The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 501: Brawling with a Guest

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker C: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven jerks and Velcas. [00:00:13] Speaker D: And you're listening to the four wards podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 501 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me two other wards and a guest to help you move forward in league of Legends. This week, our wards, we've got, of course, Mike of many names. [00:00:51] Speaker B: I'm never leaving. [00:00:53] Speaker D: And we've got Pillow Pat. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Hello, I'm here. [00:00:56] Speaker D: And then we've got a friend of the show, Rule 29 has joined us tonight as a guest. [00:01:03] Speaker C: Hello, Rule. [00:01:04] Speaker D: Do you want to tell the listeners anything about yourself? [00:01:07] Speaker C: No, no, I'm just kidding. No. I've been playing league since I want to say, 2010, and when I've actually tried to play solo queue ranked, I've gotten platinum, I think two or three seasons. Once was back in 2014 and then once was, I want to say 2019, but haven't been back Platinum when it. [00:01:33] Speaker D: Is what Emerald is now. [00:01:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got to platinum for a few seasons in a row and then I was, you know, I just get there and then I'd be like, all right, I'm done playing ranked for the rest of the year. [00:01:45] Speaker D: You know, understandable. Don't be like me. Go from Emerald three to plat four and dropping. [00:01:53] Speaker C: Man, you have the worst luck. When I see you stream, it's like. [00:01:58] Speaker D: Like, that's half the reason I stream all of my games is just so I can document. Look how fucking bad my teams are on average. This can't be normal. [00:02:08] Speaker B: No. I think you are explicitly cursed. [00:02:10] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:02:11] Speaker C: So I agree. [00:02:12] Speaker D: If you guys want to watch that, head on over to Twitch tv. Jacksomen. I stream several nights a week. Sometimes it's super Metroid, sometimes it's me getting trolled in League of Legends. When we bully Mike into it, he can be found at Twitch tv. Mikeandmannames. And same for Pillowpet at Twitch tv. Pillowpet. Guys, we also have a Discord. Come join the Discord. The link is in the episode description. You can come play normal games with us. We do that a couple times a week too. When the ranked is really bad, I just see who's around and we play some norms instead. [00:02:43] Speaker B: If there's a bunch of people who want to play games, we have a bunch of people who tried to grab games. Like we Have a bunch of European players who have been trying to grab games in the middle of the day while we're gone at work. We've had a bunch of people who will just show up for games and if Jax is doing ranked, usually he'll stop and join for hey, there's four people. Let's go play some ranked normals. [00:03:02] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Now we also need to give a shout out to Codex, Ninja Pillow Pet, Skippyus, Esquire and Labana for supporting us at the shout out tier. Thank you guys so much. You keep the show on the Internet now. If you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes you get a bunch of stories and anecdotes, sometimes it's just us prepping for the show. You never know what you're gonna get. And then $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and a shout out at the top of every episode of both this and our general gaming podcast from 8bit to 4k. Last but not least, listeners, I'm gonna put on disappointed dad Jacks a little bit. I know we celebrated episode 500 and last week was all fun and games, but we haven't gotten any listener questions in the past week. Not in the discord, not to our email theforwardspodcastmail.com I don't expect this to continue. I expect we'll have new questions next week, so write in to the four wards podcastmail.com so I don't have to be disappointed again in a week. All right, with that. We should have talked about this last week, but we were Busy celebrating episode 500 last week. Patch 25.19 came out and yeah, we'll cover 2520 next week when it comes out, I think. But for now, we're gonna talk about 25:19 and what the fuck changed a week and a half ago that we're all dealing with to help keep you guys informed and rule. You're the guest. So I'm gonna invite you to go first. Tell us about what's changed with Jinx. [00:04:50] Speaker C: Well, let's see. Hold on, let me pull Jinx. All right, so she has two changes. The. The less important one is her flame chompers is just getting a flat 20 damage increase at all levels. I don't really think that really matters that much. Let's be real it's usually the last skill you're upgrading and it's 20 more. [00:05:14] Speaker D: Damage when you combo someone with your support. [00:05:17] Speaker C: Like. [00:05:17] Speaker D: Yeah, it's not bad. [00:05:19] Speaker C: No, I mean but it's like eh, you know, like usually those are the. It's. It's the kind of patch notes you just kind of glaze over. But the big change that is really nice is Switcheroo Jinx's Q Her rocket. Specifically the bonus range is increasing. It's going from 80 to 100 at level at first level and then at rank five going to go to 200, which is what it's currently at. So the. You end up in the same place but the starting levels you're going to have more range. That 80 range is going to make a huge difference, especially when you consider Jinx has a base attack range of 525. So level 1Q, her attack range would go to 605 which isn't, you know, it's good but it's like there's tons of champions that have base range is longer than that, especially in AD carries. [00:06:17] Speaker D: Basically the same as like Ash range. [00:06:19] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So you, you're not really going to be able to out range someone and poke them from afar. But with the new changes it goes up to 625 and that's on the high end of ranges. I think some of the only champions that have a higher range is