[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker A: 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 525 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got one other ward with me today to help you move forward in League of Legends. It's Mike. Of many names.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: It's just me and him and him and me.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: That's right guys, you get a two man show tonight. So I hope you're okay with that because that's what we got. Guys, we are the Four Words podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the discord. Come hang out, come play games with us.
We've been playing lots of mayhem, some normals, some stuff we'll talk about when we get to the patch notes because there's some silly shit going on right now. It's a fun time. Link is in the episode description. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman where it is a mix of League of Legends, Super Metroid and the Quintet Super Nintendo RPG Trilogy. Right now I finished Soul Blazer and I'll be starting Illusion of Gaia in a day or two from when this goes out onto the Internet. Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames where mostly I think you've just been streaming when we play Terraria.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah, recently like that. I mean I've been in a never ending wheel of sickness so I haven't been happy to stream for a while. Hopefully when I'm not there.
We're working towards recovery again for the fifth, sixth time. I don't know, it's a lot.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: And then Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet where he's been streaming every chance he gets. Just about he made affiliate. Go check him out. He's streaming all sorts of stuff. All right. We also want to give a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeethdab for supporting the podcast at the shout out tier. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show. Now if you want to support the podcast like those guys do, head over to patreon.com theforwards podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us.
$5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. $10 a month gets you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout your name out during the intro of every episode. And all of those benefits also apply to our General Gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners. You guys sent in questions in the email this week. I'm very happy about it. That doesn't mean you can stop. Keep sending those questions to theforwardspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. All right, our topic tonight is the patch. It's patch 26.7.
That's right, it's the April Fool's patch. And there's some shenanigans afoot, so we're going to cover that briefly.
So there is an April Fools pass.
It's. It's a free pass, I think.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: But basically just if you play during the April Fool's patch, you can get some icons and emotes, which is a neat little bonus.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: And then Mike, can you explain the stuff is happening in non ranked Summoners Rift for some silliness.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: So they've added a bunch of things that go on specifically not during ranked because they are disruptive and they do actually take like a significant portion of the game. One thing in specific is like a huge thing. For starters, for all of you who have been around for as long as me and Jax, the gold per five items are just back in the game and you can build Urf's lucky statue out of them. So like you just can get more money spend, I don't know, 900 gold to get another GP5. It's actually worth doing.
There are shiny minions and monsters which means that like if they are they're noticeably like gold plated and when they die, gold literally drops on the ground and anyone who's near the gold can pick it up. And it's free money items. I've noticed it like every other item, usually your first and then your third and then the fifth has a chance to be a different power. They call it shiny items. It's actually just, you know, like your standard RPG rarities. Uncommon, rare, mythic, legendary. Those correlate with how strong the bonuses are. I had a legendary Rabadons which meant it had an extra 40 base AP.
You get hats like you do in Earth or Arm when you buy the hats. You can get certain hats.
Occasionally minions and monsters will like why the is that a wolf walking down the lane instead Or a chicken? Something like that. That just that Just happens sometimes.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: This is actually literally just a model swap and not actually any.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Just a bottle swap. The annoying thing now is that this makes Nico slightly stronger because she can be hilarious about this.
But the thing that, like really warps games.
And this is the big.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Which. Okay, it is the big one. It also is gone already. It was only available on April 1st.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Never mind. But I'm still talking about it.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Well, you kill someone, there's a random chance that Karthusault is going to happen. Just out of the blue car, the salt hits the enemy team.
This won me a game and lost me a game. Won me a 4v5. Lost me a 4v5. But apparently something's no longer relevant. I don't need to get into the minutia of that one. Still have fun with the others. Like the. The money thing is actually the big one. You can't control the shiny items. It's just random whether or not you'll have stronger. So, like, you may just end up being weaker because of RNG than your enemy. It. Oops. It's not super huge for the most part, but occasionally it is. The real One is the GP5 items. Grab a GP5 item. They're. They're that useful to grab. Money's always good, especially if you're not in a winning position.
