The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 514: Prep School

[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 514 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual, Jack Zoman. And I've just got one more word with you guys. This week we've got Mike of many names. [00:00:48] Speaker B: It's probably just going to be me and Jax for some time now. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Yep, Pillow's going to try to show up when he can, but with a new baby that's difficult, but hopefully we'll get him back sooner rather than later. In the meantime, guys, we do have a Discord. The link is in the episode description. If you join the Discord, you can come chat with us. You can see pictures of Pillow's baby. He posted some. You can play games with us. It's a great time. Come join the Discord. [00:01:14] Speaker B: We're doing games pretty often. [00:01:16] Speaker A: We've been playing a lot of norms because it's new season. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But like, come play with us. Seriously. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv, Jacksolman and Mike can be found at Twitch tv, mikeofmanynames and of course we've got shout outs for Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy, Esquire, Labana, and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier. Thank you guys. You're keeping us 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. And $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed. And we'll shout your name out during the intro of every episode. And all of those benefits also apply to our general Gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners, not a single one of you wrote into the email this past week. You're being saved by the Discord once again. Barely. We need more questions. It's a new season. Ask us shit so we can answer your questions about how the new stuff works. The new stuff is crazy. So write into the 4wards podcastmail.com with your questions. We can answer your questions on the podcast. [00:02:38] Speaker B: A quick note on that if you have a suggestion for a topic, don't be afraid to pop it out there. We may say no, we may hold off on it, but we like the user interaction and sometimes you guys have given us some really great ideas. [00:02:52] Speaker A: Also, if you've ever listened to the pre show, you know we're too stupid to come up with good episode ideas ourselves consistently. [00:02:58] Speaker B: This too. [00:03:01] Speaker A: All right, our actual first topic for tonight. We've prepped a couple of smaller topics this week. We just spent all of last episode like an hour and 10 minutes or whatever it was covering the changes in the new season. We covered patch 26.1. We did not have time to really provide a lot of conjecture and thoughts and any experience with the patch yet because we just hadn't had time. So we're going to spend a little bit of time this week giving our thoughts on some of the various changes that occurred and our initial just thoughts and impressions. This is not going to be like a hot takes and like telling you guys what to play. Just a general how did this land in our opinion And I'm going to kick it off with I think role quests are a big success. However, I think it's weird that mid lane is the worst scaling of the farming roles. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Now that is interesting, isn't it? And now it might also be that a lot of mid laners have the most scaling period. So they get less scaling through their quest. Is the potential for that now? I'm not sure if I believe that. I think they may have just a full extra item is pretty massive for ad carries and top laners. Yeah, they're fucking relevant. [00:04:25] Speaker A: It's also just the extra experience and extra gold is direct power. Whereas mid laners the boot upgrade is the only direct power they get. [00:04:33] Speaker B: So yeah, I think both of us are in agreement that mid lane. I think the boots need just like a little bit of a tweak and it's not a tweak that needs to be very big. I think what they could do is just add some form of percent scaling on those boots. [00:04:50] Speaker A: All they need to do is just make it so the boots have a gold cost upgraded version that just increases the stats on them. Something to like when you're full item you still have a use for gold. That's it. That's all they need to do. I think. [00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Have a base version, upgraded version. [00:05:07] Speaker A: They may be okay with mid lane being just straight up weaker than top and bot in the late game with the offsetting of. [00:05:13] Speaker B: They're very powerful mid and early. [00:05:16] Speaker A: They're very powerful mid game. So we'll see. But that's my first impression. What's your first initial thought or impression or whatever you want to call it? [00:05:26] Speaker B: This one's going to be twofold because it's relevant to the lane and then the person 80 carries. Getting six items is incredibly powerful. Not having that boot slot there means you can now get a full crit build and then have lifesteal and then get a GA or be someone who has odd scalings that also work with crit so that you can get something weird. Yep. [00:05:52] Speaker A: That's. I think the biggest winner is champions like Yunara that have weird scaling methods but need crit now can actually hit both of those marks. [00:06:02] Speaker B: You know is one of the better ones to talk about. Because people that are partially on hit partially crit benefit so much from this because they can start out with something like a Kraken slayer and then transition into crit which gives them an early game power spike and then a mid to late game power spike and then. [00:06:20] Speaker A: Still be allowed to get a final item that's relevant instead of before. If you did that well, you hit 100% crit but you're also full build. No life steal for you. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So this is. This is my like ad carries are living it up. They are powerful. But also in the same vein, fucking remember that Cassiopeia needs to buy boots or play her in bot lane. [00:06:43] Speaker A: Like even if you play her in bot lane you still need to buy boots when. [00:06:47] Speaker B: When she's played she has a significantly lower win rate because she's not buying boots in like 50% of games. In the games in which you see she has boots, her win rate is as good or better than before. So fucking remember Cassiopeia needs boots. Yup. [00:07:07] Speaker A: Alright, I've got another initial impression. I love every turret having plates. [00:07:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Tier 2 turrets are so much safer than they were before because them having plates means one dude who's a little bit ahead can't just destroy the entire turret in one push when he's ahead of you. [00:07:27] Speaker B: Unless it's like 25, 30 minutes in the game. Yeah, the turret is surviving longer. Another like I'm going to keep going with these ones. I've got another one on there and that. I love what they've done to the jungle change. I think they've made good changes to the jungle. The increased smite damage means I'm missing a lot less smites when there's smite fights or if you're someone who has a burst combo. Your burst combo feels unstealable. [00:07:55] Speaker A: It levels the playing field again. So it doesn't feel like junglers have so many. Well, there was literally nothing I could do moments as they did before. [00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And then like with all the. The defensive changes to the jungle, they didn't feel like they made it so that they were untakeable. You can still solo a dragon early on. It's a little more dangerous, but you can still do it. Grubs is still pretty much the same. I think the one that's actually become the most impactful change was to Harold. It's actually like a chore to take herald and it's always worth taking herald if you can get plates on it. Now, Harold, actually, as long as you're hitting with a herald, it's worth using because you're always getting at least a plate and a half, maybe two. [00:08:40] Speaker A: So my next thought, 200% crit damage is a problem. It is not a problem for AD carries. I think it's fine. It does make them scale even better. But since they're building Iedge, it doesn't really change that much of their late game output. Because the Iedge got its crit damage multiplier nerfed down to keep the overall damage from spiking too hard. No, it is a problem on Tryndamere and specifically tryndamere because 200% crits mean he just auto wins lane. If he gets that early crit when he's at like 10 rage and just gets that 2% crit, he just auto wins his lane level one. It's fucking oppressive. I played against a Tryndamere and was literally getting Turret Dove before he was level six because his crit damage was so psycho. Yeah, I think Trinomir needs more nerfs. [00:09:33] Speaker B: I think with the change to ad carry items, the change to crit was not relevant. They should not have done it because if you're buying crit, you're buying an I edge anyways. So like, yeah, I guess it makes it more impactful before you get your eye edge. But most people are buying I just their second crit item. The people who aren't are the people who are building something like Essence Reaver into Blank or Corki who builds like weird. Weird. Yeah. I don't understand like third. Third. And this. This is now relevant because we've watched a week of this. Don't look at pro for builds. Don't. Don't. [00:10:14] Speaker A: Yes, don't. Okay. It's fine to get ideas from pro, but try them in norms to make sure. They work in a less organized environment. For example, it didn't occur to me last week when we were talking about all the item changes that Zeke's getting Ultimate Haste makes it really goddamn good on Malphite, and it does. We saw that in pro play in LEC this past weekend, and I'm gonna try that in some norms. I'm not gonna immediately be playing Zeke's Malphite in ranked, but I think that might be enough to no longer need to go malignant to have a good amount of ultimate cooldown on a tank. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Build as a counter to that. I have never seen so much seraphs rush into Ralais on Taliyah. Why would you do that unless you're in a pro environment? Yup. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Please do not copy that. Because that's what the pros do. There's a reason they're doing that and you're not in the same environment. On the note of items, is it just me, or are the new items kind of overshadowing, like, the old items that were updated pretty hard? [00:11:19] Speaker B: Outside of the old items that were out of blooded, there were only two. [00:11:21] Speaker A: What do you mean you're thinking returning items? I'm counting those as new. I'm talking about, like, Unending Despair, Horizon Focus, Sundered Sky, Echoes of Helia. [00:11:31] Speaker B: Oh, all of those. [00:11:34] Speaker A: Like, a couple of them are good still. Yeah, but it feels like they're all like, a tier less insane than like, Gunblade and the Bandle pipes. Which Bandle pipes is getting nerfed? Next patch, guys. Riot already confirmed it now. [00:11:51] Speaker B: That point it's still gonna be good. They're just making it the same cost or a little bit more than where it should be. It should not have been 2000 gold. We talked about it. It was cheap as. It'll still be cheap as 2300 is still cheap. But, like, you need to wait more than two backs to go get it now. They're not nerfing the stats on it. They're nerfing its cost. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm thinking like, Dusk and Dawn basically completely supplanting Lich Bane in the game. Almost entirely. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't. I don't know a single Lich Bane user right now in comparison. [00:12:21] Speaker A: That kind of stuff. That's. That's where my brain is at, is like a lot of the new items just seem like they're just straight up better than old items are. And that kind of annoys me. I don't want that to be the case. [00:12:34] Speaker B: So, yeah, like, and that. That gets to A point of you should be looking at new items very heavily and you can do a little bit of, little bit of cooking right now. Take, take some time, take some thoughts. As we were talking about not understanding the Zekes and Malphite, that's. Let's do some cooking. Between Zeke's into Malignant's malphite or Reverse, there's been some, some interesting theories about popping Dusk and Dawn on Mordekaiser. That could be real strong. There's. There's some, there's some thoughts going on that. That cooking is. Now is the time to do them. And now is not what I have been seeing across the board. I've been seeing either a very set set of builds that people have been following across the way, which. Okay. Or you've been seeing things that are like fucking stupid. Like the Dusk and Dawn build into Xin Zhao that one game so that he had infinite fucking healing. [00:13:37] Speaker A: Yep. [00:13:37] Speaker B: Didn't do any damage, but he just didn't fucking die. [00:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it was pretty silly. So stuff like that, that's. That's where my brain goes for my impressions. You have any other thoughts you want to share before we move on to our next topic? [00:13:50] Speaker B: Don't forget Baron's bonds at 20 minutes now. That's the other one. [00:13:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:54] Speaker B: I've seen a bunch of snuck barons really early. [00:13:58] Speaker A: We've seen several snuck barons in pro. [00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't forget about Baron at 20 now because that's, that's a killer if you forgot about that. Yup. [00:14:09] Speaker A: Okay, so that's our initial. Just thoughts, impressions, observations, our vibe. Let's talk a bit. It's a new season. Ranked is open. Let's talk about prepping for ranked in a new season with this level of sweeping changes. First and foremost, this is kind of our unanimous. There's a lot of changes. Do not jump straight into ranked before you have played a bunch of normal games, period. [00:14:38] Speaker B: My. My advice is a minimum of 10. You want to have both sides of the map because you want to feel what it's like on both sides. You want to play at minimum your main role and your off roll. And you want to play two to three of your main champions. [00:14:55] Speaker A: Yes. [00:14:56] Speaker B: In fact, I would say you want to play all of your main champions because it's very likely their builds have changed as we've been talking about the items supplanting things. Yeah, A lot of people have new builds going on. One of the people we've been playing with has gone nothing but Enchanter Senna for a while. [00:15:13] Speaker A: Yep. We're not advocating necessarily for Enchanter Senna, but it's something he's experimenting with. And that's kind of the point is experiment in norms. Get those experimentations. Some of them could be OP or correct, and sometimes they're neat and fun. [00:15:32] Speaker B: But not necessarily very cool. Sometimes we've discovered why they're not used. [00:15:36] Speaker A: And you're not going to know which it's going to be until you actually put it to the test. [00:15:40] Speaker B: You need to get a feel for how things are, especially. Especially if you're someone who's playing with Dusk Till dawn. Because that is a fundamental change on a bunch of characters. They feel different to play. Yep. [00:15:53] Speaker A: So other than playing norms, what else can people do to prep for the new season of ranked? [00:16:00] Speaker B: My main thing is see if your champion pool is the same. Your champion pool may have just changed. Yeah, partially it could be. Now you have new options so you can go check and see if there's new things. Partially it could be. Man, I. I played 400 games of this last season. It's getting a little tired on