[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
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 508 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Sohlman 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.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I'm here as I always am.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: And we've got Pillow Pet.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: And guys, we got a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, come play games with us. It's a great time.
We got a question submission channel. If you don't want to write in an email because you're a zoomer and you don't believe in email or whatever, like we got a Discord channel for it. Just. Just join. The Discord link is in the episode description.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Or if you're like my wow healer who refuses to let anybody know anything about him.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Sure, he's weird, fair enough. And because I've had people concerned about it before, we will say when we read your question whatever name you want us to say if you tell me what you want to be called on the podcast. When I read your question, that's the name I'll use. So if your real name is attached to your email, please don't feel like that's a barrier. I'm not going to tell anyone. I will tell them whatever name you give me. And if you forget to give me a name, I just say people's first name. If you ever heard me say like Ben or whatever. As the person writing in as I just use a first name. I'm not here to dox people.
Okay.
We do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV. Jacksonman Mike hopefully will be streaming again soon at Twitch TV. MikeofManyNames and Pillow, you're at Twitch TV Pillowpet. Can we bully you into streaming in the near future?
[00:02:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I got plans to stream a good bit on this next coming not this week, but the next week after. I got a few days off. I plan on scheduling some streams.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Nice.
You got to join the Discord so you'll know when he goes live.
All right guys, shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting us at the shout out tier on Patreon. Now, if you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com the 4 Words 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 for as long as you maintain the subscription. And all of those benefits do also apply to our from 8bit to 4k general gaming podcast which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least listeners I mentioned writing in your questions via email. That email address is theforwardspodcastmail.com write in so we can answer your questions on the show.
Alright guys, it is a patch week this week we've got patch 25.23 and we got a lot of things to mention before we get to our what each of us wants to highlight specifically. First of all, Zahan is out. The new Healing Bruiser Fighter Champion. We are not going to cover him this week. We have not had enough time to get beyond very very initial impressions.
We will go more in depth this next week. That being said, we do have initial impressions.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Mike, he's pretty fucking fun. Like legitimately he's one of the most fun champions they've released in a while. He feels good to play. He is also, I think, I think he has the Yasuo effect where you can go 010 and hit a point in the game and then you're strong but you can go 010 and be shut out of the game fairly easily.
So he's he's not an insta win button but his power spike is big.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I got to play both top lane and in the jungle one game each trying to fill him out.
His whole strength to me personally right now just is all around getting his passive stacked as fast as possible because that doubles the effectiveness of his passive and like you're good fun interactions in between his knockup and his pullback like how high you can shoot people in the air. That I've noticed seems pretty fun.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: I think knockbacks and knockups have always been weird in League of Legends.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we will start seeing things get a little bit more interesting when we start getting builds finalized because right now it's kind of the Wild west. Except for one point.
Don't, don't build the hydra items on him.
They're not worth it.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Stridebreaker is acceptable. I think people building ravenous are just wrong and really don't build Bork. Holy shit. I've seen two Zahens Build Bork. It's fucking terrible.
Okay, and on that note, by the way, zahen has a 51% win rate right now with within, like, four days of his release.
And tons of people are building him very, very, very wrong.
This champion is just straight up busted. If you are not playing him, you should be banning him right now. Hopefully, once numbers are too.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: Sorry, I was gonna say his ban rate seems, like, surprisingly low for being a new champion.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: I think it's because he wants to be played. Everyone wants to play him. Instead of just ban him, he.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: He somehow only has a combined 70% pick plus ban rate.
I would have expected that number to be closer to 90%, honestly.
But, yeah, he's really goddamn strong. We will cover more in depth on how he works next week. Hopefully the next patch, they'll fix his numbers, because I think he's mostly a numbers issue on why he's so damn strong.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think he could do a minor tweaking, and then he'll be pretty good.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: That's all we're going to cover for now on. On Zahen. We also got other stuff that came in this patch. We have a winter map back. Finally, those of you who have been playing for a very, very, very, very long time, remember old Summoner's Rift and Old Summoner's Rift had a winter version. We got every winter. We finally have that again. I hope this comes back yearly. We don't. We don't know exactly how long it's going to be here. They said until, quote, early next year.
