[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 513 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me just one other ward this week to help you move forward in league of Legends. Mike of many names is joining me tonight.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no pillow tonight. He's tired with a baby.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't blame him. We, we, we hope his kid's doing well and we hope he gets some sleep because oh my God, with a newborn, sleep is at a premium. Yeah, guys, we are the four Words podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. We've been playing a lot of normal games with people in the Discord community trying to learn this new patch which is what we're gonna talk about today.
So come join the Discord so you can be part of that and play games with us while we try to figure out all this mayhem.
Link.
We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksoman, where it's still about 5050 league and Super Metroid content.
Mike, you can be found@twitch tv mikeofmanynames. Hopefully more often now.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Well, apparently I'm perpetually getting sick, so fuck if I know.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: True. And when he doesn't have baby aggro, we'll bully Pillow Pet into streaming more at Twitch TV PillowPat. We do want to give a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast at the shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys. You keep us going on the Internet now. If you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show.
$10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and we will shout your name out during the intro of every episode for as long as you maintain your subscription.
We also do have a general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We actually put an episode out of that last week. We postponed this episode because the patch was coming out like the day we.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Were able to record and I was just getting sick, so didn't want to do a bunch more podcast work.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Exactly. Last but not least, listeners, we were on a break over the holidays and we got one question in the Discord. We're going to cover as much as we can of the new big patch this week. Your mission, listeners, is to write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel of the Discord so that when we get through this monster patch, we have questions to answer on the show. That is your mission. You don't get to choose whether or not you accept it. You need to just do it. Ask us shit so we can answer it. Alright, as I alluded to, this is patch 26.1. It is the big season change patch. We are in season 2026.
Everything has been upended and Mike and I are going to do our best to cover it and explain what you need to know of what all has changed.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: There have been a lot of changes.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: As usual, we are not covering every change. It is still recommended you actually read the patch notes now more than ever.
Yes, we will give you the Cliff Notes version of everything. Basically, that's what we're doing today. So, first and foremost, Riot has added role quests for top, mid and AD carry and slightly reworked the jungle and support quests that already existed for all of the new quests. The top, mid and AD carry you complete your quest by getting farm kills, turret plates, etc. In your lane and for participating in epic monster kills.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: This has changed the like lane swap detection thing because quests only work when you are in your assigned lane or they only benefit fully when you're in your assigned lane.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yes, you also do get passive points over time towards your quest as long as you are actively participating in your lane.
In my experience, these quests are generally completed from the 10 to 15 minute mark for most players unless they are wildly ahead or behind.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah, considering kills and towers count for them, you can very quickly build these up or they can stagnate for a long time if you've been starved.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So what do these quests actually give these roles? Well, for top lane, if you didn't take teleport, you now get teleport. It's on your V key. All of the quests, if they have a component that is an active that you need to press, it's on V, which I think is just top lane and support, but it's on V top lane. If you didn't have teleport, you now get to Teleport on a 7 minute cooldown once you've completed your quest. If you took teleport instead, you get the empowered teleport with a shorter cooldown and it grants you a giant shield. It's a percent of your max HP. It is a large shield and it lasts for 30 seconds when you teleport. So it's basically up for whatever fight you're teleporting to get into always, even if you have to run a little bit to get there. This is really strong on tanks and decently strong on everyone else.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: They've also added in Top lane, just in general. Once you've completed your quest, you gain bonus XP up front and for the rest of the game. And your level cap is now level 20 specifically for Udyr. This does mean you get more skill points. Yep.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: To be fair, Udyr could get one extra skill point by taking the triple tonic before, but now he doesn't have to if he's top lane.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And top lane new deer is actually good against quite a lot of new things that are showing up there. So topple new deer actually a viable thing because of how this works now, this bonus XP up front, this extra stuff. The top lane meta has shifted a little bit, especially because of this extra free XP and the extra teleport. There's a lot more champions who can run Ignite up there because they get a free teleport. Now has a lot more champions that are allowed to get Flash now that didn't have it. Yep.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: A lot of lane bullies are either now taking Flash Ghost or Flash Ignite instead of something in teleport, or they're just swapping their teleport for Ignite and just having a teleport later.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: That does not mean the teleport is bad, mind you. As we said, that shield's real good if you've got it and you still get the enhanced teleport. They're the only ones that get that now. Yep.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: For jungle, it's really just numeric changes. We'll cover them in a little while when we cover all of the generic jungle changes.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: But jungle exactly the same.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: The quest is exactly the same type of quest. You get stacks for killing camps, you get stacks for takedowns, you get stacks bonus. If you haven't killed a camp in a while and then you kill a camp. Nothing's really changed for Mid lane. When you complete your quest, you get upgraded boots.
Basically, these are the upgraded boots that you could buy for 500 gold if your team got feet of strength last year. In most cases they're the same or almost the same as they were then.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: The two differences here, one, all of them are free and you get them immediately if you have your upgraded boots as opposed to having to wait until after your second full item.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: The only truly meaningful one apart from that one boot has been like taken out that no one cared about that one. It's gone. Is that Berserker's greaves Now give life steal.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Yasuo and Yone are very happy about that. Now the carry mids. If you play 80 carries in mid.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: The empowered recall, it's on a random like 4 minute ish cooldown or something like that. It's incredibly powerful when you get it.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: To be clear, the cooldown isn't random. It's reduced if you get kills.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Oh, that's how. Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: It's a long cooldown. But if you get kills, like if you win a team fight outright and get 5 kill participation, it's instantly off Cooldown.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's like the full 4 second empowered recall that you get from Baron. It's amazing. Yep.
The ADCs. Well, you get a bonus item slot straight for your boots.
Your boots. Once you get this unlocked, just get shifted from your items directly into your little V slot. So now you can get six full items.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: They also get bonus gold up front. It's 300 gold. You basically get a kill for completing your your quest as far as gold goes. And you now get bonus gold for last hits and champion takedowns for the rest of the game.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Basically to support plausible to actually her item.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Exactly. Make it plausible to actually fill all six slots in a reasonable game length for supports.
