Episode Transcript
[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 499 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I've been dragged away from Silksong for this.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Same buddy, same. We've also got Codex Ninja.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: I've been dragged away from work for this.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: I think all of us are good at that.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: You're welcome.
Guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a discord. Come join the discord. The link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. We also can be found on Twitch. I stream at Twitch tv. Jacksonman Mike streams at Twitch tv. Mikeofmanynames and we're still trying to bully Codex into streaming. We got some shout outs. We're going to give a shout out to Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire and Labana for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. We could not keep this show on the Internet without you guys. If you want to support the show, head over to patreon.com theforwardspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And then $10 a month gets that same exclusive feed and you'll get a shoutout at the top of every episode for as long as you maintain your subscription. We also do have a general gaming podcast now. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And that shout out does count for both shows.
Last but not least, listeners. You guys actually did send in questions and that's awesome. I greatly appreciate you guys for that.
We still need more. We always need more. And as a matter of fact, this is episode 499. We got episode 500 coming up next week. Guys.
Write in questions you want to ask the old wards. Yeah, you heard me right. I'm not going to tell you who. You'll have to wait for episode 500 for that, but write in questions for them so we can answer them on episode 500. That's probably going to be the closest we get to actual League content next week.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: We've got at least two people slated to come with that you haven't heard from in some time. Hopefully we're going to get a few more of them in, but at minimum you should be hearing two voices that either you haven't heard in a long time or, or you've never heard before.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: It's gonna be fun. We're gonna. We're gonna catch up, we're gonna do some fun stuff. Don't expect educational content next week, guys. I'm sorry, that's. We're celebrating next week because holy crap.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: You might learn some of the old lore.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yes, there. There might be some old lore.
You can also, if you want to send questions, put them in our discord in the questions submission channel. That's fine too. But the email address is the preferred method. Theforwardspodcastmail.com and for both of these things.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: If it's 4, 500, write down 4, 500.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yes, please say so. Make it clear. Make things easier on me when I put the document together. Alright guys, we're gonna talk about minigames tonight and we gotta start with a discussion about minigames of defining what the hell we even mean by minigames.
So the majority of the cast of League of Legends, their champion does whatever their champion's designed to do. Your champion does whatever your champion's designed to do and you try to outplay each other. That's the nature of League of Legends. The way we're defining a minigame is a champion having some sort of mechanic that is visible to their opponent, that forces their opponent to make decisions based on this mechanic in addition to them having to make decisions on this mechanic or something that is warping behavior in some other way. It's behavior warping gameplay is what we're defining minigames as.
So for example, we would not count Yorick split pushing with the Maiden as a minigame even though it warps the game state because it doesn't force moment to moment decision making. We would however count Codex's favorite champion that we're going to kick this one off with. Talk to us about Bard.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: Yeah, Bard.
I just want you to know that that's Bard's noise. To me it's all great.
So yeah, so Bard's passive is that he collects chimes and so it's really important to like note that we aren't talking about just a stacking champion, although he does stack with his. It gives his auto attacks greater abilities. Right.
But the reason why Bard's passive is game warping is that it gives him movement speed for like a fair bit.
And that allows him to like, just wander around the map in a way that like, nobody else can and not.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Just allows him to. Requires him to wander around the map in a way no one else can not.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Not just that. You also know where those charms are. Not to the same extent Bard does. Bard gets a little mini map coordination that shows him exactly where they are. But you can see every chime on the map if you can look for them.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:05:46] Speaker C: Also, if you're a Teemo, definitely start putting him on the chimes because like that, that is a great way to play. Play against Bard. Poor Bard. Bard just wants chimes.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're a Bard against a Teemo, take the rune that makes it so you have a shorter cooldown on your trinket so you can sweeper the cosmic insight. I think it is so you can sweeper more often because Teemos are assholes.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[00:06:13] Speaker C: But so when we were originally thinking about the concept for this episode, one of the things I was thinking about was when is it bad to succumb to the siren song of your minigame? And Bard, in my opinion, is a perfect example of this because.
And I don't know about like, right, right now, because it has been a couple of years, but Bard, when I played him extensively, was a little mana starved. He didn't get a ton of mana back in the day or didn't have enough regen really.
So he would have to kind of dip out of lane a little bit and grab some of the chimes that had spawned nearby when like, things had chilled out in the lane for a sec.
And there's this weird like, thing where you have to know whether or not you can like really leave your carry alone.
And I feel that that's, that's one of those things is like, Bard just want to roam, yo. Bard just wants to go Bard gaming. You know, roaming around the map.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: That's, I feel the, like the main minigame that Bard has above and beyond any other support. Bard is the roamer. And you need to know when you can and can't leave your ad carry, because getting chimes is your main component to power. He scales off of chimes better than he scales off of most other things, apart from like levels and gold, which you don't get a lot of. So like, that's your scaling point.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: And at the same note, for the enemy, being aware of when Bard roams is extremely important. Like when you are playing against a Bard, you basically have to ward opposing Tri Bush in a way that you don't feel that same pressure when you're against other lanes.