But it's gorgeous. The music is very festive. It's great.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: And you guys thought I was kidding about the Reindeer Rift Herald.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: It's hilarious. The little horn thing on it. It does.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: And a red nose.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: I didn't notice the red nose.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: He does. It's very cute.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Maybe I'm blind.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Okay. Also, live this patch and this one. We have a specific end date until January 7, 2026. The blue essence Emporium is live.
If you have excess Blue Essence because you've been playing for a long time and you don't need to buy champions anymore, go get some chromas or icons or whatever suits your fancy from the Blue Essence Emporium. I got a whole bunch of chromas and some of them I'm very happy about.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Yeah, they have released a couple new ones since then. You've probably also picked up maybe one or two champion skins that have new, new colors in the Essence. And Boream. Take a look.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: I think I spent probably like a half hour going through and buying stuff last night and I still have like 400 something thousand blue essence.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: I don't have that much, but it's because I buy lots of chromas that I probably will never use.
[00:07:48] Speaker C: Oh yeah, I'm picky. I always get the obsidian or the pearl.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Obsidian depends on the skin on most skins. I have one caveat. Do not get the obsidian for smolders only skin. He looks like he has blackface.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: It's bad.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: It's. It's possibly the worst skin in game.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: All right, and then the other thing before we get to our highlighted changes is a whole bunch of champions got added to the possible jungle pool. And we're not going to go through the specifics of all these changes. Every single one of the champions we're about to list got some variation of one of their abilities, does bonus damage to monsters or higher percent damage to monsters, or in some cases already had that and they made that number bigger.
So some of the champions you may now see as junglers in your games that were typically not junglers before they were either off meta or very off meta, depending on the champion in question, include Aatrox, Ambessa, Cho'. Gath.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: You got Fizz, Jace and Malphite and Ornn, Riven, Sion.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So we also got a question in our Discord. Are any of the new buffed jungle champions good? Yes, most of them.
A lot of these champions have kits that already lended themselves to jungling and just didn't have the damage to have a competitive clear in the jungle.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Embessa was pretty close before. Now she's just there.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Sion. Same thing. Riven. Same thing.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Malphite is unique here in that he got a straight up across the board multiplier. He just does two times as much damage to jungle monsters. So Malphite on his.
Yes, Malphite could be.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: This might be a segue into. My first topic that I kind of want to cover.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Is Sunfire. Sunfire got a jungle specific buff.
It was the damage modificate modifier for it was 1.6 and now it's just two times. So it got a pretty sizable buff to its immolate damage on monsters. And just to be specific, this is Sunfire. Only this isn't Radiant, this is just Sunfire. So it's from my understanding I haven't got to use it yet because I'm a Scion lethality jungle player.
It is a pretty decent buff, especially when you're pairing it with like a moo moo and other AOE clearing junglers.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: That buff alone put some pure Tank junglers back into the clear.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: And specifically should also make Sunfire actually competitive for the junglers who were building liandries into tank.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Now, this is, I think, specific only to Sunfire. Like, this does not affect if you just go back and buy a Bomb ease or any of that. This is only to the completed Sunfire.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: So, yeah, do not think you can just sit on a bomb ease and it's gonna make you stronger.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: And I hate that they didn't give a similar change to Hollow Radiance. Sunfire has higher base damage and does double damage to monsters than Hollow Radiance. Hollow Radiance has lower base damage and does 25% extra damage against monsters.
And in the jungle. In the jungle, you don't get to use Hollow Radiance's little splash on kill effects the way you do in lane. Like the number being lower in Lane against minions. Makes sense. Yeah.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: They should have made it on par for the jungle. Like, it's just an even.
So it doesn't feel bad to get Hollow Radiance.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it sucks.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: You're almost always better off getting a Sunfire and then building full Mr. Afterwards if you need to build heavy Mr.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: I don't think that's an if. I think that's a. You do. Because even in games where there's nothing but magical damage champions, there's always something that does major physical damage, and that's towers, dragons, otacon. Yeah. So even if you only get one armor item, make your one armor item a Sunfire. If you. If you're in the jungle.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yep.
Okay, Mike, talk to us about our favorite lesbian lizard lady.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Okay, so we've been talking about Niko shenanigans and the weird and interesting things that she can do for a while. Because every time we think we found them, someone finds another one of the most common Nico shenanigans. In fact, probably her most powerful one has just been not fully removed, but curtailed in that once Niko takes damage in a form from a tower, she is immediately knocked back to herself, which prevents you from turning into a cannon minion and tanking 15 tower shots.