Then you must buy a GP5 item while they're around.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. So let's talk about the actual, like, patch changes. Oh, there's one April Fools change that does apply in ranked. If you played during April Fools on previous years. Garen is a penguin for this patch.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: It's wonderful. It's fucking adorable.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: I. I don't understand why this isn't just a permanent skin you can use.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: They need. They need to sell this. This should be like, fuck it. Fucking charge us legendary cost for it. I don't care if you. It's that funny. I want it in the game.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Right?
They actually do it because they're saying
[00:07:02] Speaker B: that's probably a big run.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: This is not in the patch notes on Riot's site, however, this is in the patch notes on the official wiki.
There's apparently a new gameplay setting in the settings menu. If you go to Game and Gameplay, there is now a toggle to learn spell on cast, which is where if you have a skill point available, an ability is not learned using its cast hotkey will learn it instead. It's like you hit level two and you just press W and you'll learn W. That's cool.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: I may want that.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: So that's literally I saw this as we're recording. Guys, this was not planned. We did not discuss this in the pre show. But yeah, go check that out in the settings if that's a setting that interests you. I personally have my level ups bound to zxcv so it won't change anything for me.
But that's cool. I like that.
Okay, let's talk about the actual like patch changes. I'm going to start with a simple one. Shyvana had a change to the way that Ultimate Haste behaves for her.
So previously Ultimate Haste gave her extra passive Fury generation.
Now Ultimate Haste gives her a percent multiplier on Fury generation, which means no matter how she's generating the Fury, if she has 30 ultimate haste, she'll get back her ultimate about 30% faster, which is great. This means a Shyvana who is ahead gets a lot more value out of the Ultimate Haste because if you're ahead, you're actually able to hit things and generate fury from auto attacks.
And it is Shyvana who's behind is about the same place as before.
So I'm happy about that. It definitely increases the value of Hex Plate which was already a really good item on her. You should be strongly considering building Hex Plate regardless of this change because it's just so good in her kit.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: But I don't think it's a rush. I think it's the second or third item. But it's one of her best second or third items.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Massive multiplier has to be second or third at the earliest. It can also be fourth and it's fine. But it's. It's really good.
So yeah, I'm happy about that change. Making Shyvana feel better to play is great.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: The Sylas interaction they changed as well is huge considering how how much a counter pick he was into it.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Yep.
So basically Sylas was getting to apply on hit damage twice when he used Shyvana's Q because Shyvana's Q because when he steals Shyvana he steals her entire champion basically because he gets to be Dragon form with all of her abilities.
He was applying on hit damage, the passive portion of her Q once from the actual auto attack and then again from his own passive which applies on hit damage in an area around him.
And so they've changed that.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Yes. He was basically just double dipping. So they've changed that so that he doesn't get to apply the on hit damage from Shyvana twice. That way he just gets his own base damage on his own passive and the damage and on hit Damage from Shyvana Q.
He's still better than Shyvana in dragon form because he still gets his own passive plus everything Shyvana does. But.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah, but this may make it so that, like, Shyvana is actually able to fight him based on items.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, if they have the same items, he's always going to win.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Pretty much.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Unless the game's gone super, super, super, incredibly long. And she has a ton of armor and Mr. Built up because he doesn't get her passive. That's the only thing he doesn't get.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
And if she's like full five items, half tank, she can easily out brawl him.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I've done it.
All right, Mike, your turn to talk about a monster lady.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, let's go with the monster lady.
So Cassiopeia is getting two bits of love, one of which is just the easy one. She's getting some more base mana. She can probably cast literally one more E, I think because it's like 30 AP to cast an E or 30 Mana. So that's actually huge because that's essentially her auto attack. And that means she gets an extra free auto attack when she's not killing something.