Because whenever Bard leaves is when you have to suddenly play really aggro and punish their ADC for being 1v2. So Bard is our inaugural example of a minigame, because everyone has to make decisions around Bard, not just the Bard player. And he. It's just different than everyone else.
I'm gonna talk about an older champion with a very straightforward but still nuanced minigame. Gnar is the first champion with an ultimate that is gated behind a resource that he doesn't even have full control over.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a conditional Ult.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Yes.
So Gnar's minigame is his rage bar. As you hit things, you build rage. When your rage maxes out, you go Mega Gnar, whether you want to or not. And you can't access your Ult unless you're in this time limited, limited control of when it happens state. The way Gnar warps the game is when Gnar is close to full rage, his opponents want to be more cautious because all Gnar needs to do is hit a boomerang or get a couple last hits or something and he can go mega and jump on you and beat the shit out of you. And at the same time, the moment Gnar's Mega ends, he's frail and weak and easy to just dive on and kill.
So Gnar's bar, the Rage bar, warps everyone's decision making around it. When Gnar's bar has just depleted or is low, his opponents want to be aggressive and punish him, and he wants to be safe and play back. And when he fills the bar, he wants to play aggro and trigger a condition to force his transformation to come out. And instead of letting it happen randomly by last hitting.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Out of every single one of the mini games that we've talked about, this is the one that is like you see this in Pro.
Consistently playing. The Gnar game is its own game and it needs to be played tightly.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: And it's also important that it is a mini game like this because if Gnar had control over his transformations, he'd just actually be either overpowered or undertuned to uselessness, because there's no way to make that balanced. He is balanced around the unreliability of having access to Mega.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: So, Mike, let's change gears a bit. Talk about a different kind of minigame for us.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: So I'm. I'm going to switch it up from where where I'm looking At there are two champions that have the exact same mini game and there's a third who's who has a similar one. But I'll get to her later. We're going to talk about Annie and Vex. And Annie and Vex have what is functionally the same mini game, which is they have very powerful CC conditionally on all of their damaging spells. That conditional CC is whether or not they have in Annie's case, four casts of any ability triggers the stun. And in Vex's case she has a like a bar to fill up, which is a little bit more nuanced in how you get it. It's not as precise as getting it exactly four, but in a similar manner she has control over whether or not she has her CC and she can very quickly get that CC and hold it, much like Annie can. And their CC is very powerful potentially, but it's not all the time. And so playing around when they have their CC and how quickly they can get their CC is the mini game.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: And specifically playing around when their CC is almost available because it's very clear cut, just like we were talking about gnar. When the bar is empty, they're weak.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the slight difference between Annie and Vex, Vex's does come back over time, static. So she can leave it at 90% full and then not do anything and then have her stun up or fear. Annie needs to be four spell casts.
What those spell casts are, however, can be anything. So she can have three popper, shield, Popper alt, and then her ultimate will have the stun. So how many stacks she has is a little bit of a foolery game depending on how she's doing.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: You will frequently see Annie sit at three stacks to have control over when they get the stun, but also be free to cast a spell to wipe the wave because that she has that little bit of control. Whereas Vex, on the other hand, if the enemy doesn't have a way to give you dashes to reset it quickly, she kind of just doesn't cast her spells until she knows she's safe to put herself in a weak state.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Or she blows both spells very quickly to very quickly reactivate her cc. Because if she blows them in a minion wave properly, that CC is almost.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Fully high, half the cooldown right there. Like on a cannon wave it's 70%. On a non cannon wave it's 60% if you position it correctly, if you're allowed that free. Whereas if you can hit a champion in there, it's 95% better.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah. If you also hit a champion with that, you basically have your CC again. It's. It's a very interesting mini game, and it's slightly different between the two of them, but it's the same mini game you're playing.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yep. You're playing the. Is the CC available or about to be available that decides how scary they are.
All right. Speaking of scary Codex, want to talk about the other support you've put on your list?
[00:13:21] Speaker C: Yeah, so I learned.
I learned Pyke like, a while ago.
So I learned Pyke specifically to learn how to gank mid because he had just the best, like, get the first three waves in head to mid because he has, like, the W ability to just, like, zoom. Can just do his little zoom thing and.
Yeah. So his minigame, in my opinion, is the. Is. Is the stealth mechanic. So pike has this ability to take damage and it makes it into gray health from his original, like, total down to his new new, like, new, like, damage, I guess, register. But if he's stealth and is no longer in vision, he restores a good portion of the damage he took. So essentially him and Tahm Kench have.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: The same mechanic, that Greyhoth mechanic. They lose max health, but they have a potential regeneration window.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: But the thing I really like about pike is that he really.
