The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 505: Spiraling Despair

[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 505 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. [00:00:51] Speaker C: Hopefully I'm only two weeks away from being able to play games again. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Hopefully. We've also got Pillow Pet, my two weeks. [00:00:59] Speaker A: Two weeks on the podcast in a row. I think that's a record for me lately. [00:01:04] Speaker B: We're happy to have you on as much as we can get you guys. We are the four Words podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. Come watch Worlds. Come. It's a good time. Link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman where it's a mix of media, social, Super Metro and Path of Exile content. Right now Mike will be able to be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames When he heals we will bully him into streaming more once his hand is healed. And Pillow can be found at Twitch TV PillowPat. He doesn't have an excuse, he just doesn't stream as much as he should. [00:01:40] Speaker A: Hey, I might boot it up tonight. You don't know, I might. [00:01:43] Speaker B: There you go. So follow him at least so when he does boot it up you'll get a notification from Twitch and you can go harass him in his channel. Alright guys, shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. Now if you want to support the podcast head over to patreon.com the Fourwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and we will shout you out at the top of every episode. And those benefits also apply to our General Gaming podcast from 8bit to 4k which you can find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least listeners, Uncle Chris Go carried you guys this week. We got a question from him but we need more questions? Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. You can also drop them in the Question Submission channel In the Discord Speaking of the Discord, I mentioned it already, but World's Finals are coming up this weekend. They are going to be Saturday, November 8th at 11:00pm Pacific Time or Sunday, November 9th at 2:00am Eastern Time. For those of you who are outside the United States, please look up the actual time of the event. Some some confusion happened in previous weeks because US does daylight savings time, stupid. I think we're all on the same time zone now, but just look up what time the event is. We will be having a watch party in the Discord. I'll be there and I encourage as many listeners as want to watch the World Finals to come watch the World Finals in the Discord with other people. It's a blast. I look forward to seeing you there. So our actual topics for tonight. Now that we got that announcement, the first one is inspired by my own ranked journey. If you've tuned in to Twitch TV Jacksoman lately, you've probably seen me losing a lot. Unfortunately sometimes it's because I play bad. I'd say probably half of the losses are actually that and I deserve those losses. [00:04:06] Speaker C: Half of the losses, not half of the games. Half of the losses, yes. [00:04:12] Speaker B: That is not hyperbole by the way, because the other half I get the most frustration inducing toxic rage babies that I have ever seen. I am not exaggerating listeners when I say that I had a game that was a one game state. We had huge leads in every role except top but our Kayle died once against an aatrox and proceeded to throw a tantrum in chat and then run around the map suiciding to the other lanes to make sure that the game was unwinnable. [00:04:44] Speaker C: There was a game a week ago. A week and a half ago you were like 17:3 on LeBlanc. You were in their base and then your team did not functionally work. Just people being really terrible. [00:05:01] Speaker B: Not just like I've lost. [00:05:03] Speaker C: Half of them are where they're just toxic and half of them are their they. I don't want to say incompetent, but they're definitely not where they should be. [00:05:12] Speaker B: I have lost several games to my team just walking in one by one and committing suicide domino style. And no matter how fed I am, I can't win a game from that state when four people just die to stupid and then the enemy walks down mid and ends the Game before they respawn. I can't fix that. So that's why we're going to talk about this. So what we're actually going to talk about is how to maintain your mental when you're dealing with shit like what I'm going through right now. How to keep good mental when matchmaking keeps giving you rotted lemon, rotting lemons. You got any advice for me, guys? [00:05:53] Speaker C: I hate the word mental. It's mental fortitude. It's a descriptor. But it's been co opted on me, so I guess mental is how it's talked about now. Language. Fuck it. The main thing is always trying to find a positive in a game. And if you can't find a positive in the game, that's the time you got to take a break. If you can't find anything that went well for you, if you can't find a positive of your play, their play, something else that made that a game that you can. All right, well, I did something right there, so stop. That's, that's immediate. Either you're, you're no longer in a good place mentally, or your hands are coughed, or you're just having an off day. Back away from league on those days, it's, it's, it's not for you. Then even if you set out, hey, I was going to do six games today, I've only done three. Every one of them has been terrible. Nothing's been going my way. That's a time when you gotta just stop and back away. Maybe do what I do and play with a buddy. Playing with a buddy, or in Jax's case, stream with people, that's a huge mental boost to have somebody there with you, either to help commiserate with you or to show, hey, you've been doing something good over here or just to vent with. Having someone with you is so much better. [00:07:14] Speaker B: I cannot express how much of a mental relief it is to have other people see the shit I'm getting put through and going, yeah, that's not normal. You shouldn't be getting these kinds of games as often as you are. Like, it is validating because I realize when I explain this and describe what's happening, I sound like every random Silver Reddit player who's like, oh, my team's holding me back. Riot keeps giving me bad teams, and I'm lower ranked than I belong because of Riot's matchmaking. I literally brought receipts. I stream all my games. I almost never play league outside of. [00:07:50] Speaker C: Stream, and if it's not a stream, it's usually random normals with us. So it's not on the ranked problem. [00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, like I've played. How many games of ranked have I played this season? I think you said 544. 544. Probably 500 of those. 