But that does mean you can still pop into a cannon minion crab aggro and not take the increased champion damage.
So there are still shenanigans you can do with it. They're just not infinite bullshit.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Much less accessible for us mere mortals than they used to be.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it will be difficult to do properly. Or you just place yourself In a correct spot, her tower dive is still going to be strong because she has this power. It might just give you enough time to do a reset for for champions. So things like that, you're going to find new shenanigans that she's going to create, but it's just not going to be easy peasy. I am now the cannon. Hahaha.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: All right, so I want to talk about. I mentioned in the jungle changes that Fizz got some changes to make him a better jungler. But he also, unlike the rest of that list, got changes to affect him in lane as well. Fizz got a base armor bump of four armor, which as a melee champion who's usually laning against ranged champions in mid lane, your armor still matters even if they are a magic damage champ, because they're going to be auto attacking you relentlessly in the early game.
And then also they changed the cooldown on his ultimate. If you've ever played against a Fizz, it feels like his shark is always up and that should be significantly less the case. It lost 20 seconds at rank one down to losing 10 seconds at rank three. There should be significantly larger windows where he can't just shark you and kill you.
I think that's a good trade off. As someone who plays Fizz, I'm fine with having the shark be up a little less often if it means I can survive the worst part of the lane.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: This plus a couple of the changes he got a few patches ago.
This is a healthy change because.
Well, I'm not going to advocate it, so I'm not going to talk about it. But with the jungle buff and this, this is a great way of keeping Fizz slightly in line because Fizz can get out of line very, very fast.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: I mean 20 seconds on first rank sounds like a lot, but that's really. You're just having to wait one extra wave to decide you're going all in. Like.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the walk back to lane.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: It's.
[00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not gonna make a huge difference.
But I mean if you're a one trick, yeah, you're gonna definitely feel it, but for the most part we're probably never even gonna notice it.
All right, well, so another jungler that got changed, but not in the jungle in. In Lane, Rek'.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Sai.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: So Rek' sai has been a menace lately in the top lane, mainly because of her healing that she's able to do.
So her healing, her fury based on her minion hits was 20% to now it's 16% fury gained, which is. Which just equates to 5. From 5 to 4. And now her max HP healed was 10 to 20% based on level, to 9 to 20% based on level. So there's knocking her healing down a little bit, taking away her sustain. So she's a lot less of a sustained bully in the top lane and just trying to knock her down without completely gutting her out of the lane because they want to let her stay in the top lane. I'm not against it that her biggest, biggest problem was the sustain that she had.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: So, yeah, knocking the sustain down but not giving her any other new strengths is a good idea. This was her strength. It still is her strength. It's just not as oppressive and important.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: To note if she's trading aggressively, her rage gain against champions is still the same. Her fury gain. So if she's fighting you, she's still gonna gain just as much fury as before. And the 1% max health healing loss is the only actual nerf she takes.
[00:16:29] Speaker C: Yeah. Which, I mean, short term isn't a whole lot. Long term, it's a lot.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: It adds up.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: I mean, how many times you're going under trying to heal. So good change, good target.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: All right, Mike, it's mid lane time. Your turn first.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: All right, well, maybe my favorite mid lane champion at the moment is getting a buff nerf. Mostly a buff. And it's actually pretty evenly buff and nerf. They're reducing the duration of her E snare. This is. This is actually one of the few times I'm going to go directly into numerics here because time matters on snares and roots and stuns, going from one and a quarter to two and a quarter seconds to 1.2 to 1.6. You're losing a little over half a second in snare time. That's a lot. But it also means her snare total duration only goes up by less than half a second. Enough time to be useful. But it's. It's a significant reduction to the point where there were some people maxing E. Don't. The. The amount of snare gain is no longer worth the amount of damage loss you get from not maxing Q. The other half of her. The buff portion of this is they are once again buffing her passive. The damage per spell, the base damage is going up. The beginning, it's not going up at all. But by max level, it's going up by almost 50%. Actually slightly more than 50%. And she's gaining an extra like 6% ratio. Per spell.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: I. I just want to drive home. In the last two months when they first made the change, she started at 1% AP per projectile. You get three projectiles per spellcast. So 3% AP on her passive, basically, per spell cast up to 15% now. And the base damage doubled at high level.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: They've also like significantly shifted around the ranges she has. The things that she has. So where Mel was kind of oppressive in different locations, they've toned down a lot of the oppressive pieces that she has and pulled it into her damage point, which I think is exactly where Mel wants to be. She's a trading mage. She wants to constantly be fighting and trading and fighting and trading.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: I have a question for you, Mike. With so much damage in her passive now, do you think it's worth building Lich Bane on her?
