[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz and you're listening to the Four Wards podcast. Here to help you move forward in league.
Hello and welcome to episode 531 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me it's a two man show this week guys. We've just got Micah many names as my co host tonight.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Who did you expect it to be? It was obviously me.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Are you Dio in disguise?
[00:00:54] Speaker A: It was me, Dio. I hate that show.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: He just hates that I'm the one making the JoJo reference because I don't like JoJo and he knows it.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: I also don't like JoJo.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Alright guys, we are the 4 Wards podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come yell at me and tell me I'm wrong for disliking JoJo's bizarre adventure. We have an anime channel literally for that.
We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman where I finished Illusion of Gaia and will be starting Terranigma probably later this week.
So that'll be fun. In addition to you know the usual Super Metroid in League of Legends and Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames where we're gonna bully him into streaming something soon. Yeah, something and Pillow can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet when work is not making his life hell. Guys, I want to give a shout out to our patrons. Shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow, Pet, Scipius, Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the dab for supporting us at the shoutout tier on Patreon.
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Alright, that being said, thankfully it's a patch week this week, so we have stuff to talk about.
So I'm gonna kick it off with a nerf that I think does not go far enough to fix the problem. Ash got some changes this patch because it turns out Ashe is overpowered as fuck.
And Riot recognizes that an incredibly high utility AD carry like Ashe should not also be the highest DPS ADC in the game. Cause she was definitely both.
She's still pretty close to the best at both as it is because all they did is they nerfed the later ranks of her Q's AD ratio now at max rank instead of 140% of your AD as the attack damage, it's 130%.
She's still a hypercarry with both percent AD scaling on the Q and attack speed on the Q. So it is an incredible steroid.
And the key problem here is that she's allowed to do that while also providing a hard stun. And the crit version of her slow is such a potent slow that it effectively neutralizes any champion that doesn't have dashes.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: The the theory about this like is that all her power being gated within her Q, if you jump on her while she doesn't have Q prepared, you have a significant advantage over her.
That yeah, doesn't really happen reasonably almost ever unless you're getting a gank off. If you're like talking about any time your fights are happening, unless she has been segregated from the fight for like 10 seconds, you should expect it to be up. We saw Ash out duel assassins that got her alone multiple times.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: And the reason for that is when she crits her slow will slow her target for over 50%. She builds crit in her build and an over 50% slow in league of Legends that can be applied indefinitely because as long as she's hitting you, it will continue to happen at two items. 50% crit. She has to auto you twice every two seconds to maintain a 50% slow on you. Means without a dash you cannot escape or catch her. You have to be able to break. So where she can't auto attack you for two seconds to be able to close the gap or extend the gap.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah, this is, this is where one half of that was a problem. The other half of that was LeBlanc got on top of her and she just beat Her?
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Yep.
So, yeah, she got a Nerf. I don't think it goes far enough. I think they need to remove the crit slow entirely or cut both versions in half and make the normal slow what the crit slow does so. So that she's actually able to be fought back against.
And then also keep this damage nerf because her damage is still quite high after this change. It was busted as fuck before this change.
All right, Mike, Speaking of high damage.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Speaking of high damage, Naafiri took some Nerfs here. And Naafiri probably was the strongest assassin in the game, and she might still be, but that's more of the point of most other assassins aren't exactly super strong. And Nefiri's nerfs aren't enough to make her, like, bad. In fact, I've played her since them, and she still feels fine to play, which is the main point of this. I think she took mostly Q damage nerfs, and it's a scaling damage nerf. The bonus ratios are the same. The base damage went down 10, so 20 at max, because you get two daggers, not a big deal, but enough to be a, like, noticeable. If you don't have items yet, you have a chance of fighting her nerf and then the. The real Nerf with her R. Like, this is a significant base damage nerf.
So there's two parts to this.
The damage ratio here, there's her damage and there's every dog's damage. And considering she gains dogs throughout the time, this can end up being like, the bonus damage is almost as much or more than her base damage based on how many dogs there are. It's never more than. Because she doesn't have 10 dogs. Thinking about that, the second half is just one tenth of the base up to and including the ratio. So the main damage got nerfed by 50 at the final rank. Her base damage beginning just fine. So realistically, what they're saying is her R did too much damage late game, and her Q did too much damage early mid game. And realistically, yeah, yeah, this was true. So the. The touch nerf is definitely like, people have gotten away from me since then with. With my R that wouldn't have before.
And I've lost a couple of fights where I would have won them with my Q before, but not to the point where like, oh man, that was the sliver of damage that would have won me the game.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: This is the kind of like, this champion needed a Nerf, needed a meaningful Nerf, but also did not need to be gutted out of existence.
