The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 504: Gwen Will Riot Learn?

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. And you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 504 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 with us tonight. [00:00:50] Speaker C: How's it going? [00:00:51] Speaker B: And we've got Pillow Pat. Hello guys. We are the Four Wards Podcast. Reminder. We have a Discord. Come join. The Discord link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. Come play games with us. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman, where it is probably not going to have much League of Legends for a while because there's a new Path of Exile event starting at the end of this week. But so be it. Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames, but probably not until his hand heals. [00:01:21] Speaker C: Yep. [00:01:22] Speaker B: And Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet whenever we bully him into streaming again. [00:01:27] Speaker A: I'll get there. [00:01:28] Speaker B: All right. Shout out to Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire and Labana for supporting us at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys. You keep the show on the Internet now if you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and a shout out at the top of every episode. And all of those perks also apply to our General Gaming podcast from 8bit to 4k. Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners, we need more questions. Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com or drop your question in the question submission channel on the Discord so we can answer your questions on the podcast. Okay, with that said, we're back on schedule. Patch 2521 is out. It's been out for a couple days now and we're going to talk about it. And Pillow, I'm going to make you kick it off with the change we're all very upset about. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Oh yeah, so Gwen got some changes. Of course she did. So tldr on her her damage is going up and she's getting tankier. But the big change of her that a lot of people might be happy with is her E cooldown refund is getting drastically changed at the early levels. So early level it was 50% across all ranks and now it's going from 25% scaling up to 65%. So a lot stronger later. Her W is giving her more tank stats on armor and magic resistance. Her Q on her Snip snip is getting 3% more AP damage. AP ratio on her passive is going up 0.05%. It's negligible. Her R slows getting stronger early. The same late and damage is going up by 5 base and 2% AP. I'm glad to see the AE change. Not happy to see the damage buffs. I don't think she needed those. I think she just needed a Nerf. But I mean, I'm a Gwyn hater. I like to play Gwyn because I like to abuse her because she is silly strong. But I don't think this is what she needed. But I'll let Riot go off and think that they're doing something beneficial. Unfortunately, it's just gonna anger me. [00:04:06] Speaker C: I think the Kaido were right initially to do some buffs because she was in the dumpster a lot of matches that she just handily won before she was now going out even. And a lot of things where she was able to do team fights in late games. She wasn't the Nerf to her R that they did a couple patches back where they made the slow scale based on on ranks. Huge for her. She's. She's frequently lost kills now because of how that works. [00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah. But at the same time, why did they have to buff her fucking percent health damage? [00:04:39] Speaker C: I think that's the huge problem. We shouldn't be giving her more percent health. We should be changing the percent health over into more base damage. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Because the entire reason Gwen upsets all three of us, by the way, is late game when she gets full ap. Because Gwen does not build tank items. She builds AP almost exclusively. Like a. Whatever. The Liandry's thing that heals you is Riftmaker. Riftmaker. Riftmaker's like the closest she gets to building Bruiser other than Riftmaker. She builds raw AP because when she gets to that like 500 AP mark, she just kinda presses R and Q on someone and insta kills them. Regardless of what their HP is, regardless of what their defensive stats are. Just 100 to 0 blink and you miss it pretty much. The same problem that AP Varus has if he gets fed where he just. Oh, you delete button, you're erased from the map. Your stats did not matter. I fucking hate that Gwen is able to do that shit and she does it while being untargetable for most of your team. [00:05:47] Speaker A: And the healing. The healing she does is absurd. [00:05:50] Speaker C: The healing is based on her. [00:05:51] Speaker B: I mind her healing. [00:05:52] Speaker C: Yeah. So like, if you were actually a weaker target. She heals a lot less because all her healing is based around that thousand cuts. Passive. Yep. [00:05:59] Speaker B: I just. The healing is. It's less oppressive than someone like Aatrox or Vladimir. So it doesn't frustrate me. The same way that the deleting of anyone, including Tanks, frustrates me. [00:06:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Essentially, if you're not a like hyper duelist, you're not beating Gwen by the mid to late game. [00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah. That. That like 7,000 health scion with like 200 armor and 200 mister. She kills him in a second. And that's not really hyperbole and that's a problem. I hate it. She absolutely negates so many elements of the game already with her hallowed mist. And then you just let her have scaling percent max health damage. Nah, I don't like it. I would be so much happier if they just left it locked at 1% and gave her a flat AP ratio on the passive. I'd be fine with that. [00:06:51] Speaker C: That would feel a lot better, I think. [00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah. She would probably be better at deleting squishies, frankly. [00:06:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:58] Speaker B: All right. I had you go first because we all are upset about the Gwen change. Mike. