The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 503: Know Thy Enemy

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker B: 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 503 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. [00:00:48] Speaker C: I'm in pain. [00:00:50] Speaker B: Hopefully that'll subside eventually. We've also got Pillow Pat. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Hi, I'm sleep deprived. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Okay, we're all helping with that, guys. We are the Four Wards Podcast. Head on over to our Discord. The link is in the episode description. We got all sorts of fun going on. We've been watch Partying Worlds games most days. We've been playing some normal games. It's a good time. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv. Jacksoman, Mike can be found at Twitch tv mikeofmany names probably not until his hand heals. And Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillowpet. [00:01:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I broke several hands. [00:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah, don't break your hand, listeners. It sucks. So shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire and Labana for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys. You guys are keeping us on the Internet. Seriously, it's very appreciated. Now if you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com theforwordspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month gets you that same exclusive feed. And you'll get shouted out at the top of every episode. And those benefits also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners, we did not get any new questions this week. I'm not as mad as I should be because we did get a trinket tip sent in by a listener which you'll hear next episode. But we didn't get any new questions, so rectify that. Write in to theforwards podcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel in the Discord so we can answer them on the show. All right, with that out of the way, our topic for tonight is feeling out your opponent in lane so you can better predict what they're going to do. We want to talk about how to actually do that because it's easy to say, oh, well, get a feel for your opponents and then start like, expecting their reactions to be this way. How do you actually do that? Wants to kick us off. [00:03:06] Speaker A: So my, my experience in this is probably going to be a lot different than like other lanes because I'm in the top lane and, and up there, things do change a little bit. So typically you can. You'll shoot skill shots at people. Like, this is the basic version. You'll shoot skill shots at people. And I'd say seven times out of 10, they're going to dodge in the same direction every time. But I'm going to talk exclusively. Like, my experience doing this is. So I'll just for an example, like, if I'm playing Darius in the top lane, you walk at someone with Darius, they walk away. If I walk away from them, do they step back towards me? If so I can use that to my advantage. So if they're instinctively going to walk back towards me when I start to walk away from them, I can turn right away towards them, use my apprehend and pull them in. Like, if I can gauge the distance. Right. I'm trying to figure out how this other human being on the other side of a screen is thinking, and I'm trying to get into their head. So, okay, yeah, they're gonna. Not gonna walk into me as a Darius. Typically, I'd say 1 out of 10 probably do. So go ahead. [00:04:20] Speaker B: You've just unlocked a memory. I remember playing a top lane game once where I was playing trundle against an illaoi. And for whatever reason, this illaoi had a habit of taking a step back every time she tried to throw her tentacle grab, which meant I dodged her tentacle grab like 95% of the time after the first couple because she just had. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. Like, everybody's always gonna have a tell. I mean, you see it and everything. See it in baseball, football, like all the sports that you can think of. Every person's got like a tell. When someone's lying, they usually got a tell. Poker is huge in this poker. I mean, it's just human nature to just be repetitive. You know, that repetitive is just part of it. Like, I need to probably go back and look at my games and see what my tells are when I'm playing, because I'm sure they're very obvious. So that's a really good point. And so other than the skill shots that we're going to get to, just reading the behavior of your opponent. And you can spend the first few minutes figuring that out. Like, you don't, you don't have to just jump right into fighting. You can try to learn what your opponent's going to do and how they react. And most of the time in lower elo especially, they're always going to react and act the exact same, no matter how many times it's killed them. [00:05:41] Speaker C: We've. We. You said something important here, which is we're not just talking about reading like skill shots. These are ways to determine whether or not you have a greedy opponent, an aggressive opponent, a passive opponent. These are things that by testing reactions and moving around, you can determine an entire play style for how a person is going to act as a general portion before you even get into, oh, he likes to talk dodge up as opposed to dodging left or right. [00:06:09] Speaker A: That's a great point because, like, I mean, this is just another experience I have. Like, if I know this aggressive or this opponent that I'm going against is like, gonna, no matter what, if I step up, he's gonna try to fight me. I'm gonna be like, hey, Jax, while you're top lane, set up for a gank here. Because he is not gonna be paying attention if I make it to where he can attack me at all. He's gonna focus on me and he's gonna be right up there for a gank. So you can use that for your advantage. I'm glad you brought up the aggressiveness. That's a really good point. [00:06:37] Speaker B: And I also want to point out that those aggressive players may in fact be doing this as well. They are playing aggressive to see how you respond to their aggression. So you want to be doing the same. The worst thing you can do in laning phase is with no information on your opponent other than what champion they are. Play super safe and passive and hide and not feel anything out, because then you're exiting laning phase with no knowledge on how your opponent is going to respond in team fights. [00:07:09] Speaker C: So I think, I think my favorite. I can give an example on this one. And there's a previous game that we were playing last week where I was facing off against a mid lane Yasuo. And Yasuo consistently always has a brief tell on how he's going to try and get the tornado on you. He's very, he's very easy to read a champion because what he's going to do is pretty telegraphed. He's going to hit dash, hit dash, and then try and get as close to you as possible to make that tornado hit for the third hit, to get his knock up, to get his ult off to do as much damage as possible. [00:07:46] Speaker B: Or he's gonna throw it at near max range because he doesn't want to be anywhere near you and there's no in between. [00:07:51] Speaker C: And so you can sort of either predict. All right, I have time here because he just threw out the tornado. So I can go in, hit a milli back out. He's not going to have another tornado ready. Or if you know, like I was Malzahar that game. All right, I've got a shield. It doesn't matter if he throws that tornado out at me. I can move forward, pop some damage on the minions and walk away. