The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 496: I'M GOING TO DO GWEN!

[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 496 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. [00:00:50] Speaker B: I'm no longer choking, thank goodness. [00:00:53] Speaker A: I was worried for a moment. We've also got Codex, Ninja and I'm. [00:00:57] Speaker C: No Longer Clutching My Gut. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Both positive things. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Also nice. Wasn't worried, was confident you'd pull through with that issue. Guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast and we're a podcast network now. So come join. The Discord link is in the episode description. Come talk to us about games. Find a link to the new podcast which is also linked in the episode description. Because we have a general gaming podcast now. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're going to shout out Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Robegon, Skippius, Esquire, and Lebana for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys. You keep the show on the Internet. It is a big deal. Seriously. If you guys want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com theforwards podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and we'll shout out your name at the top of every episode. And those perks apply to the new podcast as well. So if you subscribe at the $5 tier, you get behind the scenes on the general gaming podcast as well. It's pretty cool. We do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv Jacksonman and Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames and we haven't bullied Codex into streaming yet. Last but not least, listeners, go ahead. [00:02:26] Speaker C: I said I will. If we can get enough like, you know, sponsors on the podcast that you can't say it in a single breath. If you run out of breath, then I will stream. [00:02:38] Speaker A: You heard her make me breathless. So she streams. Guys, that's quite a few. [00:02:44] Speaker C: Take your breath away stream. [00:02:46] Speaker A: All right, guys, last but not least, we need more listener questions. One of you did Write in this week and I appreciate that, but we need more. Write in your questions to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. Alright guys, it's patch 25.17. There's a whole bunch of minor changes. This patch. I don't think this patch is really like a groundbreaking shift patch. It's one of these like adjustment patches. And given that riot is gearing up for Worlds, I expect this patch, the next patch and the one after it will probably be pretty minor adjustments and then we'll get the earth shattering one. But even with minor adjustments, there's still some stuff to talk about and I am gonna let Mike kick things off. You just played Kassadin. Tell us what changed with him. [00:03:36] Speaker B: So with Kassadin, Kassadin needs to be handled very gently. When they buff him or nerf him, they're buffing him this time. And because if Kassadin is allowed to be as strong as he can be, he warps the game. There was a, there was an entire year in which Kassadin was on the perma ban or pick list, like 100% pick ban. He is probably the only champion that was on there for that long because of what can happen when he's allowed to be too strong. [00:04:09] Speaker A: And specifically, he was not on 100% pick ban in pro. He was on 100% pick ban almost globally. [00:04:16] Speaker B: I believe it was 95% in solo queue and 100% in pro play. [00:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah, which is ludicrous. No champion has ever been even close to that high a pick ban in solo queue before or since. [00:04:28] Speaker B: So they're understandably cautious when they start changing Kassadin nowadays. But both of these are well, well thought out buffs because they're just giving him more AP ratios on his Q and his E. His Q is getting 10% more AP ratio going from 60 to 70 and it's E is getting a 5% AP ratio going from 65 to 70. Your E is your first max in 90% of scenarios. Your Q is very, very rarely your first max. So changing base ratios is not a big deal here. Getting, getting the bonus AP ratios is really where Kassadin starts to shine, is that level 11, that level 16 is where he starts becoming powerful. He's a champion at level six, but he's not strong until 11. And then when he's allowed to hit 16, he is a monster. This is a good change. I felt it. [00:05:23] Speaker A: It felt good and I like that. It's specifically an AP ratio change because that means it doesn't meaningfully buff the Bruiser Kassadin that we have seen in the past. I don't want to see Kassadin go back to building Rod of Ages seraphs into frozen heart and tank items. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and this. This forces him still into that pure AP mode, but it's giving him more tools more quickly. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Really? [00:05:50] Speaker B: Because 70 AP ratio on your first max is very potent. And I. I should. I should point out specifically with the Cube, because it has the shield ratio on it. This is only for the damage. This isn't part of the shield ratio, so it's just a damage bonus. Good buff noticeable. [00:06:09] Speaker A: Speaking of good buffs, I'm going to briefly cover Morgana because she got some changes that make her much better in a farming role. So this doesn't meaningfully affect Support Morgana. They buffed the damage on her W prior to Max rank. At Max Rank, it does exactly what it did before. And they reduced the mana cost on higher ranks of her wife up to 20 less mana at Max rank than it used to cost. For Jungle Morgana, the damage buff is noticeable. For Mid Lane, Morgana, the damage buff is tremendous. Remember last patch? They changed her W to do more damage up front, but have less execute scaling. This change just stacked on top of that. I've played Morgana mid on this patch. She feels really good now. Like, really good. [00:07:03] Speaker B: She's a great counter pick into certain matches now. [00:07:06] Speaker A: Yep. She remains my personal counter pick into Malzahar minus smolder. She's great. That makes sense. So, yeah, Morgana straight up better. Like, that's the key is none of these changes are bad for support. So if you're playing Support Morgana, your last max does four more damage per ticket. It's still good. Or your second max, depending on which version of Support Morgana you're doing. [00:07:32] Speaker B: This is a. This is a good buff for the Support Morgana's damage. She's not ever really picked to help push. She's not really ever picked to. She's just picked for picking. And she's picked for helping secure your AD carries. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah, she's picked for her ability to pick people off and her ability to Black Shield the person who the enemy wants to kill the most. That didn't change. All right, Codex, you've got three AD Carries in your lineup. [00:07:59] Speaker C: Pick one. Yeah, let's start with the hard one. Let's go with Ynara. Okay. So I don't know why Riot took four plus weeks to fix this, but they finally decided that they wanted to fix the most. Most. Mostly it's the Kraken's lair, but also Bork and Guinsoo's Rageblade. Basically what happens, all right, in your mind, you paint a stick figure of Ynara on the left of your mind and then paint three enemies over on. So when she throws out a auto attack with a Q activated, it will hit the first enemy and then spread to the other two. Now put five minions right next to those enemies. It will bounce to again, all of them. So what was happening was, is that it was triggering multiple stacks per bounce. So what it's supposed to do is that when she hits that first enemy with a Kraken Slayer, it is supposed to stack one time, even if it. If the Q is activated and bounced to the other two. What it was doing is it was bouncing to two enemies and stacking, you know, three times. And with the five other minions there, it would stack eight times. Because that was how it was. There was another situation where Runan's hurricane was dealing full on hit damage when bouncing from that secondary target to the primary target. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Only the primary. [00:09:30] Speaker C: Yeah, only to the primary. Only to the primary target. But again, this is dealing with the fact that Riot's never done like an AoE splash damage champion before. And the thing that I just don't understand about this entire thing is that these items were very obviously going to be used on Ynara. And I just can't imagine that this bug didn't appear on Target Dummies. [00:09:56] Speaker B: So it's a little weird in the coding of it. Part of this is an interesting portion in that it only works with Ynara because every other champion who has a form of splash cannot get more splash. You are only allowed one instance of splash. [00:10:10] Speaker C: Right? So this is the first time that they've broken that. [00:10:12] Speaker B: So things going. Having it stack and do extra damage to the other minions is probably actually the least of the problems. But they fixed that with another one. The real big issue was getting multiple hits of full procs on the main target. So you were double triple dipping on Kraken Slayer procs on Bork procs. So that is significant increase in single target damage. [00:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah. The reason why this probably wasn't caught as quickly is because I know that sounds completely bananas, but there was actually an identical. Well, not an identical. There was a concurrent another bug where when the damage from the primary target went to the secondary target, when the hurricane bolt went back to the primary target, it would sometimes register zero damage. So there was this weird balancing between There's a bug that basically generates infinite damage, and then there's a bug that generates zero damage. So in concert together, like it, it effectively means that she might land effectively in the same place, kind of. [00:11:28] Speaker B: So having played a little bit of her sense, it feels very similar in damage to where it was before. You're doing about the same amount of single target and a little bit less aoe. If you were building the Kraken into crit. [00:11:44] Speaker C: Yeah, Kraken into crit. [00:11:44] Speaker B: If you were building Kraken into other things, that is where her damage nerf really saw a hit. [00:11:52] Speaker C: Yep. And so the. The biggest thing that I'm starting to feel, I only took her into the practice tool since. So I kind of feel like this is going to so subtly shift us to PD on her over Hurricane. But at the same time, Hurricane's real nice. So I don't know, we'll just have to kind of see where the. Where the numbers go. The one thing that I thought that was very interesting is that her win rate in Iron is. Has spiked from 44% all the way up to 47%. But in diamond and Emerald, she has fallen like 3%. So something that the. The Iron folks are doing and the brown folks and what is completely the opposite to the diamond and Emerald people and whatever it is in this Q bug, it is making them diverge right into the middle, into the middle of the pack. So I don't know. I just thought that was just. [00:12:54] Speaker B: If I had to guess, it's target targeting and that the people who were in the diamond and Emerald etc were properly utilizing multi hit to get extra damage to do much more AoE damage. Whereas now that she's not randomly doing no damage. [00:13:14] Speaker C: Yeah, randomly doing no damage. You. Yep. [00:13:16] Speaker B: The people who don't have optimal target selection and are just hitting the first thing that comes to mind aren't having suddenly no damage procs. So in a weird scenario, in both cases, this sort of just evens out. [00:13:31] Speaker C: Right into the middle. So, like I said, I don't. I think that if you're just taking her out for the first spin for the first time, I still think you should be running something pretty simple like. Like yuntalled into Infinity, like the most boring build ever. But at the same time, like, I'm gonna be playing around with the building. [00:13:50] Speaker B: As a. As a side note, Kraken might still be the single strongest item in the game. I've seen it built on so many things, and it does tons of damage. I've never seen a Lucian do More damage than a Kraken rush, Lucian. So Kraken might still be the rush and then you move into crit. But Yuntal is probably the smart way to go because I think Kraken's going to be getting a little bit of an axe soon if it continues the way it is. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Speaking of Kraken Slayer, what happened to a champion that often builds it? Mike. [00:14:25] Speaker B: So let's go back up to Master Yi. As we may have talked about last time, Master Yi is now allowed to benefit from the procs on Kraken Slayer and Terminus specifically, which were special exceptions from his queue. And that was a mistake. Master Yi became the single highest win rate champion in the game at like all right, 56, 57%. [00:14:53] Speaker C: Holy shit. [00:14:53] Speaker A: Really pushing that without also having nerfs on him was a mistake. I think the change itself was fine. [00:15:01] Speaker B: They have properly nerfed him in in response because. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:07] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. So in response They've taken off 14 HP for his base health, so a little bit squishier on Yi and they've flat out pulled 10% extra. Like his alpha strike already had an on hit modifier because it did a little bit less damage with them. They've pulled an extra 10% out of that. So now he only does 65% on hit damage with all of those things. [00:15:30] Speaker A: And to be clear, I think this should always be the case when there is an interaction that is unintuitive or defective in some way. It is better to fix that interaction to work the way players would expect it to and then nerf the champion accordingly for the extra power that gives them than to leave a interaction working in an unintuitive way for balance reasons. [00:15:53] Speaker B: He is still on the positive side of win rate, but he's no longer the single best champion in the game by a wide margin like that was that was his emerald win rate was 57% a yee what? But like toning down the damage Kraken Slayer needed to be toned on it does that much damage. Terminus might actually be the one that might still need special exception because he instant procs Terminus with his passive with Q Terminus fully stacks and he gets the full stack benefits and he's untargetable during that. So I think that might actually be the biggest problem. However, we'll see where he ends up in another patch or two as things start to play out. They they had considered I the like early patch notes was they were going to immediately pull out the Kraken Slayer portion and instead they toned down all the buffs and let it stay. It seems to have helped. Now we'll see where it goes from here. But he's eaten some absolutely necessary nerfs. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Yup. All right. Yeah, go ahead, Codex. Talk about kog'. Maw. [00:17:01] Speaker C: All right, so kog'. Maw. All of these changes, in my opinion, is mid lane kog', Maw, not bot lane kog'. Maw. At the same time, you can play APCOG mid or sorry, bot. It's just. It's. It's. You kind of need to have like a assassin mid or something like that to balance it out a little bit. So they are bringing back AP Cog. So his Q, which is the skill shot, is going. Is remaining the same on all of its flat damage. But the AP ratio is increased from plus 80% AP ratio to 90% AP ratio. His W bio arcane barrage where he gets like an attack steroid is going from. Oh, actually the bottom is remaining the same. Again, it's just an AP ratio. Okay, Buff, where we're going from plus 1% per 100 AP going to plus 1.5% per 100% AP. Both are target max HP. And then finally the R, the living all Chili, where he does like that thing from the sky is going from 100 to an 80 to again 180 with a. A, both AD and an AP ratio now. So they're just straight. Straight up adding an AP ratio of above 35. [00:18:21] Speaker B: It had an AP ratio. It just didn't scale before. [00:18:23] Speaker C: Oh, it didn't scale. Okay. Yeah, sorry, I didn't see that. So instead of it just being a flat 35 AP ratio, it's going from 30% to scaling up 35, 40 to 45 AP ratio per. Per rank. And then maximum damage is still doubled. So wait a minute. Is it the. Is the maximum. Does he have like a center on it? Like a. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:47] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. He has like a little like. Same as old Ramus Ult used to. Okay. Has a sweet spot. Okay. And like I said, I don't. I mean, this just makes AP Cog viable. [00:19:01] Speaker B: No, I don't think this. It's not a. It's not a sweet spot. It's a multiple hit thing when you cast it more than once. [00:19:08] Speaker C: Oh, oh, so it's like Karthus Q then. [00:19:12] Speaker B: It's actually more like Cassidy Ult. [00:19:14] Speaker A: Yep. [00:19:15] Speaker B: The more times you cast becomes up to double damage. [00:19:19] Speaker C: Becomes up to double damage. If he's hitting two multiple. [00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:23] Speaker B: If he casts it three or four. [00:19:25] Speaker A: Times, I've got to correct you Guys. Then his mana cost increase per cast. The damage it does is boosted based on the opponent's missing health. That's what the. [00:19:37] Speaker B: That's what that is. Okay. [00:19:38] Speaker A: It is an execute at a hundred percent damage increase. If the Target is below 40% with a cosmetic crit, and then above that, it can be up to a 50% damage increase. [00:19:50] Speaker C: Okay, and. And when we're saying maximum damage is still doubled, it's. It's talking about that the. The AP ratio is still going to be more, but it's still like just double. [00:20:01] Speaker B: Yes, right. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, right. So what they're saying is the. If the target is below 40%, you still do double damage. That has not changed. [00:20:09] Speaker C: Right. Okay, okay, okay. [00:20:10] Speaker B: They just don't want to write down an untold other number section. It's just that damage goes up, they. [00:20:15] Speaker A: Don'T want to give the ratios a second time. [00:20:17] Speaker C: And the other thing is that like. Like, as I was saying before, we were getting into the weeds of it. Like, I personally, looking at these AP ratios, like, we got like 10% on Q, we've got like 0.5 per 100 AP. I think this is just making AP cog viable, especially in mid lane. I don't see this like being an unstoppable force in bot lane, but I don't know. I'd definitely be open to hearing your thoughts. [00:20:51] Speaker A: Hear me out. It means that if for some reason kog' Maw doesn't need to build tanky items, he could go in Asher's AS like his fourth item and get a whole bunch of extra damage. Like, I think it makes he can do that. The best damage option at that point. This would be, for example, also, this would be this. The reason he might do this is if he wants to go a Zhonya's, let's say a Zed is the main threat to diving on and killing a kog'. Maw. A. All his AP ratios got buffed. Zhonya's is just better for him. And if you're going Zhonya's, you would also maybe want to consider Nashor's as another damage item, because in a situation where Zhonya's is correct, you don't necessarily need tank items. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Beyond that, there's another point of this in that in those scenarios, normally kog' Maw is, I'm gonna hit the front line and we're gonna fight it. I'm gonna beat your front line before you beat ours. But now he also gets to play the Poke game. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Yep. [00:21:46] Speaker B: And his Poke game Will hurt. [00:21:49] Speaker C: So I am curious. Just normal build, hybrid. Like, Like J, J, J, J, J. We're talking. If we're already talking like, natures, does he build like Kai'? Sa? [00:22:02] Speaker A: Not typically. He doesn't have the incentive to build actual AD the way Kai' Sa does. [00:22:07] Speaker C: Okay, right. Because he doesn't have like. Like Q evolve or anything like that. [00:22:11] Speaker B: He prefers the on hit stuff. So he gets things that are just like, give me more procs on every hit that I'm doing anyways. [00:22:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:22:18] Speaker B: And he only needed, what, three items before. Before he built Pure Tank. [00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah. He wanted Bork, Rageblade, Terminus. That's it. [00:22:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And then everything else is just full Tank. [00:22:30] Speaker A: And I don't think that's changed in the average case, But I do think you will find there are games where Zhonya's is correct on him. And in those games, this is a straight buff. Zhonya's has over 100 AP. It's an extra half percent on hit damage you didn't get before. Regardless of what else you build, even if you're not building a Nashers. Technically speaking, a very minor buff for just the 30 AP that's on. On Rageblade. [00:22:55] Speaker C: Yeah. I was thinking that technically speaking, if we're just talking about this is a minor buff to AD Cog, because Rageblade is absolutely. [00:23:03] Speaker B: He always votes Rageblade. [00:23:05] Speaker C: Yes, always. [00:23:06] Speaker A: It's also a buff if he gets Baron Buff, because Baron Buff gives a whole bunch of extra ap. [00:23:12] Speaker C: Okay. So, yeah, I mean, at the same time, while I do think it's a buff, I don't see anything that's like. Like he ain't jumping more than like, a percentage. [00:23:23] Speaker B: He might actually see play in mid because he has the range to do it. [00:23:27] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:28] Speaker A: Yes, but that's really the key. [00:23:31] Speaker B: There will be. There will be matches that he's allowed to play mid now, as opposed to before, where he just didn't do enough damage. Before he got destroyed. [00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah, before he was just. Why would you play this when you could just play Zerith or something else like it? Okay, I want to talk about some item changes, because there's three item changes in this patch, and I think these are some of the more impactful actual meta shift item changes that we've seen in a while. So first I want to talk about a couple lethality items. Axiom Arc, which surprises me that it was very unpopular as an AD assassin. Legendary, because I thought this was core on, like, half of the lethality cast, but apparently it's been very unpopular and weak statistically. So they've cut its gold cost by 250 with no changes to its stats. [00:24:17] Speaker B: I think that 100% is the reason why it was unpopular. Because it was like the most expensive lethality item around by a good chunk. And if you're building lethality, why not build more cheaper items? [00:24:30] Speaker A: Except for profane Hydra, which was the actual most expensive lethality item at 3200 has been almost down to 2850. Almost. [00:24:39] Speaker C: It was so bad, right? Like who. Who was buying it? [00:24:44] Speaker B: There are. [00:24:44] Speaker A: There's a people who are buying profane Hydra were specifically like Wave Clear and roam assassins. So like Zed and Talon could buy it. But Zed's better in his bruiser build right now, so he's not building it. Talon just doesn't need it. So there's so much wave Clear. [00:25:00] Speaker B: Anyway, this is really good on those champions who have a 1, 2, 3 combo and then they get out or get in. They jump in, they do 1, 2, 3, and then they get out. Add in the profane Hydra. Click. A lot of them went, I may as well get a ravenous. It does more damage. I get some healing. [00:25:16] Speaker A: Yep. [00:25:16] Speaker B: Or they were going, I may as well get. Oh, I forgot the other one. That gives a slow. Because that is now a Hydra item. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember what it's called. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah, the. It's the. It has a hydro proc. And it gives a slow to it as well. That was more potent than the pure damage from a profane Hydra. This is a very good item on champions like Kha' Zix who jump in, do 1, 2, 3. [00:25:45] Speaker A: And specifically, the reason this is good on Kha' Zix is this allows Kha' Zix to jump on people and hit the profane Hydra to kill the minion that's next to them. So they're now isolated and he can cue them for full damage. [00:25:57] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:25:58] Speaker B: It's very good for him that way. [00:26:01] Speaker C: Oh, this is gonna be great. [00:26:02] Speaker A: That is the main reason this item is good on Khazix. So Khazix is very happy the item went down 350 gold in cost and 5 A.D. less. Which remember, 350 gold is literally a longsword. It's 10 A.D. so it's effectively 175 gold, more gold efficient than it was before. And it's also a much earlier Spike. [00:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah. The 5ad loss, I think is well worth losing.350. Putting this at 2.228.50. We might actually see it used now especially like in combination Profane, Hydra, Axiom, Arc for some people you get the. The one that allows you to see wards that's like 26.50 or something. And you have three very cheap items. You are getting your three item power spike like a thousand to 1500 gold faster than other people are. [00:26:55] Speaker A: Yep. On someone like Kha', Zix, that's snowbally because assassins are snowball champs by nature. [00:27:01] Speaker B: Assassins should be living well with this. [00:27:05] Speaker A: And then there's one other item that's been changed. This patch. And this is an AP item. It's one that we already liked and now it's just better. Horizon Focus gained 10 AP and went down 50 gold in cost. Which 10 AP is worth about 200 gold. So this is about a 250 gold improvement in efficiency on this slot. [00:27:25] Speaker B: This is nuts. This is nuts. Horizon Focus is straight up the second highest AP in the game. [00:27:31] Speaker A: Yep. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Only death cap is more and that's 800 gold. Almost more expensive or. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Or seraph in a few edge cases. [00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah. If you get the. This ridiculous amount of. Basically you have to be rise to have enough mana rise or cast for it to be. Yeah. But oh, this brings it up to almost a core item in half of the mages period. Even if you don't care about the haste, it's that much AP and everyone still uses haste even if they don't want it a ton. [00:28:03] Speaker A: It also is so much AP that I feel like this basically pushes Cosmic Drive out of everyone's builds except for like Volibear and Vladimir because they need the health. [00:28:15] Speaker B: If you didn't. If you didn't actively use the movement speed proc. I think you don't build Cosmic Drive. [00:28:21] Speaker A: Ever because Horizon Focus is cheaper and massively more AP with the same amount of haste. [00:28:28] Speaker C: God 27. This item is nuts. How many. Okay, I'm curious how many of. So you're right that so many mages just want that much ap. As long as you know with a little bit of haste. But how many mages are using that passive the hypershot A lot. [00:28:50] Speaker A: A lot of mages have the range in their kit to proc the vision and the reason that proc matters. Most of the time you're proking someone you can already see. It doesn't matter. But for example, it is the difference of firing a lux Q and seeing who you rooted and knowing whether or not it's worth ulting when they. When you root someone out of vision because they're in a bush, for example. But also you may not want to walk up to that bush to throw a ward in it. You see it hit. You can er. Because you can see from the proc it's a squishy or you can see from the proc it's a tank and just throw your E and walk away. [00:29:31] Speaker B: So two things with this one. 600 range is ever so slightly longer than most of their attack ranges. Almost every mage has something that can hit at 600 because 600 is just outside of most auto attack ranges and most mage's abilities hit a little bit farther than auto attack range. [00:29:47] Speaker A: Even Annie can proc this, although admittedly only on Tibbers. [00:29:51] Speaker B: The second portion, Hypershot, isn't just a reveal on the champion when it triggers them. It's a 1400 range reveal. [00:30:00] Speaker C: Oh wow. I didn't notice that part. It's real big, ain't is? [00:30:05] Speaker B: It's like getting a bloom. Like a little pop. [00:30:08] Speaker A: It will reveal. Like when they're looking to bushwhack someone. You just throw a spell into the bush and oh, you've revealed whether or not there was five people waiting there. [00:30:17] Speaker B: You can check the bush. You can see around the corner on things if someone was within range. It's very strong. [00:30:24] Speaker A: It's a lot of hidden power. It's strong in the same way that movement speed is strong and that it's hard to quantify in the moment, but over the course of a game it has so much impact. [00:30:34] Speaker B: And technically Rabadon's has more AP, but this is 5 base less AP than Rabadon's for 750 less gold. Yes, the 30%. So you're paying 750 gold for the multiplier and 5 AP on our admiral. [00:30:52] Speaker C: Would you build this on support Lux? [00:30:55] Speaker A: Yes, if you have enough income for it. Yeah. [00:30:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I actually kind of feel like this is almost a support buff. [00:31:02] Speaker A: Like weirdly, I would argue for support mages, not just Luxembourg support mages. [00:31:07] Speaker C: Sorry, I was just kind of like. We were talking about the Lux exam. [00:31:10] Speaker A: No, you're fine. [00:31:11] Speaker B: I think there's only one item that is more important on supports and that's malignance for most of them. So this is probably the second item. This is probably. Yeah, that's what I would support item. [00:31:24] Speaker A: The support mages need a mana AP item. Usually malignant, sometimes ludens. Depends on the champion and then they want horizon focus. It's easy to build on a support budget. The most expensive component is 850. [00:31:36] Speaker B: It's incredibly easy to build two fiendish codexes and A blasting rod wand Codex. Fantastic. [00:31:43] Speaker A: So fiendish. [00:31:44] Speaker C: Fiendish. [00:31:45] Speaker B: We have two of them. [00:31:46] Speaker A: Why are you so fiendish? [00:31:47] Speaker C: I'm fiendish. [00:31:50] Speaker A: All right. I thought that was funny, but apparently it didn't land Codex. Talk about some Senna fiend off about Senna here. [00:31:57] Speaker C: Fiend off about Senna. Okay, so let's go look at what. So Senna got a buff for both. So it was really interesting. So I'm part of a another like, like League discord and I. I have like the rank 5 Senna ADC on that particular discord in NA. So it's really interesting to see his feedback on. On ad like, you know, Bot Lane Senna versus Support Senna. So they actually buffed both with this. This buff. So they. They bu speed growth from 2% to 2.6 and then they buffed the heal on her Q. So like when she shoots out that little kind of like skill shoddy thing usually into minions to scale from 40 scaling to 100 to 40 scaling to 120. The ratios, the 80 and AP ratios are untouched on the heal. And so the Q heal increase. That's definitely 100% of support center buff. But the attack speed growth was absolutely like a. I mean, like, sure, it's not like Support Senna doesn't want that, but AD like Bot Lane Senna really, really appreciates a little bit of attack speeds growth. So I personally feel that this is fine. I don't feel that Senna's in an unbalanced place currently. She doesn't like overwhelmingly being played and a lot of things like if you jump on her, it can get really, really intense. She's very, very late game skewed. So I don't know. I feel that if you've played the game for really, really long and have built up all your stacks, you kind of deserve to win it. But I don't think that anything in this is like overwhelmingly overpowered. [00:33:51] Speaker B: So yeah, Senna Senna is one of my favorite AD carries to play. She's caught a couple nerfs in the most recent batches. So getting a little bit power back. Like she got the massive nerf to. I don't remember if it was support or attack Senna getting her souls. [00:34:07] Speaker C: Yeah, the souls. Yep. [00:34:09] Speaker B: So getting. Getting a little bit of power back. The attack speed growth and like the heal and attack speed growth is just a big buff to Support Senna because Support Senna should be training. So getting a better attack speed growth is just good. And it is just a straight buff to AD Senna. Because if you're dueling, getting an extra free heal when you hit your Q is just better. [00:34:29] Speaker C: It's just better. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Nope. In both scenarios it's just a straight buff, but it's not something to push her too far into being too strong. Good all around. I think this is a nice little healthy buff without pushing her too far. [00:34:44] Speaker A: Speaking of pushing too far or not pushing too far, as the case may be. Mike, you have the jungle champ buffs listed in our patch notes. And I think you're referring to the thing that we talked about in the pre show that we think is bad. [00:34:58] Speaker B: Yes. So first things first. I'm going to mention this so you don't do it. Don't take Nyla into the jungle. [00:35:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it's, it's. Guys, you need to understand. 80 cars are really hard. [00:35:12] Speaker B: Specifically telling you don't do it. That is worded that way because nailah specifically did less damage to a lot of jungle monsters with the side slash on her Q that spread damage did less damage to monsters. They're just buffing that up. So that late game when AD Carries steal jungle camps, she can not be hindered from using her Q because she was hindered from using her Q. So it does not mean nailah is a jungler now. [00:35:42] Speaker A: However, it just means she's better at stealing my camps. God damn it. [00:35:45] Speaker B: Yes. However, that is not the case with a couple of other champions. This one I 100% love sets getting a push forward into doing more damage into the jungle. His E has a significant bonus monster damage. It's going from 125 to 250 based on level. Very, very strong. He does a surprising amount of damage in the jungle, but he's kind of a difficult jungler because you just gotta run at people. The other person who caps some jungle buffs here, and this is the most dangerous one. If you can play Kindred Jungle, you are allowed to play Vayne Jungle. This is a more difficult jungle because she does not have the inbuilt healing and sustain the jungle that Kindred has. Which is why Kindred can function as a jungler. Vayne just does fucktons of damage and they're boosting that damage. So essentially Silver Bolts always does it's max monster health damage of 140 scaling to 200 regardless of the max HP. This is true damage. It always does it and it's now always doing that damage cap as opposed to just if you could do damage cap, it will do it. [00:37:04] Speaker A: This means basically what this amounts to. It's a little bit worse at early ranks on dragons red buff and blue buff. And it's better on basically every other camp. I think it's about how we're neutral on gromp for the first clear. [00:37:19] Speaker B: Pretty much. That's. That's the change. [00:37:24] Speaker A: They do have a note in the patch notes. If you want to play Vayne Jungle, start with silver bolts and then max tumble. Do not max silver bolts first bolts. [00:37:35] Speaker B: Doesn't give you any extra damage based on rank. You're always doing the cap damage. [00:37:42] Speaker A: It does 15 extra damage per rank. That's it. [00:37:46] Speaker B: I'm sorry, Those are. Those are per rank? Yeah. Yes. [00:37:48] Speaker A: Yes. It's not much because that is three autos for 15 damage. That is five damage. [00:37:55] Speaker B: Grand total of 60 damage is the difference between the rank one and the rank five. That's every three attacks. So a grand total of 20 damage per attack. Tumble is more damage. [00:38:07] Speaker A: Yep. But also, like, seriously, we're not kidding. Unless you are an expert kindred jungler, don't even bother. Vayne is really vulnerable to being invaded while she's doing her clear. And if you're not kiting fucking perfectly, you're just gonna feed. [00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah. This is the expert jungling going. And if you are good at jungling, Vayne's gonna be powerful. She will clear very quickly. But you shouldn't, unless you know what you're doing for that first clear. Because if you don't, you are going to cost everything. Do some. If you want to try it, go do it in practice tool. Learn how to do practice tool. Become a jungler in practice tool. [00:38:53] Speaker A: Okay, Codex, you have added to the. To the document. [00:38:57] Speaker C: Well, you didn't. You didn't have a third one. So I get. I get to just. I just get to go forward. It's great. So I just want to tell the. [00:39:04] Speaker A: Listeners she added in all caps in bold. I'm going to do Gwen. [00:39:13] Speaker C: Hey, man, I can do swing both ways. All right, so Gwen, this is in honor of Pillow. Since he was not able to attend tonight, we're getting some Gwen nerfs. So you know all the Gwen haters. Please rejoice. Rejoice. [00:39:30] Speaker B: It is 90 nerf. [00:39:32] Speaker C: Well, it's 90 nerf. So that her armor is going from 36 to 33 base. Her attack speed. This is, you know, the. The compensation buff is her attack speed growth is going from 2.25 to 2.5, which is tiny. And then the needlework is going. This is the thing that I actually seriously agree with is being scaled from 60% flat at all ranks to 30, 45 and 60%. Because that slow is fucking insane. And I think it's absolutely fucking ridiculous that she gets it at rank one. Like, just like, like level six. Boom. I get to slow you 60%. Like, oh my God. All subsequent slows are going from again, flat 25% to 15, 20 to 25%. If she gets it late game, like she deserves it. But I'm really happy about the, the, the R Nerf there because it's, it's just, it's just untenable. [00:40:29] Speaker A: But yeah, the key here is at level 16, I think she's straight up stronger than she was before, but she's weaker prior. [00:40:37] Speaker B: And three, I think three armor doesn't matter at all. At level 16, the attack speed growth plus the. The nerf is completely gone by 16. The attack speed growth means she's physically stronger. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think that's fine. She should be a late game terror. Not in the one shots anyone sense like she was before. Before they nerfed the fucking percent max health damage. But in the like can duel anyone sense, which she can. [00:41:03] Speaker C: So this is, this, this is a good, healthy, you know, Nerf for Quinn, in my opinion. So. [00:41:09] Speaker A: Okay, we have one other topic we want to talk about tonight. We'll keep it brief. Riot brought Doombots back for patch 25.17. So I'm going to give a brief overview of what Doombots is, because we haven't had this mode in League of Legends in many years. Doombots is a PvE game mode. You and four teammates are against the AI and it picks five random champions from the pool of Doombots. There's. You'll, you'll notice if you play this a few times, there's a lot of repetition. There's only like, I think 10 or 12 possible doombots. And you have 15 minutes to try to not lose the game. And then if you can survive those 15 minutes, then you get a boss fight. And I mean like a straight up, like, raid boss boss fight with mechanics to do. It's a lot of fun. These bots are cartoonish in how broken and silly they are. This is not just, oh, we gave the bots 10 times the stats. No, this is Malzahar. Q goes off in a wave repeatedly, and his dot spreads to everything in range and fears the targets it bounces to. This is Lux laser, fires eight lasers in a star pattern. It is over the top. Every champion has shit like this that you have to play against. Some of the bots have funny Names like Doombot. Cho' Gath is just named Jeff, which is so fucking funny. Let's prank as Botbot instead of Blitzbot because Blitz is a robot. [00:42:55] Speaker B: These are not balance. [00:42:55] Speaker A: It's got a sense of humor. [00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah. These are not balanced. You are intended to lose if you try and play it normally. [00:43:01] Speaker A: Yes. The other thing that this mode has is. And this is the reason I wanted to make sure we actually covered it on the show. There are quests that run twice during those 15 minutes. You have to do the quests if you want to win. Quite literally, you should drop everything as long as it does not leave your Nexus exposed to damage and do whatever the quest is. Winning the quest gets your team a permanent dragon soul and gets your team a thousand or fifteen hundred gold per person. It is such an insane swing. You need to do the quests whenever possible. We have. Me and Mike have played a bunch of Doom Bots and we have lost so many games because our randoms just didn't do the fucking quest at all and kept playing it like it was a regular co op vs AI game. [00:43:51] Speaker B: So. So Doom bots as a. As a whole, if you're playing the regular Doombots, you can go in and fight that one and play and it's still a difficult challenge. There's a hard mode, Doombots, that's for teams that know what they're talking about. Either you're going randomly in there and hoping that everyone knows what the fuck they're doing, which most of the time they don't. Or you're going in with four to five people, maybe three if you think you can carry everything. And then there is a special trial that's going to go on three separate of them. The current one is Viger's Evil. This one's. It's painful. It's really painful. Basically, randomly throughout the match, Vigor Curses Curses you and something happens with the curse. Some crazy thing goes down. Everybody gets a Nivea egg. All the bushes just start throwing out Teemo Shrooms shit like that. Vieger's Evil means those stack and they get all of them by the end of the game. It's hard. I am yet to kill that at all. It's a 15 minute mode plus maybe 5 minutes to kill the Vigor boss. It's hard. I am yet to beat VGR's evil and I am yet to beat a hard mode because I haven't had enough people to play with. [00:45:11] Speaker A: We have been posting things in the Discord asking for people wanting to play Doom Bots. If you're not in the Discord. Join the Discord and come join us and play Doom Bots. It's a lot of fun even if you're not very good at the game. Just having people in communication. Like the bots are not technically skilled at all. [00:45:30] Speaker B: They still do stupid things. [00:45:32] Speaker A: They're really stupid. One of the Doombots we played before this podcast, I had the Malzahar Doombot just try to turret dive me for no apparent reason and die. To the turret. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Unlike the intermediate AI, these still use the old AI. So you can like exploit their AI and make them do things, but they still cheat. They still randomly gain strength when they shouldn't be. Even though you're doing things, they respawn almost immediately. You get like five seconds before they respawn. And I did check. It has been nine years. Nine years since Doombots was out. [00:46:10] Speaker C: Oh wow. Has it really been nine years? Wow. [00:46:13] Speaker B: 2016 was the last time they made Doom bots. And that was when Teemo got his devil skin. Because the Teemo Devil was the old runs down the lane. Better kill the Teemo devil before he kills your Nexus. And they have decided, let's make Vieger the ultimate evil. Because of course Vigor is the ultimate evil. [00:46:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:34] Speaker B: And make him an actual tough fight. [00:46:36] Speaker A: If you fail like he is, he is literally a full on raid boss. You have to do a safety dance. You have to do like one on one duels with Doom bots in Mordekaiser's Ult randomly. You have to find the real Veigar when he splits into clones. Like it is full on. If you've played an mmo. Like wow. It is a boss from that basically. [00:47:00] Speaker B: And it's not easy. And Vigor still works like Vigor. So every time you're hit by an ability, he's gaining power only. He already has 2000 AP, so he hurts also. [00:47:14] Speaker A: There's more champions in this than I thought. There are 19 different doombots. [00:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:19] Speaker A: I'm not sure I've seen them all yet. [00:47:21] Speaker B: I think I have, but there might be one or two that I've just missed. I have a personal hatred for Maokai bot because he does way more damage for no fucking reason. And Soraka bot because oh my God, that silence is bullshit. [00:47:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:47:40] Speaker A: Soraka's silence does insane damage and creates like a star pattern of zones of silence. It's insane. [00:47:49] Speaker B: It's. It's. It's evil. It's. It's so good. It's evil. But. But we should stop gushing about Doombots and head into some questions. [00:47:57] Speaker A: Yes, but seriously, listeners, please join the discord and come join us in Doombots. We want to get five together and actually be able to do the the challenge modes. Because you really cannot do them with randoms. [00:48:08] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sorry, I did forget something important here. Don't play supports. Every champion needs to pull their weight. One person not doing enough damage, you can't win. [00:48:19] Speaker C: Well, can you build like full AP Lux? [00:48:24] Speaker B: Yes, but I wouldn't because they're just AP Lux. Yeah. Mages are hit and miss. AD carries are hit and miss. Bruisers are king. Tanks are relatively weak, unless you are a bullshit tank that does damage for no reason and supports are worthless. [00:48:41] Speaker A: It's definitely not the most balanced mode in terms of champion diversity, but it's a lot of fun. And there are some really good AD carries in there. They're not all bad. There are some good mages in there. They're not all bad. Yes, the good supports are the ones that have other reasons that they're good besides just protective utility. And they're still not amazing, but they're at least functional. Okay, let's get a couple questions in. We've got a question from Reigns who writes. So I'm focusing on split push only top at the moment with very little team interaction. I want to solo carry games and not rely on teammates who are inconsistent. But this style teaches me the wrong fundamentals, doesn't it? And is the style inconsistent for climbing? Sometimes and no. [00:49:26] Speaker B: So it's. It's inconsistent for climbing if you are not strong enough to solo carry a game? Yeah, pretty much. You have to either pick a champion that can forcibly solo carry a game or be a player who can 1v9 fundamentals. You still learn a lot of the right fundamentals. The thing that it doesn't teach you is team fighting. [00:49:46] Speaker C: Yeah, the only fundamental it's not going to teach you is team fighting. [00:49:50] Speaker B: You should still be doing rotations in the early game because that gets you power. Especially things like Rift Herald. You should still be like checking in on jungle and things like that. Split push doesn't mean you live alone in a corner. Split push means you are pushing to gain advantages while you can. Especially around the opposite side of where big objectives are. So like you are trying, the goal of split pushing is either force them to send an inconsistent