The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 522: Udyr's Harem

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz and you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 522 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Zoman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. It's the usual crew. We've got Mike of many names it me and we've got Pillow Pat. [00:00:54] Speaker A: It's also me guys. [00:00:55] Speaker B: We are the 4 wards podcast where we stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv. Jacksellman Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames and Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet. Make sure you follow all of us so you can catch when we play Terraria together this coming weekend. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I'm excited. [00:01:14] Speaker B: It's going to be fun. We are all actually streaming. [00:01:17] Speaker C: It has been an absolute blast to play Terraria again. It's going good. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Feel like I'm fine. [00:01:23] Speaker B: I just want to give a shout out. [00:01:24] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's okay. We'll talk more about that when we get to our general gaming podcast which will come out in a couple days. But for now we're gonna give a shout out to our Patreon supporters. Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the Dab. Thank you for supporting the podcast at the shoutout tier. You guys are keeping us on the Internet and we do have a Patreon if you head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we will shout you out at the top of every episode. And all of those perks also do apply to our General Gaming podcast from 8bit to 4k that comes out Wednesday nights every other week. Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And last but not least listeners, we need more questions. The Discord is carrying you once again. We didn't get any in the email so write in to the4wardspodcastmail.com or drop your question into the question submission channel on the Discord so we can answer your question on the podcast. Alright, we are continuing with the topic that we've done the past couple of non patch weeks, uh, we're gonna tell you guys a little bit about some of the least popular champions in League of Legends. And for context, guys, we pulled the list a month ago. So some of these champions may have shifted their absolute placing, but we don't care about their absolute placing. We just batched them to talk about them so we can talk about some of the least popular champions in the game, period. And that hasn't changed. So I'm gonna kick us off with a champion that I think is one of the most fun champions in the game. She's down here because she's just not very good right now. Because anytime she's good, she takes over pro play. That's right. We're talking about Zeri. Zeri is a relatively new champion. She is a weird marksman. And when I say she's weird, by that I mean her auto attack is a spell when you right click people. And her Q is functionally her auto attack in terms of how she does damage. So her Q is a skill shot. It's a line that is just a like machine gun burst of shots. And its cooldown scales with attack speed. And it's functionally her auto attack. This means she can auto attack in any direction whenever she wants. She does not need a target. As a matter of fact, she can hit multiple targets with her auto attack. If the burst of shots kills a target, the remaining shots will go through, or if they move out of the way in between them, they'll only get hit by the ones that collide with them. A couple other important things to note about her basic attack. It's capped at 1.5 attacks per second. So while she scales with attack speed on it, she does have a lower ceiling than other AD carries who can go up to three attacks per second. Thank God, because can you imagine having to cast a spell three times a second just to be a regular champion? [00:04:38] Speaker A: Riot would have to buy everybody new keyboards that played that champion, right? [00:04:43] Speaker B: This ability is allowed to crit, just like a regular auto attack can. However, it only applies on hit effects to the first target struck. [00:04:54] Speaker C: I also believe the on hit effects are only for one of the hit damages, not each time it does damage. [00:05:02] Speaker B: She applies a single on hit effect, the first to the first target she hits, and then no on hit effects at all for subsequent bullets in the barrage of shots. But it is a full value on hit for whoever the first hit is. It's weird because she has a lower attack speed cap if you do build more attack speed beyond that. It is converted to ad, but the ratio isn't amazing enough to justify trying to play around this. It's mostly A, so you don't get punished if you wind up having to itemize more attack speed than 1.5. Kinda like Yasuo and Yone don't get punished if they build more than two crit items. But it's never really optimal to try to abuse the conversion. [00:05:47] Speaker C: Unlike someone like Jhin, who absolutely scales with those. [00:05:53] Speaker B: Yes. So that's Zeri's Q, which is her basic attack. What about her passive, which is actually her basic attack and is a spell? Well, as she moves around, she builds up her meter and she can right click to spend however much meter she has. If the meter is not full, this does a little bit of damage. And if the meter is full, it does a lot of damage and a lot of percent max health damage. That's about it. It is a spell. It triggers on cast effects. It cannot critically strike. It does not trigger on hit or on attack effects. It is a spell because her Q is her basic attack. It is forcibly learned at level one. She cannot learn other spells at level one. [00:06:39] Speaker C: There's a couple champions to do that, but yeah, she's one of the few. [00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And most of the other champions are like Azir, where everything else is tied to a soldier. So you have to spawn soldiers first. Same idea. Zeri's W is called Ultrashock Laser. She shoots a skillshot. It slows whatever it hits. If it hits a wall instead of a unit, it then creates a big laser past that wall that does lots of damage and slows. This damage scales with her Critical Strike effect. So if she has Infinity Edge, it does more damage. It does not scale with critically strike chance. It auto crits if it does the wall version, but it's scaling with Infinity Edge is nice. So it is an actual crit, not a cosmetic crit. Her E is a dash. If she dashes into a wall, she slides right through the wall. Similar to Bard throwing a portal onto the wall. After she has dashed for five seconds, her bullets pierce targets and go straight through and hit everything in a line. They also do bonus damage. The subsequent targets still do not get hit by on hit effects or lifesteal, just like before, even though the bullets are passing through. [00:07:57] Speaker C: Another side note, with this ability, you can use it anywhere at any time. It is just a dash. It just functions a little bit extra when you hit walls. [00:08:05] Speaker B: Yes, and there's no difference in the