He works on vision control a lot because you can tell, like, oh, this. This bush is warded, you know, that kind of thing.
Another thing that I really like about it is when he dives in, you know, quote unquote, invisible or stealthed, you can. You can. The. The enemies know that he's nearby and that he's stealthed. And I think that that was like, a really, really cool, like, sound effect, like, concept of, like, there's this. This angry monster thing that's nearby, but you have no idea where.
Where pike is. So you're playing this mind game with this. This scary sound, wondering if Pike's coming to set up for a gank. So, yeah, I don't know.
Pyke's minigame is just. It's just really interesting.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: I think he has a second minigame that is shared with all. Every hook champion in the game except Pike's is very visual. In every other hook champion, it's, are they going to hook you as they move forward? Pike's is, I could hook you. And I'm showing you I can hook you. Am I going to. But he also has that invis playing with your mind. And so, like, he has this. This dual mini game that like this. The sound effect is in much the same way that like some champions have that global sound effect.
It's not global, but when he's near, you know, he's near only if he's invisible.
[00:16:03] Speaker C: Another thing with pike when it was really bad to succumb to the mini game was there was always an intense desire for me to hook way more than with like Nautilus or Thresh or any of the other support hook supports I played.
It's just the way that the channel works. Like you just want.
You want to throw that. It feels good.
Right.
And I just feel that succumbing to the minigame was a problem.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: That's fair. So I'm gonna keep that theme of succumbing to the minigame is a problem. I'm gonna talk about Draven. Draven's entire minigame is he catches his axes. He juggles while he fights you. What this means is Draven has incentives built into his kit where he wants to run wherever the axe is going to fall to catch it. And therefore his opponents know where he wants to go. And the minigame is, is he going to choose to drop an axe or is he going to get hit by whatever you're going to throw at him?
That's basically Draven's entire minigame. And I think Draven's minigame is one of the best executed minigames in League of Legends.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: It absolutely warps how both Draven and his opponent plays at the micro level without impacting anyone outside of the lane he's in.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: He also has very high incentive to play the game.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yes. If he doesn't pick up his axes as they fall, he doesn't get to do the bonus damage from his Q. He. He doesn't get stacks, so he doesn't get gold cash ins. He doesn't get big executes on his ult like he has to play the game. Which means that he is choosing to lose significant amounts of power every time he doesn't deliberately go to catch an axe. So your job as his opponent is to force him to make that choice of I'm willing to be weak versus getting hooked, getting rooted, whatever it might be.
I'll give you a hint. If you're against a Draven, very often they will walk right into the CC because they're so fixated on their axe catching.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Now, admittedly like Draven is so incentivized to play that minigame that it feels like he will do that 90% of the time.
And not just to his detriment. It it is.
Draven has one of the highest power spikes when his axe is spinning versus non, which makes him incredibly dangerous.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: And here's the other risk. Draven stat checks almost everyone while he's got the axes spinning. If he knows that he can just kill you with the remaining axe he has. Or maybe he has a Q off cooldown and can reset a spinning axe to make up for the one he drops. He can take advantage of you trying to catch him juggling and instead just go hard on you. And it's hard for you to run away because he has a run speed steroid and he does shitloads of damage and you've just burned your CC on nothing because he didn't go to catch it. Yeah, that's part of the minigame too. A good Draven will know when to choose to drop an axe to bait you, and then he'll murder your ass.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: It's the best executed minigame that League has.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: I think it's really one of the best. It's so simple and straightforward, but so nuanced.
All right, Mike, who you want to talk about next?
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Well, let's keep going with the same sort of positional requirement and that there is another very positional requirement. One in that this other minigame, much like Draven, is incredibly incentivized. 90 to 95% of the time you're going for those blobs, and that's a Zach. Zack has a minigame that is almost, but not quite as potent as Draven's. It is very well executed, is very well played, but it is slightly different in that he doesn't have power tied behind it. He has regeneration tied behind it. So tankiness, Zack's blobs just heal him for a percent of his max health straight up.
And so he is shedding them. Every time he. He hits someone with a spell, he is shedding blobs and they're costing him health. And so you are constantly playing the Is it worth it to cast my spells, to lose max health, to go pick up health that I might be getting? Is it worth it to go after those blobs? They know I'm going to be there. It's a very similar game to Draven, but the costs are a little bit higher for Zack with a slightly lower payoff because he doesn't have obviously the same kind of damage. It's a very, very straightforward game. But I think in much the same way that Dravens is This, this nuanced perfect balance, Zax, is. Is it always worth it? And most of the time it's yes. But sometimes, like you, you will kill yourself going verblobs.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: It definitely happens. All right, Codex, pick an ad carry to talk about. I know you're itching to talk about an ad carry on this topic. Yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: So I'm gonna talk about Aphelios. So this is a mini game that unless you're really, really, really into the league, you don't really even know what the other mini game, what Aphelios is playing when you're playing against him. Like he's just got all these guns and they have all these like, you can see like this little thing under his health bar of the ammo that he has left. And you don't know exactly unless you've played him extensively, like what he's necessarily bringing to the game.