Not much has changed. The quest is basically the same. The reward is mostly the gold you get from the quest. But they do now get a dedicated control ward slot on V. And control wards cost only 40 gold. Once you've completed the quest.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: I believe they've also actually get more gold. So like you have a slightly higher gold income as a support. Not a lot. But between that and the vision wards costing only 40 now that's massive. That's massive for your gold economy. And you actually have another item slot so you don't have to worry about supplying an act. Holding an item slot.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Huge quality of life for supports.
Okay. Next thing is that most of the stuff that was added specifically last season is just gone. Otacon's gone. Blood petals are gone. Feet of strength are removed. First Blood and First Herd are with Bonus Gold again. Baron spawns at 20 minutes again instead of being pushed back to 25 for Otacon.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: The only thing that remains from last season is that the Nexus Tower is still revive. We'll get to that later.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. They also have made a lot of changes to the jungle itself. Of course they have. They change the jungle every season. They have to this season.
It's compulsive. They always do it. This season specifically, Epic Monsters have significantly more health, armor and magic resist than they had before. This means your dragons, your Void grubs, your Rift Herald, all of the above. Significantly higher health, armor, magic resist than before in most cases. There's a few edge cases if you do them very early, where they actually don't, but it's fine. Smite also got changed.
Smite, now the first rank, still does 600, but after the jungler has gotten 15 stacks towards their quest, their Smite now deals 1000 damage. And when they complete their quest at 35 stacks, Smite does 1400 damage, which makes it significantly harder for non junglers to steal.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: There are only like four abilities that can do more than 1400 damage to a camp.
It's. It's hard to find things that do that much damage.
So unless you're talking about like Nunu or Chogoth, Smite is now your secure button. Yep. As it should be.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: I believe Spellbook Smite is a thousand now.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Caps at a thousand.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: It's only the first able to confirm. I assumed they had updated it to change it to the new values, but I haven't actually tested. So thank you for confirming.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
We should also point out that red and blue are no longer ever going to be that bonus. Everyone gets red and blue. Once you've killed two dragons, they're now the shareable version where the Jungler always gets one and whoever can pick it up gets the other. Yep.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: And that's it. They stopped scaling at that point for buff amount. They also made the buffs a little stronger in general. Yes, because they're no longer given out globally to all five people after 25 minutes.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's functionally stronger for the people who get them. So Junglers should be happier because now you are slightly stronger and usually mid laners for blue buff, usually AD carries for red buff. So the next point, this is going to be incredibly important for everyone.
Don't stop and slow down at the beginning of the game. They have zoomed things faster. The game's starting essentially 35 seconds sooner. Camps now spawn at 55 seconds for the regular camps, Krog's Cromp and The others are 107 now. Minions spawn 35 seconds sooner. So you're getting minions very, very quickly on the field. If you were doing a late invade, you don't have time for a late invade anymore.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Late invade is basically an immediate invade now.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah. If you are not invading immediately, there is no invader, which does change the meta pretty significantly to where it was at the end of last season.
We're not gonna go over. Yeah, don't. Don't just run to lanes anymore. Go and watch things. We've seen a lot of people trying to do these weirdly timed invades. Check your vision spots. We've talked about them plenty of times.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah, but generally speaking, everything in the game happens 35 seconds sooner than it did before, except for Epic Monsters. Those spawn at the same time they did before. So everything you can think of that was on a timer from game start other than epic monsters is 35 seconds accelerated. They've made some vision changes, because of course they have. The big one that everyone's talking about is Phalites. There are new little mushroom circles scattered around Summoner's Rift. If you mouse over them, it will show the area of vision they will reveal if you place a ward in them. And if you place a ward in them, you'll get that bonus vision for 45 seconds.
The ward itself in the felite also gets extra radius.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Yeah. You do not keep that vision for the whole time your ward is there.
It's only for 45 seconds after it spawns. But the downside, very obviously, people are placing wards in the Feylites all the time, which means it's very easy to find wards and sweep them out.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yep. Speaking of sweeping, if you have disabled a ward through Oracle's aura control ward, it no longer grants the Feylite vision until turned back on or killed.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Speaking of the sweeping, the Oracle lens lasts longer.
The yellow trinket, the your war trinket, also has a shorter cooldown. They're making vision more accessible and deniable.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yep. They've also added some extra Scryer's Bloom locations that spawn after 15 minutes or after two dragons have been killed, whichever comes first.
Spawn points that were caused by the elemental dragons no longer occur. Instead, it's these new spawns instead. And they're. These new locations have short respawn timers.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a significant increase to the amount of vision, especially given the like in lane or in area around your front of jungle areas.
It's to help survive when you've been essentially cordoned out of your own jungle, giving you the ability to get a little bit more vision in there so you can move things a little bit safer.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: All right, so we have just a catch. All for other systemic changes. Home Guards.
Home Guards are the run speed effect. When you respawn or recall, that gives you movement speed to get back out on the field faster.
Home Guards no longer have a duration.
However, they are now removed when you reach the end point, which is basically the front lines of wherever the map is. Whatever the furthest point in your lane you still have control over is as determined by turrets.
Or if you enter combat or enter the jungle, they're instantly removed.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: This does not mean you can't. If your minions are past the center point and into the enemy area. This does not mean Home Guards last until you get to that location.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: No, they'll last. Your outer turret.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: It ends at your outer turret or slightly in front of it. If you've got the minion slightly farther in front of it.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: There is.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: It ends at the halfway point.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: There is a visual indicator on screen for this.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: The other point of this is that There is a second tier of home guards that now activates at 14 minutes.
Is a much faster Home Guard. This is to the point where like at some points where you would try and teleport, it's faster to back and just use Home Guards out.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: This is also a big thing pushing mid laners away from using teleport because you just don't need it to get back to your lane quickly.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Ignite is now a lot more popular in mid as well. Although TP is still. Still common. Yep.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: So let's talk about turrets for a bit. Since we mentioned Home Guards last until your outer turret. All turrets except Nexus turrets now have turret plates.
Turret plates no longer expire.
