The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 518: Underplayed, Not Underpowered!

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: 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 518 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohlman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names. [00:00:49] Speaker C: I think I'm recovered. Still a little cough in the back end, but I feel good. [00:00:54] Speaker B: We're glad to hear it. We've also got Pillow Pet. [00:00:57] Speaker A: I'm here, I'm tired, I'm back to work and still not getting sleep. [00:01:01] Speaker B: That is the quintessential new parent experience. I know you're not a new parent, but it's a new kid. Guys, we are the Four Words podcast. We have a discord. Come join the discord. Come hang out, come play games with us, come chat. It's a great time. The link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. We do also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV jacksoman, where I'm still holding to my Beat saber on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I may be unemployed now, so the beat saber might be earlier in the day, but it's gonna happen. And then league throughout the week and Super Metroid usually on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Mike can be found@twitch tv mikeofmanynames. Maybe now that he's feeling better, he'll actually stream again. [00:01:46] Speaker C: I think I'm trying to figure out a day that I want to set as my stream day, but I'm going to like dedicate to actually do a stream. I want to talk to some people, figure out when that day might be a good time to try and like force myself to do a stream per day then. [00:01:59] Speaker B: Fair enough. And then Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillow Pet. But I assume you do not have time to stream right now with the newborn. [00:02:06] Speaker A: No, no, not consistently. [00:02:09] Speaker B: But go give him a follow. So once his kid gets a little older and he starts streaming again, he'll. You'll be notified. [00:02:15] Speaker C: You just got to stream. Put some, put some shades on the baby. Have them right there. And. [00:02:21] Speaker A: I will. Yeah, I guess, I guess I could do that. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Fair. I would not do. [00:02:26] Speaker A: All right. [00:02:27] Speaker B: No, guys, we. We got to give some shout outs to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast. At the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. You keep the show on the Internet. Now speaking of supporting the podcast, we do have a Patreon if you head over to patreon.com the Fourwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month will get you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show and $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and we will shout your name out at the top of every episode. All of those also do include you get a cool red color for your name in the discord that says you are a Patreon supporter. And all of them also do apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. [00:03:17] Speaker C: We have some hidden videos ready for the people who are in the Patreon this week. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Yes. So patrons check out Patreon Chat in Discord but everyone else, that's what you're missing out. You only need the $1 tier to get access to Patreon chat. You don't need the exclusive feed tier if you don't want it. Last but not least, listeners, you guys answered the call this week. We got questions in the email. Thank you. We need more because we're going to get through them. So Write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com with your questions. We can answer those questions on the podcast. All right, we're going to get into right into our main topic tonight and we got a suggestion of a topic from a listener that we liked but tweaked. So Cameron B Suggested a League of legends, A to Z. Just quick descriptions of every champion. We talked about it and we felt that A to Z wasn't as useful to our listeners as maybe explaining less popular or more obscure champions. Because if you're a newer or less experienced player, you may have only seen that champion a couple times. Maybe only in Aram. You don't really know what they do or how they work and when you go up against someone who plays them in ranked cause even the least popular champion in this game is played hundreds of thousands of times a month globally. Like that is not an exaggeration. The least popular champion in the game was played 175,600 times last month globally. Yes. So we figured let's instead talk about champions in the order of least popular so that we can explain what the least popular champions that you may not have seen a gazillion times. What they do how they work, so you know what to expect. So when you run into one of those mains in ranked who plays that weird champion, you go, oh, I know what that guy does. I can play against this instead of. Well, I'm against a one trick and I don't even know what his champion does. I'm just screwed. So pillow. The least popular champion in League of legends in 2026 is Skarner. Tell us about Skarner. [00:05:26] Speaker A: Yes. Skarner the Dread Scorpion. I don't know if that's his actual name, but that's what I'm giving him. He is the least popular played champion in League of Legends right now. Not because he isn't fun to play. Well, it might be. I. I was kind of wanting to talk about a little bit during pre show. I got to play him the other night and it was just in like an aram. He's just. He's in a bad state. Like, he is really like in a bad state. Right. [00:05:59] Speaker C: Fundamentally changed what Skarner is and does. And a lot of people who liked previous Skarner do not like current Skarner because he cannot do what he used to. [00:06:09] Speaker A: He, like, he's just has really no identity. Like, he's. He's just kind of like a. I don't know, it feels like to me just like right now he's just in a place where he's just like a placeholder. Like, hey, this is Skarner. He was a champion and he's still champion. But like, he just. It just doesn't feel good to play him. [00:06:29] Speaker B: So. But people still do play him. So if you go up against him, let's explain what he actually does so the listeners know what to do. [00:06:37] Speaker A: So Skarner's Q, he picks up a rock, empowers his next three auto attacks, or at any time he can throw that rock for some splash damage, which applies his passive which lets you do extra on hit damage to the next time you auto them or maybe use an ability against them. W is an AOE like shock wave that applies a shield and applies some damage and a slow. His E is his charge which like will grab you and like if you collide with walls will stun you or it'll just like move you in through the charge distance. And as R is kind of like his identity and it has been since his before his rework, it impales them with his. With their tail. With his tail. And like he can move the group of people or the single person that he hit to different directions based on like it's stays in the front of him, he can drag him back, drag them forward, drag him left, drag him right. And they're kind of just stuck there and they can't get out of it unless they have like a QSS or something along those lines. [00:07:48] Speaker C: So I'm gonna point out a couple things specifically with Scarlet right now. They retweaked him. So his identity is his E. His E is where his new power is. It's him waltzing through walls unlike anything else. He physically moves through walls unlike other people who sort of teleport or walk around. And he has very large range through this. [00:08:07] Speaker B: Him and Kane are like the only ones who can do this really. [00:08:10] Speaker C: And then when he grabs someone, he. Once he grabs someone, he physically moves them wherever he wants to within that dash. So you're moving in a kind of like a scion ultimate in that you have momentum based and you can't turn properly. So you have to be moving in a specific way to smash people into ccing walls. But you also do like get to abduct people with this movement. [00:08:33] Speaker A: Like this ability used to be a lot better and they nerfed it. It used to have. Well, I'm saying like after the rework, I'm telling I'm going to talk post rework. I'm not going to talk pre rework because it's just not who we're talking. Like that's just not him anymore. So it used to be a lot better. Like I had a bigger hitbox where you could just kind of like grab people from like the front and like turn around. It was. And it was really strong. And then they nerfed the hitbox of it and now it just feels like it's almost super hard to hit unless you're standing directly in front of them and go right through them. It used to be kind of forgiving and it's just not anymore. [00:09:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And then the other really important thing to point out about his corner is his ultimate is one of the few suppressions in the game. It is a suppression specifically. It is not something that can be reduced by tenacity and only certain things can get rid of suppressions. I believe it is just QSS as. [00:09:27] Speaker B: Far as like self remove qss and then a couple champion abilities like gangplank can eat root out of it. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Yeah, milior, etc. Etc. [00:09:36] Speaker C: So like Skarner is the weird one because he is one of the few people in the game left who can choose where you are going. I'm abducting you and you're going Somewhere else most of the time. Every other CC is you're staying put or I'm sending you in a very specific direction. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Important to note, he is not allowed to flash while he has someone impaled, but he is allowed to take a thresh lantern. Yeah, it's very funny. [00:10:03] Speaker C: You can get pulled very far distances. [00:10:05] Speaker A: It's just one of the interactions because. [00:10:07] Speaker B: It'S just so funny. You just yoink people across an entire screen. [00:10:12] Speaker A: So he's picked 0.62% of the time, which surprisingly his ban rate is only 1/5 of that at 0.12%. Like he's still banned. Surprisingly like for his. For as much as he gets played like 20% of the games that he's. [00:10:29] Speaker C: Played, I'm guessing part of that is someone just got beaten the hell by that one Skarner. They're back at the next game. [00:10:34] Speaker A: The one trick. [00:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah, he's. They essentially removed most of the damage portion out of him. So he's. He's a pure tank now. He can't really build damage and, and be functional. So like, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people don't like playing Skarner anymore is because unlike a lot of other tanks, you don't. You don't do damage. All you do is absorb. [00:10:54] Speaker B: To be clear, he does percent max health damage. So like he, he brawls just fine, but he's not like gonna blow up a carry. [00:11:02] Speaker C: Yeah, he loses most 1v1s. [00:11:05] Speaker B: All right, any other quick thoughts on Skarner before we move on to the next one? [00:11:09] Speaker C: His name is the Primordial Sovereign. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Okay, Mike, the second least popular champion in the last month globally is Renata Glask. You want to explain this chemtech support? [00:11:23] Speaker C: Renata is a hardcore bound to support champion. She does not have the like ratios to make her a functional mid laner like some other champions. She is very supportive and she's incredibly skillful. Like her ability to. To properly function exponentially increases the better you are at this champion. And the best champions in the world will win tournaments on Renata Glask because they are that good. She is a. A support that you can be a support on and carry the game, which is really hard to say in a lot of cases. Most of the time your support is a true support. You're empowering someone else. Renata can win you games alone. [00:12:05] Speaker B: She's a support in the sense that thresh is a support. She doesn't really do very much that makes her teammate directly stronger. But she is the most like, hey, You. I'm going to keep you safe. And we are going to win this game together. [00:12:21] Speaker C: She's one of the most. One of the most powerful battlefield control supports there is. [00:12:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:12:26] Speaker C: Her passive is a thing that makes it so that she is just a support. She does a tiny amount of bonus damage and then marks the enemy so that your ally can deal more damage. That's one of the reasons why she's kind of hardbound to support her Q is called Handshake. It's one of those other abilities that has full control over moving someone. You grab a person, the first thing you grab and then you get to throw it. And whatever you hit with, they're stunned. So you can grab a person and throw them into their ally. And you get to choose which direction you throw them in. And now we get to the like. This is the core power of Renata. It's called Bailout. Bailout is one of the most broken abilities in the game. If properly used, Bailout gives you a not damage buff but like an attack speed buff and a slight move speed buff. But if you die while Bailout is going, you are not dead. You gain a very quick form of like Scion Health except it it's percent drain instead of numeric drain where your health just falls. And if it reaches zero during that fall, you die. But if any kill happens during that you are instantly revived at. I think it's a percent based on what level. The W is just 20%. Just 20%? 20%. So she's you're revived at 20% and you get to just keep fighting. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Important to note that 20% is low enough that several champions executes will just auto kill you. Such as Urgot or Garen. [00:13:53] Speaker C: Yes. But if they kill you slightly before that with the Bailout goes, you can kill them right back. Yep. This. This is one of her two massive power budget abilities. The next is her E. It's a loyalty program. She sends out a skill shot. Any allies it passes over it gives them a shield to any enemies it hits. It does a tiny little damage burst and some slow. It's not too much, but it's. It's another powerful. Like getting another shield for your ally is a good thing. And now we have the other half of her like power budget. And this is a wholly unique ability to Renata. It is called Hostile Takeover. And it is a massive skill shot. Think like Nami's Wave. [00:14:38] Speaker B: All of her abilities by the way are references to like corporate business. [00:14:43] Speaker C: Yes, she is. She is a corporate baron. She's A Chem Baron. That's why it is. And the hostile takeover is a massive skill shot. It's very much like a Nami Bubble or a Nami Wave that any enemies that it hits go berserk and immediately attack the closest thing, including other allies. It's not a long cc. Maybe a second, second and a half at most. But that can change an entire game. Suddenly the AD carry is attacking the support. That support's just dead. And you get to keep attacking during this. They're not immune like with a Bard Ultimate. They're not on your side. They're still enemies. So these two like combined powers of W and R are incredibly difficult to properly utilize. Hence why she has such a low pick rate. Because if you cannot properly use them, you have a useless champion in comparison. Her support is not strong enough. Her CC is relatively weak in comparison. Yeah, the grab is the handshake is okay, but like it's easily dodged. Your passive isn't that much extra damage. Your E isn't that much shielding. There's much better versions of the support versions elsewhere. Even her. The buff portion of W isn't actually that strong. [00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a weak version of a Lulu when she uses the polymorph on an ally instead of an enemy. [00:16:07] Speaker C: It's basically ardent censor and strength. It's not that strong. [00:16:10] Speaker A: I'd say that's going to be a common trend with most of these champions that we're going to talk about. It's not that they're pick rate is low because they're all just bad champions. Most of them are just really