The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 506: Winter Rift Inbound?!?!?

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. And you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in League. Hello and welcome to episode 506 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host tonight, as usual. I'm Jack Soman 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. [00:00:50] Speaker C: I'm here and anyone who's been listening to today, take a little break. Go watch at least one game of Worlds. One game of Worlds finals. It'll be worth it. [00:01:00] Speaker B: It was a good series. If you didn't see it, it is highly recommended. We've also got Pillow Pet with us tonight. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Hello. Hello. [00:01:08] Speaker B: All right guys. We are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. The link is in the episode description. We got channels for playing games, chatting about the shit that was announced at Worlds that we'll cover in a moment. You want to talk about other video games? We've got a channel for that. We got an anime channel. Come hang out. It's a great time. We look forward to seeing you there. [00:01:30] Speaker C: I got to do a little bit of 1v1 coaching with one of our our friends because we were just hanging out for a while and he wanted to get some help taking a look at things. So like, yeah, if we're hanging around and you just want some help or some advice, yeah, we're there for that too. [00:01:44] Speaker B: Quite literally. If you see us in a public chat channel, feel free to pop in and say hi. Just period. [00:01:51] Speaker A: Or you can just ping us. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Yes you can. If you want to play games, be like, hey, at four awards, anyone want to play a game on League? We might do it. We might not be available. Who knows, but can't hurt to ask, right? All right. We do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman, where it's still Super Metroid twice a week. And mostly Path of Exile because we have a new Path of Exile League Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames once his hand heals. And Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet whenever we bully him into streaming again. [00:02:25] Speaker A: I'll get there eventually. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Alright. And we've got some shout outs to do. That's right. Shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the show at the Shoutout Tier thank you guys. You are keeping us on the Internet. And guys, if you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com theforwardspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show or in the case of this episode, a like 7 minute discussion of the World Finals and $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout out your name at the top of every episode. And these benefits also do apply to our general Gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners, you guys sent in questions this week. Thank you. We need more. We always need more questions. Write in to the fourwards podcastmail.com or drop a message in the question submission channel of the Discord so we can answer your questions on the show. Alright, so we got a patch. But before we actually get to the patch itself, I briefly want to touch on new shit that was announced at the World Finals that affects all of us. First of all, Riot dropped a reveal for a new champion. Zahen. He's another Darkin champion. He looks like a mix between Aatrox and Xin Zhao. He's apparently extremely overtuned on pbe, so don't expect the power level you see in videos on your TikTok or YouTube shorts to actually be the power he's at when he hits live. [00:04:10] Speaker C: But also take anything you see on the PvE with a grain of salt. It looks broken there. The people who are streaming those are usually very good. And there's no guarantee everyone on the PvE is very good. So a lot of times it's broken as on the pbe, but it's not broken in the regular game because you're facing people with real skill, or at. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Least people at the same skill level as you. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah, so chime in a little bit on him. You mentioned that he's a mixture of Zinzao and Aatrox from my understanding, and it's still early. He is, we should point out, not. [00:04:46] Speaker C: Aatrox, old Aatrox, old Aatrox, the original, like season three Aatrox. [00:04:52] Speaker A: He's got the revive capabilities and I think his passive result. [00:04:58] Speaker C: We have the. We have the entire kit released so we're not going to go over everything he does because they still have time to change anything. Until his release. We won't be discussing what his Abilities are what they do. All we can say is he's a. He's a fighter who's got some CZ in his kit. He currently uses mana, currently has a revive, currently has an unstoppability. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Yep. And he. They did say he is going to be the last champion release of the year, so he will be out before 2025 is over. [00:05:29] Speaker A: I would assume, looking at the time, season three has 55 days left at the time of recording, so that's probably when we'll see. [00:05:38] Speaker C: I'm guessing about a month away. [00:05:40] Speaker A: January 6th is when. Or January 8th, I think is when. [00:05:45] Speaker C: January is when the season ends. I'm assuming we're going to see him before probably around early December. [00:05:52] Speaker B: I would assume we're either going to get him on 25.23 or 25.24. So in either two or four weeks. Yeah, 25.24 will be the last major patch of the split. So that's why I think it might be 2523. [00:06:06] Speaker C: Very well. Could very well could be two weeks. If they think he's been tuned relatively well, they may push it forward. [00:06:12] Speaker B: We'll see. So the other thing they announced during Worlds Finals