They are just part of how turrets work. Instead of being only for the first 14 minutes, the gold on turrets is now mostly baked into these plates. The actual turret kill is worth less gold.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: To compensate how they function, they're. They're weighted so that like instead of being the perfect fifths that they were in regular Summoner's Rift, they're weighted like they're an earth where it's front loaded. You get a little bit at like 10 and then at 25 so that it's easier to get the first couple of plates and then the last few of them have the majority of the health of the turret behind them.
So the last two or three plates are harder to get.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: So there's a whole Bunch of just numeric changes for turrets as well. There's also a couple of mechanics to help you take turrets. They've added something called crystalline overgrowth. If a turret can be damaged but has not been for a while, it will begin to have crystals grow on it. Over time, the crystals will build up bigger and bigger. And if you hit a turret that has crystals on it, it will take a burst of damage. This is kind of like a global demolish effect.
It's intended as a catch up mechanic on the turret. If you're hitting the turret regularly, you won't get this. But you also don't need it because you are hitting the turret regularly.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: This is, I do not remember if it is 90 seconds or three minutes. This is. It's not a long time, but it's long enough that if you're pushing every wave in and hitting the turret, you're not refreshing them. Yeah.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: And it is not full strength. After 90 seconds it starts scaling up.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: So the, the duration to get it to full strength is pretty long. But if you're able to hit a turret once every couple minutes, you're gonna small proc here and there.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: I think like this is a weird numeric thing. I think it's like 40% of the proc is in that initial creation of the crystalline overgrowth. So it's always worth it. It's always worth it. To have the crystalline overgrowth hit. And the crystalline overgrowth hit, even at full strength is never a full plate.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: I mean it can be the full.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: First plate, it can be the full very first plate, but it's never worth waiting until it maxes out to hit it. It just so happens to give you extra strength.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Although speaking of demolish, it's intended as a catch up mechanic.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Because of this, they did also change how demolish itself works. It's now a three hit passive with a cooldown on turrets. To trigger, Demolish still does damage based on your max health. It's just the condition to trigger it has changed. So tanks can't just stand at the edge of the turret until it's available and then walk up and smack it once. Essentially they have to actually hit it three times.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: It's. It's both better and worse. Like with this combination, if you have demolish, you can wreck a tower pretty quickly. Especially if you haven't gotten to get to the next tower yet. But yep, demolish is now harder to proc, which over overall I think is a better thing. Yep.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: So you mentioned Nexus turrets earlier. They liked keeping the Nexus Turret Respawn so that's the thing that stayed from 2025 changes.
However, Nexus Turrets do not respawn at 100% anymore. They respawn at 40% health and will slowly regenerate up to 70% health.
This means your respawned Nexus turrets are never going to be as strong as the original ones were in terms of durability.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: It's always worth killing an access turret now as opposed to last where it it felt wrong.
Sometimes if you could kill an exit hurt and you can never get back to it because of the amount of regen that it gets. Nexus turrets regen relatively quickly. If you could kill a Terror before you could yourself over now. It's never going to give you that full blockade that it gave you before.
Obviously all turrets have the slight numeric changes and tweaks on things. We're not going to go over those. So the next real thing we need to talk about is Minion spawns.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You want to explain the first one because it keeps messing you up and getting you killed against Niko.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: This me up a lot. Because you've now been ingrained for the last 16 years that all minion waves have three melee and three ranged. And then they can sometimes gain or eventually always have a cannon. Not true anymore. At 14 minutes, the minions spawn faster. It's now every 25 seconds waves happen. Cannons now have two melees instead of three. When it's a cannon wave. Once 30 minutes happens, minions spawn every 20 seconds. And only two caster minions spawn.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Yep. This is intended to increase the tempo of the game.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah. You'll never. You'll never see the size wave stacks you had before. But also now cannon minions spawn in wave three. So they've shifted where the wave spawn is. This is really messing me up consistently. Because I have been trained to know how many Minions there have been. And it's all gone. And it changes based on timers. I don't like that. I don't like that Niko is so much scarier now.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
The.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: The.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: The biggest. Other than Nico, the biggest function this change does is that split pushers have massively higher ability to cause mayhem to buildings because they have so many more minions supporting them that the turret cannot clear. And they're wiping the enemy minion wave. So it doesn't matter that the enemy is getting minions at the same rate.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Yeah. It doesn't matter that there are less minions because Minions are spawning faster. So you are more likely to have more minions with you. Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: This means past 30 minutes. If the turret is the only thing hurting your minion wave, you basically can have a permanent minion wave under a turret until it dies.
Until they respawn fast enough. The turret can't clear them in time.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: No, not with a cannon.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Okay. There's one other systemic change before we get into champions and items. Those are the the big things in this patch. And this last systemic change is that critical strikes deal 200% of normal damage. Once again, as a knock on effect of this, champions who have critical strikes in their kit such as Shaco or who are expected to build critical strike in their items such as AD Carries, Nyasuo, Nyone, all of AD carries. Yeah, all of those champions have numeric changes to compensate for this crit change.
Generally this is they had abilities that had ratios tied to crit. Those ratios have been reduced to make the ability be more. If it's a spell like ability, it does not need to scale with crit as hard. And if the ability was auto attack like they tried to preserve the high crit damage ratio and nerf it in other ways.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Gangplank is the other one who is relevant in this.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Yes. So if you play one of those champions or roles, please control F the patch notes with your champion name and see what the specific changes for your champion are.
We are going to shout out two specific ones though. Mike, I'm going to let you go first.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: This is an important one because this is a change that has happened and it needs to be known now. Cassiopeia can now and needs to buy boots. Her passive now just gives her flat bonus movement speed that scales so she can get very very fast. But she needs boots. You are not fast enough on your own to live without boots anymore.
And since you are generally a mid laner, your boots are better.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the key is mid lane Casio is no longer sad because she would have lost out on basically most of her role quest if not for this change. And bot Lane Casio, you get bonus gold, you buy your boots and you still get six items like you did before.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Bot Lane Casio is essentially just a faster Cassio.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: So there's one other champion that is not actually changes about the champion itself that I want to draw your attention to. Although they are in there. If you are a Rengar player, especially a Rengar main, why would you do this to us? A that but B you need to read the patch notes. You need to specifically control F Rengar in the bug fixes section.