offense portions of it. If you skip the wall part, it's not like you have to slide through a wall to get maximum value or anything. Sometimes using the wall is appropriate, sometimes it's not. It's all contextual in the moment. And then her dash also reduces its cooldown by a little bit every time you shoot a champion with your abilities or your Q. By the way, even though her Q is on Q, it is not counted as an ability. It will not trigger Spellblade anymore. That was one of the changes they made to try to bring Zeri in line so she could be balanced. [00:08:40] Speaker C: They did that very early on and they needed to. [00:08:43] Speaker B: It was stupid. And then her ultimate does a big Aoe. And then as long as she hit at least one champion, she gets bonus movement speed, bonus attack speed. And her Q is now a three shot burst of of bouncing shots. And this bonus movement speed stacks every time she hits a champion with her Q. And the five second duration of the ultimate gets extended up to five seconds. Again, it'll extend by one and a half seconds. But she can't go above five seconds, which means as long as she can stay in the fight, she just keeps the buff. This is the reason she is pro jailed, which is why she's weak and why she's in this list in the first place. Because they're able to dip in and out of fights at a level that the rest of us just can't and maintain this buff. We have literally seen pro teamfights that go on for 20 seconds where Zeri is just stacking movement speed for the entire 22nd fight. [00:09:42] Speaker C: It's one of a few reasons why she's pro jailed. Having your Q be skill shot auto attack is most of the other half of that. [00:09:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So because her Q is a skillshot auto attack, that means she is able to do things like hit a teemo that you know where he stealthed. She can shoot a Kha' Zix that's just disappeared or an Akali in her shroud when other AD carries can't deal damage to those champions. [00:10:09] Speaker C: I don't know if this is true. Can she still hit pink wards that are. [00:10:14] Speaker B: I believe so, yes. [00:10:15] Speaker C: Okay, so there's another case. [00:10:18] Speaker B: So her Q being able to hit things that she can't necessarily see is a lot of power, especially in pro play. So another reason she's pro jailed Zeri is a lot of fun though. Like this champion is an absolute blast to play. So I highly recommend give her a play just to have fun. [00:10:39] Speaker A: One fun fact. [00:10:40] Speaker B: So much fun. [00:10:42] Speaker A: One fun fact about Zeri, much like with Graves, when she gets Teemo blind, she shoots in a random direction when you press Q. So she could still hit somebody when she is blinded by Teemo. [00:10:53] Speaker B: Yes. Graves does also work this way, although in his case, it's more like each projectile goes in a random direction and it looks really weird. [00:11:01] Speaker A: It's funny to watch. [00:11:04] Speaker B: It is so funny because these champions, you can't. Their auto attacks aren't a point and click, so you can't have them follow the same rules. So instead they just shoot in random directions. And it's very funny and also very disorienting. It feels like your champion bugged out. But no, you were blinded. That's why that shot went sideways. Any other thoughts about Zeri before we move on to our next one on our list? [00:11:27] Speaker C: She is known as one of the fastest high Pentakill champions in the game. Yeah. When she was released within that first year, she already had more Pentakills than everyone but the top three in like less than a year. She has not been out for very long. And she is also one of the weird champions where her build is not a standard AD carry build. And it gets weird fast. Yeah. [00:11:56] Speaker B: She is the third highest Pentakills in pro play ever. Despite having been released like a decade less recently than most of the other champions at the top of the list. This is why she's in pro jail. It's actually insane how many Pentakills she got in pro. [00:12:14] Speaker C: And she isn't frequently playing anymore. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Not anymore. I. I really wish they would figure out how to un pro jail her because she's genuinely fun to play. But much like several other champions in the series, there's a reason she's low play rate. It's because she's genuinely bad. Outside of organized play, she's still good enough to be played in pro right now. She's literally already been played at firsthand, which started today as we're recording this, by the way. But I would not recommend Zeri in solo queue. There's just better AD carries to play. All right. Pillow. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:51] Speaker B: This is top laner week for you. So which top laner do you want to talk about first? [00:12:55] Speaker A: So first I want to talk about is Udyr. So Udyr. I've always enjoyed playing him, but he's. He's not very popular. And I think it's for the same reason that every champion that we've talked about so far is there is a specific, like, skill in playing him. It's, you know, there's the very basics where most people run his R and just use that. But there's a. There's. There's a ceiling to him that if you're not playing him proficiently, he's not as good as other champions to play. And he's got a very specific audience. So to start with his abilities, his passive is his ultimate where it's on like I think 30 second cooldown at the start of the game. And when you get your. When your passive is off cooldown, it'll empower you can double or you can reselect your next basic ability. Qwe or R which are all basic abilities in his case to empower it to do extra, which I'm going to get into. So his Q is his wilding claws, his tiger stance. He gains attack speed and he does on hit damage. Then if it's empowered, it does all that. And it also like does chain lightning. I'm sorry Awakened. It'll do like chain lightning on his next attack. Two attacks and it will. The damage is based off how many targets it hits. And if it's an isolated target, it does all that damage on one target. So this is where a lot of like he gets. He can like one shot tanks because it does like max health. Max health damage as magic damage. I believe I'm gonna look. Yeah, Magic damage to isolate target strikes. Bounce to other nearby targets when possible. So it's a very strong tank killing item or ability. His W is his. His turtle stance. His iron. It's called Iron Mantle. It's where he gets a shield. His next two autos restore some hp. His empowered gives him a larger shield and restores even more hp. It just empowers that. It's very strong. His very strong sustained tool in lane. [00:15:26] Speaker B: I would say that his empowered W is straight up his most broken ability that people just do not realize how broken it is. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:15:35] Speaker C: Like you may have missed it. You may have not said it. Did you also say that whenever you press an ability, you gain the attack short bump of attack speed. [00:15:42] Speaker A: I don't know if I said the attack speed on. [00:15:45] Speaker C: I think it's part of the pat like you get for the next two attacks that may be part of Q specifically that you get the bump in attack speed. [00:15:52] Speaker B: Q gives attack speed. Swapping stances doesn't anymore. [00:15:55] Speaker A: It just gives you. I think. [00:15:57] Speaker C: Yeah, you're right. [00:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:59] Speaker B: 30. [00:16:00] Speaker A: So I never even knew that. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Okay. [00:16:02] Speaker A: I just always thought it was this [00:16:03] Speaker C: Q. I. I am a very old gear player. [00:16:07] Speaker A: All right. [00:16:08] Speaker B: It also. It also every Time you cast an ability. The next two attacks in addition to the attack speed reduce the cooldown of [00:16:16] Speaker C: the old it used. [00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:18] Speaker C: That his you would. You would maintain stacks to maintain an attack speed buff that no longer exists. It's now just everything is on a two hit system. [00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Moving on to his E. His E is like the. His old bear stance I believe is what it was The. It's called Blazing Stampede. He gets some movement speed and his next auto. And this one doesn't have a two hit system on it. It's just indefinite. While he's in that stance, anything that he autos gets stunned for a short time and the duration goes up through levels. Usually this is his last max in a build that he's going. But yeah, you gotta get stunned for a short time. And his empowered makes him CC immune. Completely CC immune. You can run through veigar walls. He can turn it on when a vise ult him. I think he could even cancel a with a well timed udyr E. You can cancel of Mordekaiser's all I believe this is. [00:17:18] Speaker C: It's not just unstoppable. It is CC immune. This is the Olaf effect. Not. Yes malfunctifact. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. He's just cc immune. Nothing can stop him. I don't think so. Other than like a wall. [00:17:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:35] Speaker A: Other than anivia and like. Yeah. Just like pillars and terrain. So yeah, that's his E. And his R is the Phoenix stance which is now Wingborn Storm. And sorry I keep calling talk about these stances. If you didn't know like Udyr used to have like his classic Udyr was stances and the one it had Bear, tiger, turtle and Phoenix. And that's what all these are based off of. That's why I'm going off of that. So his R is the big AOE Wingborn Storm. Big big AOE storm. Where it puts the big swirly swirling storm around him. Makes him look like a little bird and does AOE damage. And when he autos his next two autos will empower his autos to do like splash. AOE damage. [00:18:26] Speaker C: It's a cone. [00:18:27] Speaker A: What is it? Is it a cone? [00:18:28] Speaker C: It's a cone. [00:18:29] Speaker A: I don't know. That doesn't doesn't say on that. But. And then as empowered his awakened of that is he can shoot the AOE circle out and it'll follow the closest enemy or stay in the minion wave just based off the priority. If there's a mid enemy champion nearby, it'll go after them. Works Like Victor R, I think when before he can control it or is he always Victor always able to control? I don't know. I don't play him any at all. [00:18:59] Speaker C: He's always going to control. [00:19:02] Speaker A: And then his next two autos of course do the. The splash cone slash splash damage just does more of it and that's it. Udyr is a melee caster. He. He weaves autos and that's why not a lot of people like to play him. Because he has. He is got a very strength is in his abilities. And I mean there's. There's those cheese builds with him like that go full crit or lethality or throw something that you can do like one shot potential. Play like an assassin but you're squishy. And you got the AP builds which make your R and W super strong. And then the typical like tanky AP build is what I think he goes now which just gives him massive sustain. And he's pretty much like a drain tank. He's very strong. I like him. I've always enjoyed playing him. I was really surprised to find him this low on the list because of how much I enjoy him. But it does take like you have to know what you're doing on him to be decent. And I'm not decent at him. I just enjoy playing him. [00:20:04] Speaker C: Udyr is one of the more interesting champions on this list because he is ancient and has gotten a full rework. So unlike a lot of the other ones who are around, except for Skarner, he has gotten the full rework treatment. And that rework made him popular very briefly and then again disappeared. So like he is incredibly strong in the right hands. And when certain cheese things pop up and that's really like where you really want to know what Udyr does. Because Udyr can be very easily countered if you know how to face him. But if you don't, it's impossible to stop. [00:20:45] Speaker A: He's pretty fun, but he's not that most, most exciting champion. [00:20:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Considering everything's based on just slapping people. [00:20:53] Speaker B: Yeah. But he's still like he can be really disruptive. Like we're downplaying him because he's so auto attack centric and like he slaps people. But he's very disruptive. He can literally just run around punching a team and stunning all of them while having a slowing aura. [00:21:09] Speaker A: I know he can do some crazy things specifically. Like I know I've played games with him with you guys where I would just like sure I would. It would be a tickle fight. But you Can't. You can't. Couldn't take me down. Like, I would be 4v1 and nobody could kill me because I would always have my W up, my empowered W up. Because it gets so short a cooldown later in the game. That plus unending despair and all the healing like you just can't stop it. [00:21:37] Speaker B: Yep. That's why the. The most popular builds on him are usually liandries into tank and you just whittle people down while being unkillable with [00:21:44] Speaker C: your W. But it's also like he's one of the most interesting champions if you decide to put time in him because he has so many different play styles. And you can in fact build around each one of those as your primary thing. Except really the stun. That's the one you can't really build around. It's just the accessory to the others you can focus on. I'm going to be the healing monster. I'm going to be the AOE monster. I'm going to nuke one target. [00:22:09] Speaker B: Yup. All right, Mike, who do you want to talk about? [00:22:13] Speaker C: Let's start with Camille. Camille is another one of those. She is a very weird playstyle, so she's not exactly simple to pick up. And she has a very weird power curve, so she's not exactly easy to win with. Unlike someone like Darius, who has a very clean power curve throughout the things. Even though he's not like auto easy to play, Darius requires a little bit of finesse. Camille requires a lot. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Her. [00:22:44] Speaker C: Her skill floor is actually quite high. So starting with that. This is actually one of the main reasons why her passive is very weird in that her next auto attack does a weird on hit. It is technically an on hit. It gives her a shield that's 20 of her max health. But what kind of shield it is depends on who dealt or you're hitting someone. So if they deal damage to you, depending on what they have done more damage to you with magic or physical damage, that will shift what kind of a shield it is. So if you're facing mostly AD champions that are doing physical damage to you, you'll get an AD shield. Reverse. If you're taking a lot of spell damage, you'll get a magic shield. This can be exploited if someone is auto attacking you a lot as a caster. [00:23:35] Speaker B: Kind of. Because what it does is it tracks how much damage that person has done to Camille over the course of the game. [00:23:44] Speaker C: Each person. [00:23:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:23:46] Speaker C: So early game this can be exploited properly by casters. [00:23:50] Speaker B: However, would be a prime example of this. If Kenan predominantly auto attacks a Camille in the first couple level. Then when he goes to burst her, she's gonna get a physical shield when she hits him back. And not the magic shield she wants. [00:24:03] Speaker C: Yeah. So like this is a weird thing that is passive but is actually incredibly strong properly utilized. It has its own internal cooldown. I don't know what it is because it doesn't actually. Oh, cooldown based on level based On I believe 1, 7 and 13, so 18 to 10 seconds based on that range. So dropping 4 seconds a piece, which means you can get multiple of them up in a fight, especially late game. Her Q is her most powerful ability and it also has weird scaling based on level up, which is why you are hard coded to casting or to leveling up Q first. This is the first iteration of the prototypical auto attack reset double hit. So she has two charges on that Q. Every time she casts Q1 attack, you redo, get some bonus movement speed, do some extra bonus physical damage. A little bit longer of a range. Important to note, this cannot crit. So this kills. Crit builds. She cannot crit with this Q. After a short internal cooldown, I think it's a quarter second. You get a recast of Q that does a significant amount of increased damage. And based on what level of the spell it is, it will change the amount of true damage that this will be dealt. [00:25:26] Speaker B: As important to note, she can recast it after a quarter second, but she must wait 1 1/2 seconds for the recast to do all this bonus and true damage. If she recasts it before one and a half seconds, it's just an auto reset and it's just the first Q again. [00:25:42] Speaker C: Yes, you'll. There is both a physical like little shine mark on her legs and a auditory cue when that happens again. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Yes. [00:25:53] Speaker C: This is a really, really important thing because of how the true damage scales with it. She converts the entirety of the damage dealt by the Q, which includes her auto attack damage, into true damage by the end of this. So you can completely bypass tanks with this eventually also towers. It's why she's one of the greatest tower clearers in the game because this is converted fully to true damage. Her W the tactical sweep, it's a cone ability that after like a second or so, she you. You take a look and you do a sweep and you have a minor ghost while you're doing it. The ghost effect, not the movement speed bonus, is moving through minions. You are locked into an animation where you're sort of stuck in this weird Little kick animation and depending on you'll have a visual indicator which portion of the queue you are hit by. It does percent max health damage and healing. So if you're not hitting with the outer edge of that queue and you're only hitting with the inner edge, you're only doing some bonus damage. The outer edge does a bunch of max health damage and a bunch of healing for you. So much more powerful to hit. Your E hook shot is another one of those weird abilities where really this starts increasing her skill floor by a lot. Camille throws the grappling hook out. It's a moderately large range, but not like remarkably long. It's about 800 and it must hit terrain for it to do anything. Once you grapple onto the terrain, you are pulled to that terrain. It does not matter what else you were taking in that time, you are pulled to that terrain. So this functions like the Tristana jump we were talking about previously. How you can ignore ccs if you properly utilize Camille E. It also has a second cast called Wall Dive in which depending on if she just decides to dash in a random direction or dash towards a champion, the range is different. If she dart dashes toward a champion, if she hits them, they're stunned. You get a little bit of bonus attack speed. You get some physical damage burst on them if you do it. Otherwise you may move through walls. So you can grapple and pass through a wall. It's a. It's a dash and it's a very short range on that like 400. It's potent. [00:28:20] Speaker A: It just goes off, I believe. [00:28:22] Speaker C: So it is both a knock up and a stun important for if you have a Yasuo. Her final ability is Hextech Ultimatum and it is one of the reasons why she is flexible. Her ultimate is a large AOE single target ability. So you pick a target and you jump at them. While you're jumping at them, you are CC immune and then you land. You are untargetable on displacement immune. So so like you, you lose targetability when that happens. Like fizz jump, Fizz pull trouble. Once you have landed, there is a hex on the ground that the enemy cannot leave. You cannot. You can't leave it. But if you decide to leave it, it's open. Anyone can leave. Other people can enter it, but everyone is pushed away besides your target. So this is like imagine J4 ultimate, only there's no physical walls. There's just a weird barrier wall and other people can enter through it. You do some percent current health damage through this, but not really super potent. The other side bit is that Camille gains some extra bonus damage to the target. That's magic damage. Camille's a weird champion. Yep, yep. [00:29:36] Speaker B: The biggest. Like her ultimate lets her dodge an ability and also say, hey, you. You in particular, you're stuck here. Fight me. Which is really powerful. [00:29:47] Speaker C: Yeah, we got to see it today in pro. Be used to. Nah, fuck it. I don't care. You're staying here with me. I'll die, but you get to die too. [00:29:57] Speaker B: And you mentioned that if she leaves it, the Zone is removed. This does not care if she leaves it of her own accord or not. So she goes. Gragas and Tristana and Lee Sin can remove her from the Zone against her will to save their allies or themselves. [00:30:17] Speaker C: The other point is, if they can be knocked out of the ultimate, they will be knocked out of the Ultimate. Including through walls for other people besides your target. It's a large displacement if you want it to be. Yeah. Which also means it can be pretty anti synergistic if used inappropriately timed. [00:30:35] Speaker B: All right, any other thoughts on Camille? [00:30:38] Speaker A: Not myself. [00:30:38] Speaker