that's really exciting is we're getting a winter map again on Summoner's Rift. For those of you who weren't playing this game 13 plus years ago, the old version of Summoner's Rift had a winter version that they turned on every winter. When they redid Summoner's Rift to what it is today, they never redid the winter version. It was apparently a lot of work because they literally had to basically build a whole new version of the map from scratch. Yeah, they have been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes over the last couple years to make fundamentally changing the map easier for them. Like from a tech level, you may have noticed things like the Summoner's cup being on the Summoner's Rift during worlds and other like, tweaks to the Rift that have happened. Those are all a result of the backend changes that they have made building up to. They finally announced they're bringing back the winter map. We will have a snowy version of Summoner's Rift with Christmas trees and it looked like there were some candy canes in there. And everyone is happy about this. I think. I think this is unanimously. Everyone's excited. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Nasher comes out of the ground saying, ho, ho ho. And say with the Santa hats and mittens, very festive. I think Harold looks like a reindeer with a little red nose. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Do not do. Not quite. [00:07:43] Speaker B: I can't tell if you're fucking us, fucking with us on this or not. Either way, as someone who remembers back in 2012 when we got this thing, I'm really happy for it finally coming back. [00:07:58] Speaker C: Yeah, it. It was a nice little change of pace and it's going to be real good to see it again. [00:08:02] Speaker B: Okay, let's actually talk about the patch that just came out this past week, and I'm going to kick it off with a really straightforward change. Yone, everyone's least favorite. Well, second least favorite, Wind Shitter. He got nerfed really hard last patch by Doran's shield and second wind being nerfed. And the buffs they did to compensate apparently weren't enough. So they're adding five base damage to his Q at all ranks. Cool. This should actually make a meaningful difference in his ability to last hit and early trade. And then once you're like level nine and actually have max rank like five damage when you're hitting for 200 plus, a hit stops mattering as much. [00:08:48] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's not enough that it allows him to build tank that that's a small enough base damage ratio that it's not like. Well, he gets to go this directly into Jack show like a couple times they've done before. [00:08:59] Speaker B: I'm. I'm so thankful they didn't overbuff him. I want to play Yone. He's fun. I don't want Bruiser Yone to be a thing. That's oppressive. All right, Mike, Speaking of oppressive, we're. [00:09:13] Speaker C: Gonna do an inverse one. We're gonna talk about Akshan, who is a very big winner from that problem. So everybody getting slightly less sustained meant that Akshan, who is an early game bully, got to early game bully very, very hard. And the tone downs on him are small but good. All they took is 20 base health and they added one second to the initial cooldown of Q and it scales back to where it was initially. So at rank one, it's one second longer by rank five. Exact same cooldown as before. Just enough to tone him down levels one through three. While you're really trying to get all your stuff, this is a good way to do a nice little tap. There's no actual damage nerfs because his damage damage is about where it should be. And changing Akshan's damages is very difficult because of how his auto attacks work with his 200 plus year. Fucking passive. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I still just wish they would just remove his shield so that he could actually be traded with. [00:10:20] Speaker C: He is such a convoluted champion. Like they. The. The meme of 200 years is Aphelios. But it's, it's if. If Aphelios is 200 years, Akshan's a thousand. That the amount of bullshit that they stacked into him was oh boy. [00:10:37] Speaker B: It's crazy. [00:10:39] Speaker C: All right. [00:10:40] Speaker B: Pillow. [00:10:41] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:10:42] Speaker B: You got a champion to talk about. Yeah. [00:10:44] Speaker A: So Skarner got some changes and you would think that these are some really nice changes. He's getting more AD ratios. His E is adding an ad ratio of 120%. He's getting some base ad growth. He's just getting buffs all around. His Q is cooldown is going down. It's going down. But that's the compensate that the cooldown doesn't start anymore till your last. You use your last bit of Q. It used to. The cooldown used to start on first cast and his R's cast time's going up. They're really trying to get him into the game, give him some juggernaut builds. I was looking his win rate since these changes have actually went down almost a little more than 4%. It was 47. It's down to 43. But I'm just going to say his pick rate is doubled. More than doubled. So that's. That is why he's huge numbers. A lot more people are giving him a try. I did have a chance to play him specifically in the top lane. Wasn't a great matchup. So I wasn't having like the best time in the world. But when he did feel really strong, I did get several solo kills. It was against a set I ran. I did like a W max with Manaflow Band and he felt really good. I think these are some good changes. I like when they add an AD ratio into and give options into someone that's typically just going to be stuck behind like a tank build. [00:12:26] Speaker C: So Skarner is very much like Briar in that the more you play him, the higher your win rate on him becomes to a non average like across every champion. That's true. But in some champions it is like a statistical anomaly on how much better you get. Breyer is one of those champions. Skarner is one of those