Rengar was extremely buggy.
They have done a full rescript of how Rengar works to try to maintain as much current functionality and feel as they could while fixing all of the bugs and technical issues that Rengar had. This will affect your gameplay if you are a Rengar main. If you're a Rengar casual, you may not even notice this. They also removed his forced crit entirely. It now just scales with crits if he crits the attack the way other abilities work. So Rengar should be a little less one shot Y for the rest of us. Thank fuck. Yeah, but just I am not exaggerating. He literally is more than half of the bug fixes alone in this patch. Okay, we have one more change that I want to talk about before we get into the items itself. Because there is a systemic change.
Omnivamp as a stat has been changed to now apply at 100% value against champions.
Always your AoE, your damage over time, your pet damage. If it's against a champion, you get full value. If it's against minions, those. Those types of effects are still reduced. Single target is not. You get the full value of omnivamp. Single target on minions or monsters.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: There are not many sources of omnivamp, but there are a couple and they're adding a few more back into the game. The one that we didn't mention before is that the starting ad carry item that you usually get, Doran's Blade. That is known omnivamp item again.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah. To be clear, nothing's changed for it as far as its stats, but if you're using Jack of all trades, omnivamp is a stat for Jack of all trades, whereas the passive it had before is not.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: And it changed with its life thing.
It is now omnivamp. It functions as omnivamp. Yeah.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: So there's a bunch of changes to existing items that we want to cover first. Because that I think is what's going to be the thing players need to know. Your items that you already build has changed. We mentioned critical strikes. Do more damage. Infinity Edge got preemptively tweaked to give roughly the same multiplier on damage that it gave before overall. So it now does 30% damage instead of 40. It's about the same, give or take a percent or two. This is intentional. It is to keep Infinity Edge from just being the best item in the game for all crit champs, period. It's intended to be a capstone for those champions, not the first item you buy because crits are too strong.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
Continuing with the Crate items. Lord Dom's regard your One of your two armor pen items has re changed back to giving the bonus damage versus High Health champions.
So if you've got tanky people, you want Lord Doms. If you've got high healers executioners specifically.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: What this means is we are back to the 2024 version of the item where your marksman should never be your mortal reminder Heal Cut person.
Because you need them to build Lord Doms for the bonus damage and someone else should bring Heal Cut to the table. Yes, Mortal reminder did get made cheaper, so if you have to build it, it's fine. But you really want to build Lord Dom's instead. If you have any choice at all.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Lord Doms is a significant damage bonus now.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Yes.
Tier items can be stacked again when you've completely built out and upgraded your tier items such as a Seraph's Man Immune Mirror Mana rather or Fimbulwinter or the new one that we'll talk about in a little bit. You can now buy a new tier and start stacking it and complete another one if you are so inclined. Ezreal's very happy about this.
Most other champions I don't think care very much.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Kassadin might want a couple of them. Yeah, maybe it's a niche thing. Maybe Ryze will probably not.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: We'll get to why Ryze definitely won't.
We'll get there quickly. Zeke's the item that triggered like an AOE around you when you used your ultimate now gives ability Haste for Ultimates. Similar to how the other ultimate coded items all grant ultimate ability haste. This was the other one that didn't. So now it does.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
Essence Reaver has been reverted back to what it was. It is a Sheen proc for Crit again. So if you were building someone who wanted a Trinity Force and built Crit, Essence Reaver is your go to now. You don't need to splash out for.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Trinity Force and built Crit is important. This item still sucks on Ezreal. Please don't build it on Ezreal.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: It is Ezreal's winningest item. There's no way it is Ezreal's winningest item.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Those stats have to be before the hotfix changes. It was overtuned on release. It has been hotfixed to be weaker. I'd be willing to bet next patch it's not anymore but well.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Well that's not relevant for that. Yeah. Continuing on Umbral Glaive got a massive shift. First of all, it is more expensive. It is a real lethality item now. It gives high damage, high lethality, high haste, high cost. Not full 3,000, but it's. It's a higher cost item. You're gonna have a harder time finding it on ad supports. The second thing that makes it so goddamn powerful. It got a proc in there that it didn't have before. When you become unseen for a full second, you now have a true damage proc based on damage plus lethality. This is Kha' zix favorite item. He can proc it three times easily.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Yep. If you've evolved your ultimate, you'll basically always meet that condition. Unless the enemy has something granting them vision of you when you ult. Such as a tether.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
Other than that, its function to kill wards still works exactly the same way.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: All right, so there's a couple of mage item changes we wanted to highlight. One of them is just fun. Luden's companion has been removed from the game. It has been replaced with Luden's Echo, which has the exact same stats but it's a staff instead of a gun. And it is way cooler.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: It's back to the way it used to be. And it's better.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Literally no stat changes on this item at all.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Back to the.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: We're just both really happy about the name and the icon change.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Well, speaking of back to the way it used to be, Horizon Focus has been completely reverted back to what it used to be. So as opposed to a really high AP haste item, it is a mid AP damage amp item that either when you hit someone from long range or when you apply a CC to someone, you gain a damage amp. So Horizon Focus is still very good.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: But it does not have a CC condition. It's just range.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: They took the CC one away. Okay.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Yep. Just range.
The range is 600 units. So it's like Ash Auto Attack range.
Most champions who are ranged champions have spells that go farther than this. But not all.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Oh yeah. And it gives reveal.
That's not really relevant. 90 of the time.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: It had the reveal. Even on the previous version, it's the damage amp that's restart the damage amp coming back.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: So like it's significantly less ap.
It's slightly cheaper, but it's got a damage amp in it. Which really matters if you pop damage amps. Yep.
Alright.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: The other big item change is unending. Despair has lost its magic. Resist completely. It's now a 50 armor item instead of a 25. 25 item. As a result of that, Aegis of the Legion has been removed from the game since it was the last item that it built into. So Unending Despair has a new build path. Please check your build. It is now an armor item to I guess add more variety to armor builds. Instead of everyone buying just Sunfire and then Jack shown and ending Despair for hybrid stats.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: I don't think this actually changes very much.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: It. It just now focuses more. You have to buy. You can't buy nothing but the hybrid items anymore to get double armor mister. You have to actually split and focus on things.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Yep. So they also have changed Redemption to make it less valuable to tanks and more valuable to enchanters.