So they actually gave it an appropriate nerf.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's a mild nerf to the main damage, and there's a big nerf to a specific thing that is a problem at a certain point in time, and they. They notice where it is and. And properly nerfed that.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: I'll be honest, I did not even know her R dealt damage based on packmates.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah. So like, initially, depending on whether or not you have the W going, you do actually get more damage out of your R because you have extra dogs. Would you do that? I think her cap is 7 or 9. I do not remember if they upped the. The number.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: So at level 15, if she has already precast a W, she will have seven. Pac Man.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Okay, so the. The max, she can have a 7. She has 5 baseline. Then by then 7 is like. You are doing almost as much damage with the packmates as you are with the base damage.
It's 70% of it. So, like that. That's a good chunk of extra damage that.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: I just had no idea they did damage.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah, most people don't.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: I knew the dots themselves did damage when they auto you. I just didn't know that they did damage when you cast the Ult.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: That's why it looks like it has such low base numbers.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: I. I wouldn't have called 120 bonus ad low in the first place.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: No, I mean, little. Like 150 plus 15.
Like, oh, no. You did a little amount of damage and then the dogs start attacking you.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I just didn't know. So now I know. All right, I want to talk about kind of a premier mid laner in organized in pro play, but has very much fallen by the wayside outside of it, which is Galio. Galio has gotten some tweaks this patch.
They have reduced the mana costs on his Q because it cost ridiculously high amounts of mana for a champion.
For a champion that doesn't really build mana. Now, that being said, I think his wave clear is way too high still. But that's because of his passive, not because of his Q.
Like Galio's passive is what makes his waveclear crazy. So they've knocked 10 mana off at all ranks on his Q.
They've also buffed the damage on his justice punch, which is the ability he uses to actually commit to a fight. This is where him doing lots of damage is appropriate.
Now, it's not a strict buff because at max rank, it is 10 less base damage. It's 10 more base damage at first rank, but the ratio has gone up. And since this is your second max, typically sometimes your third max, this is going to be a damage increase at almost all points in the game.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Is there a single build that builds no ap?
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I've played Pure Tank Galio. It's fine. But he's much better off his tank with a Rift Maker or tank with a Rod of Ages if that's appropriate for the game. Usually Riftmaker.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: So the. The last change Galio got and this is just straight up, this is a good change. It is strictly a buff. But also this is a change that should have happened a long time ago. Gallio's ultimate damage now scales with your Magic Resistance.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Specifically Bonus magic r magic Mr. Because he also has like the highest base Mr. In the game too.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: So to be clear, his passive and his W already scale with bonus Mr. This is just adding a similar bonus Mr. Ratio onto his Ult as well. So he is supposed to be the Anti Magic Tank. That is what his identity was always intended as in the first place.
So he gets to be that a little bit better. If you're picking Galio into Heavy AP feels better than before. And it already felt good.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah. He's. He's like one of the few melee fighters in mid who has zero issues dueling people twice as range. Yep.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Partially because he's usually building a Hollow Radiance first item. And they're mages that he's dueling who are ranged. But yeah. So I'm generally in favor of these path of these changes. Anything that does not skew Galio into going full AP again. Because that version of Galio was fucking awful. I'm happy about.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: There's a. There's a small chance that this skews two items because 100 AP ratio is not a small ratio. And I can see a second item ip.
Especially if that is a Banshees.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: He's supposed to be a Anti Magic Bruiser as well. So if he's going Mage Bruiser, I'm still fine with it. I just don't want. There was a version of Galio not that long ago where he was going full blower like Ludens Death Cap Shadow Flame type builds.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: I don't want that to ever come back. That's bad for the game. His damage should not be so high that it is worth building like that.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: And his inherent tankiness makes it to the point where he is still worthwhile to play there. Yeah.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Inherent tankiness and massive amounts of cc because he is a lot of CC in His kit.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Yeah, they did. They did a good job of not gutting that, but making it so that it's not reasonable to do. In fact, you are in most cases, better served building tankiness because of the scaling.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yep.
Especially since he gets Mr. Scaling on most of his kit now.
Okay, last galio changes, Mike, who do you want to talk about next?
[00:13:40] Speaker A: We're gonna just go alphabetically. So Quinn. Quinn's got an interesting set of changes because, well, they want to make her a jungler, so they added some things to her. Her passive harrier, which you can trigger and proc through a multiple of main manners, is getting bonus damage to monsters.
And her main like AoE damage. Her Q just does straight 50 increased damage to monsters.
That's her jungle buffs, because, yeah, that's really all she would need to jungle the blind functions enough like the healing within what's her name's Kit. Kindred's kit, and that it's enough that she's not taking the the amount of damage that others were because she is still squishier than most junglers. But the blind offsets that now so that she will take significantly reduced damage in comparison to. If you decided to put Ash in the jungle, which you could, but I wouldn't. And then as another straight buff to her across the board, now they're halving her mana costs on her ultimate. I mean, to the final one, which is still zero, but half of zero is still zero.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yep. Basically, top laners should be happy about this because it means if they need to go take a camp, they can do so better. And her ult being cheaper just means you don't render yourself ineffective by using your ULT a couple times to roam around the map.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: And honestly, I think. I think as a whole, she makes a pretty damn good jungler. She's very, very fast.