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm becoming numb to it. [00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Mike, how about something that we're less upset about? [00:07:10] Speaker C: I'm not even less upset. I'm quite happy about this one. So Yunara, since her inception has been an interesting AD carry. She is like the essence of how to be AD carry. Because most of your damage is just auto attack. You need to learn how to auto attack or you can't play Yunara. And so she's like a surprisingly good training wheel to learning how to play the position because she forces you to learn it. And that's been noticeable because a lot of people who don't know how to play AD carry have been playing Yunara a lot and that throws off her win rates up and down really heavily. So they've had a hard time properly balancing her. But I think the things that they've been doing here are going to be really beneficial. Most of these are buffs. There's a Very tiny Nerf in here. But that's mostly into her ULT state. There's two big changes to her W and to her E. So her W, her baseline W, not her alt W, is getting its power shifted. It's getting more base damage. And they're changing your total ad ratios to bonus ad ratios. So it now does more damage as you put more ranks into it properly. Not like through bonus damage per level or anything, but because of how they shifted the base damage, you get significantly more damage if you're putting points in W. And the change to her. Her old form of that is that it. It's going from total ID to bonus ad on the ratio. So she's losing some of the raw scaling burst of that. But if you hit with a W, it's gonna hit hard now like it's. It's ULT damage. Base damage at max rank is 525 +150 bonus 80. 50 bonus 80. That is. That is ultimate levels of damage. And she gets it two or three times in an Ultimate. Yep. [00:09:04] Speaker B: Twice if she doesn't go flicker Blade. Three times if she does, basically. [00:09:09] Speaker C: So that's. That's the. The basic change on her W. It's a little bit better, especially if you're leveling into it her E. Her E's change is a lot more different because a lot of people don't know how her E functionally works. It's mostly just a little movement speed buff and she gains a significant portion of movement speed as she charges towards enemies. Because it's meant for you to keep up in a fight. That movement speed used to decay immediately when you pressed it over the next one and a half seconds. So you would start with, I don't know, a 50 bonus and it would decay down into nothing over one and a half seconds. They are shifting that entire thing, both the base one and the the bonus one, towards enemies to start decaying after 1.5 seconds. It will probably also decay over 1 1/2 seconds post 1 1/2 seconds. So it should probably be the same rate of decay. However, you are going to have a much longer duration of that movement speed. Probably. I would essentially double it, essentially. And since you get the initial burst and then the decay, it's going to be a significant advantage to her. So she's going to get a huge burst of movement speed that then falls off a little bit. The trade off for that is that they're going to put an extra 1 1/2 second cooldown on all ranks. Not a big deal. It's baseline cooldown is nine seconds. Now it's your last max. You never need to to rank this. Really all it gives you is more movement speed which while useful, you're in ad carry. You care a lot about your damage and your W does a lot of damage and your Q, your scaling damage on Q is your main main power. So this doesn't shift. This might shift how she levels up her early couple levels. With how you're going to be doing W versus Q. You have a lot of teamfight power and early fight power is as Yunara leveling Q first. But now there's a real reason to level W first and maybe max it first. It's hard to say because you're not usually winning fights like that. But maybe going 2, 3 points in W like Morgana does and then going all into Q could be a beneficial thing. [00:11:23] Speaker B: Now, alright, I'm gonna talk about another ostensibly marksman, but he does not play in the bot lane. Graves got some changes and they nerfed him last patch I think or a couple patches ago to try to shift him away from lethality. I don't think they've really succeeded, to be honest. So instead of, you know, fixing their previous attempt so that he actually stops building all full lethality burst, they're just giving him a shitload of Mr. Technically speaking, they nerfed his base Mr. By 2 and they buff nerfed his growth of Mr. But they made it so that his E, the stacks of armor that he gets when he dashes at people also gives Mr. At half the value that it gives armor at all ranks. Graves is going to be a fucking nightmare. I'm so unhappy about this because this is going to mean that he's more effectively. Maybe this will succeed at pushing him away from lethality because he's just going to fucking drain tank us with a marksman build in a bloodthirster. Is that better? I don't know. [00:12:39] Speaker C: It's going to be an interesting one. [00:12:41] Speaker A: I'm worried about the tankiness that he's going to. I already think he's pretty hard to kill. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Mm. [00:12:47] Speaker A: If you don't know how to play against him and like using a minion wave or a tower to your advantage, like he can be very oppressive. The getting the magic resistance seems to be like a trend they're going on. Like hey, instead of let's give them an ability all armor, let's kind of like give it both and just make them like super tanky all around. Just seems the trend they're Going with we'll have to wait and see. But yeah, I think you're. You're right. He's gonna just be a drain tank. He doesn't have to build full lethality anymore. [00:13:21] Speaker C: So the, the benefit, I think to Graves getting these changes versus anyone else. Graves has a flat on target cap to his damage. There is always something that someone can do to deny damage to other people, which, yeah, makes Graves a much harder champion to balance, but also gives him a clear weakness no matter what. A scion can walk up and suddenly he can't do damage to the rim. Now it's hard sometimes because Graves can move faster than Most scions can, etc. But things like Rammus are significantly better versus Graves than they are versus a lot of other champions because he can wall off and he can keep him in a location. I think the shift