I felt that weirdly enough, the ammo management, like it was just kind of like having two different types of ammo was like a, a way that like Aphelios like interacted with that situation.
Like green white being really good at single target or like, I don't know, just. Just a lot more like that.
Red White Don't Fight is like the super famous one. Yeah.
You know, blue, blue makes them all go explode.
And it's just weird though because like, I mean, first of all I wasn't a really like, like particularly like proficient Aphelios player. But like I do feel that, that when, when thinking about when to just drop the minigame, I feel at the very end of the day is just a right clickman.
Like.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Any, any, any true. Like, like ad carry, like you can just drop the minigame and not do this incredibly complex like 4th dimension chess with your.
Or you could just right click them to death. And I felt that that was actually when I started really getting like a lot better at him was when I stopped the fourth dimensional chests and instead focused on just really good, good micro.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: The most important thing to remember with Aphelios is all of your right clicks will do the same damage roughly to whoever you right click on.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So like, I agree 90% of what you were saying. I think the point is that since everything he has is ammo based, he never stops playing the game.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah, effectively.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: But he can choose to simplify the game to. I don't feel like making this complicated right now. We're just gonna attack you.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Speaking of not making this complicated, I want to talk about Illaoi briefly. This is a champion. Most people don't even remember exists in the game. But Illaoi has multiple minigames it her kit.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Unless her name is Matthias.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yes.
He doesn't pay the Patreon. He doesn't get shout outs.
All right, so Allowi's first mini game is that she passively spawns tentacles periodically and her other abilities interact with these. But her opponents can kill them. They just take two auto attacks or auto reset abilities will count as a second one. So like Ajax can two tap it by just right click and then hit W for example. I believe Renekton's W will straight up one shot it because it's multiple separate auto attacks. I don't know if anyone else works that way. But the point is.
So this creates a situation where a lot of Illaoi's game is stepping up to put down tentacles to expand her zone of influence and her opponents trying to beat down the tentacle swarm to control where her zone of influence is and push her back. That's the first minigame because if there are tentacles around, Illaoi is strong as fuck. And if there aren't, she kinda sucks. But Illaoi's second minigame is her ultimate tier basic ability, the test of spirit. This is her E, I believe. And this is where she shoots out a tentacle that grabs someone and creates a clone of them. There's multiple aspects to this minigame. First of all, it has the same minigame elements as any other hook champion of oh God, she's walking at me. I need to dodge the tentacle grab. And she can just choose to not use it and keep walking at you and close that gap while you panic trying to make a decision. But it also has the minigame element of if she creates a clone of you, do you fight her or run away? And there is never a clear cut yes or no answer for that, because sometimes it is actually correct to fight her off. If you are straight up stronger than her. Even if she's doing damage to the clone and you can avoid getting hit by the same hit that hits the clone. If she hits the clone, she's doing less than 100% damage to you and you're doing 100% to her, you win those.
Sometimes that's the correct choice.
Sometimes that correct choice is run and break the tether of the clone entirely and deal with the tentacles it spawns.
And sometimes the correct choice is something in between. Back off to try to bait her, to chase you so your jungler can come in or something. She has a lot of dynamicness for her opponent's decision making in her minigame. I actually think the second one doesn't really have a lot of decision making for her because for Illaoi, the moment you hit the test of spirit, you want to fight. That's it. There's no other decision to make. Illaoi always wants to fight when she gets that test of spirit. She wants to do as much damage as possible during that window of power. So for Illaoi herself, the minigame on that is more trying to trick enemies so you can actually land the damn thing because it is an awkward minion blocked skill shot.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: A bit of that and a bit of where do you want to do it? Because like the best Illaois are also doing it near their tentacles. So they're gaining extra portions of power or combining the two minions or do.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Next to a wall when their tentacle cooldown is available and they can walk to that wall to trigger a tentacle spawn.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So the best Illaois are very good at zone control and figuring out what to do with both.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: She's honestly one of the most pure zone control the video game champions in all of League of Legends. Like I would say, only Heimerdinger even comes close. And maybe Zyra. All right, Mike, one more.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: All right. The last one I sort of alluded to being very similar to the previous ones in that there is a very similar mini game going on between Seraphine as there is between Annie and Vex in that her CC or her minigame is a three point passive. It's three spell activations much like Annie's. And the reason why it is different is because the outcome, the final third spell does different things to each of her spells, which is why it is completely unique to Annie and Vex who only gain cc. Now Seraphine does enhance her CC if she uses it on her E and it goes from being a slow to a root or if you have a Rely's an automatic root to a stun, which is why Rely's is always the correct decision as her first item.