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Yes. Third or fourth? I don't think it's a first item. I think you absolutely need the mana regen item. I don't think it's your second item because she is so powerful with Shadow Flame because of how her execute functions. You want Shadow Flame as soon as you can reasonably get it. And you can't reasonably get it as a first item because you need your mana regen. So third item. Maybe you're not having the ability to. To push towards that Rabadons or right after Rabadons because it's. You want to be weaving your attacks in there. Kind of like Lux wants to weave her attacks in there.
I know Lux usually doesn't get Lich Bane, but that's partially because she throws all three spells all at once.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Pretty much.
And then. Do you remember, does Lich Bane still give a massive boost in attack speed when it's the. When it's active?
[00:19:47] Speaker B: I believe it does, but I can go check on that because that also.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Would make her feel a lot more responsive when using. This is the other reason without having to actually invest in attack speed.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Your next attack, it goes off super quick.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yep. 50% bonus attack speed. So, yeah, I. I think it should basically never be later than fourth. I think it should usually be third. Unless you're really popping off and can just buy needlessly larges out.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Right. If you can straight up get the. The pieces of the needlessly large rod very quickly, then you should be going into Rabadons. Otherwise, lich bane still 100 AP. It's hay ability haste. You want ability haste. It's moving speed. You want movement speed. Like it gives everything she wants and then some.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: All right. Like, I. I almost think like her entire build is almost entirely solved because of this. Because her next item is Rabadon's. Her last item should probably be Horizon Focus just out of sheer AP and haste.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: I wouldn't do Horizon Focus. I would say last item should be either a pen item.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, I'm forgetting Void Staff.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Void Staff or Crypt Bloom. Or if you have other magic damage on your team, Blood Letters Curse.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: She can reasonably stack Blood Letters Curse, possibly better than any other mage. Actually.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Stacks it instantly in half a second.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Her E stacks almost instantly. Her Q stacks it almost instantly. So like if you have another person on the team and you aren't trying to be the most ap, you want a little bit tankier. Well, that his curse is reasonable otherwise, I mean, if you're still going for burst, you probably want Void Staff or over it.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Other option would be a defensive item like Zhonya's or Banshees, depending on game.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Okay, I got one more champion change I want to talk about, and that's Ahri.
Ahri got a change. Her w the Foxfire, the three little flames around her that auto target things nearby, has a damage penalty. If it hits the same target with multiple flames, that damage penalty has been reduced. Instead of doing 30% damage on the second and third hit, it now does 40% damage. Which means if all three flames hit the same target, you're doing 180% of a single flame damage now instead of 160.
It's meaningful. And I played her. Her assassination power feels so much higher with this change. This is your second max. It feels great.
Yeah, that's it. Just Ahri got a huge buff. Alright, let's answer some listener questions.
So our first question tonight comes from Uncle Chrisco, who writes.
Hello, Wards. I continued my league journey this week with a detour into Aram Mayhem. It may not be the best way to learn the game, but I'm on a big win streak and damn, is it fun.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yes, it is.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Fun is the reason we play video games. Like, that's the point. My plan moving forward is to start playing ranked next season after I learned the game a bit more, and to take advantage of the chaos of whatever changes get implemented in the new season. But I was wondering if there would be any benefit in getting a ranked placement in this season before it ends. I've heard that having a previous rank can affect placement, but I have no idea how impactful that is or what it entails. So should I get ranked this season or just wait until season 16?
[00:23:01] Speaker B: I would not go into ranked at the very end. People get weird at ranked at the very last couple months. Weeks.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: They're either going to be intentionally tanking games because they're. They don't want people to be at their ranks, or there are people who are incredibly toxic because they think they should be higher and they can't get up there, etc. Etc. Ranked at the very, very end is a punishment of mental fortitude. If you can withstand the last month weeks of push to get the rank that you want, yeah, that's. That's where it's going to be. Because a lot of people will have quit ranked for two, three months and then realize at the last second, oh shit, I need to play my ranked. It's a. It's a. It's a hellscape.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: It's. It's miserable. Ask me why I know.