me. Let's. Let's build up something new. Or it could be. You want to be like the second portion. Do you want to play in the same role? Now that role changes have happened, the quests have gone on, you may not want to do the same role you were doing. [00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, this is the time to figure all of that out before you go into ranked. The other thing I would say you should do, prepping for the new season, figure out what's new with your worst matchups. If you're bad against specific champions and they're not the one you're going to ban every game, figure out what they're doing that's new and figure out how to deal with it. [00:17:00] Speaker B: And on that note, bans. If you're someone who doesn't ban, ban something, look up. Look up the most played champion in the game right now and ban them. Look up. Yeah, look up the most winningest champion may not be the most played. Ban them. Ask your teammates. Ban something for them. [00:17:20] Speaker A: Quite literally. You can just go on your favorite stat site and just go pick rate. What's the highest pick rate? Ban it. That will be more effective than a no ban may not even be in your role. Who gives a shit? That's not what this is about. [00:17:35] Speaker B: So a lot of people talk about. [00:17:37] Speaker A: Because if it's the most popular, that means it's the most likely that that's going to be the main on your opposing team. And therefore you just banned out someone's main which is the highest predictor of you winning the game is if someone on the enemy team has to play off main. [00:17:53] Speaker B: There's a second portion on this and that. If you are banning off roll, you have now confused potentially what the enemy has information wise. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Maybe there's more variables there. That one does depend a bit on other picks and what's showing and what you're playing, whether it's plausible in that role or not. [00:18:11] Speaker B: But like you, you can help confuse the enemy by banning off roll just because maybe you're playing support on the biggest pick in the game. The most popular champion is no longer Zed. It's Kayle or something like that. [00:18:24] Speaker A: Incidentally, I just went and sorted by all roles pick rate. It's all support San adc. Like literally all of them. What the hell. The first champion to show up that's not one of those is Diana in the jungle at 12%. So maybe she's what you should be banning if you're not playing Diana Jungle. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Or a side note, I have an advice for people if you haven't seen it like ever because it's a very rare champion initially. If you have nothing else to ban, just ban Qiyana. Yeah, she is a weird champion whose interactions are strange and if you're not used to seeing her, she will fuck you up. She's extremely snowbally and she's popular in two separate roles. Yep. [00:19:11] Speaker A: I'm gonna continue with banning sett when I play top lane because fuck that champion. But that's more my own personal. I just hate certain champions and he's one of them. [00:19:21] Speaker B: My ban has been switched to Akali because Gunblade Akali equals fuck me. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean to be fair, Akali was one of your primary bans before she was. [00:19:32] Speaker B: But I started banning nothing but Zed for a while there because he was that popular. [00:19:36] Speaker A: Fair enough. Alright, any other thoughts for prepping for a new ranked season for the jungle? [00:19:43] Speaker B: You need to do prep runs. There is a completely different feel to how the jungle feels. Your damage is different. Your. Your damage is completely different from your first run around. So you need to test this and just go and and play some runs. Either do practice game runs or eat. Do not do co op verse. AI. You fundamentally start at a different level. [00:20:06] Speaker A: Yes, it plays Swift play for the same reason. [00:20:09] Speaker B: It's under swift play. It's not the same thing. That will not prepare you for ranked. You need to either do normal games, normal draft pick or go into the practice tool and just run cycles because Your. Your run is fundamentally different, not just because of the starting time, but because of the changes to the jungle pet. You just do less damage. [00:20:32] Speaker A: All right, so as an addendum to this, obviously, Mike, everyone knows you mostly just play duo Q or flex when you play ranked, but let's talk a bit about how we're planning to approach ranked this year. What role are you going to be maining? What champions are you thinking about? That kind of stuff? [00:20:53] Speaker B: Unfortunately, both you and I do not have the what champions am I thinking about maining? Because both of us have kind of a large pool that the man. I can do this in this situation. Yeah. I feel confident with it and I feel confident with a lot of champions. But there are some that I will primarily pick over others. My two, like my three most prominent champions that I've been enjoying. I've been playing more mid than than jungle recently. So that's been where I've like shifted my priority of changes to. I still really like Mel. She's really fun. I play her a lot. I've found out that I really think Brand is much stronger than people are giving him credit for in the mid lane. And I think Brand can snowball fights way harder than most other champions because he. His teamfight damage is royally disgusting. And I haven't played her a lot, but the last couple times I have felt so good. I think I should play her more. Is Vex. That's one of those. I haven't gotten to do more than two games on her. Even though I've played like 50 plus games this season. I. I had such a blast on Vex. I should do that more. I don't know why I don't. [00:22:10] Speaker A: Because you forget that you enjoy her. You forget that Vex is a thing and you focus on other things and then you get reminded and you go, oh, wow, Vex is so much fun. Why don't I play her more? And then you forget again. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I pick her into like two specific matchups and then I'm like, fuck. I really like this. God damn. This was fantastic. Like, Vex is my main counter into Ahri. [00:22:31] Speaker A: Fair enough. I'm actually just gonna continue what was working for me at the end of last season. I'm gonna stay top lane because top laners are rage baby children and throw a tantrum if they don't hard win their lane. So since I'm willing to, you know, play a farm lane or go even or play weak side, that puts my team in an automatic advantage. And with the new role quests It's a lot easier to be strong as a top laner. I can just take teleport and play champions like Volibear, who build a lot of HP anyway. And Volibear feels a lot less hardbound to flicker blade this this patch than he did before. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Dusk and dawn has done wonders to him. [00:23:12] Speaker A: Dusk and dawn has done wonders for him specifically. So I can just play those champions and play top lane. And sometimes I'll beat the shit out of my opponent and sometimes I won't. But I can then Teleport and have a 3000 life shield because teleport is insane on top laners. [00:23:32] Speaker B: This has reminded me of two things, oddly enough. One, we did not mention this. Top lane has the most balance it has ever felt because you do not need to pick TP and it doesn't feel like it. You're punished when you do. Yes, if you take tp, you actually see a pure benefit from taking tp. You get a faster tp. That shield is really fucking strong, but you don't need it anymore. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Yep. [00:23:55] Speaker B: And the other thing that reminded me of is I was going to mention this. Don't play in some form of inebriation. I was incredibly sick at the beginning of this year. And so I essentially. I said, I've played 50 games. I've essentially played 25. Because that entire first week, my practice wasn't real. [00:24:18] Speaker A: I can confirm, as someone who played with you a lot, we played 22 games together and won 41% of them. A lot of those losses were just you inting your face off. [00:24:29] Speaker B: I. I did not play like I usually played. My entire mentality was completely different. How I made decisions was entirely different. Yep. And not knowing the game as it was, the game had changed on me, meant I did not know what I was doing when I made a lot of my decisions. So especially if you are like, sick, don't play while sick because your entire ethos has now changed. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yep. Okay, we do have a couple of listener questions. Again, thank you to the members of the Discord who sent in questions. You guys are carrying the Q and A portion of the podcast. Guys, write in. Write in in the question submission channel on the Discord or email us atthefourwards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. And again, that is the Four Wards podcast. If you're just sending it to Forwards podcast, you're not getting it to us. It needs to have the the. Okay. Our first question tonight comes from Toast, who asks, everyone says stick to one champion to learn and improve. But I have a hard time sticking to one champion because I get bored and I have fun playing more champs. How can I trick my brain into playing only one or only a couple of champions? Or should I even worry about it since I'm having fun and mostly playing for fun at the moment? [00:25:46] Speaker B: Hey, Toast. If you're not playing ranked, you don't need to worry about it. [00:25:49] Speaker A: Yep, first and foremost in norms. Play whatever the fuck you want. It's a normal game. There is no consequences. So you should be playing to have fun, but also don't like troll. [00:26:01] Speaker B: Play to win, but have fun while doing it. Don't make yourself miserable to win. When you're doing ranked, that's when you start restricting yourself and honestly get yours. If. If one champion does not do it for you, Build a pool of five champions or something like that. So that way you have a rotation you can go through that will both satisfy what you're playing and have. Like these are the things that I'm comfortable doing, so I can cycle through them based on either I'm not feeling the other one at the time, or I know this one is good in this situation, etc. That way you have a way of hopefully stiving off that that malaise you have. But if you're playing norms, just play norms. Have fun. [00:26:47] Speaker A: Yep. As far as tricking your brain and only playing one or only a couple of champions, well, your