champions. The more you play him astronomically, the more win rate you're going to be. Which is why when you double his player rate, his win rate goes down. [00:12:53] Speaker A: I will say Uncle Chris goes probably happy to hear about these buffs since we talked about him last time. Definitely. I think he's going to be in a lot better spot Once these numbers average out, I'd say he'd probably go above 50% win rate or right at my. [00:13:09] Speaker B: My favorite. My favorite of all these changes is that they added an 80 ratio to his wall charge thing so that items like Sterak's suck less. Sterak's is so good on the type of champion he is. [00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah, he needs it. [00:13:27] Speaker C: 0.1 seconds on the cast time of his R is a surprisingly large amount because you are aiming it at a bunch of people. But it is not long enough that I think it actually will give many more people a chance to get away. [00:13:40] Speaker B: It's specifically intended to be a Nerf so that he doesn't become dominant in pro where they're playing on zero ping. [00:13:47] Speaker C: 2.1 seconds will not matter for 95% of your games. 5% maybe. They were at the edge before. They barely got caught. Now they'll get away. So realistically that that little dirt, the big like trade off in his kit has actually been the Q change. Getting some more power into it while actually having a cooldown be later. [00:14:09] Speaker A: Used to be before this change that like, you could hold your cue and like by the time you use your last one, if you weren't just like rapidly using it because you could space it out, it's like Aatrox, like your Q would just always be right back up. So I think it's a good change to make it to where like once you're done with the last queue, like then you can. Then your cooldown starts. [00:14:30] Speaker C: Yeah. You can essentially drag your boulder with you from a camp to another camp and then immediately able to cast it again. Shouldn't be able to do that anymore. You may as well just blast the camp pretty much. [00:14:39] Speaker B: All right, I got a couple more champions I want to briefly cover. The first LeBlanc got changes. And the reason I'm highlighting is not because these changes do anything. They nerfed her health growth and her armor growth by small amounts. I'm highlighting it because LeBlanc is apparently really high win rate and these changes don't do a fucking thing. She's really safe and really bursty when you're going. The Doran's Blade build I talked about previously on like a couple episodes ago. She's really strong and people are starting to pick up that Doran's Blade is the better starting item than Doran's ring on her specifically. And it's very noticeable. But I don't think Riot's picked up why it's strong Yet. So we'll see. We'll see how things go. But these nerfs don't do anything. That's why I wanted to highlight them the actual changes that do something. They're buffing Volibear's base stats. They gave him four base armor and two base ad and then nerfing his Q very, very, very slightly. And nerfing the damage cap against monsters on his E until you rank it. Basically forcing you to actually max E second on jungle. Whereas before you sat on one point of E and maxed Q second. [00:16:03] Speaker C: Unless you were going ap, which would. [00:16:05] Speaker B: Be weird even then. Like, it really didn't add very much damage to rank it up. It added like 1% base or max health damage per rank. But now it scales up the damage cap dramatically. You need to max it second or you won't do enough damage to objectives. And that's the big change for Volibear that actually impacts the jungle mostly is he loses some movement speed. Not really because of the Q nerf, but because he has to max E second instead of maxing Q second. [00:16:37] Speaker C: And you. You pretty much have to. [00:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to now. So since top Lane gets to enjoy the 2ad without really caring about this part. Top Lane Volibear is a little better. [00:16:51] Speaker A: I mean, four base armor good, but four base armor is not a small amount. Like that's significant. [00:16:57] Speaker B: Four base armor is significant. 2 AD is significant because he's a champion who Auto attacks a lot and pretty quickly. Yes, that adds up. All right, Mike. Talk about a champion on the other end of the spectrum. [00:17:14] Speaker C: So the next one we've really got to talk about here. Pretty much A Soul is the only other champion that that really received noticeable changes. Most everything here has been pretty minimal. The first change, this is actually probably the more minimal of the two changes. And that's saying something because it's a lot for how simplistic it is. His Q Breath of light is gaining 5 damage in all ranks. With how often q does damage. 5 damage at all ranks is a surprisingly large amount of damage. Unless I'm looking at that wrong. And that's the burst proc from the Q completing a circuit. I'm not sure which it is. I think that's the circuit, which actually means this is even less than I thought it was. I think this is the burst from the circuit from completing it. So you have to channel your Q on a target for one full second and then you hit the burst, and that's gaining five damage at all. Rex. Yeah, that's how that is not super impactful. Yes. It's technically an aoe. Everything in the burst would. Would feel that pop. Not. Not super impactful. Very impactful. They're giving him five movement speed Base Aurelion Sol. You live and you die by your move speed. Because you have to stand still to cast your Q. Being able to pick up and dodge and move things quickly. 