The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 517: Mel and Mayhem

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven, Jerks and Velcas. And you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 517 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names. [00:00:49] Speaker B: I have pasta salad. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Delicious. We've also got Pillow Pet. [00:00:54] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:56] Speaker A: All right guys. We are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, Come play games with us, come chat with us. Link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. We do also stream on Twitch. Mostly me, I stream at Twitch tv Jacksonman. I'm, I've committed. I'm. I'm having a schedule now. I'm streaming Beat Saber on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I need just fucking exercise. This ties into the question last week about like fitness goals and stuff. I'm doing it. I'm doing Beat Saber twice a week, still Super Metroid on Wednesdays and Saturdays and then League basically the rest of the time if I feel like streaming. Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames whenever we bully him into streaming again. And Pillow Pet at Twitch TV Pillowpet whenever he has time because Baby has taken up most of his time. [00:01:48] Speaker C: Oh yeah, now I have an excuse. [00:01:50] Speaker A: Alright. Yeah, now you have an actual legit reason to be lazy about streaming instead of just being lazy guys. I also want to give a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting us at the shoutouts here on Patreon. You guys rock. You're keeping this show on the Internet. We appreciate you. Now, if you want to support the podcast, head 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 will shout you out at the top 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, we need questions. None of you wrote in on the email. You're getting carried by the Discord as usual. Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. Stop letting Discord show you up. Listeners. Send Those emails theforwards podcastmail.com okay, we have a patch week this week it's patch 26.3 and there's a whole bunch of small changes and then a couple of ginormous changes. [00:03:18] Speaker B: A few system changes as well. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Yes. So I'm actually going to kick us off with a system change that I think confused a lot of people because I've literally already answered a question in the Discord when someone was in a game with me and didn't understand this. Riot has changed it. For supports, they now start with the role quest slot available for control ward use. This does not mean they have gotten the benefits of their role quest. It means that they can put their control wards in the V slot and you can double bind that slot to two different buttons if you want. This is so that supports do not have to transition from pressing a different bind when they complete their quest in order to be allowed to use control wards. It is a quality of life and smoothness of the experience change. [00:04:08] Speaker B: This is a big, big deal the more you play because you fall into patterns on how you hit things and suddenly not having the same pattern halfway through a game can absolutely fuck you up for a second or two and that can easily get you killed. Yep. [00:04:24] Speaker A: So that's all that changed. You do not get the cheaper control wards or any of the other benefits of the support quest until you actually complete it. You just are allowed to put control wards in that slot from the start of the game so that you don't have a shitty experience. That's all. I think this is a fantastic change. I'm very glad for it. Because supports were the ones that had an active button that they needed to hit. That is something that they hit both before and after the quest. The only other active is in top lane and if you didn't take teleport, you can't hit V before the quest is done anyway because you don't have teleport. Sports usually have control wards before they complete their quest. [00:05:08] Speaker B: You should. [00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're not, you're doing it wrong. Please buy control wards. It's literally everyone should be buying control words, not just supports. But it is literally your job to buy control words as a support. [00:05:20] Speaker C: That top. That top lane Teleport is what like 7 minute cooldown? [00:05:25] Speaker A: Yep. [00:05:26] Speaker C: Stop using it to catch farm. [00:05:29] Speaker A: It can mostly. Yeah. [00:05:31] Speaker B: Like if you're doing proper split pushing. Or if it's like this is going into a wave and it's a three stack crash. Yep. Those are the. Or if you're shed or if you're Shen. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Shen is a big exception to that. Because Shen gets his ult on such a short cooldown. By the time he's got two, three items. If they have a doubled up wave and you need to teleport after a play because there's nothing else to do but you need to catch the wave before it dies to turret that's fine. [00:05:56] Speaker C: On Shen I know it's just a little off off tangent but man I. I protect that seven minute cooldown like it's my life. Like I have to think like is this worth it or is there going to be a team fight in the next seven minutes. I'm going to need this. So hard to make that decision. [00:06:11] Speaker A: Yep. [00:06:12] Speaker B: And there is almost always a team fight in the next seven minutes. Dragon's on a five minute spawn. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Exactly. But yeah. So that's the only other active use of the quest button in the first place is top laners. And it makes sense. Like it's not gonna mess with people's muscle memory for top laners but it would for supports. And that's why this change happened because it was messing up supports. Alright. Since I started talking about items in control wards PI' Illo a bunch of actual like regular items. Got some changes this patch. [00:06:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Wanna talk about some of them? [00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:46] Speaker C: I mean there's a big list of them. So I'll just start at the top and work my way down and we'll just kind of like go over them real briefly. So Actualizer got cheaper. That's about it. They're trying to make it push it into the game so it gets used more. It hasn't been instead used a whole lot. Yeah. So they're getting it cheaper. Significantly cheaper. 2,800 total cost. So that's from 31. So that's 300 gold cheaper. Dusk and Dawn So the spell blade on the ad is going down. The Spellblade damage from 100 to 75% and the health is going from 300 to 350. So Dusk and Dawn is like we were talking about it a little bit briefly before the show started. It's a very strong item. Like it's got very good uses for people that like Tom Kenched that put like a stacking like an auto auto attack stack on champions. So it's. It's really good. So I don't know if this is going to really. This Nerf is going to do what they're intending to make it a little bit weaker and trying to. They're trying to separate Dusk and Dawn and Lich Bane. But like Dusk and Dawn is specifically a fighter item. Whereas like Glitch Bane would be like. [00:08:17] Speaker B: Echo someone that dawn really does is anyone who can proc it consistently like over and over and over quickly. This is going to touch Nerf them. Most of them still built apart. But this is going to be like over the course of that 10 second fight you're going to lose 200 damage because you've lost four procs, five procs on your small amount of ad. Because you still have some ad, but it's not a good chunk of it. [00:08:48] Speaker A: Here's. Here's the most important part. This is the same base value you get from Lich Bane for your ad. It's now nerfed down to be the same. So the only difference in the proc itself is the AP ratio is 30% less. It's 10 instead of 40. And dusk and dawn doubles up your on hit effects. So if whatever on hit effects you have add up to 30% AP, the proc is the same. Dusk and dawn also has less AP by 30 it's 70 versus 100. But it has more ability haste, it has attack speed and then it has health. So if you use those stats this item still just better. It is also more expensive. [00:09:29] Speaker B: The the other thing about this is is that now because of that little bit of a nerf there the few mages who would buy the. The burst mages specifically, not the ones who use it for longer fights. Even Akka because he has a lot of on hit proc still likes Tusken dawn more. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Yep. [00:09:45] Speaker B: Things like Kassadin still want Lich Bane more. Kassadin has that proc which is a word one but he's all in his burst damage. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Here's the problem. Kassadin also has an on hit magic damage effect on auto attacks. And he does really want the bulk. [00:10:04] Speaker B: It does. He likes the bulk. He likes the bulk a lot. [00:10:06] Speaker A: But like I think Dusk and Dawn is still better for him. It is less burst. To be clear, he doesn't usually build Nashors so it is less burst. [00:10:14] Speaker B: I think the reason why I care less about Dusk and Dawn right now is because the way Kassadin is building right now is significantly tankier than his previous builds. Which means you sort of need an extra little bit of damage in him. [00:10:27] Speaker A: Or just build actualizer and there's Your extra damage. [00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah. But the other person I've been thinking of really has been like, LeBlanc, who has the chance to do massive burst combo with a Lich bane. Proc. Yep. [00:10:38] Speaker A: LeBlanc I think would be a perfect example of someone who should be going Lich Bay, not Dusk and Dawn. [00:10:43] Speaker C: I didn't even know. I didn't even know that she was building Dusk and Dawn. [00:10:47] Speaker B: She was. [00:10:48] Speaker A: She shouldn't be. [00:10:49] Speaker B: There are a lot of people who heard that Dusk and Dawn is just better than Lunch Bane. And anywhere that they had a Lich Bane, they would be putting Dusk and Dawn. That is not true in every case. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yep. [00:10:59] Speaker C: All right, next. Endless Hunger. So this one's getting a little bit of a recipe change. It's getting a looks like a long sword and 825gold cost added to the the ending, making it a total gold cost. 3,100, up from 3,000. And you're getting five more A.D. so you'll have 65. They're trying to. Endless Hunger is a very strong item for like your fighter casters. You're looking at like Riven. I mean, even Renekton, Any of those casting fighter champions. It's very strong. So it looks like they're buff. Buff. Nerfing it. 100 gold for 5ad is not a bad deal. I would take that deal. [00:11:49] Speaker B: It is in that game. Statistically, they don't know how to deal with this item. The people who build it, unfortunately, like when they build it, they're in their big power spike, so they gain so much benefit from it. This is a third item is really where it shines. And as the third item. Oh man, is it hayfarred? [00:12:10] Speaker A: And we're not covering it in particular, but some of the abusers of this item got Nerfs in this patch, like Riven, for example, because this item is just freaking broken as like a third item. Once you've got enough ad for that. Passive. [00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of people scale much less hard on their third item than they do their first and second item. There's really like a big punch on one and a big punch on two and then a minor buff on three. Endless Hunger was a third big punch up. [00:12:40] Speaker C: I think eventually we're going to see this get the Spear Shojin, original Spear Shojin, and just get removed, come back at a later date as a whole different item with a new identity. This be my guess because it's just gonna cause nightmare problems balancing realistically, like. [00:12:57] Speaker B: There'S two ways to solve this. They need to massively Change what it does with haste. Or they need to completely remove the tenacity. [00:13:04] Speaker A: Just completely remove the tenacity, make the haste a flat amount and reduce its cost. [00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:09] Speaker A: Then it's fine. The issue isn't even the proc. Huge amount of omnivamp or the little bit of omnivamp it has. It's just that it has too many damn stats on it. Period. [00:13:19] Speaker C: Or 3100 gold, which I mean is an expensive. It is. But I mean, for what you're getting, it's a value. Like good value. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:13:29] Speaker C: Okay, so next is protoplasm harness. This is the healing tank healing item based off your resistances. It's just lowering the amount of healing that you're getting to. It's stopping people like Ramis and other people that can get huge buffs to the resistances from getting large absurd heals. And there it looks like they're increasing the lifeline from 2 to 300 based on level instead of a flat 200. And some just minor and more ability haste. So some good tweaking like. But main. The main target of this was lowering the max heel based on resistances. Because of, like I said, Ramus Sejuani. It really is. Yeah. Because he can just on a button press get large amounts of resistances and heal for his whole health bar. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Yeah. The. The other tanks that are usually known for their like resistance stats are Sejuani and Malphite, who both lose it by the time that this would be procced in most cases. [00:14:31] Speaker C: Unless you have superb timing. [00:14:34] Speaker A: This also item like, guys, this item sucks if the enemy has a black cleaver and a blood letters curse on their team. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. If it. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Because it reduces the amount you heal it. [00:14:45] Speaker B: We're not. We're not talking about penetration. Penetration ignores your armor shredding, removes your armor. [00:14:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:14:50] Speaker C: Yeah. So instead of buying grievous wounds, just get a black cleaver. [00:14:53] Speaker B: I mean, if I have two protoplasm harnesses. [00:14:56] Speaker C: So next we're going to get into the mid lane boots. So they are nerfing the resistances early on these boots. And that is so that you can't completely negate like an assassin from doing damage early. So they are updating it to go from max HP scaling to bonus HP scaling. And they are changing the shield to be from 100 to 200 based on level. Scaling begins at level 9 plus 8% of bonus HP. Bonus being the keyword there. I didn't notice it at first, but that is the key word. So Jax Ransom numbers. Instead of, you know, Syndra getting 80 plus the shield of damage, right. As soon as she gets the boost or the boots, she'll be getting a significantly lower amount. [00:15:54] Speaker A: If she gets it at level 9, she gets 100 shield instead of about 130ish. Assuming no health on items which most like. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Most won't. Like most burst mages won't. There'll be a couple of people who build Rod of Ages. They'll get a little bit more. [00:16:09] Speaker A: For them, it's roughly break even. And in the couple of cases of tanks being played mid lane, this is a net buff in most cases for tanks. [00:16:18] Speaker C: Yeah, they're happy. [00:16:19] Speaker A: Like Galio is happy. Malphite and Sion when they show up in mid for some fucking reason. I say that as someone who plays Malphite mid because I hate Zed players. They're happy. But everyone else, it's. It's a nerf. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Quick, quick wording correction. The. The resistances are not changing. We're just talking about the shield. The resistance is just the shield. [00:16:41] Speaker C: Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's just the shield. [00:16:43] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:16:45] Speaker C: But yeah, that's it. On items. Some good changes. Some confusing changes for me and not enough changes I think for some of them. [00:16:54] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, Mike, let's do some champion changes real quick. We'll talk what changed with Zahen? [00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll talk. The short one here. Zahen is an interesting champion. Much like Ambessa, he is supposed to be a top lane sort of semi bully and a jungle threat. He has not seen anywhere near his jungle presence, whereas he's still very strong on the top line, but his jungle presence has been muted. Now part of that is the change to items and the change of stats and things has made him less powerful in the jungle. Part of that is his kit is less powerful in the jungle in general because he's not trading. So he's not getting his stacks and you don't get stacks off of monsters. So in compensation they are giving him a better monster fire on or better monster modifier? Wow, that's hard to say. On his Q and his E. A little more bonus damage, but a percent modifier. These should go a long way. This and Zahen is one of the jungles who. He can move pretty fast through the jungle if he wants to. And this clear is a pretty good one. He's a very healthy jungler. Being one of the completely mana less champions. He never has to worry about things. He has very good lifesteal in the jungle because of His Q, his E gives him enormous clear speed because his ease damage is very, very high. So like he's a, he's going to be a good jungler and he should be back up to the point where he's clearing around scuttle spawn, which they're. They hit a lot of champions to be a little bit post scuttle spawn, which is why you see a lot of people who are going back and then going to scuttle a little bit later. Zahen can hit the scuttle now if he does it correctly. [00:18:37] Speaker A: Fair enough. Alright, I got a couple of other champion changes to quickly touch on Varus and Zed got some nerfs. Zed got his jungle clear speed nerfed again. It did get hotfix buffed a little bit from the initial patch, but it is much weaker than it was. His Passive only does 75% increased damage to monsters now and has a cap of 175. He is definitely not S tier anymore. Thank you. Fuck. And then there's Varus. Now if you've been listening to the pod for a while, you probably already know how I feel about AP Varus, But Varus has found a new home. Varus is not played in the bot lane anymore. He is a top lane lane bully who the moment he hits six just one shots people building ap, which is fucking stupid. So Riot has nerfed his armor to make him more vulnerable to the fighters that are common in top lane and nerfed both the on hit ratio and the percent max health ratio on his W so that they scale worse with AP so that he has less. Just blows you the fuck up potential. Thank fuck I still think he's too popular. And I hate seeing AP Varus because that champion is dumb. No champion should be able to do the obscene amount of percent max health damage that Varus does in an instant while you're cc'd. [00:20:02] Speaker B: Part of the about Varys is how quickly if you already were fighting and then he does an ability and then alts and does an ability again because your alt gives all three stacks real quickly. So he can do two massive procs of max health damage in like a three second window. [00:20:22] Speaker A: Yep. And even with these changes, if you have 400 AP on him, he's still hitting you for 30% max HP on the first proc and then the second one is bonus missing health damage. That's a percent of your missing health and also 45% max HP. So 75% max HP plus 14% of your missing health just from the W procs. This is why he just one shots people. By the way. [00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's not including his auto attack damage. The actual damage from the Q, the actual damage from the E, the action. [00:21:00] Speaker C: From the ULT itself. [00:21:02] Speaker A: And the ULT hits hard. [00:21:04] Speaker C: I would say A.P. barris has the hardest hitting and most damaging ability in the game. Like oh yeah. Like even if you get like a vie girl that's super stacked. Like I don't even know if it can be a varus because I've seen his cues. One shot like a 1010000 GP. Like the more HP you get, the more damage. Obviously it's going to do like Viegar has a limit. Like still Mr. Countered. [00:21:33] Speaker B: The only. The only people who have more damage than him are the true damage percent health champions. Because yes, you can build Mr. And it will do a good chunk against this. It's not going to stop it, but it'll do a good chunk against it. You can't stop Fiora. You can't stop fame. Fiora is the worst of the two. [00:21:52] Speaker C: I meant by like a single ability like at one instant, one instance of. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Damage requiring the pop. So like it's a, it's a build and then pop because thankfully it's not one shot. Yeah, unlike Fiora who can pop it. [00:22:06] Speaker A: And then I mean you say that but also you're literally rooted during it. And the combo for varus is literally like R auto and then hit a spell right when the R pops your second stack. Two more autos and then your empowered Q and your opponent is literally held in place for the entire combo. If you hit the Ult, they cannot take an action unless they have cleanse or a mercurial scimitar or an ally has a cleanse ability for them. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it can get really disgusting. [00:22:34] Speaker A: It's dumb. I hate A.P. varus so much. I wish this shit would just get fucking removed. Just why does it need to have an AP ratio on the percent max health? Just get rid of it. Give him a better on hit AP ratio. I don't mind AP existing. I mind it scaling the max health. That shit should be gone. [00:22:51] Speaker B: If you're gonna give scaling 2% health it needs to be current. [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I hate it. So I'm glad it got nerfed. It's not nerfed enough. Not even close. I checked. He is down to a 49% win rate in top lane or 47% win rate. But he's still getting picked in 2% of games. [00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Thankfully the people who are good lane Bullies. They shit on Varus. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Yep. Someone like Gangplank destroys him. Okay, here, let me get my other topic and then we'll go to Mike's big one. Some rins got reworked in this patch. Just minor ones. Cashback they realized is actually overpowered for ad carries now. So they nerfed it a little bit. Still better than it was, just not quite as extreme. Triple tonic. They lowered the amount of AP you get from the Level 6 potion. And then the important one. Phase Rush took a big nerf for ranged users. It is now half as strong for ranged users than it is for Melee users. This dumpsters. The value of this on champions like Orianna, Taliyah, Ryze, Vladimir. In most cases I think they're better off going a different rune. Unless they need the slow resistance of Phase Rush. [00:24:18] Speaker B: Now Ryze is the one weird one out of this because it compounds with his own speed boost. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yes. [00:24:25] Speaker B: So Ryze may be the one who. [00:24:27] Speaker A: Still takes this Take conqueror in most cases on him. [00:24:32] Speaker C: I think Vladimir still take it. I think Vlad will end up still taking it. He might go already like 5050 with electrocute, say Aries. Good on him. Yeah, I guess I had to see it in game because it does. Like, I mean, yeah, it's. It's gone. Like. I don't know why you would ever take this if you don't have to. [00:24:53] Speaker A: It's pretty brutal. [00:24:54] Speaker B: It's. [00:24:54] Speaker A: It's a big nerf. I think it's needed. I do think they targeted the wrong part. I think Phase Rush should let them run fucking fast. But they shouldn't get the slow resistance. That's how it used to work. Only Melee got the slow resistance ranged. Just got to go fast. [00:25:09] Speaker B: I think that's a better chance. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Much healthier rune. Oh well. Alright. Speaking of reworking things the wrong way. Ha. I made it into a segue. Mike. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:20] Speaker A: What have they done to your girl? [00:25:23] Speaker B: Mel was one of my favorite champions. I say was because I'm not playing her anymore. And I won't be for a while. Not unless they do some serious work to her in multiple ways. Their. Their claim is they're trying to make it so that there's less player frustration playing against her and that you can now like have a chance to outplay. Way outplay Mel in ways that you can understand. None of this changed what her power was the entirety. There's a change to every single ounce of how she works. Base stat, passive Qwer. Everything has been changed somewhat. None of this changes what she does. But it Makes her significantly worse at everything. So you may have remembered not too long ago in this patch cycle, in this year cycle, Bel got a passive buff. They made it so that she could do more damage. They took that away. She was worse. They're reworking her. The numbers on her everywhere have, like, mostly gone down. She has received a lot of nerfs, a couple of damage buffs here and there, but overall, she is receiving nerfs to damage. And then there are subsequent spell changes. Her passive doesn't change how it works. One of the hardest things about Mel, to understand her passive, one of the things that defines how she is, they didn't. [00:26:50] Speaker A: And it defines the frustration other people feel around her. [00:26:54] Speaker B: This is more than her reflect because wind walls exist. Her passive was the problem. Not knowing that you're just dead. They didn't change it. They changed some numbers on it. They massively nerfed it way below where it was before. [00:27:08] Speaker C: But that. [00:27:09] Speaker B: That's. That's. It's below where it was before. They gave her the. The change to buff her so that she was competitive. That's gone. Her Q took a bunch of different hits. So they finally did the one thing that we've been saying from the beginning, but they haven't compensated anything else back to it. They reduced the projectile speed by a significant margin, but now the radius is smaller. The AOE is smaller. Her range already got a nerf. The damage is now technically a dot aoe. So it has reduced use through all of that instead of a damage. And they change it to have an initial hit and then some subsequent total damage hit things. Because that's how those.aoes work. That just massively nerfs what it. What it does. [00:27:56] Speaker A: To be fair, if they take a full duration Q, it does more damage than before. If they take a partial duration cue. If they take a partial duration cue because of that initial hit and subsequent hit mechanic, they take more damage than they did before. It does do more damage. That is the only thing that is improved in this. For the rework on the queue. [00:28:17] Speaker B: They gave her a better amount of cost with it too. [00:28:20] Speaker A: Kind of. Yeah. [00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah. The cast time is now longer. The areas like, as we said, the area spreads lower the explosion radius, the protector speed, things that were supposed to be done to nerf it, but they haven't compensated the original problem, which was it's hard to hit the Q sometimes and the range is well lower than it used to be. And being a Dynamox is huge. [00:28:42] Speaker A: I don't actually think the Q is the problem. In the rework, the Q is not the problem. [00:28:45] Speaker C: It. [00:28:46] Speaker A: It does do more damage in all cases. It's just less reliable and less reliable. But stronger is fine. Continue. [00:28:55] Speaker B: This is the core of one of my main issues here. They have changed what her W provides her. Her W which was her damage immunity plus reflect isn't a damage immunity anymore. It's a shield with an AP ratio and it destroys projectiles that target the unit area instead of reflecting them. So she can't get in between another target and bounce them if they weren't targeted at her. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Which to be fair, is mostly intended to prevent, like Katarina and Samira Ults from just one shotting themselves. [00:29:31] Speaker B: They deserve it. [00:29:32] Speaker A: I agree, but I don't think that's the problematic part of the change. Have you tested. Does she just get a shield and she takes the hit and then reflects it, or does it still. If a projectile hits, does she not take damage from that projectile? [00:29:45] Speaker B: As I said, I haven't touched her since. [00:29:47] Speaker A: Okay. We're unsure, listeners. It could be one way or the other, but if you use it on a non projectile, you just get the shield. [00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So one of the big things was you could use this to dodge a thing and then get a slight movement speed Buff. This is the unclear portion of this change. She got a little bit more move speed over a longer duration. Is her W a longer duration now or is it just the movement speed that's not mentioned. [00:30:11] Speaker C: It doesn't say how long the shield lasts. Like if it has a decay or if it's just like there's nothing. [00:30:17] Speaker B: The Original duration was 3/4 of a second. They doubled that for the movement speed. They did not say whether or not they doubled it for the total duration because they have nerfed the duration of her W multiple times. [00:30:28] Speaker A: They did not increase the duration of the shield. [00:30:31] Speaker B: So this is a 3/4 of a second shield. You still have to time it perfectly or it does nothing. At least with a damage immunity, you knew something was going to block. A shield is much harder to deal with. It's. It's three quarters of a second. Give her that back if you're not gonna give her immunity. Continuing on her E. They nerfed its range. They nerfed the missile radius. They. They nerfed the dot radius. They nerfed the radiuses around this thing slightly buffed the projectile speed slightly. And by slightly, I mean they increased the root duration to its max. So instead of scaling, it's just always at max. Gave her a little bit lower of a Cooldown a little bit more damage. A little less damage per second. So it's a really hard way to say that her E is weaker. Stronger. It's a little bit faster. But it's not as fast as it used to be because they've already nerfed their projectile speed once. It's