is going to end up being if Graves becomes more popular, we will see what else pops up to try and deal with him. Because Graves has clear downsides versus a few other champions. Like we were talking about Gwen earlier, who. It doesn't matter what's in front of her. She's throwing damage through it anyways. [00:14:21] Speaker B: Yep. And I will say I do think right now if you just look at stats on Graves, his. His win rate did not go up with these changes. I think that's largely a function of. People haven't switched off of building Ghostblade first yet. [00:14:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I think Ghostblade is. If you are not constantly using the Ghostblade active for Ghostblade, stop building Ghostblade. I have seen in a pro scenario two people not like players, two people properly utilize Ghostblade as a first item on champions who utilize Ghostblade better than Graves. If you're not capable of constantly doing it, just stop doing it. Stop it. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. Pillow. You have Morgana question mark in the notes. [00:15:09] Speaker C: Explain. [00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean this is just be really quick. It's more of like a why, why are they doing this? And like I can, I. I can read the patch notes like anyone else and they explain the reasons, but it just doesn't make sense to me. Morgana is very strong in the mid lane in the jungle as a support pretty much wherever she wants to go. Because she's just. She's got a huge CC kit and her black shield is really strong. Her armor growth is going from 5 to 4.2. That's her change. Like, you know, why not change the healing on her W. Why not, you know, lower the CC of her Q or increase the cooldown of it. Like, why not do something to like get her take away from her power? Because like, right now she's my perma ban, so I never have to see her. And the games that I don't ban her. Like, I always see her like every time I haven't banned her. Like she's always in the game, usually as a mid laner because she's really strong in the middle lane. And that's what they're trying to get rid of. They're trying to be like, oh cool. Now, like we were talking earlier, Zed can do more damage to her. Talon can do more damage to her. Anybody with AD can do more damage to her. Slightly more damage to her. But I just don't think this is going to be enough to actually do anything. [00:16:29] Speaker B: It literally did not make a dent in either win rate or pick rate for Morgana. [00:16:33] Speaker C: Mid changes to base stats are so uncommon. To actively change whether or not someone is good or bad, it meaningfully shifts a little bit of power, mind you, because in all three roles she has a meaningful use of armor. [00:16:52] Speaker B: But I was gonna say it's common for it to matter when it's specifically AD or attack speed for junglers, because taking a few seconds off a jungle clear is huge. [00:17:02] Speaker C: Yes. [00:17:03] Speaker B: That's the only time these base stats actually make big swings. [00:17:06] Speaker C: So like armor growth is a weird stat in that there's functionally no difference to a champion at level one. And maybe it'll have a meaningful impact by the end of the game. But put 18 levels on this and it's not even 18 armor. It's like 15. So 15 armor is less than a cloth armor. So great. [00:17:32] Speaker B: They nerfed her by like 200 gold. Late game. [00:17:34] Speaker C: Yeah. If. If she's. If she. If you're in a scenario where you were almost surviving before, you can't play Morgana now. But that also could theoretically just be outplays. Because a single extra Q bind or another half a second on her W healing or any of her spell healing technically could make the same difference. So I don't know. This functionally doesn't mean anything. [00:17:58] Speaker B: Alright, well, speaking of functionally doesn't mean anything. Rant about Qiyana for us. [00:18:04] Speaker C: Yeah, because I actually. I think this also functionally doesn't mean anything. Qiyana. Qiyana's way too fucking strong. And she has been too strong for multiple patches straight. She is one of the fastest and most dangerous jungle clears in the game. She does absurd damage both in mid lane and in jungle, and the changes are not enough. To do jack and shit. She lost 3 health growth. Oh no. Again, less than. Less than the item's worth of heal of. Of total HP by level 18. It's. It's not even like 60 HP. It's not a lot total by 18. And then she lost 5% bonus ad ratio on her Q. Kiyana builds lethality. She's not building hyper high amounts of ad. She's blowing you up from zero to dead in one and a half seconds. Now this means she might need to also auto attack once. [00:19:07] Speaker B: Yep. While you're rooted or stunned. [00:19:09] Speaker C: Mind you, this is the key problem with Kiana, and you just mentioned it there. She is a hyper damage assassin who. Who builds completely damage, who has CC in her kit. Hard cc. Multiple instances of hard cc, which is the worst part about it. Her Q is one of the dumbest things in the game because it can give you hard CC depending on how you move. Yeah. Kiana is a little bit high of a skill floor, but her ceiling isn't that high in comparison to a lot of other assassins. She throws three abilities at you and then you're dead. [00:19:48] Speaker B: She's very straightforward once you've gotten the hang of how to control her. [00:19:53] Speaker C: Now, much like people like Riven, she has high movement like ceilings because the amount of dodges you can do and the other things, that's where her like complexity comes from and knowing which cue to take. But that's. That's not super difficult. I. I think Qiyana is way too strong and they need to do significant nerfs to her. Please. Full fucking pull her out of the jungle. [00:20:19] Speaker B: She does not belong there would be nice. All right, I think that's our rant segment of the patch over. I got some quick item changes that I want to talk about because they are very impactful. I'm going to start with the loser of these changes. Doran's shield lost a little bit of its healing. Whenever you've taken damage, you heal less than you did before for melee champions. It's the same for ranged champions using Doran Shield. So bot laners rest easy and the. [00:20:49] Speaker C: Occasional mage that would use it in mid top. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Yes. Second Wind at the same time also lost three healing after you take damage. Both of those combined should do a lot to mitigate the oh, Teemo auto attacked me and I'm full again situation that those items and runes can tend to create. But they're not big shifts. The other two Doran items, however, have been reverted to their old version from two years ago. Doran's ring now gives one mana per second. And if you've damaged an enemy champion, that number becomes two mana for five seconds. Which means if you land one spell on someone, you get five mana back. And then they also nerfed the health regen value if you can't gain mana so that it doesn't heal you a lot when you hurt someone, it technically. [00:21:39] Speaker C: Also means you get 5 mana per auto attack as long as you're within combat with an enemy champion. So yes, but it's. [00:21:48] Speaker B: It's generally about the same power level as before, as long as you're actually interacting with an opponent. However, the other Doran's item, Doran's Blade, which has been pretty much a dead item for a while because you either were starting Doran's Shield or you were starting Cull for everyone in solo lanes, it was just AD carries that were building Doran's Blade. Previously, they've made some changes. They've removed the lifesteal on it and given it 2.5% OmniVamp instead. For ADCs and other auto attack centric champions like Yasuo and Yone, this more or less is a wash. Most of your damage was from auto attacks, so now instead of 3% lifesteal, you have 2.5%. But your abilities are also going to heal that 2.5%. So it's a wash in most cases. For those champion classes, the big winners of this Doran's Blade change are stupid. It's champions who do not need Doran's Ring as offensive mage type characters. Champions like LeBlanc and Annie. LeBlanc's Q& Annie's Q both refund mana when you last hit with them. Which means they can go D Blade and bully the shit out of their lane with all of that AD and then also heal off of their last hitting minions with their single target ability. It's dumb. I've played Doran's blade on LeBlanc and it's really oppressive. Like I just straight up one lane at level one because I just hit the guy, dashed at him and hit him a couple more times before I snapped back and he was half life because I had 70 something AD and he had one spell to throw at me and then 50 AD because he was a mage. [00:23:35] Speaker C: The other people who heavily benefit from this Doran's Blade change are the Mid Assassins. Yep, Zed. And like the main one I think is Naafiri. [00:23:46] Speaker B: Yep, for the same reason because they do damage via abilities and now those. [00:23:50] Speaker C: Abilities heal them and then Naafiri's dogs. That's going to be disgustingly good for her. [00:23:56] Speaker A: I know you probably hate to hear it because you're an Akali hater, but this is a buff to Akali as well. [00:24:02] Speaker B: With a huge buff to Akali. [00:24:04] Speaker C: Yes. [00:24:05] Speaker A: She loves that healing with her Q. [00:24:07] Speaker C: And maybe because she was very frequently going Doran's Shield, but that. [00:24:12] Speaker B: This is better. [00:24:13] Speaker C: Yeah. So like, depending on what lane you were in, you got doranshield. So you survived between one and six. [00:24:22] Speaker B: And that won't change in those lanes. But anything where you could have gotten away without it before, you can now go D Blade and win harder. [00:24:29] Speaker C: Yeah. If you were potentially going to win a lane before level six, you get Torrent's Blade no matter what. [00:24:35] Speaker B: And by the way, for people who don't know, all of Akali's abilities have meaningful AD ratios. So she doesn't even lose spell damage when she does this. [00:24:47] Speaker C: She is one of like four champions who have always had good ratios, both AD and AP throughout the entire lifetime of her champion. Her Kayle, Jax. They're. They're part of the breed of people who. Gunblade was their single best item back when it cave meaningful AD and AP and that's. They are the reasons why Gunblade does not exist anymore. Yep. [00:25:10] Speaker B: Okay, while I'm just talking about all of the item changes, just a quick mention. They took 50 health off catalyst of Eons. So that Rod of Ages builders spike a little less hard on 1300 gold. That's it. I don't have any opinions on that one good change. All right, Pillow, wrap us up. What changed with Mundo? [00:25:32] Speaker C: Yeah, real quick. [00:25:32] Speaker A: With Dr. Mundo, armor growth went up and his E, which is the hit and throw something back if it kills it. Or it's just his auto attack reset. The damage went down on the bonus HP damage by 2%. And that's it. It's. I mean, that's significant for him. [00:25:53] Speaker B: Late game, not nearly as much as you'd think because the E also has a passive portion that went unchanged. That basically amounts to about 2 overlord blood Mal, 4th of AD. And that's still there. He's still gonna run around with 300 to 400 AD as a 6000 health tank. He just does slightly less burst damage when he hits you with the active portion. [00:26:16] Speaker C: That. That active smack is gonna do just a wee. A bit less damage. [00:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it'll do about 300 less damage to you ADCs. [00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Fair compared. He does get like 5,000 plus life. [00:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a meaningful Nerf, but not the Nerf that I don't think anyone was hoping for other than Alois. I guess he's probably happy that that's all it got. [00:26:38] Speaker A: Yeah, he still goes where he pleases. [00:26:40] Speaker B: Very much so. Alright, there's one other change in this patch that is not actually a Summoner's Rift patch change. They've added a new version of Aram. This patch. What the hell is Aram? Mayhem, guys. [00:26:56] Speaker A: All right, so if you are a player or have played arena, so you know that in arena you get these Augment cards. And Augment cards are in place of like your runes. So you don't get runes or any of that, you get these Augments cards. So one of them off the top of my head is a quest called Quest steal your heart. And so what this is is you build a heart steel and Once you hit 350 stacks on your heart