Redemption lost its health entirely and gains a little bit of ability power instead. And the build path changed.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Please don't build this if you're Braum. Yeah.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Stop building Redemption on Braum Leona, etc. But keep building it on Nami Sona type Champions.
Potentially.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: There's a couple other mild numeric changes to items across things. We don't need to discuss those ones.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: It's numerics. Go take a look. The next slot here we have. As opposed to changing items, we have items that used to be in the game that are coming back.
There aren't many of them, but each of them is very interesting.
The first coming back is Stormrazor which is one of the energized items. It is the energized crit item that gave damage. This is. It's a big damage proc. Gives you some move speed. It's your damage energized item if you wanted to do that. It's very strong as a first item on certain characters. This is a Rush item. It's incredibly powerful if you don't also.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: It is also expensive. This is. It has the same problem that Yuntal does of it being a Rush item that builds out a BF sword.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: But it also serves the same role as Yoon Tall of being a Rush item that gives you ad attack speed and crit on the same item. This is the one for spiking immediately. Whereas Yuntal takes some time to get online.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yuntal's is more overtime damage. Stormrazor is more burst. Yep.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: The other returning item is a fan favorite. Hextech Gunblade has been brought back to Summoner's Rift. This item costs 3,000 gold. It gives ability power. It gives attack damage and it gives omnivamp. And then it has an active that is a point and click slow that does some damage on cast. That's it. That's all it does. It is really good on the Champions that it used to be good on many years ago. And it's really good for champions with.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Good hybrid scaling, it's a very powerful item.
If you built this before, this is probably your new Rush item. Gunblade is very strong on almost everyone who uses it.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: I don't know about Rush item, but I will say champions like Kai' Sa are really happy with it later in their build.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Yeah, there are some hybrid people who build it later in the game. But like if you're Akali or if you're Kayle, this is your first item.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Kayle Kael. Really?
Yeah, I'll have to try that.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: The explosive burst on it is really powerful.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: I suppose the Active would also help you stay alive early.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Yeah. This one contends with the other item that we're gonna be talking about as a new item, which we'll get right to now. We're gonna talk about this one for Kayle as well. Dusk and Dawn. Fuck. This item is amazing. But it's also overpowered as shit.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is a Sheen item. It has AP health, ability, haste, and attack speed. And specifically the Sheen proc of it. Much like Lich Bane, it has a pretty low base AD ratio, but it applies on hit effects an additional time.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: So when you do that first hit after you proc your ability, you instantly get two hits of something like, oh, I don't know, a Kayle passive.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Yep. And to put that in context, Kayle's Passive has a 20% AP ratio already.
This item has a 10% AP ratio, which means, effectively you're getting a 30% AP ratio additional on your E casts that she didn't have before. Lich Bane's only 40%, so it's barely less damage than Lich Bane with no other items except this has health and this has attack speed.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: The other portion of this is. Yeah, it applies auto hit effects additional times. This also includes your attack procs. So people who have three hit passives, congratulations, it's now a two hit passive. Yup. Ekko can E slam auto attack you to instantly proc his passive.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Mordekaiser can basically instantly put his AOE up with this thing.
Like, this item is crazy. And we fully expect to see it nerfed.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: So this is the other. Like, if you are rushing, this is your rush.
Very few people who use this don't take this first.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: God, I hadn't even thought about Mordekaiser on this. He has a 40% AP ratio baseline. This is just better than Lich Bane for him, period.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: What the Fuck Riot. What were you thinking?
[00:38:44] Speaker B: So, like, this is the other item that Kayle is rushing. This replaces Lich Bane for a lot of people. This replaces Nashors for a lot of people like Gwen.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: It also scales really well with Nashors if you're a champion. Who still wants both?
[00:39:00] Speaker B: If you use both, like maybe Kayle or Gwen, you can still get both.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: God, I'm gonna start building this on Mordekaiser.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: This.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: I didn't even think about that. His AP ratio on Hit is so high that this item is just nuts.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Dusk and dawn is probably the most powerful item that they've added here. Probably. We'll talk about a couple of others who are fucking stupid.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, a few of these items are pretty crazy. The second one we're gonna talk about is not one of them though. They added another zeal item. This is called Fiend Hunter Bolts. It's a zeal item. You already know what the stat line looks like. It does give a lot of ability haste. And then when you cast your ultimate.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: It does not give ability haste. It gives ultimate haste.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Ultimate, yes. Ultimate ability haste.
And then after you cast your ultimate, your next three basic attacks get bonus attack speed and automatically critical strike for 75% of normal crit damage. If that attack would already have been a critical strike from your random crit chance, it deals normal damage plus 10% bonus true damage. So your next three attacks after your ultimate are faster and stronger no matter what.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: If you were an altbound crit character. Twitch Yunara, this is your new zeal item. It's your friend.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Okay, I have not tested this. This is me Theory Theory crafting live on the podcast. AP Yunara, build this.
Your three auto attacks after your ultimate are going to get your passive proc at the stupid high AP value that you have.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: She can go Dusk and Dawn normally you can't use.
Yeah.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Does Dusk and Dawn work with her passive? I don't actually know.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: It's a multi hit passive.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's on crit. I don't know if the second proc.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: From not that part of the on hit her her Q proc. She instantly QQ proc and then ultimates afterwards.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: O so there's definitely going to be some silly builds. This is not us endorsing building AP Yunara. It's just me realizing that this synergizes really well. If you want to build AP Yunara.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: For some reason, it gives her crit throughout her ultimate, which means you have the ability to potentially do it.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Don't know if it's good. I have not seen people building this item. Even the champions that it seems like it's targeted at. I haven't seen really building this item.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: I haven't seen them played.
A few that I have seen actually do in Aram Mayhem have all used it and it's been silly.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: Fair enough.