a little smaller. But the root duration is now just a one hit wonder. So like it may not even be worth. It should be worth leveling second still because of the damage. [00:31:33] Speaker A: But it means it's never worth maxing first. [00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Anymore. [00:31:38] Speaker B: It is now. It is always wrong to max first and it is sometimes wrong to take first now. And her R got half a percent AP buff which does nothing. [00:31:50] Speaker A: It is bigger than it sounds like because remember that is per stack. So she gets 30 stacks on someone that's 15% AP. [00:31:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So like. But they've already massively nerfed the damage part of the passive. So swings and roundabouts. [00:32:06] Speaker A: So here's I think the biggest problem. The the rework intent is to make her less reliable, make her less safe. But give her power is what Riot thinks they've done. And she does do more damage than before. The problem is they did literally nothing to alleviate the actual frustration and pain points that actual players experience. With this champion. She still is aggravating. As for people to play against and because she feels way less reliable, she's much less fun to play. Her win rate actually technically went up with this patch. [00:32:48] Speaker B: I did forget her W now does different like it has a damage scaling difference between physical and magic. If it was physical, it now is flat reduced before it's converted. Which could be terrible depending on what it is. She had to receive some hotfix buffs. [00:33:05] Speaker A: Yep. [00:33:05] Speaker B: And realistically, like yeah, the AP is higher. Her damage is higher. The thing that makes Mel Mel isn't her reflect. It's her. It's one of like. It is the. The beautiful core looking ability. It's a shiny thing. What Mel is is that's distinct is her alt assassination and how her passive. [00:33:27] Speaker A: Works with that because they increased her damage. She's better at the thing that frustrates people because yes, her reflect is very like you remember when she reflects your enchanted crystal arrow and kills you because you were stunned by your own arrow. [00:33:42] Speaker B: The one frustration point they actually got was for the Samira players. The Katarina players. [00:33:48] Speaker A: Yes. And that's a good fix. Like I know Mike's like fuck those champions. But even he will agree it is an actual good for the game fix. [00:33:56] Speaker B: It is it is theoretically good for the game. But if you're reliant on getting that Ult off to get me a murder kill, I deserve to fuck you with it. I deserve to fuck you with your own Ult. For the three quarters of a second, it's active. And if you fail, it fucked you were dead. [00:34:12] Speaker A: And you will still reflect the projectiles targeted at you, but back onto the Katarina and Samara, you just won't reflect the projectiles targeted at all of your teammates. [00:34:21] Speaker B: Yes. Technically speaking, the thing that made it so powerful was if they did it in a team and you were the closest target, you took all of the shots and reflected them, which meant they just exploded, which, yeah, technically, this is a good benefit for that, but they don't deserve it. [00:34:38] Speaker A: So the problem is, what frustrates most players, other than the big reflection, is the invisibility of her damage. Because of the way her passive and especially her ult combined with her passive work, she gets you down to like a third a quarter health and then she just kills you abruptly from wherever the hell you are. So you'll do a trade with her, you'll disengage, you'll be out of her range, but because you're marked by her passive, she just presses R and you die abruptly. And it feels unfair and it frustrates people. [00:35:13] Speaker B: That's one of the problems. The other one has always been, man, I walked away from her flash auto attack, you're dead. The passive pops. You got below the standard. You just died. Those points on Mel did not get changed or are technically better. [00:35:28] Speaker C: Yep. [00:35:28] Speaker A: I honestly am shocked that they chose to do this because the obvious answer is they should have. Tom Kenchter. Her reflect is her big iconic. Everyone knows what it does. Everyone is like, oh, that ability is so crazy. That's most people's initial reaction to it. Make it actually good. Make it her Ult. Let it give her damage immunity, let it do more damage instead of having a less damage modifier on it and make it her ultimate with an ultimate length cooldown. And then give her a new W that's like a utility spell. Tons of mages fit that mold. [00:36:02] Speaker B: If you. [00:36:02] Speaker A: And that would let her do something that is iconic and cool. And if you wanted to frustrating them right. [00:36:08] Speaker B: Of doing this, I think have that. Have that W and alt flip. Yeah. Perfectly fine doing that. Make the duration like three seconds that she can actually like walk while bouncing and reflecting things. She has an invulnerability window, much like a lot of people have. Untargetable. [00:36:24] Speaker A: Let it be old power. [00:36:26] Speaker B: Give her that and then have her W be something that interacts directly with the passive. It has to eat the stacks and either give her a buff. Something like, hey, I'm going to eat my stacks on you and give me my move. Give myself a move speed buff. Something that will directly benefit her without popping the damage. [00:36:46] Speaker A: I would even go so far as to say they could make it so because she has the auto attack damage. Make it so her W just takes however many stacks of auto attack damage she has stacked up and applies it to her next spell. [00:36:56] Speaker B: That works too. Whatever it is, it still has a. [00:36:58] Speaker A: Decent cooldown and it's an empower your next spell to do more damage like and then get rid of the fucking execute. It's dumb and it frustrates people. [00:37:07] Speaker B: I think the execute, if not aoe random blank bullshit is a little bit better, but it needs to be significant. One of the big problems is it's not visible. Yeah, make give her a graphic that scales around you so that you know you're covered in stacks. [00:37:24] Speaker A: And like, yeah, you can see it on the health bar, but that's the only place you can see it. It's dumb. [00:37:29] Speaker B: She's got massive golden lines of undercane energy running through. Make you surrounded by golden threads. The more threads you have around you, the more stacks she has. Shit like that. [00:37:40] Speaker A: Something. [00:37:40] Speaker B: This doesn't change what Mel is. It just makes her less fun. But more powerful. [00:37:49] Speaker C: Yep. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Less fun, less reliable. More powerful and still just as frustrating for people to play against. And that's the problem is players still hate playing against her. Her ban rate is still through the fucking roof. [00:38:05] Speaker B: Her ban rate may have gone up because she got more present win rate. Yeah. [00:38:09] Speaker A: She is the seventh most banned champion after a Nerf because that's what this is is supposed to be a Nerf. It's perceived that way. She's still the seventh most banned champion with 16 and a half percent ban rate in NA right now. In Emerald plus, if I lower that down to include silver games, she is the number one ban and has been for the last couple patches. [00:38:34] Speaker B: And I don't see that still number one because they've not done what they desired to do. They've just made her worse. [00:38:43] Speaker A: And because in lower ELOs the knowledge gap is bigger. She's not clear. No one knows how she works unless they play as her. So she's just as abusive of less experienced players than she was before. [00:38:59] Speaker B: There will come one time I will play her in the near future and that will be I'm going to test her W out to see what that does with the shield versus the damage immunity. Because if she still takes damage on the bounce through the shield, that is worthless. [00:39:14] Speaker A: So I believe that if it's a projectile, it will not damage her because the text says Project Hostile. Projectiles sourced from enemy champions that collide with the barrier will be destroyed instantly before Mel fires the same projectiles as her own. [00:39:30] Speaker B: Hopefully that is good. That means that you can't use your shield to run away effectively anymore. [00:39:37] Speaker A: It should mean that she can't use the shield to just say fuck you to melee champions. She just gets to block a little bit of their damage. [00:39:44] Speaker C: Like I specifically think of. And like to your guys, I've been sitting back listening. Like Mel is frustrating for me to play against. Just for like you said, the, the passive. It's just not very clear. There is no clear. Yeah, like you can't, you don't know like even like I know what's gonna happen if I let her hit me with two or three abilities. I'm just gonna die. And it could be immediately or she could wait a little bit and all of a sudden you know, I'm dead. I think like it was really frustrating the damage immunity from her w for like I think of like Talon comes to my mind someone who just dives on her and all of a sudden now you're, you're out your big cooldowns and she took no damage. So I think the shield on like blocking projectiles and or destroying, I think. Does it say destroy? I I. [00:40:34] Speaker B: It destroys projectile still, so. [00:40:36] Speaker C: It won't reflect anymore. [00:40:37] Speaker B: Oh, it will reflect. [00:40:38] Speaker A: It still reflects. [00:40:39] Speaker C: Okay. [00:40:40] Speaker B: If Talon Ults on her and she gets a perfect blank, it will reflect all of those back at Talon. [00:40:46] Speaker C: The ones that hit her. Yeah, gotcha. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Okay, well, what's guessing there is whether or not the projectiles will damage her and hit the shield or whether they will just bounce harmlessly off of her. And I think it's the latter. [00:41:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's got these things that are inside the barrier that are. She's going to like functions much like. [00:41:06] Speaker B: The wall and that if it the barrier exists around her entire body, there's no inside. [00:41:11] Speaker C: Well, I'm talking like talent again. I'll bring him up. If he goes up and cues her and like she's going to. [00:41:17] Speaker B: They are instantly reflected from. From the. If, if it is not a direct melee strike or something like a senna auto that has no projectile whatsoever, then it will hit the shield or the. [00:41:30] Speaker C: Immunity whatever if it's coded projectile, it gets reflected. [00:41:33] Speaker B: If it's coated, doesn't matter. [00:41:36] Speaker C: Shield. Got it. [00:41:37] Speaker A: So to give this an example, previously, if you're Zed and you Ult a Mel, you get her down to 1 GP and then your Ult is gonna pop. She can press W, block the ult pop and not die. Now, because that's not a projectile, that Ult pop will go against the shield. And if the pop is bigger than the shield is, she still dies. [00:41:58] Speaker B: With the amount of people who have low cooldown on target abilities, I do not see why that's a problem. [00:42:05] Speaker A: Looking at you especially how long the cooldown is. [00:42:08] Speaker B: Yeah, this is like a 30 second plus cooldown. I'm looking at you phasing your six second untargetability. [00:42:14] Speaker A: All right, that's enough about Mel. Let's talk about something more fun. Pillow. We don't normally cover alternate game modes on this podcast. However, all three of us have been having a blast in Aram Mayhem and they dropped a shitload of changes for Aram Mayhem. This is the big Aram Mayhem update patch, guys. If you haven't played Arab Mayhem, it's genuinely the most like, goofy fun mode Riot has added in years. Go play it. It's fun. [00:42:46] Speaker B: It takes the best part of arena, the random modifier things, and adds it into Aram, where you can build things in a wacky way anyways, because you're all in one lane. You're all messing around together and you. [00:43:00] Speaker C: Ever wanted to be a 4 million HP or you can do that. [00:43:04] Speaker B: I. I have seen a 70,000 health swain. Yep. [00:43:10] Speaker C: So let's give some history a little bit. First on Avery Mayhem, this was supposed to be gone like a month ago. Like it was supposed to be rotated out like it was. [00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah. This was not supposed to make it to the new year. [00:43:20] Speaker C: It was not supposed to make it past the first season. New season patch like this was kind of like a filler gap. Give some people what it is so popular that it is taking up 45% of all Riot's game modes across the board. URF ranked Flex solo duos blind what every game mode they have available, aram mayhem has 45% of all the player base right now playing their game consistently. So they came out with a season for Aram Mayhem. I haven't touched ranked solo duo, but I have played lots of Aram Mayhem. So they have a progression track now. If you have played or dabbled in arena, you'll kind of get. You'll. This will be a little Bit familiar to you. So you start off level zero and at level one you get a red envelope perk. So now you get an Augment. A new you unlocked a new Augment. Now you can collect. If you get this Augment, you can select it. And now you can collect red envelopes that give you permanent stat buffs. And then level two all the way up, I think the level. Yeah, 32. Where 32. If this is awesome. I love this. You're missing ping. You're missing pings. Now shoot. Shoot projectiles at your enemies where you pinged or heal your allies. It's hilarious. [00:44:51] Speaker A: With Global range. [00:44:53] Speaker C: With global Range. Wherever you ping, it goes. Of course, granted, that is. I think you know it's got a cooldown based off your pings. You can't just spam it. And I haven't looked yet. Is this unlocked for the least desirable people or is it like if your pings are shortened? I just. I haven't checked it because I'm not a least desirable. So I'm allowed to ping. [00:45:18] Speaker A: I hope that it's restricted for people who are chat restricted and can't use the question ping anymore because that would be hilarious. [00:45:25] Speaker C: That would be great. Guys. This game mode, in my opinion, urf's out right now too. Like, URF is out. And I used to love urf, but I am no longer an URF person. I am a. You know what? Let's go into Aram Mayhem and hope that I can make it urf, but better. Last night I played and I got Stackasaurus Rex. The full stack of Source Rex on Aurelion Sol. I had like 900 stacks at like 17 minutes. [00:45:56] Speaker B: You. You can get Samira Alts. One of the powers is you now have Samira's style. When you hit ask you Samira halt. That's just a new power. [00:46:07] Speaker C: Shaco Deceive. You could. It's called Clown College. It replaces your snowball or your heel, whatever. You finally, you get to select which slot it goes in, which is kind of cool, but like, it just puts you invisible. And Shaco Deceive. And you go behind somebody and you do bonus damage. And when they kill you, you explode and do a lot more damage and become a box. A Shaco box. And so with this new season, they've added like I mentioned Stackasaurus Rex earlier. So what