No.
I want to explain briefly what happens when a new season starts.
For the last 12, 13 years, what riot has done at the start of every new season is a soft reset.
What this means is they compress everyone's ranks towards Silver slightly. So if you're legitimately in Iron, they might bump you up a little bit. If you're in Silver, probably nothing happens when it resets. If you're in Masters, you might get knocked down to Plat one, or Emerald one rather.
And if you're an Emerald, you might get knocked down to Plat. If you're in Plat, you might get knocked down to High Gold. If you're in Gold, you might be knocked down to low Gold. It compresses the farther you are away from the average player of League of Legends, which is Silver, the more the reset affects you.
And then after they do that soft reset, they knock everyone down a full division. Your MMR does not change, but your visible rank will go down a full division. So if you were in Silver 3, reset happens. You are now in Bronze 3. Artificially. Your MMR is still Silver 3, but your rank is now Bronze 3. And you will win a lot of LP in your games at the start of the season as you play enough games to gradually get back to Silver 3. Essentially, it's an artificial give everyone the experience of climbing every season mechanic. You guys have anything to add for that?
[00:25:30] Speaker B: There is also, like there. There is a good portion to this. This sounds like it's nothing but negative. There is a good portion of this because a lot of the people who were pulled up in ranks artificially have now been pulled out of that rank, which means they are now no longer immediately killing games in the early portion of the season.
So you should find after the first couple of weeks skill should be closer to where it normally starts to coalesce with less people who because most people who do boosting do it in the middle of the year, end of the year, the beginning of the season is less likely to see a lot of boosted random people in ranks they should not be in. So you should find better quality games at the beginning of the year after the first couple weeks because in the first couple weeks, as you said, it's wild west, who knows what's going on. But after, after the first two, three weeks, usually toned down, you can, you can gain some rank there. You can also lose a lot of it very fast once that's ended. And, and if you've utilized the ability to climb without actually gaining any skill with the climb, you usually fall back down.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yep. And that's really the key is ranked is about trying to become better at the game. Your rank is a byproduct of becoming a better player.
All right, our next question comes from Frequent Question writer Rains who writes are One Trick Ponies a reliable source for builds on champions?
My hesitation is they have knowledge of the champion that I don't have due to not as many repetitions. So I would be itemizing wrong because they do it in specific circumstances and that's exactly the time that they are actually good sources of builds. In a generic situation, just a random matchup, they might be building weird shit, but when they have a different thing to build from their norm and we're talking about high ELO one trick ponies, please don't follow the builds of low ELO one trick ponies. They're low elo for a reason.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: We're talking Alysane. We're talking oh God, the Velikoz One Trick AZAP as app.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Yeah, if you're watching the good ones, the popular streamers who talk about things to their chat, they'll probably explain oh so and so this matchup is really hard because XYZ so I need to build this to neutralize the matchup or stuff like that. That insight when they explain the why they are deviating from their norm is.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Invaluable which is why One Trick ponies are good sources.
I am not sure they are the best source of information if you can find usually former pros because they they've switched down into streaming. But some pros while they're playing they like to talk about why they're doing things a lot more than solo streamers because solo streamers are making their entire time on just making a business of themselves so they have to be part of the entertainment. So they have to change things around to make it more entertaining. You can't just always play alicent can't always play the same mundo build all the time. He has to do some things that are more interesting.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Okay, you're saying alicent. Do you mean Alois?
[00:28:46] Speaker B: I keep saying the wrong one. I mean Alois.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Okay, I'm like who the hell is Mike talking about? Is this.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: I'm saying the wrong person.
There are actually possibly my favorite. There are a couple of people who live in masters. They're not challenger players, they're not pro players. They, they frequently do things like climbs to masters etc. These are people who like to explain why they're doing certain things with their champions. I really like a guy named Hussy. He always explains the why when he's doing things.