Caitlyn at like 650. [00:06:35] Speaker D: So a few other like empowered effects. [00:06:38] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:06:40] Speaker B: The big sneaky thing here that rank two now means she's at 650. [00:06:44] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. Rank two, she'll be at 650. So level four, she's going to be able to auto attack trade with Caitlyn at the same range and Caitlyn won't be able to kite her and that's huge. And specifically you can start bullying other champions earlier where you can get an auto off and then walk away before they can auto you back. If you're at maximum range, I think that's a huge change. And if you play it well and you're playing around those, those range, those high ranges, it's. It could be the difference between whittling someone down so that you can all in them, or basically just having to sit back and farm. [00:07:24] Speaker D: Absolutely. All right. Well speaking of just having to sit back and farm, Mike, pick one of your two champions because they both got buffs that help them do just that. [00:07:35] Speaker B: I'll save the bigger one for later. So we'll start with Seraphine. So Seraphine got also. Well, she got three changes. She got a base stat change in which she got both a mana growth and an HP growth change up by 15. For the Mana growth, which is quite large, going from 25 to 40. And the HP growth, she got 5 more HP per level. That's not a big deal. Useful because that means she's a little bit less squishy. But 5 health per level doesn't add up a ton. And then both of her spell changes, each of which is very good in a different scenario, but both of them are very powerful. Her Q, the amplified damage at low HP that Q does now also affects monsters. That's a lot. One, it helps you with objective taking if you're a support. Two, if you're a mage, you can now clear camps significantly faster. When you go, start grabbing camps at level like 11. And both hits of your Q when you have the double empower Proc will do that because it's just a second Q shot. When you have the empowerment on it. Fantastic change, but I think less important than the W change because the W change is a massive healing buff. So she's going from 3 to 5% missing health per target in the circle to 8 to 16% missing health regardless of where you are, regardless of in the circle if you were in it when she did the initial cast. Now you get it, which is huge because people kept wandering out of your circle. [00:09:16] Speaker D: Yep. And to be clear, this means her best case scenario is significantly less healing than her best case scenario before. But her worst case scenarios are massively more healing than they were before. More than double. [00:09:29] Speaker C: Huge difference in lane. [00:09:31] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [00:09:31] Speaker B: It's. It's a. Especially a lot of healing. The baseline healing is now higher than the maximum it was before by 3% and it's going up to 16%. Massive. Absolutely massive. [00:09:46] Speaker D: It's almost enough to make me want to max it second. It's not, but it's almost there. [00:09:51] Speaker B: If you are supporting it should be your second max. [00:09:55] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:09:55] Speaker B: Because as much as this is a useful ability, it is too long of a cooldown for this to be your max. And your ECC is really potent. Yo. [00:10:08] Speaker D: All right, Pillow. You want to talk about Lilia for us? [00:10:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So Lilia didn't get any huge buffs like game changing or anything, but they're trying to bring a more AP focused junglers into pro play and that worlds. So what they did to her, they brought her bonus damage up by 50 damage at all ranks at 5% more AP scaling. And that's just the Bonus damage and her cooldown just went down 10 seconds at all ranks Small, buff, but impactful because she. Her. Her alts is one of the most impactful in the game if done right. I mean it's highlight reel worthy in some cases. [00:10:52] Speaker D: It's such a high variance ultimate. It's either complete shit or God mode. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean I love it's. It's. There's not a lot of champions in the game that apply sleeps. I mean we got Zoe that I know of, Lilia and I think maybe those are the only two that like apply like a actual sleep as the cc and so she gets that. I think everybody gets bonus damage off of. I think it's a true damage like Zoe. Or is it true damage? [00:11:27] Speaker D: The bonus damage from popping the sleep is true damage. That's the only part of it. It's true damage. [00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:11:34] Speaker A: Well, it's a. It's a really good Ult. I like the change. I used to play her a long time ago, but she's felt weak ever since they nerfed her tank build. She can be very strong just like any champion, depending on the hand she's in. She's not a super beginner friendly champion, so you don't see her a whole lot in lower mmr. So I'm glad to see her getting some love. There definitely needs to be more variety with AP Junglers. [00:12:05] Speaker B: They're working on that. [00:12:06] Speaker D: Fair enough. Yeah, we. We didn't highlight it, but they also buffed Diana in this patch, which I just don't understand why they felt me too. She was already strong as fuck. I actually want to talk about the champion they named after me. No, they named it after a Dota designer. But Jax got some changes this patch that are quite controversial. They nerfed his base HP by 15 and gave him 20 extra initial armor gain when he ults at rank one. Now this scale's to the same point at rank three, but that means his ability to fight other top laners at level six is massively higher. And remember, he still gets 60% of however much armor he gets as magic resist. So even if the two opposing top laner does magic damage, he's significantly spikier tankiness at level six when he hits the Ult. I don't understand this one because the whole point of Jax is that he's an inevitable monster and he's supposed to be weak early. [00:13:14] Speaker B: The more I think