like high skill. [00:16:23] Speaker C: Yeah, these are high skill ceiling. Very high skill floor as well. [00:16:29] Speaker A: Like you are putting yourself at a handicap if you don't know how to play these champions. Because they're just not inherently good champions to play. [00:16:35] Speaker C: But if you know what to do with these champions, you can win with them. Renata is absolutely insane if utilized in the right hands. As we've seen from multiple worlds straight. [00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Renata and the next one that I'm about to talk about are champions that are put in what we call pro jail. Which means this champion is so good in highly organized competitive play by the best players in the world that they are intentionally kept weak for us plebs so that they don't take over the pro play environment. Renata is never going to be a good solo queue champion. Just period. [00:17:11] Speaker C: If you are Renata, you can win games, make no mistake. But you must put in the work on Renata. Mhm. [00:17:19] Speaker B: And Kalista is not going to be a good solo queue champion ever either, for the same reason. Because anytime Kalista is viable in solo queue, she is broken in pro. So let me explain what Kalista does. Kalista is an ad carry. She's played pretty much exclusively in the bot lane. She's not like some of the ad carries that can kind of pivot to other roles. She does occasionally see top lane play, but we don't count that because that's cheese shit. And Kalista's passive kind of defines how her champion works. So I'm going to start explaining that Kalista cannot cancel her auto attacks. Every other champion in the game, if you auto attack and then input a move command, you can animation cancel and like shoot the auto attack and then keep moving. Hawkshan, his is different. He can cancel them. He just gets a different benefit if he does. [00:18:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a very weird one, but yeah. [00:18:13] Speaker B: So on Kalista, if you attempt to auto attack and then cancel the backswing of your auto attack with movement, she will instead dash. This dash gets longer as she upgrades her boots. Its distance depends on the angle towards her target. So if she's trying to dash away from a target, it's less effective than if she's trying to dash towards a target or diagonally towards a target to dodge things. And on top of that, her other passive, she gets an item at the start of the game that she can activate on an ally to mark that ally permanently for the rest of the game as her oath sworn. I'll explain what that does shortly. Her Q is just a line projectile. It goes through a target. If it kills a target, it just keeps going. And if it kills that target, it passes her E through to the next target. Which will make sense when I get to the E. Her W. This is one of the abilities that like is one of the reasons she's pro jailed. Whoever she has made an oath with, they will mark a target when either one of them hits that target. And if the other person then hits the same target, it does bonus damage to that target. There is a cooldown on this and then she can actively press the W to send out a little ghost that scouts an area for her. Her E. Every time she auto attacks or hits an enemy with her Q, she adds a stack of rend. She can press E to pull all of those stacks of rend out of the target, dealing damage based on how many stacks there are. So the more spears she stacks up in you, the harder her E is going to hurt. This can stack up to 254 times. So in a real environment, effectively infinitely. Cause everyone in the game should be dead well before you would ever get to 254 stacks of this. And then Kalista's ultimate. The other reason she is pro jailed when she presses R whoever she has made an oath with. Generally her support is instantly put into invulnerable untargetable stasis and pulled to her. They can then throw themselves anywhere they have full. The support has full control over the targeting of where they get thrown. They can dash to attack an enemy and it knocks enemies up. They can get pulled by this and then just dash to safety. It is an incredibly strong just oh my support. No, you can't kill them or oh my support. I'm giving them the gap close so they don't have to use their own. This means she's incredible with champions like Alistair who suddenly she can use Fate's call throw Alistair into her enemy. Alistair can then pulverize around him because they're knocked up from Fate's call. And then he can headbutt the enemy to a bad position while they are airborne because he has time to set all of that up because he didn't have to use headbutt to get in in the first place. [00:21:16] Speaker A: This is true. Basically everybody becomes Malphite. [00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Basically because it is also an unstoppable dash when they are coming out of Fate's call. [00:21:25] Speaker C: It does knock the first thing it hits back. It stops there. So unlike Malphite, it's not a targeted spot. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Yep. Also important to note if your support is a ranged support, it will set them farther away from the target. If it is a melee support, it will put them more or less right on top of the target after they collide. So yeah, do this is so that she doesn't like inter by yeeting her soraka into fights. Basically. So I'm going to be clear, listeners do not play Calista unless you have a dedicated duo like plain and simple. You have to be coordinated as a duo to succeed with this champion. She's. She's genuinely weak if you're not correctly using those sentinel marks period. Regardless of everything else. And then she's also one of the hardest champions in the game to pilot on a mechanical level. [00:22:16] Speaker C: Yeah. She. She is one of the like. If she was balanced around normal means she would take over AD carries because she is a very powerful individual. AD carry. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Yep. [00:22:27] Speaker C: To fight with and has full movement while attacking which no other champion. [00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:34] Speaker C: Gets. [00:22:35] Speaker B: It's very difficult to escape her once she's on you. [00:22:38] Speaker C: So that passive and that ultimate are the reasons she has to be kept in this jail. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Yep. But you will run into a Kalista occasionally in solo queue, and hopefully when you see one, you will stop trying to cc and blow up the enemy support and just having Kalista pull her away to safety every time. [00:22:54] Speaker C: Yeah, the. The real, like, the kicker with Kalista is she is incredibly good at dueling, even if it doesn't sound like she should be. Like, she will have much less monetary value in her items. But if she's item equivalent to you until you get to, like, four items full crit, she's winning most duels. [00:23:15] Speaker B: I just use this as an example because in my plat games, I have had, like, a Malzahar or Warwick who just would continuously alt Callista's support, and then Callista would just be like, no. [00:23:26] Speaker C: Yeah, you have blue, your big button. [00:23:30] Speaker B: Exactly. That's why this is important for you to know how she works is you literally can't focus down Kalista's support unless you know for a fact Kalista is just not there. [00:23:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:40] Speaker B: All right. Pillow talk to us about a support champion that doesn't play support as a role. [00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So we have a jungle support. This is Ivern the tree. So Ivern has. [00:23:55] Speaker B: I love that. Instead of going with his actual title, which is the green father, you're like, he's Ivern the tree. [00:24:01] Speaker A: I so. So I'm not looking at any notes on these champions. Like, I don't have them pulled up like most. So I'm giving them all my names, and I'm just going off the top of my head with their abilities. I love it. So Ivern, he. He's pretty fun champ to play. I like playing Ivern. I really enjoy him. So Ivern is a jungle whose identity is. He is a