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It can be big. When you can predict what your opponent is going to do next, it means you no longer need to react to what they're doing. You can now catch them in the act. A great example of this is if you're leaning against a LeBlanc and you have a CC. Let's say you're playing Ahri and you have a charm. For example, if you can predict when she's going to dash at you and you fire your charm when she does it, she can't dodge it. She's mid dash. She just gets charmed. If you're trying to react to her dashing at you, by the time you have realized she is dashing at you and are now taking an action to respond to it, she's already out of her dash and can either do a second dash with her ult or just sidestep to dodge the charm. That like quarter second time difference is the difference between you charming her out of her move and fucking her over and her having the ability to outplay you. [00:09:13] Speaker C: The other. The other one is people like Yasuo, not Yasuo Zed. Their abilities put them in a specific location in comparison to where you are. So you can manipulate a position based on where you're facing and then respond accordingly. Which is why for a long time. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Ahri was played into Zed because anytime he ults her, she can always just charm her back the moment he pops out and he just gets charmed. So yeah, you did also mention skill shots briefly. A lot of testing opponents reactions on skillshot champions is literally just keep throwing skill shots at them and see how they dodge. You will notice almost everyone has a pattern to how they dodge. They'll try to dodge a skillshot the same way most of the time. Sometimes they will consciously try not to dodge that way. They'll dodge differently, but they may be slower at doing that, or they may make other mistakes because they're not doing it out of habit. They're having to be deliberate and think about it more. [00:10:11] Speaker C: Or their pattern is they dodge back and forth, and so they explicitly go one way and then another because they've trained themselves not to go the same way, but now their pattern is to go back and forth. [00:10:22] Speaker B: Yep. And if you've ever had the experience of an Ezreal just reading you like a book and hitting you with mystic shot after mystic shot after mystic shot, you're probably too predictable in how you dodge because that Ezreal is doing exactly this. He's figuring out how are you going to dodge and firing his shots, leading in the direction he thinks you're going to step. [00:10:44] Speaker C: And there are. There are certain roles that really need to know prediction more than others there. These are the hook champions, your blitzcranks, your thrashes, your nautiluses. You have to predict people to land your main cc. And so your first couple don't expect to land. You're going this specifically to try and figure out a pattern to see what you can do before you throw a CC out. [00:11:08] Speaker B: Absolutely. So since we're talking about, like, testing your opponent's reactions, let's talk about how to be less predictable yourself so that when your opponents are doing this to you, you can either give them wrong information or predict what they're going to do based on your past behavior. So. [00:11:29] Speaker A: So first thing. Sorry, go ahead. [00:11:31] Speaker B: I was gonna say let's start with skill shots because I think it's the simplest. If you dodge a skill shot the same way three times in a row and they fire it a fourth time, you should deliberately dodge that fourth one differently. Even if they miss the previous three, sometimes this will bite you in the ass. [00:11:47] Speaker A: I found the stop movement key. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Yes. [00:11:51] Speaker A: To be the easiest way to trick people trying to guess where you are. For example, gen alts. Gin alts are the. In Xerath alts are like the biggest mind game between two people. All right, which way you going? And even though Xerath is a lot faster to shoot, Jin is kind of being a more deliberate of where he's putting it. You could be like, all right, I'm going up and I just stop my. I usually just use my stop movement key because if you just stand still, they're never going to expect that they're Always going to. Most of the time your opponent's going to move to try to dodge. And I'll put a caveat. [00:12:33] Speaker C: This is a very rank dependent thing. The farther up the ranks you go, the more likely they are to try and predict movement ranges. Whereas you see in a lot more iron and and bronze leagues, they're aiming at you as opposed to at where you're going to be moving. So stop works more often in higher ranked games. [00:12:56] Speaker B: Yep. What I was also gonna say about skillshots is it is shocking, especially in lower Elo, how often just dodging forward works. Especially in lower elo, people assume you will try to run away when you are dodging. Just period. No matter what the skill is, no matter what the situation is, they assume you are going to be running away when dodging. If you dodge towards someone, there's two variables at play here. One, they're not going to expect it. Two, geometry. The closer you are to them, the less distance you have to move to move enough of an angle out of the path of the shot to get out of it. This is why you'll see if you watch good players fighting a Yone or Yasuo, they are constantly in melee range attempting to sidestep. Because if you can dodge one of those Qs, you can straight up win the duel. And it's absolutely frustrating as the Yone or Yasuo when someone's literally just sidestepping in melee range of you. [00:13:55] Speaker A: It is shockingly easy to dot or to dodge those cues from the the Wind Brothers. It's shockingly easy. They don't have a huge hitbox. [00:14:05] Speaker B: Yep. But they're also. [00:14:06] Speaker A: I miss them on Minions. [00:14:07] Speaker B: So you would think that they are near undodgeable. No, you just have to be close. If you're at max range of it and they fire directly on you, you're pretty much always gonna get hit. [00:14:16] Speaker A: But if you're Minions dodge my Minions dodge my Yasuo Q all the time. Yep, I'm not a good Yasuo. But Minions will just. They got those faker minions and they'll just move and I'm just what is going on here? [00:14:29] Speaker B: I legit will play Yone in Plat ranked. I think I'm a plat level. Yone Minions dodge my shit all the time. Scuttle Crab dodges my shit all the time. [00:14:38] Speaker C: Scuttle is the most frustrating one. He just randomly moves. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Yup. [00:14:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:42] Speaker B: But also the minions like will just sometimes just decide to change targets and run away as I'm firing the ability. I'M like, why? [00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Now that's just a calculated misstep. So you can make your opponent think like, oh, this guy is not good with these Qs. [00:14:57] Speaker C: You said something there. I'm gonna actually point out this. You can tell a story in a moment. The next thing we should really talk about is baiting. [00:15:06] Speaker B: I was gonna say I will deliberately on yone in early laning phase when I don't want to hard shove the wave, miss Qs on minions to make my opponent think I'm an idiot. I don't want to shove the wave. So I don't actually want to be hitting Q's in the first place. But if they see me miss a bunch of Q's in a row on easy targets, they're gonna go, this guy's a moron. Let's fight him. And then I'm gonna kick their ass because I'm not gonna miss on them because I'm doing it on purpose. It's very funny. It works so often. And that's kind of. I'm. I'm setting a wrong expectation for my opponent and then capitalizing on it. [00:15:41] Speaker C: Yeah. Baiting is the. The instance of trying to trigger a habit that you know they're going to be doing. This works exceptionally well on those aggressive players, especially once you've read what kind of an opponent is. You can very easily bait out what their reactions are going to be. So this is. You've. You've gotten your measure of what your opponent seems to think you're going to do and how he's going to be playing, and now you are utilizing that information to force a decision on them that will end in your benefit. So usually this happens in mid lane a lot. You're baiting for a gank or you're baiting on a major cooldown because you think you can dodge it or something like that. Baiting works incredibly well versus someone like Malphite can bait the Malphite R and then you just walk in a certain direction or perfect flash hit and you've. You've bumped his major cooldown. Now you can go in on him. [00:16:32] Speaker A: So another form of. And this is going to fall somewhere in one of these topics, and I don't know exactly what you would call it, baiting your abilities. And I'm going to use Zerath as an example here. Xerath has three skill shot abilities. His big laser beam, his stun and his basic abilities, I should say, and his pillar of lightning or whatever. If the opponent thinks that you're going to cast that they're going to zig and zag and you're just going to be able to auto them. Like you can just sit there and auto them while they're constantly zigging and zagging and not they're trying. They're worried about your abilities and not what you're doing to them within an auto attack radius. And I use Xerath because you see it the most with him is people constantly trying to zig and zag out of the anticipated Q or E. And that's another thing that you could use to your advantage just. Just to auto them. Like Yasuos, when they're constantly trying to sidestep everything, just right click them and you can just let go most of the time, win that trade because they're too worried about dodging another one. [00:17:37] Speaker C: That's really. [00:17:39] Speaker B: I was gonna say the zigging and zagging is especially funny to me because most of the way that most people seem to do it even as high as Platt makes them an easier target because they're zigging and zagging in such a small area and so consistently that they are super easy to hit. [00:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen. [00:17:56] Speaker C: Sorry, no, go for it. [00:18:00] Speaker A: I was just gonna say I've seen lots of people die. Like on my team. Instead of just right clicking and running back to the tower, they're worried about dodging something and they just died to like auto attack damage and then still missing the dodge on the skill shot because they're too worried about dodging and not looking at anything else. They one track, I'm dodging this and then they're dead. And I'm constantly. I got a buddy that, I remember the game, he was just constantly trying to dodge an ability. I'm like, dude, just run to your tower. And he just died in the mid lane trying to just dodge abilities. [00:18:36] Speaker C: The. The big, the big one, the big, the big champions again. I mentioned them before. Your thrashes, your blitzcranks, your Nautilus is if they've got this long distance hook ability, their best bet is just walking at you. And you have to respond to that either by running or zigzagging or doing something because they'll just walk up to you and if it's Blitzcrank, he'll just knock you up. If it's Nautilus, he just roots you. If you're trying to do the zig and the zag to dodge, they'll eventually just catch you and then their skill shot is as easy as can be. [00:19:08] Speaker A: All right, Why I love A game like League. I was just gonna say that's why I love a game like League, because it's not going against a computer. It's going against another person. And it's fun just trying to get into the mind frame of your opponent. [00:19:21] Speaker C: I actually have something. [00:19:22] Speaker A: I love it. [00:19:23] Speaker C: But by that point, this is actually a great point to notice. You mentioned the computer point. The new intermediate bots know when you're hitting spells and dodge accordingly perfectly, pretty much every time. Once you've seen this, you can start recognizing scripts because it becomes perfect dodges over and over again, always. [00:19:46] Speaker B: God, I wish scripting wasn't a thing anymore. But unfortunately, it is still. [00:19:50] Speaker C: It's far less common than it used to be. The scripters are much better at making scripts, and the scripts that are used are still like, oh, man, how the fuck did they get away with this? But once you see someone and you report it, they're pretty much gone forever. Yep. [00:20:05] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:05] Speaker B: Any other thoughts about feeling out your opponents, testing reactions, and changing your behaviors? [00:20:10] Speaker C: No, I think I got it. [00:20:12] Speaker A: One. Yeah, one more quick thing where we'll go to the baiting thing and how you can use it against you. If your opponent decides that they want to get aggressive out of nowhere, you're probably getting ganked. If you do the opposite and you decide to start getting aggressive because you know a gank's coming, you're giving that gank away. So try to be less predictive in your aggressiveness and don't always do it when you got a gank coming. Like, you can also fake a gank by getting aggressive. If you were trying to create space in a lane, you could act. If they think they're getting ganked, they're most likely going to back off. If they don't back off, then you can be like, oh, they don't care if I'm walking at them. And then you can set up a gank with that so you can. I like to fake ganks to try to create the space. I like to act extremely passive, so they're trying to poke me in lane so they stay forward. There's multiple ways to do it. Try to figure, like, what we've already said. Try to figure out how your opponent's going to react to the different things you do and take advantage of that, especially if you're in comms with a duo that's a jungle or a mid laner that can roam. Just take advantage of your opponent's reactions and explain to your teammates, like, hey, this guy is super aggressive, or, hey, he's kind of passive. When I attack you, I'm going to sit back. Just let him know. [00:21:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. All