The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 515: Lux Can Do WHAT?

[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 515 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Sohman, and I've got with me Mike of many names tonight. [00:00:46] Speaker B: I'm a little bit stuffy, so you're not going to hear me quite as much. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry about that. It's just the two of us pillows dealing with the baby aggro still. He'll be back as soon as he's able to, but yeah. Guys, we have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out with us. Come play games. We've been playing a lot of normal draft games and a lot of Aram Mayhem with the new season. Aram Mayhem is a lot of fun if you join the Discord. The link is in the episode description. You can play Aram Mayhem with us. You can play normal drafts with us. Come play. Have a good time. [00:01:18] Speaker B: You didn't used to like Aram all that much. And Aram Mayhem is holding your interest. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Yes. Aram Mayhem is much more fun there. Guys. There is a Augment in Aram Mayhem that makes it so when you question mark ping, it shoots a missile at the location you pinged at. It's the funniest shit in the world. [00:01:36] Speaker B: I've yet to see it. It was a Vandrovo's video. So either either this is the biggest troll of all time, you apparently unlock. [00:01:43] Speaker A: It by completing the battle pass for Aram Mayhem. [00:01:46] Speaker B: I've never seen the battle pass. What the fuck? Battle pass. [00:01:49] Speaker A: That's what Vanderlol said. [00:01:51] Speaker B: But yeah, this Battle pass is. [00:01:53] Speaker A: It's extremely funny. I love that that's a thing. The Augments in general are a lot of fun, and they. They enable different playstyles that make a lot more champions fun in Aram. Because my issue in Aram is not viability, it's fun. There's a lot of champions that just aren't fun in Aram. Mostly the ones that their kit is designed around split pushing in the first place. Anyway, that's not what this podcast is about. I'm supposed to be plugging shit I stream on Twitch. You can find me at Twitch TV Jacksoman, where I'm doing a lot of Super Metroid and now ranked, because I've jumped into the ranked season. So come join in and watch me get trolled by my team over and over because oh my God, it's already begun. And Mike can be found at Twitch tv mikeofmanynames and we're going to bully him into streaming more, especially if we ever start duoing. [00:02:47] Speaker B: I apparently have just the perpetual sickness, so like I don't know what's going on, but it's not going to be in the next couple weeks. Probably because this is fucking stupid. [00:02:57] Speaker A: No, but as soon as you're better, you're streaming. [00:02:59] Speaker B: It was minus 20 the other day almost. We had minus 2 minus 40. Windchill. [00:03:05] Speaker A: That's too darn cold. All right guys, we got to give some shout outs. Shout out to Codex, Ninja Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast the Shoutout tier. Thank you guys. You pay for keeping the podcast 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 same exclusive feed. And we'll shout your name out during the intro to every episode. And we also have a general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. All of those Benefits apply to 8bit to 4k's pre show as well and shout out as well. Last but not least, listeners, you guys answered the call for questions this week. Thank you. We'll need more. We're going to get through most or all of them tonight, so Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com with your questions. We can answer them on the show or if you join the Discord. We do have a question submission channel that we will pull them from as well. Again, that is theforwards podcastmail.com Please remember to include the if you just send it to forwardspodcast that will go to the old defunct Trinity Force Network. One that we don't have access to. Alright guys, it is a patch week. Patch 26.2 is here and we're gonna talk about it and I'm gonna let Mike kick it off with a well deserved fricking nerf to a champion we both hate. [00:04:38] Speaker B: So for a long time last season my main ban was Zed because he's the most popular picked champion in the game and he got really heavily buffed to play in Jungle as well as mid. And with the new items, he's kind of strong. He is one of the main benefits of the siege Breaker item, like he would get a kill, stay in lane, demolish a turret, getting killed, go into the jungle, demolish one of the objective camps. So like he would absolutely wreck. And he was for a little while, for a little while, the single fastest clear in the game. He's not that anymore. He got about a third of the power knocked out of his bonus monster damage. No, not bonus monster damage. His monster damage on his passive. That is not a bonus. It is a multiplier. [00:05:32] Speaker A: Yeah, the multiplier was dropped from 1.8 times to 1.2 times. [00:05:38] Speaker B: So he lost a crap ton of bonus damage to the monsters. He needed it. He can still jungle. Make no mistake, he is still there. But now he's not by far the best jungler at using the new items and the fastest jungler. So thank fucking God. [00:05:56] Speaker A: Yeah, Zed. I hate that fucking champion. Ever, ever since they made it so that you have to build Zhonyas to be able to exist against him in the mid to late game. I hate Zed. Make QSS remove his goddamn ult again, please. [00:06:10] Speaker B: QSS needs to be buffed a little bit. Cleanse needs to be buffed. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Cleanse should be the ultimate. If there is a debuff, it's gone. You're taking a summoner spell. It's your summoner spell. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Just make it have a flash level cooldown and make it actually clear all. [00:06:30] Speaker B: Debuffs, clear all debuffs and prevent all debuffs for like a half a second or something. [00:06:36] Speaker A: That's all they gotta do. And then just give it a flash level cooldown because it would be flash level strong at that point anyway. We're talking about the patch note, not what we want them to do for League of Legends. So I'm gonna talk about another champion that has been tearing it up in the jungle and got a well deserved freakin nerf. Gwen has been a huge beneficiary of the changes in this season, specifically Dusk and Dawn. But she's really strong in general. So Jungle Gwen lacks the early game weakness that Top Lane Gwen has. So her pick rate and win rate skyrocketed with Dusk and Dawn. So they're nerfing Jungle Gwen. Specifically, they are cutting the AP ratio in half for her monster damage on her passive and also cutting the base damage down to 3 from 5. This is very significant. It won't make much of a difference on her first clear. But once she gets some AP under her belt, her passive is no longer going to let her just delete like blue and red buff and gromp the way that it did before. Thank fuck. Because Gwen hyper scales and being able to bypass your weak early game by being a jungler is oppressive. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Unlike Zed, she wasn't the fastest at clearing camps, but she was one of the fastest at taking objectives. [00:07:57] Speaker A: One of the fastest at taking objectives. And she's one of the best scaling champions in the game. She can literally reach a point if she's full build, she can reach a point where she can one shot a Dr. Mundo. I wish that was hyperbole. [00:08:12] Speaker B: Percent health. Savage man. If that Mundo does not build the resistances, he's just dead. Even if he is, he's dead slower, but he's still dead. [00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's brutal. So, yeah, I'm glad she got a Nerf. I really wish they would rebalance her entirely because she's way too binary right now. I really would prefer if she actually wanted to build Bruiser instead of the full AP burst mage that she is, because she is a melee burst fighter for some reason. Oh, well. Your turn, Mike. [00:08:43] Speaker B: So you're gonna notice a theme with us in that we're talking a lot about junglers. And that's because pretty much this patch, there are two sets of changes. There are AD Carries and there are Junglers. And we'll get a little bit to some of the other changes in a minute. But back to the Junglers. Nunu is getting a hefty set of nerfs across the board because with how the jungle changed, Nunu became one of the two best champions at just getting objectives. And he could move like the wind with how they changed Hearthguard or the Hearth boots. So they needed to tone his power down. They've added a second to his consume needed. They've reduced the base maximum damage on the biggest snowball ever. It's again 30 at all ranks. So it's a static just nerf straight across the board. And then there is a slight scaling nerf to the snowball barrage. All of its base damage per hit from two going to six. So like it's getting nerfs across the board in both sections. This will heavily impact his clear and his PvP. Because he was that strong, he was able to zoom across the map, take anything he wanted and you couldn't stop it. [00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm very happy about this Nerf. [00:10:04] Speaker B: The only advantage is, is that he's not super popular. So you didn't see him a ton, but when you did see him, it was a nightmare. [00:10:13] Speaker A: And to be clear, I'm pretty sure he's still going to be really strong with these changes. They're not a big enough nerf to knock him out of being good, but he's unpopular enough that it should. It should prevent him from being like, pick band level power. [00:10:28] Speaker B: He's still gonna be every bit of stronger. The jungle. One second off of consume is going to hurt a little bit, but you used it once, maybe twice at a camp eventually. And your other things are mostly just to make sure your burst damage against people is not overwhelming. [00:10:44] Speaker A: Pretty much. [00:10:45] Speaker B: That's a good chat. Good nerfs. [00:10:47] Speaker A: All right, I'm gonna talk about actually a pair of jungle buffs, because there are actually a couple in here. One that I'm unhappy about and one that I think is totally fine. So the one I think that is totally fine is they're buffing Taliyah jungle. They're giving her Q bonus damage to monsters, scaling based on rank so it increases as she ranks up her Q and increasing the multiplier on her E to monsters. This is fine. Taliyah is supposed to be able to jungle as a secondary role, and I don't think this makes her oppressive. The biggest, most important thing is objective monsters can't be hit by the E. So the damage modifier multiplier on that does not change her ability to like burst out dragon or anything. So I think it's fine. I'm okay with this change. Aatrox, on the other hand, got a straight up buff. They increased his passive's damage. That's where sometimes Aatrox will change stance and he'll like stab you with his sword and heal a bunch. They're increasing the damage of that, which means also increasing the healing of that because it does both. And then they're also increasing the monster bonus damage on his Q, which you use three times. So you basically are getting 10 extra damage per hit of Q on monsters. Aatrox Jungle is gonna be obnoxious this patch, and I'm really unhappy about that. He is my current jungle band. [00:12:18] Speaker B: He's an annoying champion, I don't think. I don't think it's gotten to the level of oppressive that some of the other ones we've talked about are. He's not in the new to Oppressive. He's not at the Zed Oppressive. But Aatrox can get real scary real fast. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And just he's really hard for unorganized teams to Deal with. He tends to just run through them. [00:12:42] Speaker B: Even organized teams. He can just. You build him in the right way. 1Q hits. Your health is maxed. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Yep. Especially if you got a takedown before that. Because he's an endless hunger abuser. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah, he is. And that's the secondary reason why we're, like, annoyed at the aatrox buff. Endless hunger is getting no changes. And he is one of like three people who benefits most from it. [00:13:04] Speaker A: He is one of the biggest abusers of that item. I would love to see them just remove the tenacity and make the ability haste static on that item. And then the champions that it's good on could be balanced better. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:17] Speaker A: All right. Speaking of items, Mike, you have some actual item changes in here. Talk to us about the items that are getting tweaked. We already know one because we talked about it before. That bandle three item changes. [00:13:28] Speaker B: The bandle pipes is going up to 2300 gold. We've talked about it. It's proper. That's where it should be. [00:13:34] Speaker A: It's still a really good item at that price. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Don't sleep on it. Still. It's still great. Yeah. About people. You wouldn't expect it to be great on. [00:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah. The. The key with bandle pipes is it's 20 armor, 20 Mr. 200 health, 15 ability haste. And if you are a champion with reliable slows or stuns, it's also then 20 move speed and 30 attack speed for yourself. Regardless of the aura. That's already really good. [00:14:02] Speaker B: It's really good. Yeah. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Like, consider this on top laners. [00:14:07] Speaker B: Yeah. If you apply slows consistently. Yeah. So the other two changes are both ad carry items. And they are situationally incredibly powerful items. First one we talked about a little earlier is feed hunter bolts buffs all around for this. It's getting an attack speed buff. It's getting the damage multiplier on the guaranteed crit up and the true damage bonus up across the board. It's great. The, like seven champions that use this are going to use this. And the ones who thought about using it might actually pick it up now. [00:14:41] Speaker A: I. I could see Twitch choosing this over Runaan's sometimes. [00:14:45] Speaker B: For example, like, the one champion that seems to be hardbound to this item is Yunara. [00:14:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:14:50] Speaker B: Because it guarantees her passive actually doing something. [00:14:53] Speaker A: Yep. [00:14:54] Speaker B: And now Yunara is just stronger. The other one is for hex optics C44. This is the increased range AD carry item. And it's getting two buffs. It's getting some more damage. And they're reducing the max damage amp for distance from 700 to 600. This means there are several AD carries whose eight attack speed. Just your attack range is within that now easily. Caitlyn procs this on every max range attack. [00:15:23] Speaker A: Yep. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Ash should be clear range attack speed attack to be. [00:15:27] Speaker A: To be clear, you do not need to hit at max range to get a damage amp. If you have the lowest range of any AD carry, you're still getting 8% damage amp at max range. This basically just means don't play melee range. [00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, this item is incredibly strong on the right ad carries. Yeah. [00:15:46] Speaker A: I just want to drive home that the difference between a 500 attack range AD carry and Caitlyn's 650 is 2% on this item. Yeah, it just encourages you for playing keep away. [00:15:57] Speaker B: You. You still benefit even if you are short of range. But the longer range AD carries just get full benefit at all times. And especially for people like Caitlyn who don't care about attack speed. This is a brilliant item. As a first item, it's easy to build. [00:16:13] Speaker A: I actually think this item is low key op on Lucian despite him being a short attack range. The reason why is it's his ult. [00:16:21] Speaker B: No. [00:16:21] Speaker A: Scoring a takedown against a champion grants you 100 bonus attack range for 6 seconds. Lucian is very good at blowing up one target and this item means for the next 6 seconds he gets to auto attack at 600 range instead of 500. It's actually insane. [00:16:38] Speaker B: That is also an incredibly powerful benefit from it. And that attack range stacks per kill. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Oh, does it? I did not know that. That's insane. [00:16:47] Speaker B: I found that out when I was playing Caitlyn in an era Mayhem. The other day the range got crazy. But like okay, if. If you're. If you're a indy carry that uses range heavily. Jinx and Caitlyn are my two primary ones. Ash could easily use this now she probably won't because she likes attack speed items more, but she's got a 600 range attack. It's. It's a lot of AD and easy to proc damage amp on one of the most damaging roles in the game. [00:17:16] Speaker A: And stacking damage amps is how you get to the point where you can just blow up anyone like this. Plus Lord Doms. You kind of just cut through tanks. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:27] Speaker A: Especially if like the threat against you is magic heavy. You don't want to go shield bow. You want a maw for your lifeline item. Build this as your last crit item in those situations as pretty much any marksman. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Yeah. If you don't need to get attack speed. Hexopsis is where it's at. [00:17:44] Speaker A: All right, I got one more change I want to highlight. Malphite got a slew of changes because Malphite was actually overpowered in both jungle and top lane. So first of all, for Jungle, they've nerfed the damage multiplier on his W slightly. That one's jungle. Specifically top lane does not care. They then have nerfed the base damage on his e by 20 to 40, depending on the rank, and made it so the mana cost scales up as you rank it up. And they've nerfed the cooldown on rank 2 and 3 of his ult. Same cooldown for rank 1, but rank 2 and 3 don't get up nearly as quickly. All of these combined. Malphite's still strong. He's just. He's not literally killing you from 100 to 0 in the mid game on respawn the way he was before. [00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah, the. The E meta cost is entirely a top lane nerf. The alt is obviously nerf for both of them. [00:18:44] Speaker A: The damage for both. [00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And the W is the sole jungle one. It's like, it's very obvious which ones are which. For nerfs. They're thought out. Well, your ULT is still going to be on like a 40 second cooldown because you're building one to two ultimate reduction items. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Yep. I've. I've literally been building both malignants and Zeke's in many of my games on him. [00:19:06] Speaker B: There's no reason not to build at least one of them, if not both of them. Having malignants be your only AP item and then going full tank starting with Zeke's is great. [00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah, his. His win rate did go down. It went down from 52% to 50%, basically. So, like, it's a meaningful nerf. But he's not unplayable. He's like a 50% win rate. You can still just play him if you want to play him. At least in the games. He's not banned because he's also the most popular ban right now. [00:19:34] Speaker B: The other thing about it is, like, get a little bit of practice in. Everyone fucks up. That R sometimes. That R is where half of your power budget is. [00:19:42] Speaker A: Yep, it really, really is. All right, so we do have actually a trinket tip this week and this comes from playing a game with a listener who knew a neat quirk about Lux that we didn't know. So we're going to share it with the rest of you. [00:19:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Considering a lot of the people that we play with play a lot of Lux and none of us had ever known this. [00:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you have weird edge case knowledge you want to share with the podcast, come join the Discord and play games with us. It'll come up naturally and you can share and we'll share it with everyone else. Uh, so with Lux, if you use her E, her big aoe like primary damage dealing spell and place the center of it inside of a wall, you will get vision of the whole area around the E but your enemy will not be able to see it because the center of it is inside a wall. This is similar to the concept of like Nunu bushwhacking people with his ult. But Lux can just do this from range through walls. In the specific game where this came up, this listener used it to scout Baron without the enemy knowing that Baron was now visible because that's the E. [00:20:54] Speaker B: Inside one second off of getting a perfect steal. [00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it was very close to being a successful steal because they weren't expecting him to have vision. [00:21:05] Speaker B: However, also because of that, we got like two or three kills afterwards because we knew where they were going and what their health was. [00:21:11] Speaker A: Yup. So that's the trinket tip. Use use luxy inside walls if you don't need to be using it for damage to scout for vision without the enemy being able to see that you're scouting for vision. Alright, it's listener question time and our first question Tonight comes from 4 wards alumni Kangadrew. Kangadru, we miss you. Come join the show again sometime. So Kangadru writes hello to add to your first impressions on the new season from last week, how do you think the new home guards has changed the pace of the game? I've seen a lot less teleport on mid laners in exchange for ignite barrier and ghost. [00:21:45] Speaker B: It has Teleport is still frequently grabbed because two reasons. One it is the auto pick for a lot of like if you grab the auto skill trees, teleport is still on a lot of those. So people will just automatically have teleport. But also a lot of mid laners still just split push to victory. And so they take teleport to try and do that even when they should be split pushing to victory early insults. [00:22:12] Speaker A: If you don't understand why Mike's saying that, watch my streams more often. Oh my God. No, no. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Homeguards drastically has increased the pace of where people can move, what they can do. You can get back into lane significantly faster. It's one of the reasons why Nudu is getting that Nerf. [00:22:33] Speaker A: I think especially in the case of mid lane, where you also get that empowered recall later on, it heavily reduces the reliance on teleport. I feel like mid laners taking teleport is now basically just people who need it to survive the laning phase because they need to be able to reset after they take a bad trade. [00:22:51] Speaker B: It's. It's that and Ziggs and. Because Ziggs. [00:22:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say and. And mana intensive champs. Yes, for the same reason. Because they need it to reset mana in the early game before they get their mana items. I have seen a lot less teleport in the top lane as well. A lot of lane bully top laners are now just taking ignite and killing people and just having a shitty version of teleport when they complete their quest. I'm not sure that's worth doing on anyone who's building health, honestly, because the empowered teleport shield is so much stronger than we thought it was going to be. [00:23:25] Speaker B: It's really strong. I think occasionally you need to be like, all right, I will take Ghost as well. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Because if it's someone who's going to. [00:23:36] Speaker B: Shit on you, you need to be able to survive the lane. Otherwise it's screwed anyways. So you need a combat summoner to combat the combat summoner? [00:23:43] Speaker A: Yes. I think champions like Darius, who already were borderline on teleport, just always go Ghost Flash. [00:23:51] Speaker B: Now. [00:23:51] Speaker A: I think champions who are reliant on teleport to survive Lane, you still take it. That hasn't changed. But Lane bullies like Kennen, for example, should basically never be taking teleport. Quinn should never be taking teleport. I don't think Shen should ever be taking teleport anymore. [00:24:09] Speaker B: Shen is the one weird case because of how you use his ultimate sometimes. [00:24:13] Speaker A: Well, specifically, I don't think he should be taking it anymore because the main use for teleport on Shen was to teleport back to split, pushing after you Ult to make a play. [00:24:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:23] Speaker A: And you can still do that. [00:24:24] Speaker B: His Ult is on a long enough cooldown that it's almost the same time as tp. The only thing is, depending on what your early game matchups are, you still really want that teleport. Now, admittedly, if he's in one of the matchups where he's in a moderately okay one, bring fucking ignite. Shen does way more damage than you think he does. [00:24:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I've. I've mostly seen teleport Swapped out for ignite in both mid and top. But I think Ghost should not be slept on. Ghost is really good. [00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And don't sleep on it as your defensive version either. If they're taking Ignite, Ghost is sometimes a great counter offensive spell. Yep. [00:25:00] Speaker A: Ghost can let you. Oh, they're gonna all in me. Let me just Ghost out of here and you don't have to burn your long cooldown flash. And it can also mean, oh, I'm stronger than you now. Cool. You can't escape me. I'm running you down. [00:25:12] Speaker B: Yeah, because a lot of those champions who are bullied early become fuck you late. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Yup. Cough, cough, Gwen. Cough, cough. Kayle also Kayle. Yes. Kayle. Kinda needs teleport to survive the early game though. [00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Most of the time. [00:25:27] Speaker A: Alright. We got more questions though. These come from Rains. Who writes Hi Wards. Thanks for continuing to answer my questions. Love the content, especially when you go through the patches because quite frankly, my attention span can't deal with reading through it all and I usually control f my champions or otherwise ignore it. That's literally why we choose to highlight what we do in many cases. You should always be control f ing your champion and specifically core items that your champion has to build. That's something a lot of people forget. If you're hardbound to Trinity Force, you should be control effing Trinity Force on every patch. Just to make sure nothing's changed, always. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Look at the very first section of the patch notes because those are universal changes to the game as a whole. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Yes, it gives you a nice quick summary. It's none of the numbers, but it just tells you these champions are weaker, these champions are stronger. These system changes happen. You should always look at that. So Rain's first question. Mike said a five champion pool to help prevent boredom. Jack said three is typical for climbing. How do I balance my low threshold for playing champions repeatedly despite not playing that many games, with the fact that I want to climb? I always try keeping three, but it usually bloats out to five or six. I think five is fine if you want to climb. If you're like me or Mike, where we just get bored playing the same champion over and over and then play the others in norms. You don't have to always play ranked. Even if you have limited time, you still should be playing norms sometimes too. Play other champions and norms so you're not. Don't. Don't play your core ranked champion pool in norms because you're not. [00:27:01] Speaker B: I have a good solution for you. If you're Setting aside time to play ranked games, say you have three ranked games per day, drop that to two and make one of them a normal game. That way you always have either a cooldown or a warm up time. You get to play another champion that you get to just have for fun and you get to just have a fun time with League, which this is a video game. Have fun with it. [00:27:27] Speaker A: All right. Question 2. How informative is win pick ban play rate of champions versus their ability to climb gain lp? Are low ELO tier lists and being a tier list poacher actually helpful to climbing? Yes and no. First of all, informative of stats for champions, the most informative part of all of them is pick rate. If a champion that you think is OP has a really low pick rate, don't bother banning them. It doesn't matter that you think they're op, they're just not going to show up in enough of your games. Like if Zilean is suddenly the most powerful champion you've ever experienced, eh, he shows up literally in one out of every 200 games of league of Legends. That's not hyperbole, that's literally his pick rate right now. Why would you waste your ban on that? So that's the first part. I think for bans specifically you should be heavily factoring in pick rate. Specifically avoiding banning unpicked champions. Anyone in the top 20 of pick rate is perfectly valid to ban. [00:28:34] Speaker B: I think if you are someone who is not going to ban otherwise just ban whatever the most popular champion is or ban the one thing you don't like seeing even if it is a niche pick. If it completely counters you. If, well that, that zillion. If zillion is the one thing that counters you while you're playing a support, yeah sure, ban it because it's the one counter pick to what you're doing. There are times when, when it doesn't matter what the the pick rate is because fundamentally that champion stops you. There are a couple of people who are like that in the game that just this champion fundamentally stops me from being able to play the game. It's rare across the board but like there are just straight up counter picks that are. This champion has a like 70 to 80% win rate versus the others. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Yep. Now on the other hand, low Elo tier list and a tier list poacher, they can be useful if you are looking for what's popular in my ELO in my server. Because again, banning something that's popular is generally a good idea and they can be useful for I want to find something new to play. What's good? What should I try and see if I enjoy it so I can learn it? That's the entirety of what it matters for. [00:29:52] Speaker B: I would almost never chase the very, very top champion because they are almost guaranteed to be getting nerfs. [00:29:58] Speaker A: Yep. [00:29:59] Speaker B: If they. The other reason to check this list is if they coincide with what you play as your champion pool, you go, oh, this is now my priority because I play this and it's very, very strong. These are climbing strategies that you can deal with. Normal games still play what you want, play what you want for fun. But like there are champions that are just stronger than others based on. On how the balance is going. And if you can, it's not abusing. If it's actually like part of what you're doing, you're not changing everything up to. To try and set up a bug or something, that's not abusing it. You're not doing that because if you are, you're. You're probably not watching us. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Reigns then has some top Lane specific questions. I'm a bruiser fighter main as demonstrated in my last batch of questions. Does it help my climb if I'm really only trying to win or lose games by my own ability to add Malphite and or Kayle or Top AP Varus into my pool specifically for a tank and ranged AP champion to round things out? [00:31:04] Speaker B: Malphite is much easier to add into that pool than Kayle is. [00:31:08] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. [00:31:09] Speaker B: So Malphite is a relatively low skill floor. So it is not terribly difficult to add in a champion like Malphite. [00:31:19] Speaker A: Kayle specifically requires a keen understanding of how to lose lane gracefully with the knowledge that you will outscale. There is a reason, because that's exactly what Kayle is. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Even though I like playing Kayle, I don't play a lot of Kayle because I don't lose lane gracefully easily. [00:31:40] Speaker A: You don't at all. You are the least graceful lane loser I've ever met. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Now, admittedly, even when I don't lose lane gracefully, I usually can bring it back and do work later, as is evidenced by our earlier game. [00:31:53] Speaker A: Yes. [00:31:54] Speaker B: But it. It brings me into holes that I shouldn't be in. And I understand where my own flaws are here. So I know Kael should not be in my pool. [00:32:04] Speaker A: For Context, guys, Mike went 080 on a Malzahar and then ended the game 12, 12 and 15. That's what he's referring to. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, admittedly, I got camped like crazy early and Then Katarina was fed. She could follow me and kill me instantly. But I let myself die a couple of those early times because I was being too aggressive. [00:32:26] Speaker A: Yep. [00:32:26] Speaker B: Part of that was because our jungler just never fucking came, even though he was right below me. [00:32:31] Speaker A: But that's what it is. [00:32:32] Speaker B: That's me bitching and bitching. [00:32:34] Speaker A: But yeah, I might have just let you die too in a couple of those. [00:32:39] Speaker B: Yeah. But also understand this is part of a. Understand yourself before you start trying to add champions in. It doesn't matter how strong Kale is if you personally will not be able to make it properly work because you're going to give yourself too much of a hole. [00:32:54] Speaker A: Yep. [00:32:55] Speaker B: So malphite. Yeah. I think malphite is an easy one that you can add in for a tank as a carry. Maybe AP Varys. It's much easier to survive there because you're just poking. It's a lot less volatile, it's a lot less vulnerable than Kayle is. [00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:11] Speaker B: What would you put for a carry top laner that has arranged Kennen? Yeah, Kennel is a much easier one to do. [00:33:17] Speaker A: Kennen is easy to play, he's straightforward and even if you lose lane horribly, you are a teamfight monster. You just need to build a Zhonyas. [00:33:28] Speaker B: One good ultimate from Kennen can win a game. Yeah. [00:33:31] Speaker A: That's why I say Kenan, because he is a ranged carry top who has fallback patterns. The other ones don't. If you're Kayle or Varus and you just get crushed early, your game is over. [00:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you're going to try and add two champions into your pool, Malphite's a good one to add. He's still strong. He's. He's good against most top matchups because they're mostly physical damage. Yep, he's a good tank. There's almost always AD in a game, even if it's not versus your lane. And yeah, Kennen is just a very strong ranged top laner. [00:34:04] Speaker A: So Reigns has a follow up question that I want to segue