However, what it does for her other two abilities is equally as important for her Q. It shoots a second full copy. It doesn't do less damage. It's just two copies. And for her E it is a massive heal. It is a team wide heel as opposed to just being a shield and some speed up. And this is why Seraphine has been very hard to properly balance because this ability can be game breaking in power. It doesn't do anything unique to her ultimate, which is where it's completely different to Annie and Vex. Her ultimate is just her ultimate. It's always going to be the same, but you can very quickly game that and have no stacks whatsoever.
Cast all three abilities and immediately on the third one have a thing go off or you can sit there at full threatening or you can be at 2 or 1. Seraphine is, because it's only 3 points, has possibly the biggest minigame of the three. She has the most mind game potential. Each of them does something slightly different. It's very easy for her to build stacks and when she has all three spells available, you have no idea what's coming out when. So Seraphine's minigame is very, very potent.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. So to wrap up our minigame talk, obviously the answer will vary somewhat from champion to champion, but in general, when should you drop the minigame? Sometimes it is bad to succumb to your minigame and be too predictable or straightforward. So what are the kinds of circumstances that should cause you to say, nope, I'm out. Veto my minigame. I'm just gonna go back to farming.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: The the biggest one for most, for almost every champion here, I think every one of them. But Seraphine, you drop it when there's a gank.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: I think the only one who doesn't drop theirs is Seraphine and potentially Gnar because switching over into mega Gnar is his own unique thing to help in ganks. But Seraphine is still playing that game during a gank. She's going to be trying to throw spells out to try and get her her empowered spell up everyone else. Yeah, it does not matter. You're backing away, you're going away, you're trying to secede and let them either push the wave in or just like take a tower. Etc. If you're getting ganked, you're walking away from your minigame.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: It's okay to drop axes on Draven. It's okay not to pick up chimes if it means staying alive and keeping your teammates alive. So the other thing I briefly wanted to touch on is succumbing to your minigame. We've all seen the Lee Syndrome montages, both good and bad.
Obviously we didn't talk about Lee Sin directly, but it kind of is the the poster child of the My champion does this thing and I'm gonna do it at all costs. Are there times when it is worth doing that even though your gut tells you no?
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Again, I think there's one champion on this list that the answer is always yes to. And the answer is if you can get a kill before you die. Dravens is yes, which is why Dravens always play that way. You have to get that kill first. If you can get that kill before you die, you don't know if you're going to be able to get a kill later. And so your stacks could be tossed away in the future. So being able to get that kill at the cost of your life is almost always worth it for Draven if he gets the kill.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: If so, I've got an example of one. I have seen Illaois give up kills because they're too busy trying to cast their tentacle slams or their tentacle grab instead of just running down the carry. That's trying to run away from them. When she casts those abilities, she stops for a moment to cast the ability and does the thing and then she can move again, which can create enough distance for a lot of champions to kite you that otherwise you would just keep spamming W on them and you'll kill them because you'll stat check them because they're a squishy ad carry at 1.5 items and you're at two item Illaoi. Yeah, that's the big one that comes to my mind of I have seen allowies do that and it is painful to watch when they just get outplayed on the skill shots. And now there's enough distance that allowy can't catch up anymore and now she has to run away. But that means they get to pelt her with hits like entire time while she runs away. So don't Lee syndrome most of the time, but every once in a while it can be right. Alright, that's enough about minigames.
Let's answer some listener questions because you guys answered the call. We got email questions, we got discord questions. We're gonna get a couple of them answered tonight and then the rest of you we'll get to after episode 500. Our first question of tonight comes from Aaron, who writes for a podcast called For Wards. You haven't talked about warding very much lately. You always hear the best bushes to ward, but never where in the bush to ward when warding objectives like Dragon or Baron from over the wall or for early anti invade vision, where should you place wards to maximize vision of champions while minimizing the amount of vision you get with very little blind spots or having them cleared by scryerbloom or getting ganked when you try to get the vision? For example, should you ward closer to the objective in the bush or in more angled wraparound locations for broader Coverage.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: This is a very complex question because there is a lot of answers to this and a lot of points that you have raised that are very good. The main one, like the Scryer's Bloom, you can't do anything about that. That clear zone is large enough that if you are warding near an objective, your wards are pretty much cleared from the scribe. So never ward to avoid Scryers Bloom. Where are the good spots to ward in general?