5 base move speed on a twitch movement. It's huge. Plus it factors into how far you move with your W because you're adding movement speed per range. So like you're moving around the map much more to fuel that charge. Boy, this is going to be interesting. Like yeah, the movement speed is the big buff here. The Q burst is. Yeah. [00:18:54] Speaker A: I mean his base movement speed was already pretty low at 335. So 340 seems like a pretty good little touch in the right direction. Like they're not over buffing him by any means with like damage numbers or anything. I think the base movement speed will be good on him because he's a very slow scaler. [00:19:12] Speaker C: They have to properly scale this because a Sol is one of the champions that can completely take over again. He actually has the single best scaling in the game if you infinitely scale the game. Because if you infinitely scale the game, a soul can kill you at 99% health. [00:19:29] Speaker B: That. But also he has such a high percent max health damage when he gets enough stardust stacks on his Q that there is no amount of tankiness that can survive him for any length of time. [00:19:38] Speaker C: Yes. So realistically, in a 40 minute game, a SOL is one of the strongest champions in the game. Giving him five movement speed helps across all points in the game as opposed to the five damage on the burst which really only works super well for that first couple levels. And it's mostly for getting a couple more minions where you would have accidentally not gotten. The fact that his W is based on his movement speed is huge. So now you're multiplying even more when we have the additive bass boots. Plus potentially he. He usually goes the spell pen boots. But he'll go swifty sometimes when people are getting slows on him because slows really affect him. This really affects his ability to WQ because that slows him while he's doing it. So now he's still keeping up with you like this. This is incredibly potent. This is a very powerful movement speed buff. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Movement speed is already the strongest stat in the game. It's just invisible power. And a Sol makes it visible because of how broken it is on him. Alright, pillow. We've saved the best for last. Talk to us about all the rune changes. Cause what the fuck. They changed a whole bunch. [00:20:56] Speaker A: This is an insane amount of. This is a rune patch. Like they. They're skipping the champions and not making anything significant there. So we got a long list of rune changes. I'm just going to start at the top and we'll go down and discuss them as we go over them. So biscuit delivery is getting another change. They're actually nerfing it by 0.5% of your maximum health as the healing. So it was 2%. Now it's 1.5 plus 20 plus 20. It's not going to make a big difference because the way they. When they nerfed it originally, taking it away from. They made it so that tanks couldn't hold on to it and heal a substantial amount or fighters and heal a substantial amount. And they just made it to where like yeah, it's. It's a good early game healing item. That's all it needs to be. So I mean there's not much really to talk about. They're trying to get down on the early game sustain and there. This is them continuing to fight it. So biscuit delivery, getting a little nerf cash back is the next one. This one is pretty significant. I use this one a lot. So with cashback ruin, when you buy a major item, it refunds. It used to refund 6% of the money back to you. Of the gold it was 6%. Now it's going up to 8%. And you know, doing a little quick math, you buy a 3,000 gold item, you're getting a little less than 300 back. Like you're getting free boots with your first major purchase. [00:22:31] Speaker C: Something like that. But like this is a 30% buff on this. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:22:36] Speaker A: Like it's significant. [00:22:37] Speaker B: That's the big thing is it's buffed by a third of what it used to be. [00:22:40] Speaker C: Quite potent. [00:22:41] Speaker A: Like you get a lot of cash back. Like by the end of your getting onto your last item, like half of it's already been paid for in cash back. [00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Like you hit four items on a marksman or a mage where one of those items is Infinity Edge or something else similarly expensive, you're literally getting a thousand gold back by four items. [00:23:03] Speaker C: Yeah, 100. If all four of your items are 3,000 gold, you get a thousand gold back. [00:23:08] Speaker A: This lets you get to your full build or your. Your spikes much quicker. This rune is completely useless when everybody is full build. So you're not getting any Power then. So this is a early game power rune. [00:23:25] Speaker C: No. [00:23:25] Speaker B: But you don't the way to think. [00:23:26] Speaker C: Of this any power on on gold items. Late game either. Like when you're full build on any gold item, you're damageable. Yeah. [00:23:34] Speaker B: With this buff, this rune basically amounts to almost a kill per item you complete. In terms of power. [00:23:40] Speaker C: Yes. And that's like an initial kill. Not. Oh no. I've killed him five times. [00:23:46] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:47] Speaker A: It's big good change. [00:23:48] Speaker B: I think it should be picked up. [00:23:50] Speaker C: A lot more now if you are a late scaling champion. I think you want this knife because you're designing to go to the late game anyways. You want three or four items, you better be picking this one up. Asol wants this. Yep. [00:23:59] Speaker B: Also like it means that the only reason to ever pick magical footwear now is specifically for the 10 movement speed because cash back breaks even with it in terms of gold value. A little after one item. Like two items will always be more gold than magical footwear. [00:24:15] Speaker C: You get magical. You usually get the free. The free boots faster. So. [00:24:19] Speaker B: And your first legendary. They're around the same time. If it's a low kill game 10, 15 minutes. [00:24:25] Speaker C: Well yeah. You get magical foot more faster if you're getting kills. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:29] Speaker A: All right. Next one guardian. So guardian shield is getting a 30 shield bonus. It's going from 150 to 180. It's getting 10% more AP power scaling and that's it. You get more shield on Guardian. So that's exciting. [00:24:49] Speaker C: Good for more base. A little more AP shield. It's good. [00:24:53] Speaker B: It should make it much more viable on champions like Lux Support or Morgana where they're not really enchanters and don't want to build enchanter items. But they're not necessarily the primary carry mage either the way like a Vel' Koz or brand might be. [00:25:08] Speaker A: Next one's pretty. Another pretty exciting buff. Hail of Blades is getting a buff. It's unchanged for ranged but melee was 140 for three attacks. That's 140% attack speed. And now it's going up to 160. So you get a 20% attack speed buff. Bonus attack speed buff. It's gonna be pretty good for everybody that uses it. I mean I choice for some things. Yeah. I mean there's several top laners that use it. Master Yi lately has been abusing it in the top lane. [00:25:45] Speaker C: I don't know why he's been using it because he's just pretty much better with lethal tempo and Jenny in any case. [00:25:50] Speaker A: But Just because you can get four quick attacks off in a matter of a second. [00:25:55] Speaker C: He doesn't quick attacks. He wants to fight you. [00:25:58] Speaker B: I think it makes. I think this is actually a buff for Critical Master Yi, who should be going Halo Blades and a nerf for On Hit, who should have always been going Lethal tempo. And that hasn't changed. [00:26:09] Speaker A: Next next will be Legends Bloodlined. So Life Steel per stack was 0.35 scaling up to 5.25% and now it's 4% per stack max with a maximum of 6% life steal. Good. More Life Steel. [00:26:27] Speaker B: Slightly better. [00:26:29] Speaker A: Like not nothing big there. This one's pretty decent. So the minor shards that you get at the very bottom of your rune tree. The movement speed one is getting a buff from 2% to 2 and a half percent movement speed. Pretty good change. Half percent is a decent amount when it stacks up. Maybe really in soul like this one with his buff. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Who knows this is underrated rune. [00:26:55] Speaker A: More movement speed coming from Nimbus Cloak. The next one it was 14% scaling up to 40 and now it's 15% scaling up to 45%. A lot of people take Nimbus Cloak. I see it a lot. And now there's going to be a lot more people taking Nimbus Cloak. Specifically Garen's. I see it a lot on Garen's. So he's going to be moving faster at you. The Flash. [00:27:16] Speaker B: It's really popular on ghost users in general. [00:27:21] Speaker A: And now some sad movement speed. [00:27:24] Speaker B: No, this is happy this change needed to happen. [00:27:27] Speaker A: Slow resistance from Slow resistance from Phase Rush is getting cut down from 75% to 50%. Could change for the Phase Rush abusers in that been going around lately. [00:27:41] Speaker C: If you've watched anyone play Rise, you've seen them hit two attacks a run the away faster than you can do things. That's Phase Rush. Phase Rush's movement speed hasn't changed, but like giving it the slow power so that you can trade versus that. Yeah, that needs to happen. [00:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah. They can't no longer run away from you if you have a slow as fast. They'll still be moving fast, but just not as fast. All right. Some tenacity changes with the tenacity shard. You're getting 5% more tenacity and slow resistance was 10%. Now it's 15%. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Not as good as it sounds because this is still multiplicative with other sources of tenacity, but very nice. [00:28:24] Speaker A: So if you're not buying tenacity, it's good. [00:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah. It should be really Good early game against like Morgana and Leona type champions. [00:28:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:34] Speaker A: And last but not least, probably the most unused rune that I've ever seen. Triple tonic. I'll be honest, when I was reading over this, I had to think, what is triple tonic? I was like, are they adding a new rune? No, triple tonic. Then I remembered you get three potions. The last one I think is a skill potion where you get an extra skill. So your Elixir of Avarice, bonus gold you're getting was 40. Now it's 60 bonus gold. Cool. 20 more gold. That's 5, 5, 10 more seconds. In the rift, the adaptive force pretty, pretty significant from 20 to 30. So you get 10 more adaptive force. So if you're AP, you're getting more AP. If you're AD, you're getting more AD. [00:29:25] Speaker B: And that elixir is specifically the I spike at 6 and I'm going to kill you now elixir. So more AP or AD is big for that. [00:29:33] Speaker C: Uh huh. [00:29:34] Speaker A: So yeah, those are your rune changes. A lot of significant ones. A lot of ones that are just like meh. So expect more, more movement speed and more zoomies. More attack speed. [00:29:47] Speaker B: All right, so that's the patch. Let's answer some listener questions. Our first question tonight comes from Toast, who writes, how do you play against two mages? Bot lane, as an AD carry, are there certain AD carries that are better at laning against double mage? Or is it just how you play it that makes the big difference? [00:30:07] Speaker A: I mean, right on. [00:30:08] Speaker C: Yes, technically, yes and yes. [00:30:10] Speaker A: Like initially, right off the bat, like you just abusing cooldown windows is a really good start to like your mages counters. If they don't have cooldowns, then they're. If they don't have their abilities, then they're not going to be able to do a whole lot. But most likely they'll just probably be standing and sitting back and trying to. It's. It's tough. But I mean one of the right answers is knowing the cooldowns and when you can go in, get your farm and then back out. [00:30:40] Speaker C: Yeah, this very, very heavily depends on