into from the Malphite suggestion. Follow up, how do you make tanks work for climbing in the top lane if you want to win games by yourself or is the answer simply you can't because of class limitations? The answer is you learn how to identify who on your team is the wincon and then you follow them around and keep them safe and CC the people they want to kill. Sometimes that's going to be your jungler, sometimes that's going to be your mid laner. Often that will actually be your ad carry, but you just figure out who it is and then your job is to follow them around like a lost puppy dog. Do not fall into the trap of being like, well, I'm the top laner. That means I have to split push. You can just death ball. It's fine. [00:34:47] Speaker B: This doesn't mean in the mid game, start following them around in mid lane forever. Nah. Your goal is what objectives come around, then you follow them. Because you still need to be getting farm. You still need to be doing leaning things. You still have individual power. You need to understand how to utilize that individual power. Let's talk about Malphite here. Malphite needs to pick the target of the ultimate, either as a peel or an engage tool. It's hard to properly know whether or not your team will follow up on an engage. So unless you and another person are talking to each other, your first thought shouldn't always be engage. It should be counter engage. If they're starting to do a bunch of stuff, then you go in for the ultimate. [00:35:31] Speaker A: Yep. Very often you can win a game as Malphite just by ulting the assassin who dove on your ad carry. That's it. [00:35:38] Speaker B: If there are. If there are five people and you can get an ult on them, a lot of the time, that's worth doing. Unless you're alone and then you still die. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Yup. All right, we got one more set of questions, and these come from our Lux trinket tip provider from earlier Jedi DJ who writes hey Forwards podcast. I'm a longtime listener, first time writer. I've been listening since the very beginning, and y' all are my favorite iteration of the podcast. Thank you. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:36:04] Speaker A: I thought it'd be fun to ask you guys 154 fun rapid fire questions. So, Mike, we're gonna do this rapid fire style. Favorite champion of all time. [00:36:15] Speaker B: I probably smolder. [00:36:16] Speaker A: Ezreal Champion. You hate playing against the most. Collei Zed champion. You refuse to play Lee Sin. I refuse to play. [00:36:28] Speaker B: No. The closest thing for me is Kiyana. [00:36:30] Speaker A: Okay. Flash on F or D. F is for flash. [00:36:35] Speaker B: D F is for flash. [00:36:37] Speaker A: Nope. D F is the button I changed. D is where my flash got put in 2009 and I'm never changing it. [00:36:43] Speaker B: You're wrong. [00:36:44] Speaker A: Solo queue or duo? [00:36:46] Speaker B: Well, that one's very obvious for both of us. Yeah, Duo. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Duo. Duo is just better. I solo queue from lack of people around to duo with more than anything else. Snowball or scale? [00:36:57] Speaker B: Scale. [00:36:58] Speaker A: I would prefer to play scale. I feel like the game doesn't allow it a lot of the time. Or the people in the game don't allow it a lot of the time to be more accurate. [00:37:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but your games don't allow you to snowball either. [00:37:08] Speaker A: So shush you. Grubs or dragon? [00:37:12] Speaker B: Dragon Grubs. [00:37:14] Speaker A: I would take Grubs over one dragon every day of the week because of the way turrets have changed. They make such a difference on ability to take turrets. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Grubs are very strong versus new towers. Dragon has a lot of power. [00:37:28] Speaker A: The reason to choose Dragon, in my opinion, is because your teammates will just tilt out of their minds because you didn't take the dragon. And oh no, the enemy has two. The game is over. All right. Worst Rework Riot ever did Aatrox. I was real tempted to say Aatrox, but I'm gonna say Urgot because I loved old Urgot and I hate new Urgot, I actually think. But and I said that there are actual, definitive, objective, correct answers to this. There's two of them. [00:37:58] Speaker B: The one, LeBlanc, one that got reverted. [00:38:01] Speaker A: LeBlanc because they literally reverted it. [00:38:03] Speaker B: And which Rise revert are you talking about? [00:38:06] Speaker A: No, Kog' Maw for the same reason as LeBlanc. It was fully reverted. The version of Kog' Maw we have now is the version before the rework. Those are the worst reworks they ever did because they literally reverted them to their pre rework state. They were so bad. So best Rework Riot ever did. [00:38:24] Speaker B: This one's hard. There are a lot of good ones. There are a lot of real good ones. [00:38:28] Speaker A: I'm actually gonna say the Evelynn rework. For those who don't remember old Aurelion, Sol's a really good answer. For those who don't remember old Evelyn, she used to have her her stealth on one of her abilities. Her Q didn't have the like hit something to trigger the three subsequent ones. It just had a tiny cooldown. And her alt was just a weird shield granting nuke. Her whole kit was very disjointed. It screamed this idea came from the Warcraft 3 DotA mod because she is one of the like first 50, she's. [00:39:01] Speaker B: One of the early champions. [00:39:02] Speaker A: I don't remember if she's part of the original 40 or not, but I think she is. Her rework, she was literally kept in the dumpster for years. Like deliberately stated to be in the dumpster because they couldn't balance the old version. If they made it so it was good, it would be oppressive. So it had to be kept crap the rework. Let her be a real champion. Aurelion Sol is kind of in the same