right, Mike, your trinket tip note is Kaisa Ult shadow. Explain this trinket tip. [00:21:41] Speaker C: All right. I found this out today from somebody going through TikTok looking at random things. And I scroll down and I don't like that. I found it from Dom, but it was a thing from Dom where he was going over one of the games and he was talking about how people were reacting to Kaisa. And as he's going through there, he stops and he pauses and he goes. How does he know he's going to be right where he is to deny the movement for it? When Kai' sa ults, she puts a shadow directly where she's going to move to. So if she's far enough away, you have the ability to react to where that is. And then if you're doing something like say a poppy versus her, you can pop the W and interrupt her or move yourself into a location where you can put a stun on them, you can react to get yourself farther away from them to bait them into a worse situation. Now you know where they're going. That's one of the things that I've always found is the hardest is knowing where Kaisa is moving with that ultimate. She has a lot of positions she can go. It's a very large teleport circle. You can. You can figure out where she goes. There's a tell. [00:22:53] Speaker A: I got two old eyes for that. [00:22:56] Speaker C: It was not something I literally. I never noticed it ever happen. And I had to watch a pro fell figure it out while watching prose. So none of us knew this existed until this year. [00:23:11] Speaker A: That's pretty neat. [00:23:12] Speaker B: Cool. All right, let's answer some more listener questions. We've got more of the questions that built up from Labana, so we're gonna answer a couple of them. First of which is, what about the laning phase? Is it more important to try to farm, get to the core items to be super tanky, or is it better to sacrifice your laning phase to help with Grubs, Drake, etc. [00:23:35] Speaker C: This is assuming you're playing the top lane tanks. I'm assuming. [00:23:38] Speaker B: I believe so. [00:23:39] Speaker C: Okay, well, Pillow, you're actually the more top lane expert. [00:23:44] Speaker A: Do you play many tanks up there specifically? I just play like scion. If I'm going like in a tanky bruisery route. I'm trying. I'm reading up on the questions right now so I can catch myself up to see where we're leaning at in this topic. So it looks like your last question answered was you're the tank and you're wanting to know how to get cooldowns used on you and that you're used to being the coward in the back. So as a tank you're just basically you're going to have one of two jobs in my experience is you're going to be the peel for your fed guy and hopefully that's your ADC or it's going to be your mid laner. If you're playing top or I mean even your job. Whoever's fed, you're going to be there be peeling for them or you're going to be the guy that's annoying the heck out of their fed person to where their your team can clean up the rest of their team. So to answer your question as to how to get the cooldowns used on you, you be the aggressor and if that means that you're dying first, that's fine. All major cooldowns were used on you. Now to read the current question. What are you trying to do in the laning phase? Is it trying to important to try and get form be super tanky and better sacrifice and try to help grubs. So the grubs, there's a, there is a podcast that I listen to and it talks about the importance of like grubs and all the objectives and how each objective increases your win chance. And I remember like getting all the grubs was like a 1.6% chance to winning. Increase your winning. It's negligible at best. It's not worth it unless you're in a good position to go and get them. Go ahead Mike. [00:25:32] Speaker C: I think I've noticed this is, this is the real problem. If your team is already going into there, you need to determine and this is a difficult portion of will my presence save the play or will my presence not impact the play? Because if you going down there will in fact save it, it's more than worth it because they're going to go do it whatever. What they're not going to listen to you. They're not going to wait until you're there or when you're ready or whatever it is, they're just going to go for it anyways. So if you going there will have a numbers impact. It'll have you're at full health and they're at all at half health, you may be able to do something about that. You can keep them off someone fed, etcetera if your presence will impact that fight, specifically grubs here, that is beneficial for you to lose your time on your wave because it was going to happen no matter what. If you lose that play because you were off farming, it is sort of on you because that play was going to happen no matter what. There's nothing you can do to stop them from doing it. The best you can do is try and save it. Now, if it's already, like losing, there's one person versus three going in. Don't throw your life away for that. [00:26:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So that, like, yeah, if you guys have a good shot at winning that objective, you should definitely be there. Because you're the tank, you're the front line. You're. You're the. You're the damage sponge. And most tanks, all of them have a pretty good Ultimate. I mean, I'm thinking Malphite R. I'm thinking Orn Ultimate. [00:27:05] Speaker C: They think the worst tank R is Ramus, I'd say. [00:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And you just don't see Ramis in the top lane unless it's a very niche pick into like an ergot or something like that. Like, you might get the guy that's still doing the bramble rush and source boots. I don't even know if that's still a thing. But you. Most tanks do have a pretty impactful R. And at this point of like, Grubs, you probably are going to have R. So if you're gonna be. If it's like you might win this fight, you should be there. Unless you 100 know you're not going to win it. Farm is always super important, especially as a tank, because your items are very expensive and it's hard for a tank to farm because they have high resource costs and you don't do a whole lot of damage unless you're like, k'. Sante. [00:28:03] Speaker C: Yeah. The other part of that one, the Drake one, for the first two Drakes, they're not your problem. The first Drake happens five minutes in early on, you're farming. Don't even mess with that second Drake. [00:28:15] Speaker B: I have an exception, the Go, unless you are Shen. [00:28:18] Speaker C: That's a fair point. Shen is a very unique situation in which you need to pay attention to every single fight because you need to know whether or not your R will be useful. But we didn't recommend Shen for you right away, so I think you're not looking at Shen right now, although we maybe should have because he's very impactful. But other than that, like, the second Drake is usually also about 11 minutes it's not usually a top lane impacted fight. 