I've seen of other top laners is that they are so powerful at bullying out Jax that he doesn't get to do Jax because he is so far behind. It's not like this is going to make him able to duel people at level six he's not getting any more damage. He's getting 20 armor. He's still losing some base health, but it means he's going to survive those encounters. [00:13:36] Speaker D: It's going to make it so the people he could already duel he's just going to crush too. [00:13:41] Speaker A: I would say depending on his build path. It's almost a power neutral change just with the lost health to the gained armor. Because typically armor health is a linear like scaling. Like you could have 900 armor and 100 health and it's not going to matter. But you try to balance those as you go up. I think the rule is what every 10 armor you try to. What is it like 100 health you try to keep with every 10 armor or something like that, every one point. [00:14:11] Speaker C: Of armor is a 1% increase in your health. Effective health, I should say. So if you have 100 armor, your effective physical health is a hundred times. Whatever your your health you see on the screen is an Mr. Is the same. It's just for. For magic instead. [00:14:31] Speaker A: So there you go. So I think yeah, they definitely had to take his base HP down because that would have just been completely unfair. So I think it's a good power neutral change. I could always bully a Jax early, but like you said earlier, Jax, will you let him do his thing? He might act tilted and never leave the side lane and just farm and take towers all game, but you let him do that level later in the game. He's. He's got his triforce, his, you know, everything else that he's gonna be. It's just he. You can't deal with him. [00:15:05] Speaker B: The important part here is that this is just during his ult which means that overall Jax is slightly weaker. Ever so slightly. Until he also. In which case then he is stronger. [00:15:19] Speaker D: Yep, he's a window of strength champion. All right. Rule. Your champion is just your next champion you have in your. Your list is just always kind of there. She doesn't really have windows of strength. She's just generically strong or not depending on the game. Talk to us about what they changed with Mel. [00:15:38] Speaker C: I'm actually really excited for this change. Basically, Mel's passive. The second part of it that no one ever remembers is that when she casts a spell, she gets three stacks of an ability and the next auto attack she uses will do 24 to 75 damage plus 3 ability power based off of level that is increasing from 24 to 75. It'll now be 24 to 99 based on level. But the AP ratio is tripling from plus 3% to plus 9%. Now keep in mind, Mel can stack her passive three times. So it's every time she casts a spell and it lasts for five seconds. And so later on in the game, her Q I think has a cooldown of goes down to six, I believe. So yeah, you could easily queue build up those stacks, use an E to refresh it, and then Q again. And then you'll have nine stacks. And so you'll deal a maximum now of 72 to 297 and 27% of your ability power. That's a huge change. I could start seeing people building things like Lich Bane on her now because you want to actually lean into that ability now. You want to lean into her auto attacks after using abilities and that actually help force you to do that. I think this will really help with her consistent damage. Mel is one of those champions where it feels like either she's completely dominating or she's doing nothing. And I think this will help in those situations where she throws out a couple abilities and she's against Zed. So nothing hits right. And so at least you get that auto off with a little bit more damage. So I. I'm really excited to see how this will change. And I'm excited to see if people will actually change how they build Mel going forward. [00:17:44] Speaker B: Don't forget, with Mel, you are now with how the changes that were done to her, you are building full AP instead of that weird hybrid tanky build you were doing before, Trying to get as many on hit effects as you could. So you regularly see Mels with 800 plus AP. 30% of that is an additional 350 damage on that. So you're hitting with that three spell combo, which you can do Q E, Q pretty quickly, and then another 600 damage on the auto attack. [00:18:17] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah, I think in the later game this is gonna be. It's gonna be enough damage that if she wasn't killing you before, she will kill you now with that last auto. [00:18:27] Speaker B: I agree. [00:18:29] Speaker D: All right, so I can't think of a good segue, Mike. Talk about Brand. [00:18:34] Speaker B: There is no good segue between her and Brand. Brand is getting three very good changes, one of which is only useful in the jungle. His passive is getting a very slight modifier increase of 0.05%. It's just a base damage modifier to monsters. His passive is where most of his Damage to the big monsters came from. And that's how his big early clear happens. So Brand is just chugging along faster in the jungle. But to go along with that, he's getting two AP ratio buffs. His W is getting a 10 buff, and his ult is getting a 5% buff. That's really, really, really potent. Brand doesn't build the most ap. He gets dot plus dot plus slow plus. Sometimes you'll see void staff in there before you would ever go Rabadons. So he's not getting 800-900AP. But AP ratios are still incredibly important, and this is a great way to tune him powerfully up without making the support Brand, who is just an annoying little shit from being too powerful. [00:19:47] Speaker D: This. This is also. It's enough of an AP bump that he doesn't feel bad to buy Death Cap on anymore. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Yeah, a 70% ratio is a great ratio. [00:19:59] Speaker D: Well, and also, you got to remember with the pyroclasm, that's 5% per bounce per hit. [00:20:04] Speaker B: And you can hit someone three, I think maximum three, maybe four times. [00:20:09] Speaker D: You can get five hits on enemies if they're just clumped up. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you can hit multiple people clumped up together, but if it bounces between you and one person, I think they can get hit three times by it. [00:20:19] Speaker C: I don't know why they're buffing Brand. I feel like every time I fight against him, he's like one shotting my entire team. I don't know. [00:20:28] Speaker B: He got a Jungle Nerf a little while ago, and you didn't see too many AP Junglers for about three or four months or so. And they're trying to really bring this as an option back. And Brand was one of the premieres, and he's gonna be one of the premieres again. [00:20:44] Speaker D: Brand also is a more fair champion than a lot of the ones we've talked about because he's an. He's a mage who can't, like, dash around. He just shoots spells at you. They're all skill shots except for his E, I guess He's. [00:20:58] Speaker B: He's waddling forward to you. [00:20:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they. [00:21:01] Speaker D: There is counterplay, but he is a. [00:21:03] Speaker B: Very, like, team fight heavy champion whose team fight power got buffed. [00:21:08] Speaker A: So he's one of those champions that, like, even if he's very far behind, can still be super impactful in any team fight. Like Malphite Amumu, Any of those champions that, like, they. They could play be 0 and 12 and still come into a team fight and just decimate it. [00:21:26] Speaker D: Yep. [00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. [00:21:29] Speaker D: I'm going to talk about someone with a lot less counterplay than Brand Riot decided to Buff LeBlanc, and I do think she needed it, but I don't like the way they did it. They have buffed the AP ratio on her W and on her mimic version of her W. This is the dash. Now, the reason I don't like that this is how they chose to buff her is this is the low counter play version of her combo. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Out of everything, the best one to buff would have been her E. Yes. And the worst one would have been her Q. [00:22:04] Speaker D: Her E requires her to hit you with a tough skill shot and then stay in range of you long enough for it to trigger. It's the most fair encounter play of them. But the reason this annoys me is her mimic W is her weakest of the three mimics. If you can get both parts of the other two. But it's unconditional. It's just a burst of damage. And this is enough damage between the buff on her W and the buff on her mimic W that she can frequently just wr QE and kill someone instantly. Even though the W doesn't hit because the R is the one that actually gets her in range on top of them. I don't like it. [00:22:44] Speaker B: It means the engage range is disgusting. [00:22:46] Speaker D: Her. Yeah. She can literally dash over two different walls to kill you and then just snap back when she's done. It's brutal. I have played LeBlanc since the patch hit and she feels oppressive if she can get even a minor lead because of it. Because this is so much more burst damage on her, like reliable, basically not a skill shot ability. It's also more wave clear. Something she already was too good at. So yeah, I felt like she needed buffs, but I'm not happy that this is how they did it. I would have much rather than buff ethereal chains. Alright, PI', Illo, you've got a note in here that does not apply to Summoner's Rift. So explain yourself. [00:23:26] Speaker A: So I like to frequent other game modes in League of Legends. You know, typically arenas and Arams. They recently brought back one of my favorites, Brawl. So Brawl is back and it is now being used for new player experience testing. So what that means they are. If you don't know what Brawl is. Brawl is a 5v5 one lane situation point based. And it's just an entire. It's exactly what the name is. You just fight. You're fighting and fighting and fighting and trying to push minions to the enemy. Team and they're trying to do the same to you, but you just fight. So they are bringing it in and trying to test it as a new player fighting experience to give new players the chance to just non stop team fight and get used to it. I think it's a good idea. I mean, I think they're taking a game mode and they're turning it into a learning experience for new players. Right now new players only have a ramps to use. Those can be like, yeah, that's constant team fighting. But I think Brawl is that plus a little more because it's constant. There's jungle camps in there, there's, there's, I guess neutral objectives is I guess what you would call them. I, I just like, I like Brawl. I like what they're doing with the trying to bring it in to be a new player testing. And I just thought it was big enough to mention so people can new players. Especially if you're listening to the podcast, it's a good chance for you to go work on some fighting mechanics. They usually only last 10 to 15 minutes, so they're really quick. [00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Unlike Arams, which can very frequently, like if a team starts holding it hostage, can last half hour. We just had one of those where an Aram was a half hour long. Brawl. Brawl cannot do that. [00:25:21] Speaker C: No. I also like the fact that we have a game mode where we're gonna finally be able to have constant team fighting. But you get to choose your champion. Arams. I love Aram, don't get me wrong. I absolutely love it. But you are at the mercy of Rngesus. And so if you play two champions, right, like the chances of you actually getting one of those two champions is so small. And so I like the fact that now you can just be like, oh, I want to get better at team fighting on Caitlyn. Right. And you can just grab that champ, jump into a brawl, try her out, try the combos, just do your best and then you know you can actually learn and get better and you can keep repeating that experience until you're like, okay, now I feel comfortable on Caitlyn and so now I'm going to take her into a normal game. [00:26:12] Speaker B: There's a couple of big things about Brawl that are better than Aram at teaching people. One, there's no towers. So you don't have to worry about trying to push towers