very passive jungle. And what I mean is he never fights a jungle camp. He frees them from the jungle, and they give him the gold and the buffs, and that was it. So he goes. His passive is he goes up to a jungle camp, clicks it, casts it, puts a little timer around him, and then after a short time, Ivern can go back up to that camp, click it again. It absorbs the camp. He gets the gold and the xp, and he keeps moving on. It costs health and it costs mana to activate this passive. So you do end up being unhealthy at the end of your clear to start absorbing all these jungle camps. His Q sends out some vines and attaches it to A target. And these can be the jungle camps that he can't attack and he can't. Him and his allies can pull themselves to whatever the vines are attacking or attached to and bring you in closer to distance. I think range. It kind of like with Callista, like the range get. Stay back to a range distance to where they can attack melee, get pulled in a little bit closer. W throws down some bushes. He creates his own bushes. It gives him empowered autos when he's standing in a bush and hide your allies and you can hide, you know, your. You can close it and make an arena. [00:25:50] Speaker C: They changed it slightly. [00:25:52] Speaker B: I. I did not know this. His allies get empowered autos if they're in one of his bushes. [00:25:57] Speaker C: Yeah, this. This was. [00:25:58] Speaker B: I literally just learned that now live on the podcast. [00:26:01] Speaker C: This was one of his big power boosts. Was. For a long time, Ivern only got ranged when he was in bushes. And when they gave him a range auto attack, they made it so that if you make a bush, you get stronger auto attacks. And as and allies also get stronger auto attacks. I'm going to give a little side note back for the passive part. If you smite, you instantly take the entire camp afterwards. [00:26:22] Speaker B: Doesn't matter what you do, still have to channel first. You can't just smite a camp. [00:26:26] Speaker C: The channel happens. Once you've channeled and you have the. You'll. You'll see a massive marker underneath the champ underneath the camp. Once you smite that, it instantly completes the mark and smites it from whatever health it is instantly dead. [00:26:38] Speaker A: So I counter Junk line. Very important to note that he's still the dragon and Baron and Rift Herald are still angry at him and he has to fight those. [00:26:48] Speaker C: Yes. [00:26:48] Speaker A: They don't like ivern, so he still has to fight those. No. So his E is. I think the most powerful part of his entire kit is a shield. And the shield double procs. Like it'll expire and explode and then give the person the shield again. Like it's. It's very strong. [00:27:10] Speaker C: So yeah, I think it's still. [00:27:12] Speaker B: It's broken. It doesn't recast. But if it's unbroken and didn't deal damage, it will recast. Okay. [00:27:20] Speaker A: And R. His R is summon Daisy, which is like a worse but better tippers. It's kind of hard to explain. Like the. The. The artificial like intelligence of Daisy is dumb. Like he. The controls on Daisy are just awful. [00:27:40] Speaker C: Yep. [00:27:40] Speaker A: In my opinion, like, worse than any summon like pet in the game. It's awful. But so what Daisy does Is like you can put the shield on him if you throw your. Your vines out and hit somebody. Daisy charges them. Daisy gets very, very fast. Daisy attacks a few times. Daisy knocks up on a third attack, I think and shoots like the rocks up in a line and knocks anybody in that dis like in that line up. It's very strong. Daisy is very strong and it is a very short cooldown on his r. Like he's always going to have Daisy up and he can shield him and explodes. And Daisy is a very strong pet. He's just so hard to control. [00:28:21] Speaker B: There's a literally strongest pet in the game in terms of like ability to just fight. Yeah, I would say Timbers and Yorick's maiden are both stronger in specific ways. But Daisy can just brawl. [00:28:35] Speaker A: Yeah, Daisy has especially with like malignant. [00:28:38] Speaker C: It's every three attacks with no cooldown. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Just three attacks. That's it. I don't remember how his. I think it's just like with ability, power, as that's how Daisy scales. I don't think it directly. He directly scales with like health or any of that. I think it's just ability, power. [00:28:54] Speaker C: I think you're right. [00:28:55] Speaker A: Ivern, he is a very one of those niche champions where the people that play him like consistently play him well. He's very frustrating because of what his kit does with the CC and the shields. Inherently, he doesn't do a ton of damage, but he blocks a lot of damage. And Daisy is very good at distorting an entire team fight. [00:29:22] Speaker B: If you are playing against an Ivern, you need to ward whichever side of the jungle your jungler is not starting on. Or if you are the jungler, you need to ward that side of the jungle. You can't trust your team will. And if Ivern goes to invade because he can literally just walk in, steal a camp instantly, it's completely uncontestable. Your jungler needs to be mindful of that and consider maybe going and stealing Ivern's camps on the opposite side of the map from where Ivern is. So you need that intel. It is integral. You will lose against Ivern if you are not tracking where he is at. [00:29:56] Speaker C: We. We've mentioned him as a weird, weird jungler a couple times. He is intentionally not the fastest first clear. He becomes the fastest clear in the game because of the speed that that passive eventually goes off at. [00:30:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think at like level. What is it? 11. It's what one. It just throughout his levels, his passive gets a lot quicker. So you get to later levels, you know, especially now where jungles get bonus XP in the jungle with on camps he gets like the level 16 his passives almost instant. Like you cast it wait like a second and a half, two seconds and like you can just go ahead and take that camp and that's any camp. Like he just go it's passive and then takes it within seconds. So Ivern used to fun little fact about him until he got recently changed with the jungle changes the last season or two the were buffs. Blue buff and red buff didn't get shared amongst the team. Ivern was the only champion in the game that when he would take his buff it would leave a remnant of that buff behind where any of his allies, one ally only could go pick up that buff and it would share it. So he was super strong because back in the day you wanted to always like your you got. You gave blue buff to your mid laner most of the time. Like you always gave your blue buff to the mid lane. That's just how it went if they were a mana champion. [00:31:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Ivern made it. Yeah. And Ivern like he didn't have to do that. He got his buff and his allies got his buff or one ally got his buffs. [00:31:31] Speaker C: Fun times. [00:31:33] Speaker B: All right, my turn to talk about another fun Jungler that no one ever plays. Bel'Veth, the Empress of the Void. Bel'veth is probably the most straightforward champion of the six we're going to talk about tonight. She is a DPS jungler. She attacks faster than normal. As a matter of fact, she is allowed to exceed the attack speed cap. Normally champions can only attack three times a second. Bel'veth is allowed to attack up to 9,999 times a second. [00:32:04] Speaker C: They upgraded the attack speed cap to 3. That was 2.5. [00:32:06] Speaker B: It's been 3 for a year now. [00:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a while. [00:32:10] Speaker B: We literally covered it on the podcast, Mike. [00:32:13] Speaker C: We did. You just forgot it's. I don't play a lot of attack speed based champions, as you may have noticed. [00:32:17] Speaker B: Yes. So she attacks faster than normal. Like her base attack speed is very high, but she does less damage. All sources of damage, including on hit damage are reduced to 75%. Whenever she casts a spell, she gets two stacks that make her next attack