3rd Drake, 4th Drake anything beyond that. That's when lanes have completely broken down and now you're in the. You are an important member of Team Fight Land. The main point is when lanes break down, that's when things really start to settle on your shoulders for. For being with the team. [00:29:03] Speaker A: So I'm reading up a little bit more into his question. I didn't realize that he was a Cho player. If you like the infinitely stacking Cho Goth feeling. Scion is another infinite stacker is one of the same way and it's a. It's a lot easier. So I recommend him. And he's got like Cho got two different playstyles, lethality and tank. [00:29:27] Speaker B: Cho also adds an extra variable to this question of you should rotate for grubs so you can nom them and get a stack that doesn't count towards your six against minions. [00:29:38] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. Cho is explicitly like since we're talking about Cho. Cho has a unique point in that if you can get an eat, his eat is stronger than Smite at all points in the game because by the time they have a 1200 damage smite, your E, your R is doing 1500 damage, etc. Etc. So your. Your nom, your R is better than Smite in almost every situation. And so you can guarantee beyond a smite. And so if you and your friend actually like properly pair that you can not allow anyone any chance of stealing. Which means you are an incredibly useful portion of that. And that may be the one time where you go down for second Drake. First strike is you probably won't even have R yet. So don't even bother looking at first Drake. But that may be the point where hey, second Drake is now at 12:15 minutes. Maybe I want to get a free stack. I've got time on this. Let's go. [00:30:36] Speaker B: And specifically this is where your teleport is back up. You walk to the dragon before it spawns, do the play and then teleport back to your lane. [00:30:45] Speaker C: That definitely helps with maybe a recall. [00:30:47] Speaker B: First if you got low during the play, depending on how it went. Yeah, I will say grubs are unique in that you do not have to worry about coordinating with your jungler on Smite or fighting with him on Smite to make sure you get the stack. He can smite one, you can eat the other one. It doesn't matter which order you do it in because he cannot smite all. [00:31:06] Speaker C: Three grubs and his smite will never be at the level of your eat at this point, you're doing like 1100 true damage here. He's only gonna have 600 damage on smite. [00:31:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Literally. Just waddle down nom a grub. Enjoy your free stack even if you're really behind on Cho. If your team got grubs, you should have at least seven stacks of your ult because of that. [00:31:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Do we want to like, skip to five since we're already talking about Cho in stacks? [00:31:35] Speaker B: Sure. So question five is specifically on Cho. When should you eat a minion versus holding it to eat a champion specifically. Now we're adding the caveat of you do not yet have your six stacks on Minions. If you're unaware, you can only eat minions six times, and then anything past that doesn't stack anymore. [00:31:56] Speaker A: So I'm gonna skip to 5B to start off, because that seems the easiest 5B is when to eat a dragon. [00:32:03] Speaker B: Versus a champion in the dragon fight. [00:32:05] Speaker A: It doesn't matter on that one. Try to try to secure the dragon because that's a permanent buff for your team. So try to use that. But they are both the one in the same stack. Epic Monsters and champions are the exact same. There's no limit to those. And then for me, 5A when I'm playing Cho Goth, as soon as I get it level 6, it's on cooldown. My R is always on cooldown. Unless there is a kill potential, like immediately kill potential, I will immediately put that sucker on cooldown. And I try to time it for my backs as well. Like if I'm getting ready to back, like, okay, it's going to take me 10 seconds to back. It takes me 30 more seconds to walk back to lane. So there's 40 seconds right there. The cooldown is very short, even early. I think it's what, like 60 to 80? [00:32:51] Speaker C: It's like a minute, maybe a minute 20 early. [00:32:54] Speaker B: 80 seconds before your cooldown reduction at rank one. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Okay, so yeah, 80 seconds. So you gotta wait what, 20, 30 seconds for it to come back up. Not a big deal. Use it before backs and use it if there's no kill potential. Like, yeah, just keep that sucker on Cooldown. [00:33:10] Speaker C: So essentially in the lane if at when you turn six, if they're not below half health, eat a minion right away. If unless you are having your person gank for you right when you hit six. Because then, yeah, your old can get an easy secure on a kill. Other than that, you. You immediately eat for a minion, you try and go back immediately afterwards that you're having the little as least wasted time possible. It's pretty much the same thing there across the board. Unless you know that grubs are coming up within that next minute, you eat a minion. Unless you know that you're gonna have a low health champion to fight, you're gonna eat a minion. And by the time that's what, another six, seven minutes. When you already have six stacks, you won't even be level 10 by the time you're at max stacks. If you do that very easy cooldown over and over again. [00:33:59] Speaker A: It's very easy on Chogoth to bait yourself into not using your ultimate because of the what ifs. Until you got those first six minion stacks. I don't even care about the what ifs. Because a stack is a stack is a stack. Like you're only going to get yourself stronger. Get rid of those minion stacks and you don't have to worry about them anymore. It's like real life. Do you wait to pay your bills or do you go ahead and get it done if you can and then you don't have to worry about it anymore. You just get rid of those stacks that you don't have to worry about them anymore. That's the way I've always looked at it. Unless I think beyond a shadow of a doubt. If I hit a knockup, he's dead. I can r him if I'm not sure. Just use it. Just put it on cooldown. [00:34:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:42] Speaker B: So I want to address the dragon fight a little bit because here's the actual logic of it. If there is a fight breaking out around dragon and you are not yet fighting the dragon or dragon has been peeled off of for the fight and has reset. You best be eating a champion. If it is a their jungler is alive and could potentially smite steal and you are doing dragon, you best be eaten. The dragon Cho' gath can secure above most champion smites, cossacks, etc. [00:35:15] Speaker C: People who can damage plus smite combo can out smite him. [00:35:20] Speaker B: But it's different. [00:35:20] Speaker A: And I'm. I'm sure you know this. If you ping your ultimate, it shows the damage that you do. True damage to monsters. [00:35:29] Speaker B: I actually did not know that because. [00:35:31] Speaker A: I haven't played Choath. Oh yeah, if you ping. Yeah, if you ping Cho' gath ring it'll tell you the damage that you do. So you can tell your jungle like hey, you got a 900 smite. When that gets to 1500 smite it. I can eat it. [00:35:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend trusting your jungler to coordinate smites in lower Elo. But if you're in comms with the jungler, absolutely do that and just. You can just secure it and then yeah, there may be a fight that breaks out afterwards, but you've already secured the objective when there was ambiguity on securing it. But you should never hold your ULT during a fight in the hopes of being able to use it on the objective afterwards. You don't need to do that. You should be using your ULT to get a kill in the fight so that the objective is secured. [00:36:13] Speaker C: If there is a fight that is going on and the enemy is still doing dragon, you have the power to walk up and steal that dragon. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Yes. Or blast Conan and steal the. That one's hilarious. I have had those where you just walk over, hit the blast cone on blue side, land on top of the dragon and just nom it. [00:36:33] Speaker C: If. If someone is holding damage on dragon like they're at like 3,000, 4,000 health. You walk up to that dragon and you start doing damage because now they have to kill you or you eat dragon. And if they don't kill you, your team should be able to kill them. Don't do this alone unless you're planning on dying. This is when a teamfight's going on. If you are willing to sell your life to get the steal, go for it. Otherwise you need to be like this may cost me my life attempting to do this. If it's the middle of a team fight, they probably have to start focusing you or it's yours. And that may just secure you guys the win. [00:37:13] Speaker B: Alright, let's. Let's move on from Labana's questions. Labana, we do appreciate you. We will answer more of these questions next week. We now have some questions from Reigns and Reigns writes, I've started playing PR Garen with more focus on crit builds over bruiser stridebreaker, phantom dancer, Mr. Or IE what is oh mortal reminder Swifties then varies into resistance or bruiser items from there and that feels like a better build. But I lost a trend top in lane. Am I supposed to be. I assume if my mistake was I should have built randuins at some point rather than double down on damage. So I can function in Lane. [00:37:52] Speaker C: No, you just kind of Trin will just eventually. Yeah, there's. There's only so much you can do versus Trin. You can win early once he hits six. It's now a baiting game between you and him. Can you do enough damage to force him to ultimate before you have to ult or can you force out his ultimate and then use yours? Other than that. [00:38:13] Speaker A: So remind me because I'm drawing a blank. What's Pete? What's PR Phase Rush? What's the item that Phase Rush. Okay, got. I gotcha. Okay. Sorry. Late, tired, could not think of anything. [00:38:25] Speaker C: Phase Rush Garen is one of the few champions that can run away from drindamere. You are one of the few who has the power to smack, smack, hit Phase Rush. Hit Q, run away. His slow doesn't affect you. You hit your wife. It's useless against you. So you have the power to negate the lane. I don't think you win the lane post 11. About 11 is when the lane heavily favors Tryndamere because Tryndamere will just do more damage and sustain up while you can't kill him. Because as a crit Garen you can do a lot of damage but Tryndamere just won't die. [00:39:02] Speaker B: Your job as Garen against a Tryndamere is. Is delete waves so that he can't reach your turret to beat it down. Because a Tryndamere that's just trading waves with you is fucking useless. He's a split pusher. He's supposed to be taking turrets. [00:39:17] Speaker A: Tryndamere is my pocket pick into Garen. Like that's just who I. If I see a Garen I'm like, alright, I'm going Tryndamere because like I'm not gonna kill him most like unless he's playing. Giving me the chance to just auto him in lanes. But like it's just. I hate playing against Garens because I just. They frustrate me with their play style. The flash r ignite combo, the Garen special. So I always just go Tryndamere because I'm like, yeah, you're not gonna dive me under tower bud. Like you're just not like that's. [00:39:49] Speaker C: No, it's. It's dangerous to try and dive a Garen under a tower. [00:39:53] Speaker A: Well, I was talking like a Garen's not gonna dive me under the tower. [00:39:57] Speaker C: Difference. Yeah. [00:39:57] Speaker A: Because typically they'll just Q in. I'll walk away. So I. I purposely picked Trend Amir because it's a very good matchup for Trend. I will say that. Like I might just be a hater. I don't like the Phase Rush Garen because I feel like Conqueror is very strong on him just because of how quickly he can stack it. And it's just a really good run. [00:40:21] Speaker C: You build conquest. When fights, you build Phase Rush to essentially annoyed Elaine. Conquerors will do more damage. It just will. Phase rush will allow you to move in and out of fights better. Phase rush is significantly better when you are also on split push duty because that allows you to get in and out, push lane, walk away, push lane, walk away, get in, etc. If you're not like if you're facing a trin, walk up, clear a wave, walk down to your team, you have the power to delete an ad carry in two seconds. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say like at some point you're never going to even interact with Tryndamere again because he's just going to stay at a side lane most of the time. So if you're just focusing on building not to counter trend but to win your game, that's usually going to be your ideal. So I would go with the the build that's going to win you a game, not that's going to win you your matchup. [00:41:21] Speaker C: If winning your matchup means making sure there's a 4v4 and you sit with Tryndamere and make sure he doesn't do anything because your four will always be therefore then sometimes it's correct to not let Tryndamere split push to victory. But you pretty much need to know that your 4v4 will win. Otherwise you should be making that a 5v4. [00:41:40] Speaker B: Alright, question 2. How do you set up a proxy if you're losing lane? Don't you don't full stop. You don't. [00:41:48] Speaker C: If you are playing Garen and you are losing the lane trying to proxy is giving them free kills. [00:41:53] Speaker B: No matter who you're playing, if you're losing the lane you should not be proxying even if you're playing fucking singed. If you're 03 you need to stop proxying. Your job at that point is to make sure they don't take turret plates as best you can and stop dying. [00:42:10] Speaker C: Yeah, the the enemy mid and jungler also had that. That's just done. Proxy's over. Don't try it like proxying is dangerous. People get away with it because a lot of people don't react properly to it. If they've reacted properly once it's done it's over. Don't proxy. [00:42:31] Speaker A: I'm going to push back on this just a hair. So say you're you're losing lane and it's pretty bad like you're oh and 3, 0 and 4 and you're gearing into it. We'll just say a tryndamere and he you have an opportunity and you know where the enemy jungler is and you have an opportunity to run past him or run through the jungle, just depending on how your wave state is. You have an opportunity to clear the next wave and get a good back without losing your tower. But don't maintain your proxy because they will come kill you you you like. I'm talking maybe a one, maybe a two wave proxy. And I'm going to mention him, but I do not recommend doing what he does. The boss is very good at proxying and he can show you how to do it the right way and also the wrong way. But