steel, your stacks are immediately tripled and from there on out, when you get a proc of heart steel, the account, the amount is tripled. So you just get a lot more health. There's another, really, there's one that will turn. If you select it, you become locked into melee. So like if you're an adc, you have to, you have to attack in melee range, but it gives you a bunch of buff to damage and like attack speed. So it's just a fun little change to Aram. And I, I, I've played it a few times. I enjoy it. There's a lot of fun stuff that you can do with it. [00:28:06] Speaker C: This, this system, the, the Augment system was the reason why I liked arena, because it made arena matches so fun and different every time. [00:28:17] Speaker B: It gives you a little bit of like the roguelike vibe of like, oh, what kind of build am I going to be able to put together this time with the random Augments it's going to give me? [00:28:25] Speaker C: And you can get some stupid combos of things that go perfectly right for you. Now in an Aram, that means you've got five people potentially have this going right on for, for them. And Aram has always been the most goofy of the modes. So this is. I am not able to play it because I can't use a mouse right now. The second I can, I'm going into Aram. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Mayhem tanks are busted. Of course, I was a 12K HP Udyr. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. And I do want to note that they did say the patch will be, it'll be live through Patch 25.24. So that means it should be around for the rest of the year, basically. [00:29:02] Speaker C: If I remember rightly, I saw that it's going to be around until January 6th. [00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds right. Because the 24 patches, always the last patch of the year, so it'll be around until 26.1 or 25. Yeah. Okay, so we've got a trinket tip this week sent in by a listener. So this is from Yeet the Dab, who writes, hello, it's me, Yeet the Dab. I heard Mike mention in episode 502 that Faker tracks bone plating cooldowns in his head. So I thought I'd drop this trinket tip. If you left click a champion and bring up their portrait on the top left. The portrait's buff will show you cooldowns on runes like bone plating, mana flow, band, and Electrocute. Use it to time your trades better. It's good advice, Ye. It also does work for some champion cooldown passives such as Anivia, Egg and Zack revive. [00:29:52] Speaker C: Yeah, so this shows. It doesn't show any numeric values, so you have to judge this. It is. It is a beneficial point to. To. To make a lyric of this. And you definitely want to down champions like Anivia. However, it doesn't show you quite as much as you think. It shows things that are active, and they will show how long they're active for less so than how long the cooldown is on a lot of things. So usually it'll show when something is activated. It'll pop up. Bone plating usually isn't presented there as a cooldown, but a lot of things are. Like, one of the big ones that I've noticed is the. The gold one from Blue Tree. First strike. You can tell when a champion has first strike ready because that will pop up as a debuff when they've already gotten first strike. [00:30:45] Speaker B: Yep. All right, let's get to the actual listener questions. And I've promoted one that I think is relevant to the Doran items I mentioned a moment ago. Toast asks, is Kohl worth considering as a starting item ever? Especially now with the nerfed Doran's items. So I think there's two important contexts here. The context of a solo lane and the context of an ad carry for a solo lane. If you are in an advantaged lane where you should beat your opponent regardless. And Cole has stats that are relevant to you. So, like, don't do this on mages. It's fucking useless compared to Doran's blade on mages. Yeah, Cull's fine if you're gonna bully them anyway. Might as well, you know, heal more because Cole just straight up gives more healing in the early game than Doran's does. Doran's blade and then also get to cash in later. [00:31:43] Speaker C: Cull has always been a niche item. It is something that some champions utilize and some don't. Or conversely specifically in Bot Lane more than anywhere else it is used as a catch up or a. A breakpoint that you don't start with. You get as your like your first back piece to just do like a. A Draven does an accelerate advantage. Color is a good item situation. Not everyone's gonna want it much like not everyone's gonna want every Doran's item. Not everyone can utilize it. As you were saying, mages just don't get Cull because it's wasted on you. [00:32:21] Speaker B: Even auto attack enough for the healing to be worth it. [00:32:24] Speaker C: Even for the gold value. If you think you're going to be doing the farming and farming and farming, it's not worth it. You're. You're wasting the gold that you could be using to give yourself more ap to have more advantages trades. [00:32:34] Speaker A: I know a champion that would go Cole just specifically because it was really good on him. And that was usually Urgot just because of how his W worked with the passive of Cole. But with the recent Doran's blade change, I don't know if that's going to still be the same. But maybe a coal with a Dord's blade he might do that. But I think the way with Urgot's W and how fast he can attack with it. He got a lot of benefit from a coal. [00:33:06] Speaker C: I think Cole is still more healing because it's only 2.5% total healing from the damage done. And you're not dealing with a hundred damage per shot until after Doran's is no longer useful. So Cull is probably worth it there. Still the. The champion, we've mentioned her earlier. Yunara, one of the best Cull users in the game because her amount of healing with her splash damage with the way they're coded. You still get healing on every champion that's hit by that. Every minion that's hit by it. Cola is exceedingly strong on champions that have either very, very, very fast attacks or split damage that is coded in a certain way. It's so worth it on other champions. But it has niche like excellence. [00:33:52] Speaker B: So I mentioned that. The answer is different for AD carries though. For 80 carries. The math on Whether you should call or Doran's Blade comes down to you're in a 2v2. You want the extra