and clear them back and forth. Two, you can go back and heal. You're not at the mercy of waiting to die to go by and do things. You can go Back whenever you need to. And three, that jungle camps, that's a really big thing. You can walk out, back away, go grab a jungle camp. Maybe you get a little bit of healing. Maybe you just want to grab an extra little bit of gold before you pick up an item and then go right back into fighting. It's. It's got a few of the things that Aram doesn't have that are also great for new players to learn. And Aram was already my main thing to help new players learn the game because it's just team fighting. This is just more team fighting. [00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:02] Speaker C: Rule. [00:27:02] Speaker A: I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah. I love the fact that you can select your champion. So if. If you haven't played it yet and you've played swift play, that's. It's similar to that. There is no draft. You select your champion you want, you build your own page, your summoners, you hit play, and it puts you in the game. When a match is found, there's no. There's no banning, there's no. The whole drafting phase is gone. And I really appreciate that too. [00:27:32] Speaker B: That also just speeds up the game. You start much quicker. [00:27:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And a piece of advice for anyone who does try brawl. The jungle camps are very important. That's where you get those little advantages out. And I think it also helps when you shift into normals because then you're used to fighting for jungle camps. Right. And so when you get to those big teamfight moments like Dragon Herald, Baron, Otacon, you know, you're already used to those like, oh, it's in the jungle. This is a big objective we need to get. [00:28:05] Speaker A: I will say one downside to brawl, and I think we talked about it last time Brawl was out, is there is a mechanic. If you get several kills in a row without dying, you get put on fire, which gives you increased stats. So you're at the mercy of assassins this entire game mode. That is the only downside I'll give it specifically. In my experience, it's usually a shaco. [00:28:33] Speaker B: The two big ones for me are Akali and Fizz. [00:28:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I. I believe if you're on fire, you also take more damage. Is that. [00:28:44] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:28:44] Speaker C: Is that true? [00:28:46] Speaker B: You're doing more damage. You're being a monster. [00:28:49] Speaker C: Right. And so if you're an assassin with an easy escape, then you can just jump in, nuke someone, and then escape. I could see how that's really annoying. [00:28:58] Speaker B: And unlike the Aram build, you can walk back and heal. [00:29:01] Speaker C: Right. So if you only get out with, you know, 20 health left you can just walk back into base. [00:29:05] Speaker D: Yeah alright so yeah brawl. Good way to onboard new people. Good way to just practice a new champion just in team fighting. Let's answer some listener questions guys because we did get a bunch of questions before 500 that we haven't answered yet so we're gonna get through some of them. Our first set of questions comes from Skippius Esquire who writes these are questions from the standpoint of a silver AD carry. I play the following champions in generally this Miss Fortune, Jhin Ashe, Jinx, Twitch with Twitch being my worst of the bunch. So this question is a two parter. What advice do you have for me when it comes to when to play which I currently focus on my support to help decide who to play since I'm not sure worrying about counter picks in low elo is a big deal. So if I have an engage or heavy CC support I normally go mf. If I have a mage support I normally go Jhin. If I just don't know or feel like playing them I pick the others. What ADCs should I look to add to my mix and cover all bases and why? Because there's not really a question in the first part, is there? He's just telling us what he does. [00:30:11] Speaker B: It's a bit. He wants advice to know when to play which one. Okay and then the second one when what champions would you add? So the first part is pretty easy. If you are first pick or the first couple picks you get to decide. That's your choice. You get to be the I want to be MF, I want to be Jhin etc. You dictate the rest. If your third pick, maybe fourth pick because someone else wanted to grab support and jungle and you're on red red side so you have the second two picks. You can tailor it to what else you're seeing. Ash is really great utility wise Jinx or if you think it's going to be a really long game, Jinx is scaling way out scales all the others. Ash's utility way out scales all the others. Ms. Fortune is the strongest laner out of those by a long shot. Twitch is a cheese fucker and I hate him. He's. He's the most annoying of them because he has the worst way of getting away from him and then suddenly you just die. I hate EP Twitch so much but you have the option of doing an AP Champion when you do Twitch. I don't like it but it's there. And then what other ADCs do I think you should add you have a good chunk of them. You really probably want a mid game AD carry if you're looking for something like that and you want a like dedicated team fight AD carry. Jinx is great at those but she's very late game focused. MF is good at those but she's good at very narrow portions of them. And Ash is pretty much a front to back fighter. So like the the two things that I would think about. Kaisa is one of the best team fight AD carries around and a nice good mid game. One I'd say is Varus. He spikes really well on two, three items. He's got a good mix of utility and damage. He can also be built multiple ways. And Kai', Sa, she has a good mobility, she has great fighting, she has great dueling, she's good in front to back fights, she's good in back to front fights. If someone gets a good little hit on something you can jump to the back line and do picks. I think those really well covered what you're missing in that situation. [00:32:21] Speaker A: One more