The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 526: Quick Questions

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. And you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 526 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got Mike of many names. [00:00:48] Speaker B: How's it going everyone? [00:00:49] Speaker A: And we've got Pillow Pat. [00:00:51] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:52] Speaker A: All right. And guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast. We've got a Discord. The link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. Come play mayhem with us. Come watch League of Legends esports games in the Watch Party channel. Basically every weekend at this point. It's a fun time. We also want to give a shout out to Codexninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet. The dab for supporting the podcast at the shoutouts here on Patreon. Thank you, guys. If you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com theforwards podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. $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 perks also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv, Jacksolman Mike can be found at Twitch tv, mikeofmany names and Pillow can be found at Twitch tv. Pillowpet. Last but not least, listeners. The Discord's carrying y' all again. We need more questions right into the 4 wards podcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer them on the show. Because guess what, guys, we're kind of cramped for time this week, so we're just gonna answer questions until we run out of time for the day. And it's gonna be a little bit of a shorter episode, but we're making sure you guys get something to listen to each week and your questions are the things you actually want to know as listeners. So that's what we're going to spend the limited time we got. So we're getting right into it. Our first question tonight comes from Reigns. He has an open ended question for just our vibes of what is the most fun 3 to 4 champion pool you can build. [00:02:38] Speaker B: So I think Jack's answer. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Sure. [00:02:41] Speaker B: We're putting both Viego and Silas in this. [00:02:46] Speaker A: Silas, yes. Agreed. They're both fun to play and you have variety every single game. [00:02:52] Speaker B: You get to put them in at least two, if not three roles a piece. [00:02:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I hate that Viego is a functional laner again. Yeah, if he was more popular it would be problematic. I'm trying to debate if I want to talk about my champion pool for mid or for jungle though. Because like if I was then thinking for jungle I'd be like okay, let me pick like an assassin and someone else that's like an outplay type champ because those are fun like dudes to me. Like fun in League of Legends is champions where I can feel like I am styling on my opponents. [00:03:27] Speaker B: I have saying that made me think of two champions that I think I need to put in in this pool for fun. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Vex. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Vex is very fun. [00:03:37] Speaker B: She also such a fun style. [00:03:39] Speaker A: Champion Vex is also fun because like her voice lines are hilarious. Like she's just. She brings a smile to your face when you play her. [00:03:47] Speaker C: This is probably not going. It's probably gonna be controversial, but I like Vagar. But not just AP Vagar. I like building Tank. Vagar, Vegar, whatever. [00:04:01] Speaker A: Veigar is shockingly good. And it is Veigar, by the way. It's named after someone who worked at Riot when the game was being made initially back in like 2008, 2009. Whose name is actually Veigar the white. [00:04:13] Speaker C: The black white slash black mage from Final Fantasy that people play mid lane. [00:04:17] Speaker A: Yes, he is a black mage. [00:04:19] Speaker C: But yeah, I like playing Tank Vegard [00:04:21] Speaker A: from Final Fantasy Set nine. [00:04:24] Speaker C: Almost identical. But yeah, I like Tank especially. Really fun in Mayhem because you can still get thousands of ap. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a little tragic because the phenomenal evil augment doesn't stack as fast as the actual phenomenal evil that you have as vegar because it has a cooldown that doesn't exist on the real passive if you're. But you still. It's just fun. [00:04:49] Speaker B: So funny. [00:04:50] Speaker A: It's so much fun. Especially then if you get Eureka. So you scale your ability haste with your ap. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Oh God. Yeah. [00:04:57] Speaker C: Another one that I really like and is really fun is full AP Malphite. I always have so much fun with just delete button. [00:05:06] Speaker A: Yep, just you. You don't get to play League of Legends for 45 seconds. [00:05:11] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:05:12] Speaker B: My, my fourth is Brand. I can play him in three roles easily. [00:05:17] Speaker A: I. I literally just got an unkillable demon king on Brand like two hours ago. [00:05:22] Speaker B: He's fun. He's. He's not just straightforward. You can do fun tricks with him. You can royally up a team fight with him. He's. He's a fun player. [00:05:31] Speaker C: Another one. These are all been like specifically like mid lane for me. Disco Nunu. [00:05:38] Speaker A: No, no, I like we're not advocating for disco nunu. [00:05:42] Speaker C: I love nunu mid. I think it's hilarious. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Okay. Nunu mid is a different thing than disco Nunu. Disc is the nunu where you take ghost and it used to be clarity, but that, that's where it comes from is the disco Nunu is clarity looks like a disco ball over your head and you just run it down. But that's no longer a thing because clarity isn't a summoner spell you can take normally. [00:06:07] Speaker C: Okay, so I was just remembering. [00:06:09] Speaker A: New. [00:06:09] Speaker C: New. [00:06:09] Speaker B: Wrong. [00:06:10] Speaker C: I thought everybody called nunu mid just disco Moo. New. But yeah, and full ap Nunu mid. [00:06:18] Speaker A: That's still pretty degenerate. It's where you're having fun and the other team isn't. Unless you're behind and then you're not having any fun anymore. [00:06:24] Speaker C: But no, but like your wave clear from level one is just unmatched. [00:06:28] Speaker B: No, it's pretty much a couple people. [00:06:31] Speaker C: He just one shot like he one shots the back line and it's great. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah. You have to be playing something like Graves to match it. Which is all not a common mid laner. But it's the correct nunu. [00:06:42] Speaker C: Yeah, nobody can match his roams early at all. [00:06:46] Speaker B: No, no. That no one else can do. [00:06:48] Speaker A: All right, so yeah, fun is pretty open ended. We all have different ideas of fun. Please don't just play for fun bullshit in ranked. This is like for norms or for like other silly shit. Alright, let's get to some real questions. This comes from Toast, who writes might be a stupid question, but why does every build I see take one of the health shards on the bottom of the rune page? Even at the end of the game if you're getting 180hp from it by that point. It seems to me that isn't really significant when 15% tenacity slow resist is there. But every build I've ever looked up has never had the tenacity shard. Am I just not valuing the health enough? Are people sleeping on the tenacity shard or Am I just overthinking and none of this matters? [00:07:30] Speaker B: You are misunderstanding what the runes are for. Those little early runes exist for early game. You don't play those for any other reason. They are how you sort of functionally modify your character to work between certain lanes. So if you're facing more ad you get a little bit of armor sometimes. If you're facing something where oh man, I actually can't do auto attacks in this. I can't do attack speed. I gotta better go adaptability in some cases. And health will always be more valued early game than Tenacity. Because tenacity doesn't do for you in early game. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Not just Tenacity doesn't do. But the bigger problem is how little tenacity actually applies to and how tenacity stacks. So tenacity works for stuns and roots. Slow resist obviously works for slows. Tenacity works for things like fears. It doesn't work for knockups, knockbacks. And there are tons of abilities that are knock ups or knockbacks. It doesn't work for suppress. So the enemy needs to be bringing CC that Tenacity works on for that Tenacity rune to even do anything. And then here's where it gets even worse. Tenacity stacks multiplicatively, which is bad when it comes to reducing a thing. Easy way to think about it. You have 100% cc duration, you get 30% tenacity. Cool. Now you have 70% cc duration, you get another 10% tenacity, you now have 63% cc duration because it is multiplicative. So you're just. It doesn't actually add very much. And any game where you would actually want the tenacity, you're going to be building merc treads. If you're considering the Tenacity rune or [00:09:18] Speaker B: you're going to be which is going to do the Sterak thing, you're going to be getting something that isn't this. [00:09:23] Speaker A: And that's why the Tenacity rune kind of sucks is because the rare situations where you really do want tenacity, the diminishing returns render the rune near useless. Anyway. There is an edge case of a very slow happy team. When you are an extremely kitable champion like Nasus, the slow resistance has more value because slow resistance is. Slows are less effective. So it can mean the difference between getting in range and not. [00:09:47] Speaker B: But in almost every scenario the health is usually more beneficial. Yep, it's a full auto attack. It's usually a full spell minimum at first level, which is easily the point of life and death. [00:10:00] Speaker A: Yep. Now that's for the the flat health. The scaling health usually is. The reason to take the scaling health is to try to win it like level 11 where it's like it's clearly better at that point. So it's for like mid game spiking [00:10:15] Speaker B: or if you're someone who actually has a health scaling in their champion, something that has multiplical health on their champion. [00:10:20] Speaker A: Those are when you someone like Mundo for example because it's just increasing your top end a little bit. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Mundo, sejuani, volibear, etc. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah, alright. Hopefully that helps you understand the rune a little bit more. Toast generally stick with one of the two health runes generally. Our next question. Oh boy. Jokey Sierra writes wards I need your wisdom. My dad likes to play some league with me and my brother when he has time. It's super cool that he's interested and I want to make sure he has as much fun as possible. One obstacle is that with league sessions often separated by weeks or months, his skill level is understandably pretty low. He has a good grasp of the game's overall strategy but struggles hard with mechanics. He's decided to main Yasuo. Should I try to sell him on a less mechanically intense champion? Otherwise what strategies can I use to carry a guaranteed inting? [00:11:14] Speaker B: Yasuo, I think you actually like if he likes Yasuo nudge him towards the brother. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah, try to get him to play Yone instead. [00:11:23] Speaker B: Yone is very much a heavily potential skill based thing. Like Yasuo has a lot of the same stuff as Yasuo but the floor is a lot higher up than Yasuo's is. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Yone from super far behind can still build bruisery and press r to cc people for a moment before he dies. Whereas Yasuo, you're never getting a third hit to proc your knock up if you're that far behind. So the most you could hope is to be able to r off someone else's knockup to contribute to a team fight. [00:11:57] Speaker C: If he's not interested in learning another champion or going after Yone just maybe try playing malphite. [00:12:06] Speaker B: Exactly what my suggestion was going to be. Bring knockout champions. Get a malphite. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Get malphite Diana. [00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah, Diana is a great combo. Orianna, if you want to put him in a different lane. [00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah, we're assuming he's playing Yasuo mid. [00:12:20] Speaker C: I think you might also try getting him out and like you're. Yeah, I was gonna say he might try getting him out of Solo mid lane for a minute. And I hate to say it, but maybe go with him in the bot lane while he plays Yasuo. Even though he like it's gonna have [00:12:34] Speaker A: be a hard time get him to play Mayhem. It'll force him to play different champions. Mayhem is incredibly fun. The stakes are much lower because games are faster and who cares if you lose. [00:12:46] Speaker B: It'll also give me a chance to learn a lot of different champions. Yeah. [00:12:49] Speaker A: And also him moments where he feels awesome because of the augments. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Sometimes you just. You hit the right augments and you just feel amazing even if you're not actually playing very well. [00:13:00] Speaker C: And if he's like some people that I've played with like has no interest in doing Aram at all and he's like, ah, no, I want to play Yasuo. Take him in a brawl. [00:13:10] Speaker B: Brawl's another good place. [00:13:11] Speaker C: Brawl's out right now and it's still 5v5. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Brawl. [00:13:14] Speaker C: Brawl's out right now. It's a good place to go learn. He doesn't have to be alone and you could kind of talk to talk him through it as while you're playing with him right there. But if you're already laning with him and he has no interest with anything other than fives and doesn't want to play anything other than Yasuo, just yeah, knock up championship. Try to carry him with a knockup champ. [00:13:37] Speaker B: But I think our number one thing is try and try and push him towards Yone if he still loves Yasuo and he's having like this because yone very similar play style is a lot easier to pick up and go with. [00:13:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. All right. Hopefully that helps. Jokey Sierra, let us know how games with your dad has been going because maybe you can get him to join the discord and come play with us. [00:14:00] Speaker B: We are still happy to teach. Hey, if he wants to learn, we're happy. [00:14:04] Speaker C: I am also a dad gamer. [00:14:05] Speaker B: I wish I could get my parents to play but they're. They're not. They're not so hot into moving with fingers. They're. They're pretty arthritic. [00:14:14] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, our next question set comes from Reigns again who writes how do the playstyles of Kayle and Nasus change when moved from top lane to mid lane? [00:14:25] Speaker B: We've done this recently. We've talked about. We've definitely talked about Kayle and mid Lane. Nasus in mid lane. Probably not. [00:14:32] Speaker A: That's fair. So let's focus on Nasus for this. Nasus in the top lane. Is a scaling stacker. You, you stack your Q. You try not to die. Eventually you reach a threshold where you have enough stacks. The enemy miss positions. You wither them and you run them down. Depending on the matchup, that happens sooner or later. Nasus in the mid lane sometimes is that. But often you max spirit fire and just shove waves and then roam. Because even a rank one wither from a non stacked Nasus is going to win the river fight. [00:15:03] Speaker B: He is one of the best people to duo with and go steal the enemy's raptors. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:09] Speaker C: With that being said on Wither, because wither to me and it will always be is like in my opinion the most overpowered ability in the game. Maybe other than Zilean E. It's one of them. [00:15:23] Speaker B: Zilean Z is fucking stupid. As we played against it yesterday and [00:15:28] Speaker C: where Nasus would shine again in the mid lane. He's just great for setting up ganks. Like he doesn't even have to be involved. He just wither and then all of a sudden they're moving like I cheese and I max wither. If I'm having a bad time, I'm like all right. Like yeah, you can max E. You're still going to go through mana trying to farm with that. But you can also just get your jungle fed. And now at, you know, level five, you got a 80% slow on your enemy and they can't escape. [00:16:00] Speaker A: Yep. The other key difference here is in mid lane it's a much shorter run back so you can actually reset after shoving waves when there isn't a roam opportunity to get your mana back. Whereas in top lane it's a long run back. [00:16:12] Speaker B: The other thing that's common in mid lane is assassins. And Nasus is much better into assassins than a lot of people give him credit for. [00:16:21] Speaker A: Yep. [00:16:22] Speaker C: Another good thing about Nasus mid lane and not saying taking mid because it goes against really what a lot of NASA's just want to be kind of like left alone and just not a target in the middle of the map. But not many people at all know how to freeze a lane in mid lane. Nasus is one of the safest farmers because of his passive where he can sit under tower and even catch a, you know, a stack here and there. And eventually that squishy mid laner isn't going to be able to hold you back because you can build into tank runes or tank items and it won't matter because now his q is doing 800 damage. A stack or a