he can do it the wrong way because he's good at it. He knows how to do it really good even though it's wrong. You can take the one wave between the towers, go through the jungle and take the next wave and hope that you're gonna get out of there. But I would always just recommend taking the one wave backing in the bush and that stops them from being able to just shove under your tower where you can catch the next wave. But Mike and Jax are both right. You're not gonna usually get away with it if you're really far behind because they can just kill you pretty quickly at that point, a lot of them. [00:44:02] Speaker C: Will chase you down. Oh, you're going down into the bot to try and do a proxy. We'll just collapse on you and Garen. [00:44:09] Speaker A: Correct answer is the catch is to stop the bleeding. Try to stop the bleeding the best you can and just try to soak your XP depending on your elo. Unless you're. If you're not 100% confident with it, just sit under your tower and try to stem your bleeding and catch xp. And you know it's okay to even give up your tower if you got to like, you know, a lost tower. The first tower is not a huge difference or game breaker in a game. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. So let's continue. He then asks, despite having a high aptitude on Nasus, I struggle to pick him in games because I'm scared the sit back and scale mentality he requires might just lose us the game before he's relevant. Unlike Mundo, who only needs about two items plus boots. Should I be picking Nasus more and Bronzelo because games are usually taking 30 minutes anyway, even if they are mostly lost by then. How do I turn Nasus from a win hard or lose slower champion into a win or lose through my own agency? First off, stop. Stop thinking of him as a sit back and scale? Nasus at level six can duel most, not all, but Most other top laners. [00:45:15] Speaker C: Nasus on two items is insane because Nasus on two items usually has enough stacks to just outright beat most champions. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Yep. [00:45:25] Speaker C: There are very few that he can't duel because the magic, his, his wither is obscenely powerful. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:45:33] Speaker A: I will die on the hill. It's the strongest ability in the game. Right behind Zilean's E. I think it's his E. Nasus magic numbers are 60 stacks. Level six wishing. And with that combination right there, you can usually win all of your all ins just because of how wither is and how your E interacts with armor. Like you can always win that, that, that brawl will say just because of how short the cooldown is on cue and how much armor is shred from his E. And they're not going to be able to do anything to you because of Wither. There are so yeah, be aggressive there. [00:46:18] Speaker C: There are, there are some real power points. Nasus isn't just a split push champion. He can dominate a fight if he shows up from the right point. Nasus showing up in a team fight is a horror moment for AD Carries. He's absolutely destroys them with a single wither and then he runs at you. If, if you are having problems with Nasus, start figuring out am I farming properly? Because maybe you are actually not getting as much farm as you think you are. And Nasus Q really like you should have 200 plus stacks by 10 minutes. I think if my math is correct. [00:46:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot. The stacking on Nasus is a lot more forgiving now than it used to be. [00:47:02] Speaker C: It's a lot more forgiving. You get more stacks. There are points when you can be like, if you are winning, you can push your lane even harder to push harder. You can go in and start taking jungle creeps and just start scaling even faster. You can take your push lead instead of sitting there and slow pushing, wait things up, wipe the wave, go down and help a fight out. Because now Nasus is really powerful. You're gonna be great in that grubs fight. If you're in a grubs fight, you can grab the little mini grublies and get a Q stack on every one of those because they instant die. [00:47:40] Speaker A: Another really good thing about Nasus is his kit is just really good, especially his passive with his Q. His passive gives you unlimited sustain and the more stacks you get, the more health you get back. So it's okay to just, if you're getting low, be like, all right, let them shove me because they're Going to shove you. And then you just. Unless they're freezing on you. And if they're freezing on you, it's okay. If it's a champion that you don't want to ever interact with there you can max your E and you don't have to worry. And you can stack. You can wait to stack. You don't have to stack it. You don't have to start stacking at level one. Like you can wait pretty long into the game to start stacking because it'll become a point where they won't be able to stop you. [00:48:20] Speaker C: So like one of one of Nasus's first early matchups. That level one to six matchup where NASA struggles hardcore is Teemo. You'll see Teemo played in analysis all the time. I love seeing a Teemo versus Nasus because they always do the same thing. They grab, ignite, they push at you, they try and shove you down. So you start leveling your E early on and then you're winning in trades. And then you don't fight them properly and they're not gonna be happy because they're gonna try and shove on you. And then by the time you're level six, you can fight the Teemo, but you shouldn't. You should be sitting there fighting to farm. And then by the time you're level 11, Teemo can't do shit to you. [00:48:56] Speaker B: You also do not build Eternity Force first in that matchup unless you are way ahead for some reason. Like you got multiple ganks. Yeah, just build the spirit visage first and that just accelerates the Teemo no longer deals damage to you. [00:49:09] Speaker C: Point. That is the second thing. The biggest indicator that you're doing the wrong thing is build path. Sheen is the core item on him, not Trinity Force. You can get a Sheen and set on it and go build another item. [00:49:22] Speaker B: The way to think about it, sheen is 900 gold and it adds like 80 damage to every Q. Trinity Force is 3,300 gold and it adds about 210 damage to every Q. You are paying 2,400 gold for 130 damage on your Q. [00:49:43] Speaker C: Now it helps you run down enemies. It does other things besides just add there that damage. That's why Trinity Force is a good item. But yeah, you can pivot. If you're in a match where you need armor, he's perfectly fine getting a frozen fist. [00:49:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you enjoy it because then they're slowed even when wither wears off. When you have two seconds before you're able to reapply It. [00:50:06] Speaker C: Yeah, it. And he is the single, like, probably best utilizer of sheen in the game when he's ulting. So nasus nasus becomes inevitable. But you can win significantly earlier. Then you can lose. [00:50:23] Speaker B: Yep. Also, it is totally valid when you are behind to ult so that you can stack more on the wave in the tower when they are setting up to dive you because they're gonna back off if you ult when you're under tower and then you go, cool. I have half the cooldown on my Q. Let me just stack this cannon and two of the three melees and two of the three casters. [00:50:43] Speaker C: This is the other important point to point out. If you are far behind, just tell your jungler, I'm taking this one camp because Q stacks, whether you're red side or blue side, you need some stacks. One camp isn't gonna kill or break you. I need the stacks here and I'm not gonna be able to. This is a scale, and I'm a win condition. As much as any ad carry is to steal jungle farm, don't do this at level six, but like level 11, midway through 15, 20 minutes, this is the point where you're like, hey, I need to get farm. And this is farm. But don't steal their entire jungle. [00:51:20] Speaker B: Much better as red side than it does blue side just because of the. [00:51:24] Speaker C: Crud, the amount of it. But don't steal their entire jungle. They will not forgive you for that one camp. They will. [00:51:31] Speaker B: All right, we got one last question from Reigns. Which is Sion top in low elo or does he have too much crossover with Mundo? [00:51:38] Speaker C: No crossover whatsoever. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Yeah, Sion is an engage CC tank. He's great in low elo. Sion. Basically, when you get out of laning phase, your job in team fights is when it looks like the fight is about to break out or has broken out, press R, run into the squishiest champion you can reach, and then immediately start channeling your Q with your shield up. By the time that the Q then knocks them up, you can recast the shield, and boom, you've burst a squishy for half their life or more. And you're a big, beefy tank that they all now need to focus on so your team can kill their tank and kill them. He's really straightforward, so he's great in low elo. He doesn't require extremely high levels of execution. He doesn't require your teammates to have, like, inherent knowledge. He just runs at people and fights. And that's what people do in low ELO anyway, so he's perfect. And games are bloody and long and stupid. So he stacks a lot of Mm. [00:52:40] Speaker C: Mundo sounds like on the surface he'd be very similar. He's walk up in Teamfight Brawl Fight Me. But Mundo is a very unique playstyle in comparison to others. He plays more like Aatrox than he does like. Like Sion, Mundo is going to go forward. He's not looking to try and CC anybody. He's looking to walk past the enemy and put pressure on the backline. And you're going to try and deal with me before I deal with you? Yep. [00:53:09] Speaker A: So fun thing about Scion is, and I play a lot of Scion is you get two build paths with him. Full tank, which is the easiest way to go or lethality, which is still a good build path on him because of the infinite stacking. I see Jack shaking his head. But let me, let me explain first. Let me explain this one. If you pick Scion top lane and they pick a Gwen, you're not gonna have a good time like ever. You're just not gonna have a good time no matter what you. But see, like I will build lethality into a Gwyn because it takes what's strong about Gwen, the max health damage and equalizes it to where you do just as much damage to her as she does to you. And lethality Scion hurts. But I will before I chime back in again, let's. Let's hear your guys's opinions. [00:54:06] Speaker B: I think Lethality Scion is a trap. You are shit in team fights as lethality Sion compared to any other version of Scion. The version of Scion that you should be playing if you want to kill people is Titanic Hydra Sion, where you are a tank. After that you are just getting Titanic Hydra because he stacks shitloads of health. So that active and passive damage from Titanic Hydra is huge. [00:54:30] Speaker C: I think it's that and what overlords Bloodmail. [00:54:33] Speaker B: You can go overlord's bloodmail if you're very fed. [00:54:35] Speaker C: Yeah. If you want damage you do. But the thing is have that great. [00:54:40] Speaker B: Of ad ratios once. [00:54:42] Speaker C: Once you do lethality Sion, you're stuck there. If you go the Titanic overlords, both of those still fully benefit your tank stacking. And even if Gwen is fighting you, you know you're not playing for the Gwen, you're playing for the team fight. Sion is always a good team fighter. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:01] Speaker C: But when he's going lethality, you're willing them to kill you so you can go beat on someone with your lethality stacks and if they're a good enough team, they'll bait that out of you instantly. Whereas if you're Tank Sion, even if you're into Gwen, everyone but gwen will take 20 seconds to kill you and you can do whatever you want into that. And if you're Titanic overlords. Yeah, they'll kill you in 10 seconds instead of 20, but you'll have half health that team. Yeah. [00:55:33] Speaker A: It might just be because I have experience on Scion that like, I feel comfortable going the lethality build into like a ranged matchup. [00:55:44] Speaker C: I think we should. Yeah. Or sell this one. If you are not experienced with Scion, do not go lethality because lethality warps the playstyle. You are no longer playing Scion like Scion. You are playing Scion like an expert at Scion, which does things that other science don't. [00:56:01] Speaker A: The right build is Tank. It's always going to be Tank because that's just how his kit is built. If you get really good at Scion and comfortable with him, then look into the lethality builds. I don't want to give you bad advice and say, go build lethality like on your first couple games with Scion. No, it's not going to work. You're going to have a bad time. Build him the right way. Go the recommended build pass. It's going to lead you the right way. Don't do the phase rush build on him because that's the wrong keystone as a tank. That's grasp always as a tank. Phase rush is reserved solely for lethality. So don't get baited into a phase rush on him. It's just not going to work for you. You get more value out of grasp. Don't play Sion into if you get to choice into a range matchup because you're not going to have fun on that. [00:56:59] Speaker B: Especially specifically into matchups that can punish your channel on your Q. [00:57:04] Speaker A: Yes. If you want, I'd be happy to play with you with some games to go over Scion a little bit because he is. He's one of my frequent picks right now. He's in the top lane. He is my top pick, which isn't saying much. It's just 10% of the games. But he's the only top laner in my recent games right now because I really enjoy playing him. [00:57:30] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, the. The other real option you have is if you're not wanting to deal with Scion or Bundo or Nasus because you're having problems here, we've already mentioned it many times. You've got Lucian. Just bring him into the top lane. You'll win your games, push forward. You don't need to worry about team fights because no one will even bother split pushing against you. Lucian, top for the win. [00:57:49] Speaker B: There you go. All right, guys, this has been episode 503 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Zoman for Micah, Many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:58:00] Speaker A: Good night. [00:58:01] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:58:02] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.