Speaking of silly, the item that we are all very upset about, Riot, has added a new item called Endless Hunger. This is an ad bruiser item. It gives a pile of attack damage, it gives tenacity and it gives omnivamp. None of that upsets us. It then gives Ability Haste that scales with your bonus ad.
This item is freaking stupid on Zahen.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: It gives so much ability haste, quite.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Literally a full or nearly full build. Zahen, who's stacked his passive, is getting 50 or 60 ability haste from this. A regular champion with no AD multiplier anywhere in their kit is still getting 3040 ability haste. Regular full fat Ability Haste. Not basic Ability Haste, not ultimate ability Haste. All ability haste. And then on top of that, if you get a takedown, you get 15% omnivamp for eight seconds. So Aatrox is an absolute nightmare. He gets a takedown, he refreshes his Ult and suddenly has insanely high omnivamp and just heals to full on every hit.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: This goes from the weakest healing item to the strongest healing item once a kill happens.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Yep. I am extremely unhappy with this item. Mostly because of the ability haste.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: The ability haste is really strong. The fact that it has tenacity on it as well is incredibly powerful. Yup.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: Because now that means that class of champions, even if they're not against magic damage, can get merc treads. Plus this item plus Sterak's. Cause Sterak's is a good item on everyone who would want to build this. Even though this item doesn't have health and just have so much tenacity that they just shrug off your stuns.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Yeah. You have more than 50% tenacity. It's disgusting.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
The next item we want to talk about is another assassin item. This is a lethality item. It's called Bastion Breaker. This item is expensive but gives an absolutely insane amount of lethality.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: This is the highest lethality item in the game now.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Yes.
This gives a bonus true damage proc. When you deal ability damage to a champion or epic monster, this has a cooldown. I'm not sure how long the cooldown is. And then if you have gotten a takedown, you get 90 seconds of having a sabotage buff.
Sabotage does a Gigantic burst of true damage to an epic monster or turret.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: With how towers have changed in the game. Bastion Breaker is how assassins are going to kill towers. It means champions like Zed are monster tower takers. If you're fighting them 1v1s against people in side lanes, you lose. That tower is dead.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Is very popular.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: I just looked the the proc on champions or epic monsters from just abilities has a 45 second cooldown. So it's basically once per combat.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Essentially the lethality ratio on the turret proc is insane. Most lethality champions are melee. This item alone means that you get an 850 true damage proc to structure or epic monster with no other sources of lethality.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: If you have a 50 lethality build. Yeah. That's more like 1550 damage on the proc.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Its lethality scaling is truly monumental.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Yes.
Actually crazy. But also a little bit of a luxury item because it is so expensive.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Yeah. This is a third item for people who build it. And yeah, if you are a champion who builds lethality, this should probably be in your kit from now on because of how the game has changed. Yep.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: It lets you rotate after plays to make things happen so much better. Speaking of making things happen better, they added a new active item for mana stacking mages. This thing is called Actualizer. It is also AP mana item. It is expensive. It's an AP mana item. It's got a good amount of AP on it. But this is like significantly more expensive than your lost chapter items. And the reason it's so expensive is when you use it, it has a one minute cooldown. But when you use it, your spells cost double mana and you gain increased ability damage healing and shielding. And your basic ability cooldowns progress faster for eight seconds.
And this bonus damage, healing and shielding scales with your bonus mana. This item is why I said earlier that Ryze is probably not building multiple tiers anymore. Because Ryze gets more bonus mana based on his ap. And this item will just snowball all of that. This is. This is a death cap level capstone for Ryze, who can also build death cap. He just gets two capstone items now.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: For everyone else that is this archetype, this item is very good. Rise just happens to be an abuse case for it. This is. You cannot play a game of Rise without this item as your third or fourth item. Essentially.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: I think the only other champion who should be bound to this item is Kassadin. I think Kassadin wants this very, very badly. He's not going to use it while he's ulting he's not going to use it like post 16 a lot but when he goes in for that burst he is going to explode you.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: The the problem with Kassadin is just he will actually run himself oom in like two rift walks if he builds this and it's expensive and he wants things like the Dusk and dawn we talked about earlier.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Dusk and Dawn's a real good on.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Him because by the way he has on hit effects on his auto attacks because of his W.
So yeah, I don't know if Kassadin's as hardbound to it as you think but Rise definitely.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Cast Rise is the only hard bound. This is his idea.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: And then this is really good situationally on Kassadin, Cassiopeia, Anivia and other champions like them.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Sorry.
Back to AD carries again and we have Hex Optics C44.
What a fucking name. Yep. This is another Crit item for AD carries. It's a Noon quiver item. It's a cheap item. It's very good for long ranged champions.
It gives you a straight up damage amp based on how far away the enemy is capping at 750. Certain champions can just instantly proc this at max range. Caitlyn can do it a bunch. Jinx can do it a bunch. Kog' Maw can do it a bunch. He's not going to build it.
The second portion of this when you kill a champion you gain more range for six seconds.
Yup.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: This is enough to put long range champions such as kog' Maw during his w outside of turret range and still able to hit the turret.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Like I think this might be a late game. Tristana item. A fourth item for Crit. Because she doesn't really need attack speed, she'll get a free damage amp. She has more than 750 by late game. Plus the increased range. Oh my God. Caitlyn loves this item. Yep.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: And also because of the increased range damage. This also is really good for rapid fire cannon users in general.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yes. And it is not an attack speed item. It is damage and crit. Yep.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: Which you need if you built a rapid fire cannon because you don't have any frickin damage in your build.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: No, it's. It's a very easy build. Cheap, strong.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: Alright. Speaking of cheap and strong, they added a new tank support item. This is to compensate for tank supports basically losing redemption that we talked about earlier. This item only costs 2000 gold. It gives health. It gives armor. It gives magic resist. It gives ability Haste.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: It's called Bandle Pipes.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: It is called Bandle Pipes.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: It is awesome. It is bagpipes.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: It is bagpipes. And if you CC an enemy champion, you get a buff. This buff lasts for eight seconds for melee and only four seconds for ranged. Sorry, Rakan. This buff gives you movement speed and gives you and nearby allies a bonus attack speed. This item is legit. I would strongly consider this on tank tops, where you just need a hybrid resist item because it's so cheap.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: It works on.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: So I would build this on Maokai.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: It's so powerful.