that is is like. So say you get. There's this augment called Heartsteel Quest. When you reach 300 Heartsteel stacks, it triples to go to 900 Heart still stacks it does not affect your heart. Still stacks. The Stackasaurus. I found out it affects people like stacks that get like Viagar. Yeah. [00:46:59] Speaker B: I'll give you another. You can get vigor passive. [00:47:04] Speaker C: You can get Phenomenal evil passive. [00:47:06] Speaker B: Phenomenal evil. And that will gain you increased vigor stacks. [00:47:12] Speaker A: Does that. Can Vegar get his own passive a second time through the Augments? [00:47:16] Speaker C: Yes, he sure does. [00:47:17] Speaker A: That's so funny. [00:47:18] Speaker B: I want to see that really badly. [00:47:20] Speaker C: I got it the other day. [00:47:21] Speaker A: That's so funny. [00:47:22] Speaker C: It stacks a little bit slower. I think there's a little bit of a. An internal cooldown in between abilities because I had it on Zyra and I wasn't getting it every time. [00:47:31] Speaker B: Certain abilities do not count. I have found this out when I played it on Twitch. [00:47:35] Speaker A: Also, remember Veigar's actual passive. He gets five stacks for every takedown. I don't think he gets that on the Augment. [00:47:42] Speaker C: No, it's just for. It's just ability hits. [00:47:46] Speaker B: You have. You have to explicitly land damaging abilities. If your ability does not damage, it does not count. If your ability affects something else that does damage, it does not count. Found this out on Twitch. The only way to gain stacks on Twitch is to pop your E. There is. [00:48:04] Speaker C: They're at level. I'm looking at it, and this is. I haven't got to this one yet. It's level 16. And this is awesome. It's called Void Immolation. Let me make Void Immolation Augment. It combines Sunfire and Hollow Radiance into one item. It's great. [00:48:22] Speaker A: It's awesome. [00:48:23] Speaker C: It's super strong. Ridiculous. This game mode is just ridiculous. Like, it's awesome. It's how you. You can. It's. You can be creative. There are frustrating parts of this game mode. Like the mundo with 2080, the 70,000 health. [00:48:40] Speaker B: Yes, swain now. However, just because they got bullshit things doesn't mean you can't also get bullshit things. Because of that game. I had the single highest damage of Champions I have ever seen. That was before this update. I had over 250,000 damage to champions. [00:48:58] Speaker C: Last night I had. There's this Augment that you can unlock. It's called Shrink Engine, and it's just the opposite of Tank Engine where Tank Engine on takedown, you get size and health. Shrink Engine, you get smaller and get ability power. I had it on last night on Gangplank and I was the size less than a poro and I had like 900 something ability, haste and these. [00:49:23] Speaker B: Oh, there's another one that we have not Mentioned properly here. They have made synergistic combos of abilities that are like set. [00:49:33] Speaker C: Yes. That's what I was getting into. Sorry. [00:49:37] Speaker B: Yeah, we distracted on this one. We love it so much. The sets. If you get multiple things within that that. That benefit each other, you gain a bonus set. Bonus that gives you increased stuff. [00:49:49] Speaker C: Yes. That's where I was going with the stack of Source Rex. So what Sacsaurus Rex is get these augments that give you like phenomenal evils. One heart still quest is one. If you get. I think it's three of them, you get an extra 100% more stacks. So I had one the other day, the Dive Bomber set on Scion. So every time I died I turned into a train and it just like flows and does a lot of damage and then when you get to the Dive Bomber, it reduces your death timer by 40%. So I was dying at level 18 as a scion. Lots. I had more than one death per minute. I was dying at level 18 as A scion would go through my entire passive and already be respawned before the enemy team like who died like 40 seconds ago came back. Like it was hilarious. It's great. [00:50:39] Speaker B: And they're. One of the names of the. The sets is Wee Woo Wee Woo. [00:50:46] Speaker A: Yup. [00:50:47] Speaker B: Which depending on how far in you get, gives you movement speed and heal and shield power. One of the new names is I'm a baby kitty. Where is Mama? [00:50:59] Speaker A: One of the new Augments they literally put the description is Bounce of the Poro King Augment. Bounce on enemies. Crazy style as the Poro King to knock back and deal damage. Like they are being silly with this. And I love it. This silliness is exactly what a mode like this needs. [00:51:18] Speaker C: It's great. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend it. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Snowballs Go Burr. [00:51:23] Speaker C: Mystic Punch. So much fun is in this. There's the one like that you got in arena where all your abilities can crit. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Yep. [00:51:34] Speaker C: Every ability can crit. Ridiculous. On her eyes. [00:51:38] Speaker B: This is scaling with like there is a. There is now an AP Crit item. So you can buy criticism for AP and have your like Jeweled Gauntlet increase. Jewel Gauntlet is the thing from TFT which allows abilities to create. Which is what I think. I don't know if it's called tool, but that's just what I see when I. [00:51:56] Speaker C: That's what it is. That's what it is. Yeah. [00:51:58] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So. And then there's just one of those augments gives you 50% crit. So between that and the Jewel Gauntlet you're 75 and then you get stat. You buy the one crit item and you have 100% critical on your abilities. [00:52:13] Speaker C: We forgot to mention there are stat anvils in this. It's 750 gold. You usually buy them when you are a max max build. And they will they range anywhere from silver, gold to prismatic. All this stuff does silver, gold to prismatic. There might be a bronze. I don't know if they've added bronze or not, but as far as I know it's just silver, gold and prismatic levels and like. So an example of like a prismatic augment will give you 18 armor penetration. And like a silver and gold augment might give you like ability haste and attack speed, like combined together. So you can get 100 crit just from stat anvils without building a single crit item. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And they also give you the hats because like normally you get cappaduce when you've got no money left to get the giant stack of hats. Every one of those gives you one of the hats, which is one of the passives with the more hats you're wearing, the more AP. [00:53:04] Speaker C: That's old hats. Hats on hats gives you 15 AP and some ability Power, I think. Or I'm sorry, Ability haste per hat. Every two anvils give you a hat. [00:53:17] Speaker B: It's just so fucking fun. [00:53:20] Speaker C: Oh yeah. Come play it with us. It's so much fun. [00:53:24] Speaker A: Yes. Join the Discord and play Aram Mayhem with us. We don't care what your skill level is. We're here to just have a good time doing silly shit. [00:53:33] Speaker B: There will be rage moments. Sometimes you're just in much the same way of Aram. You're in champion select and then you're even more because of Augments. It happens. [00:53:42] Speaker C: What did I do to you the other night, Mike? [00:53:44] Speaker B: It's ridiculous. [00:53:45] Speaker C: Well, you were playing Ezreal or something in it and I did something and like knocked you into like the enemy team or something. [00:53:52] Speaker B: Yep. Like you, you pulled. I had a perfect shot lined up and you pulled them out of it with a. I don't remember who you were playing. And because of