The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 532 - Predictably Unpredicatable

[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 Velcas and you're listening to the [00:00:14] Speaker A: Four Wards Podcast here to help you [00:00:17] Speaker B: move forward in League. Hello and welcome to episode 532 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me my two regular Wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've of course got Mike of many names. [00:00:52] Speaker C: It's a great time to be keeping. [00:00:53] Speaker B: I'm still here and we've got Pillow Pet. [00:00:57] Speaker A: I have returned. [00:00:58] Speaker B: Welcome back guys. We are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, come play games with us, come ask us questions, come Talk about action RPGs or whatever else you want to talk about. We got all sorts of channels. It's a fun time. Link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. 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. I also want to give a shout out to CodexNinja, Pillow Pet, Skippius Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the Dab for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. You pay for keeping the show on the Internet. Now if you want to support the podcast head on over to patreon.com the Four Wards 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. Or just kitchen disasters whatever it might be this week. And $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout your name 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. Last but not least listeners, we need more questions. We are probably going to run out again tonight, so write into the four wards podcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel in the Discord if that's easier. But please Write into the 4 wards podcastmail.com if you've written in and haven't heard your question read, you might have accidentally sent it to forwardspodcastmail.com we can't control that email. That's from the old TFN. Please include the the theforwards podcastmail.com so our topic for tonight, we want to talk about predictability. So for context listeners, this came up. Me and Mike were playing some games and he was surprised at something that I thought was obvious. I don't remember the specifics anymore because this was a week and a half ago when this game happened. And we, we got into a little bit of a discussion and we were like, hey, let's cool it. This is a great podcast topic. So this is the podcast we're going to talk about. A, predicting what your enemies are going to do, and B, how to make yourself unpredictable so your enemies can't do the same thing to you as easily. So let's start by defining predictability in the context of League of Legends, because Ezreal's gonna shoot Q at me is kind of a given. That's. That's. You're not being predictable by using Ezreal Q. That's just how the champion's supposed to work. So the first type of predictability we want to talk about is skill shots. Because it's predictable that Ezreal's going to shoot Q at you, but where exactly he's going to aim it, how he's going to predict your shots, may or may not be predictable. Some people are very consistent and some people are very not. So, Mike, when it comes to skill shots, how do you define predictability? [00:04:06] Speaker C: So there's, there's two separate things that I think of when I'm talking about predictability in skill shots. There is how they shoot them and how they move when they want to shoot them. Because that's something that I've been noticing. Significantly more playing more mid lane is there will be people who move in such a way that they're about to do a laser. If it's Victor, they're going to move in such a way that they're going to try and do something with you as Xerath, etc. [00:04:38] Speaker B: I have a perfect example of this. Many, many, many years ago, before I was even a host on this show, I was in a different podcast community and we were playing community games and I was playing top lane Trundle against an Illaoi who was another community member. And after, like level three, I noticed that for whatever reason, this guy had developed a habit on his laui. Every time he was gonna fire test of spirit, he took a step back first. I don't know why, but he always did. And so we played out the lane and I kicked the shit out of him because he just could not land test a spirit on me. And after the game, he was like, how did you dodge all of my test of spirits? And I'm like, you take a step back every time you fire it. He did not know he was even doing that. This was some sort of muscle memory he had built that he did not even realize was happening. So I literally helped him become a better player because then he had something to work on, on breaking that habit so that he would hit his test spirit more often. [00:05:39] Speaker A: I think probably subconsciously he's thinking, if he steps back, you're gonna step forward and he can just turn. Like, maybe you'll start running at him. I don't know. [00:05:49] Speaker B: I have no idea. I. He did not know why he was doing it. He didn't know that he was doing it. I noticed it. Like I said, by level three, it was really apparent. On, like, the second cast, he moved the exact same way