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Probably the best too.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Yes. So she got some quality of life tooltip updates on her tentacles. She got a very mild ad ratio buff on her passive spawn tentacles. The actual change that matters, Illaoi's test of spirit, her E the like, she throws out a tentacle and it grabs you and she creates a ghost copy of you and fucks you over completely. Got stronger, but a lot shorter.
A lot shorter. It now lasts significantly 3 seconds.
If you have a CC ability, you can actually CC her. And as long as you dodge the tentacles yourself that the spirit is drawing aggro from, you can still win fights against her. Which was not true before because 10 seconds meant she just automatically won if you tried to fight inside the tentacle. Unless you were massively ahead of her, you still don't want to get hit by it. It's still a fuck you button, but the degree is much more severe that you can fight back.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: I think it is also a better fuck you button because of what else is part of this.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yes. So they also made it so that tentacles now attack the ghost sooner in the combo and have a shorter attack timer. So they should still get two tentacle slams off on the ghost from her passive tentacles during the duration of it, despite the duration being three seconds instead of 10.
So again, she's actually stronger in those three seconds than she was before.
But it only being three seconds means there's just so much more ability for her opponents to play the game.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: So I. I think that they are achieving what they want because I actually watched the video from Phreak who kind of described the overhaul with Illaoi, or at least little. Little one.
It is really annoying when you get hit by one ability and for 10 seconds you gotta do the Dance Dance Revolution bullshit, man. It's just lame.
But. So here's the problem. I don't. This is, this is no way that this is a neutral power bounce. What they're gonna do is she's gonna. She's gonna fall on her face. She's gonna be in the gutter for two weeks and they're gonna try and buff her moving forward. And I just hate, I just hate the fact that I think that this is how riot does it. They do these havsies reworks where they throw people into the gutter for two weeks and then go with the opposite.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: You're missing some major power in this.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: The reason you are wrong is that her tentacles that are spawned everything except the Q tentacle essentially gained 5% total ad on every single slam. So that means tentacles only one second faster.
But that means every tentacle from her ult gets 5% more ad ratio. Every tentacle that her W causes to attack.
Every tentacle on a test to spirit target all of the above. Every tentacle slam, every tentacle is 5% more damage.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Basically, yes, every tentacle is better.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: But also that's the compensation is her test of spirit is weaker. She is passively, generically stronger.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: So this basically means that her poke, the unavoidable poke that you do nothing about, is weaker. Her base kit, you still don't want to fight her with three or four people alone. You're still going to give her insane damage. Gives her more healing because there's more damage on them.
She can build a tank here because there's slightly less ad. You need to get in the kit.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: I will say, that being said, she did drop 1 1/2% win rate. She was already a low win rate champ relative to most. She was the 48th highest win rate in top lane. She's now the 57th.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: She's not a popular champion. She never.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: She's not a popular champion at all. She never has been.
And it is, I think, intended to be a mild nerf because with Illaoi's test of spirit the way it was, she could never be allowed to ever be strong because that was such an oppressive basic ability that you hit an auto win.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Yep. No, the entire kit is whether or not you dodge the E. That is.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Literally the kit, which is why now.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: And that's still true, but to a lesser degree.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
And if you jump on her with three people, she ults and then.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You don't, you don't fight Illaoi in her ult. Yep.
She's a knowledge check kind of champion. Do you understand? Not to fight her in her ult.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: But I think the big thing is, like, if. If she tests a spirit, let's say, for example, a Malzahar, he can just be like, cool instead of running away like a scared little girl. I'm just gonna dot you and Ult you and wait out the ghost. Because my Ult lasts two and a half seconds and the ghost only lasts three. So fuck you, Illaoi.
She didn't exist before.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: She's still always getting one slam now.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: So, yeah, she's always getting immediate. There's. There's a slam happening.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: It's the prior version. He would do that. And if she wasn't dead inside the Ult, she then is just like, cool. Your ghost is still here. So I just auto win.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: We're gonna beat up on you. Yeah, I. I think with the other nerfs and buffs that have gone around, Illawi has some winning matchups. Those winning matchups are now more in allowance favor because of her passive and the matchup. She was weaker in. She's weaker in, which is. Yep, there's a lot of champions that are better at fighting Illaoi. So what she does is done better by them.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: And for the, like three Illaoi fans out there who are sad that their champion just lost some win rate, it means your champion is no longer on the permanent. Not allowed to be buffed. Listen.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah, there are some champions that are just not allowed to gain power because of what they have in that kit. She changing that kit now means you can see some more damage on there. We've got one listener whose favorite champions lobby top him all the time. Matthias is a great guy.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: He should be happy about this change.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Listener is a strong word. He's a Poe friend who occasionally listens.
All right, Codex, it's your turn.
[00:21:01] Speaker C: Well, speaking of occasionally listening, we have Pantheon.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Not sure how that one gets, but we'll go with it.
[00:21:09] Speaker C: Yeah. So Pantheon, you know, as he does his jungling, you know, definitely is not listening to Bot Lane, who's frantically pinging him.