The. The better change to her is she's getting a specific damage increase during her poisoned form E. So this is considered like, there are two separate portions of her E. There is a non poisoned and a poisoned. They do separate damages. There is a bonus damage increase in her E. That bonus damage is getting a scaling increase in damage. So nothing at level one. But by the time you're in three, you're already doing a bonus to this. And even if it's a small amount, baseline one. This is your first max always. Essentially there's what, like three cases which you'd rather max Q or something? So you're pretty much always maxing E and you're casting 1012 minimum ease in a real, like, fight fight. So base damage increases are massive on this ability. This. This is a big. This is a big buff. Even though it's a very small number,
[00:12:22] Speaker A: it adds up quick. It's the same thing as, like, when a champion gets a couple of AD buff and it skyrockets their win rate.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't forget she has to wear boots.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Yep. So speaking of champions wearing boots who probably shouldn't have to, I'm going to talk about the other monster girl we have in our list here, because we stand monster girls on this podcast, in case you didn't know. I mean, obviously, obviously Nami got some changes this patch and they're a little confusing. So I wanted to highlight them. Nami's W, which is her heal, bounces from target to target. It does regular power on the first target hit and then reduced or increased depending on her AP healing or shielding on the second and third hits. And that's the part that's confusing. Previously, the bounce modifier started at -10% and went up by 10% per 100 AP. So at 100 AP, your bounces do the same as the initial hit. Above 100 AP, they do more than the initial hit, and below 100 AP, they do less. That's changed. Now they start at 20% less, but they scale up at 15% per 100 AP, which means at 133 AP, the bounces do the same as the initial hit. This breaks even at 200 AP, which means at 200 AP, you're exactly as strong as you were before. Which it is important to note, is an amount that is reasonable to expect Nami to hit with a support build that she would normally go. She's typically building items like Imperial mandate, which is 60AP. Dawn core, which is 45AP. And then the passive on Dawncor gives another, let's say 40AP. If you have a lot of mana regen, she builds Ardent Censer like she's hitting around 200 AP with these enchanter builds. Because she is specifically building enchanter.
So late game, she's as strong as she ever was.
But early game, that means that if you're casting it on an ally to heal them, the bounce that goes to the enemies is going to hit significantly less hard. If you're bouncing it off an enemy, the bounce that then goes to your ally to heal them is going to heal for significantly less early.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: If you're trying to self cast just to get the bounce, it's almost not worth it unless you're actively healing yourself.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Yes, you're better off just targeting an offensive bounce if you're trying to do it for damage early.
So that's why I wanted to highlight that. Not because I think it changes much, because Nami's still gonna be strong as hell early. Everything she does is incredibly snowbally and strong early, but because it's a confusing change that like we did not fully understand. I had to go to the wiki and look up the exact numbers to break down how it worked to make sure that I would explain it to you guys correctly. This does also mean that maybe late game AP Nami could actually be a real thing. Previously it was URF only,
[00:15:24] Speaker B: but that ratio is real.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: High.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Now it's potentially worth it to not get the healing tier item and to go into an Archangels.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: I mean just do both.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Let's be real.
You're unlikely to get into a game if your game is lasting long enough that NAMI can get two tier items. Wow.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it does specifically give a lot of value to Archangels. If you need the anti burst, that would be the way to think of it is if you as the NAMI are the target of an assassin, the AP on Archangels is a lot more valuable than it was prior to this. Go double tier that game. You might as well remember you can
[00:16:05] Speaker B: only stack one tier at once. So don't buy two tiers.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yes, you stack one fully transform it into a completed item, then you buy the second tier and stack it. But yeah, so yeah, nami's weaker early, but I think she's still good.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: All right, Mike, speaking of complicated changes that we needed to go to the wiki to absolutely get the right numbers on. Yes.
So ORNN is a little odd in that Ornn Ornn has a weird thing with how Bellows breath works in that it has its own base ratio which if you look at this, you go oh yeah, W Bellow's ratio, this brittle proc damage has nothing to do with his W, that's his passive. I have no idea why it's called out in bellows breath because it's not part of his bellows breath. Brittle is part of Ornn's passive. So for starters, wrong ability called out second portion here.
So the, the base percent damage, that's max health from his, that does no change. But now they have changed brittle's proc. They're flat out moving it down by 1% and it's scaling from 1 to 18.
So technically 20. The reason this matters a lot is this essentially puts Orin at the same level of power damage wise he was last year. Because now obviously Orin can get to level 20 which means he scales up to.06% less than where he should be. Oh no, you're essentially at 18%. So at 20 he is as strong as he was at 18 last year on every brittle proc. Other side note that a lot of people don't fucking know because I'm calling this one out on brittle.
Other people can proc brittle and in fact other people should proc brittle because brittle is what increases cc and ORNN only immobilizes people with knock ups which can't be modified.