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Okay. No, I have. I have a little bit of a pushback on that statement. When it is not chemtech Rift, warding past a Scryer's Bloom on the enemy side can give them a false sense of security.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yes. Okay, that's true.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: That is. The one and only time that you should be taking Scryer's Bloom into account with your warding locations is if you have a choice of like, oh, I could ward this, this crossroads, but there's a Scryers bloom right past it. Or I can or gonna spawn right past it, because obviously if it's there, you can just it destroy it, then it's not there. Or like, it's gonna spawn right past this crossroads. Or I could ward past the crossroads, and it's safe to do so. You should ward past the crossroads, wherever that might be, because then they're gonna walk up, they're gonna hit the Scryer's Broom towards your bushes typically, and they're gonna miss the ward that's right behind them. They're not gonna know that you can see them the entire time. You know who hit that ward and whether they're alone or not.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Now that it's good for most gank situations for playing the Dragon and Baron game, it's a little bit less useful there and that those have pretty much like solved award locations.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: The. The best location for a ward in the Pit is anywhere in the Pit, unless it's Ocean Soul or Ocean Dragon, in which case getting a ward in that bush is incredibly useful for the in the Pit Ward, because in the Pit is just in the pit.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Here's a qualifier. You want to put it in the Pit, where the enemy cannot auto attack it over the wall from a safe position.
So if it's Dragon and you have control of Bot Lane, like, you've taken their turret. This is like second or third dragon. The wave is pushed up to their tier two. You have control of the bottom lane of Dragon. You don't have control of mid Lane. You should be warding the Pit towards Bot Lane, because then they have to put Themselves in more danger to clear your ward. So if you ward at the back of the pit next to mid lane, well, they reveal it and they just hit it over the wall and you can't do anything about it.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah, and then there's in the same vein, very similar with Baron.
The difference is, is that both Baron and Dragon, this is more prominent in Baron. Most people check the pit with pink wards. They put their pink wards in the pit.
So if you have cleared Scryer's blooms, cleared the.
The crab scuttle crab when they are up a little ward just around the corner of the entrance is a great ward to have because frequently that won't be checked because they're spending their vision and their anti vision to clear out wards in the surrounding area or within it. And so that can give you information on when people are doing objectives.
There's too many spots across the entire map to go into like details into where to ward everywhere. Like there are great places to ward all across the map. And so trying to detail every point on those isn't exactly the easiest way to do things. But there are some like key locations where there are good wards.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: I have a general rule of thumb I want to give for any. I'm warding a bush and it is not a moment where I feel threatened. If you feel threatened, the answer is as soon as possible and get the fuck out or don't do it at all. Yes, go with a friend. But if this is a situation where you don't expect to be attacked, you're just putting down a ward. Think about where the enemy is likely to come from. Position your ward such that you will see that approach as soon as possible.
So for example, in a tri brush, if you think the enemy is going to be coming from river through a Tribush, you want to put that ward maybe closer to the lane so it can see up the river more. If you think the enemy is going to be coming from the jungle and you're warding opposing Tribush, maybe you want to put that ward at the back of the tri bush closer to the jungle so it can see the enemy that much sooner. Same thing for lane bushes. If you want a ward that is easier to defend, you maybe want to put it on your lane side of the lane bush. And if you want a ward that maybe projects more vision so you have more advanced warning, like for example, trying to spot someone sneaking into the alcove, you may want to put that ward further out so you can see farther.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: I have two specific scenarios and these are Specifically for pink wards. Okay. In mid lane, those two side bushes, you cannot put your pink ward just at the back corner near you. It does not give a long enough vision. To deny vision, you need to move them up not to halfway exactly, but like halfway between the middle. And so like, like a quarter of the way into the bush is about where it gets full vision and has. At least your side is closer to you, so you have a little more protection for it. But it sees the full bush. That is important.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: If you. If you walk right up to the wall and then place it max range over the wall, that is far enough.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: But. But directly over the bush.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Max range is the key.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: It. It needs to be there because otherwise you can't see the full bush. The other one is there are a couple of bushes where they have a slight turnaround in the corner to them.
The most prominent one I can think of is right behind the blue buff. It has that little turnaround in there. The optimal place to put a ward is at that little corner. So you can see the entire bush.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Yep. It is very easy if you place the ward too far around the curve to just not be able to see half the fucking curve.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: Alright, it's time for warding 101 via deep amounts of Bard.
I don't know, some sort of like advanced. Advanced warding. And then also like herder. I'm an ad carry.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: So class is in session with Professor Codex.
[00:39:40] Speaker C: Yep. Professor Codex. I got the tweed, I got the. I got the elbow patches. All right, so in Bard land, you need to understand that the way to kill jungles most effectively. So blue side is the bottom of the map, red side's the top, right?
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:39:56] Speaker C: Okay, cool. So we're in blue side.
We want to kill the enemy jungler who is red side. Right. So the most effective way to murder him is level one. You want where his red buff is. There's a bush that's directly above it. That is the bush where nobody goes ever. And that is the best place to place a pink ward, period.