And so right now he's just getting.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: I thought you were. I thought you were going for he doesn't listen. He Ults in, even though it's fucking suicide and everyone's pinging him not to.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: There's that too. That's more classic Pantheon. I was going with Jungle specific, so we. Their nerfing is clear for the monster damage on his Q, which is, I believe, his first max for jungle, going from 105% damage, you know, ratio to to just 90. This is a nothing burger Nerf Pantheon is not a farming kind of jungler.
Like, he needs gold the same as anybody, but he is a ganker. This does not affect his gank in any way.
So yeah, this might be for like some ultra high level, like pro Nerf, but I wouldn't even think that Pantheon would be really popular in pro.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yes, very.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Because is it the point and click stun? That's just one of them.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: One of them.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: The ultimate stun. He's very bursty.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah, the ult is very powerful in bro.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: Okay, well, because they actually like can.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Coordinate rotationally grabbing people.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: The key there is he's popular in pro partially also because of fearless draft.
Other junglers are better, but not by so much that you wouldn't pick him when you're in like game three of a series where the best ones have all been removed already.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: Right. Okay. No, that makes sense.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: It does look like his win rate did plummet a full 2% on this patch. So even though it's like. So it seems like it should be a small nerf, this does look like it's.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Statistically, this is because of what I. What I was talking with Jackson earlier and I don't think he agreed with me on this. People don't know how to properly jungle and he had enough power with it that he could not properly jungle. 15 off magic monster damage means you lose 3 to 4 seconds on the first clear. Easily.
[00:23:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Which means if you don't know how to properly jungle, you've now lost the fight for the scuttle instantly.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Okay, so we're separating out posers from. From real junglers. Okay? So do not blind pick Pantheon when. When you're junk. When you're learning jungle. So like, he's not your amumu. Pick your nocturne. Okay.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: He's not a free Clear. Yeah, he's not a free.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: He's not a free Clear.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Yeah, he's very good fighting Pantheon Jungle. Yep. If you're playing Pantheon Jungle, you need to be ganking. You need to be aggressive. If you are doing six camps into scuttle crab, you should not be playing Pantheon Jungle.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Now if your lanes are forcing you to do that, well, I guess you're screwed. Yeah, but then like, speaking of screwed. Yeah. Oh, why? Well, actually, yeah, let's. Let's talk about some screwed. There's a pretty hefty nerf to a classification for most champions in the classification of pure. Tank supports Alistair Braum and Rell Are all tanking a hefty tankiness nerf in Alistair and Braum. This is both their armor growth and their base armor. Alistair just loses seven base armor. That's massive. That's a lot of base armor to lose. Braum is losing that 7 base armor plus point 2 growth. Ouch. Like he's just taking more damage in bot lane by a lot.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: And Rel, to put that in context, seven base armor is enough that a level one AD carry with Doran's blade is doing about three more damage to you than they were prior to this Nerf at level one per attack per.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Auto, of which they do a lot and of which you don't have a ton of health. And then Rell is losing some scaling 5 to 25 base shield on the crash down her W shield. The ratio is still the same, but 5 to 25 like the base on that, it's a meaningful shield loss. It's probably the weakest of the three because she didn't lose armor. Which means it's only while that crash down is going that she has slightly weaker. So Alistair and Braum took the big net of this one.
And my favorite of the tank supports, as you may have heard, is not on this list. So if you were abusing tank support, time to switch to Leona.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Because Leona not only did not get any of these nerfs, she already was one of the more winning supports and she's now skyrocketed. She is now the seventh best support period of any class of support.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Now Tank supports were like ruling the world. This is where they were. They were way overplayed. This is a major adjustment. And Leona not getting the full stick of this is because more of Leona's kit is avoidable. The only thing you can't avoid is if she walks up and Q hits you. But that's really dangerous to her to walk up and Q hit you. So Rell's crashed down her major cc. Alistair, you can't stop the pnglab. Braum has the amount of CC to CC an entire team through his passive. This is why Leona did not get the same nerf as them. Because she's less reliable than them. But now she's stronger than them.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Yeah, Leona's really good at saying fuck you. In particular, she's not really good at like full full team.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: She can't do a five man alist Earl.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: No, but she is the best single target CC in the game.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Yeah, but I mean, but that's.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: She's now also the tankiest tank support.
[00:26:53] Speaker C: Yeah. I think what. What I am really upset by seeing this kind of sweeping change is that the. The when the time to kill is really high is the best part is the healthiest state of our game. I hate how our game constantly has to go through a cyclical pro skew where you. Where you kill people in three frames. Like it's bullshit.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: I agree. And I really wish that instead of nerfing their tankiness they had said, hey, Alistair, Braum and Rell are all too strong. We're going to tap 10 base damage off their abilities as needed.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Take their damage down instead of their tankiness down. Because they're tanks. They're supposed to be tanky and support tanks. Even Leona who didn't receive a nerf, even Alistair and Braum who both have damage reduction mechanics in their kit. They're squishy as hell.