B: Cool, cool. Then I'm gonna talk about our favorite snake lady, Cassiopeia, who we want to crush all of our bones. That's a reference that no one who is the target audience of this podcast will understand, but it's fine. So Cassiopeia is. She's a Naga type champion. She's a snake lady. And I want to note her passive first because it changed recently. Guys, Cassiopeia as of 2026 is allowed and should buy boots. Her passive now just gives her increased movement speed. It makes movement speed bonuses more effective as she levels up. That's her passive now. Move speed bonuses means things such as Cosmic Drive and boots. It's the same thing that like the Celerity Rune has. So Cassia, Cassio should buy boots. If you haven't played her in a while, don't think that she's still bootless. Okay, now that I'm done with that psa. Cassio's Q very similar to Karthus Q. She picks an area within her range and that area suffers an explosion after a delay. In Cassio's case, that explosion poisons the enemy for three seconds. If she hits a champion, she also gets some bonus movement speed. It's pretty straightforward. Her W, she throws a cloud of miasma into an area. This lasts for several seconds. Enemies inside the miasma take damage over time. They're poisoned and then also they are slowed and they are grounded. Grounded is a Very rare ability in the game. Grounded prevents all movement skills. You cannot flash, you cannot blink with your champion abilities. You cannot recall, you cannot teleport. None of them work while you are grounded. [00:32:34] Speaker C: Movement speed bonuses. This stops movement abilities. [00:32:38] Speaker B: Yes. Importantly, there are some abilities that you might not think of as movement abilities, but that are and are stopped by this. Such as Ornn recasting his ultimate to redirect the Ram. He can't do it if he's in the miasma. There are a bunch of abilities like that. That's just probably the most big example. So her miasma is extremely powerful in that regard. It is however, very weak as a damage ability. So it is her one point wonder. Her E is. Is kind of her bread and butter. It's called Twinfang. It is a point and click ability. It does some damage to the target. It actually does very little damage. However, I've mentioned poisoned on her Q and her W. If the enemy happens to be poisoned, then her E does significantly more damage with a much, much higher AP ratio and heals her. The heal is reduced if it's not against a champion or. Or a large monster. She gets. She gets the full value heal if she's hitting Dragon, for example. But Poisoned is the important flag. Notice I didn't say if they're marked by her Q or W. I said poisoned. So Cassio's Q and W can cause this condition. Singed Q, teemo E& ult and Twitch's passive all count as poisons. And if any of those champions are on her team, they can enable her to get the strong version of her E for her so she doesn't have to hit her skill shot or use her grounding ability. [00:34:13] Speaker A: I'll say it's usually a lot more reliable than just her Q too. Because like a Teemo just auto attack does it. [00:34:19] Speaker C: Yep. [00:34:19] Speaker B: For several seconds on Twitch E. Her E. Yeah. And her E is spammable. It is a 0.75 second cooldown. Which means it is literally. This is basically a mage auto attack. And she actually will use this like an auto attack during laning phase. Because the other aspect of her E is if it kills the target, it refunds the mana cost. So what you will see Cassios do because the. The. The mana cost refund applies even if the target dies while it is en route. It does not have to deal the killing blow. It simply has to be the ability that is cast as the target dies. So what you will see a lot of. Yeah, that was huge. For quality of life for her so what Casio's laning pattern often is is to throw an auto attack and an E at the same time. The E travels faster than most auto attacks. They arrive roughly the same time and last hit the target. And once you get good at that, you can last hit from like 100 health at level one. Which is unheard of for most other champions. [00:35:20] Speaker C: Yeah, the only other person who can [00:35:22] Speaker B: is Mel Annie doing roughly the same thing. Because in both cases it's a mana cost refunded because the ability was what got the the last hit. [00:35:32] Speaker C: True. [00:35:33] Speaker B: So Twinfang is Cassio's primary ability. This is typically her first max, except in extremely hard matchups where you match Max Q first. And you shouldn't be playing Casio in those. [00:35:46] Speaker C: If you're countered, you're countered. [00:35:48] Speaker B: Yeah, but generally Twin Fang is her first mechs. Her last ability is petrifying gaze. This is one of only a couple abilities in the game that cares about what direction people are facing. If they are facing away from her, they take damage and are slowed for two seconds. If they're facing towards Cassiopeia, they take damage and are stunned for two seconds. This ability is insanely strong. You can literally. It's a big cone. You can hit five people in a teamfight and CC the entire enemy team if they all happen to be facing you. This is also an ability that has a lot of mind game counterplay. If the opponent thinks you're going to ult them, they can turn away. And there's no turn time in League of Legends. You turn around instantly and then they just don't get stunned and then they turn back around and kill your ass. So there's a lot of reading and predicting your opponents to making this good or knowing that you're not on vision and surprising them with a stun out of nowhere. She's really good at bushwhacking. So yeah, that's all of Cassio's abilities. She is a DPS mage. She is in the same category of mage as like Ryze and Azir in that she's extremely high DPS for an AP champion, but not all that high in burst. She's not like someone who's supposed to 100 to 0 people in a second, but she can kill tanks in a way that most mages can't. She's insane at taking Baron and dragons as long as her mana holds. [00:37:22] Speaker C: And because of the weird quirk with poison, she is one of the best mages to be a bot lane carry. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Yep. Especially now that bot laners get their boots moved to a separate slot. She can get back her old six item power if you play her bot [00:37:36] Speaker C: lane and still have ridiculous movement speed because she is one of the fastest champions in the game with boots. Yup. [00:37:42] Speaker B: On that note, you will often see Rylai's built on Cassiopeias and Swifties. She can be a nightmare because she becomes impossible to escape when you build like that. And her E heals her. So a late game. Cassio is DPSing you down, slowing you while moving way faster than you and healing every time she hits you. And you just can't fight back. It's brutal. [00:38:12] Speaker C: It is a straight up toss up as to who is strongest as a dps. Azir, Casio or Rise. Each of them have potential to be more damage. [00:38:22] Speaker B: Yep. [00:38:22] Speaker C: But each of them have the potential to absolutely do nothing. [00:38:26] Speaker A: I'd say in all mid laners, Cassio is probably the strongest at Level two because she'll have her Q and her E and like, she can just run you down as soon as she has Q and E. Like you're just. You can't get away from her. [00:38:37] Speaker C: Yep. [00:38:38] Speaker B: She is, however heavily managated. She is one of those tier champions. She needs to build a tier item. She needs to build Rod of Ages oftentimes just to have enough mana to function because her E is so spammable and it costs 50 mana or 40 mana every single cast. And if it takes you 10 casts to kill someone, that's 400 mana. [00:39:05] Speaker C: That is the entire tier baseline. [00:39:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, Cassio is extremely strong. She does also occasionally see niche counterpick play in the top lane. But I wouldn't recommend like playing her main as a top lane. It's definitely a niche counterpick. [00:39:21] Speaker C: Mm. She's good at tanks. Not against bruisers. [00:39:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, that's Casio. She's genuinely fun and she's one of the few champions in this lineup that I think if you enjoy her, you should play. [00:39:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Cassio is in this list because she's unpopular, not because she's bad and unpopular. All right, Pillow. How about a champion that got reworked to be way less interesting than the old version. [00:39:45] Speaker A: So the next champion I'm going to talk about and go through quickly is Rek'. Sai. Everybody knows our girl Rek' Sai and she used to be a. She's dominantly mostly a jungler and there was some times where she does get played in top lane. Recently she's been changed where she's not as great in the top lane with her sustain I'm trying to remember because I can't think of it off the top of my head because I don't play a whole lot of rek'. Sai. Her passive. I can't remember exactly what that is. Do you guys remember off the top of your head? Because it doesn't have it listed. Okay. Heard the fury. Alright. So her passive is where she builds the fury with her successful auto attacks and base with her abilities. Her Q is Queen's wrath slash. The Prey Seeker. Depending on if she's burrowed and unburrowed. So unburrowed. It's where she has the quick next three attacks that I think where she spins in a circle and does kind of like an AOE around her. She. She gains some attack speed and does some more damage. It's mainly just a. I think a Fury builder for her pretty early. Her E is the bite and the tunnel. This is where she can either where she's burrowed. She can cast the tunnel and travel through it. If she's unburrowed. She bites someone. It's. I think it's a basically an auto attack reset. But the quirk with this one is if you have max Fury on her. Her bite does true damage. So most people are always. You always save your bite for when you have Max fury. It does quite a bit of damage too. And then her W is the burrow and unburrow. This is the main bread and butter in her kit where she's able to shoot through the tunnels if she's burrowed. And then when she comes unburrowed if she attacks the champion and knocks them up briefly. And she's also blinded when she's burrowed. And she can only see what ward see what her other. Her allies see. And otherwise it's very restrictive. The zone that she can see around her. [00:42:01] Speaker C: Her sight. If anybody constructed to like her auto attack range. It's a little bit longer than that. 385 it's. [00:42:07] Speaker A: You barely cannot see anything unless you have like wards or someone else has vision. But there is the quirk when somebody is moving in her darkened zone that she sees a blip of them like on a radar. And she can see where they're at not necessarily what direction they're moving. They just see the circle of where they were and it'll just keep that circle. That blip will keep moving across the map. So she's really strong like into like Shakos and other champions that can go stealth because she could see them way before they could possibly see her. Unless she's sitting on a ward, so she's really strong in that aspect of being able to scout away without actually seeing. She's kind of like bat vision almost. And her R is the. I'm trying to remember the name of [00:43:00] Speaker C: the R. Void Rush. Some. [00:43:02] Speaker A: What is it? [00:43:03] Speaker C: Void Rush. [00:43:04] Speaker A: Void Rush. Okay, sorry. For some reason, I'm not finding any of the abilities on this list. I'm trying to go off memory here. So Void Rush works a lot like Kane's R does that you has to be someone that you recently damaged. Actually, it reminds me, I forgot to talk about the second part of Q. The prey seeker part. She. When she's burrowed, she shoots a projectile out and does some splash damage and does. Just does some damage. And like, if you hit that, you can recap. You can cast your R. And what? She goes untargetable, disappears, jumps into her opponent, and then jumps like, jumps at her opponent and does lots of damage. I think based off missing health. [00:43:48] Speaker C: Max health. [00:43:48] Speaker A: Is it max health? Okay, so what you mean, like, the more health they have, the more damage or. I thought it was like, lower health targets did more health damage? [00:43:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:43:58] Speaker B: It used to be missing health. They changed it gotcha a while back. [00:44:02] Speaker C: This is why she's so good into tanks a lot of the time right now, because she actually has ability to conk them for a big amount of damage as opposed to just being a drain tank. [00:44:12] Speaker A: So there was a time where she was like, her sustain was stupid strong in the top lane, and that had to get nerfed because she could just go get max fury burrow when she's borrowed. It uses up her fury and heals her for a percentage. And she was able to just really just sustain through top lane while constantly poking down and engaging and then just getting disengaging and healing all the damage that got traded onto her. She's not like my favorite champion to play. I feel like she's very boring, in my opinion. Now, I. I did like her old ultimate before she got changed. So in her old ultimate, she used to be able to just. Her alt was to take her to any tunnel on the map. Like, she could. She could go rush to any tunnel on the map and just teleport there. And it was a relatively short cooldown, if I remember. So it was a really fun giant [00:45:11] Speaker C: screech that you could be heard where a map wide and then she zoom across the map like teleport does now. [00:45:17] Speaker B: Yep, it was. It was so much fun. It was colloquially called the farm alarm [00:45:23] Speaker A: when she Would scream to back and then just. Yeah. Ult to wherever she was jungling. [00:45:29] Speaker B: And it let her do things like setting up a tunnel in right by Bot Lane, pathing towards top ganking top. And then. Oh, Bot Lane's fighting. Let me just zoom across the map. And now I'm fighting Bot Lane. Kind of like how like Shen jungle can do and miss that version of Rek'. Sai. She was way more fun. [00:45:48] Speaker A: She was way fun then. But the only rex size bad. [00:45:53] Speaker B: She's just like you said, kind of boring. And I think that's why she's