I might throw in that I I've always enjoyed playing and I'm not an ADC main by any means but an ADC that I've always enjoyed playing is Caitlyn. I've always felt she feels relatively safe. I enjoy her play style with the traps, the headshot mechanic. It's not complicated but it is a. It's not a complicated champion by any means but it's got a high skill ceiling honor. So I would say Caitlyn might be another one to look into but you don't want to over saturate your player pool even though ADCs do play very similarly. You want to. It's better to be good great at two or three champions than good at five or eight champions. So I would say pick three of those or even the ones that Mike mentioned or I mentioned or if anybody else mentions any and get good at those. Get great at those. [00:33:25] Speaker B: There was one, yeah there was one that I was thinking of but yo go right ahead. [00:33:29] Speaker C: I was just like to say I think that when you are playing a champion you shouldn't go, you shouldn't try to expand your pool beyond more than like three champions until the three that you're learning are intuitive. You can do their combos. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to think oh in this engage I need to use these abilities. It's just all automatic. That should all just be something you do instinctively and if you're not quite there yet with those champions, that's totally fine, but don't try to expand your pool unless you're, like, thinking, oh, these champions just aren't really fitting for me. And I think I want to try different champions to find the one that does fit with my playstyle. It's very important that you can pilot your champion instinctively, so that way you can focus on learning the other aspects of the game, like macro. [00:34:22] Speaker B: Yeah, the champion I was thinking of, but I totally miss. And this is. This is the safety champion. This is. Everyone's coming after me. Ezreal. Ezreal is a champion that, if you're comfortable playing skill shots, he's just skill shots. So he generally is one of the easier champions to learn because it's just skill shots, and he has a ton of safety behind him and a lot of power. [00:34:44] Speaker D: Fair enough. All right, shall we go to question two? [00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:48] Speaker D: All right, Ms. Fortune, specific question. When am I going the Bloodthirster build route, and when am I going Ghostblade or Lethality? I find I enjoy the Bloodthirster route, so I normally play that, but I'm guessing there are matchups where I help my team more going lethality. I'm of the opinion that currently don't bother going more lethality than Collector. You should get Collector. But I would go the Bloodthirster into Collector and ie type build. [00:35:13] Speaker C: I appreciate you saying that, Jax, because I think lethality on ad carries are just. It's just such a bait. Like. Like, unless you're in an Aram, right, where it's all squishies, I think that lethality just falls off a cliff. And as an AD carry, you're supposed to be the one where it's, you know, 30 minutes in the game, and all of a sudden, if you look at anyone, they just explode. And you can't do that with lethality. [00:35:41] Speaker B: As the ad carry, your job is do damage. And MF can get away with a little bit more than most people, especially because she's using the lethality to fuel the one lethality item that gives her her axiom to give her her alt back so that she's alting more often. She's one of the few that can do that. But also she's just stronger, usually building crit and bloodthirster. So strong build crit. So going Bloodthirster into the one lethality. He just mentioned the crit one. [00:36:16] Speaker C: Collector. [00:36:16] Speaker D: Collector. [00:36:17] Speaker B: Collector, yeah. Going bloodthirster into Collector into Iedge is one of the Strongest power spikes. You don't need to build attack speed early because you're MF or. [00:36:26] Speaker D: Or if they're tanky, Bloodthirster into Collector, into Lord Doms or Mortal Reminder, depending on enemy team comp. [00:36:35] Speaker B: Or if they're very tanky, you don't get the Collector and you go immediately into Lord Dom's. [00:36:40] Speaker D: Sure, but that would be like a game where you're playing against like four tanks. [00:36:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:44] Speaker D: Collector is so good on her because it just. It shortens the amount of time the enemy has to escape your alts before they just die outright. [00:36:53] Speaker B: And the reason why you do the little subpart you're talking about. BT PTA versus Lethality First Strike. All of Lethality's damage is based on that first hit. And MF does more damage on her first hit. Whereas with bt you're doing more trading. You'd rather have PTA going on. So you're. You're doing more damage over the course of time. Yeah. [00:37:17] Speaker C: Basically, you got to think of it like this. When you're using First Strike, all of your bonus damage is happening in that first three seconds. And with pta, it's after you've landed three auto attacks or damaging abilities. That's when you get your damage spike. So if you're going for quick trades, you're just going to. You're going to want to go First Strike. And if you're going for a little bit more sustained fighting, you're going to want to go pta. [00:37:42] Speaker A: The trying to think how to word this crit is usually, like we always said, always going to be the better option because you're never usually never going to get a team of just squishy, squishy, squishy, squishy. There's always going to be a tank or a bruiser in there. And how lethality works is it is a one for one on armor. So. And it is not a. This item has 18 lethality. I don't believe. Unless they've changed something. You don't get that 18 lethality when you first buy that item. That is a scaling stat. Still Correct. Am I wrong? [00:38:19] Speaker B: They did that change a while ago. I don't remember if they ever changed it back. 18 is how much it becomes when you're at that final stage. It's. It's been a very long time. I haven't looked into the minutia of lethality, but even if