[00:27:43] Speaker C: Yep. They're squishy as hell.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Just built. Just health stacking where Mundo has 500 AD and two shots. You're carry because he has 7,000 life.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: He's tankier than a tank support will ever be.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: Yep. Whereas like I've killed me many an Alistair. Like seriously, this is just.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: They just go splat later in the game. And that's why it frustrates me is it just exacerbates the problem where why would you ever play a tank support when you can either play an enchanter and sit behind people and keep them alive instead of sitting in front of them and keeping them alive, or you can just play a mage and blow people up.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: It's symptomatic of a little bit of a change. But it's also like when. When they are that high of a priority and everyone is playing them in a. To a significant degree. I saw more Alistair, Braum and Rell in the last two months than any enchanters or mages. They were that popular. So like there's only so much you can do to take them down because they're not picked for damage. Their goal is to sit there, walk up and stop you. So the only way to do that is to either take away some of that CC power or take away some of that tankiness. And I think armor was the wrong way. I think health would have been better.
[00:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah, should have been health. It shouldn't have been armor.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Rels. Rell's is the single healthiest change there.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Because it's when she goes in. Right.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: It's specifically when she goes in. It's all on the shield and it's.
[00:29:07] Speaker C: All on the shield. And like, that's. That's fair. Also, does the shield fall off? Yeah, like, eventually over time. Like, like, dude, it falls off over time.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: I. I was gonna say it also shows she's the one who lost the least win rate of the tank supports that got nerfed. She's roughly neutral in the standings overall.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, like, again, she probably had the least impact power in comparison. And Alistair QE A four man, five man, Alistair Qi wins a game.
[00:29:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
A Braum. Braum shield is one of the most disgusting defensive tools ever. A moving wind wall.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: Moving wind wall. Yeah.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yep. So.
[00:29:49] Speaker C: But not as big. Oh my God. That. That ability is stupid. Sorry.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: It is. We agree. Speaking of stupid, the other change I want to highlight, Riot realized belatedly that. Oh, we buffed Blade of the Ruined King last patch. Oh, fuck. Irelia builds Blade of the Ruined King first, and she's a fucking nightmare. And impossible to deal with for almost every laner, Especially in mid lane, where champions simply do not have the kits to fight her. Period.
Well, gee, we're riotous. Clearly the solution is we should nerf her health regen by about half. Riot, you missed the fucking problem. Irelia's Q heals built in baseline and applies on hit effects, including lifesteal. Irelia heals to full by trading with you because she just W's the caster minions. Q's. All three of them. Cool. She's now fully stacked on her passive. She just Q's onto you and fights you. She doesn't have to hit the stun.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: She doesn't have to wait to use her Q to attack you with another reset. Exactly.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: She does not need the reset Q. She just stat checks you. Nerfing her regen does not change that play pattern. And that play pattern is the reason that no mid laner worth a damn can deal with her. Like, unless you're playing Syndra. Syndra can deal with her because Syndra can interrupt her dash and say fuck you in particular, other than Syndra. Like, what the fuck are mages supposed to do against this goddamn champion?
She builds Lifesteal first so we can't poke her out. She has a better engage range than mages do. And she stat checks us. Oh, and she builds Wit's end second if she's against a mage.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: And the smart thing about her for a good Irelia player is they're using that Q to dodge.
[00:31:30] Speaker C: Yep, yep.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: They're dodging your abilities. So unless you've got a point and click Good luck hitting her.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: I have not seen an Irelia in my games since the blade of the ruined King Buff because I am perma banning this fucking champion and this health regen nerf does not change that in any way, shape or form. I will not see an Irelia in a Jaxoman game unless it is on my team and first pick for the foreseeable future until Riot figures out how fucking broken her ability to heal off the wave is.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Note to self, relearn to play Irelia.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: And to be clear, I don't mind her Q having a heal if she hits you with it. I mind her healing off the Minion.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: She should. This. This is the biggest problem with Irelia is how much she can heal off of main waves.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Yeah, she heals literally hundreds of life on a vamp scepter by just deleting the Minion wave.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: If. If they restricted it purely to champions. I think Irelia isn't this necessarily fixed. She still has some other problems to her, but it's a great comes pokeable. It's a great.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it becomes healthy and sustainable.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. I didn't want to spend a lot of time on Irelia. I just wanted to soapbox ban this fucking champion. I cannot believe Riot allows this champion to exist in this state. She's. Her win rate is not that great because unless you're good at Irelia, she falls off a fucking cliff in team fights.
But she is the most frustrating to lane phase against champion in the game by multiple orders of magnitude.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: There's ever been a champion in the history of the game that has aggravated me more in laning phase than Irelia.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Akali with her old W where she.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Became invisible to towers aggravates me more because that Akali could be stat checked ever.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: I don't.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Being able to avoid towers from that was the most frustrating thing in the world.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah, she had downtime. Irelia doesn't.
[00:33:32] Speaker C: Speaking of downtime, Quinn has gotten a change to her. Her Q.
They are shifting the Q going from a total AD to a bonus ad. And because of that, they have to shift around the damage.