He has a lot of champions played so you're not going to get the intricacies you will from a one trick but unless you plan on one tricking you're probably getting more information out of the generalist anyways.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: There's a specific one trick that I like to watch for like renekton and it's God Rectan really enjoy him. He. He explains why he's building an item early. Like he'll be like wow, you know a lot of people might build black cleaver here but I really need this for the, you know, because I need to really get ahead in my trades or he offers a lot of knowledge and tells you why.
So yeah, there's there's some though like some one tricks like high elo that you just don't want to listen to because they're just making that build because they're very good at that champion like they can get away with that. So like you don't want to listen to them because if you're not really good at that champion you're not going to be able to perform.
And I specifically I'm thinking of like the boss, right?
Like he's a very good player in the league of legends but you're not gonna be able to play like him because he's got a whole different mindset when he's playing this game.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: There's a reason why he is one of the very few people who while scion inting was a thing was able to get his account unbanned for the inting strategy because he was always trying to win and you could see him winning.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: It was very Obvious if you actually watched his actual gameplay, but not obvious if you just looked at end result screens.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Yeah, like he, he. He is very good at the game and finding niche strategies, but he's not a good person to emulate.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Absolutely.
All right, we've got one more question for tonight which comes from Skippius Esquire. And I think it's relevant since we just talked about a whole bunch of patch changes where a lot of them are this sort of thing.
Skipius writes, I realize this may be super noob, but I would love to better understand changes in the patches and why they help. For example, Jin's base AD in this patch went from 59 to 61. What does a 2 AD change really mean? I get that it depends on a lot of factors, but I look at patch notes or listen on the pod and most of it just goes over my head as yeah, and same is true with AP or health or whatever.
So I mentioned briefly when I was talking about Fizz on this patch, Fizz got four armor this patch and that matters because that's four more armor. Every time he takes an auto attack, which he takes a lot of auto attacks in lane because he's typically laning against ranged champions.
That four armor is usually enough armor to where you will take one less damage per auto attack.
You add that up over the course of a lane, that might be 50 less damage by the time laning phase ends. And that adds up because that means a situation where maybe you would have had to back prior to that change. Now you don't. You're healthy enough because you start Doran's shield and the healing overcame enough over time because this is all damage that's happening over time.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: In an AR1 auto attack would have killed you.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Yes.
In an all in hundred to zero someone dies. We are not ending this fight until one of us dies situation. These changes mean nothing. They literally do not matter in those circumstances. But for attrition battles where you are slowly wearing each other down over time, burning cooldowns, burning resources, Mana, etc. These changes add up.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: So we have, we have a little bit of extra time that we can get a big discussion in on what these changes are meaning and whether where they are and where they're going. We have like yes, enough that I can start to get into a little bit of minutia with an AD carry. When you see a base AD change, AD carries specifically live and die by their auto attacks.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: So this is also true for Yasuo Yone, Master Yi and a couple other Non AD carry champions.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: These are people whose minor amounts of AD matter a great deal because of how often they're attacking. Or in Jin's case, specifically because of the ratio he gets to multiplicative damage. Jhin is going to be unique out of every AD carry out of every character in the game, because Jhin multiplies stats and adds them into his base AD total AD to get monstrous amounts of damage.
But as a standard rule, if you see 1 or 2 AD as a change, that means you're looking at about a 5% power increase because of how often most AD carries will attack.
So like, one or two AD is a very large amount of damage in the very early game. Anything that uses base AD as a ratio. So you'll. You'll find the different types of ratios on.
On passives, you'll find base ad, total ad, bonus ad. Same thing is true.