She has a decent to fairly powerful gank because her damage is very good.
Always was.
And I. I know she was made as a top laner, but I don't like her there in comparison. Like, she just sort of sits there and then runs away to cat claynes while the other top laner either shoves and wins or follows her with tp. This change, like, if someone picks a Quinn now, you don't automatically know they're playing top lane because there was never any Quinn adc. So it gives her, like, a variety and pick ban.
And honestly, like roaming as a jungler, she has speed.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Yep. Her ganks, obviously, she's nowhere near as tanky as Ramus, but her ganks are very Rammus esque. Once she's post six in that, even if you see her coming on a ward, you may not have time to react depending on what your position is when you see her.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And she's unlike a couple of the other people who are squishier junglers. She's not really bound to wait until 6. She. She has CC in the kit before that. She can't gank earlier.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: And do not underestimate the power three
[00:16:34] Speaker B: gank and maybe level two gank.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Do not underestimate the power of a blind. So I think. I think you should be expecting to see a couple of Quinn Jungles in your games now.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Now, you know who should underestimate the power of a blind because he's always blind is Lee Sin.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: He should be immune to blinds. That should just be part of him. Like there's. He's. He's literally blind. Why they should do nothing to it. It's.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Do you remember the. The April Fools champion spotlight for Lee Sin?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: The original one.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Where the whole screen was blurry.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: It was so funny.
Okay, so Lee Sin got some changes. This patch.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Oh my God. That's 2012.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's forever ago. So what they changed with Lee Sin. They've slightly nerfed the value on his safeguard shield and removed the cooldown on reduction on the shield. It used to get a longer cooldown if used on non champions and a short cooldown if used on champions. It now has a slightly longer than the short cooldown always.
And then he actually gains a shield if he jumps to a minion or ward is the big one. Previously, unless you were jumping to a champion, Lee Sin had to self cast it to gain a shield at all. He had to target himself or an allied champion to get a shield. Otherwise it was just mobility on a longer cooldown. So straight buff across the board. Except it's a 1 second nerf if you're jumping to a champion specifically, which I think is fine.
But that's not even all of the Lee Sin changes. They also did nerf the AD ratio on his E. That's the tempest where he slams the ground and does AoE damage. It's still 90% AD instead of 100 minor nerf. And then this is the big one. Lee Sin's Ult.
A champion's body will continue to fly, knock up and do damage even if killed mid flight. Now this one's a little weird, so I want to explain what that means.
If Lee Sin's Ult dealt The killing blow before their corpse would go flying and hit people and knock them up. That's how it used to work. What changed is previously if he Ults them and they start moving and then they are killed by him or one of his allies, their body would stop dead in its tracks.
Now if they die in flight, their corpse will continue on the full duration and knock people up. Which this is. It sounds really minor. It is a huge quality of life improvement for Lee Sin because it means that his Ult behaves consistently regardless of what his allies are doing. He is no longer punished by an ally killing the target he's trying to kick into his team, for example.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Or if he just miscalculates damage and kills you. Well.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: But if his Ult killed you before, it would knock your corpse and do this anyway. It was only the case of them dying after the Ult but while flying. That this changes.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: And that's why I think this is a strictly good change. Even though I hate Lee Sin. I want to be clear here. I fucking hate Lee Sin. I think this champion is incredibly bullshit. He's way too high burst damage for how safe he is. He builds way too much assassin items. He should straight up be banned from building lethality. Regardless of all of my personal feelings on this Champion abilities. Behaving consistently in situations regardless of what your teammate is doing is strictly good for the game. You should not be punished because your ally tried to kill the same target you did ever.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: The only person who should be punished is Draven.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: And even then like that's a different thing entirely because that's. He doesn't get the cash in if he doesn't deal the killing blow.
This is. There's several other abilities that are like this. Like Kain's Ult for example. If Kayn is in Red Kane and he Ults into someone to steal their life and his ally then blows up that someone before he can pop back out. He does not heal. It's incredibly punishing to Kane.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: The heal happens by your ally.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Second half on the first half.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Correct. By your ally killing that target before you can recast and pop out. They often will just straight up have killed you.
It's a miserable experience as Kayn. It's one of the reasons I think Red Kane is bad. Even though I love Kane. Kane is my highest mastery champion. This. I would put this change to Lee Sin's Ult in the same boat as making that more consistent of it now behaves the way you expect it to always.
This is good Even though. Fuck Lee Sin.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Lee Sin is one of those evergreen champions, but also he's one of the evergreen champions that exists because of the style, not because of consistency. So, like, Orion is an evergreen champion because it's very easy to balance her.