So it used to be 20 scaling to 100, which now it is 65 scaling to 205 with the ratio. Oh, oh. Actually the ratio remains the same, but it is now a bonus ad ratio. So here's the thing. Bonus ad, like total ad. I get it. All the items I have plus my.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: You know, inheritance your base ad, which also grows with you as a characteristic.
[00:34:15] Speaker C: Bonus though like, it's not deal with.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: It items, but it's just items bonuses ad from items. So to put this.
[00:34:22] Speaker C: Oh, so it doesn't include the intrinsic ad.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Okay, right.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Items.
Yeah.
[00:34:29] Speaker C: And that's again why they have to. To make it significantly more, because it's not including your intrinsic ad.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:37] Speaker C: So anyway, the overall reason, what Ryan is right, is trying to do is that they're very upset that she's building static shiv and symbiote and just kind of roaming around doing Quinn things and having all the wave clear. They. They want her to lose minions by like wandering around post six, like trying to find people.
They don't like the fact that she can just shove and move, so.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Or they want her to commit more.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yeah, they want her to commit more. I. I don't know how I feel about this.
I. I don't know if it actually changes it. I hope it does. I really hope that they actually took the time to check. But like, these.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Look, I just did the math on it. Riot are morons. Is it the same Riot fucking morons? No, this is a buff.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Oh, Fuck.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: At level 9, Quinn has 77 AD. That's what the base AD would be, right? Statik Shiv gives 45 AD.
So what that means is the old one, when you just hit the point where you just max it out, did 100 base damage plus 120% of your total AD.
[00:35:47] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Which is 125. 127, something like that, for like 225 total damage. Her new version does 205 plus 120% of your bonus AD, which is 45, which is, you know, 259 damage. So wait, just static? At just static shiv, she's doing like 30 more damage per Q than she was before.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Jesus Christ, guys.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Like Riot's lying to us and her ad growth sucks. If you scale that from level 9 to level 13, she gains 11 AD.
[00:36:26] Speaker C: So level 1, does it affect anything?
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Let's see. Level 1, she has 59 AD and no bonus AD.
It is a very mild nerf.
[00:36:39] Speaker C: Mild nerf? Well, she. She usually has a Dorans. Right?
[00:36:43] Speaker B: So it's 7 AD.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's roughly power neutral to a mild nerf. But they specifically say the Statik Shiv symbiotic souls wipes the wave and roams around build as the problem. And at that point, she just does more fucking damage than she did before. Riot, learn to do basic math, please.
[00:37:04] Speaker C: Yeah, like what I just did is.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Literally grade school level algebra I'm not doing calculus here.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Unless they calculate how bonus AD functions slightly different than we expect, which is pure math.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Then they don't.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Then the base number there is wrong.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: However much AD you have on items. And runes.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: Oh yeah. Okay. So also runes. That actually makes sense.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: Anything that is.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Any source of AD that does not scale Trinity Force is bonus ad.
Trinity Force only scales off your base ad.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Now.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: This is also why they intentionally make champions that could be good with Trinity Force. But they don't want to be have weak bonus A base ad ratios like Quinn.
Because holy Quinn would be a problem if she had good base AD and could abuse Trinity Force.
[00:38:00] Speaker C: Right.
Yeah. Okay.
Well all of a sudden I just learned what bonus versus total is. And like don't get me wrong, it's not like completely had no idea. But eh.
Bonus is items total is like everything plus plus everything.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Yep. And I just want to put this in context. The highest base AD in the game at level 18 is Mega Gnar with 163 base AD.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: Yeah, you don't need.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: It's very very easy to have many more hundreds base bonus ad than that.
The main reason for the total AD versus bonus AD ratio differences is some abilities feel like auto attacks and it's more intuitive if they just function off auto attack.
[00:38:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm actually like really quickly checking out Yannara just to see she's I think total. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's a total.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: She is. Because her auto attacks just do 30% of your regular value.
While you're looking that up though, Mike, you have a quick change for your last one. Let's wrap up the patch and get some listener questions.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: So this one is sweet, simple and very important for pro play. And the occasional Baron Steel timing.
Baron had health regen per five, so he was always regening health while you were fighting him, which could mess around with smite timers.
That's gone. He no longer has health regen per five in combat. To compensate, he got 100 more base health, which isn't quite the thing. And his out of combat regen is unchanged.
He is slightly easier to kill.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Basically what this means is if Baron takes about seven seconds to take total, he's exactly as tanky as he was before.
If it takes longer, he's slightly squishier than before. And if you somehow are killing Baron in less than seven seconds, he's tankier than he was before, but not by an amount that you really care about too much.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: The only. The. The reason this matters is Smites. Because Baron was subtly changing that health. And very frequently you would see 2 5, 7, 1 health left after a smite.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Yep. And if you've been playing for a long time, you may remember that Baron used to update his health and max health based on the levels of players while he was in combat, which resulted in situations where during a Baron fight, someone dies, which means someone else levels up, which means Baron gains 40 health. And now the smite misses.