We've talked about hidden speed, hidden power and movement speed. Giving your support extra movement speed when you're a tank support.
Disgusting. Yep. It's so, so cheap. 2000 gold for a health armor. Mr. Haste item that also gives you attack speed because you're casting and. Oh my God. This thing is everything a tank support.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Wants and it does not list a cooldown. This means, like for example, I mentioned I could consider this buying. Buying this on a tank top. If you're playing Maokai and you buy this every time your saplings hit someone, you get bonus movement speed and an attack speed aura. Even if they're on the other side of the map. Like if you threw a sapling and then teleported to a play. Doesn't matter. You still get movement speed and an aura.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: Braum, who has infinite cc.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: Anyone who has low cooldown slows.
[00:50:39] Speaker A: This item is really good.
Tahm Kench, honestly would love this.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: Tahm Kench. The, like the low key, potentially powerful person for this is singed. Yeah, he pays. Rylai's. He's slowing. No matter what you're rolling around, always at bonus movement speed. Always with bonus attack speed Health armor, mister. All right. God.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: I think that's enough. Glazing a band of pipes? Seriously? These things only cost 2000 gold? I don't understand how a complete item is allowed to be so cheap.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it's 800 gold more expensive. It's 700 gold more expensive than a bf sword. Yep.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: So tanks get another new item in this patch. This is called protoplasm harness. This is a tank lifeline item. So lifeline items are things like mauve, malmortius, and Sterak's. This is in that category.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: But for tanks, Sterak's is a bruiser item, not a tank item. This is now the tank version of that. It gives a big chunk of health, gives ability haste. And its lifeline passive is a instant heal, a max health bonus, and then a bunch of healing and you get increased size. So for people like Chogoth. And you get movement speed and you get tenacity. Yep. That's your lifeline. Proc is big. The heal also scales with your armor and Mr. To a kind of silly level. It's a huge percent of healing for armor and Mr. This could be a pure health item that you buy on a full armor. Mr. Stacking character and be the only health item you get. And it's worth it. Yep.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: All right. We got one more new item to talk about. This is a new Enchanter tier item. Sona Mains Rejoice.
[00:52:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: Called Whispering Circlet for the regular version. And then when it's upgraded, it's called Diadem of songs.
It is cheap. 2250 gold. It gives health and mana and mana regen. And heal and shield power. And heal and shield power that scales with your bonus mana. And then the upgraded version, when you have healed or shielded an ally in the last three seconds and you are in combat with champions, or they are, then you will heal the nearest lowest health ally champion every second as long as that condition is met.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: Based on your bonus man.
[00:53:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Based on your bonus mana. So, like, I could see a Taric building this after his Fimbul Winter, for example, because Tarek can be very mana Taric.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: Doing. Doing this double mana on Taric is totally plausible. Still gives you health and mana.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: And then he builds a frozen heart because he's Taric.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: This is great for Sona, who's incredibly mana hungry. This is great for Janna, who's incredibly mana hungry, giving her actual healing.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yep. If you have really good AP scaling, you might still just prefer to go seraphs, but you could also just do both because you can buy multiple tiers.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Can't buy multiple tiers. This is probably your first one, unless you're so far ahead because it's that cheap.
[00:53:46] Speaker A: I could totally see like a support Sona, for example, building seraphs with her first item and then buying this once she's completed seraphs because it's cheap and she'll actually be able to afford it later. And just having both.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Yeah, just. You're probably only going to get two full items. Have those be your two full items. One for ap, one for mana. Both of them stacking into each other because they're both mana items.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: And also tiers are cheap supports can actually afford to buy a tier and let it start stacking because you can't afford full items anyway because you're a support.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: I think they might actually be the biggest beneficiary for reals about the multiple tiers is champions like Sona.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So like, supports that are mana hungry, that are enchanters, are very happy because now they basically have a three item combo. That's. That's fantastic. Redemption. Whatever your other item is. Plus this.
[00:54:39] Speaker A: Yep. Also remember, you don't get free blue buffs in late game anymore. So you actually do care about your mana.
[00:54:44] Speaker B: As an enchanter, you do need mana. Yeah.
[00:54:46] Speaker A: Okay. That's items. We got through items. Oh, my God. We actually just have a little bit left. We're gonna finish it.
Season 2025 is over. We're on season 2026 now. So the ranked season has ended. You got rewards based on whatever rank you achieved in 2025. And there are some changes to the ranked system for 2026.
The first most apparent one is the Aegis of Valor system. If you are auto filled, you cannot dodge your autofill. You'll just be autofilled again until you play the autofill game. In addition, when you play that autofill game, if you get at least a C in your mastery, which is a very low bar, you will not lose LP if you lose the game. And if you win the game, you'll get double lp.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: They mean an actual C, not a C minus, as far as I am aware.
[00:55:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: So you can't. You can't coast and do nothing. You need to try to win a game.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: But as long as you play at least. Okay, you won't lose anything or you'll gain double.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: Yes. As long as you're doing well, there's no. Nothing burned but time. And you are going to burn that time no matter what. So you're not losing and you're gaining a lot if you win. Trying to win, those might actually be more important than winning your regular ones.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: Yep. So they also made some changes to player behavior.