544 have been on stream. [00:08:08] Speaker C: Sounds about right. [00:08:09] Speaker B: It's been mostly on stream. So it's very. It is such a relief and like helps me not get anxiety. Even though I've dropped two full ranks. I was Emerald three. I'm currently Gold three. Because other people can see what I'm going through. I can commiserate. I can share it with other people and be like, what the fuck is happening? Why is this happening to me? Why is it happening again? [00:08:35] Speaker C: I hate. I am positive that Jax has cursed because there's no other reason for it otherwise. I've never seen any other player ever get the amount of. These are like truly toxic people. [00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not talking. This is not counting the oh, they dominoed in and died type games. Like, I'm talking the actual like people who throw a tantrum and make the game unwinnable on purpose. [00:09:05] Speaker C: So like if I had to break down your loss, your losses in sections about as you said, half of them you're not playing well about out of the next half. It's probably a good 50. 50 on whether or not it's just Ragers or people who are playing terribly or just don't deserve the rank they're in or like are kind of incompetent for where they are. [00:09:30] Speaker B: I would break it down about the same. About half my losses are my own damn fault. About a quarter of my losses are just straight up team diff. And about a quarter of my losses are Rage babies who do not belong in online video games. [00:09:44] Speaker C: Because if you bring that. That quarter into wins, that's a much more positive win rate. [00:09:52] Speaker B: Even. Even if you just take that quarter of rage babies causing losses and make them 50, 50 wins and losses, it would literally have undone this entire drop. I would literally still be an Emerald. [00:10:03] Speaker C: It's. It's utterly in indescribable how bad this is. And I would say make a new account, but it's really difficult to get a new account to the point where you have. And there's all the stuff that you have on your main account. [00:10:16] Speaker B: I own Pax Jax. [00:10:19] Speaker C: You can't. You can't get rid of the things that you have on it. Which is the one. Like I really wish I could transfer some of the stuff I have to a different Account, but. [00:10:27] Speaker A: And what you need is a new name. You need to change up your name. Keep it Jack's Omen, but change it somehow. So maybe that refreshes your account. I don't know. [00:10:38] Speaker B: It might change my matchmaking seed somehow. [00:10:40] Speaker A: Just somehow. I don't know. [00:10:42] Speaker C: They're annoyed you have Jax and you're in base name. How? [00:10:45] Speaker B: I mean, people do assume I'm a Jax main. I do play Jax a fair bit, specifically as a counter pick to Yasuo. And I had someone who was like, oh, we lost because our mid played something unorthodox. It's like, Buddy, I was 11, 8 and 6. I crushed that fucking Yasuo. We lost because we had a 116 and 10 Maokai who entered every lane. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't say that I relate with your problem on a personal level, because I don't have to deal with that toxicity very often. I would say maybe 1 in 10, even 15 games. [00:11:23] Speaker B: And I want to put this out there. I have strongly considered picking up top lane because more than half of all of the baby ragers I have dealt with have been top laners. They are maybe far and away, like night and day. Top laners are the baby ragers. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Maybe that's why I never encounter them. Maybe I'm the baby rager. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Well, no, that's the point. You're not. So you're just not having to deal with that shit. Because most of the baby ragers are top laners. I've strongly considered just playing top because of it. [00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah. The two most common have been top lane and support. [00:11:58] Speaker B: Supports are the ones who are straight up boosted, like the Maokai I just described. The top laners are the ragers. I've had a few ragey ad carries, a few ragey mids when I'm jungling, and a few ragey jungles when I'm playing mid. But mostly, yeah, it's the top layer. Like, maybe that's the takeaway. Maybe that's the intervention. Here is Jax, just start playing top lane. [00:12:22] Speaker A: You might. Yeah, give it a shot. Maybe that'll get rid of your. I mean, and nobody cares about top lane anyway. You play whatever you want up there. And I mean, really, it doesn't even matter. You don't exist. [00:12:31] Speaker C: And this is until you do at the end of the game. [00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe that's what I'll do when I'm done with my break playing Path of Exile, I'll just start queuing top. I like top champs anyway. Fucking Mordecai is a bunch of Champions up there. [00:12:45] Speaker C: We like to play. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Anyways, maybe I'll just begrudgingly pick up Irelia because she's bullshit. [00:12:51] Speaker A: That's a good one. [00:12:52] Speaker B: Or I could play Gwen. Gwen's bullshit. [00:12:55] Speaker A: I've been playing Rek' Sai lately. Rek' sai top is like ridiculously strong. I went into a Darius and like didn't lose the lane. And you should lose as a Rek'. Sai. Like on paper, you should lose to a Darius. [00:13:08] Speaker C: All right, you have to print this out because you've mentioned this and I've been seeing Rek' Sai everywhere. Rek' sai is a neutralizer. Rek' sai is not a winner. She goes ahead or even early and just sustains the lane forever and then becomes a knockout bot midway to the end of the game. Unless you build nothing but Bruiser. And then she can duel a couple AD carries. [00:13:35] Speaker A: So the game I was going against Darius. And I want to get to a part how I deal with my mental. If I'm having a bad day here in just a second. But the game I had with Darius, I did. I went Titanic because you have to go Titanic just for the wave. Clear. Then I went into Unending Spirit Visage, Sunfire and then Thornmail. So I mean I just you full time, you could just. You could attack me as much as you want. But I was going in the ground and I was healing. Like that was it. And I you. The sustain on Rex I like you were talking about is just. [00:14:08] Speaker C: She's so frustrating to face because of that. [00:14:13] Speaker A: Like I went and gets analysis the next game and then I went built full bruiser against analysis. [00:14:19] Speaker B: Because he's always going to outscale you. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And that game, like you could tell, like just looking at my numbers specifically it was almost the same exact amount of time. One was a 50 minute game and one was a 49 minute game and I had over 100 more farm on the bruiser build. Like it's. It feels so much better, the bruiser build does. But that's just how it's going to be when you get more damage. That's how it works anyways, how I deal with mental. If I'm having a bad game or someone is tilting me in my game with a bad attitude, I try to A, I'll just mute him or B, I remember like I sit back and I'll be like, man, this is just a game. Like I'm never probably going to see this clown ever again. And I hope if I do, it's against him. [00:15:08] Speaker B: Okay, I Get so many repeats of the same people. It is actually absurd. The number of times I'm like, oh, it's this guy again. Either in the very next game or like, I've lost, I think four games to the same guy being on my team in the last couple months. And every time I see him, I don't remember his name right now, but when I see his name, I'm like, oh, this motherfucker again. [00:15:34] Speaker A: So if that happens to me, you might have a different story because your guys sound like they're a lot more toxic than the people I deal with. Like, if I get re queued with somebody again and on my team and they fed the last game, I got to remember this is a new game. Like, maybe they had a bad game, maybe they were off. Maybe they made a misplay and then continued to feed off of that misplay and like, couldn't recover. Just don't start off by flaming them immediately because now they're in a worse mood and you're in a bad mood because you're just continuing feeding off that. You got to give yourself every new game is exactly that. [00:16:07] Speaker C: As much as I 100% agree with you, that's not the people that Jax gets. [00:16:11] Speaker A: No, no, Jax doesn't. Like, this isn't Jax. [00:16:13] Speaker C: Those are the losers of the game when no one's playing. Well, that's the kind of person that he gets. If he's talking about a rager, he's talking about someone who will in that next game immediately start flaming him because they remember he was in the previous one. [00:16:26] Speaker B: And if they will not just flaming, but they will come to my lane and die. They will come to my lane and die to my lane opponent just to spite me. [00:16:34] Speaker A: They will give Jack specific advice. [00:16:39] Speaker B: I am not kidding that I have had a jungler play vi go in on a gank for my lane with Ultra and then the moment I engaged into the fight, flash away, queue away, and just run and leave me in the fight just because they wanted to troll me because the previous game had gone poorly. That's not a hyperbole, that's just a thing I had to deal with. [00:17:01] Speaker C: So the main takeaway from this is don't duo Q with Jax. [00:17:05] Speaker B: There's a reason I don't ask these guys to duo with me, and it's because they don't deserve that. [00:17:13] Speaker A: I think we need to put you in the top lane for a few. [00:17:17] Speaker B: I think actually, just like I can play mid or jungle when I play with you pillow since you play top and I think otherwise I should just play top lane. I play a lot of top champions. I like split pushing. I think that's actually throw an island because then I'm just removing the baby rager and if I lose top lane, so be it. That's fine. I'm not going to tantrum and make the game an automatic loss. I'm happy to be carried. [00:17:43] Speaker A: The only people that I know that baby rage top lane are typically gonna be Teemos. Teemo's for some reason always rage. I like anytime like a Teemo. They've always gotten mad. [00:17:58] Speaker C: I've seen them do stupid things. I've never seen them rage at me. [00:18:01] Speaker A: That's why I've had a lot of gnars get upset when they're losing. [00:18:06] Speaker C: That one seems wild to me. What? [00:18:08] Speaker A: There's one more that's always just like you're playing into them and you know, they're just like ego. Kind of like a Draven player. Is it Riven trying to think Riven? Yeah, Riven. [00:18:17] Speaker C: And Aurelius Riven is the one that I see like as the. I am either going to ego stomp someone and refuse to back down or I'm going to show an ego and lose and then rage because I lost. [00:18:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say Riven's top of that list. [00:18:35] Speaker C: She is. She is really the Draven of top lane. It's very sad to say because I love Raven. I'm just not good at her because I don't. I don't have quite the capability of doing all the good Riven shit. I don't want to put enough games on Riven to be able to properly do that. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no. Okay. That went way longer than I thought it would. But thank you for the, the, the commiseration. Lets give a quick reminder guys. If you've been watching Esports League, specifically at Worlds, there are two different reasons you should remember. Don't necessarily build your champion the way the players at worlds are building that champion. Sometimes this is because they're just building wrong. We've seen a few of those, but most of the time their builds are optimized for the highly coordinated environment that is pro play. And that is not what we're experiencing in solo queue. Solo queue is more chaotic. The communication is much, much, much lower. We value different things than they value. You in solo queue should not be building, for example, Rod of Ages, Orianna or Liandry's on damn near half the mage cast because you're not playing Pro5v5 coordinated League of Legends. And you're also not farming like they are. You're not soaking as much experience as they are. [00:19:59] Speaker C: The amount of gold and XP that pros get is astoundingly high. I have seen them hit break points on items 2, 3 minutes faster than I would have done and I wouldn't be playing bad. Normally they are in a game where. [00:20:14] Speaker B: You'Re getting kills and you're getting soaking. [00:20:16] Speaker C: Up golden XP to a degree that I do not understand how they're capable of doing this. But there is a third reason and it is explicitly for these large tournaments. They are playing at the patch from when the tournament started. Yep. Which means right now we are two patches past when they started. Things have changed slightly. Things have been nerfed, things have been buffed. Orianna barely at the beginning of that, caught a nerf. We talked about that nerf. We talked about how you needed to change the, the build and the, the rank order for her spells. The pros can get away with playing that build because that, that is a highly coordinated environment and he needs to survive 5 people instantly diving on top of him. Always. Because that's just how a pro is going to work in a solo queue environment. You need the damage. You need the damage a lot. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Exactly. Alright, Mike, our trinket tip this week literally just says more Nico Shenanigans. Explain. [00:21:21] Speaker C: So we've done several Niko trinket tips because each time we see more Niko Shenanigans we go, wow, that's, that's cool as hell. What? And then we explain it. And Niko can do some, some things that are insane in the game. And pretty much as far as I'm aware, none of it has been taken out so far. This was. I was just wandering through YouTube shorts watching random things and about maybe 10% of the things that I find are league related. Sometimes it's just fun plays and sometimes it's really cool. New information I've never seen before. The Kaisa tip from a couple weeks ago, that was one of those. This one is. It was specifically Niko vs Yasuo because of what Yasuo has. So Yasuo, his shield activates on champion damage. Niko can cast a spell, transform into a minion. And because she is now a minion, the spell doesn't trigger his shield. [00:22:21] Speaker B: That's so wacky. [00:22:23] Speaker C: So there are plenty of things like that where a champion is specifically required to trigger this. Minions aren't champions, so therefore once she's a minion, the spell is coded as if She's a minion. Niko's amazing. I need to play more Niko. [00:22:39] Speaker A: That's so insane. And you know, it's not a bug that they can just go in and fix because it requires an entire. Probably rewritten like a REW code. [00:22:47] Speaker C: It's. It's also just not a bug. We've. We've seen the things that Niko has done as a minion. Specifically. Take the cannon minion trick where you tank a million tower shots because cannon minions don't trigger the increase in tower aggro. But you're still a champion and you were the first lock on target. So it's locked on to you. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Like I can understand and maybe get behind the cannon minion part of it. Because, I mean that's. [00:23:14] Speaker C: That's. [00:23:15] Speaker A: To me, that seems kind of cool. Like a cool little thing. Because she can't attack that. She can't do anything otherwise she'll like. [00:23:21] Speaker C: I mean she can still auto attack. She becomes the champion. [00:23:23] Speaker A: But she can't like auto attack the tower or anything. Like she. Anyways. Like, that takes her out of transform. If you auto attack the tower in a transform, it takes you out of it. [00:23:33] Speaker C: I'm not sure she can auto attack. [00:23:36] Speaker A: I think. [00:23:36] Speaker C: No. She can auto attack is transform. 100 I'll have to. [00:23:39] Speaker A: I'll have to 100 but I don't think being able to completely negate another champions. Like passive is healthy. But that's just my opinion considering it's. [00:23:51] Speaker C: Yasuo and he's bullshit. Fuck him. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:53] Speaker C: When you have an ability that negates 50% of the abilities in the game. Fuck you. You deserve this. [00:23:59] Speaker B: I'm kind of with Mike on this one. [00:24:01] Speaker A: I don't like Yasuo. I just think he has. [00:24:04] Speaker C: He has Wind Wall. He can completely negate 90% of the damage in the game. But that's. That's the Nico Shenanigans. We're back again. [00:24:12] Speaker B: I. There isn't like a hotkey for Niko to instantly transform is there? Players doing that actually have to like target the abilities and then quickly move their mouse to the button and click it before the abilities hit. [00:24:23] Speaker C: Unless you can actively macro it. I don't. [00:24:27] Speaker B: Which would be very against the rules. You're not allowed to have macros that move your mouse to a specific. [00:24:32] Speaker C: No, no, no. I mean like. Like how you can have mouse button 5 be your item for specific location. There may be something specifically for Nekos that activates her champion ability. So I'm not 100% sure about that one. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Fair enough. Alright, let's get some listener questions done and our first question tonight is gonna come from our new patron. Uncle Chrisco writes. Hello, wards new player here with a question. I've been playing Skarner in the jungle and I'm having a great time. I looked up a lot of jungle guides, played a lot of practice tool and bot games, and listened to a lot of podcasts to try and be prepar to play the role. And so far it's working out pretty well. But I still have one big weakness that I haven't really been able to find any good answers for, and that is as a tank, when and how do I know to engage the enemy team in big fights? I know that generally it is the tank's job to get stuck in and start soaking damage, but I just don't know what to look for to start the fight. Especially since Skarner's e ability is so good for starting engagements. [00:25:31] Speaker C: There's a couple answers to this one, so let's just. [00:25:34] Speaker B: There isn't one clear cut like, oh, if it's this, then this. So let's list off, what are criteria that need to be met for an engage? To be a good engage, you need. [00:25:44] Speaker C: To have your team be able to follow up on your engage. That's yes, unless you are going in there to deny them the ability to get to someone else. So unless you are going in there specifically to be a disruptor, you need to have your team behind you. Because if you're going in to be a disruptor, you're guaranteeing, all right, I'm going in there expecting to die. Whether or not I survive is based on whether or not my team does something else. That's a rarity. You do that one in every ten games. The next one you should be doing in pretty much every game, your engage needs to be with the team behind you in like close to team fights. So if you're doing a baron fights, for example, you need to be able to look off and go, all right, my ad carry and my mid laner are relatively nearby. I'm capable of going forward and doing this tank fight because there's someone near me that can back me up when I go in. [00:26:38] Speaker B: So the next variable that I think should be considered is who would you be engaging on? Especially since Skarner can kidnap people. If you go through the wall and grab their scion and drag their scion into your team, is your team actually gonna be able to kill him before your cc runs out and he can then just ult onto your carries and fuck them over while his team then collapses in. [00:27:01] Speaker C: Yeah. The third is do you see someone massively out of position? Is there ad carry playing way too far back? Either nowhere near the teamfight or way out in front of the teamfight where they shouldn't be. [00:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Because to be clear, sometimes the answer is yes, you should engage on that sion because his team is out of position to be able to save him. [00:27:24] Speaker C: So like we, we've. We've talked about engages a tank. This pretty much, I think it was two episodes ago we were talking about engages on a tank. All of those apply to Skarner. There is another one that Skarner does that most others can't do, which is the surprise. Skarner is exceedingly good at getting around the front line