it is 18 lethality right away, that's just 18 armor. [00:38:36] Speaker A: That just. Yeah, that just shreds 18 armor. It is not a. I won't even say shred. It just negates 18 base armor on that champion. That's why lethality typically isn't the better choice. Another reason that Bloodthirster in my opinion is a better option is it gives you tankiness as an ADC with the added shield. I'm not sure if we mentioned that. I might have zoned out while I was reading the question some more. [00:39:04] Speaker B: Nope. [00:39:05] Speaker A: Bloodthirster gives an ADC extra shield or it gives you the shield on top of your bonus health, which just gives or on top of your health when you're full health, which is just bonus health that an ADC needs to maybe survive that burst from the Zed or the Akali or whatever Assassin is the flavor of the month that week. So I would say Bloodthirster is always the safest, best route for damage and utility. [00:39:30] Speaker C: For MF specifically, the reason you go Bloodthirster is because this shield will protect your passive W, your move speed if the damage doesn't break your the Bloodthirster shield your passive W which gives you I think early on like 35 move speed. Which is more than boots by the way. It'll protect that move speed so you don't lose it. And that's why it's so important to get Bloodthirster on MF. [00:39:58] Speaker B: Well, the other reason, much like Draven, it's 80 A.D. she's very good with raw damage. Bloodthirster is the highest AD item in the game. [00:40:08] Speaker D: Yep. [00:40:09] Speaker B: And she's very front loaded in her damage until her alt happens. So getting a big burst of upfront ad damage real strong. [00:40:20] Speaker D: All right, let's. Let's move on to question three. Pink wards. Do I buy them as an AD carry and if so, when do I use them? I normally don't buy but when I get them and happen to have 75 or so gold after back and by I normally just put it in my Tribush so I can defend it easily. [00:40:36] Speaker B: That's a great way to do it. If you don't have anything else. It allows your support to put their pink ward in more strategic places while having a defensive pin cord. Everyone should be on pink wards. Everyone should. [00:40:48] Speaker A: I'm going to push back on that. I think pink wards early in the game are a bait and I don't think they're worth buying. And this is coming from just like a, you know, typically just a top lane mentality. [00:41:01] Speaker B: You live in the 1v1 land. [00:41:03] Speaker A: Even. Even then like 75 Gold early game is a lot to invest sometimes that 75 Gold, even if you have it extra in this. This is just my opinion and it could be wrong. But I'd much rather hold on to that 75 gold. So on my next back I can buy a more combat centered item. Because down there in the bot lane it is a who stronger? Who can do the trades? Who can win the trades. You're going to get ganked. It's going to happen. If it's coming from behind you and it's in that tribe bush. It's not going to save you if you're up there trading. I'm just pushing back on the pink wars. I think they're a bait early. [00:41:47] Speaker C: I think I agree with that. [00:41:48] Speaker B: I think there's a part of it that you're right there. And a part of it's you're not. The early portion. Yes. If you're going back on your first back, don't do it. By the time you're level six, you should probably have gotten a pink. Wartime bot lane is the most ganked lane. Period. And if you use your minimap and actually pay attention when you put that Pink Ward down, 75 gold that you spend can save your life and save you a lot more than 75 lost gold. [00:42:18] Speaker D: Yep. I'm. I'm gonna push back a little bit. I think the problem here is you shouldn't be generally putting your pink ward in the tribush because pink ward is for denying vision in lanes. So you can get your jungler in. Pink ward is. Oh. We're the dominant of the two bot lanes and we're wanting to create openings for ganks. You're either going to walk up and pink ward their tri bush to make sure it's not warded or you're going to be pink warding a bush in your lane to make sure that your jungler can sneak in. Pink warding your tribush usually just means you're handing 30 gold over to your opponent at the cost of 75 gold from you. [00:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah. That. That's the location. [00:43:00] Speaker D: Your tribushing safety wards are what your trinket ward and your supports words are for. [00:43:05] Speaker B: That's a much better way of putting. Yeah. Your support is going to be placing a lot more words. You want your pink ward to matter if you are pushed up a lot. That mid push in the jungle is also just fine because that's an easier defensive position so you're not using it a ton. You're still denying the vision in the river. [00:43:21] Speaker D: Yep. [00:43:22] Speaker C: I will say once you hit mid game, I don't care what role you are, make sure you're getting a pink ward. Because even if you put it in a really stupid place, I have had some pink wards in really stupid places that have spotted the invade. And as a jungler, it is so important to see that invade happening, even if it's at like 25 minutes. You know, just knowing where the enemy jungler is or seeing, oh, hey, there's three of them in this weird place in bot. Well, hey, because we had that ward there, now we can all go barren, you know, because we have a small opening for it. It is so important to get pink wards on the map. [00:44:00] Speaker B: They are also a huge bait for enemy supports. And junglers, they like to clear pink wards. You can bait around a pink ward and get a kill out of it. I'm very prone to this because I like clearing them. [00:44:15] Speaker D: Yep. All right. Question four. When am I supposed to be moving to mid lane? Am I doing it at a certain timestamp? Do I worry about first turret? If it's first turret, is it both first turrets or any first turret something else? I think the easiest answer is, well, yes, but let me say. I think the easiest answer is when you have taken enemy turret, you should be then going to mid lane to push your presence. [00:44:40] Speaker