The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 527: Toasting the Reinz

[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 527 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me just one other ward to help you move forward in League of Legends this week. It's Mike again. [00:00:48] Speaker B: You'd never guess it was me, would you? [00:00:51] Speaker A: One of these days I'm gonna have to do a two man show with Pillow and I'm gonna introduce it the exact same way. Except then it's gonna be like. And wait a minute, you're not Mike. And Pillow's gonna be confused because I'm not gonna tell him. I'm gonna do that beforehand. [00:01:05] Speaker B: It'd have to be a pretty rare day to get me completely sick enough to not be here. [00:01:10] Speaker A: Or you have something going on. Maybe you're at a concert that day or something. [00:01:14] Speaker B: Who knows? It is true. I do actually occasionally have life. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast. Join the Discord. We have a Discord. Come hang out. Come play games. Come talk to us. Come ask us questions. Talk about anime. I've been posting in the Anime channel a lot more and recommending stuff. Come hang out, it's a good time. Link is in the episode description. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV jacksonman, Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames and Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet and I want to give a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Geeth. The dab for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier. We appreciate you guys, you're keeping us on the Internet. Guys. If you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com the Fourwards podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month gets you that same exclusive feed. And we'll shout you out at the top 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 publish it every other week. Last but not least, listeners, the Discord's carrying you again. We Only got one new question from the discord and none in the email. So write in to the4wardspodcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer them on the show. All right, guys, it's a patch week. Patch 26.8 has dropped and we're going to start this off with a heads up that the ranked season one of 2026 ends when this patch ends. So when 26.09 arrives, which it says should be April 29th, according to this note, ranked season one will end. Ranked season two will start. This is not a reset. You will still be at whatever rank you were at the end of season one. But this means that rewards will be given out based on what you achieved during ranked season one and the ranked mission. The win 15 ranked games mission will be reset. You'll have to win 15 ranked games for season two to be eligible for rewards. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Yes. There is a minimum threshold you have to achieve in the next eight days before you are given a reward. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Yes. So if you haven't played 15 ranked games and you want to get the rewards, whatever the skin is, I don't think we actually know yet. [00:03:46] Speaker B: It's prone. [00:03:47] Speaker A: If we do, I missed it. [00:03:49] Speaker B: They show it off right now. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Okay, there we go. So if you want the Braum skin, you need to play 15 ranked games and be high enough rank. I think gold for minimum for the skin or you need to play a. [00:04:01] Speaker B: But it's not play 15. It is win 15. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Yes, you need to win 15 games. So yeah, you have, as of when we're recording this, a little over a week left to do that. So get on it. All right, let's talk about the actual patch changes this week. And I want to start with one that is not actually a League of Legends change for gameplay. League of Legends has added more Discord integration and since we have a podcast Discord, this is a great thing. Now you can just drop a Discord invite link to your League of Legends party into Discord and your friends can just click that link and instantly join you in League of Legends, which is great. This is currently live. It says across U.S. canada and Brazil, and then it should be expanded to additional regions in the next few patches. So if you don't play on one of those servers, it'll be there for you soon. But for now, US Canada and Brazil, we get to have Discord integration. I think this is great. Discord integration makes it easier to join people and find, like pickup games with people in the community. I'm going to be using this now whenever we set up like mayhems or norms. I'm just going to drop a discord link into the chat. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, no notes really. This is good. They can probably add a few features, but I'm not going to be judging them when they have this baseline. As a baseline. [00:05:27] Speaker A: Exactly. All right, Mike, you've got champions on your list. [00:05:32] Speaker B: I do. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Talk to us about one of them. [00:05:34] Speaker B: Well, let's talk about the least problematic first. In fact, I think this is probably the smallest change of all. Tom Kench. So Tahm Kench is getting a slight adjustment to how his passive works. And this is really just Tahm Kench they have decided needs to be viable in two roles, both top lane and support. And to do that, you need to carefully balance what he can do or he gets a little out of control in those two roles. And so far, with the addition of the new items, specifically Dusk and Dawn, he's a little bit too strong in top lane. And so they've rebalanced him accordingly in the way that we usually are complaining about. But actually fits to this one. They've rebalanced him so that his base damage is a little bit higher, except for level one, but his AP ratios are lower. It's exactly what we want in his HP ratio. Yes. His bonus HP ratio and his AP ratio