hit and they just run down anybody because they can't get away. And now they're tanky and they do ridiculous damage. [00:17:14] Speaker B: The changes to mid lane at the beginning of the year make it so that you can't really freeze mid lane for more than a wave. So you're always going to end up getting a stack or two here or there. And NASA's, as you were saying, is one of the best people to farm out a tower. AQ will pretty much always kill the minions in the back right after a tower shot. [00:17:35] Speaker C: And if they try to tower dive, you just throw wither. Even if they kill you, you throw wither on them and they're stuck under tower wither alt. [00:17:42] Speaker B: You can survive half that time. [00:17:44] Speaker A: So question two. What is Vlad's deal? How do you play out his laning phase? His mid and late game? How. How do you decide Item choices and runes? [00:17:54] Speaker C: Same thing with how we just said with Nasus. You kind of just survive until you are scaled up and all of a sudden now you're one shotting everybody. His E, everything of his abilities cost health. [00:18:08] Speaker A: Okay? So on that note, because his abilities cost health except for his Q, don't spam his E early. I have seen people literally lose their lane from overcasting E early. [00:18:21] Speaker C: And don't cast your W just because you're getting poked. Try to save that for if you're diving so you can drop tower aggro, or if you're being dove, or if you're dodging a C, use it to dodge CC or to get out of sticky situations. Do not use it as like a combat like ability. [00:18:42] Speaker A: If you're using it for damage, it better damn well be the finishing blow and they're dead. [00:18:48] Speaker C: Assuming you're asking us because you're playing Vladimir or trying to like get into him. It is also important to know that when you're getting your third stack of Q, you get increased movement speed. So you want to always try to get your last stack of or your red Q on the enemy champion. But it is good. You want to make sure you always use it because it gives you one last stack that you have to use if you let it expire. [00:19:17] Speaker B: The main thing about that is that Q is a threat. You can use that to push people off things to push people in. You want to try and use it on enemies. Don't kill yourself doing it. It's perfectly acceptable to Q per a minion with it. If you can't get to them. Use that Q though. And then mid late game, hit as many people as you can with your R. Yeah. [00:19:42] Speaker C: And your R increases your enemies affected by its damage. Taken from Vlad. [00:19:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:19:49] Speaker C: So cast your R first before you go all in. [00:19:53] Speaker A: You don't want to use the R to get fade away kills if you can help it, because you would have just gotten the kill up front. If you cast it earlier, you get A. And because it's delayed damage. Yeah, it's delayed damage. It's delayed healing. If you cast it early, that means you don't necessarily have to hit W to not die while you wait for it to go off. [00:20:10] Speaker B: Vladimir is incredibly good with Zhonyas. Because of this, he does still get the heal through the Zhonyas. Yep. [00:20:17] Speaker A: So here's my other thought for deciding item choices. A mistake I see a lot of Vladimirs make is over indexing an ability haste or under indexing an ability haste. Vladimir needs some ability haste at most two items I usually do like Cosmic Drive plus boots and that's enough ability haste. You really don't need more than that because I'm usually playing in mid the upgraded ability haste boots give a shitload. And that's it. That's all you need for ability haste because that gets your Q down to like a two and a half second cooldown. You don't need it shorter than that. You're better off getting more out of the Q casts, which means you want raw AP so that when you cast the Q it heals you more and does more damage, which is the whole reason you would want more ability haste in the first place. And if you go too high in ability haste and too low on damage, you reach a point where your E costs outscale how much you're healing from Q because you're casting it too often and not healing enough when you cast Q, which means you're literally damaging yourself. So it is extremely important to not over index on ability haste. [00:21:26] Speaker C: And you're also going to be making yourself a lot squishier with how Vladimir's passive works. More AP means more health, which means more healing. That's why Riftmaker is like you have to get rift maker because it gives you more ability. [00:21:40] Speaker A: Rift makers a trap don't build Rift maker unless it's a very specific situation. [00:21:47] Speaker B: It's. [00:21:48] Speaker A: It's not a bad item. It's expensive. [00:21:51] Speaker C: I feel like with the health scaling giving you ap, it's pretty decent on him. [00:21:55] Speaker B: It's okay. It's. It's a. It's a choice option. He has basically three options as his first item. That's one of them. The one that you Usually see is probably the Hex Belt. [00:22:07] Speaker A: The jump Proto Belt is really good on him. Cosmic Drive is really good on him. Riftmaker is situationally good on him. Like I would take Riftmaker into like a Gallio. [00:22:17] Speaker B: If you're in a tough fight, Riftmaker is what you want because the other two are much better for like extending his power. Riftmaker is how he survives more. You're doing that if you're building like a spirit visage because then you're indexing into I need to survive. Which is another point you do not always need to buy a spirit visage. [00:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:38] Speaker B: It is a decent. It is actually a better than good item on him. Most of the time. If you're fighting primarily ad you're not getting the benefit out of a spirit visage. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Yep. But to put into context why I'm so down on Riftmaker in most circumstances, rocket belt is 500450 gold cheaper. It is the same amount of ability power. It is 50 less health. It is 5 more ability haste and it gives you a movement button. Rocket Belt is almost always, except in certain situations such as, like I said, laning against a Galio better than Riftmaker. [00:23:17] Speaker C: I think Riftmaker is probably better though. When you're looking into mid and late game where you're getting into team fights and you're not as much better as [00:23:25] Speaker A: you think, you end up getting 6% [00:23:28] Speaker C: Omnivamp but you're gonna end up getting more ability power from the item just because of how your health stacking. [00:23:34] Speaker A: Not as much as you'd think. I've. I've been like a full build with Rift Maker as Vladimir. It's worth like 120ap at that point. And that's like I have a death cap, I have a zhonyas, I have 800 AP. He gets and 4,000 life. [00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, the. The. The big thing Riftmaker is double scaling him giving him a health and ap. If you go for things that are mostly AP or mostly health, he actually gets slightly more out of them. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Well, he's so Pillow's referring to the void infusion passive where you get AP based on your bonus health. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Yes. So it doesn't properly scale with Vladimir's passive him getting extra health because otherwise that scaling would magnify itself to ludicrous levels. Which is what you were thinking. It does. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:24] Speaker C: Well, no it doesn't. I know it doesn't like completely compound on each other complete like all the time. But it. When you get more ability power, if you buy ability power raw, you get health. Then it will calculate that health that you just got it into. The ability power from Riff Maker. Like it doesn't just keep adding on top of it because you got more ability power now you got more health. And it's. It doesn't like calculate it that way. [00:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah. It doesn't scale bounce back and forth because otherwise Vladimir would have infinite scaling back and forth. They don't code it that way. But they also don't code it so that Vladimir's extra health bonus doesn't scale into that. [00:25:00] Speaker C: Yeah, he's gonna die on the hill. I'm a Riftmaker fan. [00:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Riff Maker. [00:25:05] Speaker A: If you're ahead or if you're in certain matchups, Riftmaker is good. But the problem is just Rocket Belt is literally better for 450 Gold cheaper so you spike harder earlier. [00:25:14] Speaker C: And that I will agree. It's not always a good first item. Riftmaker is usually with the scaling just like Heartsteel is never a good usually first item because the scaling is just not as good. Like you can get away with building them second on Heartsteel or third, you know, even because it scales with your max health or bonus health. However, I actually. [00:25:33] Speaker A: Even though I said earlier that I like to go Cosmic Drive, I as I'm thinking about it more, I had already switched to Rocket Belt is my primary build over Cosmic Drive because of the cost difference. As soon as I figured that out and then I forgot about it until right now. [00:25:49] Speaker B: Second item. But like Riftmaker is not Riftmaker Hex Belt. Proto Belt is so good as a first item. The extra bonus movement speed because of the dash. That dash is huge for Vladimir. [00:26:04] Speaker A: Yep. It lets you. Instead of like sitting at the edge of being able to cast the empowered Q, you can just press Rocket Belt and Empowered cue someone and blow them the up. It's great. But we're kind of like in the weeds on his items a little bit. How do you play out as Laning phase Spam Q? [00:26:20] Speaker B: Carefully. Carefully. [00:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Spam Q. And don't get caught by his mid and late game. This one depends more on your opponents. There's some matchups where you can just split push cuz he just beats them later. Like if you're against a Fizz and you're even, you're just going to beat Fizz. So you just split push and force them to send someone to deal with you. And if the enemy has a tank top laner, you beat him too. So now they have to send two people to deal with you because neither of their solos can. [00:26:49] Speaker B: But the like the Dedicated split pushers of side Lane. The Fioros, the Camilles. They kick his ass. [00:26:55] Speaker A: Yes. So in those situations, you're a team fighter. You follow your team around. You throw your Ult down and EQ w when it's appropriate in a teamfight and blow people up. He's very bursty. So this is the other thing. He has two main runes. Phase Rush generically Extremely Good and Electrocute helps him blow people up a lot better. He's extremely bursty with Electrocute. Burstier than people expect a lot of the time. [00:27:25] Speaker B: He also like becomes one of the best team fighters in the game. Mid late game, his AoE damage gets psycho. His healing allows him to stay within a teamfight forever. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Yep. So this is the other thing. He's one of the very few champions in the game. His healing is not based on the damage he deals. It is just a ratio of healing on his Q. It is, let's see, 35% AP plus a base value, which is crazy. And then he gets increased healing on the empowered one based on his missing health. So you can actually reach a point where you cannot be killed by someone because you just out heal all of their damage even if they're like 300. Mr. Tank with Mundo Ult running doesn't matter. You eventually hit a point where it doesn't matter. It does not matter how much damage your Q is doing. You're still healing the same amount. Target selection on your Q, however, is still important. You heal a lot less on Minions. The way he wins trades is by creating health disparities between him and his opponent. By using Q on his opponent every time they step in range. Basically. Any other thoughts on Vlad? [00:28:38] Speaker B: I think we've covered all of it. [00:28:40] Speaker A: Let's. Let's go on to the last question we have from Reigns, which is every so often I get placed mid my secondary instead of top. And if I can't play Lux, I'll play Malz. But I feel like neither of them can really drive a game forward into a win without a significant lead. Are there any low floor mages that can do that? Or do you really have to put into work into more complex mages in order to be able to do that? I was looking to a Sol Mel, but can a good Swain Vhagar Galio carry a game quite easily? Or does it have to be your Syndras, Ahris or assassin types? [00:29:08] Speaker B: Anyone can carry a game. [00:29:10] Speaker A: Malz and Lux can absolutely drive a game forward into a win. [00:29:14] Speaker B: Malz is a little bit harder because [00:29:16] Speaker A: Mowz Is my sweeper on Mowz? [00:29:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Malz's damage is very, very dedicated to this one target. Fuck you. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Yep. [00:29:24] Speaker B: But that does not mean he can't do a lot. Lux is a little bit easier. She's got a lot of aoe push and shove and poke. The reason why A Sol Mel are so potent are they are heavy amounts of consistent damage. A Sol is very, very good at shredding tanks. Mel is very, very good at popping people. Vagar can instantly win a game. Just pop. Someone's dead. [00:29:50] Speaker A: Yep. There have been so many games that have been won because of Veigar just catches the ad carry with a WQR and they're dead instantly. [00:29:59] Speaker B: And I have seen A Swain supports win games. Swain is potentially disgusting in the right hands. And Galio too, like a good Galio is really fucking hard to fight. [00:30:11] Speaker C: So my opinion of these A SOL Swain and Veigar all fall in the same like category of their scalers. Like they, they are. They aren't up front strong right away and they have to build to that case. Now if we're looking at someone that you don't have to rely getting stacks and hitting, you know all your abilities and try to become relevant. You know, mid game where you're just blowing people up instantly. I think Galio is a really good choice to bring because Galio is super disruptive, super tanky and playing him mid lane, your ultimate is basically at this point being mid lane is going to be universal on the map. Like you're. You're going to be freed up to help out almost anywhere. As long as you're having some map awareness. It's like with Shin as long as you're able to kind of pay attention to what's going on you. And it's not the super long cooldown either. Like it's. It's. It's a good item or a good item. It is a good ability. Galio is my choice on this. If you're kind of getting filled, he's kind of safe even into 80 damage. Like he is a good lockdown. He's got disengage. He's got really strong engage and just does a lot of damage even as a tank. Like that would be my choice. Blind. If you're trying to pick something that can carry like he. He carries in a different way not with just full damage but just where the enemy team can't move. Like his taunt is very strong. [00:31:47] Speaker A: You're basically just find the person on your team who isn't a moron and just kill everyone who's near them. Alright, our next question tonight is a very straightforward one from Jacob who writes Nashor's Tooth and Dusk and dawn seem to have a very similar role. I play Diana Jungle and I don't know when I should prioritize one over the other and if both are overkill. So they do seem to have a very similar role in the specific context of Diana Jungle. Dusk and dawn is just better when you have the completed item. Building both is overkill for PvP but [00:32:24] Speaker B: not for objectives depending on what you're facing. [00:32:28] Speaker A: Generally yes, I tend to play Bruiser Diana when I play Jungle so I tend to build both and then I'm itemizing tank items like Jack show frankly, which is totally valid. If you're going more like Assassin, definitely don't go both just do Dusk and Dawn and then build assassin items from there like shadow flame, etc. [00:32:50] Speaker C: Pretty much important to know when you're building attack speed that attack speed isn't always good because you might not get a game where you're able to do a lot of attacking. So it's always better to upfront your damage into your ability, power or AD because like if you build a lot of attack speed we'll say but you only get short trades, your attack speed is worthless. Like it's not. It's not helping you out at all because you're. You're losing out on a bunch of damage. So attack speed is only really good if you're going to be able to beat up on someone for a to get the value of your attack speed. [00:33:30] Speaker A: Now here's the other variable for Diana Jungle, Dusk and Dawn's build path fucking sucks. The blasting wand and the dagger are the only components that meaningfully affect you prior to completing the whole item. Whereas Nashor's you get a blasting wand and a fiendish codex and a recurve bow I think is the item the build path is smoother. The individual components give you more power in the meantime then the sheen that whoopty fucking do your Diana. Why do you care about a base sheen that you spent 900 gold on that barely does anything until you complete the item. So there are going to be games where it's correct to go Nashors because you just have to piecemeal and you need strength Now Nashors gives a lot [00:34:19] Speaker C: of ap like it gives what? [00:34:21] Speaker B: A hundred? [00:34:21] Speaker A: Did I get a hundred? [00:34:23] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not. It's not a small amount. [00:34:25] Speaker B: It's 90 now. [00:34:26] Speaker C: They. [00:34:26] Speaker B: They took away from being Able to instantly get Kai' sa