This is basically that 2.0 that.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: That happened in a pro game, and the Baron was left with one health on the smite. It was not his fault. There's nothing he could have done. Yep.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: And that's when that got removed. So now they're removing this. I don't think there was a triggering incident for this one, but there was. He shouldn't heal during combat.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: There was. There was another couple of. Like, there should have been 1200. And then suddenly there was a health pop up, and he was left at, like, four health.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: Hey, I stole a Baron with Jax and I believe Mike as well. When the Baron was only at one. It was great.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: All right, that's the patch. We have a trinket tip in here. Who put this in?
[00:41:20] Speaker C: Me. Because it's an adc.
Well, actually, it's not an ADC trinket tip. All right, so one of the things when. Especially when I'm coming back to League and getting right back into it, you see us like garbage. It's really hard.
I actually have, like, a huge, gigantic, gigantic how to see Us Better like, pamphlet that I think we need to do an episode on. But this trinket tip is do not hit a minion at 50%. And you will way, way, way, way, way, way last hit. Better in laning face. In laning face. Yeah, yeah. If. If you. If again, if you're doing that, that, like, slow push, like not hitting the minions and just last hitting while. While doing the footsies play, you need to make sure to not hit them at 50%, because when you bring them, especially now that they do max health damage against each other, you'll get surprised. Especially when cannons are involved.
The cannon will absolutely take a minion that is suddenly 30% after you know you hit it. But your attack speed isn't going to kick in fast enough for it before it dies.
So the. The golden rule is you can hit it at 70%, but you cannot hit it at. At any. If it looks like it's close to 50.
And like I said, you. You will 100% increase your. Your CS a lot better by. By avoiding that.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: So this is a bigger rule in mid and top than an or a bot and top than it is in mid. Because mid is significantly more about roaming, which means you are clearing waves significantly faster than other other people.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: You're pushing much farther, much faster, more consistently. So this is not the rule in mid.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:43:13] Speaker C: Are you just blowing up the wave anyway after like level eight?
[00:43:17] Speaker B: No, this is like level three, Level five.
[00:43:20] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, I guess.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Because you, you. You are trying to make sure you have priority when it's time for Scubbits, right?
[00:43:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: If you've ever been in a call with me when I'm playing league or watched my stream, you probably hear me say fuck you Minions. It's because for some reason the minions are like psychic. If they see you hit something below half they turn. They all turn and focus fire it. They're not supposed to and they often don't do it. But occasionally they all just randomly say hey, let's just kill that thing and fuck the player.
So yeah, just don't hit them below 50%. Let the minions get them low and then last hit. Okay. Rains sent in a novel a while ago. Let's actually get some of these questions done. We've been putting them off for a couple weeks because there's just a lot and we appreciate you, Reigns. Thank you for waiting.
So the like preamble is Reigns has moved back to top lane since it feels like the role with the most solo agency to win or lose a game. He occasionally duos with a support friend, but mostly it's solo. He's refining his champ pool to cut down on micro to focus more on macro leading into a split push lane dominant style. The goal is to become a strong side lane threat who pulls pressure and opens the map for my team champions like Yorick, Mordekaiser and Nasus.
So questions are with that context in.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Mind, those are good champions to have that playstyle with.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:44:47] Speaker C: Yep, agreed.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: What should my priority list be in terms of assessing whether pushing a lane is worth my time? Post laning phase, for example, how many missing enemies or which specific ones are missing? Objectives, standing gold, etc.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Couple things you need to have explicitly very good mini map awareness. You need to be watching where champions are. Because if you're still like post laning phase, usually that means a tower is down either yours or theirs and you are moving around the map to try and take that other sides, tower, push objectives, etc. If you are going past the halfway point, you need to have Vision on at least three of them minimum. Your champion pool is decent at 2v1s. So three is the main mark you need to make sure you see elsewhere.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: And that's just going past half.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: The key here is both Yorick and Nasus also are very good at saying, oh, the gigafed midlaner came to match me. I'm going to walk away and you can't stop me from doing so.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah, and Mord's not bad at that either.
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Yeah, he's serviceable, but not as good as the other two at it. And that's important too, because if they have one person who can match you, that means that that person plus any other one dude can kill you.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: The next main thing really is are you winning or losing?
If you are winning, you have much greater freedom to push than you do if you are losing. But you should still, unless specifically as Nasus, you should be wiping the wave as quick as you can and getting out of vision. Nasus, obviously you're Q farming and that's. That's your main priority. Yep.
[00:46:35] Speaker C: The one thing I will throw in here is that there's like a specific thing when you're okay, you're your.
Okay, your top lane. Right. And we're gonna. I think it's blue side, like the left one.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:50] Speaker C: So. So you've. You've taken the tower. You know, your Nessus, you're jamming. You are going to crash that wave into the red side tower. It's really, really important that if you see no one, that you hide in that little like, bushy thing right next to Krugs and start your recall. You're not leaving, you're starting your recall. And then you wait until you see where the people are. It is actually really okay to just masturbate in a bush. I'm just saying it's part of the top lane experience.
The only.