amount of people so that they your team wins on the other side or you take everything. That's the goal of slip pushing. [00:50:28] Speaker C: And I think that's kind of the hingey part that I feel is Tricky because usually at like 35 minutes, you're split pushing and there's a key fight that I. That's. That's in our base that you need to be part of and people will still TP to try and just split push their way. But you can't base race five people. If they, if the gates are down. If the, the. The. The. The what is it the. Not the Nexus. The ones that are outside of the base. Well, the inhib towers. If the inhib towers are down and there are five enemies, you need to stay. You. You can't. You can't leave your team because they are in your base. They are going to end the game. Unless. Unless they're. They're. They're. You're. You've taken their Nexus is the only other move like that's the only one that, That I feel is the one thing that I, I dislike out of my split pusher people. [00:51:28] Speaker B: Unless you have super minions moving into their base and you can teleport in to fight with those super minions and you're a champion. That takes towers fast. We've mentioned them before. Nasus, Camille, etc. You have to be a fast turret taker and a good split pusher to go do that. [00:51:48] Speaker C: But I consistently will see a not relatively like, not weak split pusher, but someone who's like okay, and they'll go teleport top to try and take the inhib tower when they, when the enemies are like five in our base and it's like bruh. Like you can't. You can't rage split. But I will say that like fundamentals, you should be learning your wave management. You should be learning your tempo. You should be learning how, how to split push. Nothing about split pushing is going to teach you the incorrect fundamentals if you are not succeeding at it. You got. You got to be looking at those fundamentals, right? Like am I split pushing when they can see me and have a choice between rotating, right? Am I actually drawing enough pressure that people are showing up to stop me so that my team is actually winning the Dragon Fights? My team is winning the Baron Fights, right? If that's not happening, something's going wrong in your games. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Yep. Alright. So Reigns has a ton of other questions in this doc. So Reigns, we appreciate you. We will get to some more of your questions next week. We're gonna jump down to a question from Iamsquid who writes I am switching from Vel' Koz support to Vel' Koz Midlane. [00:53:13] Speaker B: Your name makes Sense. [00:53:14] Speaker A: I'm using a different account. Yeah, the name makes sense. Now I'm using a different account. What advice do you have for someone in my situation? He then immediately posted again. I'm back. Lol. The account is starting out well. Any advice for how to handle big streaks or big win streaks and or lost streaks? So we got two topics. Switching from support to mid lane, using the same champion and how to handle streaks. [00:53:41] Speaker B: The main thing switching from support to mid you need to worry about is farming because you should still be relatively comfortable doing Pokemon. Now you need to poke and farm. Farm is hard. [00:53:52] Speaker A: Specifically learning how to farm without using all of your mana immediately. Mid laners auto attack a lot, whittle down the wave and last hit so that they don't have to spend mana for their farm. [00:54:04] Speaker B: Yeah, unlike ad carries and unlike top laners, mid laners frequently constantly auto attack as opposed to doing last hits because they don't have time if they want to conserve mana to do anything but that. So your goal with spending mana should either be I'm spending my mana to get a last hit that I wouldn't be able to get with an auto attack or I'm using this to push my advantage so I can roam or I'm using this to poke the enemy champion. Maybe I can farm at the same time with that. Vel' Koz is someone who can do that. So your goal is trying to get a hit on them with farm if possible. Otherwise you're still playing the farm game. Farm is how you win lanes most of the time. If you can out farm them a significant amount, you can be down 3 or 4 kills and still be parody with gold. The second portion I think Jax is way more well equipped to deal with because he goes on both win and loss streaks like crazy. [00:55:05] Speaker A: It's. It's true I'm cursed slash blessed in that sense, but the advice for how to handle big streaks is to not let the lost streaks go to your head. You need to make sure that you maintain a solid mental that you yourself are able to play well each game even if it's a loss. I have literally lost 10 plus games in a row where I had control of the outcome in maybe two to three of them. There's not much you can do when you lose a game because someone rage quit or someone decided a tantrum and run under a turret over and over to feed you just kind of auto lose those games. And the hard part is making sure to reset your mental not fall into bad habits based on the bad games. It's very easy if you've just got played a game where you were helpless and got stomped to suddenly start playing a lot more conservative the next game. And that's a mistake. The next game is a separate game that may or may not be the correct way to play. But you're going to do it because you got your ass kicked in the previous game and now that loss has bled over into the next game and is affecting your likelihood of winning the next game. That's the problem. [00:56:24] Speaker B: You're playing a very, very long range champion who's very good at team fights and very good in specific situations. So I would like explicitly look at where Vel' Koz works best. There is a very popular streamer that we've talked about a couple times. I cannot recall his name off the top of my head. Azab. He is a like Vel' Koz one trick. He is amazing. He's very good at tutoring. [00:56:51] Speaker A: He's probably considered the best Vel' Koz in the world. [00:56:53] Speaker B: He is also really good at tutoring. Like he will constantly talk about how he's doing things and you may want to check those things out when you're switching from a supportive role to a mid lane role because now carrying is on you. You need to be able to carry damage games. So and your life matters a lot more now as a support you can be a lot more with the death. [00:57:17] Speaker A: It'S a lot easier to trade yourself for someone else's support and have it be beneficial is what Mike means. [00:57:24] Speaker B: Yes. [00:57:25] Speaker A: Okay. Any other thoughts about any of this stuff from I am Squid. My only other thought is why did you use a different account? Just play on your Vel' Koz account so you have your cool Vel' Koz skins. [00:57:36] Speaker B: If you were like if you were that much better as a support than a mid laner unless you're going from like plat to bronze, I doubt that's the gameplay shift. And if you're playing as a plot player you should be good enough to just play mid lane. So there's no reason I think that you can't just do your main account. [00:58:00] Speaker A: Like play some norms to get used to mid lane first but like you're already familiar with your champion. [00:58:06] Speaker B: The the only reason I might be like if you fucked up the MMR in your main account that badly and it is a permanent iron and you think you can be much better in the other one but even still I think you're better off doing your normal one. [00:58:18] Speaker A: I've gone from Emerald to the bottom of gold in silver mmr. Back to em in a year on one account. [00:58:26] Speaker B: Twice. [00:58:27] Speaker A: It was the second time. I haven't dropped that far yet. [00:58:30] Speaker B: You weren't. You just weren't in silver mmr. Yes, because you were back in gold. I saw that one happen. [00:58:37] Speaker A: But that was actually like high gold mmr. The silver MMR only happened once. The point being, like, you can rectify mmr. It just takes playing enough games. Let's get one more question in here. Let's. Let's be charitable. I think when we cull the silences we'll need to fill this time. Anyway, so Skippius Esquire wrote in what conditions should I be looking for when picking boots that are off build? For example, I normally play MF or Jhin. I usually grab zerkers on MF and swifties on Jhin. But there are certain times when you want other boots. I'm guessing, like if I'm laning against ap, ADC and support or maybe tons of CC on the other team. [00:59:17] Speaker C: Oh, okay. So. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, my friend. Okay, so here's the thing. Those top laners and like all these other characters who play characters like. We don't play characters, we play carries. We build boots because it's about damage. That's why you build zerkers onto MF is because it equals damage. You build swifties on Djinn effectively means damage. Swifties are. Is incredible with his move. Speed off of his grits. [00:59:48] Speaker A: Give him uptime, which is damage. [00:59:51] Speaker C: Yeah, so, so this is, this is. Both of these situations are about damage. We don't build merc shreds like the, the, the AP ones. We don't build any of the other like defensive boots, anything like that. The reason is, is because it does not give us damage. If you want to play other classes, go do that. We play damage classes. [01:00:14] Speaker A: So it's not just because those boots don't give you damage. It's also the situations those boots are meant to solve. You still die. [01:00:23] Speaker C: Yeah, you still die. [01:00:24] Speaker A: If you are a squishy AD carry. [01:00:26] Speaker C: Yeah. If you want to live, you need to play a tank. You need to play a different class. [01:00:30] Speaker A: Reducing CC by 30% because you built merc treads is great when you can live long enough to then take an action after that 30% reduced CC when you're an AD carry who literally dies instantly if you're struck by a CC. Yeah, there's, there's no off 30 sec. Like half a second after you died instead of a Second after you died does not matter. [01:00:54] Speaker B: So realistically, the boot. The boot question should be, am I taking Swifties, Am I taking Czerkers, or am I taking Ionians? And 90% of the time, yep, there are some AD carries. [01:01:08] Speaker A: A lot of. There are a lot of AD carries where ability haste is damage. Such as Ezreal. [01:01:13] Speaker C: Oh, you know what? Okay. I just don't play the eight. Eight. The haste ones. Okay, that just makes sense. [01:01:17] Speaker A: So the question for pure auto attack. Ad carries. Yeah, you're correct. Zerkers are the only damage. [01:01:22] Speaker B: 95% of the time an ad carry is hard locked to a boot, much like how Yode and Yasuo are hard locked to boots because those boots give them the ability to do things. They need circuit greaves to, like, function. [01:01:38] Speaker A: I definitely have built Merc treads more than a few times on those champions. But the key is you have to adapt the rest of your build around that. [01:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah. As an AD carry, your goal is damage, so your boots should be in service to giving you damage. The champions who can switch between them are few and far between. [01:01:56] Speaker A: Most of them are mages. There's a lot of mages where you can go, oh, I want SORC boots so I can blow this person up versus oh, I want Ionian boots to be able to CC more often versus, oh, I want Merc treads so that their mage can't blow me up during the duration of their cc and then I can fight back. [01:02:15] Speaker C: Yep. So the only situation where I feel you get to build a little bit of variance in your. In your boots. In the boots question is actually something that I'm currently investigating with Ynara, where I actually don't build boots until after two items. And I feel that playing or this is the first time I've got to play around with delaying boots because I'm building boots to. [01:02:42] Speaker A: You're still building boots one. [01:02:44] Speaker C: So I'm already taking the rune that gives you the semi magical boots. So, like, this is like I built the entire system for. I don't really need it because I get the semi magical boots anyway and I can delay it out. And I'm getting movement speed increased from Kraken Slayer into Phantom Dancer. So it actually is kind of okay for me to delay it until after two items. [01:03:08] Speaker B: I'm a push there. Specifically, you need to be building items that give movement speed if you're going to even attempt that. Movement speed is the most important stat for a carry because if you can't reach them, you can't hit them. If they can just run faster than you. Your. Your. Your position is worthless. [01:03:24] Speaker A: I think that's the key of why this works for you, Nara, is she has a move speed steroid on her E, which is also a dash. During her ultimate. She has a slow on her W regardless of whether it's the ultimate version or not. So she can run people down despite only having magical boots versus Tier two. [01:03:41] Speaker C: Yep. She's the only one that. That currently gets to play around with playing with boots at all. All other carries are hardbound. [01:03:49] Speaker B: MF might be the other one who can like, actively work around it because she gains movement speed because of that W, but she just strucks the round. [01:03:58] Speaker C: Yeah. I have built Swifties on Miss Fortune, and I would actually encourage you to at least look at that and see how it feels. [01:04:06] Speaker A: So mf, like, Swifties are good. You can also make a case for symbiotic souls. [01:04:12] Speaker C: Really? [01:04:13] Speaker B: You're doubling up on the passive. You're doubling up on the passive. You're. You're just. If I'm not in combat, I'm so fast. [01:04:20] Speaker A: This would be an example. So if you're an MF where you're in a situation where you're the one who needs to go pick up side lanes and then regroup with your team mid a lot, those boots will let you do so really well. And also you get the empowered recall, which is nice. [01:04:32] Speaker C: Does it drop you out of combat if you hit a minion, though? [01:04:36] Speaker A: Yes. [01:04:36] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. So. So you. You catch the wave and then you breaks her. [01:04:40] Speaker B: Her. The boots. It doesn't break her strut. [01:04:43] Speaker C: It doesn't break strut. You see that. That's the thing that I was curious about. And then the reason why I didn't investigate it was because if I take a minion, it reduces that passive. Or on the boots. On the boots. [01:04:55] Speaker A: She's, I think, the only, like, bot lady to carry that can even consider symbiotic souls. But she can consider it. It's valid in some situations. She's one of the few not hardbound to a boot. A 80 carries. [01:05:08] Speaker C: Yep. Everybody else is usually bound to Zerkers. There are. Like Jin is. Is the exception where he's bound to Swifties. But again, there's just no point in building merc treads or steel caps because we're just gonna die anyway. Why? Why die? 1 1.3 seconds versus 1.25. Like it doesn't matter. That 500 milliseconds just doesn't matter. [01:05:30] Speaker B: So, yeah, now the. The 180 carry in which you get to choose what boot you want is Lucian Top. He benefits from all three boots baseline. And as a top laner, you may actually want to use the other boots. So if you want to experiment with boots, take Lucian in the top lane. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Sure, we'll go with that. Guys, this has been episode 496 of the Forwards podcast. We're apparently giving like almost legit lusion tops now. I don't know what the fuck's happening. I think it's the gravitational pull of the impending episod episode 500. Regardless, I've been Jack Sohlman for Mike of many names for Codex Ninja. Have a great night. [01:06:14] Speaker C: Bye. [01:06:15] Speaker B: Good night everybody. [01:06:17] 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 answer them live on the show. That's the four Wards podcast at gmail com.