augment on. [00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, but it's. It's not a weak item by any means. [00:34:34] Speaker B: No, wait. [00:34:36] Speaker A: And it's also slightly cheaper. [00:34:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but like Nashers is, if you're going pure attack speed. She hits like a truck with Nashers still. She's hitting every auto attack. She has an attack speed star right in her kit. [00:34:48] Speaker A: Getting all the Nashers is always more clear speed. And that's kind of why, like sometimes you will run into games where Nashors is just the way to go because it's more clear speed. [00:34:57] Speaker B: These are disgustingly good items. [00:34:59] Speaker A: And like I said, when I'm playing Diana Jungle, I tend to go conqueror. I'm going Dusk and Dawn and Nashors in one order or the other, depending on the specific game. And then I'm building like tank items, maybe a rift maker if the. If it's that kind of game. And I'm ahead. So I actually want the attack speed because I'm building tanky enough to stay in fights. If you're not building tank, I think Nashor's value goes down a shitload. [00:35:24] Speaker B: Yeah. If you're facing into tanks, Nashor's has the more powerful buy in. Otherwise, like there's no reason like Dusk and Dawn is so good with her. You proc it almost instantly. [00:35:37] Speaker A: Yep. It speeds up the number of passive procs you get, which is the majority of your jungle clear, by the way, your passive does way more damage to the camps than anything else you do. So getting more passive procs means way more clear, which is why it's as close as it is to Nashor's and clear, despite Nashors having twice as much attack speed. Okay, let's get one last question in for tonight. This one comes from Matthias, who writes how do the different damage immunities like Gwen's Hallowed Mist, Yasuo's Windwall, Xin Jiao Ult and other similar abilities work. I often get confused what gets blocked and what can still damage. And also which champions get the immunity. Is it all enemy champions in the ability or only the champion that casts the ability, etc. So these are several different categories of abilities. Let's start with the most straightforward Wind Wall type effects. So this is Yasuo's Wind Wall, Samira's, whatever it's called Braum Shield. All of these abilities destroy incoming projectiles that are targeted at them or that are in the radius. [00:36:41] Speaker B: We should talk about Mel's reflect here as well, because it functions the same way, but reflecting. [00:36:46] Speaker A: Yes. The big difference For Mel is that it actually needs to be targeted on her or a skillshot. She does not block like an auto attack going over her head, whereas Windwall and the other abilities will. [00:36:59] Speaker B: But functionally, it will eat anything the others eat. [00:37:03] Speaker A: Yes. [00:37:04] Speaker B: And then reflect those back. [00:37:06] Speaker A: There are some caveats. Some abilities are not deleted by Windwall. If Orianna throws the ball into a Windwall, it stops there. It doesn't get deleted. Same is true for Syndra throwing balls. If she punts a ball with her E, it stops at the wind while it does not get deleted. This matters especially in the case of Mel, because it means Mel still eats the stun and does not reflect the ball back. I learned that the hard way. It's very frustrating as a Mel. I hate this inter matchup. [00:37:37] Speaker B: There's a lot of really weird things about that. Orianna ball is another weirdly functioning one. Yeah. [00:37:44] Speaker A: This is also why, for example, these abilities are so strong against Ornn. Because he calls the horn and you have plenty of time to just throw the ability in the way of the ram and prevent him from getting his ultimate to do anything. So that's wind wall type abilities. I don't think we missed any, but if we did, I'm sorry. The next type of ability is dodges. Shen has one, Nilah has one. Jack in Shen's case. Yeah. [00:38:11] Speaker B: Jax has one and kind of Xin Zhao has one. [00:38:16] Speaker A: Xinjiang is its own thing. [00:38:17] Speaker B: Zinzao's is weird. It's gonna probably be needed to be talked about completely separately. Yeah. [00:38:21] Speaker A: So dodges block auto attacks. Some empowered auto attack abilities will go through dodges, some won't. It's not consistent. You literally just have to learn it on a case by case basis. It frustrates the hell out of Jax players. How inconsistent dodge is. It's just. Just part of league life. But yeah, just anything that they work on just does nothing. You don't get stunned by Volibear Q. You don't take damage. None of the effects that should apply happen because you dodged it. Now we got the weird special case ones. So Xin Jiao Ult is a weird special case. Xin Xiao Ult, he puts up a barrier and any damage that hits him from someone who is standing outside the barrier doesn't deal damage. All other effects still happen. [00:39:11] Speaker B: And that's the weird part is his is unique in that all ways. If it's a cc, he still cc'd. If it's a blow up, instant death. Some of them will kill him. [00:39:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:25] Speaker B: Pike, for example, because it's only based on your location during the ultimate. Like the damage portion. [00:39:33] Speaker A: Yes. That also means if there is a projectile flying at him from outside the the circle, and that person flashes inside the circle before the projectile lands, he takes the damage. [00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:44] Speaker C: It. [00:39:44] Speaker B: If it is a projectile, it will still hit him. Unlike all of these other ones where no projectile makes contact. Which, like, is especially important on Urgot. Urgot's killing you. It's bringing you right to it. [00:39:57] Speaker A: Because by the time it does the damage, he's in range. Yeah. Gwen's hallowed mist also uses this kind of proximity thing. She does not get hit if the ability user is not also within the mist. If she's in the mist, the other person must also be in the mist to hit Gwen. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Everything that would hit her just passes right through her. Other people within Gwen's hallowed mistake. Perfectly damageable. Which means anything that would hit her is hitting them. [00:40:30] Speaker A: Yep. You've absolutely seen Gwens get their supports or AD carries killed by shrouding a Ashe arrow that goes through them and hits the person behind them. It happens. The other abilities that come to mind that are less intuitive. Kindredult. Everyone standing inside the Kindredult, regardless of which team they're on, cannot be reduced below 10% health. If they are brought to 10% health, they cannot be healed above 10% health until they leave the ground or the ground expires. That is the important qualifier there. If they leave the ground through any means, they can instantly take damage and heal again. Things like Mordekaiser's deathrealm Urga Ult Grog Assault can be really good at forcing people off of Kindred's ultimate to make them vulnerable again. [00:41:23] Speaker C: Another one that comes to my mind is Fiora's W because it's a very. Another quick. It doesn't. It just makes her immune to everything. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Yep. Importantly, immune to everything external. If it's already on her, it doesn't make her immune to dot damage ticking on her while it's running. [00:41:43] Speaker C: But it could make you immune to. I don't know if I've ever seen this as a case, so I won't know. I don't know if Urgot recasts are as she's casting W. Does it still pull her or does it stop that instance if it's already on her? [00:41:59] Speaker A: I think it will stop the pole if she reposts the pole, but it's very hard to time. This is the same kind of thing as like Braum can technically block the pull back From Urgot with his shield and die instead of his teammate. If you weren't aware, that's. That's an interaction. [00:42:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Because Urgot opens someone and then Braun puts up a shield. [00:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:17] Speaker A: The chain is thrown out. Braum will intercept it and he'll die instead. God, now I'm wondering what happens. Is it just special case not to interact with Mel's W Or can Mel execute Urgot with that? Because that would be hilarious. [00:42:30] Speaker C: I. I would assume it's like most other things. You can't recast it. I don't think it can be recasted. But if it's a. [00:42:36] Speaker B: It's not the recast. [00:42:37] Speaker C: If it's. [00:42:37] Speaker B: It's. [00:42:37] Speaker A: It's. If it's in the recast and that is a projectile that then hits the target. [00:42:42] Speaker B: Yeah, they're both projectiles. [00:42:44] Speaker C: I would assume that if they're in death range. If Urgot's in death range when it re. Splashes on him. I don't know. It might be fun to test out. [00:42:53] Speaker A: We will have to test that. We're gonna have to test that. [00:42:56] Speaker B: With Braum. You don't have to be in death range. He intercepts it and he just dies instead. [00:42:59] Speaker A: Yep. [00:43:00] Speaker B: Which would be. [00:43:01] Speaker A: Whoever got this is whoever got hit by Urgot. Ult is in death range. Urgot presses R to execute that person. Braum intercepts it. Braum dies from full health. Does not matter. I'm wondering. [00:43:13] Speaker B: I didn't know that. [00:43:14] Speaker A: Mel gets ulted by Urgot, takes the hit, gets put into death range. Urgot presses R to execute her, and she reflects. I want to know what happens. We will have to test that. So we'll get back to you on that one, Matthias. Maybe I'll make you test it with us. Because you're in the discord pretty often. We'll figure it out and we'll report back. Listeners. The rest of the abilities in the list are like terracolt. Kael. We're just. You're invulnerable to damage. Tryndamere ult. You can't die. But everything else works. Normally. You just stop at 1 hp. You can't go to zero until it expires. Those ones are much more straightforward and simple. They don't have a bunch of weird interactions. It is very funny. If you tryndamere Ult immediately before getting yoinked by Urgot. Urgot's ult takes two seconds. If you don't die in that time, [00:44:00] Speaker B: it releases you the weird and interesting Parts of the things like untarget abilities where we we're not going to get into the minutia of them. There's too many of them and they each do too many different things. So the. The standard damage reduction or damage immunities pretty much this is how they work. I don't think there's anything we've ah know what is and isn't a projectile. Wind walls do not block Lux Ult. [00:44:29] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:30] Speaker B: The the one that most people don't know. Senna's auto attacks are not projectiles. She can attack you through a wind wall. No consequence. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Yep, this is one that Yasuo bots constantly will feed on because they just don't understand. That wind wall does almost nothing to Senna. It can block the root. That's it. And the Ult, I guess her Q [00:44:53] Speaker B: is also not a projectile. Yeah, it is a laser. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Same for Lucian. Q not a projectile. Which is why if you're up against a Yasuo, just play Lucian in the top lane and beat the shit out of him. Alright guys, it's a little bit of a short Q and A episode this week. We're sorry, this is all we have time for. I've been Jack Selman from Mike and many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:45:14] Speaker C: Good night. [00:45:15] Speaker B: Good night everybody. [00:45:17] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected] [00:45:28] Speaker C: and [00:45:28] Speaker A: of course send your questions to the 4wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.