[00:47:28] Speaker B: You see those Krugs? You can take them.
[00:47:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. The only minor thing I was going to add is like, take. Take the Krugs if you see them. Be careful though, because when the red minions come for, like, they might be able to see you through the window.
You might need to like, look at like enemy vision in your post game just to see if they saw you or not and get better at it.
The main thing is just to take a really deep. Let's say the Krugs aren't there. Right. Like, there's no. There's no money to be had and you don't see anybody and you don't know they're dead or whatever.
You start your recall in the bush. You take a deep breath. You stop it before like the last second.
If. If you suddenly see people somewhere else, Dragon Bot, wherever you're gonna see them, right? Go take the tower. That. That is your green light. Bloop. Bloop. You are ready to go take the tower. If you. If you don't see anyone, you just go home, spend your money. It's fine. Like. Like, don't get into trouble. Because if you don't see people, that is red light. Like, that's explicitly.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: If you don't see people.
[00:48:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I don't know about three.
My general thing when I'm doing this, somewhat equivalent in mid. Because like at 14 minutes, as an EDC, I should be mid.
Like I'm just looking. Can I contest the wave if I see people?
Yes. If I don't see people, I cannot. Right. So like it's. It's a red light. Green light. And getting better at red light. Green light is part of the game.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: All right. I briefly want to explain to the listeners why you should be channeling and canceling a recall. Because it sounds like you're just wasting time. Why would you stare? They're channeling a recall you don't intend to complete. The reason is that it gives you the ability to make a faster decision. Recall is an 8 second channel. If you channel down to 1 second and then cancel repeatedly while you wait to make the decision.
That means when the decision is made, if it is to not complete the recall, you lose nothing. You instantly cancel the recall and go do what you're going to do the moment the right people showed or everyone showed, whatever it might be, whatever the condition is in the moment, if the correct decision is to complete that recall, that means you now have X number of seconds less than 8 before you are back at Fountain. Depending on where you were in the recall cycle when you made that decision. If you don't start channeling a recall like this, that answer is always eight.
[00:49:49] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: So you are saving some amount of time. It might be one second, it might be six seconds. Sometimes it might be a quarter second. You are still saving some amount of time by channeling recalls you won't complete while you wait to make the decision. Waiting to see who shows.
[00:50:04] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: Than if you just stand there idle in the bush.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: There's another caveat here. If you have more than 2,000 gold, don't wait complete that recall.
[00:50:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: Usually.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: Like unless you see all five on the bot wave explicitly like that. That's the usual single scenario.
You know they're there, you see them all, they're fighting over there. Yeah. Then take the tower. But otherwise you're better off spending that gold and being a bigger threat.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Yes, that is. That is the usually right there is. If you see all five, you cancel that recall still and you go clear. Shit.
[00:50:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Because at worst you'll gain gold and at best you'll draw one of them to teleport to you and then you just walk away.
[00:50:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
So as an adc, the way that I do this because you as a top laner can actually encounter a foe. I cannot encounter a foe when I'm alone.
I actually do it immediately in lane the second that that last minion that I've cleared dies in top lane when I'm trying to split push. Which btw, I shouldn't be. But like if it does happen, I do it in lane. I don't even waste the second walking to the bush. So get comfortable with even possibly looking at that because again, it's saving you time.
Like I to make the decision had.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Moments where choosing to just recall where I stand the moment that the minions died meant I got out alive. If I had run to a bush, my recall would have been interrupted.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: It happens sometimes. There are times when that is the correct decision.
Let's keep going with Rain's questions. Question two. I've been doing some research between streamers and guides and such and I'm finding very conflicting information on what is better between focusing on CSING in the laning phase or trading phase for pressure. As a low ELO player iron soon to be bronze, I obviously can't be focused on both at the same time whilst reteaching myself certain lane fundamentals. So which do you guys believe is a better starting point in order to win game lanes and games more consistently?
[00:52:01] Speaker B: So you're going to see those. You're going to see that conflicting information because of who is giving you that information.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Yes. In high elo, you do have to balance this.
In low elo, your opponents will be trading 100% of the time. They are going to miss a ton of CS because all they see is see hero try to kill hero. If you can focus your energy on disengaging from them and getting that cs, you are putting yourself massively ahead of them very, very quickly. And then you can just kill them because you're ahead.
[00:52:36] Speaker B: So you're a top laner, which means for the most part you should be trying to get one of the last picks if you can Counter pick.
If you. If you see an enemy champion that is heavy trading, your goal should probably be to grab mordekaiser, because that way you actually can just trade while farming. Neither Nasus nor Yorick has the ability to easily trade and farm simultaneously if you can get away with it. If there's a tank up there, play one of the other two because they're gonna be way better at ending the fight versus tanks. You can just farm in their face forever. Yep.
[00:53:16] Speaker A: And that's really the key is if they're trying to kill you and they're missing CS trying to kill you and you're farming and not dying, you're getting stronger and they're not, you win.
[00:53:26] Speaker C: Yep.
So as an ad carry, I do need to represent the carries and what they need in their world.