Not so much with Lee Sin.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Her kit is inherently, like, super balanced on a, like, mechanical level. So it's always just a numbers game with Orianna.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: And she has been, like, within meta, never the best for a decade plus. I don't think I've ever seen her completely fall out.
Lee Sin has remained in the meta a decade plus because they have to continuously buff him into it because he's really cool to watch people play.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: He's also one of the most popular champions in the game.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah, champions that give you really interesting. Not just skill expression, but, like flashy skill expression are super popular.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yep. That's why Yasuo is continuously popular, no matter how good or bad he actually is.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: And then Zed is always strong because Zed's real fucking flashy to play.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Faker. What was that?
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: All right, Mike, you got one more champion on your list. Talk to us about the baby dragon who could.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: The baby dragon who could. So this because of what the Nerf interaction is happening for.
This may not end up being a permanent nerf. I'm going to preface this off immediately explaining what happened and then what happened to his nerfs. There's an interaction between Deathfire Touch and Black Cleaver, which essentially, if you had anything that had that quick of an interaction for how many procs it does would instant proc. Death fire touch. So 1q, 4 ticks of deathfire Touch. That's Black Cleaver done.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: They plan on.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: He was fully stacking Black Cleaver off of every spell he cast, basically now,
[00:23:16] Speaker A: because they become his. His E remains a single target, his Q and his W.
One starts as and one becomes aoe.
They became the two second ones. But it's very easy to reapply and get the full four seconds out of it.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: And two seconds is still enough to fully stack Black Cleaver off of a
[00:23:35] Speaker A: single spell hit because of how many times Blackfire Touch does its damage. So it because of this, the more problematic of smolders builds became very popular again, despite the fact that it numerically is worse damage. It's faster to get more base damage cheaper if you go Black Cleaver plus Spirit, Shojin and a couple other things. It's a cheaper buy to a not remarkably lower damage going the proper Crit build and so.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: And also way tankier and way tankier.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Now it is a noticeable difference in damage. And they went, you know what, we need to make sure that as long as this is still a thing, he has been nerfed. So base ad took 2 off of it. That hurts any ad carry.
Base ad is a huge thing to understand in ad carries. That's a real problem. They took a good chunk of of the scaling damage on his Q and just decapitated the top end of it.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Yep. At max rank, he loses 20 damage
[00:24:50] Speaker A: per Q in compensation.
The crit bonus damage went up half of what it was, so it went from 50 to 75. And the I edge bonus also got stronger. So the multiplier that he had on his Q just bumped up for how it scales with crit. So if you were properly building crit, there is not even a nerf. This is just a straight buff.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: It's a straight buff at one item, basically. Well, it's neutral at one item if you're building crit. If you're not building crits in Earth.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: And this above past one item, this,
[00:25:27] Speaker A: this does hurt him before he finishes his first item, which is relevant because that's not finished till nine. So it's slight nerf, but then a buff.
He took AD ratio nerf, specifically bonus 80 ratio nerf on his W explosion damage only.
And they took off straight up 50 bonus like 50 damage across his alt and took 10 bonus 80 ratio off. Like they did a series of nerfs to him.
Because this other build is way too strong and tanky.
Now because they're breaking the interaction, they may end up reverting. Some of these they explicitly point out, hey, even with this, this nerf, we saw him continue to have number buffs with this. This entire interaction is going to be broken by next patch. So they're not going to do any more like stealth nerfs to him in the meantime because they know they're going to break the interaction.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Yep. For context, I looked at his trends.
Smulder has a 50% ban rate. This patch.
He has a 54.6% win rate globally in Emerald plus, which is absurd. And also he has a 24% pick rate. So he's in three quarters of games in either pick or ban.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Yeah, he has such good scaling. It's so hard to knock smolder down.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: And that's after these nerfs.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Yes, this is true. This is post nerf, which goes to show you. Now, admittedly, that's because this build is now catching on again.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Yes. And as that's why they are removing this interaction.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: As more and more people the. The interaction and the rage is still going up. And that's why they're not doing another mid Nerf. Because this is not sustainable. To keep nerfing a champion like this. Plus that interaction is just not healthy.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Yep.
Okay. We got two more things to talk about. I'm gonna yak at you for a moment about a couple of tweaks to runes. Storm Raiders Surge they apparently decided is too weak. Which kind of.
So they're buffing it. They're increasing the movement speed. It gives by 8% for melee and 6% for ranged. But they're also making Stormraider Surge last for four seconds instead of three. Serun is really, really fucking strong if you need mobility. But also can chunk someone for a quarter of their life.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Mm.
I think they did the wrong thing.
So they. They have to the right thing if they want this to be. I chunked you. Now I have a thing. I think they should have straight up double the move speed, half the duration.