as the first. And I'm like, oh. So that's what I think of when I think of, like, movement and skill shots is some people just have tells that they're about to use a long cooldown ability. [00:06:13] Speaker C: The one that I've noticed the most is specifically, people will move just to the side of the minions when they're about to toss something out at you. So you can any kind of skill [00:06:25] Speaker B: shot that's minion blocked, especially if you [00:06:27] Speaker C: are also, like, on the side with them. So you can start baiting people forward and then moving quickly. I've been doing this a lot with Kassadin is baiting people to use a skill shot out and then using Q to block half of it. [00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah, so that. That's kind of what we mean when we say predictable with skill shots. There's also, if you're talking about, like, let's say, for example, a skill shot that everyone is always trying to dodge. Xerath Ult. If you're an experienced Xerath player, you're gonna notice some people will try to dodge your ult in a specific way every time. So you can start building habits of leading your skill shots certain ways. And then if someone moves differently, you just cannot hit them because you've built a habit of, oh, they're running this way. Let me lead my shot this way. Without building the habit of, I need to analyze this individual and figure out how this person is going to dodge. And that's. You've developed a pattern to how you fire your skillshots. So the second type of predictability we have, I think Is one that Pillow is probably going to be extremely familiar with, which is laning patterns. And when I, as a mid laner think of this, I think of when I go into a lane and I'm like, oh, this dude thinks he's the best player to ever play League of Legends and he's going to try to kill me from level one onwards. And I'm going to easily bait this guy under turret and kill his ass because he's dumb. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Pillow, what do you notice for laning patterns in top lane? [00:07:46] Speaker A: So top lane, everybody has laning patterns. Every single person up there. I mean, whether from a vein to an orn, everybody has the same, like, they have laning patterns. So Darius to me is probably the one that comes to mind first when you think of like laning patterns. Because the. Darius wants one thing in this lane. It's. And that is for you to push on him and have the long lane so he can run you down because that is his best chance to kill you. So they'll shove a wave, wait for that wave to push back, and then get aggressive. Like that's just, that's just how the laning pattern goes on him. It's just repeats till the end of time. He wants the long lane. That's why he builds movement speed. He's just going to run you down. And that's just how his is for Ornn. He, you know, Oren has hit you with a Q cast R because you're slowed. Knock you up, do the. It's just top laners are so notorious for everybody having a laning pattern. Renekton dash, Q W dash out. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Like it's to the point where you can notice, oh, this guy's playing aggro. He's like the other 10 renektons I've laned against. Oh, let me step one step forward. Oh, he's going to dash at me. Cool. I can just dodge that now. [00:09:09] Speaker A: And the thing like about these is if you notice that the aggressive laning patterns and their aggressive player, if you play passive, they are more likely than not to make a mistake of be overly aggressive and then they'll. You'll catch them out in a. In that mistake where your jungler can. Either you can bait them in for your jungler or, or they'll just get so frustrated that they'll try to dive you under the tower. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say [00:09:40] Speaker C: is they try and force the play to work. [00:09:42] Speaker B: Those types of players, that specific type of aggression, they very predictably get frustrated if they haven't gotten a kill and there's a few levels have gone by. It's so funny. [00:09:52] Speaker A: They're so consistent. Fizz to me is probably the one mid laner that is notorious for this. Because a fizz has to get kills early to be meaningful in the mid game. [00:10:06] Speaker B: He doesn't, but people think he does. [00:10:10] Speaker A: So they get, they play super aggressively. [00:10:12] Speaker B: These reputations aren't actually they have to do this, but people have the perception that they have to do this. [00:10:18] Speaker C: Yeah. That reputation is because of a lot of very high end streamers who are talking about people moving skill bases up. And when we are talking about this, we're talking about people of bronze to platinum and in bronze to platinum. That does not work. That, that does not matter. Fizz does not have that that problem there because not only does he actually usually get free kills, but he has very easy access to them throughout the game. [00:10:46] Speaker B: And his opponents are more likely to make mistakes that give him opportunities after the laning phase. So he doesn't need to be ahead to force at extremely high level play a fizz who's even is useless because people are making so few mistakes. When