and into the back because he can just. Oh well, we're doing a dragon fight and the dragon is at half health. But the enemy's moving in. I'm gonna sneak through the pit and grab the mid laner and now I'm gonna ult. Unexpected angles are your friend and you will sometimes use them sometimes. Cause don't forget you're also the team's tank. If you walk away too far forward, sometimes they just kill your backline. And now you're alone. Yep. The. [00:28:12] Speaker B: The other thing that I would say to think about is do you even need to engage? Sometimes the correct play, especially on someone with as strong of appeal as Skarner. [00:28:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:24] Speaker B: Is literally just to let the enemy dive in to fight you and then hold them in place while your team beats the shit out of them. [00:28:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:31] Speaker B: This is especially true if. If they have like a VI and Ambesa, those types of champions. Oh, they blew their load to dive in on your carry and then you ult them once they're done with their cc. Now your carry has time to get away and they have nothing left. Your carry lives and can now apply damage because there's nothing left that can threaten them. You just won the fight for your team without actually having to engage. But just by stymieing the enemy's engage. [00:29:01] Speaker C: Sion ultimately or not. Sinalt. I'm sorry. Skarner Ult might actually be the single strongest CC in the game. It is a suppress. So a lot of abilities that work on stuns do not work on his. It allows you to move them. It works on three targets now instead of one. And it has a surprisingly large range. So remember that that is one of the most powerful tools. Use it wisely, but don't be scared to use it. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Alright, shall we move on to the next question. Yeah, my goal at this point is to keep playing normal games until I feel comfortable enough with the game to start playing ranked. And I'm wondering if I should change champions. As I said before, I've been picking Skarner and I've been doing really well. Very positive win rate in the champion is just so much fun. Pushing people out into the lane from behind their turret with the E never gets old. But I know that in ranked, his pick and win rates are super low. And I'm worried the only reason I'm doing well with him is because I'm playing in normal games. So I'm wondering if my time would be better served mastering Skarner or switching to a, quote, more viable champion. Since my ultimate goal is to start playing ranked. [00:30:08] Speaker A: I've said it before, I feel like having high proficiency with one champion is a lot better than trying to pick up like a flavor a month or someone that might be better. Statistically, you're going to just be better if you know how to play the champion. Once you have figured out Skarner and feel really confident with it, I would recommend maybe picking up a like a back pocket champion with like a similar playstyle. [00:30:32] Speaker C: So we've, we've said it a couple times before. To go into ranked, you need more than one champion in your pool. You need to be able to do something for when your PK is either taken away from you or banned. Because sometimes people just don't like Skarner or randomly for no reason, he'll be buffed and suddenly he's op. Things like that happen often enough in league that you need to have a backup if you want to play with us so we can figure out, hey, these are the kind of champions you like. That's a good way to do that. You're going to need to test the waters on a couple of other champions. Go through the jungle list and see if there's anything that you just like the flavor of. And then once you've tested the flavor, go through the free champion rotation and see. All right, is there anything in here that I like to play? And that'll be if you find it and you like it, that'll pick up as many or one of your seconds or your secondary role. Or maybe you have a secondary role that you'd like to pass with. That can be another good thing to do with that. [00:31:25] Speaker B: The other thing I would want to point out is, yes, Skarner is the losingest jungler right now. However, he's still at like a 47, 48% win rate. So like almost half the games across the world that he's played in, he's, he wins. And literally if he gets to any of his core items, his win rate becomes pretty much normal. His win rate is low because a lot of Skarners are simply losing the game before the game gets going. [00:31:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Skarner is one of the champions where he has never been truly a popular champion. And so outside of a couple people who really like a few pros who love the champion or casters, in the case of Captain Flowers, they have sort of a niche following, but they're globally not popular. Skarner is among those where unless he's broken as all hell, he's not usually picked up by a lot of people. And so because he has a sub usual play rate, his win rate usually suffers a bit. And that's true for most people who have really low pick rates because they're not super well played. So they're not super well balanced. [00:32:38] Speaker B: But, and here's the big reason that I think if you enjoy Skarner, you should just keep playing Skarner. He's unpopular. That means he never gets banned and he's very unlikely to be picked away from you. He's unpopular. You're a new player. That means it is very likely your opponents have no idea what the fuck Skarner does. You can personally have a much, much, much higher win rate than the statistical average across all ranks. And those things are enough that if you're having fun with Skarner, fucking play Skarner and carry your ass to victory with him. He's a good champion. He's been played at Worlds four times this year. [00:33:21] Speaker C: Oh yeah. No, he's. He is good enough to be played at Worlds no matter what. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Ignore that he has a 0% win rate. [00:33:28] Speaker C: That is, that is not entirely Skarner's fault. [00:33:31] Speaker B: Yeah, he's been picked four times in pro. He brings things to the table that are valuable and we can't blame the west on his win rate, unfortunately. [00:33:43] Speaker C: But also he is a champion who with mastery, his win rate goes up relatively significantly, actually. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Yep. [00:33:51] Speaker C: Much like Briar, which we talked about a few times, the more you play Skarner, the more likely you are to see higher and higher win rates. [00:34:00] Speaker B: He has a learning curve. [00:34:02] Speaker C: His ult is not immediately intuitive, nor is his E. And because of that, he's someone who can't be immediately picked up and played. But you're never going to see as much nuance or skill as you will see with someone who's got even 10 games on him. But yeah. The main bit of advice here is get one backup because there will eventually be a game where you're not going to see a replay or something like that. Even if it's. Or just sometimes because you won't get the role. Sometimes you just won't get jungle. [00:34:29] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:30] Speaker C: So my main. Before you go into ranked, get one champion you can play in every role because sometimes you just won't get your roll. But focus on two. I would say just two. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Skarner plus someone else for your primary role. And that someone else, obviously it's not likely you're going to be have Skarner banned or picked away from you, but that someone else becomes someone you can pivot to if maybe you just need a break from Skarner or you really hate a particular matchup. [00:34:59] Speaker C: There are times when your team has no damage. [00:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Your team drafts a Galio, a Tank top and an Alistair and it's like, well, we only have an ad carry who can kill people. So. [00:35:12] Speaker C: And that ad carry is Jhin. So there's no dps. [00:35:15] Speaker B: Those are the times when you go, cool, I'm gonna fall back on my secondary champion that does more damage. So we can have a threat besides the ad carry. [00:35:22] Speaker C: Yeah. And then probably minimum 10 games for that champion. Just so that you know what they are and what they do properly. [00:35:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:30] Speaker C: Find the one secondary role that you like to play and then find another one or two champions for that one. Usually you'll find those two champ, those two roles pretty commonly. [00:35:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. All right, let's get some more questions. Our next question comes from Reigns who writes hi Wards. Now that I've been promoted, I've been taking some time to research and attempt some new picks in the top lane. I was looking at playing Top Lane Kayn as my for fun climbing pick. But after two games going 05 in lane on both occasions against bruisers, despite changing my approach to laning Phase, I have promptly put him in the Self Ban angle. Probably the correct choice. Top Lane Kayn has been dead ever since they changed Corrupting Potion to Not proc his passive. Which should tell you how long ago it was since Corrupting Potion doesn't even exist anymore. So question one. What self Bans do you guys have and how many games did it take for you to put them there? [00:36:25] Speaker C: Oh, I have a couple actually. Let me go through my list real quick. There are a couple of champions that no matter what I do, I can't seem to play them. Doesn't matter if they're popular. Doesn't matter if they're good. Doesn't matter if they're broken. I just can't seem to get it. Even if I enjoy playing them, Aatrox is there for me. I can't. I can't play Aatrox well. I don't understand why. He's mostly skillshot based, but I can't seem to ever get the amount out of Aatrox that anyone else can out of Aatrox. So he's in my I'm not playing this champion list. Riven is there because if I try and play Riven, I essentially lose the game. Because Riven needs to be brutally powerful to be good. And if you're not pushing yourself ahead and doing Riven things, you're not really making it out alive. In that case, it's. It's just not that way. And Kalista, because I'm not confident in my kiting well enough to play her in my orb walking. I can orb walk. I can do it well. I can't do it perfect. And I'm not gonna macro myself into doing it because that messes with me in so many other ways. So I can't play Kalista. [00:37:33] Speaker A: I'd say myself ban myself banned. A set like, Seth's super strong. He's a great champion. Anytime I play him, I just cannot, cannot win the game. Now, occasionally, I will have a really good game with him. If I'm just like, in a normal. I might play him, but set is myself band. I just can't play him. [00:37:53] Speaker C: Right. [00:37:54] Speaker A: Something about him. I'm missing something. [00:37:57] Speaker B: I. I had LeBlanc in myself band for a while because she was my most played, but I was at a 30% win rate. But since I've dropped back down, I've picked her back up again because she's really good at lane bullying people who are worse than you. [00:38:11] Speaker C: Well, didn't you drop her because they changed her animation with the new mode? [00:38:14] Speaker B: I did. [00:38:15] Speaker C: And that really. That really messed you up. [00:38:17] Speaker B: But I was still playing her, and I got used to the animation. I still don't like it, but I got used to it. But I just. I dropped her for months because I had a terrible win rate, and it didn't matter how good I felt. Statistics didn't lie. I was losing way more on her than I was on other champions. Champions. Well, I've picked her back up because I'm just stomping people now, and my win rate's gone up slightly. It's up to 32.4% on her despite my overall win rate being in the dumpster. So that should tell you. Like that's why I picked her back up and unbanned her. I also, even though he's one of my most played champions overall, I have yone in my ban jail right now. I won't play Yone because I think yone is just kinda bad right now. [00:39:01] Speaker C: I think all three of us have Yumi in that jail. [00:39:04] Speaker B: That's different. [00:39:05] Speaker C: No play, no touch. We ain't dealing with this. [00:39:06] Speaker B: I'm. I am not counting. [00:39:08] Speaker A: I still. I still have 100% win rate on Yuumi Top. I'm just throwing that one out there. She's not in my banjo. I just don't pick her. [00:39:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not counting champions that I just don't play in the first place as being in Banjo. Banjo means you do play it or did try to play it and have chosen. No, I will not play this in ranked. Something is not clicking. [00:39:30] Speaker C: Yeah, because I have such a large pool in that a sense that I don't have a champion pool. I play everything I have to have individualized champions. I will not play because I'm fairly comfortable on most of the champions in the game enough to play them. But there are a couple that I play significantly more and I should be probably focusing on. But I don't have that kind of attention span. I need. I need change. [00:40:00] Speaker B: Fair enough. Well, let's go to the next question from Reigns because I think we're gonna get some vitriol on this one. Are there any for fun ranked climbing picks you can suggest? I was thinking Kled, but he also seems weak right now, so I'm not sure for fun means not just low mechanical burden, but has some interesting and volatile parts of their kit. But I don't want to trade that I lose one trajectory. I don't want to trade that I lose one trade