Nobody will sweep that bush.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: And you can behind the red buff bush. Not the one that is on the corner of the red buff.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: No. So you got the red buff and then you've got like there's the Rockwell frogs that are above it, there's the Krugs that are above it. And then there's in a triangle form, there's that bush that nobody goes to. Where the, where the lane opens into the.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So it's. It's like. So where the red Buff opens. There's the opening. There's a rock wall back there, and then there's a bush behind that one. That's the one.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:53] Speaker C: The bush behind. Behind that rock wall. Yeah. That is the bush where nobody goes until super late game. And if you stick a pink ward in that bush, you will watch that jungler clear their thing until you place another pink ward. You have complete control over. Over as they walk around in their top side.
It's incredible. That is how you kill more jungles as bard than any other ward, bar none. The way that you kill them on the blue side.
So again, sorry, blue side.
We are a blue side bard trying to kill red side junglers, you know, so there's. There's blue buff, right? And then there's that gigantic amount of corridors that go to fucking everywhere you want to. If you're coming from lane and you only have a few moments, what you want to do is waddle. Waddle your bard up to where there's now like a little bush and little crevice and you can see his blue buff. And on the other side of that wall, there's the. The gromp. You want to place a ward there if you don't have any time, like across the wall, just so you can see everything. If you're smart and you actually have three more seconds, waddle your butt all the way up to where again, there's that. That big corridor of just. You can just see everything. You have complete control of their blue side, basically. If you place a ward in the middle of that, of that. Of that area. Don't place a pink ward, obviously, they can see it. Duh.
So that is how you murder people with burn.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: So that's the corridor between the second.
Right next to that second turret. There's that corridor that leads into the jungle, that corridor, that entrance between there and blue buff. There's a giant like 4 cores corridor. A ward in that spot. Not in the bush. In the spot.
[00:42:35] Speaker C: In the spot. Because then you actually see people come and you can do all this stuff. You can even catch Rameses, because even they don't gank from that far.
So it's also pretty uncommon to see.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: Someone use a ward there or a sweeper there.
[00:42:49] Speaker C: Yep. But you're bard and you go fast. You go fast. Yo.
That is your jam.
That's how you keep your carry alive. That's how you murder junglers. It's great. It is literally the best.
So you are a blue side bard, theoretically, or a carry. It's cool. So you're walking to Lane and all of a sudden you see your jungler eating their Krugs on blue side at the bottom of the map. And then you see this bush. That is what we call the Shaco bush. You never need to ward that bush unless the enemy has a Shaco. That is the place where Shaco comes to kill you every single time. And they never expect that you backward it. So if you have a Shaco on the enemy team, all you gotta do is drop like one time in lane. You get shoved in. You just drop a little ward there. And then all of a sudden Shaco's like, hi guys, I would like to kill you. And you say ha ha. I see Shaco coming to gank me. Let's walk away.
No, that is the Shaco bush as a ad carry because unfortunately it sucks. But a lot of supports don't understand vision. It really sucks. Man, I wish we were better at teaching people.
So you are going to be doing all the warding at least in lane because your support isn't on the same page of like keeping you alive, right?
So when you ward as a blue carry going up, waddling up, of course I'm shoving in my second wave. I'm going to go get my ward before 3 minutes 30 because that's when the junglers come out to eat.
You always ward where it is like deepest you can go. If you are warding defensively. If you are the person on your blue side warding defensively, you ward the most inconvenient place for them to stand to kill your ward.
And that's because it takes actually a fair bit of time to execute three autos.
So you can catch people off a ton of the time and just start a skirmish when they did not know that your jungler was on your side.
If you ward making them stand just a little bit too close.
So it also gives you more time. And yeah, so wherever you're in the try, if you are warding aggressively, I. E. You want, you want your, your fighting, you ward as deep as you can.
If you are warding defensively, you ward closest to your tower as you can.
I do believe that is warding 101 for bot lane.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: The only difference that I will give you one there, there are two scenarios in which it does not matter how you do that. One is there is a specifically Leona who does not care. She clears wards in a second. And the other is, is there an assassin jungler on their team or a pike because they're going to get the vision lethality Item which, if you have a ward on your side of the map, it dies in two hits, period.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: Okay, let's get the rest of Eren's questions done. They're hopefully a little shorter than the.
Oh my God. That was more than I thought we were going to talk about. So he continues. What do you think about adding official map quadrants or location names to the game for better context based pinging and communication, such as on my way, your champion, top right jungle near blue buff or Danger spotted bottom river to make team communication more efficient? Or would it clutter the UI and overwhelm players? I also think such an idea would make it easier to discuss areas of the map instead of pixel blush.
[00:46:29] Speaker C: So I actually felt that this was something I wanted to do with my friends. However, they weren't interested. I would say that I actually, I do feel that this is a thing that could be explored. I just haven't ever like optimized it. So. Good thinking.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: We. We have the nomenclature, period. We have, we have named everything around so we know what things are called, what the difficulty is, what you're asking for.
[00:46:58] Speaker C: It's just the system.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: I absolutely think that Riot should implement this into specifically pings in chat. There is no reason for the chat box to not be able to say when it says like pinged caution for it to also say pinged caution at Red team blue buff or whatever it might be.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah, they could codename quadrants or sections. They don't have to get as specific as pixel bush. But we have.