is Fizz ever going to find an opportunity? So he has to force plays. But at low level play, people are making constant mistakes on every side of the map, on every player. Because that's why we're in low elo. If we were playing flawlessly, we wouldn't be there. We all suck, us included. Guys, I'm not flaming you guys. I suck too [00:11:22] Speaker C: things and then going back up. [00:11:24] Speaker A: There's also a set of predictions that's not necessarily a laning pattern that you're going to understand in the the concept of it. But the jungle is a lane in its own right. And there's patterns with junglers that you're going to have to learn and understand. So in. So for instance, you got an Elise or Nidalee. These are two early ganking, feaster, famine, jungler types, especially Elise. Like she's a feast or famine. She has to get kills early to try to stay relevant in the mid game so she doesn't have to wait to the late game to hit another power spike. So to understand that you're going to be ganked early by most, most likely early by one of these champs is understanding that laning pattern while trying to focus on the laning pattern that you're currently in. So you got we'll say a nocturne Jungle Nocturne will gank you still. But his gank pattern is most likely Till once he hits six, that's when you're most likely going to see him a lot. So he's going to try and hyper farm a Shaco. He's going to come at you probably level two a twitch. He's probably going to come at you level two. Like they. These two. Those two jungles have a very unpredictable laning pattern, because especially Shaco, like he is just all over the place. He can be anywhere and do like he does not have a set jungle path. And I don't understand why. I just know that the champion itself is just so good at ganking with his Q and his W that it makes it to where he can go in level level two and just disrupt your whole wave and then just continue to go back. He can clear his camps with like three boxes and already be in the enemy jungler territory. Getting his jungles like it is, it's a crazy champion. So you got to understand and try to recognize these unpredictable junglers and these predictable junglers and know which ones like to expect early ganks from. And then that way you can have your vision set up. So that's a whole different other ball game. [00:13:28] Speaker B: And the key here is a lot of those unpredictable junglers can become predictable very easily. Oh, they have a Jarvan jungle I should probably ward early so that when he goes to level two gank, I see him coming kind of stuff, and that can make all the difference. Yeah, Twitch support. Same thing. Or the Shaco jungle. Oh, we need to go ward his common start points, which are usually either blue buff or Raptors, and you go ward those and then you know where he's at. Well, if he's gonna level two gank, it's gonna be the lane closest to that because he's not gonna waste time going to blue buff on red side and then running to top lane to level two gank. Because the top laner will also be level two. [00:14:10] Speaker C: Yeah, so the, the, the main, the main thing with the level 2 jungle gank is that they want to get the gank while you are still level one. Yep. Which means the most likely gank position is always going to be bot lane, because they always have the most amount of time for it. However, that doesn't mean that level two top lane gank can't happen, simply because it often does. There are very easy, like, people in top lane don't predict they're gonna get ganked early, and they either don't have their ability to escape early on because it's not usually what you deal with in Picking or you don't have your CC yet because you didn't want to try and get that because it's your weakest training pattern, etc. [00:14:54] Speaker B: It's also just kind of the top laners don't get ganked off in, period. So if you throw an early gank there and get your top laner ahead, you can often never need to go back there. So a lot of times they'll be the target of really early ganks. Just let's snowball top lane so I don't have to go there anymore and I can focus on the other two kind of attitude. So that's kind of the more like map movement type predictability. So we've kind of touched on this a little bit. I want to clarify the difference between a pattern and a habit. Most of what we're describing that's champion based are patterns. Oh, I've noticed this. Champion tends to do this when piloted by people at this rank. Whether or not this is correct, a lot of times they're just imitating whatever a streamer told them to do. Let's be real. Whereas a habit would be an example, like I gave earlier about that Illaoi player, where that individual person has a habit of doing something, and maybe other Illaois might not do that, but I've noticed this guy does, and I can exploit that. We have any other thoughts on explaining that difference or like how to identify someone's habit? [00:16:04] Speaker C: So, yeah, the main thing with like a pattern versus a habit, a pattern is something that is mildly repeated, and a habit is something that is done continuously. This is something that you notice every time. It's more of an unconscious thing than a. Than a relative thing. So, like, people will fall into patterns. A habit is something that you just sort of do even if you don't intend to. [00:16:30] Speaker A: Like, my pattern is if I start red side, that is top side, right? Remind me like, red side, red team [00:16:38] Speaker B: is the top side of the map. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Okay. So if I'm stuck, webcam did it again. So if I start red side, especially top lane, I like to shove waves and then kind of roam into the enemy jungle. That's my pattern. But if I'm starting blue side, I don't roam into the enemy jungle because it's a lot less accessible. But I mean, that's just. That is just one of my patterns. I like to go into the enemy jungle, give myself a deep ward, and give my, like, self some information to try to stay relatively safe. And I would say that is my pattern. One of my Habits is I say, and it's not necessarily like a good habit is I constantly shove and set myself up for failure on ganks. Like, it's. That's just a habit I have. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah. What about you, Mike? [00:17:28] Speaker C: My habits. My habits. An early level one thing is is trying to get a specific set of wards. I want to try and get a ward out. So I have an idea on where a jungler moves. And that habit has either saved my ass or gotten me killed at level one. Many, many times. It has done both. [00:17:44] Speaker B: Literally done both. Like the other day it did. We had examples of each. [00:17:48] Speaker C: One completely saved my ass from multiple repeat ganks, and then it got me killed immediately trying to place it. So, like, yep. It's a hard thing to say whether it is a good or a bad thing, but thankfully, on both of those games, I was playing very heavy scaling, so it worked in our favor eventually. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Yep. So let's talk about trying to be less predictable, because I think being unpredictable is an important aspect of how to improve at the game and win more games. If your opponents don't know what you're doing, they can't be proactive in their response to it. They have to react. They have less time to make decisions. They have less time to reflex out hands. Check you. So being unpredictable is important when I'm trying to be unpredictable. And I'm going to use mid lane as an example because I think this is a good example here. I've been playing a lot of Lissandra since she got buffed a couple patches ago. And one thing I've started doing is I will test how my opponent reacts to a random e. Lissandra e is the claw that lets her warp to it at any point. I just want to see how they react. I will throw a claw at them, and I will watch what they do, and then I'll throw another claw at them. And that one, maybe I'll actually pop up on them if I think it's safe to do so and go for a trade or I will short it. Something that's really fun on Lissandra is throwing out the claw and just recasting it very quickly afterwards. They see the claw and then they see you move, and they panic. I have literally had people at low health flash when I throw a claw and warp like two steps because they think they're about to get ulted, But I didn't want to ult because I knew their jungler was literally around the corner and they weren't paying attention to it. Words are important, guys. So I'M feeling it out. And if they react the same way every time I throw that claw. Cool. They have a habit. I'm going to exploit that. [00:19:54] Speaker C: So one of my tips is specifically for skill shotting. Do not always try and predict movement. Go about maybe 50, 50 moving with them and 50, 50 trying to predict what they're doing. Because a lot of times people are going to start juking. If you notice they never juke. Continuously do what you're doing. But yep, most of the time you'll start seeing people try and react to what you're doing. And when you make yourself less likely to be hit in certain ways. Okay, well now I need to change how I'm doing that. And one of them is a lot of people will just keep moving straight. Yep. [00:20:30] Speaker B: You actually just hit on something that I think is important. If your opponent is not adapting, it is okay to become predictable. If they're not dodging your skill shots, it's okay to just keep firing those skill shots. Center mass. [00:20:43] Speaker C: Yeah. If, if they let you continuously walk up, beat them up, and then either get a kill or have them run away. Okay, exploit it. There is an exploitable version of this. You are now exploiting them with your own pattern. You will know when to break your pattern. [00:21:01] Speaker B: That's, that's the key is your job in those circumstances is to be mindful of your surroundings. Keep wards out especially and always be evaluating. Okay, if I do the same thing this time, what is the worst case scenario? What could happen if I do the same thing again? Depressingly often the answer is nothing. The same results will happen as the time before and the time before that and the time before that and the time before that. I am not exaggerating listeners when I say that I recently played a game as Cassiopeia against a psion mid where this psion would just continuously try to fight me. It did not matter how many times I killed him doing so. He would come back