I've always felt that you should. You do have to do both. You need to realize that gaining competency in both is the ultimate goal. Right?
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:53:43] Speaker C: I have found immense amount of success in focusing on exclusively on one for like six weeks, like 100, 150 games, and then switching over to the other one. However, the one thing.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, when you're really into league, you're really into league.
That being said, Carrie, we are a fighting class.
We're here to kill people. And I feel that while this is great advice, especially for other roles, carries are 100% based on how we kill people. Getting used to trading, getting really, really, really, really good at trading is actually very important for ad carry.
I'm not saying, like, ignore your cs, but like, there is a point where you just push. Push your foot on the gas for that pedal. Take your foot off, push it on the other gas pedal.
Like. Yeah.
[00:54:39] Speaker A: The difference here is in the bot lane, it's two on two. It's much harder to farm without dying if the opponent is trying to kill you.
[00:54:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: By virtue of them playing brainlessly aggro because it's low eloquence, you also have to play to fight. Because it's two on two, you do not have a choice. You don't have solo lanes. It's much easier for you to be like, settle down, kid. I'm farming here.
[00:55:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: And it. Your. Your pool there. Those three champions are very, very, very good at this.
All three of them have very good health regen that they gain just by hitting waves. Yep.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: All right. We kind of already answered question three, which is about recall timers.
So the question is, how do I improve on better recall timers? My main issues are bad recall Timers allowing free hits on towers with no response. Once I get back to lane or unspent gold and I am in lane missing stats.
How to improve that? Make sure you're throwing the wave at the enemy so they have to deal with a whole nother wave while you walk back or while you teleport back. Don't you recall when the wave is already pushing at you?
[00:55:47] Speaker B: You're in a very, very, very difficult lane for wave management.
This is the biggest hurdle in that lane, and it is top lane's biggest crux.
You have to learn lane management to learn top lane properly. It's not as important in low elo because people are going to fight and wipe waves. But if someone with one enemy knows how to halt a wave and freeze it on you, that game's. If you don't know what you're doing against that because you're never getting that that XP again, you're never getting that fight again.
So your main goal, like your Your initial goal with those champions and they're good at it. Push that wave forward if you're Mordekaiser or Yorick and push it towards the tower. As Nasus last hit Q Farm as much as you possibly can. He likes to sit there forever.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:56:37] Speaker C: One thing that I'm not seeing here, this I feel is 100% because you're not recalling in like in lane, where people can see you like the second the last minion like dies, you're not instantaneously recalling.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: You don't get the option to do that in their face. They will not let you.
[00:56:57] Speaker C: If they. If you do, they're fighting in a wave and you're probably going to win that.
[00:57:02] Speaker B: Top lane champions are a lot better at dealing with fights in waves than bot lane champions are. And a lot of them will gain health through that because they're also fighting waves. So it is actually sometimes disadvantageous, unless you're a level three to be fighting.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: In a wave because they have abilities like Mordekaiser Passive. Just hitting all of the little minions. Building his shield up super fast.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: Exactly. So like as. As much as this is a rule, permanent rule in bot lane, it is not in top. Yep.
[00:57:32] Speaker A: All right. We got one more question.
[00:57:34] Speaker C: There was one.
One more thing to better include.
Better improve your recall timers.
So it sucks. The UI is really, really, really old.
But if you go into your items on the client, there's this thing called item sets.
If you customize out your item sets and know exactly what you buy the second you land, you can effectively increase Your speed to. To the lane by like three or four seconds. And you know, you don't think that matters, but when you start getting good at it, it only takes you like 20 games to get really good at it. It suddenly becomes just muscle memory. And like I said, dude, it is. You get eight seconds to like while you're, while you're recalling to look at your thing of. Okay, what should I buy now? Yeah, you've already made the decision and then bam, you're already, already back to lane like immediately.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: Immediately browse into one of those points. Do not window shop while recalling. That is the easiest way to give free kills.
[00:58:34] Speaker C: Disagree. You gotta get this. It's a skill. It's a skill. You have to learn it.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: That is a great way to. In bronze and in bronze and iron, that's a great way to give a free kill because you have to learn that.
[00:58:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. You have to look, look at the edge of your screen.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: You can plan those, you can plan those items significantly. Especially if you're going back for health as well, which as a top laner you're trading your health bars a lot. It's almost a never in scenario when you're going back at full health. So you should have time while your health is regening in the fountain to get the items you need. If you're window shopping. That is a great way to die.
[00:59:08] Speaker A: Yep. All right.
Question 4 How much faith should I be placing in most popular builds and such? I found a Yorick build on Reddit where a player used Heartsteel and Sundered sky as a core and then flexes from there per game. I haven't had a chance to try it out, but is it a case of popular high win rate for a reason or is it more fine to build and playstyle that works best for.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: You starting off that don't look at Reddit as the place to get item builds.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: Yes, Reddit is the worst place you can possibly go to get item builds.
[00:59:39] Speaker B: There are very, very good data sites, op, gg, etc that are like these. Use client data to talk about where the most popular ones are. These are where you should be looking for those things. They will give you an idea on what you want to be building. They're not ironclad set in stone.