who those two mages are, because what skills they have and what order they rank skills in changes a lot of the formulas for this early stuff here because a lot of. One of the things that you need to be doing is putting early pressure on mages because they're weak, they want their levels and you care more about gold. And early AD carries are usually stronger than early mages, depending on the spells that are used and what they Have So like a Lux is generally speaking very powerful in the bot lane because she has one immediate CC and one immediate burst and an extra pow on her. Her auto attack relatively short cooldowns on all of them. Which means she can really fight back against AD carries. As opposed to the reason why you don't see Syndra in the bot lane because despite the fact that she does a lot of damage she. She needs to focus that damage on getting farm and well getting kills and levels. But you know, sometimes Syndra is an AP carry in the bot lane. So like there are. There are weird things here. [00:31:45] Speaker A: Another thing with like mages they're very resource dependent early especially with like mana. If you can get them to use abilities and dodge these abilities and get their mana pool low and you can try to keep them in lane as like an adc you're in an upper hand. If they have no mana then they can't really do a whole lot till their first back and they're most likely going to get last lost chapter and then they'll never run out of mana again. So you definitely want depends on what. [00:32:16] Speaker C: The mage is again. So the mages you see most often like you see Ziggs in the bot lane as the major mage to be there because he functions like an AD carry in a sense. He likes to hit towers. His auto attacks do a surprisingly large amount of damage and his wave clear is insane. Most early game AD carries Draven Kalista are very good into lane mages because they do a lot of burst for very few resources. Significantly quickly over and over and over again. However, most AD carries can just exert enough pressure to throw double mage out of the bot lane. There's a reason you don't see double mage almost ever. Because it's really risky. You better land those kills and put that AD carry on the back foot. The AD carry will just out sustain you. They usually have some form of if not inbuilt lifesteal within runes then some kind of sustain. They've got significant DPS even early on versus what a mage can bring. If you miss a single skill shot as a mage you. You can't miss an auto attack unless you dodge it. So it it's a bit of column A, a bit of column B. The big thing really is you have to be proactive as the AD carry and put them behind. [00:33:41] Speaker B: Alternatively play Ezreal or Caitlyn and just outrange the mages to where they can't really threaten you and you can still farm from a mile Away. [00:33:49] Speaker C: Yeah. There is the complete opposite fact of. Oh, oh, you have two mages. Good luck hitting me. [00:33:55] Speaker B: Ezreal is literally the best ad carry in the game against double mage lanes because he just doesn't give a shit. He can aggress if a window to aggress shows up, but he can also farm from far enough away that unless the mages are able to literally stand between his minions and him, he can still get the farm while they're throwing spells at him. [00:34:14] Speaker C: And even if they're able to do that, then it doesn't matter what you're playing. Well, they're doing that then. Then suddenly that damage you'd be throwing on minions is going to them. And they better hope that they're landing that poke on you because you're gonna win the poke lane then. Yep. [00:34:29] Speaker B: The. The worst is when your support is like a nautilus or something and they keep trying to go in and getting killed and nothing you can do. [00:34:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So like. [00:34:38] Speaker B: Or an Alistair. Alistair is really bad early against double mage. [00:34:41] Speaker C: Huh. So like, the. The big thing is there are ways to play to just beat double mage. That's why it's not common. [00:34:49] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:50] Speaker C: But you still need to be like, if they're good enough at it, they can. They can stop you completely. [00:34:57] Speaker B: All right, let's go on to our next question, which comes from Reigns, who writes, if you get items like Titanic, Hydra plus Sundered sky, can Poppy be a functional side laner? [00:35:08] Speaker C: Yes. [00:35:09] Speaker B: I understand there are champs that do it better than her, but I like her kit and her aesthetic. And frankly, I'm struggling to find a secondary or even third champion to play top other than Garen that I really enjoy and can play solo side lane agency and win on despite potato teammates. [00:35:22] Speaker C: So one. [00:35:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:35:24] Speaker C: Popping it on. [00:35:25] Speaker B: Now here's the key. You don't need Titanic, Hydra, Sundered Sky. Yes. Because Sundered Sky's heal is incredible on a champion like Poppy, who brings a lot of CC and shielding to the table. But because of the way Poppy's Q works with its double hit, 100% AD ratio per hit AoE on a 4 second cooldown before ability haste, you do not need Titanic Hydra to clear waves at all. [00:35:56] Speaker C: Are you gonna say the same item? I think I'm gonna say second item is one of the best items you can possibly get. Stark says I would say your best third item. Second, because Sunder sky should still be your first item if you're planning to do a side lane damage. Poppy, Trinity Force is your friend. Not the best item, it is your friend. Because your Q trades are obscene. Your movement speed's already good. Your sticking power is incredible. The burst damage you can get out of it is very high. Sterak will slightly boost that because that's what sterics does. So they. They mold well into a full combo together with. [00:36:37] Speaker B: While that is true. Go ahead. [00:36:39] Speaker