and do it again because he saw his favorite streamer, probably the boss win a game as Sion who just pushed turrets. So that's all he tried to do is push turrets. And he didn't understand when to play safe, when to push, when to step away. He didn't understand any of that nuance. He just knew push. So he kept dying over and over and over and over. [00:22:08] Speaker A: His name was John Cena Yasuo. [00:22:12] Speaker B: His name was. [00:22:13] Speaker A: And he went 1 and 10. He went 1 and 10. I'm looking at the match right now, [00:22:18] Speaker B: the history, and to be clear, he Got my Turret at like 12 minutes. Like, he did take first turret. But because he never adapted to game state, he never adapted to the circumstances of the game changing. He never learned throughout the game that, oh, this isn't working anymore. I need to do something different. That's the key here is if something stops working, you need to change what you're doing. Don't keep doing the thing that stopped working. [00:22:48] Speaker C: As a side note for that Scion problem, it's become a problem for a lot of things. I think there are two champions who I would say, if you are having problems with Sion and this pattern because it's not easy to beat it took Jax a specific champion and a playstyle to beat it. Sion just inching into a tower to win it can be really hard. I think the two champions that are easiest to deal with this are Anivia, because the wall is really goddamn strong and she has infinite Wave clear. Yep. And the other one doesn't sound like it will work, but it's because of what Sion is and it's. Trundle also has a nice little wall, but also he gets to steal all of Sion's tankiness and then use it against him and steal Ad and pushes better than Sion does. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yep. [00:23:44] Speaker C: So if he wants to get in a turret taking war with you, you will win. [00:23:48] Speaker B: To be clear, we're not advocating for Trundle mid unless you are absolutely 100% certain that it is a Psion middle. [00:23:56] Speaker C: That is not an easy bet. That is not an easy bet to know. [00:24:00] Speaker B: Right. Exactly. [00:24:03] Speaker A: On the topic of unpredictability, I just want to. It's very hard to make yourself unpredictable because you can easily get in the weeds when you try to think about how you're going to do it. So what I mean by getting in the weeds is, like, you're going to be like, okay, well, they expect me to throw my cue up. I'm gonna throw it down. But they're probably thinking, I'm gonna throw it down, so I'm gonna throw. Like, don't. Don't put yourself in it. [00:24:32] Speaker C: Don't turn this for me. A Sicilian Death Match. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Like, I didn't even think you meant that. I thought you were saying, like, if you think about it too hard, you'll wind up reacting slower. And it's better to have a predictable dodge of a skill shot than to not dodge it because you're trying to react to a skill shot and you didn't react. [00:24:53] Speaker A: I mean, the same concept, you know, if you think about it too hard. You're going to do the opposite of what you're trying to do. And you're going to spend your whole time thinking and worrying about it. For me, the best time, like if I'm trying to be unpredictable, if you don't even know what you're going to do, then the enemy has no idea what you're going to do. So flash in lane and teleport to a minion immediately six pack. I'm kidding. Don't do any of that. [00:25:17] Speaker C: Don't do that. Don't waste. [00:25:18] Speaker A: Don't do any of that. But I mean if you're just a little bit like spontaneous in what's. If you're spontaneous with your abilities. And I'm going to use Ezreal because he's the. He's like all skill shots. Everything about him is a skill shot. So it's the easiest compared to like if you just randomly throw your Q at them, they're not going to know what your pattern is other than it's just random. So they have no idea. And then if you lock in on your normal pattern and give them like you, you know, that's when you're starting to aim it and then you just kind of like swap out. It's kind of really hard to maintain unpredictability without developing a pattern or a how, you know what I mean? So it's, it's really hard to stay unpredictable. [00:26:05] Speaker B: I. I've gotten the exact quote from IMAQT Pie that embodies what you're trying to say. So I'm going to quote. This is from former pro player imaqtpie, legendary pro player from early League of Legends. If you don't know what the fuck you are doing, how are your enemies supposed to know what the fuck you are doing? [00:26:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:27] Speaker C: And to be fair, he was kind of psycho and it kind of worked. [00:26:31] Speaker B: It really did. He's. He was literally one of the most like innovative and weirdly successful despite not actually being that good players of his time because he was so good at being unpredictable very much. He would do weird shit, but he would do weird shit that was intentional and well reasoned. Just weird. And it would work because people wouldn't know how to respond, especially in the [00:26:57] Speaker C: day and age he was