You can proc brittle by silencing or doing any form of immobilization necc.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Yep. If you've ever seen a call of the Forge God into Ash Ult and you see that target just literally stand there for five seconds, this is why.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a 30% increase on CC duration. If you can brittle proc into a Morgana Q, they're literally stuck for four or five seconds.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: So the damage is scaled slightly lower. Early game back to where he was by the end of the game.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: It should make him a little bit less potent at dueling top laners is the main difference in the damage.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: It is a nerf to him right now. Brings him back to where he was last year. So if you were beating Ornn last year, that's how you should really take it. He got a little bit stronger this year, back to where he was before.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: So I did look up stats on Nami because I was curious.
Her win rate went down with those nerfs by half a percent. So meaningful but not tremendous Nerf. Her pick rate went down 2 to 3%, depending on which bracket you're talking about. But she's still the most popular support in the game. Like just straight up, she's still number one. She's just less dominant of number one.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, she's. She is disgusting.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: This is why NAMI needed the nerf.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was. It was disgusting. I also point out the Brittle thing because quite literally every single ability ORNN does has the power of CC because of brittle. You can't actively CC because of your W, but you can because of brittle procs, your Q's and knock aside. That counts. Your E obviously can do the knock up when you hit terrain. Obviously your ULT is a massive knockup. People are sleeping on how powerful Ornn is and then we're not even talking about his free stuff, which gives out faster.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Yeah, ORNN is really good right now.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: I think more people should be playing ornn.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: All right, I've got one last thing I want to highlight, which is they made a change to ranked.
Specifically, if someone in your game is flagged as doing disruptive behavior like afking or trolling in a match. The impacted players will now receive full refunds of the LP they would have lost instead of only partial. So previously some dude rage quits and ruins the game. You lost 8 LP instead of the full amount. Now you just don't lose lp. Fuck that guy. The rest of you are fine.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Great change. Great change.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Great change.
This. This tells us that Riot is seeing success in their changes to make Toxicity more visibly punished.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Anecdotally, yeah. When I logged in to check things, I got a ban report.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yep, I get those reports periodically. But also anecdotally, I got a chat warning because while friendly talking to people, I chose to describe a mistake I had made 10 minutes ago as I inted a little bit. We won the game. I did not int in the literal sense, but that was the phrasing I used to describe it. And Riot's automated thing was like, hey, that's not acceptable language. Don't talk like that again.
I literally put in a support ticket. Cause I was like, I don't understand what in this chat log is against the rules. I genuinely, truly do not understand why I got this warning.
Because it was so wild that I got a warning for that.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: And the rest of us who looked at this, we want to. They're literally just calling you out because you said inted.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: It's literally just because I used the word int.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: And it wasn't just don't not using the word, it's saying I'm inting or I inted. So like, don't joke about things like this anymore. Riot's system isn't savvy enough to understand human language. Yeah, it will just throw the ban out, which is for the better because it means it's less likely that someone can around with you.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Yeah, like I'm grumbling about it because I had this issue and got like a notification about it. But other than the stupidity of their AI, I think it's a good thing.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: And I'd rather have the AI overcorrect for this thing than undercorrection.
Yeah.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Also I wish their fucking website would work with Firefox. It's so annoying that I have to go to Chrome to log into the support site.
Just saying, Riot, fix your shit. Some of us don't want to use fucking Chrome.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Don't you want all of your powers smack through?
Just nice drain and everything.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: All right, let's move on.
We've got a whole bunch of listener questions. And since it's just me and Mike tonight, we're gonna get through some of them for you guys. Also, because this patch was tiny.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. The other change that I could have talked about isn't actually, I think, big enough to care. It's, it's, it's not. It was space filling. Let's go to real questions.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. Alright, so our first question tonight comes from Rains. We appreciate all of your questions. Rains Reigns writes particularly with role quests, but also in general. What do you need to keep in mind by playing Kayle mid instead of top.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: So I think we've discussed some of this before but not in the terms of role quests. We've discussed other things that Kayle mid can be. So like one of the big things about Kayle is in the top lane you have a lot harder of a time with people zoning you out in mid lane. It's a short lane. You can pop back to that. That turret real fast. And Kayle is not slow.