that pull, they were now close enough to get a shot off on me and instantly killed me from like 60% health. [00:54:09] Speaker C: That's good times. Highly recommend. [00:54:12] Speaker A: All right, let's do some listener questions to wrap this episode up. These come from the Discord and our first question comes from Toast, who writes, how can you tell if a champion is an early game champion or a scaling champion for late Game or win whatever else. What are some examples of early and late game junglers and how do their playstyles differ? So we're going to answer in order. First of all, how can you tell if they're an early game or a scaling champion? Look at their base damages and AP ratios or AD ratios. Someone with high base damages is generally going to be an early game champion. Someone's low base damages. [00:54:45] Speaker B: Yeah. If you are not fully confident with understanding ability damages and numbers and everything else like that, you will not be able to tell unless someone tells you. This is one of those learned game knowledge skills of these are numerically high in this point. So we can figure this out here. Base damage versus total damage versus bonus damage. These sort of things are other things that you look at so hard to tell. [00:55:14] Speaker C: I think you need to add one more like question in this is early game, late game and scaling. I think there's three different types. So like scaling is going to be your. Your obvious. You know you got Vega really in soul. Anybody who has like a permanent scaling like option. Whereas like late game where like Kayle is not an infinite scaling champion. She is a late game champion. Like she does not have a like they say scaling but she just scales really well in the late game. But she is just a late game champion. So I don't want you to get confused with scaling late game and early game. [00:55:52] Speaker A: So in Kayle's case, the reason she's a late game champion is because of the way her passive works. She evolves basically every time she ranks up her ult and becomes a stronger version of herself. Whereas the last version at level 16 is just overwhelming in terms of stats compared to most other champions. [00:56:10] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:56:11] Speaker B: The jungler is much easier to tell actually. So yeah, you're gonna say an example. Go ahead. [00:56:16] Speaker C: I was gonna say like. So just to give you like another example like of a. Like an early game champion would be Darius. Darius is an early game champion. He's got very high like his passive gives him very high attack damage. Early as a heen would be at early game. Like most of these I say like level three. Like level three is when they hit that early game spike like Darius can do some cheese. Renekton's an early game champion. Very high bases. [00:56:46] Speaker A: Yeah the. The easiest answer for that part is if you look at statistics for these champions early game champions win rate falls the longer the game goes. [00:56:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's. You're going to have to do a little bit of a stat lookup on this one to properly understand Them. Unless you are incredibly familiar with damages. Junglers is easier to understand because of playstyle. If a jungler is a farming jungler, which means they don't gain their like, power spike until their ultimate or. Or until they have a lot of damage levels like Y, they are considered a late game jungler or a mid game jungler because they don't have early gank power. Early gank power is first clear. A good example of a early game jungler is Jarvan. He gets two abilities and he can gank. He can gank you from his red buff. He takes red buff, immediately goes to somewhere to grab you. Blue buff, whatever, doesn't matter. He can gank you at level two. There's one champion who has very powerful damage and a cheese gank, and that's Twitch, essentially because of how his invisibility works. Shaco gets CC potentially because he always gets his boxes. So he has the same style as like most other early game junglers. One of those things is they have CC because it's hard to kill someone early on. Twitch is the unique one because of that invisibility. And he's the only one who has a good invisibility that early. Yeah. And then late game is very easy to understand. It's. It's your. Yeez. It's your Nocturnes. It's Evelyn even, because you don't. Well, not late, that is. That is a farm. Because there. There is a late game jungler, but there is farming junglers, which is really the other type you should be talking about. Early game. Yes, farming. Evelyn's a farmer. He's a farmer. Nocturne's a farmer. They benefit so much from gaining their ultimates or from just pure levels. [00:58:43] Speaker A: See, that's where I was gonna object until you clarified, because Nocturne is not a late game champion. He is a mid game monster. Because the later you go, the more people are just death ball 5v5ing. Which is not what he's great at. He's great at picking people off who miss position. So that's the difference between, like, he's not a scaling champ. He doesn't have crazy good scaling ratios, nor does he have any infinite scaling. He spikes really hard at like 6 and 11, and his win rate shows it. If you look at gold plus in NA, his win rate drops 25, 30, 35 minutes. All of it drops because the longer the game goes, the less impact he has on the outcome of the game, if he hasn't already won it. [00:59:29] Speaker B: There are a couple of unique champions along this line. And they are the assassin junglers. They don't bring cc, they just bring raw damage. Talon, Naafiri, Zed, these kind of just assassins that have now been allowed into the jungle. They are a weird mid ground. They have early game power unlike a lot of other people. So they can fight you early. They have the power to gank early if there is CC in a lane or if there's just really bad positioning which you should recognize when there's an early game champion and not put yourself at risk immediately killing yourself. But like if you're in a bot lane with a Leona and there's a Kha' Zix on your team, that's an early game gank if you want it. [01:00:15] Speaker A: Yep. [01:00:16] Speaker B: But they are also like the early mid push. Their power really comes into their own when they get one or two items when they can just assassinate. [01:00:26] Speaker C: I always think also like you have feast and famine junglers that like if they don't get early ganks are kind of just gonna be in a rut the rest of the game. And like I think of like Nidalee, Elise, these, these even Ad Shaco, I would say are feast and fame and jungles until there hits that like middle late game point where everything starts to even out and they hit those power spikes a little later than they want to. Those are also a type of jungle to look out for. [01:00:59] Speaker B: Now I'm going to give you a little bit more than you wanted from this one and that there is a way to very quickly and easily like deny that second half of the junglers, those junglers who hit their power spike with their ultimates, if they fail that first gank or if they don't use their ultimates when they get them, that's. That's a huge power point in your favor. And one of the fun ways of denying that is taking Lucian into the top lane. He actually has a great invade and. [01:01:25] Speaker C: It just wrecks built in smite. [01:01:28] Speaker A: We'll go with that. We'll go with that. Guys, this has been episode 517 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Micah. Many names for pillow pet. Have a great night. [01:01:40] Speaker C: Good night. [01:01:41] Speaker B: Good night everybody. [01:01:43] 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 podcast at gmail com.