It is important if someone is holding your lobby hostage. If they've declared that, oh, I'm not playing with this guy again, or I'm gonna run it down or something like that, they've locked in Disco. Nunu, report them in the lobby. Because Riot has a system now that if someone is clearly hostaging the lobby, if Riot's algorithm determines that your report is in fact hostaging, Riot will terminate the lobby and punish them. Meaning you don't have to play the game out. Do not dodge. If someone is hostaging, report their ass.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: It has to be noticeable hostaging. If you're doing niche picking, sometimes weird things, you everyone has seen the yumi top that actually tries to win. That's not enough to label a game a hostage. Just doing something like that.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: Someone picking a champion you don't think they should pick is not a valid reason for this. But if someone locks in Nunu Mid with Ghost teleport and says fuck all y', all, I'm running it down, report their ass, the game will be terminated and they will be punished.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: That is the message. Yes.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: That means do not in any way, shape or form joke or insinuate that you are going to int or troll in Champion Select. Even if you are just bantering with your friends, Riot's algorithm may think you are hostaging. Don't make those jokes. Just don't do it.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: We did not mention this back when we were talking about autofill, but Autofill has a significantly more aggressive match to make sure you're also autofilling against someone in the same role. Yes, if they can do it. If not, they want to make sure you are facing against someone who is also autofilling. They're doing this to try and make the game as a whole more even.
[00:57:54] Speaker A: Yep. So if you're auto filled support, you're probably against an auto filled support. If you're auto filled mid somehow, you're probably against an auto filled mid. I don't know how that would happen, but that's the rule now.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: Also, we spoke of reporting. Yeah.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: When you report someone, the reporting screen will now break down. Which rule? Each violation that you could report someone for actually falls under the first time you log in on this patch.
Riot makes you acknowledge that you understand the rules of playing League of Legends.
Everyone gets this. This is not a punishment in this case. If you have been punished in the past, you've seen this screen before because it is the screen you get when you're recovering from a punishment. But everyone is getting it. Don't panic. That's to remind everyone what the rules are. Don't be a dick and it won't matter. But when you're reporting someone now, you'll know which rule it falls under the report. So keep that in mind.
[00:58:55] Speaker B: It makes reporting things easier to break down. It makes it easier to simpler to find where the reports go and makes it more likely that your report will actually be considered valid because you're reporting things correctly.
[00:59:08] Speaker A: That this is to encourage players to report things correctly. So Riot's algorithm knows what to look for. Please use the reports correctly to get the assholes punished because they deserve it. And don't report frivolously because that's not doing anyone any favors. You're just tilting yourself.
All right, I haven't played this, so I'm gonna throw it over to Mike. Talk about this Demacia Rising metagame that we're getting for 2026. At least the first part.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: The Demacia Rising metagame is the fun little mini game in the base game that like, sometimes it was a dating sim, sometimes it was a fighting game.
Oh God.
[00:59:44] Speaker A: I remember the dating sim being weirdly horny. It was great.
[00:59:47] Speaker B: Yeah. This time they have made a Forex base builder and it's a really surprisingly decent one.
You just accumulate points playing the game to allow you to do more stuff in the game. Don't sit there spamming turns without playing the game. You will run your resources dry on complete accident. I did not notice that. I did it. It is. It is a mixed encouragement. You gain the resource by playing the games. TFT also works for this.
Any other matchmaking thing works for this. Play League, Bounce Back to base Building Bounce back Play League. It's great for your like 4 minute cues. If you have long queues in solo queue, there's a little story to it. It's not difficult. It's very, very easy to understand. But it has a little bit of depth, so it's. It's fun. Speaking of other game modes, let's. Let's get these things out.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Swift Play got a bunch of changes to make it faster. We don't play Swift Play, so we're not going to go over specifics. The only things that I know for a fact are that it now functions starting at level three. You get the level three start, the 1300 gold start, and it inherited the.
[01:00:59] Speaker A: Same start a game flow from regular Summoner's Rift, so it starts sooner.
[01:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
I hate Swift Play. I've done it once on accident. I didn't like it, so I'm not going to play any more of it. If you play Swift Play, check the changes because I don't know any more of them. Arena got a bunch of balance changes. Arena sticking around for a long time because arena is really popular. Aram Mayhem also sticking around a long time because it's really popular. And Aram is also sticking around for a while.
[01:01:29] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:01:30] Speaker B: It's got some more changes coming soon.
[01:01:32] Speaker A: That they gave us a specific patch. 26.3 should have more sweeping changes for Aram Mayhem. For now, there are some minor changes in this patch.
[01:01:43] Speaker B: Other than that. That's. That's the patch we got for you guys. There's a lot of things we didn't cover in detail.
If you're interested in going over, you should check out what all the items actually do numerically for your rolls. Check out each one before you rock into before you rock into rank to actually play a normal game because otherwise you won't know if your new items are actually strong. Do a custom game to build things and test things for the love of God. Way different stuff for the love of God.
[01:02:16] Speaker A: Play some normals. Don't jump straight into ranked, please.
And yeah, that's that's as much of the patch as we can cover in an hour. Ish podcast.
There's a lot strongly recommend. Please actually look at the patch notes.
There was one other change I just noticed that I want to mention. Clash got moved back. The first Clash registration will open on January 19th and will be played on January 24th and 25th. It was going to be the weekend before that. I'm very happy about this because I'm gonna go watch Lord of the Rings in theaters the weekend that it was originally scheduled. So maybe I'll get to Clash this time around.
[01:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean Clash being pushed a week later is great.
It gives you more time to figure shit out.
[01:03:03] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:03:04] Speaker B: By the way, in certain theaters around the world, AMC is doing a re release of Lord of the rings for its 25th anniversary. If you have the ability to go see it, you should go see it.
[01:03:14] Speaker A: Yeah, these are the extended editions. I'm really excited going with a whole bunch of people, including former host Codex.
[01:03:19] Speaker B: Ninja Friday Fellowship Saturday Two Towers Sunday Turn of the King. If you can find it, you should do it. I'm advocating this because this is my favorite movie trilogy of all time. I love these series to death.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: With that, go play Lucian in the top lane or don't because the bonus experience isn't as valuable. In the top lane is for him as it would be for other champions. But no, yeah, Lucian, we're sticking to it.
[01:03:45] Speaker B: Lucian may be kicked out of the top lane because he has no benefit from gaining two levels as opposed to getting a sixth item.
[01:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's gonna be the pod. That's as much patch as we can bring you in the hour and five minutes this episode will wind up being.
I've been Jack Soman for Mike of Many Names. Have a great night, guys.
[01:04:04] Speaker B: Good night, everybody.
[01:04:06] 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 4Wards podcast and of course send your questions to the 4Wards podcast gmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