faster. So if you cast three times you get six. That's the limit and your next six attacks will be sped up. She also stacks. She is one of the permanent scaling stacking champions. Every large monster she kills gives her one stack. Champions and epic monsters give her two stacks and Every stack gives her bonus attack speed based on her level for the rest of the game. She attacks very fast, y'. [00:33:01] Speaker A: All. Yeah, there was a time. I remember I don't remember who came out first, her or Kraken Slayer? [00:33:08] Speaker B: I don't remember. [00:33:09] Speaker A: Well, whichever was like when Kraken Slayer came out and it was like a legendary item or mythic item like. Like when it was true damage. She was absurd. [00:33:20] Speaker B: Yes. So for context, true damage cannot be reduced by effects such as her passive. So she does have a source of on hit true damage. That one scales at full value, but because it's part of her, it's adjusted accordingly. Any other sources of on hit true damage, if they exist, will apply to her at full value. That's what Kraken Slayer used to do. It doesn't anymore, thankfully. It's physical damage. Bel'veth's Q is weird because it is. It has four separate cooldowns. She gets an indicator under her body. I don't think enemies can see this. And it goes on cooldown per direction you cast it. So you can cast it up and right, down and right, up and left and down and left. And each cast will go on cooldown for that direction. So she can cast it four times in rapid succession. This is more or less what she does while clearing is she just spams this and weaves auto attacks in between it. It does damage when you hit enemies, so it's a dash that does damage. The main thing that's weird about it is the per direction cooldown baseline. [00:34:30] Speaker C: You cannot go through walls. We'll get to that later. [00:34:32] Speaker B: Yes, that is an important note. It does not go through any walls as a base ability. Her W is a knockup. It's very straightforward. It just does a line in front of her in whatever direction she fires it. Everything hit gets knocked up for a duration and slowed her E. She channels during the duration of the channel. She attacks enemies nearby. This scales with attack speed. And all of these attacks get additional lifesteal. These attacks also do increased damage based on how much missing health your target has. If someone is near dead, it's doing triple damage. [00:35:11] Speaker C: It has an auto target. It auto targets the lowest health thing. [00:35:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:35:15] Speaker C: And she gets damaged. [00:35:16] Speaker B: Specifically. Specifically, it auto targets the lowest health with like Q order. So if there's a minion at 1hp, it won't hit that over a champion that she's fighting. Thankfully. [00:35:28] Speaker C: Because they did change that. [00:35:29] Speaker B: Annoying. [00:35:29] Speaker C: They did not used to. It always used to be lowest health first. [00:35:32] Speaker B: Yes. And then. Yes. Like you mentioned. It also does give her damage reduction and then belvest. Ultimately, this has two parts. First of all, she just passively does on Hit True damage, this stacks against monsters. It's capped at five stacks. Against everything else, it stacks infinitely. So the more she hits you, the more true damage she does. [00:35:56] Speaker C: And then it's not percentage. So it's. It's not like infinite scale, but it's still a linear scale going up forever. [00:36:03] Speaker B: And to be clear, this is like at level 16, it's 14 plus 12% bonus ad true damage per hit. She attacks fast, so that scales up fast. But if you're tanky, it means it's going to take a lot of hits before the true damage starts to be a bigger deal than the physical damage she's already doing to you with her auto attacks. So her ultimate. That's all it does until a kill happens. If she scores a takedown on a champion or on an epic monster. So Void Grubs Rift Herald Dragon Baron. It will spawn a Void Coral on the ground, and she can press R to pick up that Void Coral. Picking it up heals her, does damage around her, slows enemies around her, and then turns her into a superpowered version of herself. In the superpowered version, she moves faster, she gets extra health, she attacks faster. She's incredibly strong. This lasts for 60 seconds. Unless that Void Coral came from one of the Void Monsters. So Grubs Rift Herald Baron. Those ones last 180 seconds and will cause her to turn minions that die into minions of her own to push lanes. I know that's a lot. Bel'veth is a crazy champion. The easiest way to think of Bel'veth is she is a Master Yi type champion in that she is relatively squishy. She needs to build at least some squishy offense items to be useful with a damage reduction she can use to skillfully avoid damage. And she has insane objective threat. [00:37:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Letting Belveth get objectives is tantamount to letting you just take over. [00:37:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:51] Speaker C: Belveth, as we were talking about with her empowered art, that's what allows her to queue over walls. [00:37:57] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. If she's in her super form, her Q is allowed to go over short walls now, but only in the super form. [00:38:05] Speaker A: See, I didn't know that. So I'm learning something too, because I always got so frustrated when always got so frustrated when playing her because I'm like, why am I not going over these walls? So I'm glad I know that now. [00:38:15] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. And the. The damage from like when she explodes when she picks up the coral is really high. Like, I have literally seen a Belvet chain kills by just picking up coral after the first kill and the explosion causes the second kill and then picks that up and that causes a third kill. [00:38:34] Speaker C: Like, isn't it true damage of the thing? It's true damage and 95% of the time it is correct to grab that over it is to keep attacking. It is very rare to watch attacking over taking the coral. [00:38:48] Speaker B: The target would have to be full HP and you're already in your empowered form. Is the only time that you would care to leave it there for a. [00:38:55] Speaker C: Little bit or you're definitely winning and they are running away. [00:38:58] Speaker B: Yes, because it will let them escape. Because you're dashing to the coral and standing still for a while. [00:39:04] Speaker C: We're stuck in the coral to that small cast time. [00:39:07] Speaker B: So what you need to know playing against Bel'veth is she is vulnerable to ccs. If you CC her, she stops life stealing, she stops dealing damage and then her E runs out and then you just blow her up. Please, love of God, do not cast your big nuke ultimate on her before she's run out of her E because you will just not kill her. [00:39:32] Speaker C: Yeah, she frequently survives because that E doesn't like Briar. It doesn't end. It still goes. But she's not attacking during it anymore, so she still keeps the damage reduction. [00:39:44] Speaker A: Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know if you covered it. If you did, I might have missed it. Her E gives her what? Omnivamp or lifesteal? [00:39:50] Speaker B: Lifesteal. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Lifesteal. [00:39:51] Speaker B: Okay. [00:39:52] Speaker A: She was a fun champion when she first came out. Like, there was so much like fun to her. Like people would just build lifestyle items and all of a sudden press her E and then all of a sudden, oh, she's full health. Can't kill her. [00:40:04] Speaker B: Yep. This isn't relevant to gameplay, but I think it's funny and want to share it because it's in the wiki. Apparently her E if she has impossibly high attack speed values because again, she's capped at 9,999, which is not attainable in any kind of real environment. If she's near that point. Apparently it stops dealing damage because the server would crash if it did. Yeah, because it would have to calculate too many attacks in that time frame because it scales with attack speed. [00:40:31] Speaker C: Like she. She is one of the weird champions with her. Her passive scaling for a while. Her technical cap was 25 attacks per second. Which was also never attainable. And then they're like why. Why are we capping this? We just make it infinite essentially.999 the realistic. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Like what attack speed will you reach in a real game on Bel'veth? By late game you'll be hitting four to eight times a second depending on the specific build you go. [00:41:00] Speaker C: You can hit obsceed attack speeds. [00:41:03] Speaker B: Yes. Also depending on whether you're in the ultimate form or not. Because the ultimate form has a multiplier on attack speed. [00:41:09] Speaker C: Yes. [00:41:10] Speaker A: Is it her passive? Like when she uses an ability that gives her more attack speed? [00:41:15] Speaker C: Yes. [00:41:15] Speaker A: Or is that more damage that's part of her passive. [00:41:18] Speaker C: It's attack speed. [00:41:18] Speaker A: Okay. I thought so. Sorry. I was. When you were going over that. I was head other thing. [00:41:23] Speaker B: That also means as the game goes on she cares less and less about the stacks from casting spells on her passive and more just about the permanent stacks pretty much. All right. Take us home. We got one more to talk about. Mike. Nobody plays Taric. What in the world does Taric do? [00:41:38] Speaker C: Tarik, the other support question mark. I say this because he's a support most of the time. Taric is a. Is a weird champion in that he's. [00:41:48] Speaker B: The support that gets played outside of support the most of all of the like hard coded support champions. [00:41:53] Speaker C: He is the champion. Like the original I'm paired with you champion. He. He has the power to like make himself a buddy with another person. I'm going to start there because it matters a lot. It's. It's his W. It's called Bastion. He picks a target and you go. You. You and I are getting some extra armor and we're doing some stuff. So it gives them a little bit of a shield and then you are linked. His passive makes it so that whenever he casts any spell his next two auto attacks deal some bonus damage and they reduce his cooldowns and he attacks much quicker. The next two are like empowered speed attacks. So you can do some shenanigans with that. And his other abilities. His Q is a heel and it also heals whoever is the target of his W. You can you gain charges that you have more powerful heels the less often you cast heal. But it's. It's a charge based thing based on his passive. The more your passive hits you, you get the more your Q pops up. Your E is a radial line as in so like you get to choose the direction in a radius of a line. And that line is, I don't know, 400 units or something. And after About a second of channel time, everything in that line is done. You also cast that line from wherever your W is in the exact same direction you chose. So it's not like a direction to. Unlike Zed, it's not a direction that you are choosing where everything goes towards wherever the direction you pick, that's where both of them go. And then his Ult, which is potentially one of the most powerful alts in the game as well, if used correctly, his Ult puts a circle around him and his W target. After again, about a second, the Ult activates. And whilst that Ult is going, you're invulnerable. Completely invulnerable. Can't take damage. You can still do everything else. It's. It's as if you're in the movable Zhonyas and you can do whatever the fuck you want. [00:43:57] Speaker A: Everybody that's in that circle, everybody that's in that circle, including your teammates, gets the invulnerability too. Not just your W target. [00:44:04] Speaker C: So your you and your W target both make a circle and whoever is in both of those circles becomes invulnerable. It is a timed thing, so you need to pre plan when to Ult, because you can't. It is hard to reactively ultimate to dodge things unless you know something is coming in like a second, a second and a half. That is the reason why Taric is so damn low. Because yeah, there have been times when his shenanigans have made him really powerful. His ultimate must be planned. And that is where a lot of his power budget is. His stun is not easy to cast. It's very easy to walk away from. His heal isn't that strong. His W shield isn't that great. His dueling power is very good. He's a actually like surprisingly good fighter as a support. But that like that's all his consistency brings him. His ultimate is a lot of his power budget and it is not easy to do is it is as difficult as a bar adult to properly use. And Bar adult is one of the hardest to use alts in the game. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Yep. Important note, if your ally is untargetable during Taric's ultimate, they will not become invulnerable unless they are the target you have tethered. [00:45:24] Speaker C: Yes. [00:45:24] Speaker B: So if. If you tether a Vlad and press R and he goes in in a puddle, he'll still become ultimate and still be invulnerable when the puddle expires. But if you put it on someone else and Vlad goes into puddle and is in the circle, but he's in the puddle when the ultimate hits. They don't go. He does not get the invulnerability at all. I've literally seen people die thinking they would be invulnerable while they the actual proc. Happened while they were in troll pole or pool or other abilities that make you untargetable. [00:45:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Taric also has the honor of being one of the oldest memes in this game. He's one of the oldest champions in the game, period. [00:46:06] Speaker B: Yep. He's one of the original 40, I believe he is. [00:46:09] Speaker C: He has like one of the true memes of the game in Armor of the Fifth Age. Taric and just who he is has changed over the years. How his power works has changed over the years. Tarik has always been the same, sort of never popular, always considered a, like, combo support with someone. He's. He's surprisingly fun to play, but he's not easy to pick up. [00:46:36] Speaker B: Also, interestingly enough, his English voice actor is Yuri Lowenthal. He's literally voiced by the video game version of Spider Man. Truly had no idea. [00:46:46] Speaker C: Truly. [00:46:46] Speaker A: Gemstone Boy. [00:46:48] Speaker B: Yep. So, yeah, that's. That's six champions you probably barely ever see in your games. Hopefully now you know what they do, so the next time they do show up, they don't kick your butt. Mike, you've got a trinket tip for us today. You want to explain? [00:47:04] Speaker C: So this is something that most of us, at least in this podcast, knew, but it's not something that we often talk about. There are two specific champions that I can think of who have a permanent channel alt, as in it does not matter what you do unless you kill them, their ultimate will go off. Those are Ezrel and Lux. There is a second portion to this which I saw in a clip of something that was absolutely ridiculous. Lux and Ezreal will always cast their ultimate in the in the exact same direction. They cast it from the same position when they started casting. So if you start casting and flash, your ultimate will go off where you started, not where you went. This matters because this clip that I saw had someone baiting a Warwick Ult. So they fired intentionally the wrong direction away from everyone else and waited until Warwick started to Ult them and then flashed to the side, dodging the Warwick Ult and instantly killing Warwick. [00:48:07] Speaker A: So this actually also there is a weird niche on like these Ultimates too. So Pantheon I'll use, for example, has an invulnerability on his E that blocks all the damage in front of him. If you are Lux and flash behind him during the ultimate, the damage will still go off because your character is behind the pantheon wall. [00:48:28] Speaker C: Yes. [00:48:28] Speaker B: Which is hilarious. [00:48:30] Speaker C: It's one of those interesting and unique things with how the game is coded. Where they're positioned matters a ton. With Lux, it matters less than like Ezreal because Lux's is a line and not a projectile. [00:48:45] Speaker