on this list. [00:45:57] Speaker C: It's also like she's. She's lost so much power as a jungler, she can't clear quickly anymore. She doesn't have excessive damage. So she's not a great duelist. [00:46:07] Speaker B: Yep. [00:46:07] Speaker A: Yeah. They kind of just like, the thing [00:46:09] Speaker C: is that she's got the invis tracking [00:46:12] Speaker A: and Even then, like 90% of the time you're sitting on a ward anyway, so it's not super beneficial. [00:46:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:46:18] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, Mike, take us home. Talk to us about the Top Lane markswoman, Quinn. [00:46:25] Speaker C: Yeah, this is. This is the only. The only ad carry who is supposed to be a top Laner. Supposed to be. She's intended to be here. So Quinn is another one who's been changed a little bit over the years. But how they've settled into it and how she has been played for a large portion of her existence. Her passive revolves around this thing called vulnerable. Passively. She will just randomly mark a target and that target will be vulnerable. She will pop vulnerable to do an increased amount of physical damage to them. It's a. It counts as an on hit. They are revealed while they're vulnerable. Revealed. So you can pop it on stealth, people. This is important because there are other ways to put vulnerable on targets than just hoping they get picked. Her cue is a skill shot blinding assault that throws her bird valor at the enemy. They become nearsighted, which is the same thing that Graves does, where your vision is absolutely, like narrowed to right around your champion. But you can still auto attack and still hit things. It's just. You can't see very far. They're also considered disarmed. So like, if they can't attack, basic attacks are unable to be queued up. Essentially, you can't command them. [00:47:49] Speaker B: Yeah, the. The term the wiki uses is they're unable to declare basic attack commands for the duration. [00:47:56] Speaker C: So they can't. They can't see well, they can't try to auto attack, but they can do Everything else they can. It is not considered a blind because blind just stops you from that. But this also applies vulnerable to anything hit and it does a burst of damage. Her w is heightened senses. This is a long cooldown AoE reveal. But it also passively makes it so that whenever you pop a vulnerable stack, you gain a burst of bonus attack speed and movement speed. Quinn is very good at fighting invisible targets because of between this and vulnerable. These are both reveals. [00:48:32] Speaker B: Important to note. I want to clarify. They're not true sight Reveals do not reveal invisible targets. They do not reveal camouflaged targets. They will reveal people hiding in bushes though. [00:48:45] Speaker C: Yes. Anyone who has a good job. [00:48:49] Speaker B: Because these are not true sight. They are just a reveal. [00:48:51] Speaker C: They. They are not true sight. They're revealed. But this does mean you ha. You lock on sight of them until they intentionally disappear. Her E is probably her most famous thing. Volt. Volt will dash to a target and mark them as vulnerable, deal some damage and then give them a short little knockback. Pops them a slow and then she pops a little bit back. If she's right next to the target, she gets popped back a distance farther so that she's at her maximum attack range. And then they're knocked back a little bit and popped. [00:49:24] Speaker B: Yep. Importantly, this means Quinn needs to be mindful of when she uses vault, she can use it to interrupt other players moves. But if the enemy has a pull, like for example, if she's fighting A Darius, if Darius pulls her, he can A, he can pull her out of the vault and B, if she uses the vault and he doesn't do that, he can then just pull her afterwards and she has no way to escape. [00:49:47] Speaker C: Yeah, this. [00:49:48] Speaker B: Whereas if she gets pulled first, she can then vault to reset the distance between them. [00:49:53] Speaker C: This also functions as an attack speed reset so you or attack reset so you can vault in middle of attack to try and get some interrupt things. This is one of the other highest priority things. Like Gragas's dash. I believe Gragas has the highest priority, but Quinn's is pretty close to it. [00:50:10] Speaker B: Yep. [00:50:11] Speaker A: I've always thought. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I'll talk about it later. [00:50:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Her ultimate is the core change to her. It's called behind enemy Lines, but it's also called Sky Strike. Depending on which one you're doing. Every time you back when you hit level 6, you will automatically activate behind enemy lines. Or you can channel for two seconds and pop into it. While you have this active, you are ghosted. You gain a ridiculous amount of bonus movement speed but you cannot mark targets. And once you auto attack or are immobilized, grounded or silenced, you are immediately popped to the ground or once you activate Sky Strike. Sky Strike does a AOE on the ground and marks targets as vulnerable. It's a good chunk of damage, but it's not huge. You can queue up vault during this, so you can charge forward and vault in so that they can't dodge you. It's very powerful rotationally. She's one of the fastest people to back and move into lanes to do rotations, but she's kind of niche. It's an auto attacker. It's an ad carry in the top lane. [00:51:23] Speaker B: That's, I think, the big key. Like, other than her Q, her abilities do shit for damage. Her Q is the only ability that has any good scaling on it. All of her damage is tied to auto attacking and procing her vulnerable marks, which she does via auto attacking. She is the most auto attack ad carry you could possibly put in the top lane. [00:51:43] Speaker A: Isn't her W like most of the time her max because of that? Because it empowers that passive? Or is it qw? [00:51:51] Speaker C: It should be qw. Your E you don't really care about because your E, it goes on a slightly lower cooldown. [00:51:57] Speaker A: But I know there was a time where her W25 damage. There was a time where her W was her max because they had it buffed up and I think they nerfed it and that's why it changed back. But I know there was a time because I was a scumbag playing her for a little bit that I do remember, her W was maxed. [00:52:14] Speaker C: It is a significant difference in attack speed between 1 and 5, 28 to 80. Like, that's a huge difference. But yep, the amount of sheer bonus damage you're doing with your Q and the fact that it is your, like your cooldown reduct, this is. This is your bread and butter ability to fight people. Blinding is one of your safest abilities. That is why, generally speaking, you level up Q. But there are certain cases in which you will level up W instead, because you have to proc vulnerable for it to be a thing. To actually use that heightened sense passive portion, you have to be continuously procing vulnerable. And to proc it, you need to be casting your Q and your W for the most part, unless you're hoping to get your passive stack on them. [00:53:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's