champion pool should be three and ranked anyway. So rotate between three. [00:26:58] Speaker B: The ultimate trick, if you are in one of the roles to do it is to play Viego or Sylas. [00:27:05] Speaker A: True. [00:27:06] Speaker B: That way you get to actually play multiple champions. So like true if. If you literally want a trick. Well, hey, if you play jungle, mess with Viego. He's fairly strong at the moment anyways. [00:27:19] Speaker A: He's extremely strong right now. And you literally get to be all five players on the enemy team at various points in the game. [00:27:27] Speaker B: Now I will give a caveat on this part. You need to know what champions do to play Viego. So if your champion knowledge is slim, I would avoid it. Same thing with Sylas. You need to know the enemy champions and if you don't, you. You can't effectively play those champions because your lack of knowledge will actually kill people. [00:27:51] Speaker A: Okay, wait. I actually just looked at the stats. Viego is apparently the 54th winningest jungle right now. Maybe don't play Viego. What the fuck happened? [00:28:00] Speaker B: Wow, I've seen so many powerful viegos recently. [00:28:03] Speaker A: That's why I'm confused. He seemed strong when I've seen him, but apparently, like, stats wise, he's below a 48% win rate. Holy shit. That's crazy. Is this just a like stat sites default to high Elo. Let's look at Gold plus instead. Where does he land? Yeah, Gold plus moves him up to 49%. He's a low Elo pub stomper now. [00:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, that makes more sense. [00:28:27] Speaker A: Okay, that makes a lot more sense. What happens if I put it in Silver? How he goes up to 50%. Jesus Christ. Okay, so maybe do. Yeah, Play Viego. [00:28:38] Speaker B: Yeah, Viego. Like, the reset power of Viego is very powerful if you know how to use it. Yup. [00:28:46] Speaker A: Okay. Toast has one more addendum to the question. Obviously we can't know much yet, but does anyone have any hot takes of champs or things that are going to be broken or anything this season? Yes, we do know a little bit because stuff has come out. But the first one I want to share is there is some stuff that has been hotfixed because it was actually literally broken. So we're going to start with that because it's funny and it no longer works. So you can't. You can't cheat with it. There was a glitch with Cassiopeia that allowed her to reach infinite movement speed, which meant she also got infinite AD or AP from the boot upgrade from mid lane because you went swift March, which then resulted in her one shotting everything with all spells, which is hilarious. That was pretty broken for the 12 hours it existed. [00:29:38] Speaker B: On a realistic note, let's not talk about a thing that can't happen right now. [00:29:42] Speaker A: I have one other funny one because this one is really funny. There was a glitch with Master Yi that caused him to not have a cooldown on Redemption. Master Yi became an Orbital Bombardment Laser champion, literally just running around spamming a gazillion Redemptions a second and just orbital lasering the enemy to death. [00:30:04] Speaker B: That's precise. [00:30:07] Speaker A: While also making his teammates immortal. Like, it's so funny. It's been fixed. I'm glad it's been fixed. So those are. Those were some broken things that happened this season. There was a lot of spaghetti code broken shit. Those aren't the only ones. They're just the funniest. [00:30:23] Speaker B: That is obviously not what you meant by talking about that, but I wanted to share anything that's been building. Dusk and dawn is a pretty one there. Dusk and dawn is so powerful. For those who use it, expect it to be nerfed. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Next patch. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Echo got a huge bonus. Diana got A huge bonus. We started talking about Volibear. We were talking about maybe splicing it on Mordekaiser. There is a fucking Xin Zhao who went AP because of it. Its power is serious. And to link a champion that I think is actually bustedly powerful. Who uses that? Kayle is bullshit strong. [00:31:08] Speaker A: Yes, she is. [00:31:10] Speaker B: Kayle, who can accelerate to get to her late game earlier, is already strong. Gunblade and Dusk and Dawn are both superpowered items that synchronize with her very, very well. And she can build one into the other. And omnivamp not reducing healing for aoe for champions means Kayle in team fights smokes and it's really hard to kill her. [00:31:38] Speaker A: She can literally go Nashor's, Dusk and Dawn, Gunblade, Deathcap and just kill anyone. [00:31:44] Speaker B: Yeah. She does not need a penetration item. [00:31:46] Speaker A: And she can then just get one last if she does need one if there's a mega tank on the enemy team because she doesn't need one early. [00:31:53] Speaker B: The other one I kind of mentioned earlier, if you haven't seen Kiana, that champion is disgusting and I hate it. And she's really, really powerful with not just the new like siege breaker item, but she is one of the abusers of the changes to Umbral Glaive because she has easy to access invisibility. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Yep. So the other one that I think is low key op, it's very stupid. Van der Lul actually posted a video about it and people were like, wait, Vanderlul's posting a video that isn't a bug? What the hell is happening? Taric with Dusk and Dawn and a high ability haste build with a flicker blade. Can perma stun people like actually perma stun. [00:32:41] Speaker B: It's. It's Earth levels of bullshit. [00:32:43] Speaker A: It's. It's worse than urf Taric, because at least in urf, everyone gets extra tenacity. If you don't have tenacity, you literally cannot escape. He just literally permanently stuns you. If you have tenacity, you get to fight back for about a third of a second every one and a half seconds or so. Basically insane. [00:33:04] Speaker B: It is the do you have fancy feet test. [00:33:07] Speaker A: Because the first time he lands the stun, you're just dead. [00:33:10] Speaker B: If you, if you can dodge him or if you can kite him, yeah, you're okay. But if you can't, it's kind of scary now. It's. It's not strong to begin with. You are sacrificing like early power because Tarek loses a lot of Those lanes. I don't know if he does it in the jungle. [00:33:29] Speaker A: You can do it in the jungle or in top lane. [00:33:31] Speaker B: But yeah, that's, that's a late game potential teammate nightmare. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Yep. So yeah, that's a thing. It's. It's. I don't know that it's actually gonna get nerfed. I don't know if it's that level of broken because like he still doesn't do great damage and building that way makes you really squishy to other people. But it's really obnoxious and really funny. [00:33:53] Speaker B: I have another like hot take and that. I think Kassadin may transition into being a top laner soon. [00:33:59] Speaker A: Potentially at least as a counter pick. [00:34:01] Speaker B: To stuff like Kennen giving him accelerated leveling. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Same reason Kale's good right now and. [00:34:07] Speaker B: And his early game. Much like Kale. Like Kale is still weak until 6 and then it can do stuff. Kassadin has a better chance at fighting a bunch of the top laners as. [00:34:18] Speaker A: Long as they do magic damage. [00:34:20] Speaker B: So like you can face a bunch of the tank top laners if they're magic damage heavy. Yeah. And then ignore them into the mid late game and run away pretty much. And it allows you how it plays out as well. Yeah. So like you, you can do a lot of stuff with that. That's my hot take. I think Kassadin top lane is coming. [00:34:37] Speaker A: All right, we got another set of questions. These come from Reigns. Perennial question writer. Thank you, Reigns. Reigns writes. I'm back. Oh my God. Still can't play consistently. But am I still learning enough about the game to climb if I'm only using one style of champions? For example, if all I play is fighter bruisers like Sahin, Garen and Darius. [00:34:57] Speaker B: Within those three champions, you have different playstyles immediately. Just because they're the same type of champion does not mean they play the same and it does not mean you play the game in the same way. So yeah, you're still learning a lot about the game. [00:35:14] Speaker A: I would also say if your goal is specifically to climb, not necessarily to become better at the entire game, but just to become better at your roll and climb, you're learning what you need. You're not going to become better at supporting people as a support when you get auto filled from playing all fighter bruisers, but you're going to learn how to play fighter bruisers really well and how to play against everything you run into in the top lane as a fighter bruiser. [00:35:42] Speaker B: But yeah, a single style has a lot of variance in it because each of those champions plays so differently. So to give an example through Zahan, Garen and Darius, Zahen is a duelist and Zahen will eventually just beat all of them just about Garen like I. [00:36:02] Speaker A: Think, I think Jax consistently beats him throughout the entire game and that's it. And Jax is also a really strong scaling duelist. [00:36:10] Speaker B: Garen is sort of a like a burst fight and then run away and Darius is sticking to the fight. Try and get a reset and then once the reset starts, bam, bam, bam bam bam. Each of them plays very, very differently. The one thing the three of them have in common is obviously there's a spin. They all spin and the Garen and I'm sorry not getting Darius and Zahan have sweet spots. So like there's some uniqueness to it. But I, I would, I would say even within that style you're playing differently and building very differently. Each of those three champions build paths are monumentally different so they're utilized for completely different situations. Garen's not going to fight tanks anywhere near as well as the Henwell. [00:36:56] Speaker A: Yep, I agree but I think it's, I think it's fine just to play one style if your goal is to climb. The only reason that would be bad is literally if your goal is to become a well rounded better player. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah, you, you are still learning the game. You're still learning your role. Other things will happen throughout the game that you still get to see like there's no reason, like so many people, one trick to the moon. You can learn almost everything else about the game in playing one champion, one style of champion. You just don't learn the intricacies of other champions. [00:37:32] Speaker A: Pretty much. All right, Rain's next question is have we played enough games to understand if classic dead brained split pushing is back as a strategy or was it just a dream that Riot devs had for the season? NASA seems like he's fun again but I don't want to auto lose the game in 10. If you can spike your role quest earlier as the top laner than your opponent. So like not nasus necessarily but like a strong early game champ who split pushes you get an experience lead that then compounds because you're getting bonus experience before they are. So you stay ahead. Yes, dead brain split pushing can work. I've seen it work repeatedly. But you have to win your lane for it to work because if you are not ahead of the enemy top laner and the rest of the map then they can still just hold you it plates on Turrets because plates slow it down a lot. [00:38:27] Speaker B: The other thing is that you'd have like. They're the style of champions who are really good at dead brain split pushing. Nasus among them are legitimately stronger at just waltzing through the side. You get a ton more gold than you did before doing it this way. So even if you aren't levels ahead, if you're split pushing and they're gaining levels in the team fights, you could be an item ahead. But most likely like if you're actively split pushing and keeping things on the side, you and your opponent should be similarly leveled or you should be ahead of them. [00:39:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. Alright, we got one more question from Rains. Why are Kayle and Malphite so oppressive right now across all ELOs? So we kind of already touched on Kayle a little bit. Kayle is a huge beneficiary of the top lane quest, giving bonus experience. Because Kayle spikes hard at levels 11, 11 and 16 and she's basically irrelevant pre 6. You're not completing the quest pre 6, but the quest is getting you to 11 and 16 faster. That's most of it for Kale, honestly. [00:39:36] Speaker B: The other half of it is she also. She is benefit. Yeah, she benefits from the new items heavily. Malphite is an interesting one. Part of it is Malphite now actually is allowed to play in the jungle. [00:39:47] Speaker A: Yep. Which happened last patch to be clear. [00:39:51] Speaker B: So that got him to be a stronger point. He really benefits from the ultimate haste items. Yep. And you can go one into full tank or two or just go full ap. Like Malphite actually has build diversity. But the. The hidden thing with Malphite is Malphite is still probably the ultimate anti ad. And a lot of the most powerful top laners are full AD fighters, Bruisers attack champions in some cases, which. [00:40:27] Speaker A: Oh, you mean AD is the stat. I thought you were going like. Malphite is the ultimate anti ad. He presses R and AD carries stop existing. And AD carries are stronger than ever between the crit change and getting an extra item. So being able to press R to delete them is why he's so oppressive. [00:40:43] Speaker B: That's one of the reasons. The other is just he's so good with armor right now they can't do too much to him. And his burst with it is disgusting. And I learned a new thing actually we're going to go into a trinket tip here with Malphite that I just learned. Your W when you were in late game is on a low enough cooldown that if you pre press W And then ult and then hit. You can hit W again almost immediately afterwards because its cooldown goes so you get two W ticks. [00:41:15] Speaker A: Fair enough. Course, the easiest solution if you're being oppressed by Kayles and Malphites, is just play Lucian in the top lane. What's scarier than a Lucian who out levels the rest of the map? [00:41:27] Speaker B: Lucian may actually beat Kayle. I would not play it in Malphite, but he might actually beat Kayle. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:33] Speaker B: What? [00:41:33] Speaker A: You don't want to see Nashor's Dusk and Dawn Lucian into Malphite? Please don't actually play that. Guys, I'm trolling. [00:41:40] Speaker B: I don't think he technically has an on head passive. He just doubles up. [00:41:44] Speaker A: That's why it would have to be Nashor's first. All right, guys, this has been episode 514 of the Forwards podcast. It's a little bit shorter this week. I'm sorry we didn't have enough questions. And as I mentioned earlier, we're dumb and bad at coming up with topics, so next week's a patch episode, but that doesn't mean you're off the hook. Write in to the4wardspodcastmail.com or our question submission channel in the discord so we can get you full hours in the future. [00:42:14] Speaker B: Yeah, just because it's a patch does not mean we won't go through it like lightning. Sometimes patches are just small, and we. [00:42:21] Speaker A: Just answered every question we had lined up. So if you ask a question in this next week, it'll be on the next episode. [00:42:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:29] Speaker A: All right. With that, I've been Jack Sohlmann from Micah Many Names. Have a great night. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Good night, everybody. [00:42:36] 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 answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.