A: I think that's how Caitlyn's Q works. Like she can buffer her Q and dash with her E and her Q will still go to the same spot, but it hides. Like the missile kind of animation. [00:48:57] Speaker C: Yep, it is. It doesn't have quite the same level of protection that the others do. It will still get stun stopped. Like Lux and Ezreal are a little weird, but I think, I think that that's, that's where I'm at. Like, this is a really cool thing. [00:49:11] Speaker B: Yep. Something to be aware of, not necessarily something to use every time. Please don't flash just to relocate yourself, but leave the ability there if you don't have a reason to. Alright guys, we have a listener question from a new listener. This comes from Dazai double who writes hello 4 wards. I've only recently found your podcast and I've enjoyed every episode I've listened to so far. You can call me Dazai Double. I normally play in jungle, but I'd like to move into other roles like mid and ad carry. My question is, do you have three to five champions you get good with per role or do you have three to five champions that you play across all roles? [00:49:46] Speaker C: Pillow. [00:49:46] Speaker A: This is more for the second part. I would say the second part of that it would be you can use them in multiple roles if the champion is viable in both roles. [00:49:55] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:56] Speaker A: Like, you're not gonna be playing like for instance, if you're up support and Soraka, you're really good at like Soraka, Sona and Nami, you're not gonna be like, all right, up autofill jungle. So I'm just gonna go Soraka jungle. Because that's my best champion. You're just not gonna be able to do that. [00:50:12] Speaker B: No, but there is a support that you can do that. Morgana is actually a vibe. [00:50:17] Speaker A: Morgana can do that. So if, if you're. If you're wanting to explore other roles like mid ADC as a jungle, you would want to focus on champions that can do mid lane and jungle. Like again, Morgana, you'll find more overlap. [00:50:32] Speaker C: In the mid lane than you will in the ad carry. I think there's only one AD carry that functions as a jungler still. And you don't usually see her as an AD carry. [00:50:39] Speaker A: Kindred probably. [00:50:41] Speaker B: Yeah. She's not a bot lane carry at all. You'll very rarely see it. But you shouldn't play kindred in the bot lane. [00:50:49] Speaker A: Mid has a bunch of champions that can double as a jungle. You mean Zed Now Morgan Organa Quiana. [00:50:56] Speaker C: A lot of the attacks. [00:50:59] Speaker A: But to answer your questions like I have my set of champions that I play in my role and then like if I get auto filled I have a set of champions that I'm more comfortable on but not as proficient with that make more sense for that role. [00:51:14] Speaker B: Yep. I think that's really the big takeaway is if your champion that you're good with in your main role is also viable in a different role. By all means learn the nuances to playing them in this different role. But they can be part of the pool for both. But you absolutely need to know more than three to five champions across the entire game if you want to succeed. [00:51:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Like your champion knowledge needs to extend far beyond your champion skill play. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Yes. [00:51:42] Speaker C: Your mid to jungle. Really that that's 100. Depending on what your jungle pool is. Some of them may cross over, some of them will not cross over. Especially the like you're not gonna get like Kane in the mid lane. That's just not functional for him. And then as AD carry you, you have a whole new pool there. It needs to be brand new champions and you need to have if you're trying to expand your like secondary to ad carry two champions. Maybe a third in case both of them are banned. But like realistically you, you're probably on 5 towards your main, 3 towards your off. I'd hazard a guess. [00:52:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:17] Speaker A: You just pick one of these champions that we talked about tonight. Make that your secondary and you only got to be good at it because it's not going to get banned. [00:52:24] Speaker B: Yeah. That is the nice thing about the extremely low pick rate champions is they just do not get banned ever. The highest ban rate of any of the champions we talked about Tonight is Bel'veth at 1.3% globally. That's the highest of those six. Alright, we got some questions from Reigns. Thank you for being a frequent question. Writer Rains. Do Garen and Darius in the same champion pool make each other redundant? [00:52:50] Speaker C: No, that's it. [00:52:51] Speaker B: No, they fundamentally do different things. Darius is a lane bully and Garen is not. Garen is a late game juggernaut, whereas Darius falls Off in the late game pretty hard as soon as champions are strong enough to actually kill him while kiting him. I do think they do the same thing of they run at you and they kill you, but it's very much like Garen is late game skewed and Darius is early game skewed. [00:53:15] Speaker C: Yeah, pretty much. [00:53:16] Speaker B: All right, second question. I'm thinking of replacing Mordekaiser if he's banned with volley for an AP bruiser. Since he's early game skewed, how do you play out his mid and late game? [00:53:26] Speaker C: You run at them and eat the crap out of him. [00:53:28] Speaker A: I wouldn't even say Volibear is early game skewed like he's mid game skewed. [00:53:34] Speaker B: Volibear falls off a cliff when ad carries get strong enough to actually kill him. But until then, he just holds them in place and beats the crap out of them. [00:53:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Mordekaiser ends up able to kill ad carries at the late game. Volibear ends up able to kill everything but ad carries at the end game. So, like, in a weird scenario, what you want to target changes as the game goes on. Realistically, like if you can set up a stun for someone else to kill an ad carry. Yeah, you're going to do that. Otherwise your goal is to walk in there, find the other fighter and kick the crap out of them. Because almost none of them can face you in open combat. By the end of the game, once Volibear gets, I'd say, three items, Volibear becomes one of the hardest duelists in the game. He's so hard to kill. [00:54:21] Speaker B: His combination of CC shielding and healing is just overwhelming for most champions there are. And then also he does percent max health damage and he does magic damage and he does physical damage and he's tanky. [00:54:35] Speaker C: Like, it gets to be a very difficult champion to deal with outside of specific champions who are very, very good at killing him. But unless you see them, you're pretty much like, oh, man, I was dying like crazy to Aurelia earlier. I hit three items. She's dead. And it really does seem to just be a. I hit three items. They die now. [00:54:54] Speaker B: Yep. [00:54:55] Speaker A: What I like most about like Volibear is the same reason that like I really like Renekton is his ultimate is just a big stat steroid. [00:55:03] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:04] Speaker A: Which just gives him like in for him specifically, like it's a gap closer and so it's just really strong and, you know, not even to talk about it. Disables towers. Like when that came out, like, I know like, my mind was blown. Like, oh, my gosh, it's. It disables Towers. That's crazy. It's super strong. Like, Volibear is a great pick if you're looking for something to replace Mordekaiser with, because, I mean, He's a strong 1v1 duelist. He's strong in a teamfight scenario, if he can stay in the front line. He's very good at peeling. He's just very good at disrupting an entire game. Like, if. [00:55:43] Speaker B: If the game goes late on Volibear, your job changes. As soon as the ad carries are strong enough to actually kill you, your job becomes now keep your ad carry alive. You are going to CC and shield and slow against whoever's trying to kill your ad carry and keep them from succeeding. He's one of the tanks that. Yes, he's one