health of Doran's blade in almost every situation. That that's literally it. There are extremely edge cases where you can take coal and have it be correct. Like if you are playing Ezreal and you are in a complete disengage we get fucked if we ever fight matchup. Yeah, the 80 health isn't gonna save you. So start cull so you can catch up a little bit of the gold you're going to be behind if you've taken like if you have a Yumi for example and you're against a Draven pike or something horrible. [00:34:34] Speaker C: Yeah, Draven is the perfect point on this one. If you're facing a hard lane bully most of the time you weren't engaging in those fights unless you'd also taken a hard lane bully. Those are great times to build Kull because you weren't intending to try and fight them. And 80 health usually isn't your savior. [00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah, this is assuming you are playing an ad carry that has the ability to say no to fighting them. [00:34:59] Speaker C: Yes, there are a couple who don't. But this. This is usually the I picked a scaling ad carry we're gonna talk about. I don't know, Jinx into Draven. Jinx versus Draven is very Draven favored. You'd rather sit there and cult. [00:35:13] Speaker B: But also she has the range with rockets to actually like not get bullied as hard. As long as she plays safe. [00:35:19] Speaker C: Yeah, you pretty much never assuming she. [00:35:20] Speaker B: Doesn'T have a Yuumi. Yeah, and I'm hating on Yumi because we hate Yuumi here. But the reason I'm hating on Yumi is that she, she. Yumi puts all of the pressure on the ad carry to stay alive. She has no peel. She has no real way to protect you in the moment other than giving you a shield and some run speed and maybe slowing your opponent. [00:35:40] Speaker C: Which means all the damage is getting on you and you first. And auto attacks, which means that health matters more outside of Graves. Auto attacks are targeted specifically. So you can't split damage with that even if she pops off in front of you. [00:35:55] Speaker B: Yep. Alright, so let's finish out the set of questions Labana sent in a few weeks back. So remember, Labana mostly plays top lane tanks, specifically Shogath. Any suggestions on how to learn the different matchups other than playing the matchups, for example Educational content or creators who often play tanks. [00:36:15] Speaker C: You can gain functional knowledge like you're gaining knowledge by watching other people playing it is a very different story. You need to get games in on champions and just play. Knowing a champion because you have seen it played or have played it yourself gives you more honestly, the second portion of that is is probably the big thing. The more champions you have played, not mastered played, gives you more knowledge on them than anything else. So if you never play a champion, you don't know ranges, you don't know damage breakdowns, you don't know a ton of information. That really is one of the keys to being a really good player. You don't, you don't have to like every champion, but given a chance every week, play a new champion on the rotation. If you haven't something to give you more base knowledge. [00:37:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. I don't watch specific content creators, so I don't have specific advice on that, but pretty much everything Mike said I agree with. Alright, next question is are there any rule of thumbs on armor vs Mr. Vs HP on itemization for tanks? So he specifically mentions that he spoke to this with me. So I'm going to give you the cliffnotes version of what I explained to Labana Previously. Armor and Mr. Function as a multiplier on your HP. They are worthless if you don't have HP to back them up. If you have 1000 HP and 100 armor it takes 2000 physical damage to kill you. If you have 2000 HP and 100 armor, it takes 4000 damage physical damage to kill you. So the more health you get, the more valuable armor and Mr. Become. And the more armor and Mr. You get, the more valuable health becomes. [00:38:16] Speaker C: There's a reason items like Frozen Heart are built so rarely because they are nothing but armor and some other stat. Because they are generally speaking a fourth to fifth item and you need to already have the other stats in line for them to be good and have the niche situation for it. [00:38:39] Speaker B: Yep. This is why in general like do not rush frozen heart. Period. Even if you are against a full AD team who are auto attackers, don't rush frozen heart. And unless you're Rammus or Shen, don't rush thornmail either. Even in that circumstance, you need the raw HP for that resistance stat to be valuable. This is also why if you've got a build, let's say you're against a full AD team and you have a frozen heart, a thornmail, a Sunfire cape and an iceborne gauntlet. That's a shitload of armor. You will get more value out of a warmogs for pure I need to stay alive in a fight where the warmogs passive does not even come into play than you will out of building a dead man's plate or a randuins. In most cases, Randuins does have the edge case of if all the damage you're taking is crit focused. [00:39:30] Speaker C: So here's. Here's one of the main key things as a tank, you should be trying to split your items versus health and armor versus the effects they give you. And that's the core component of building armor, HP, etc. Every item outside of like 2 has passives on it that matter more than the item itself. The raw stats on the item. So you're getting items and you're building things to try and counter what you can see on the enemy. You need health to make your armor and Mr. Work. You need Mr. And armor to make your big health functionally good. There's a reason why Scion is so prevalent right now. It's because he doesn't need to worry about anything building health. He can build raw tank stats across the board to situationally face anything. Because he gets free health. Yep. [00:40:22] Speaker B: But yeah. So this is why for example, you should not be thinking of Frozen Heart as oh, they're an auto attacking AD champion. This will help me stay alive. The reason you build Frozen Heart is oh, they're an auto attacking AD champion. This will help my allies stay alive because it does not give as much personal survivability as just getting one of the health armor items. But it reduces their attack speed, which means they do less damage to your friends. That's the way you gotta think about tank items. And it's true on the Mr. Side as well. I'm using armor items as an example because they're slightly more well understood frankly. But the same thing is true on the Mr. Side. You got a bunch of magic damage dealers on your team. You're building Abyssal mask as your Mr. Item not because it's the best defensive item, but because it's the one that helps your teammates do the most damage. [00:41:12] Speaker C: There are more armor items than there are Mr. Items. They give a lot broader of functionality because there is an entire class that is in every single game that always auto attacks. You will never see a game without unless it's a trolley game without any ad carries, period. Or you're playing Aram. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Absolutely. So next question is, where are the sensible warding spots? Top lane. I'm familiar for bot, but other than the pixel brush in the river and Tribush, I'm not sure where I want to be placing my wards, especially in early game. [00:41:44] Speaker C: There's a war. I think you should. You should play. And this is not a thing that you do at level four. Level five, you play this. Especially if you are being pushed in. You want a ward in your bushes in the top side, like in that little arc of bushes at the very top of the map. Because lame ganks are miserable to deal with and they are exceedingly powerful, and spotting them is one of the best things you can do. So the enemy side bush is the ultimate ward. You can have to deny those. You're going to want one. [00:42:16] Speaker A: Assuming you're playing tanks, then you probably are getting pushed on. So that's pretty decent advice is having it like right there in the bush closest to you in the top before the alcove. Like I like to play. I don't like to put a ward in my pixel bush. I like to place it farther back towards the Baron pit. Gives me more time to react and judge. The Tribush is always good, but same thing, like if you're pushed all the way up to their tower and they're at your. They're at the Tribush. Like, it's already too late. I try to place wards in areas. That gives me time to react. The ward spot behind your. The Tribush behind your tower. If you're playing. Was that blue sidebush behind your tower? [00:43:08] Speaker B: Okay. [00:43:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm trying to think. I think it's blue playing from the bottom right. [00:43:13] Speaker C: Blue is left side. [00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So if you're on blue side, you got like a tri bush that's behind you that comes behind your tower. I like to put one there because that's where a lot of times junglers can set up for a. Oh, for tower dives? [00:43:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:43:27] Speaker A: For a tower dive. If that's another place to put a bush or a ward. If you're getting pushed in, you don't have to really worry about ganks necessarily. If you're sitting under your tower farming, you got to worry about dives. Trying to think if there's any other. Like I like to just place mine forward so that I get more information. You're going to be missing some. Some blind spots, but not. You're not always going to be able to get 100 coverage on the map. So it's best to try to get yourself wards in areas that are going to give you enough time to react to your ganks and your dives. [00:44:08] Speaker C: If you're in an even state where you're allowed to clean out a wave and leave the lane. The best I think ward you can put for each side is just visibility at their big buff there. So for if you are a red side person, putting it like at that junction where you can see blue buff and gromp right below that little wall there. Or if you're on blue side, put one at the very edge of that bush so that you can see into red pit and that entire corridor there, those are some of the biggest advanced forewarning wards you can get. Because junglers are creatures of habit and they want their fucking money. And that is the safest corridor to move along as a jungler so that you can get the most time before those general wards would see you, the river wards, etc. And they allow you to branch paths. So they're a great place to see where they're coming from. And they're very commonly walked areas. Most junglers don't go from mid straight up river. They go through their jungle most of the time. [00:45:14] Speaker B: Yep. So I will say the last thought I have on top lane warding is warding the out the the brush on the just lane side. Not for necessarily junglers, although it can sometimes catch junglers who are trying to sneak in lane ganks, but so that it's much harder for your opponent to safely freeze a wave. [00:45:33] Speaker C: When you recall that's also. Yeah, there's. There's one for your side of it and one for their side of it. If you put one in the bush that's closer to you and they're constantly pushing in, they're gonna have a real hard time freezing because minions are gonna keep following them no matter what. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:47] Speaker A: It's also good that if they're trying to poke harass you, they can't walk into the bush and drop minion aggro. [00:45:52] Speaker C: Yep. [00:45:52] Speaker A: So they can. They'll keep taking minion damage, which kind of frustrates like a range top laner. [00:45:59] Speaker C: If they're a champion. If they're a champion who constantly goes back and forth under the bush to try and bait you. Just put a board in the bush. Yeah. [00:46:05] Speaker B: Often that will get you more actual value than looking for a jungler that may or may not ever show up. Not always, but often. Okay, so his last question. And again, remember, he mostly plays top top lane Cho'. Gath. Any other general advice on how to transition from fragile carry to unkillable hungry monster? [00:46:24] Speaker C: Chogoth has. If this is we're going to be talking mostly Chogoth points here, cho' Gath has one of the Best sustains in top lane of any champion. You are allowed to sit there and stay in lane longer than almost anyone else because you have inbuilt healing and mana regen straight up. So you want to. You want to trade your health and this is true for most tanks. Your health is now a other major resource