a little funky. Quinn's a weird champion. She's very like. You'll see a lot of Quinn Builds are very weird. A lot of times you'll see people building a lethality hydra on them. I forget what it's actually called. [00:53:15] Speaker A: Profane. [00:53:16] Speaker B: Profane Hydra. Like builds on queen are weird queen weird champion. [00:53:22] Speaker C: Wishy too. Like she feels like one of the most feast or famine top laners there is. [00:53:28] Speaker B: Yep. [00:53:28] Speaker C: A good. [00:53:29] Speaker A: She has to get a head take over again. She has to get ahead or like it's over for her. She's just begging for scraps the rest of the game and she can only hope to roam and get some assassination kills. She's so very easy to counter. Just going to tell you guys real quick because I don't want to get too far into it. Just get behind her in lane. Find a way to get behind her in lane and you can run her down because then her E just knocks. She has nowhere to go. She's just gonna knock you towards the way she's got to go. So the best counter to her is if you're stronger in a fighter. Just get behind her in lane. Yep. [00:54:05] Speaker B: Easier said than done on some champions. She is very good at playing keep away. [00:54:09] Speaker C: Yeah, she is. [00:54:11] Speaker B: All right. Speaking of easier said than done, we thought this was gonna be a fast episode, but I want to make sure we at least get a couple of listener questions in before we wrap up. So we're gonna go to our first listener question tonight, which is from Reigns question. Writer extraordinaire Rains writes, How do you prioritize champion pick laning phase if you need to win the game by winning lane. But games go late, so do you need to have a power curve that only dips in the middle? For example, Kael has a good level one but struggles until 16 where you can completely lose a game before you're relevant. Darius is a good pre 6, but he can fall off late game. [00:54:45] Speaker C: So this becomes part of the like, how do you personally play champions? And pick and ban phase really determines like if you are going to be someone who, hey, I'm on blue side. I'm going to be a top laner. I'm never going to get unless they show it early. I'm always going to be counterpicked. So you have to like understand that in the equation. If you're worried about like winning lane winning game. But then like if you're just someone who I have these four champions in my pool, only playing these four champions, it really becomes a skill thing. How to maximize your ability to lane, how to maximize fighting versus trying to stay safe, minion farming, etc. Etc. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Yep. Now I will say, I think the unspoken part of this question is, should you play Kayle when you have a team with a similar type of scaling on the rest of the team, where you have, for example, a kindred jungle, a Veigar mid and a Vayne bot or a jinx bot? No, you probably shouldn't. That is the one case where playing for scaling can just fuck you is if your whole team is scaling, the game is very frequently just going to be lost across the board before you can ever become relevant. [00:56:05] Speaker C: Yeah, there. There are only a couple champions who are incredibly strong early and late. And that's really like they have to win in that early game to sustain themselves through the mid lane to get to their end game. [00:56:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:18] Speaker B: Tristana would be an example of that. [00:56:21] Speaker A: I'm going to throw out a champion to you that is good from beginning to end with scaling. It's going to be a tank, but he is strong, does lots of damage. It's gonna be Ornn. Orn is a good champion. He is good from playing from behind because he's got great farming tools at his disposal. With his Q, he can build in lane, like immediately be like, all right, this guy's autoing me a lot. Boom. Here's some armor. Like, while you're in lane, don't even have to leave. He's a very good lane pick and he's safe and he throws a lot. He's not very hard to pick up his combos. There's complicated combos, but you don't have to make them complicated. It's very simple. Q throws the pillar. E knocks people up on terrain around that pillar or on walls. W makes does a brittle, displaces them when they hit, get cc'd. Doesn't even have to be by you, it can be by teammates. R applies the brittle and activates the brittle. He's just very strong. Brings a lot to teamfights and very strong 1v1 situations. [00:57:28] Speaker B: All right, let's get one more listener question. This comes from Toast, who? It's a very simple question. He writes, as a jungler, should I feel that I have to play bruisers tanks if my whole team is all squishy? [00:57:38] Speaker C: I think this really depends on does your champion pool support that? [00:57:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:57:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:43] Speaker C: If you're comfortable, don't. [00:57:46] Speaker B: But also the key variable here isn't if your team is all squishy. It's if your team has no cc. If your team has no CC and you choose to play a no CC squishy jungler, you're probably Just gonna lose or you're gonna win the game so hard that it didn't matter what you played. There's no in between. But if your team has cc, but they're all squishy. Like for example, let's say you have a Syndra. You have a Morgana support. Your top laner is. I don't know. What's a squishy CC top laner? [00:58:15] Speaker C: Well, we. [00:58:16] Speaker B: Doesn't matter. [00:58:16] Speaker C: We sort of just said it. Quinn. [00:58:18] Speaker B: She doesn't really have cc. She doesn't care. [00:58:20] Speaker C: Not a ton. Kennen. [00:58:22] Speaker B: It's. It's. Yeah, Kennen would be a good example. If that's the kind of team comp your team has drafted, it's totally fine for you to play a squishy jungler as well. You just need to have some way to hold people in place to kill them. [00:58:34] Speaker C: There is a slight caveat to that. Also, look at what the enemy has. If the enemy has easy access to high AoE damage, maybe don't put all your eggs in the squishy basket because they have a very easy way of suddenly turning a team fight on you. [00:58:50] Speaker B: But also you're better off playing a squishy champion that you're comfortable on versus trying to first time Sejuani. [00:58:56] Speaker C: If. If you don't have someone who's a tank in your pool, don't force it. [00:59:00] Speaker B: Of course, the easiest answer is just have your top laner play Lucian. And then the rest of it doesn't matter. You can play whatever you want in the jungle. [00:59:07] Speaker C: It's true. He does all the damage you need. [00:59:09] Speaker B: All right, guys, this has been episode 522 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Selman from Mike of many Names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:59:19] Speaker A: Good night. [00:59:20] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:59:22] 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. And of course, send your questions to the fourwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.