Make it a massive movement speed buff for a second and a half.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: I strongly feel like if this rune is good, it just is op and shouldn't exist. Same was true with Phase Rush. I really wish they would just get rid of it.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Phase Rush, like this whole system is so powerful in its abuse cases because of the power of move speed, but more importantly the power of slow reduction.
Which it just. It makes it so that if you have a slow. But they can proc. Stormraider Surge. Who cares?
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Remember I was bitching about Ash. Stormraider Surge is actually the only real counter to Ash right now.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: All right. We got what? Well. Or Olaf. Olaf is a big counter to Ash.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Olaf is a very big counter to Ash.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: We got one other rune change that got changed. Deathfire Touch was actually hotfix nerfed from what we talked about on the last patch episode.
But even then it was still too strong. So they've nerfed it more.
Now the damage per second is 3 at level 1, scaling up to 12 instead of 4. So it lost a third a quarter of its damage at level one and scales up to be the same. Late game. Because late game it wasn't op. It was OP in the early to mid game.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: And if you could proc it good like brand.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: It was that strong.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: That's kind of what I wanted to talk about briefly is this means a significant reduction into the overall damage. You're going to take from eating a Malzahar, Space Aids or any spell from Brand.
This also will help keep it from becoming just the de facto default rune for most other champions.
I think those two are still going to wind up more or less hardbound to it. This rune is still good, to be clear. I think it's great on Smolder, it's great on Ezreal actually, and it's quite good on a lot of other champions. I've seen it used to good effect on Annie, which is not someone I would have thought of, but her bear applies it every second.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Her bear, her Q is a single target ability that you get the full four seconds on.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Yep. So like it's a good rune regardless, but this should hopefully take an edge off of the most abusive cases.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Does reflect damage count as AOE from her shield?
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Shield? I'm not sure what kind of damage it's flagged as because to be clear listeners, that's really the. The key on all of these kinds of things is it's whatever the damage is flagged as internally in their system. It might be single target, it might be proc damage. It says it's area damage according to the wiki. Wiki thinks it's just AoE damage. It applies a 2 second Deathfire Touch,
[00:31:01] Speaker A: which that's really, really potent.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: And considering it doesn't actually deal damage in an area, that's interesting that they flagged it that way.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: That's because multiple people can do it. Yeah.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: All right, Mike, let's finish out this patch. Talk about the interesting item changes.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's a slight nerf to Voltaic and there's a slight buff to Lich Bane. Not relevant.
Slightly relevant. Change the nerf buff. Not really buff, just straight minor nerf to the gluttonous creaves. Cost 1 up 50.
It takes 10 stacks now instead of 6 stacks to max it out. Yep. Same power.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: No longer slightly weaker. You no longer are just fully stacked off a single team fight.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Same power, slightly weaker cost. So.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: All right. I want to briefly talk about these boots though. Gluttonous Greaves I think are a fine item. They have their place. They're a snowbally type item, mostly for an archetype of champion who should be aiming to snowball. So it's fine. Immortal Path. The mid lane version of them is fucking overpowered and I think more people need to be considering it on champions they might not think of for this item. So the mid lane version of this item, in addition to the omnivamp that has been Nerfed this patch. If you're above half health, you do 5% more damage. If you're below half health, you get 15% more healing and shielding.
And shielding means that things like seraphs get 15% stronger.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Yes, it does mean if you are like a person who is building seraphs to survive, it is stronger if there. There are very few champions who build seraphs and want glutinous greaves. That's. That's not a full overlap.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: You played one today, and I criticized you for not picking this item up.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: I understand why you said it, but the raw damage increase of. Of the enhanced version of so listeners.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: For context, Mike played a game of Kassadin earlier. Kassadin, by the way, heals constantly from your Rod of Ages and has a shield on the seraph. So he benefits heavily from the second half of this.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: And his Q technically gives a shield, so that's technically increased on that.
Yes, but.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: But also just 5% more damage when you're at the start of fights. And assassinating people is also really good.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Is that better than the SORC boots giving the penetration?
Usually not quite. But it's close. It's disturbingly close. And that's why I wanted to briefly talk about these boots. Is mid laners really do get the best of all worlds with immortal path. You should strongly be considering mortal immortal path on any. Any mid laner with healing or shielding in their kit or itemization.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: I think straight up, like if. If you built Ionian boots before, why. Unless that was where all. Unless that was where your haste came from.
I feel like these heavily supplant powerful.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: These heavily supplant Zerker's greaves For the few champions who were building those and sorcerer boots on a lot of bruisery type champions like Sylas should be building these over sorcerer's boots every single time.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Also, I really want to call them Glutenous greaves, even though I know it's not.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Everyone does hail to the official unofficial name of them.
All right, Mike, we got a couple of starter items.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: Actual, actual other item changes to begin with. Both of the new Doran's items see some buffs. Both of them get one buff is massively meaningful. The Doran's bow went from 6 AD to 880.