that you are actively trading and you're going to be doing it a lot. [00:46:56] Speaker B: So my general advice is especially on Cho' Gath. Unending despair. This item is crazy on Cho' Gath because he gets so much free max health from stacking up his ultimate stacks. And it deals damage and heals based on your max health. It's so strong on Cho'. Gath. Regardless of what damage type you're up against, this should literally always be within your first two items. In my opinion. Doesn't always necessarily make sense as a first item on him, but it should be your second item in almost all cases. [00:47:32] Speaker C: Heartsteel early is frequently a trap. [00:47:35] Speaker B: Yes, you. [00:47:36] Speaker C: You can build. Especially with Chogoth, you can build Heartsteel as a second or third item because the more health you have, the better Heartsteel procs happen. And Chogoth gets a bunch of free health. So you can get it as a second or third item and still have well over 3, 400 stacks. Chogoth is one of the champions that can actively be played full ap. It's a rarity that you'll want to do it, but you have the option or more. More likely you'll have the option to split damage and do some ap. Some tankiness. [00:48:08] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. Specifically with the heartsteel. You got to think of Heartsteel as I'm buying Heartsteel so I can beat the fuck out of my opponent. You're trying to use that proc for damage. The actual stacking amount. It's gonna stack close to the same if you get it in mid game because you have so much health from other sources. And also you have so much health from other sources, the stacking value is not as high as it otherwise would be. The power of Heartsteel is in the percent max HP proc damage you apply on people. [00:48:40] Speaker C: And another one of those things. This is going to be a general one. Warmogs is your friend. Learn to disengage. [00:48:46] Speaker B: Yes. Cho has really strong disengage with his Q. If they don't have two gap closes, they jump on you. You put Q under your feet. It knocks them up. You walk away. [00:48:57] Speaker C: The slow after that is insane. Insanely powerful. [00:49:00] Speaker B: Yep. Any other thoughts? [00:49:02] Speaker C: I think we're good. [00:49:03] Speaker A: I think you guys got it covered. [00:49:05] Speaker B: All right then, let's get one more question done here. We are going to scroll down a bit. We got a trinket tip from Yeet. We're going to answer a question from Yeet the dab now and then we'll get to the remaining longer questions we have in our queue next week. So Yeet writes, how much of league do you feel is things like itemization, runes comp and macro? And how much is things like knowing enemy spells, landing skill shots, anticipating and team fight execution? [00:49:35] Speaker C: This is a scale that changes based on rank. [00:49:39] Speaker B: Yes, heavily. Absolutely. [00:49:42] Speaker C: Early on, itemization actually probably matters less than things like understanding enemy champions and landing skill shots. The higher up you go, the more things like composition macro actually matter. Anticipation, team fight, execution. These are things that are always good, but they vary wildly based on what you've been doing with the rest of those things. So being great at teamfight execution and a high level game can only matter so far. When you have fucked your itemization over. We've seen this happen significantly often. This is a great time to talk about worlds briefly if you have a chance. You should take some time to watch some worlds games because then you'll start to see things like composition macro and these. These actually matter. Here you get to learn when things are done. And especially if you like join us for our watch parties, we'll talk about things like itemization, runes a little bit less so composition, macro, skill shots, etc. These things are things that we will start really diving into if you join us for watch parties and watch worlds in general. [00:50:51] Speaker B: Absolutely. So the other part of that to consider is I agree on when you're at lower level, your itemization matters less than your execution of your basic mechanics. For example, with the caveat that what we mean by that is the difference between if you build like Ghost Blade versus Hubris versus Opportunity. Those are three similar lethality items. The difference between those is not gonna matter versus how you play your AD assassin. The difference between if you build Sunfire Cape versus Iceborne Gauntlet is not gonna matter versus how you play your champion at low elo. But if you're building jank shit, you will lose way more games than you should. You should not be building completely wrong. Bullshit. Please at least have a basic understanding of itemization. You don't need to know the nuance. It's okay if you build the same build every game while you're learning, while you're getting better, but you do need to be in the ballpark of corrects. [00:51:59] Speaker C: You should be following. If you're talking the early game, the basic intros, the suggested itemization is never going to steer you completely wrong. Yeah, and that's where you should be sticking to. You should not be doing like another one of my friends does and just decide to build different items because you want to make this person tanky. You are actively losing yourself the game. Sometimes you will win simply because you play better. But that wasn't because of the itemization. You would have won harder if you built regular. [00:52:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. Of course the easiest answer is you don't need to care about itemization. Just play Lucian in the top lane. Steamroll everyone. Oh, there's a Gwen up there who cares color. [00:52:41] Speaker C: You can dash directly into that and just mess her up. [00:52:45] Speaker B: God, if only that were actually true. Alright guys, this has been episode 504 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Mike and many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:52:56] Speaker A: Good night. [00:52:57] Speaker C: Good night everybody. [00:52:59] 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 Wardspodcastmail.com so we can answer. [00:53:17] Speaker C: Them live on the show. [00:53:18] Speaker B: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.