Downside, Kayle really benefits from the ex.
Fuck faster, faster leveling that you get from top lane.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's by far the biggest thing is because the top lane quest is specifically a burst of experience and increased experience for the rest of the game.
And Kayle is an extremely experience gated champion. She is the most experienced gated champion in the game.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Yeah, because because of how weak she is initially there are other champions who scale to the same level as her. I think the only other champion who had who wants levels as much as Kayle does is Karthus and Karthus is not as strong in topic. I meant Kassadin. You know exactly what I'm saying. Yeah.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Same style, especially same breakpoints 6, 11 and 16.
Except Kassadin actually has the tools to face mages or at least survive mages.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: He can survive the lane through a combination of his passive and his shield on his Q against most mages and then because of the way his ULT works, he can punish missteps by his opponents much harder. Whereas Kayle against most mages you're just kind of sitting there like I'm farming. Please stop poking me. I just want to farm.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So she's more. She benefits much heavier from the significantly more melee oriented top laners which gives her more of an ability to farm and really like she's a lot easier to kill in mid lane. The amount of burst is disgusting and she does not do well against burst.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Alright. Reigns has another question in this which is Lux is a very throw shit off the screen without looking and still be useful. What other mid mage champions are like this that are effective for low elo. Looking for some champs for my flex role. But Lux is hotly contested all the time and frankly I don't want to play Vhagar Brand or Xerath who seem to be the main ones. Uh, my first thought is zoom your goddamn camera out. The only thing that Lux does that goes off screen is her ultimate true.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out reigns. But please, if you're not playing fully zoomed out, you are playing League of Legends. Wrong. This goes for everyone. Zoom your camera all the way out. Never play with your camera zoomed in.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Now also, this could be like you're not very good at controlling your camera so you're not keeping yourself properly.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: It's okay to play locked camera until you learn how not to not. You're better off playing with locked camera and playing to your best than trying to play unlocked and playing worse because of it.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: This is only a thing we talk about here because if you are not seeing the side of your screen, that is a real, real danger. If you're not easily capable of getting yourself to the middle, it's a real danger. Especially for the types of champions you're trying to play. I've recommended one. I'll recommend them again at Ziggs.
He's. I would actually call him the premier of these. Like over and Above Xerath, he's the artillery mage.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: I don't know about over and Above Xerath, but I would say alongside Xerath for sure.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Like Xerath and Ziggs and Lux are the long range. Oh, this person's super far away outside their own ability to do anything. I'm just gonna blow them the fuck up now.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: She isn't one, but sometimes it fucking feels like she is Syndra. Yeah, for reasons unknown, her ranges are disgusting. So maybe you'll find some some good feelings with Syndra there. And this is the most dangerous one. But I have the most fun with her is Vex.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Yep, Vex is not an artillery mage. She is a poke mage with all in threat.
But she definitely has the range to be a threat from off screen if you literally can't go in.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Alright, hopefully that answers your questions. Rains, I'm sure we'll get to you again in like five minutes here.
But our next question actually comes from Scipius Esquire, who writes I'm finally catching up on episodes and I just listened to the one regarding Hex Optics question, is Hex Optics worth it on Miss Fortune and Gin?
So we're gonna answer that, but also we're going to explain why. Because I think the why is more important to know than the simple yes or no of those specific champions.
Generally for Ms. Fortune, the answer is no. Ms. Fortune, while her auto attacks do a lot of damage, is not an auto attack centric champion. So the range proc is kinda meh for her. Jhin, on the other hand, is a solid Sometimes.
And the sometimes with Jhin is when there are people whose threat radius you need to stay outside of in a team fight.
So we say, for example, if they have a Scion would be an example of this.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: We say this because Jin Jin has the capability of moving through combat very easily.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: And especially this is. This matters mostly with people who have easy access to dive on gin. And Jin does a ton of damage.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: So why gimp yourself in the ability to kill the person who's diving you? Is the real answer. This one. If there's an assassin who can get on top of you, that's the reason not to buy Hex Optics.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Yes. Because you need a shield bow instead, but the other way. That's why I gave Scion as an example of as Jin. If there's a Scion in the game, you want to stay outside his own range while being able to hit his allies.