Yes, some of these things you will have to shift and change based on what you're facing and what the circumstances are.
But they will give you very good ideas on where you should be going.
[01:00:13] Speaker A: Yes. Now I would like to briefly explain probably why that Redditor thinks That build is good in low elo, which admittedly is where you are. People fight all the time over stupid shit, so it's really easy to stack Heartsteel to high heavens and see, oh, I got a big number on Heartsteel. This build is great, guys. Yorick barely scales with his own health. He has a percent missing health heal on his Q.
That's it.
It's enough that he wants to build health items so that the heal is bigger as well. He wants to build the ad bruiser tier of items.
[01:00:51] Speaker B: Sundered sky.
[01:00:52] Speaker A: Yes, Sundered sky is great on him because it's doubling down on I want to heal constantly, which is what his Q already does.
Yeah, Heartsteel is not a good item on him. The reason that Redditor thinks is good is because he saw number go up because he fought a lot.
That's why we say don't get builds from Reddit. Even if you're going to champion specific subreddits, sometimes you will find a build that eventually does become the meta build because it is correct out of those kinds of places.
But unless you're a really good player who's really experienced on that champion, you're not the one who's qualified to be able to evaluate a new build and go, is this actually good? Did this guy have a lucky game? Is this a meme?
There's a lot of things that it could be and actually better than the standard build is only one of those things.
Let other people figure that out, let high elo streamers, let onetrix play all these wacky new builds and if it's actually better, their audience will spread that build and it'll become the new normal. We just saw that recently with Dr. Mundo. He no longer rushes heartsteel, he rushes warmogs. Because Alois, a really good Mundo player from EU who's a popular streamer, figured out that that is the best way to power spike the soonest on Dr. Mundo with a specific playstyle and then his audience all builds that now and now it's the most popular build on him. It is correct if you're playing Dr. Mundo the way Alois does.
[01:02:28] Speaker B: So that's the second point there.
There are a lot of champion specific like streamers or pros that you can see watch Twitch. If they are someone who does mostly that one champion, they are a great person to watch for mechanical ideas.
They will do things you cannot do unless it is the simplest champion in the game. And even still they'll be able to to win fights. You probably Can't. They're going to teach you things, they're going to push you to learn more about the champion. Don't follow them word for word unless they're doing something like a teaching chant, a teaching champion. So there are like a couple of streamers who are phenomenal at that.
Azap I just one of the ones we were going to talk about.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I just named one. Aloe does that. He's a great choice if you want to learn top lane. Not just Dr. Mundo, what he's famous for, but like lane management fundamentals, how to crash waves. Actually just go watch him like he's actually the top laner I would recommend because in his streams he's constantly talking about oh I just, I'm going to win this trade because minions and he'll do the trade and then while he has downtime he's telling his chat what the like underlying thought process was behind it that made him know it was a good trade when his opponent didn't realize they were in a bad spot.
[01:03:56] Speaker B: He's, he's like, I think BWIPO is one of the most educational streamers you can find and he does a ton of it. He plays a lot of champions, you'll learn a lot of play styles and he will talk about what top lane is like, what's going on in the game, why he's making decisions and he'll answer questions from the stream that are related to top lane frequently. So like if you find someone who does that, that's a great place to learn more.
Don't take everything that someone says about builds as gospel and because you're not them, you can't play like them. Take ideas, take learn learning like skills and core ideas.
[01:04:39] Speaker C: So the one thing that I feel like, because like you guys got it really covered fairly well, I also think that having expectations on like how, how long it takes to get comfortable with with builds like to the point where you trust yourself.
I've been working pretty hard on like items and stuff within ADC for probably about four years now with like actual seriousness.
And I can say now like I, regardless of the actual minute differences, I could say that when I put together like nah, I think Ynara is going to be best with Yuntal into Brunens into ie. Like I was confident enough to, to actually be able to say that right after a long, long, long time.
So the main thing like find someone who you feel is knowledgeable in the item specific top laner kind of world and then after that go talk to them figure that out and verify it against the stat sites like OB ji. The one I pay for is Coachless.
You know, all. All of those. Those places. Lolalytics is another really good one.
Yeah, just go trust but verify. And then please, dear God, get off of Reddit. Like, no, no, it's great for memes.
[01:06:12] Speaker B: If you want to listen to Reddit, the best play to do that is just take lucid into the top lane. You'll find Reddit builds all the time and all of them will work for you just fine. Loose from the top is the way to go if you're gonna reread it.
[01:06:23] Speaker A: There you go. All right, guys, this has been episode 492 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Sohman for Mike of Many Names and for Codex Ninja. Have a great night.
[01:06:35] Speaker C: Goodbye.
[01:06:36] Speaker B: Good night, everybody.
[01:06:39] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected].
[01:06:50] Speaker B: And.
[01:06:50] Speaker A: Of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcast gmail.com so we can.
[01:06:56] Speaker B: Answer them live on the show.
[01:06:58] Speaker A: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