boat. Old Aurelion Sol was incredibly op if your name was who he and otherwise kind of meh. [00:39:30] Speaker B: I like the very first iteration that they changed it slightly and I didn't like it as much. [00:39:36] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. So skin line you're tired of seeing. [00:39:40] Speaker B: I need to find the name of it. I know exactly which one it is. I just need to know which one. [00:39:45] Speaker A: My answer is easy project. [00:39:48] Speaker B: That is the one I'm thinking of. Yes. [00:39:50] Speaker A: Okay, we agree then. [00:39:51] Speaker B: It's. [00:39:52] Speaker A: It was cool at first when we had nothing robotic, but now that we have other sci fi ones, it's the least interesting of the Sci Fi themes. [00:40:01] Speaker B: The original project skins are still good skins. They have done nothing interesting with Project Sense except for Naafiri because everything looks cool with the dogs. [00:40:13] Speaker A: Yep. Alright. Most confident roll. [00:40:17] Speaker B: Jungle Jungle. [00:40:19] Speaker A: Worst role. [00:40:21] Speaker B: Support probably top lane I like but it's the worst place to lose gracefully for me like that just that just snowballs hard against me. [00:40:32] Speaker A: Yep. Macro or mechanics? [00:40:36] Speaker B: Mechanics. [00:40:37] Speaker A: I'm turning 40. I'm turning 40 this year. Macro. I can't hands diff the kids anymore. [00:40:44] Speaker B: Alright. [00:40:44] Speaker A: Shotcaller or silent grinder? I'm a silent grinder, kind of. I mostly just chat with my twitch. Chat more than I talk to my teammates because I don't want to talk to them. [00:40:55] Speaker B: I will attempt to shot call until it is no longer relevant and then I become a silent grinder. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you watch replays? Yes or never? Never. [00:41:05] Speaker B: Essentially never. Once every couple years. [00:41:08] Speaker A: I should. Watching replays is a great way to figure out why you're deficient. [00:41:13] Speaker B: Oh no, no. I should have phrased that. I have started watching replays of other people doing things because we have been talking about doing replays and watching them. So I have been watching other people's replays, not my own. [00:41:24] Speaker A: I've watched other people's replays before. That's not what the question is. So I'm saying never. [00:41:28] Speaker B: I rarely watch my own unless I want to see something really cool or something. Bullshit. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was the. The rapid fire questions. We got one more quick question to wrap up the episode, which is from Reigns Again, who writes, does Garen and Darius make each other redundant in a top lane champion pool, or do they have enough differences to warrant adding both in? [00:41:49] Speaker B: They have a significant difference. [00:41:51] Speaker A: Yep. Darius is much, much more kiteable but much harder to escape from than Garen is. And while they're both the kind of big beefballs that run at you and ult you for true damage champions. The way they do that and their specific strengths and weaknesses and the points in lane at which they're good are very different. [00:42:14] Speaker B: Garen is more. I'm deleting that one target from the game very, very quickly and Darius is a slow fight into very quick end. [00:42:23] Speaker A: Darius is also a Lane bully in a way that Garen is not. [00:42:27] Speaker B: Yes. But Garen alive in lanes that no one else can. [00:42:31] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're asking which one should you pick up for yourself, I would say Darius because I think he has higher highs than Garen does. [00:42:41] Speaker B: Darius. Yeah. Darius is easier to carry a game with because of how his ultimate works. Garen is easier to win a game with friends with because you and one other person can go this person doesn't exist. I think Darius is better solo. Garrett is better duo. [00:42:59] Speaker A: That's fair. Darius also, as we talked about earlier, really likes being free to actually take Ghost now without being punished for it because he was already taking ghost before and now he just gets a seven minute teleport on top of that from the top Lane quest. Nothing really changed for Garen. He sometimes he can go ignite now but yeah, he gets to take ignite. [00:43:22] Speaker B: More things than he could before. Yeah, I. Yeah, none of the new ad carry items matter for him. [00:43:29] Speaker A: So there is of course an easy answer to Defender. Not really. I, I wouldn't go Bastion Breaker. I wouldn't go that because you're not going to be building that much lethality on Garen. [00:43:40] Speaker B: That's true. [00:43:41] Speaker A: And it scales that lethality. All right, there is an easy answer to this though, which is don't play either one. Play Lucian in the top lane. Steamroll them both. Destroy their nexus in 10 minutes. [00:43:53] Speaker B: Become level 20. [00:43:54] Speaker A: Yes, become a level 20 Lucien. All right, guys, this has been episode 515 of the Four Wards podcast. We're out of questions. Please write in to the fourwards podcastmail.com or drop them in question submission because we'll need them. Or next week's going to be like a 20 minute episode because we are dumb and can't figure out topics. So if you have topic suggestions right in. Especially while we're in this period where we only got two hosts. Like we kind of need your guys help. So yeah, Write in the 4wards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. All right. I've been Jack Sohman for Mike of many names. Have a great night, guys. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Good night everybody. [00:44:39] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our Patreon at patreon.com theforwardspodcast. And of course, send your questions to [email protected] so we can answer them live on the show. That's the fourwards podcast at gmail. Com.