And this rewards you for doing so. Jin gets movement speed procs from his passive whenever he crits.
So you want to stay at your max range and dance around your max range, which Hexoptis rewards.
And then because Jhin is so bursty, you get that takedown.
Now you outrange Sion's ability to threaten you or insert other beefy champion who could be running at you. That Jhin can literally just kite when he has an extra hundred range.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: The other point here is that heck is that he has the highest damage potential. You've just now multiplied it by a percentage.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Hex Optics is technically one of his best possible items. It is always worth considering as a fourth.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Yes. There's just sometimes things you need more.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Yeah, but like it it. The damage potential with Jin is disgusting. Now, MF we've talked about mostly because MF really doesn't use crit in the same way other crit AD carries do. And even though like a damage multiplier sounds really good, MF is actually surprisingly powerful in the short range.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: So you're not trying to to weave your attacks at the long ranges.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: The biggest thing is with mf, you don't have the tools to keep people at arm's length the way Jhin does, the way Ash do. Those are champions who abuse this item because they can just stay at max range.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Caitlyn, etc.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Ms. Fortune can't. If they close the gap on you, you get one use of your W that falls off the moment you take damage and then you get your flash. That's it.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Like you've got a slow, but that's that's it. And if they can get past it.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's. It's much harder to benefit from Hexoptics on mf.
So generally it is not a good choice on her. That's not to say you should literally never build it, but it should be like maybe 5% of your MF games. Whereas on Jhin, I think it's close to 50%. It's worth building.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah. There are reasons you're just not. Not many.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: All right, let's answer another Reigns question.
Discounting skill diff. How do you understand if your champion is meant to have pryo or attempt to win lane versus neutralizing the lane or losing gracefully?
[00:31:59] Speaker B: I have a bad news for you.
It's pure reps. You need to keep playing until you find out again and again and again in the same matchup multiple times over multiple games.
Because now you may win versus one person. But that may have just been oh my God, they're terrible. And you'll find out very quickly you don't win that matchup.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Now that being said, since I know Reigns plays Kayle and Nasus for those champions, the answer is generally you don't win Lane. You're not a champion designed to win lane. You are supposed to lose Lane gracefully on those champions. You will occasionally win Lane. Anyway. Those are the skilled IF games.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: The other portion is there are. This doesn't happen with Kayle. Kayle basically loses every lane unless they int their face. Off to you.
Yes, Nasus has winning matchups.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Not very many, but he does.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Those are things like people who are incredibly attack speed or movement speed based. Nasus pops an eon and he's winning their fight.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: W But yes. W yeah, you can tell Mike doesn't actually play Nasus. He just knows it's been what, so
[00:33:07] Speaker B: long since I played a lot of Nasus. I used to play top lane as my primary role and Nasus was one of my favorites. But that was 10 years ago.
So I've been playing for 17 years because we're old. I've been playing longer than some of you have been alive. That hurts. Ouch.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
Shout out to our listeners who are born after December 2009, I guess.
Oh my God. That hurts to say. I know there's at least one of you out there.
Alright, let's. Let's get some more questions. These are also from Scipius Esquire. Yeah, we're just going back and forth between you two right now.
I'm hoping you have a suggestion on how to improve a fundamental Issue proper targeting. When I am fighting, I sometimes struggle with right clicking my intended target. The result is either I walk up to the enemy, not a good move as an ad carry, or attack the wrong champion, a minion, etc. I have attack move bound to spacebar, but I just do not use it consistently. I especially have issues when the chaos of a teamfight starts. Do you have any suggestions? Is it just practice using Attack move for everything until it's habit? Kind of.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: So there's actually two parts here. Proper targeting is also proper target acquisition. Sometimes it is actually correct to not target the thing you think you should be targeting.