and lose lane, if that makes sense. [00:40:26] Speaker C: I actually do have one. [00:40:28] Speaker B: Okay. [00:40:29] Speaker C: It's Briar. I love Prior. Prior is really fun, but that's. You push that button, you're at the mercy of the game. I think that's insanely volatile. And to be fair, I also just play most of my champions for fun and I don't play a lot of ranked. For note, I don't play a lot of ranked, so I get to play more for fun. [00:40:51] Speaker A: I'd say a good climbing champ that's more on the for fun and I wouldn't say it's very volatile. But Volley Bear is really fun to play and climb with. Very simple. I mean it's a very Easy kit. And when you're really ahead, like, it's really fun. And even if you're behind, like, you're still able to stay in the game. It's a really good climbing champion if you haven't really learned to play them. Illaoi's fun. [00:41:15] Speaker C: I think we're gonna redefine what for fun means here. [00:41:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I read for fun and climbing and I go, these are mutually exclusive concepts. [00:41:26] Speaker C: Usually most of the time, for fun is play normals. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah. To me, for fun means I'm gonna do something wacky. It's gonna be for fun. [00:41:35] Speaker A: Like I was reading it. [00:41:38] Speaker C: We've done that stuff many of times. But almost all of that is exclusively to normals. If you aren't exclusively trying to win win the game, you should not be playing ranked. And to win win the game, you need to be playing it in a serious form. Which is also why, like, top cane I didn't think was a good idea anyways. [00:41:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm gonna say if you want to climb and you want to have fun, pick someone who does damage and cc. That's it. Just those are the criteria. Damage and cc. [00:42:05] Speaker C: Or if there is a champion whose kit you just really enjoy, but not all the time. My example, that was Briar, but I have another one for that, and that's oh, my little. My little Emo. Nor Yordle. Vex. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Vex is great. [00:42:19] Speaker C: She's very fun as hell. But I don't play her 90% of the time because it's not my usual try and win. [00:42:27] Speaker B: You know what I like playing her. Yasuo and Yone, they hate it so much. [00:42:33] Speaker C: Jump. Fear. [00:42:35] Speaker B: Yeah. No, for me, it's, you want to have fun and climb. Just play a champion that brings CC and damage to the table. Syndra, Vex, Annie, Volibear all fit that bill. Because, you know, Malphite is, I think, in my top 10 played now. [00:42:54] Speaker C: If you. [00:42:54] Speaker B: If you like the. [00:42:56] Speaker C: He's pretty. He's pretty one note. So most people maybe don't think about that as being for fun. Viego, I think is pretty for fun because you get to just play a bunch of different champions. [00:43:07] Speaker B: I love playing Viego, but again, we're. [00:43:11] Speaker C: Saying this one for fun is probably meaning something different for you than it is for us. [00:43:16] Speaker A: I read it as like a champion that's fun to play. So, like, why Volibear stuck out in my head is because when you get flicker blades on Volibear, it's just silly. Like, it's just completely silly. And Funny like your W's on like a two second cooldown and you're constantly healing and it looks ridiculous. So that's how I was reading it. And I'm trying to think of like other champions that to me are just like. Like Tom Kench is silly, but I mean it's a serious. He's a good pick. Like he's a fun champion in top lane. [00:43:45] Speaker C: Actually he might be a good one to point out he's got surprisingly large damage. He's Tank. He's got cc. He's. He's. He's weird and fun. [00:43:54] Speaker A: Rumble is a wacky. Like you don't see a whole lot in the top lane and he can be fun and he's very strong. Like you don't see a whole lot of him but he's. [00:44:01] Speaker C: What the hell are you? Sorry. I see Rumble all the time. [00:44:05] Speaker A: I don't ever see Rumble. [00:44:06] Speaker C: Oh no. [00:44:08] Speaker A: I just don't see him. [00:44:09] Speaker C: I don't know, maybe because people care about that nerf where you're in, but I've seen him everywhere, including world. I mean I don't know how you don't see him. [00:44:17] Speaker A: I might see him once and I don't think I've seen him once in these seat this season that I played in the top lane. [00:44:24] Speaker C: That's astounding to me. [00:44:25] Speaker A: It's 50, 60 some games. [00:44:27] Speaker B: Alright, let's. Let's answer question three. Does Hullbreaker not get affected by nearby allies anymore? Does that mean it's valuable no matter what? But decide near 50% or more of your game is in a side lane. So Hullbreaker changed over a year and a half ago. It no longer cares whatsoever about allies being nearby. And as a matter of fact, you can't ping it anymore to get the I'm hunting alone or I want to be alone message that it used to play. It is. Hullbreaker does two things. It passively makes your super minions and siege minions significantly stronger. They get a bunch of bonus damage, a bunch of armor magic resist, all of the above. It's. It's. And they get bigger and it gives you a bunch of health and AD and a five hit passive. And that five hit passive. So you hit four times and then the fifth hit triggers. It does damage based on your maximum health and it does double damage against structures, not just turrets. So it works on inhibitor as well. [00:45:34] Speaker C: So we, we must point this out. Hullbreaker is incredibly niche. It is played, it is useful, but it is niche. You shouldn't be building it commonly. You need to be a person who is most likely split pushing. But not necessarily because obviously it works on epic Monsters and Champions. Now. Yep, you need to be building health and you need to be. You don't need to be in the side lane, but you need to be shoving waves. [00:45:58] Speaker B: And that is a good important note. It is a five hit passive, but you can stack up the passive on Minions. It only triggers on Champions, Epic Monsters and Structures. [00:46:09] Speaker C: But also because it is a five hit passive, it works better on champions that are doing auto attacks consistently. [00:46:16] Speaker B: Yes, please stop building Hullbreaker on Illaoi. It's fucking bad on Illaoi. [00:46:21] Speaker C: The best champion that I think Hullbreaker is on is sett. [00:46:26] Speaker B: Yep, he gets an auto attack reset. He hits twice with every auto. He is literally the best Hullbreaker user in the game. [00:46:34] Speaker C: He's consistently a side laner. He's very frequently pushing waves. Doesn't mean he can't bring it into a teamfight where he's very good. And Hullbreaker is useful in teamfights. Now, movement speed is a great stat, but always remember