A: I was gonna say with Poppy. If you're trading a lot with your Autos, maybe Trinity Force would be a good route to go. But with Poppy, you're usually only trading with your ranged auto attack that produces the shield. Other than that, you're just like poking with the the shield, trying to hit him with a Q, trying to dive them under tower with the wall slam. [00:37:05] Speaker C: You play a very different poppy than I do. [00:37:07] Speaker A: Well, I also play top lane. [00:37:09] Speaker C: True. But like I played Bobby Knoplin a lot. [00:37:13] Speaker A: You don't see her build Trinity Force hardly. Like I never. Anytime I've won against a Poppy. I don't. I see her build a stuttered sky. I see her build a Sterak's maybe like a death stance. Like she's going like a juggernaut E route because she wants to be in the fight for long as possible. And Trinity Force, while we really good for like, if you dash at them and then throw your ranged auto, you do a lot. You would do a decent chunk of damage. She's trying to stay in there and survive. And this is why I'm calling it. [00:37:44] Speaker C: A side lane one and not a normal one. Because normally if you're doing teamfight times, that's when I agree with you. [00:37:51] Speaker B: But here's the thing. If you just go second item Sunfire or Hollow Radiance, depending on what damage type your opponent is, it's similar overall damage in any kind of all in or extended trade because of the ticking damage of those items. And the defensive stats on it are phenomenal for making sure you are always the one winning that trade. And then when you do build that Sterak's third Poppy's passive on her W, which gives you a multiplier on your resistance. Stats is doubled when she is below 40% health, aka when Sterak's procs and gives you a giant fucking shield, you should pretty much always be going either Sunfire or Hollow Radiance, depending on damage type of opponent, in my opinion, because it gives you much, much, much better dueling similar all in. And it's just a much better item. It also makes you a better team fighter later if you do have to divert team fighting instead of split pushing yeah. [00:38:53] Speaker A: To answer your question, yes, Poppy is a functional side laner without Titanic Hydra. It's just not. There's just no reason for it. And other than that there's multiple ways to build her depending on. I mean there's even lethality builds on her if you're trying to go nuclear. I mean she's got millions of build but you do not need Titanic Hydra because her wave clear is already really good. [00:39:18] Speaker C: Yeah, Titanic is a supplement to usually either give you auto attack resets or two clear waves quicker. She needs neither of those. [00:39:26] Speaker B: Titanic is really good on champions like Shen who have shit wave clear but want to be in a side lane. All right, Reigns sent in more questions and we appreciate that Reigns, but I'm going to jump down to Uncle Chris go so we can get a question from a different person tonight. We will answer more of your questions next week, Reigns. I promise you just. [00:39:48] Speaker C: You have so many. [00:39:50] Speaker B: We appreciate it. Seriously, like I'm. This is not a critique. You are the main reason I don't criticize the listeners more for not sending in questions. It is appreciated. Alright, so the other question we have from Uncle Chrisco is. Hello wards Uncle Chrisco here. Back with another question. I like to warm up a little bit before I start playing league. Until recently, I liked taking Skarner into the practice tool and doing four level one full jungle clears, two blue starts and two red starts. The problem is there's a bug in the new patch. When you take Skarner into the practice tool after you reset the game, the cooldown on Skarner's Q ability will go from around 8 seconds to 220 seconds. So I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions for warming up before a night of league. Since I'm not going to spend 15 minutes reloading the practice tool four times. Uh, I have a suggestion, Uncle Chrisco. Have you tried installing League of Legends on a solid state drive? It should not take you 15 minutes to load the game four times when you're solo and you're not being held back by the idiots and solo queues stupid hamster computers. It should literally load in seconds. I literally load the practice tool in. [00:40:57] Speaker C: Two seconds or less usually as well. Yeah, it's also possible. I don't know about this bug. Is it something that you can turn on the auto cooldown refresh and off the auto cooldown refresh to reset the cooldown back to where it should be? Maybe you can do that manually if you want. Like if you're trying to to do that, you go, all right, I Know the cooldown is going to happen here, activate the cooldown here, put it off. If you're, if you're so worried about loading and unloading the game, you can do that manually to with it. Honestly I, I don't do a warm up like that. Usually my warm ups are some form of actual game versus players. I'll do normals, I'll do Arams. Now if you're doing jungle clears, I think once you've got your jungle clear pretty much down and you understand your jungle clear, practicing the jungle clear again and again as a warm up isn't truly beneficial as a warm up because you're not shaving off two or three seconds off of your jungle clear. Doing this, you're sort of putting yourself into a habit of this is how the clear is going to go. And in about 30 of those games. So one out of every one of your four, someone's gonna mess with your jungle and that's gonna completely throw you off your grave. [00:42:15] Speaker B: True. [00:42:16] Speaker C: So I would, I would probably like do. If you, if you really like doing the. The practice tool startup, do it once, maybe twice then back out and do like a normal game or an Aram or something. [00:42:28] Speaker B: Yeah, you don't need to do it four times. [00:42:31] Speaker A: If I remember last time you, you aren't comfortable yet going into ranked if I remember from your previous questions. So normals are your, your ranked right now. You can take that a step lower. Even go into the swift play. Swift play is pretty, pretty decent. It's quick to load. You don't have to do a ban phase. None of that. You just select what you want if. [00:42:55] Speaker C: You want to play Skarner. So that way you don't have to worry about like Picker man. [00:42:59] Speaker A: You will have to select a second roll which there is a chance that you get it. But you could just do like Skarner top if you wanted to. If you're wanting to just play Skarner and get better at Skarner. So yeah, you can just do like a swift play. They're usually pretty quick. 