of the tanks who is. His role is not really to start fights and engage so much as to protect the person who's going to win him the game. [00:56:12] Speaker C: You can do a snap engage, but you are less powerful by the end of the game to do it. [00:56:16] Speaker B: Yes. [00:56:17] Speaker A: He falls in that same boat with, like, Darius at late game. Like, the only time you're gonna kill an ADC is with Flash. [00:56:23] Speaker C: Yep. [00:56:24] Speaker B: All right. What kind of processes should be you be thinking through to decide between building damage, health, or resistances? [00:56:31] Speaker A: I'd just say, like, what do you need? Like, are you. Are you dying quick? [00:56:37] Speaker B: How do you quantify what you need? We're assuming this champion has damage scaling through a damage stat and not through health or resistances. Because if they have damage scaling through a health or a resistance stat, that's the thing you should be buying first. [00:56:51] Speaker C: Generally, there's a reason why Mundo builds almost nothing but health. That is because he scales with health. [00:56:56] Speaker A: Yup. [00:56:57] Speaker B: Same thing. Like, we just talked about. Volibear, his w scales with his health for his offense. Malphite and Taric that we talked about earlier, scale their offense with armor. [00:57:09] Speaker C: But. [00:57:09] Speaker A: So if I'm. Like, if I'm trying to think. I'm sorry. Like, if I'm trying to think, like, you're. You're coming at this as a top laner. So I'm. [00:57:18] Speaker B: I'm. [00:57:18] Speaker A: I'm putting up here. Like, so you are your team's most likely frontline slash, bruiser, someone that's going to be in the fight. Are you dying instantly and getting blown up? And you're useless in a teamfight scenario because you're just. You're just not there because you can't Stand up to to anybody. You're just squishy. You're going to look at health or resistances. Are you in the team fight and nobody's dying. Like are you just hitting like a wet noodle? You might want to start throwing in some damage in there. Like you're going to have to find your balance based off how your game's playing out. It's never going to be the exact same. You get multiple build cross like so I mean again I'll use Darius as or even Garen as a example here. Between like Darius, are you going Trinity Force or are you going stridebreaker? What do you need? Like what do you need to build? Are you wanting to. Is it going against a range top laner and you're going to need to catch them. You're going to go stridebreaker because your Trinity Force is just going to not really do much for you. So you have to the game and the builds are going to change based off what you need. Is it a very damaging up front enemy team? You're probably going to be looking at damage and resistances or I'm sorry, armor resistances, Health and resistances. There we go. I'll get it out there. [00:58:40] Speaker C: So here's, here's another point of of order in this. Resistances do not do for you without health. So before you build heavy into resistances you need some health, whether that be from the same item. Like you get something like a thorn. Sorry about that. Oh crap. The the thing that reduces crits random random zone which has a healthy scale of physical damage and armor as opposed to something like Frozen Heart which has almost nothing but armor but a lot of armor. You can't really build frozen health and isolation Frozen heart in isolation because you don't have the health to support the armor. Armor and Mr. Are multiplicative power scalers with your health. The more health you have, the more beneficial your armor and Mr. Become. Yep. You will see very very low armor. People like very very low Health. Like 80 carries and something build resistances over health because usually they're worried about people essentially ignoring what little they have and dealing true damage to them. They scale better with armor and Mr. Because they're not going to be able to build health. So they need a tiny amount of armor and Mr. To compensate. [00:59:50] Speaker A: I might give Reigns the benefit of the doubt based off his punctuation of his question that he was like including health and resistances together like as a combo. But that is very good knowledge that like you could have 999 armor and like one health and you're gonna get one shot. Like it won't matter. [01:00:08] Speaker B: Please stop rushing frozen heart on Malphite or Ramus. It is bad because it doesn't have health. And with no health, the armor does not have the same value. [01:00:19] Speaker C: But the the other half of that is when you do your first team fight once you have died or even like if you're dying a bunch, you hit your tab in there, you find out what kind of damage you are dying to. You have a breakdown. Every death you have has a breakdown of what kind of damage you take, how much damage you take. Yep. If it's primarily physical, get a little bit more armor. If you're currently magic, a little more Mr. As a tank, you need to build some health. So usually you're going to be building a combo of the two. [01:00:48] Speaker B: All right, we got one more question from Reigns tonight. Which is what is the best way to deal with true damage in terms of itemization? [01:00:56] Speaker A: Shields. [01:00:57] Speaker B: Shields. [01:00:58] Speaker C: There are two types of true damage here. And one is. One is buildable against and one is not. There is the true damage like Twitch and Olaf who have scaling true damage, but they have numerical scaling true damage. [01:01:11] Speaker B: And Bel'veth that we talked about earlier. [01:01:13] Speaker C: Yeah. The only way to scale that is shields and health. Only thing you can do the other half of that is percent max health true damage because there is only percent max health true damage or. [01:01:23] Speaker B: Or percent missing health. [01:01:24] Speaker C: True damage or percent missing health which it functionally works. [01:01:28] Speaker B: Same effective thing. Garen's Al would be an example of percent missing health. [01:01:34] Speaker C: Fiora Pass Vain. [01:01:35] Speaker B: Vain and Fiora would be examples of percent max health. [01:01:39] Speaker C: There's nothing you can do apart from not get hit or fully CC that target to stop the other shields. [01:01:48] Speaker B: Shields are effectively extra health without actually being health to scale their true damage. [01:01:53] Speaker A: Like Sterak's is Garen's number one counter. [01:01:56] Speaker B: Yup. Sterak and Set. This is why SETT is so good into Garen. Because it doesn't matter how low you are. He presses W on the Garen Ult and the Garen Ult doesn't kill you. [01:02:07] Speaker C: Yeah. So shields will absorb true damage shots. [01:02:10] Speaker B: Except there is an important exception. Pike. [01:02:13] Speaker C: Pike. If you are in9999 it auto kills everything. [01:02:19] Speaker B: If you are in the execute range of Pike's Ult, you are auto killed. Shields do not protect you. [01:02:24] Speaker C: Yeah, he he he. [01:02:25] Speaker B: If you're above the execute range, it hits the shield just fine. [01:02:29] Speaker C: Yes. But they effectively made his true damage so high it can't be stopped by shields. Realistically, how you deal with the true damage champions. If you're playing as a top laner, you're gonna be facing Vayne and Fiora play Lucian in the top lane. He out damages both of them. He gets outrange Fiora. He's one of the few people that can actually, like, scale and move away from Fiora and he will just beat the crap out of an early vein. [01:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, like it's a Lucian top episode ending that is like not completely troll. The hell are we doing, guys? All right. [01:03:02] Speaker C: Giving real advice for once. [01:03:04] Speaker B: This has been episode 518 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Zoman for Mica. Many names for pillow pet. Have a great night. [01:03:13] Speaker A: Good night. [01:03:13] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [01:03:15] Speaker B: 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 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. Gmail.com.