That's never true with ap. AP is always just solid ap. So with ad, base AD allows everything that isn't that bonus ad to be increased. There's a couple of things that use solely bonus ad. They're pretty rare. So when you see a base 80 change, 90 of the champions will have just straight up all of their damage that uses AD has now gone up.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: So here's the other part to keep in mind. A lot of times with these like 282 armor type changes, especially on junglers, Junglers are the worst offender for this. The purpose of these changes is basically to speed up or slow down their jungle clear by one or two seconds, or to make them come out of the jungle with slightly more or slightly less healthy. And the reason for this is basically it's something that players won't feel a difference on, but will show up in statistics. If a champion's at a 51% win rate and they want it at a 50% win rate in the jungle, they'll knock armor or AD down very slightly. That very slightly slower clear. You may not even notice in your games, but over the course of millions of people playing the game for many, many, many games each, it adds up. And it does. The statistical change they want. A lot of these kinds of changes are literally just riot wants a stat to change on a champion. They want this champion to be picked less or have a slight lower win. A lot of them are literally just to shift pick order. If a champion shows up in the patch notes as having been nerfed, their pick rate plummets. If a champion shows up in the patch notes as being buffed, their pick rate skyrockets we saw this recently. There was a change with Vladimir that didn't actually go live, but they listed it in the patch notes, and his play and win rates both went up dramatically when nothing actually changed about the champion whatsoever.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of this is perceived. Perceived power. Now, there are noticeable things that are not perceived power. Mel's Nerf, for instance, though, with her E. That's not a perceived power nerf. That's a straight Nerf. Knowing. Knowing the minutiae of a Nerf or a buff allows you to. To gauge whether or not something will truly affect you, whether you're facing it or whether you're playing it with, like, timers on things like CC duration. Those are very large nerfs or buffs. Because 0.1 seconds can mean everything in a game. It allows you to get a flash off when you couldn't do a flash. It allows you to get one extra step when you couldn't before. It allows you to dodge something you couldn't dodge before. It's less obvious with Health AP ad.
So those are really, like. Those are power gauges. Those allow them to man, this. This champion has been overplayed a lot. Let's tone down some of the numbers in there, and sometimes you'll see they'll tone down the numbers patch after patch after patch. Like recently we saw with Polar Bear, five patches in a row, he had to get numbers nerfs.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: I think usually when that happens, it's because Riot internally thinks a champion isn't actually op, but the numbers on the live game keep showing statistically that they are.
And Riot is really bad at realizing that sometimes their internal testing is just wrong.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes they. They think something that just isn't true. And it does happen, but partially, that's usually because players are either doing something that they don't understand what they're doing or are utilizing builds that they did not expect.
And so not knowing that that build is what they're going on with, they go, whoa, this is way different than what I think with Volibear. That's the Blade, the quick thing, the one that gives Flicker Blade. Flicker Blade. He was never intended to have Flicker Blade, and it has completely warped his builds. And so they have to try and figure out how to nerf him using things that were never meant to work. With Flicker Blade.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Any other thoughts about how to read the patch notes, how to understand the changes that sometimes are really, really minor?
[00:38:45] Speaker B: If you don't want to. To get into deep minutia, just look and see if anything Says any of the champions you play or see frequently. Like if you constantly see Mundo in your games, go. All right, what do they do with Mundo?
It looks like the positive numbers are on his health and looks like a bug fix. Okay, so they say it's a little bit of a buff. It's a buff. Okay, sure. I should see Mundo being a little bit stronger.
Your champion you probably want to learn a little bit more about.
So like I said with Mel, I know Mel likes to weave auto attacks in. So seeing that she's getting a big buff to that, that passive with auto attack weaving, that's a large amount of difference for me. I know she's gonna get some serious damage in, but I'm gonna have a harder time keeping people still to get that damage in because that E nerf is a big nerf. It's not going to stop me playing her because I still like the champion and I think, I think overall she is physically stronger. But that's because I'm looking at overall things. I did not need the full two and a quarter seconds to kill someone or I was using so much more than two and a quarter seconds that. All right, well, I'm going to get two or three rotations of E in there. In the fights, you learn more the more you play the champions and then you start to intuitively understand a bit more and then you start to gauge things like, all right, I'm strong because of this. And then you start looking at numbers and if the numbers just go over your head and you can't read it right, then just look at the buff nerf list. Hey, I've been buffed a little bit. Hey, I've been nerfed a little bit and ask and see like with us, what goes on and if there's a change that you really wanted us to cover and we don't talk into the discord, Pocas will gladly tell you about it. However, if you really don't want to bother looking at patch notes, just play Lucian in the top. None of his buffs or nerfs matter up there.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. Alright, guys, this has been episode 508 of the Four Wards podcast. Sorry, it's a little bit of a short one this week. Don't worry, we'll be back next week to talk all about Zahan Zahen. However you pronounce his name, we don't fucking know.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Xin Zhao.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Yeah, Darken Xin Zhao.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: Old Day Trucks.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Until then, I've been Jack Sohlman for my commanding names for Pillow Pat. Have a great night.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: Good night.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Good night, everybody.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: 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.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: Answer them live on the show.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