this is a niche item and you need to have essentially probably a third item for Hullbreaker because you want health as a health stacker. Cyan can do it as well, but he can do it a little earlier. Same thing with like Tank Cho Goth. Anyone who can build health naturally in their kit benefits to Tall Breaker. But you want either your. Your. You want a warmogs essentially first is what I'm saying. And usually warmogs is a second item. Occasionally a first. [00:47:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Also this would be a reason to make sure you listen to the podcast because we cover things like when Hullbreaker stops caring about allies nearby on the podcast when we do our patch episodes. [00:47:29] Speaker C: Yeah, that was about a year ago now. We were giving a lot of advice for these items. Right now we are nearing the end of the year. The end of the season. Yep. We don't know what's about to happen in the next two months. Frequently, Riot will do massive sweeping changes to the game at the start of the next season or in the preseason right beforehand. So things that we are talking about right now will not necessarily be gospel for the next year. You want to tune into the. You will want to tune in to that, that patch when we first are talking about these major changes. Because who knows what will happen. Maybe we'll have brand new items again. They've completely redone the item system twice. Maybe we'll have a brand new Rift. Maybe Towers will function different. They've already changed how Towers work this year with respawning towers in the base. And with how plates function, we hell, we have two new objectives this year that didn't exist before. So you really want to not take anything we are saying right, right now as gospel for a long time? We're very, very soon going to get into a very wild period of league. It'll be. It'll be fun, but it'll be wild. [00:48:42] Speaker B: Alright, let's get one more listener question done before we wrap up for tonight. This one comes from Aaron, who writes, in the early days of League of Legends, junglers often donated blue buff to mid laners. And champions like Ivern was celebrated as the nice guy of the jungle. Nowadays, buffs are often shared without much thought. Sometimes laners hardly notice it's available to them. Do you think there should be more ways to build goodwill and teamwork in the game? For example, what if junglers could store an extra buff in their jungle item or special item when the draconic form spawns and grant it to a teammate without having them go into the buff circle? Could a system like this encourage more collaboration and camaraderie? What other ideas might help foster teamwork in a game outside of Gank's objectives, Buffs and warding. I actually kind of like the idea of the jungler picking up the shared buff and bringing it to a teammate. [00:49:32] Speaker C: That's a very cool idea. The ability to decide who gets it. It's exceedingly exploitable, which is why a lot of those things disappeared. Because on a fundamental level, league was solved for that patch time. And then they went, oh no, this is busted. And people are exploiting this system. So we're going to change this over now. They saw how good sometimes they may they make changes for the better with like with. I personally think with the Ivern system being transported to everyone, I think that's better for the game as a whole because Ivern didn't have to worry about, oh man, I really need that second buff to do my clear because I need mana. But my mid laner is just gonna take it now. It didn't matter. One of them could take it and you'd still get one. Yep. So this is a good system and sometimes things like that are are for the benefit of the game. But you need to be very cautious about which ones you do because very quickly they can get exploited. One of the key ones like this was the support item that was fundamentally exploited at the beginning of this year or last year, to the point where we were putting supports in the top line with that item to fundamentally Break the game. Jannat Top was a thing, so we need to be careful about them. But if you can, if you can think of like good system like that, jungle change good systems like that, they actually do reduce toxicity and build more camaraderie. I'm much less frustrated as a jungler because my mid laner can't just up and take my second or third buff and completely deny me my ability to farm through the game. [00:51:12] Speaker B: I want to see more systems in the game like Ornn Passive where he can upgrade his allies items, or Zilean Passive where he can literally just level up an ally sometimes because those feel good. They're not in the moment spells you cast, they're preparatory buffs. And that feels different in a way where it feels more like we're cooperating as opposed to you cast the right spell in the middle of the fight. [00:51:42] Speaker C: Those were great examples. Those are, those are probably the most co op things you can do. [00:51:48] Speaker B: Especially, especially in the case of Ornn. If you say a reminder to your team, hey guys, remember to put the item you want to upgrade in your first slot. So I can upgrade the correct item? [00:51:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's very important. [00:52:01] Speaker B: I really wish for Ornn that it was just you give them an upgrade and then they get a UI where they can click which one it applies to just to avoid that issue in the first place. [00:52:10] Speaker C: Or even if you could click the item explicitly instead of the champion. [00:52:14] Speaker B: And Ornn gains his own personal stats when he upgrades allies, so he personally benefits from playing the team game like a teammate. Similarly, Shyvana Passive, she gets armor and Mr. For taking dragons, the thing that junglers are supposed to do in the first place. So she personally gets rewarded for playing the game the way it's intended and working with your team and securing the objectives. I want more of that in League of legends. I agree 100%. [00:52:48] Speaker C: Now I'm going to do something a little differently because we're talking about this cooperative. Instead of taking Lucian into the top, you can take Lucian into the bot where his other passive actually functions and he has a co op passive that works with your. Your teammate. So maybe this time for once, take Lucian into the bot. [00:53:05] Speaker B: Play Lucian Top in the bot lane. [00:53:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I guess you can just play Lucian Top in the bot lane. [00:53:09] Speaker B: There you go. All right, guys, this has been episode 505 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Silman for Mike of many names for pillow pet. Have a great night. [00:53:20] Speaker A: Good night. [00:53:21] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:53:23] 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.