That's straight up a 33% buff. That's big. The Doran's Helm went 110 health to 140 health.
Also like a quarter of a buff. It's Fairly big. It's about 30ish percent.
These are meaningfully large buffs that make it so that there are reasons to build them outside of the unique cases.
Now it's more of a choice.
There are still people who are skewed towards one or the other.
But like that's a meaningful amount of health. Now on the door and cell, that's a meaningful ad on the Doran spell.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Do you remember when we talked about these items being introduced two weeks ago? I basically said Doran's bow is a trap.
It's still dangerous to take it if you are at risk of being hundred to zeroed. However, with this extra ad on it, you are much more likely to be able to successfully trade against an opponent to where it is no longer a trap. It is sometimes correct. Yes, 2 AD really does make that much of a difference when compared to what Doran's blade gives.
Because remember this Item is also 400 gold, not 450. You get an extra potion. So if you are not going 100 to 0, this item also gives you an extra health potion and therefore is actually comparable.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Yes. And the Doran's Helm 30 health is a lot of health.
Yeah.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: When you only have 600, 700, it's
[00:36:16] Speaker A: a lot of early health and it's the one that gives you armor. And Mr. Actual tanks may want this if you have any. For any form of defense scaling, I think Doranselm is now your starter.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: If you're playing laning Ramus for some reason, maybe you're counter picking a top lane Yi. Or if you're playing Malphite or Galio who both have their respective stat as an offense and defense scaling simultaneously. Or K' Sante who just was already brokenly good with it on the previous version before it gained an extra 30 health should consider building Doran's helm. You still should not be building Doran's helm if you're playing like let's say for example Mai Top build a Dor.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Don't do it with your car.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: It's defensive. Yeah, yeah. Just build Doran's shield instead. It's better for that type of champion.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: But like the the Pure Tanks who have any form of armor and Mr. Scaling even if it's just multipliers. So you have.
Yeah.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: Aftershock users love this by the way.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Aftershock users fuck.
Big Ram dude.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Ornn.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: Ornn. There you are. Ornn actually wants this because he has multipliers in his kit.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: Sometimes it's worth considering. At least depending on the circumstance you're leaning into.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Now if you're getting this Into a lane that is just meant to poke you down. You're one of those tanks into, like, I don't know, a vein top, a quintop. This is not the correct answer. Yeah, you. You need the regen that Doran's shield gives you.
It is, however, an option now to actually take it in more than a few negligible cases. Same thing with Doran's bow.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Like, if you're building real options, if they make sense for the circumstances of the game now, whereas before, they were not real options, you were putting yourself at a disadvantage if you started them.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: As we were saying, people like Draven now actually could want Doran spell. It's. He's a bully to be inherently fighting you. He's got more attack speed now, so he's going to be getting more axes down on you. And it's got a good amount of ad things like that.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: All right, I think it's time for our trinket tip. And this one is not so much trinket tip for you guys, although I hope you find it useful. This is a trinket tip for me because I have a bad habit of whenever I start the game as a jungler with a warding totem, I continuously forget to switch it back to a sweeper.
So our trinket tip this week is a reminder. Unless you are hanging onto warding totem for a very specific purpose, junglers should generally be switching to sweeper. Remember to switch to sweeper at your earliest possible operation opportunity.
Because I literally spent more than half a game with a warding totem when I kept wanting to switch to sweeper, because I kept forgetting by the time I was actually at the fountain to actually make the switch.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Most of the time, Sweeper is correct. I end up on a lot of games where people don't fucking ward. So I keep my totem away longer than most do.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: And obviously, champions like Lee, Sin, and Jax have actual mechanical reasons to want to keep a warding totem.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: And then Nocturne, of course, obviously wants a blue totem. But outside of these people, you really should be switching to sweeper. Almost every other jungler should be switching to sweeper.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: And also, just if your intention is to switch to sweeper, don't forget to actually do it.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: True.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I have literally gone over half a game where I intended to switch to sweeper on first back and kept forgetting for half the goddamn game. If you've watched my stream, you've seen me as I make it out to my first camp after A reset going fuck. I was supposed to switch to Sweeper and then doing it again the next time and again the next time. So that's why this is our trinket tip.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: I've done this as the support who gets free fucking Wards. It really hurts.
Remember to switch to Sweeper.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: Okay, we have one listener question tonight. It came in via the email, so shout out to those of you writing into the four wards podcastmail.com we appreciate your questions and our question this week comes from four Wards alumni Kangadru. I am shocked he didn't write in asking about Rod of Ages. But his question tonight is real simple. Hello Wards, when do you build Shadowflame versus StormSurge on Mage Champions?