A: This is an interesting. Go ahead. [00:44:42] Speaker C: Okay, I. I would say once a turret has fallen and bot lane, move to mid. If your mid laner is refusing to leave, shift your mindset. Instead of thinking, oh, I need to be mid, just think what lane has the most minions I can grab right now and then just head to that side lane, grab all the minions and then reevaluate. Where can I get a ton of minions right? Even in the mid game, it is so important for you to be farming as much as humanly possible so that you can hit that three item spike and actually start being a champion. [00:45:22] Speaker B: If you take the tower very, very early, like you take that tower sub 10 minutes, top lane is actually probably the correct answer because that's the next place you can shove for plates. People tend to go to mid and stop you. And if you're farming plates, grab top lanes plates and then mid lane is usually you go to mid lane because it's the safest place afterwards. When lanes are longer, you're more vulnerable, which is why mid lane usually shifts away because they have more tools to deal with people coming after them. And ad carry gets the mid because they are easiest to get the farm in mid lane and it's the safest lane. To be in no matter what. [00:46:06] Speaker A: I was actually listening to a discussion about this exact topic when who and at what? Like what you what Basically your question. And I floated in like the what this one guy's answer. Who. It's not always the bot lane that needs to go to the mid lane. It's you should have your strongest person in the mid lane because that mid lane tower is one of the most important towers in the game because it opens up your enemy's jungle. And now most of the time you're going to find the bot lane going to the mid lane because two people are usually stronger together than one. But I tip it. I'm on the. I'm leaning towards the side that if you're. You and your support in the bot lane are having an awful time. Like you are oh five and your support is. We'll just say oh five. You guys are both just. You're not having a good time down there and you're losing. Sometimes it's not best for you to go to the mid lane. Sometimes it's best for you to maybe stay in that side lane and let your support go off and do do their thing and help in the mid lane while you try to catch up in experience and farm because you're not going to be doing much as an ADC Mid Lane Owen 5 with a Doran's blade and some components like, or maybe your one item, you're just not going to be doing much. So typically I've seen it and I've enjoyed it. Like watch like your strongest person, whether it be top lane, mid lane are going to be mid to try and get that tower. And like I said, statistically it's going to be the bot lane. It's also because of the number of. [00:47:52] Speaker B: The top laner because they're a melee champion typically. And melee champions have a much harder time taking that tower in almost every case. So usually that's why it's either the mid or the bot lane. [00:48:07] Speaker C: I have virtually impossible. I was gonna say it's virtually impossible to create a slow push in mid. It's just there's no way. [00:48:14] Speaker D: It's the only reason you don't have enough time to stack waves. [00:48:17] Speaker A: The only reason you're going to see a top laner usually come mid game is they've already gotten their tower or there's a dive set, there's a dive there to get first tower. That's usually the times when I would come mid lane as a top laner sometimes with Harold or if I just don't have anything to do like idle hands. You're not gonna, you're not doing anything if you're just sitting around sitting in a bush. You always want to constantly be moving and doing something. Try to win that momentum game. So I always try to be like, oh cool, I can see an opening in even in bot lane. Like I'll just go like that. Oh, I can get that tower. Let's go down there, dive, get the tower. Or we can get that tower mid. Let's go. And if you're ahead in a lane, this is just going off the sidebar here. If you're ahead winning, your team's most likely going to answer or listen to you because they're going to be like, oh, this guy knows what he's doing. He's winning and they're going to follow you. [00:49:10] Speaker B: That sub part that you have under there that. How much should you force this if your maid refuses to leave? Don't force it. You're. You're going to create a scenario where neither of you are getting enough farm and both of you are costing each other xp. So go where you can to get farm. Sometimes the answer is actually just take a jungle. It's not usually a great idea because in the jungler gets mad. But it's. It's usually the correct ad carries are. [00:49:37] Speaker D: Usually bad at doing that for the early to mid game, late game, obviously you just delete the camp. It doesn't matter. [00:49:43] Speaker B: But yeah, mid game is really when ad carries are the most powerful. And the. The point that we were talking about earlier where top lane shouldn't probably be the one do that. That's not true. When you play Lucian in the top lane, you're the ad carry. You should finish killing your top lane. Then you should go down into mid and ignore that bot lane. They're not the ones who are strong right now. It's always you. [00:50:05] Speaker D: Absolutely. Guys, this has been episode 501 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Mike and many names for pillow pet and special guest rule 29. Have a great night. [00:50:18] Speaker A: Good night. Thanks for joining us. Rule. [00:50:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I was happy to be here. Thanks for having me. [00:50:22] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for joining us. Good night, everybody. [00:50:26] Speaker D: Bye bye. [00:50:26] Speaker C: Good night. [00:50:28] Speaker B: Thank you all for listening to the four Words podcast. You can send your questions in to either our discord or preferably to our email the4words podcastmail.com and we will answer them at the end of our episodes. If you would like to support us directly, you can find us on [email protected] the 4 Words Podcast.