20, 25 minutes and you're out. [00:43:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I'm also in the. Because ranked is my primary league. If I, if I decide to warm up at all and not just jump straight into it, which I often just jump straight into it. But I'm also a crazy person who can literally jump straight from path of Exile to League of Legends and play and not have issues. [00:43:32] Speaker C: We've also been playing for 16 years. [00:43:34] Speaker B: So yes, I usually will warm up with a normal game so that it's Real Summoner's Rift that I'm warming up with. It's just no stakes because it's a normal game. Win or lose, who cares? A lot of people warm up with Arams. I'm just not a huge fan of Aram. This is not really something I love. It's fine. I do want to caution. This is something I've seen a lot of people do and I actually think it's a bad idea. Do not have your warmup be co op versus AI that does very wrong things. It is too close to Summoner's Rift to where you are reinforcing bad habits that work on bots and don't work on human players. [00:44:20] Speaker C: CO OP vs AI is a training tool for very, very, very new players. And if you're playing normal games consistently and enjoying them, the only reason for you to go into co op verse AI is to test new champions in a real environment. [00:44:35] Speaker B: Yes. I think Aram is my actual just recommendation. Aram is close enough to Real Summoner's Rift that skills transfer mostly. [00:44:43] Speaker C: I have a better one, I think. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Go ahead. [00:44:46] Speaker C: Brawl is still a thing fair for the next couple weeks. Still minimum a couple months. I think this is going away. No, this is like a year. I don't know. That's Arena. That's sticking around for a year. Brawl should be sticking around until I think January. Brawl is very fast. No lane, no roll. Put it. Put the champion. You want to play on and fight. And that warms you up to playing your champion versus other players, which is the hardest part of your fight. Obviously you'll. You're not learning anything about ganking. You're not learning anything about your jungle clear. But if you're doing the practice tool to mess with your. Your clear, you've got your clear down pretty well pat. And then ganking is a very fluid thing. It's game by game, place by place. You're sort of picking and choosing. Brawl's really helping you with the part that's hardest to to practice, which is team fighting. [00:45:37] Speaker B: That's true. That's very valid. All right. Any other thoughts regarding warm ups? [00:45:44] Speaker A: Nope. [00:45:44] Speaker C: If you have hand problems, do some stretches. Like a lot of us, we sort of forget we've been playing this game a long time. Make sure you get some. Some good posture, some good things. Have some water on hand. [00:45:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's a big one. Make sure you have something to drink at your desk where you're playing. Pre game prep is important. If you're a sweaty hand person, then make sure you have something to dry your hands with. [00:46:11] Speaker C: Okay, I have my complaint right now. This has very rarely happened to me and it happens quite a lot of few other people do not use loading queues for bathroom time. [00:46:22] Speaker B: Yes. Poop before you queue. [00:46:25] Speaker C: You have no idea how long that queue is gonna take. It could be literally 10 seconds. [00:46:32] Speaker B: All right. [00:46:33] Speaker C: Could be 10 minutes. [00:46:34] Speaker B: I will point out since Uncle Chrisco said it takes him 15 minutes to load the practice tool four times, he's going to be the limiting factor on the load screens in most cases. If it's taking, I'm assuming, to load. [00:46:47] Speaker C: The game, I think there's gotta be some exaggeration. I don't think it's 15 minutes. [00:46:51] Speaker B: I hope so. [00:46:52] Speaker C: Please. [00:46:52] Speaker B: If your game actually takes three minutes to load to seriously get a solid state drive, it will make such a difference in your life. [00:46:59] Speaker C: Yes. [00:47:00] Speaker B: If you're the slow one, you can get away with this more. But just. Just poop before you cue. Just do it. You will have a better time since. [00:47:10] Speaker A: The early 2000s anymore. You don't get time to use the bathroom. [00:47:14] Speaker C: Yeah, but also like if. If you're not in the game and the early game is fucked because you're not in the game because you had to go to the bathroom, this is on you entirely. You did not have to queue there. You could have waited. Yup. [00:47:30] Speaker B: Alright. Of course the easiest answer is you don't need to warm up. If you're playing Lucian in the top lane, you can roll your face on the keyboard and smash the Nexus. [00:47:40] Speaker C: I dig it. [00:47:41] Speaker B: All right, guys, this has been episode 506 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Sohman for Mike of many names and pillow pet. Have a great night. [00:47:52] Speaker A: Good night. [00:47:53] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:47:54] 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. [00:48:12] Speaker C: Answer them live on the show. [00:48:13] Speaker B: That's the Four Wards [email protected].