So I'm gonna reinterpret this question a little bit. If you are building both, which one do you build first? And if you are only building one, how do you decide between the Venn
[00:40:48] Speaker A: diagram of who builds one versus who builds the other? Overlaps quite a lot.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: However, you are usually building both if you are building one of them.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: However, there are reasons to do one or the other and especially reasons to do one before the other.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: So that's where I want to start is the number one reason to build StormSurge over ShadowFlame. You didn't have 1200 gold when you backed to buy a needlessly large rod. Stormsurge can be piecemealed very easily. Shadowflame has a needlessly large rod in its build path. You must acquire a full 1200 gold to build it. I would rather come out onto the map with a hextech alternator and a amp tome than a hextech alternator. And nothing for the Dragon fight that's going to happen in 40 seconds.
So I'm going to go Storm Surge in those circumstances, whereas in other games maybe I finished my first item and we just had a big team fight at Dragon and I Suddenly back with 1900 Gold. Yeah, I'm going to buy my needlessly large rod and an amp tome and work on Shadowflame instead. Fuck Storm Surge.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Because they both build out of alternator. You can grab the alternator and then just decide later and that's usually the correct way.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Do I have enough gold?
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's usually the correct.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Exactly. Usually that's the way to do it. If you can't grab a needless large rod outright when you start working on your burst item because these are both burst items, neither of these should be
[00:42:11] Speaker A: a first item ever.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: We'll get there. We'll get there. But if you can't buy an endlessly large rod outright, you buy the alternator. And then if you are forced to or have a good opportunity to back before you get 1200 gold, you're going storm surge. And if you have 1200 gold, you're going Shadowflame is usually how the decision tree happens. Now, as for first item, Shadowflame should never be a first item. Just even on Mel, who is literally the best user. Mel is an exception, by the way. Mel, you go Shadowflame. Fuck Stormsurge.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: Shadowflame is her second item. Core always.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: Yes. Because of the way Mel's passive works. This is Mel specific in that context.
Stormsurge is occasionally a correct first buy on AP Assassins such as Akali or Sylas who get an early lead because Storm Surge first gives them mobility to roam around the map and burst damage to snowball their lead.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: I. I would partially agree if Gunblade was not a thing.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Gunblade is usually better on Akali and can also be piecemealed. But it doesn't push a lead the way Storm Surge does. You can go Gunblade second if you're ahead.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: I don't know. The amount of extra damage. Feels like it's stronger.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: I know but. And then also like my example of Sylas because Storm Surge Sylas is a thing when you snowball. I literally went up against one today.
He doesn't have good ad ratios. His passive is the only good 80.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So there's reasons for him not to do Con Blade. But like I don't know when Rocket Belt is a thing.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Or like a LeBlanc. If you're snowballed on LeBlanc, just go storm Surge first. It's fine. Because Mana isn't a huge issue on her either. Same for Fizz. Same thing. You can just go Lich Bane second on Fizz. It's fine.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see a couple of those. Not all of them. Battlegrd.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's. That's why to build one or the other again, often you will be building both.
Most of those are going to be where you built Storm Surge first. You're usually not building a Storm Surge if you've already built Shadowflame.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: There. There is another champion who will pretty much always take Shadowflame over Storm Surge.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: My goth queen.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: My little Morgana.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: No,
[00:44:28] Speaker B: Morgana is a good candidate for thinking of Vex.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: I'm thinking of Vex. I adore Shadowflame over. Over Storm Surgeon Vex.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: I've. I've played with both. I Think she falls into the same group as everyone else of build whichever one has an easier build path for you in the context of the game you're in.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: So the major reason why I say one versus the other in this case because of how she does resets on her ultimate.
You will always find the benefits from the passive of Shadow Flame whereas the Storm Surge proc will do nothing for the rest of those fights. You're never going to get multiple boom boom boom boom procs on Storm Surge because of the cooldown.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: But Storm Surge will often help you get that first proc and reset in the first place and is cheaper and easier to build.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: And is it is it is cheaper.
And make note these are both magic pan in and build the minimum magic pen. There are major reasons to build both because of that.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Yep, these are your flat pen items. That's why most champions who build Storm Surge also build a shadow flame.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: I actually thought of a third one and this is specifically only because of its raw AP and that's just give vigor more ap.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: He also just doesn't need to build either one of these.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: He doesn't. But the multiplier on the the low health damage plus his ult Shadow Flame
[00:45:51] Speaker B: it can sometimes be worth almost guarantees kills then yeah, in his case it's more like do you build a Shadow Flame at all versus you just don't build Storm Surge on him?