This most commonly happens in especially like big brawl team fights where ad carries are just slamming into the the tanks. There are points when you need to actually be like looking around to try and hit a target that isn't that tank. And that is where target acquisition really starts to kick in. If you're talking about fights in lanes, yeah, you're gonna have problems with minions. Sometimes there is a priority for targeting that targets champions over minions. It's like a proximity thing with attack move.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: So you it's specifically based on the proximity to where you click. So if you attack move, make sure you are having your mouse near the enemy champion you are trying to go after.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: So like the fundamental that you need to. There are two fundamentals that you need to train here. The attack move, like targeting, like properly moving with this and it sounds like orb walking. You need to start practicing some orb walking because this will drastically help you not accidentally target things that are just the closest to you with minions. Accidentally.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: Yep. The other thing I would say is make sure you're using a good mouse. Make sure you're using an accurate, consistent mouse. You do not need to be. I want to be clear. You do not need to be using $150 esports grade super high end mouse. They're very nice, but you don't need that. What you need is a mouse that performs exactly the same every time you move it the exact same way.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: I will counter you ever so slightly on this part.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Make sure you have mouse acceleration turned off in windows and make sure that if you move your mouse 3 inches on your mouse pad, it moves the same amount on your screen every single time. As long as those two conditions are met, your mouse is probably fine.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: The the other counter I hear to this is how often do you play games on your computer? Because if you are not actively playing much besides league, you can get away with a significantly cheaper mouse, right? Like if you are doing A ton of gaming, a ton of PC stuff. Specifically, you want to get something that has a large. Like there's a specific DPI thing that that doesn't matter as much.
You want something that is consistent and repeatable and feels good to move a lot. You'll be using millions of clicks on this thing. Get something rated. Well, like I consistently use a Razer mouse because I like the feel of them. But that's not the main thing that people use. Logitech is really common.
Corsairs are really common. The brand doesn't matter and sometimes the price doesn't matter, but it does in some cases.
And if you are playing a lot of things do not cheap out into like a $30 mouse.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Well, let me put it this way. I am using a $130 MSRP mouse. My wife uses a $30 MSRP mouse that is no longer sold. They've replaced it with a newer model since then. They are functionally identical. In League of Legends, I am paying for other features, and I love my mouse. It's the second one of this I've had, but I'm literally paying $100 for it to be wireless and for a couple of other features that are important to me. Hers is ambidextrous. She likes it because it means if her right arm gets tired, she can switch to her left arm when she's reading stuff on the Internet or whatever and it's fine. But they're just as good as each other in League of Legends because the only things that matter for your mouse are that it performs consistently. It doesn't need to be the most accurate as long as it is consistent. If it goes the same distance every time you move it the same amount, it's a good mouse for gaming. Because that consistency is what matters. Because that's how you build the muscle memory. Till you get to the point where you are consistently clicking on your target and not missing your click because your mouse moved a different amount than you thought it would. That's how you build that muscle memory. If your mouse is not performing exactly the same every time, you're never going to get the muscle memory to consistently click on your target correctly. Okay, there's a secondary question to this. Does trying to cast a spell that is on cooldown or no mana still cancel autos? When I play MF I in range to auto, I successfully do a right click, but I'm also mashing Q for when it comes up off cooldown. I find that my autos don't always go off. So I'm checking. If it does cancel, what is your suggestion? Just to calm down and play slower. I actually don't know. Is this a thing, Mike?
[00:38:59] Speaker B: As far as I'm aware, no.
But sometimes. And that's where things are a little odd here. There are some abilities that the game will try and activate, but.
So here's. Here's the difference. I think if it's on cooldown, nothing you do will be able to work it. It's on cooldown, clicking the button does nothing.
No Mana, I think is actually the one that's fucking you over.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: That would make sense.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: I think is the one where it's actively trying to cast it and can't.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Fair enough. I've literally never encountered this, so I did not know. But that makes sense either way. What I've found from playing with other people, what most often happens when they're trying to right click people is they will right click people continuously. And if one of those clicks misses, you're interrupting your auto attack with a move command and then you click successfully on the next click. And now you've interrupted the move band with an auto attack and restarted your auto attack.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that happens a lot too.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: That one's very common. So that would be what I think is probably the most likely culprit here, especially given your first question about sometimes struggling to right click your intended target correctly.
But yeah, maybe don't mash spells, you know, can't go off anyway. Calm down a bit and play slower.
Alright, we're gonna get one more question tonight before we wrap up. I know this is gonna be a little bit of a shorter episode, but that's what happens when there's just two of us.