both got a small tick hit. Not enough to make it not usable. But they're both a little bit lower and the base is a little bit higher. [00:06:44] Speaker A: The reason this is a mostly nerfing top lane a little bit and less support is that top lane can afford to build Dusk and Dawn. If you're able to build Dusk and Dawn as support, Tom Kench, you're winning the game anyway because you're gigafed. [00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah. If. If you can. If you can immediately field a damage item first. Dusk and dawn has health. He wants it. That's going on as ap. He wants it. Duskin dawn has an interactive sheen ability that works with his. His three hit Passive. Wow. Is it good on him? If you Q auto attack, you instantly have the proc. So like tch. Real good here. And this change is appropriate. It's perfectly done to not make it so that you're over nerfing the top lane, which wasn't out of control. Make this be clear. It was just a little bit too high relative to other champions that fulfill the same role, which are pretty much heavy health stacking tanks. His damage was a little bit too strong, not anything else. So they've very carefully done a proper nerf. It is still A nerf. And you will feel it on the first item because you're hitting both the base, the AP ratio and the health ratio whilst not tuning the base damage to be too high. Perfect. [00:07:59] Speaker A: Yep. All right, so I'm going to talk about an actual balance change. I have one in here that's not. But I want to bounce around a bit. So they've made a change to Lilia. Lilia's passive has a cap on how much damage it's allowed to do to jungle monsters. And they have drastically raised this cap. Previously it was just a flat 65. She could do 65 damage to monsters. Now it scales from 70 to 180. And to be clear, this ability does percent max health damage. Pretty much everything that does percent max health damage has to have a monster cap unless it's an ultimate because they don't want monsters to get deleted too fast. She was hitting the old cap basically the moment she built AP on the tankier jungle monsters isn't her true damage as well. No, it's magic damage. [00:09:03] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah, her true damage is the sweet spot on her Q. She does have true damage. It's also the. No, the sleep is magic damage. So, yeah, it's the sweet spot on her Q is true damage, but she was basically hitting the old cap instantly on the tankier monsters the moment you built your first bit of ap. So it's really nice for her to actually be able to scale her damage in the jungle and be able to clear camps faster. And because this is dot damage specifically, this will drastically improve Lilia's play feel because she will be much more able to go, oh, this camp is dead. I can walk away while it burns to death. [00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah, like this. This is no doubt it's good. Lilia has been significantly slower than she should have been for a long time. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Yep. I'm very happy about this change, especially since this also does not put her first clear over the top. It should have effectively no change on [00:10:06] Speaker B: her first clear, which is the problem clear for most champions, increasing the damage cap when you're probably not reaching it in one clear. Easy, easy, easy way. Yep. [00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah. To be clear, like, that's why they've been so cautious about her because she has just been a champion that runs over games whenever her first clear is too good. So I'm very happy about this. She's a middle of the road jungler still. She's a very high skill floor jungler. So I don't know that she's ever going to be godly unless she's Actually overpowered. [00:10:33] Speaker B: One of the biggest problems with her is always been she is one of the true kite junglers. And the true kite junglers require excellent timing, not the like. [00:10:45] Speaker A: So now, because they changed, they changed the rules around junglers, where having a jungle pet means you take half damage now from camp. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Not by terms of damage, by terms of clear. To optimize her clear speed, you are running away significantly earlier than other champions are. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Yep. She's like Brand in that regard. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Bran. Her briar is another one, actually. [00:11:10] Speaker A: Yep. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Although Briar can just blow shit up now. [00:11:12] Speaker A: And Lilia, Briar also often can't run away because of the way your spells combo. [00:11:18] Speaker B: But Lilia, Lilia has been one of those where she's been nerfed significantly before. So many times that how she had to do her run to drastically gated the ability for her to continue moving forward. [00:11:32] Speaker A: Yep. So, speaking of nerfed significantly so many times, why don't you talk about our favorite 46% win rate mid laner who got a nerf from 47% or 48% down to 46 this patch? [00:11:48] Speaker B: I can only assume you're talking about Mel specifically. Yes, because I doubt the other one is that high. Also. It's not a nerf. [00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:58] Speaker B: But continuing on. So Mel has problems and she always will as long as they keep her in this design space. They've been talking about how she's hitting a little bit too hard with her Q missiles. And you know your Q does a lot of goddamn damage. So they're nerfing the base scaling damage and its AP ratio. So level one, it's still the same, but it has a lower AP ratio. And then they've reduced the cooldown across the board on your W. And the movement speed duration. [00:12:33] Speaker A: Yep. [00:12:34] Speaker B: It's less than a second of movement speed. Yep. [00:12:37] Speaker A: It might as well not have movement speed at this point. [00:12:39] Speaker B: This ability is a gutted shell of what it was. I'm. I'm so annoyed at how they've treated Mel consistently over and over and over as one of the champions. I loved playing and I want to [00:12:56] Speaker A: drive this home this year. In 2026. She has never been better than the 47th best mid laner in terms of win rate. That's how bad she is. She went from 48% to 46% with this change because she's fucking garbage. But she frustrates people so badly. She's the highest frustration mid laner, beating out stalwarts like Zedd and Yasuo, who have literally Been the highest frustration mid laners for 15 years. She's more frustrating than them while having shit win rates. She needs a redesign. [00:13:39] Speaker B: Yes. And that's. That's explicitly there. Like the redesign needs to happen with her. They the only ability I 100% think they need to revert back to a way it was was her cue. Her Q needs to go back to its initial length, design speed. Because that that area was where it was best. It was dodgeable back then. It had a lot of movement things it didn't hit. Like this goddamn truck it does right now, which people are really frustrated about. And then retool other things. Tweak, move, shift, whatever you need to. I think her Q is pretty much like her basic ability that should remain the same. That like Mundo has always had a cleaver. When you reworked Mundo, Mundo still had his cleaver and the other piece of icon. She needs to have her reflect in some manner. We both think it should be an alt, maybe or at least fundamentally change the design on what W is. Yeah, but give her her proper true reflect back would be nice. [00:14:43] Speaker A: All right, so I'm gonna take a quick one. Then I'm gonna talk about some Z champions. And by that I mean both Zilean and Zyra got the exact same change. They are making it so both champions cannot level up W at level one. This is because W is a useless ability on both Zyra and Zilean if you do not have other spells. So leveling up W at level one meant all you could do was auto attack at level one. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Inverse Azir. [00:15:11] Speaker A: Yeah, instead of forcing a specific skill, they're forcing you to pick any other skill, just not that one. Because that one relies on other skills. I actually didn't know Zilean was still allowed to level up. Rewind. I thought this happened years ago. [00:15:24] Speaker B: There's a niche. I don't understand why Zyra would pick her up flowers first. Because they grant vision. There's a niche possibility that you may once in a blue moon, want to bait someone in with that. But then you're losing all your damage. So unless you're doing a five man stack trying to bait people in, it was worthless. This is a positive change. [00:15:46] Speaker A: All right. Speaking of positive changes, how about the other mage you've got in your list? [00:15:51] Speaker B: Speaking of positive changes. So Hwei is getting a nice healthy combo of buffs. All to do with his passive. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Well, buffs and one Nerf. But the nerf is a bug. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Nerf is a bug fix. So eh. Right. Hwei's passive if you don't know functions when two of your abilities hit the same target. So you have to prime it with either an E and a Q or wq, whatever. Two of your abilities hit the same target. One hits it, it primes it, the other pops it, and then you form a circle on the ground and it explodes. The base damage from this is now going up across all ranks, and that's just good. And the other portion, this has a slow. It's now comboing his other slows like other things do to stack with diminishing returns. So you can that. I'm gonna rephrase that. It is doing things that are different than others. Usually, slows override for whatever. The highest is is the most potent. And that's how that works. Because Hui is applying slows from his own passive abilities. They're allowing them to stack multiplicatively. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Not multiplicatively additively, but they're multiplicatively with each other. So if you're slowing by, let's say 20 and 20, you have a 36 slow. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Yes, I do mean multiplicatively. So you have a slightly better slow, but it is a diminishing value. Obviously, as you get more values of slow, it's not going to continue to go up to 100%. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:27] Speaker B: But as the change for that one, your damaging abilities cannot stack with slows from other champions and items. But that's good because that's how all slows work normally. [00:17:39] Speaker A: Yep. That's supposed to be how it works. [00:17:43] Speaker B: So they've decided it's weird that they [00:17:44] Speaker A: stacked with other sources before. They weren't supposed to, but they did. [00:17:49] Speaker B: So this is like a. Hey, this was a really cool and interesting thing that he did. But it's weird that he does it with everything. So let's make it with his stuff specifically. And he is the combo master. You have 18 spells, essentially 19, no less 10. Well, each. [00:18:08] Speaker A: He has 10 spells. [00:18:10] Speaker B: It's exactly 10. I said way too many. [00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:13] Speaker B: I don't know why I was thinking that each of them had four, but then that would still have been the wrong number. He's. He's the most like one of the highest base knowledge champions to understand and play. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Yep. [00:18:24] Speaker B: And now this is another basically knowledge. [00:18:26] Speaker A: Basically, the. The way hwei slows work now should feel better to use as hwei in a more intuitive way, because it feels weird when your champion has multiple ways to apply a slow, but they don't stack. That's weird. There's all. There's very few Champions in the entire game that have multiple slopes for this very reason. Hwei was one of them. So I. I much prefer the just let them stack with diminishing returns and then they also fixed stacking with everyone else because like Hui with an ash was a nightmare before because ash would slow you and then Hui would throw the fissure down and you couldn't escape it because the slows stacked. [00:19:06] Speaker B: Now the thing that makes this like a very, very positive buff is ways passive pretty much only works on Champions, so. And I think Epic Monsters, I don't [00:19:19] Speaker A: even think it works on those. [00:19:20] Speaker B: It may not. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Isn't it literally just champions? [00:19:22] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure it's just champions, but it's not something that is common enough. I don't sit there on Epic Monsters and cast with Wei. I throw a fissure down and walk away. [00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:32] Speaker B: Because Hwei does not do damage to Epic monsters like at all. He is better off harassing other people. So realistically like hey, they're giving you more power to fight more champions whilst not making it so that you are too strong versus the world at large. [00:19:51] Speaker A: Yep. [00:19:52] Speaker B: I should play Hoi again. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Yes, you should play is good. Huei is fun. Speaking of good and fun, Dr. Mundo is having a little bit too much fun because they have nerfed jungle Dr. Mundo where he bypasses his early game weakness. They've reduced the monster damage cap on his Q which his Q does a tremendous amount of percent current health damage. So this cap is basically. You're always hitting it on almost every monster on the first cast. [00:20:23] Speaker B: I think we should like talk about this number versus Lee's number real quick because holy fuck the difference. [00:20:30] Speaker A: Yes. So Mundo's Q now the nerfed version has a cap of 250 to 550 damage per cast based on rank as opposed to Lillia whose cap was 65 per second. It lasts three seconds. So that's 195 damage. And whose cap is now 180, which would be still less than a mundo cleaver. That's what, 540? Yeah, 540 damage. [00:21:01] Speaker B: And by the time you're at over 39 of this, it's a three second cooldown essentially. [00:21:07] Speaker A: So that's why it's a good comparison because he can do a cleaver as often as she can deal damage from her passive essentially. But this should significantly slow down his early clear. Especially because when you hit for 60 damage on an auto attack, having a 300 damage spell on your first cast is kind of crazy on your Buff. But then also on top of that, they're nerfing the monster damage on his Q. On his E, it has a cap for how much damage it's allowed to do to monsters. And that monster damage cap has been lowered from double damage down to 140%. So you're just not doing as much damage in your clear. And Mundo will have a slower clear because of it. And this is fine. Mundo is supposed to be weak early scaling into a nightmare juggernaut that everyone has to focus fire down because otherwise he kills your backline. Jungle gives him a free pass through that weak part in most cases. So he should not be a premier jungler. Because anytime someone who has an early game weakness and bypasses it by changing roles, they're a problem. They need to do this for Nasus and a couple other champs too. [00:22:27] Speaker B: The reason why it works like Nasus is required to Q farm and you can't speed up Q farming realistically. You got to get the kills on them. So Nasus has a artificially slowed down clear if you desire Q farming. So that's. That's a great way of having a champion who has the potential for a really fast clear to not overpower themselves because, well, you can't if you want to effectively power up. [00:22:58] Speaker A: Yes, but I was referring to Nasus bypassing his early game weakness by being a jungler. [00:23:03] Speaker B: Yes, you do bypass the man. I don't survive in lane versus most things. [00:23:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Champions like that should be weaker junglers to compensate. [00:23:15] Speaker B: Which is why Nasus is a good agreement. Because he is a weaker jungler. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Yes. Okay, let's answer some listener questions. We've got, of course, Reigns has written in. We've got a set of questions. He writes. Hi Wards. Due to my slump, I've had to reevaluate what exactly I want from the game and how to get it. Honestly, just looking for some feedback and thoughts. One norm's grinding 50 games on one champion. Trialing and learning different item builds and runes. Practicing matchups. Is this the most efficient way to get champion mastery? Are there any better methods? Add in VOD reviews of high ELO on that player versus specific matchups you struggle against. [00:23:54] Speaker B: We're talking about not like getting the mastery points because the system is not relevant to what we're talking about. We're talking about actual champion efficiency as a player. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:24:06] Speaker B: Yes to the actual VOD review things. I think if you want to understand what you are capable of, that is where looking at those things is great because it will give you aspirations. These Are things that I can do that I didn't know I could? That's what you learn from watching high level matchups. They don't give you technical proficiency. They give you more mechanical understanding. Which means you still need to put the games in. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Let me give you a perfect example. I've been playing a lot of Brand Jungle the past few days. I've been enjoying it a lot. I've been winning a lot. I have like a 2/3 win rate out of 15 games in the last week. When I first played it I did the thing you're supposed to do on Brand Jungle. I start Q. I would cast it on Cooldown when I got my W. I would cast Q, wait until the debuff had nearly expired and then cast W to maximize the amount of burn time I had. Because that's the way you brand jungle. Early I noticed on like my third clear. My third. My third game that I was barely missing being able to Q W and then Q again on the second camp and get a three stack proc of my brand passive. So I went and changed my runes. I took the ability haste rune instead. And suddenly as long as I timed my spells correctly which then took me a couple more games of practice to get down the timing. I could three stack on that second and third camp and get a much faster clear. That's the kind of things you can build up through playing over and over. I could have skipped those first several games into figuring it out if I had just gone and watched a branch jungler explaining how to do the clear. [00:25:51] Speaker B: That is another one of those things that that is actually a good thing to look at. Runes and masteries if you are not intimately familiar with the systems and how they work with your champions are things that you want to get information from other people about. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Yes. Because like I'm the type of person I was able to like trial and error and figure that out and improve it myself. If you're not a like theory crafting puzzling sort of person. Find someone who is for your champion and learn from them. Use them. All right. Question two for Champion Pool. Is it as simple as main your mains counter and an alternate should they have a similar playstyle? So I'm thinking Garen Nasus and Olaf or something along those lines. Which doesn't necessarily follow the your mains counter but does have a very similar style and that they just want to run up and bonk. It doesn't have to be that simple. But main counter pick if your main gets picked away and a third choice in specific situations is a general good rule of thumb. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So main's counter. If your main is stolen from you is a harder thing because usually the ban is also what you what you really take with your counter. And if someone is taking your champion a lot of the time they're also banning the big counters. So you need to have like a statistical understanding of well, if I'm not getting this champion and I'm not getting the ban the counter, what else am I going to be able to play into this? So you don't necessarily want to look at the main counter. You want to look at other things that work well against it. And then an alternate is also another. Like that's perfectly fine. That's a great way to have a basic simple champion pool that I am completely incapable of following because I just. I like playing too many things. [00:27:38] Speaker A: Same. We'll see if my my brand Spam winds up surpassing my my Shyvana. But it's risen up there. He's now my fourth most played this season. Slowly fixing my win rate. But I say fourth most played. I've played 15 games of him out of 200 games this season. Which should tell you how bad my champion switching is. Don't. Don't be like me guys. Please pick a smaller champion pool. I absolutely inhibit as much as I talk about my curse and I am absolutely cursed when it comes to matchmaking. I also inhibit my own win rate by playing too many champions. There is both things can be true at the same time. [00:28:16] Speaker B: There is a smaller possibility he may have been able to if he stuck to a smaller champion pool. Actually just skill his way out of several of those matchups. Yeah. Some of them only some of them. It's truly incredible how cursed. [00:28:31] Speaker A: Yep. Alright. So speaking of being cursed, question three from Reigns is slump recovery. My slump has been going on for two of the three months of this season. What changes should I be looking at to improve if champion mastery comes? But the slumps is still present. So bear in mind Reigns, we don't know the specific cause of why you're slumping, but I would recommend just take a break from league for a short while. Doesn't have to be long, just a couple weeks. Play something else so that when you come back to league you're able to come back with a fresh mindset. [00:29:03] Speaker B: So another part of what you're talking about is essentially you feel that your MMR has placed you into a situation that you are not at the level of. Is one of the things that sounds like there. Yeah, that happens when you get too efficient, too good at certain places. If you get a lot of wins in a row, you're going to start hitting a wall if you aren't actively at skill up. So those walls are to prevent you from astronomically climbing. But the. They allow people who are actually incredibly skilled to not sit there crushing low ranked people in. In smaller things. So as much as it really sucks to occasionally face those players, that needs to happen in order to properly get Smurfs out of the ranks that they shouldn't be in. [00:29:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:29:57] Speaker B: And this, this is. So this is like testing how you ver against other people once you start hitting those and. And it sounds like it was a bad time. You're not going to see it commonly. It'll be maybe once or twice a month. [00:30:12] Speaker A: All right. We've got a really quick question from Toast which I think kind of ties to what we were just talking about for Reigns. So we're gonna go with this next. He asks is it smart to make a new account for playing different roles [00:30:25] Speaker B: Unless you are incred. Like this is. You have to be fundamentally really good at one role to the point of soaring through ranks into like at least where we are always talking about Plat Emerald Diamond. [00:30:45] Speaker A: If you're legit like an Emerald Mage player but you can't play bruisers to save your life and you want to play top Lane, Darius and Garen type stuff in ranked and you're getting beat on by Gold players because you're not good at it yet. That would be an appropriate use of playing a separate account. That is about it. That's the only time if you're like well I'm. I'm gold at my main role and like silver at everything else. [00:31:13] Speaker B: I wouldn't even even like gold to iron isn't such a huge difference mechanically anymore. It's usually a huge difference knowledge wise. [00:31:24] Speaker A: I was going to say I don't know about gold to iron. Iron is. [00:31:29] Speaker B: Iron covers a large threshold. [00:31:31] Speaker A: You're right. [00:31:31] Speaker B: It's. It's over. [00:31:32] Speaker A: Iron is a special place. But like gold to bronze is really not that mechanically different anymore. [00:31:38] Speaker B: Yeah, we. We. I can't. It's hard to say iron. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Thank you. Iron. [00:31:42] Speaker B: Iron is such a huge difference between the low end and the top end. Because I believe iron covers quite literally 50% of ranked. [00:31:51] Speaker A: Something like that. We appreciate iron existing because people who are genuinely that bad at League of Legends used to be just put into Bronze games because MMR didn't go that low. [00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:04] Speaker A: And it meant that bronze was a nightmare. A Miserable hellhole. Because this actual true skill disparities were way too high. [00:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Bronze. Bronze plays quite literally 60 to 70% of the player base. Yep. [00:32:19] Speaker A: And you can't put that many players together and have matchmaking work. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah. You can't have that. There's a reason why there for all of us who are old enough, we still occasionally call things wood league. [00:32:29] Speaker A: Yep. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Because there's no other explanation. We didn't have iron. We didn't think in terms like that. [00:32:35] Speaker A: Yeah, we're really thankful for it. The biggest difference between bronze and gold frankly is knowledge and understanding to execute on that knowledge in the moment. [00:32:48] Speaker B: And that knowledge can be across many different things. It could be team fighting, it could be positioning in team fights. It could be. It could be just laning, phase laning, etc. Each of these things has a non mechanical advantage that can drastically increase you across. [00:33:08] Speaker A: And I mean like. Yeah, there's also mechanical differences. I can usually hands check a bronze player. But the key there is usually I can always hands check an iron player. I cannot always hands check a bronze player. And I'm gold. Usually plat. Occasionally emerald. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I sit in that. That gold plat area usually where I when I bother to do ranked. [00:33:32] Speaker A: So I would say I would not recommend making a new account unless you are in the extremely niche situation of wildly better at one thing than everything else. [00:33:42] Speaker B: There is a second reason to make a new account and this is explicitly. I don't want to negatively impact my friends because I am a person who is so far beyond. Most of us aren't going to be in this place. Let's be clear about this. I don't want to negatively impact my friends who are new to this game who want to play with me. And this isn't even just for. [00:34:07] Speaker A: Here's the actual answer though, Mike. You're better off playing on your real account than playing on a Smurf account in those situations. Because if you as a genuinely good League of Legends player play on a Smurf account, Riot will flag your account as a Smurf account. [00:34:22] Speaker B: I am not talking about ranked. [00:34:24] Speaker A: I know they will find other Smurfs in norms and match your friends who are new to the game against a Smurf in their lane. It is a miserable loss. [00:34:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that could happen too. [00:34:35] Speaker A: Please do not ruin your newbie friend's experience with League of Legends by playing on a Smurf account. [00:34:40] Speaker B: You have to make teams who make more action over and over and over again to do this properly. [00:34:44] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Just play on your main so Riot is going to match you against other teams with a high skill player playing with their bad friends. And then if you're not the one matched against the high skill player, well, you get to beat on some bad player and then use your lead to go fight their high skill player so that he's not beating on your friends anymore. All right, how about some smolder questions from Reigns? He writes, why should you go crit build versus Bruiser build? [00:35:14] Speaker B: You should never go bruiser build. [00:35:17] Speaker A: Disagree. [00:35:17] Speaker B: There's. There's a reason why I say this. Specifically. You have one option to do damage and that is go crit. If you are actually trying to do your best in doing damage, crit scales so much more. And then you have certain items that you take and you put in. You never go full bruiser. [00:35:38] Speaker A: I'll rephrase that to state I still disagree. And here's why. The only reason to go bruiser is if the enemy team is assassin heavy. Not dive heavy. Assassin heavy. If they have a talon and a Zed, like one of them's a Jungler or something like that, or they've got LeBlanc with a kha' Zix jungle. Going Bruiser increases the likelihood of you being able to apply damage at all. Because if you're not going Bruiser, you are deleted from the map without ever hitting a spell. [00:36:13] Speaker B: I don't usually have that issue. Admittedly, most of the time I don't see Double Assassin and it's rare to see that. And Smolder is surprisingly tanky and surprisingly good at getting away from an initial like burst setup. As long as they don't CC him out and you have a very long range of engagement. Yep. [00:36:35] Speaker A: So that's why I give the examples of Double Assassin. [00:36:38] Speaker B: It. It is something that I think is so niche as to not be relevant. And realistically, I think you can get there with the crit build and then having one Bruiser item in there. I don't think you need to go [00:36:49] Speaker A: full bruiser in most situations. I think you are better off going the crit build and just literally go shield bow. Second, if you're against an assassin 100 [00:36:58] Speaker B: shield bow and then like probably essence [00:37:00] Speaker A: river shield bow and you're good. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Yeah. The. The. [00:37:04] Speaker A: The Edge case would be. Like I said, if there's multiple assassins going like Trinity Force, Shojin lets you exist in the game. [00:37:11] Speaker B: I have my. My reason to do it. And it is if there are two assassins of different damage types. [00:37:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree with that. [00:37:20] Speaker B: If it's. If it's one or the other you can actively itemize with your spare item because most of the time as a smolder, you are an AD carry, which means you get two non crit items. [00:37:32] Speaker A: And smolder also does not have to go 100 crit the way other crit ad carries. He's fine with 75, so he can [00:37:38] Speaker B: go three, but usually he wants to go four because it's going to be essence reaver plus, specifically this, the shield bow in this case. And you want your eye edge and you want your armor shred. And so all four of those are going to force you to go crit. Now you can replace. [00:37:53] Speaker A: You often can skip the armor shred. You can often skip the armor shred against double assassin teams because they often have zero tanks. [00:38:01] Speaker B: Also possibly true. Yeah. But like this is. This is a such a niche scenario we're talking about. [00:38:08] Speaker A: Yep. [00:38:08] Speaker B: That I don't think it's a relevant one for most people we're talking about. And it has. Because I think it has to be [00:38:15] Speaker A: as a mid smolder probably where you get the, the extra levels from being in a solo lane. And your stacks aren't quite as high anyway because the, the, the crazy crit scaling is on the. The stack damage. Your, your Q does bonus damage based on your stacks. And then that scales with crit, which creates this like exponential effect where the more crit you have, the more damp bonus damage you apply from your passive. It's very weird. [00:38:43] Speaker B: Yes. Which, which is why, like, if you want to do damage, meaningful damage, you have to go crit. And talking about smaller Q stacks, there is no proper direct timing per number to number to number because it's generally speaking about a set amount of waves. And then based on your position, you will have a slightly different active timing for specifically 225. The others don't matter as much because your first one you're getting to 25. You need to get that as soon as possible. And that is get as soon as possible. [00:39:23] Speaker A: But also there's nothing you can really do in items or rooms to realistically speed that up. It's just laning phase prowess, proccing your [00:39:30] Speaker B: Q almost on cooldown to try and either hit an enemy champion or get a kill. [00:39:35] Speaker A: Yep. [00:39:35] Speaker B: And if you can't, then you can't. And then your 225. A good thumb is about 20 minutes. That is a good stack speed. Great stack speeds can get it in under 18 or so. If you're facing specific people, you can get it in a much faster One I'm talking about. [00:39:55] Speaker A: I have literally seen you against Amalzahar hit 225 before Rift Herald spawned. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Yes. So there are. There are scenarios in which you can absolutely scale out the ass because people give you extra. [00:40:09] Speaker A: Incidentally, if you're playing something that generates extra minions, such as Malzahar, that Smolder can stack off of, maybe just don't press that button unless it's for a kill. Yeah, like you press it when you're going to Ult him. That's it. [00:40:25] Speaker B: But like, okay, so. So realistically it's 225 at about 20 minutes and then get your Q225 as soon as possible. Those are your rough ideas. [00:40:35] Speaker A: So I hadn't actually asked the general stack timings question that he has in here yet. But you've answered it, so we're gonna move on to his last question. Is Smolder as good at solo laning as he is in bot carry paired in lane with a support. Why or why not? Other than laning against specifically Malzahar, because of his giga stacking potential, he's generally worse in a solo lane than he is in bot lane because there's less targets to hit. So therefore less average stacks gained. [00:41:01] Speaker B: I have two other scenarios in which he's a good solo laner. The main one is when they have something that is usually counter to like a mage. So something like Galio. Smulder is great in things like Galio because he has mobility to get around them. He can Q stack off of them with impunity. And by the time you're getting Q stacks with impunity, you're also farming for free. [00:41:27] Speaker A: So now, that being said, I don't know that he's actually better than he is in bot, but he's perfectly fine. [00:41:33] Speaker B: He's not better than than he is in bot like he is with Malahar. Malahar is just better than than anything else you can get. And the other scenario is is realistically into a hard tank that doesn't have point and click cc. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Yep, there's very few of those. But like a sion, for example, what's he gonna do other than let you stack? How does he stop you from stacking Sion? [00:41:58] Speaker B: The worst of that bunch is probably Malphite, because click boom. [00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah, he presses R once he's level six and you lose all of your hp. Especially if he's got his friends nearby [00:42:08] Speaker B: or you flash and like, that's it. [00:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I would argue Malphite Ult is basically a point and click. Functionality wise, the enemy has to flash it or they get hit in almost all cases. Alright, let's get one more. We got one more question. This one's from Toast. Toast writes, how do you get better at kiting jungle camps? How do you know how early you can start kiting it out of its range on the way to the next camp and still kill it in time before it resets? And how do you kite so you take less damage during the clear. [00:42:42] Speaker B: So the damage, the damage portion is a very different thing nowadays and almost no champions need to deal with it. [00:42:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Because of the changes they made to jungle. I believe at the start of this season junglers just take half damage from non epic monsters now. So you just, you really don't need to even like Kindred and Lilia who should. You're going to be perfectly healthy in even if you don't and you get a heal based on missing health from every camp you kill. So you're never going to get too low. Regardless. [00:43:12] Speaker B: The reason to kite explicitly is if you are scared of getting invaded. [00:43:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:18] Speaker B: Or if you intend to be like, I know we fought on the same spot. We're going to reach that crab at about the same time. I need extra health for that fight. That is the reason to try and kite if you're not in those scenarios. Usually not relevant. The other portion of this however, the. The jungle kiting portion to get the kills. To be honest, there's. There's only two answers to this. There is. You have to be counting numbers and understand explicitly. I see that at X health. All right. I've got Y amount of time before this because you know the number by heart or so play it until you know the feel. [00:43:58] Speaker A: And I'm gonna give an example since I've been playing a lot of brand lately and brand is one of the best. Like learn to abuse the patience timer to let things tick down champions in the game. When I'm doing my first couple clears, I'm literally looking at the actual damage numbers that are ticking. By the way, if you have those turned off, turn them on so you can see them. So I'm seeing, oh, my pet is hitting for 18 damage or whatever. My, my dot is ticking for 30 damage on this camp per tick. Whatever the numbers are, I'm. I'm making numbers up. I don't remember them off the top of my head. So I'm going, okay, I know that I get four seconds of my brand burn. I know that that means four seconds of my jungle pet hitting the thing and that burn. And that's roughly how long the patience bar will last before the monster resets. This, the reason I say roughly is that the farther away from a camp you kite a monster, the faster their patience depletes. So it's not a hard and fast number. So I'm looking at it going, okay, I'm doing let's say 100 DPS while I'm auto attacking, or maybe 150 with a burn going, okay, so when it gets down to like 300 health, am I good to walk away? Well, how much am I doing if I'm not auto attacking? Like 60 DPS? Probably not, but I'm probably good to walk away at 200 as long as there's a fresh burn on the target at 200. And that's the kind of mental math I'm doing as I look at the camps and look at the numbers. And that's how I know when I can transition. On Brand from time your spells to maximize uptime on the burn, to spam all your spells to get a 3 proc and then walk the fuck away. Because he eventually hits that point where you literally just cast three spells and walk away and the camp will die before it leashes. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. This is, this is a lot of [00:45:49] Speaker A: it is just practice. [00:45:50] Speaker B: This is the primary initial camp skill. Your initial clear. This is where the initial amount of skill as a jungler really shows. [00:46:02] Speaker A: If you are not making a six clear into Scuttle crab when it spawns, this is something you should be working on getting better at. This is like the number one thing that helps a jungler successfully do that. And remember, for example, on brand, I'm usually arriving at the Scuttle crab about as it's popping up because I've gotten pretty good at that. Another champion amumu who has, yes, extra [00:46:30] Speaker B: dot damage as he's walking, which means he's always resetting this as long as it's keeping up with him. So like, you have to actively change this number based on what you're playing, which means unless you are like Jax and I psychotic, you need to actively thin a champion pool, especially in jungle, so that you can actively maximize this. [00:46:55] Speaker A: Also, just since we're talking about kiting jungle camps and letting them tick down, a reminder. Your jungle pet cannot last hit epic monsters. You cannot leave Dragon or Green Gromp or not Gromp Grubs or Rift Herald or Baron or any of those at 1 GP and let your pet finish it off. You must deal damage yourself to deal the killing blow. If you have got champions like Brand, that's a lot less of a bar to reach. But for a lot of junglers who don't have that but do still kite camps because of their pet, you need to be mindful of that and make sure that you are actually last hitting them, even if you don't have smite and you the enemy team's been aced. I have definitely accidentally let a dragon reset because of that. Because I forgot about it when it first came in. [00:47:43] Speaker B: Yeah. These are important things to remember and they will make or break your ability to actively clear. Like quickly clear. [00:47:53] Speaker A: Yep. [00:47:54] Speaker B: Admittedly, if you don't want to have to deal with any of this bullshit math, you can just take Lucian into the top lane. You don't need to think. You just win. [00:48:02] Speaker A: There you go. All right, guys, this has been episode 527 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for Micah Many names. Have a great night. [00:48:12] Speaker B: Good night, everybody. [00:48:14] 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 fourwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.