[00:46:01] Speaker A: Yes, he has no reason to build a Storm Surge and the Shadow Flame is oh maybe I need to actually make sure someone dies when I hold them Shadowflame.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, that's Shadowflame versus Storm Surgeon. Usually you're building both Stormsurge more piecemeal Shadowflame if you can afford a needlessly large rod in your build path without putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. In the meantime, Kankajou left us a bonus question. Do you think Zilean should be reworked and how would you do it? Now we talked about this a little bit in the pre show and I have an idea that I think is kind of troll but also would be awesome and very on theme for Zilean because I agree he should be reworked. His champion is very boring and his ultimate is literally just guardian angel on a spell. I think Zilean's ultimate should be it should not have a revive mechanic at all. It should instead be a forced rewind a la echo ult where it resets health and resources and reverts position to several seconds prior of any target he casts it on. Now this serves two purposes. Oh Shen Ulted into the fight and is about to taunt your teammate.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: Nope.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Rewind. You're back to top lane. Fuck you. Or Aatrox just landed a big 2000 health heal. Nope. Rewinded. You're low health again. But also oh my. Vi dovin assassinated their ad carry and is at 300 health.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Rewind. She's safe now. I think it would be extremely powerful, thematically appropriate and really fun when used well. And also would have plenty of opportunity to have mistaken trolls the way that Bartle has mistaken trolls.
Bartle being another this ultimate is basically just an item active effect.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So it. I'm gonna go on a little bit of a weird point here. I think his E is actually the. The most proper thing he has in the speed up, slow down gives you massive move speed or massive slow proper.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: I think him giving XP is trash. I think that passive.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: I would get rid of that entirely.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: Entirely. I think his weird little mechanical clock bomb is stupid.
I think it's cool in that it does damage. But like you're so gated by. Qwq I'm not a fan of how that works. And then his entire.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: I'll be honest, I don't think you could get rid of his Q and W or like meaningfully change them because they're iconic. It would. It would be like if they had made it so Shyvana does not have a auto attack reset on her Q. I would have just pissed off everyone who likes the champion.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: I think the more interesting way of doing W is making it so that W is a full passive. Every time you use something other cooldowns
[00:48:38] Speaker B: to start taking down make it weighted pop offs. But actually an ability.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: Yeah. As you. As you cast more spells, more things disappear. Like more cooldowns are coming back up. And that would give you the ability to be like actually I could see that.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: Make that his new passive and tune him around that.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: Because so if you cue whatever you make his new W. Like I don't know what his new W should be in that context. Whatever you make his new W and E someone you could then do a second Q. Make it so that it. It's weighted and it scales the cue down faster than the other spells so that he still feels fun to play.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: And Zillion is supposed to be kind of like psychotically but massively powerful. He's. If I remember rightly, he's also from Rise's age where the rune magics are just obscene and he.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: I think lore wise power scaling. He's one of the strongest Non gods.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: He just fucked himself up and lost himself in time. So he should have really powerful time magic and wear better than that. He obviously his Ult needs to have some form of time magic. The. The best people giving them back up
[00:49:44] Speaker B: be kind of like a forced rewind effect.
Kind of like Echo Ult but without the explosion part. Just the rewind effect. I think one target of his choice.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: I think what you do is you create a static moment in time. You go everything here, boom. This is now a thing. This is going to either be like, hey, I'm going to forcibly reset things to this point or this is immovable for X amount of seconds.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: I feel like that becomes too similar to Bartle.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: Then not unmovable like health like cooldown. Like you just have. This is what you is the. The static power for this point. So he can do like his passive current w rewind on everything back to that point. He creates a static point. He gets to go back to that click. Go back. Everyone goes back here. Not location. The location wise is actually like probably the more interesting point. It has situations where it's incredibly powerful.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Now I'm just imagining a combination of him and Rise where he does that as Ryze Ults his team in. You blow up the enemy team on Baron and then are just snapped back out.
That would also be fun.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: This is me thinking of along the lines of I played an arcane mage in wow which has time shenanigans sometimes and alter time functions a lot like a mixture of that plus echoes rewind. You. You. You grab the static point in time and then you reverse to that point.
Which man, if someone dies there. No, you're back up. So it's something that they have to wait out.
Or kill Zillion. I think that would be the other way to fix that. Kill Zillion so he can't revert it.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: Possibly.
I don't know.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: Listeners, join the Discord and tell us what you think. Zilean should be reworked.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: Give us interesting Zilean ideas because all of us agree and Zilean needs a rework. He's not.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: And Kangaju, I'm calling you out. As a former Four Ward member, I expect to see your answer in the Discord this week. I want to see what you think a Zilean rework should be because you
[00:51:53] Speaker A: obviously feel he should get one.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Why else would you ask the damn question?
All right. Of course, Zilean doesn't even need a rework if he's just getting gunned down by Lucian in the top lane.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: That's a weird way to go with that, but sure, fine.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: I don't know. I'm making it up as we go. It's a two man episode. Two man episodes are weird.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: If. If it's Zilean versus Lucian in the top lane. Yeah, sure, go right ahead. Lucian versus Zilean, top lane. We expect to see it.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Sure, why not? It's. This has been episode 531 of the Four Words podcast. I'm Jack Soman for Mic of Many Names.
Have a great night.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Fourwards podcastmail.com.