So our last question for tonight comes from Toast, who is a common question writer on the Discord. Thank you, Toast, for joining in the Common crew for asking lots of questions. Toast writes, I keep telling myself I'm going to start grinding ranked more, but I'm stuck between playing whatever I want for fun and locking in on like two champs to get better faster. So I think I'm going to go somewhere in the middle with about five champions for my ranked pool. Problem is there's too many fun jungle champs. What should I look for when building a pool? I play a pretty wide variety and the only real locks I think I have now are Viego, Volibear and Echo.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: So the the biggest thing with building a pool, can you play it consistently over and over again without getting fatigued from it?
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: So I think Viego is possibly one of the Best if you can. If you can pilot him properly, Viego is one of the best for that. You can keep playing him game after game and he'll be different almost every time.
The second thing really is you may have a lot of fun on a champion and not be great at it. That's really hard to do. It's really hard to do because most of the time you're incentivized to play things you really like that you can play well because it feels better to play well with a good champion. Some champions give you false positive feelings and it's really hard to to properly analyze those. So take a look at like your past set of games with champions. And if you like how the play with a champion, take a quick look. Am I dying too often for the amount of stuff I'm playing with this champion? Like, do I have an average of, I don't know, six deaths a game on this one that might be too much? Things like that or how you like, narrow that down to the. The pool of other things.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: Yep. So I didn't read the rest of the question, but he does continue with just asking how to like, pick different roles, carries, tanks, etc. And honestly, since you're. It sounds like you're someone like me who cannot settle on a small champion pool. I can't. Like, it's just not how my brain is wired. I currently have five champions with more than 10 games played out of 120 games.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think I've picked the same champion and ranked yet. I haven't gotten too far in ranked, mind you.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: But yeah.
So honestly, the biggest answer is are you having fun on the champion and willing to continue to play them? If you're not having fun, you're not going to keep playing them. So there's no point in trying to add them to your pool. If you are having fun, narrow it down to like the five that you're like. These are the five that I'm having the most fun with and I'm just gonna lock in on just playing these five. Doesn't matter if it's five. Assassins 5 carries five tanks because you're in solo queue. Solo queue is a clusterfuck. You will have games where your team drafts the dumbest shit imaginable and your game is unwinnable and then you win anyway because everyone just wins their roles and it does not matter how bad your draft is.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: So because some dude on the enemy
[00:43:29] Speaker A: team Rage quits because of the first
[00:43:31] Speaker B: three champions, you said these are the three that you want viego, Voliber, echo. I think you don't need to focus on a champion style or pool. Like, I don't need to add in this or this. You have a wide enough variety between the three of them that you have someone who can play a tank, someone who can play a bruiser, someone who can play ap. You don't have to worry about the minutia of trying to do counter pick versus man, we have nothing but AP on our team. I guess I need to get an AD in here. You don't need to worry about that. You got that covered with your main three. Your other couple really should just be, who do I like playing the most?
Because there are going to be times when you're just like, I'm feeling this one. Yeah. I don't. I don't know why. I'm just feeling it. And the main thing I will say to you is play lots of norms, because that way you will have a chance to play more junglers in different styles and different scenarios.
And that way, because you're a champion like us, who doesn't have a settled pool of two or three, you actually just need to play a lot more games. That's the only way you can properly do this. And if you're then comfortable piloting the champions, you can then pick up and use them in most situations. You will instinctually start learning and going, I can use this in this situation. This one's really good here.
Pantheon's really good in this game because we have a lot of early game fighting. And I can go really good here in the ganks. Yeah, man, they're really squishy. Kha' Zix is a great idea here. No one's gonna be able to stop me from getting into the backline.
Man, I can beat the shit out of that Shyvana because I got Sylas in this pool. Things like that are alternately, I have
[00:45:13] Speaker A: elution top and I can just go gank him for him over and over on Volibear and we'll just win the game. Yeah, Sometimes it's just as simple as that.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Sometimes it's just that simple.
[00:45:24] Speaker A: All right, guys, this has been episode of 525 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Zoman for Mike of many names. Have a great night, guys.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Good night, everybody.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast.
And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards Podcast gmail.com so we
[00:45:54] Speaker B: can answer them live on the show.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