If nothing else, there's quadrants.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: I think they should. I think they should.
[00:47:26] Speaker C: I think they should. No, I think they should too.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: For everything that has a community name that is unanimous, just use that and make that the official in game name. So when a new player sees it pinged, they see where the ping is and they see the name show up and they can start associating the two. And if it doesn't have an official in game name, make one up.
[00:47:47] Speaker C: Make one up. Like, I'm sorry, this is a little.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Bit more complicated to. To like program. This is a. This is a worthwhile program, I think.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Yes. But it's not gonna be a lot of work for Riot, but I think it should happen because it would go so far to helping normalize and like make it so when we're all talking about things, we're using the same terms and communicating clearly. Because if, if you or I say pixel bush, we know what we mean by that. But if a new player hears pixel bush, how are they supposed to know which bush is the pixel.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: There are multiple tribushes.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:18] Speaker C: So, and that's my problem. So like that's the thing. Okay, so there are, there, there's, there's four tribushes, right? There's two up in top and there's two in the bot, right?
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: So they're clearly like blue side and red side, top lane and bottom lane tribushes.
[00:48:32] Speaker C: But, but think for a sec. Okay, so let's say that gromf gromf quadrant is blue bot side.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: So we're going a little bit too non specific. I think you go blue side gromp, blue side red buff, blue side Krugs, etc. So you have a naming convention for pieces of the lane. So you have, then you break it down to the lanes. Blue side mid turret, blue side, outer turret, etc.
[00:49:04] Speaker C: Well, okay, so for the quadrants though, you could say like Demacia is blue side.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Well, and I want to give an example of this from a completely different genre of game entirely. So I've mentioned before, I play a lot of Super Metroid. The Super Metroid speedrunning community has a lot of names for different rooms that come up in Speedruns that usually have some sort of historical name for why they're called that.
Some of these names make absolutely no fucking sense. There is a room called Single Chamber which is a giant L shaped room with like five doors in it. I don't know the lore behind why it's called Single Chamber, but I know that it's called Single Chamber because the map randomizer that I like to play went and got all of these different consensus community names and for rooms that don't show up in the speedruns, made a name for them and then put them in the game in the randomizer. People running a bot for their stream can hook up this bot to their actual Super Nintendo on a ROM cartridge that people use to display room names on their stream as they go through it. Like there's all sorts of cool tech built around these room names and it has been incredible for me as a newer Super Metroid like in depth player. I only played it casually for 30 years and now I'm playing it more seriously. It has made it so much easier for me to follow conversations on techniques and strategy and be able to learn those techniques myself and start implementing them. Because now I know what the fuck they're called and how to look them up. Because I know that if I go to the logic pages or I go to the speedrunning wiki And I type in that room name, I'll get a list of the things I can do there and how to do them. So. So that's why I think Riot absolutely should put the work in to implement something like this into League of Legends. Because normalizing that communication, especially if they could figure out a way to normalize it to where it's consistent across languages as well. Because all these community names like Pixelbush, they don't call it a pixel bush in Korea. I guarantee it. I have no idea what they actually do call it, but I guarantee it's something else.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: There's the fanatic bush, which, like, is only called the fanatic bush because of.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: Because of a name that's not a specific location though.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: So actually there. There is one, I think that is specifically the fanatic bush, and that's the one by Second tower.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Sure. But the point is more having that communication normalized, especially if they could figure out a consistent way to do it that would then translate across languages, would go so far in helping all of us be on the same page and know what the hell we're talking about. So that when I say bottom lane, red side, Tribush, everyone knows what I mean. Instead of whatever random name I decide to call it. And then you have to figure out, okay, what bush is he talking about.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: Yeah, which is. Which is why I think the. The best way of naming convention. There shouldn't be a name for every single bush. That is a little bit more complicated than I think it needs to be. There are quadrants of areas. Not. Not like pure, like literal quadrant zones, but if you go with Raptors, the Raptor zone, that whole area that includes a little route, the bush there includes a little corridor there. That is the zone that anytime you ping that area, Raptors is the point. Up you would go blue side Raptors. And that indicates an exact zone or.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: I would love that.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: The best way of doing this thing, it's just you ping top lane and that's where Lucian is.
[00:52:44] Speaker C: Yep. It'll just win the game for you.
No communication needed, guys.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: This has been episode 499 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Mike of many names for Codex Ninja. We'll see you next week for some fun.
[00:52:59] Speaker C: Goodbye.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: Goodnight, everybody.
[00:53:02] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our Patreon at patreon.com theforwardspodcast. And of course, send your questions to theforwardspodcast@gmail com so we can answer them.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: Live on the show.
[00:53:21] Speaker A: That's theforwardspodcast at gmail. Com.