playing. [00:26:58] Speaker A: But Jax, you're. You're go back on your lissandra. Like you just throwing a Q but not actually doing it for any reason or your E or whatever. Like that makes people not understand. Like, oh God, is he gonna come in or is he not gonna come in? Like they have no idea. [00:27:12] Speaker B: I. I have literally had lanes where I throw e at them 10 times without ever taking it. Because I'm just using it for Wave Clear and trying to psych them out at the same time. And then the 11th time they don't realize I've hit an item breakpoint and I can 100 to 0 them now. So the 11th time I take that E and blow them the fuck up and they just, they've gotten conditioned to not expect me to take it because I didn't take it the last 10 times I used it for Waveclear and I'm still using it for Wave Clear. I'm just also using it to kill them. [00:27:41] Speaker C: There is another thing point out here, and that is with specifically how lanes generally work. Lanes have a pattern to them that needs to be followed. Especially when you're talking about things like top lane and how you deal with leaning mechanics and wave management. Wave management and patterns in this, these are going to be like. This is where you get into very high level predictability workings and how people deal with these things. This is how people become high end players, is learning the predictability of laning patterns and exploiting those. Because lanes should move in certain ways and exploiting lanes is how you become a very good player. [00:28:25] Speaker A: It's a good point. So as in like top lane. So minion damage is not static anymore and it's. They've made it a lot harder to freeze waves because of it. So if one side is getting particularly ahead, your minion damage is increased and so on, so forth. It kind of, it's. You'll. If you click the minion, you'll see a little percentage icon and that's showing like bonus damage that they're getting or doing. [00:28:53] Speaker B: Specifically the damage they do to other minions. [00:28:56] Speaker A: To other minions. Yes. [00:28:58] Speaker B: This is one of the, the rubber band mechanics in League of Legends. [00:29:02] Speaker A: So you can use that to your advantage and be like, okay, I see that their, their minions have a 5% damage increase to other minions that wave is going to push whether it's even or not. Like, you know, an even wave, 0% meeting in the middle are going to stay in the middle. Like they don't, they don't typically shift unless there's some wonky targeting or whatever that happens. Which, I mean, that's going to happen. You can go into a, a practice match and spawn minions for, you know, 10 minutes and then eventually one side is going to push. Like they're not going to just stay in the center because there's some wonky like AI to them. [00:29:41] Speaker B: It's one of those things like the pathfinding AI isn't perfect and eventually it gets to a point where one side the minions get an extra auto off and then that creates a cascading snowball. And if you do this in Practice Tool, you'll notice sometimes that cascading slowball snowball is such a slow burn that by the time it's gotten big enough for it to actually push, it is overwhelming and takes an entire turret with minions. It's very funny to watch, but you'll only ever experience that in Practice Tool because in a real game, players are interacting with that lane and that has way more influence than a little bit of minion randomness. [00:30:14] Speaker C: And you'll also notice you only ever see that in Bot and Top. Mid can't snowball the same way. They have fundamentally changed how MID works versus other minions. So mid does not snowball like that. The most I have ever seen is a two minion stack that you didn't explicitly sit there and take damage from towers for. [00:30:41] Speaker B: This is because Mid is a shorter lane. So these never build up to that kind of insane point that they can in Top and Bot because they simply reach tower range and die before the variance is enough to matter. [00:30:53] Speaker A: Another thing familiar that Top and Bot have I drawn a blank on the word I was just looking for that have they're similar. That are the way they're similar is the laners have fomo. Like and you could take advantage of this. And by I say FOMO is it's fear of missing out. You can keep opponents in your lane whether they're. If they're unhealthy by just shoving waves typically and hope that your jungle might see the opportunity if you communicate with them. Hey, let's do a dive. Whatever. You can keep them ahead. You can set up your teleport or you set up your backs. We've talked about this before, back timings, etc. But like that is a habit or a pattern that you'll notice in laning where whether they have 5% health left and you're one auto away from killing them and you're playing Teemo top lane and all you got to do is right click them and take a tower shot maybe and you kill them. They don't care. Like they stay. And that is. That is just. You got to understand like this, like you got to think, is this guy greedy? Is he playing with greed? Does he stay way too long in lane after like after you've backed trying to get A plate. That's just the patterns that you got to look for and try to recognize. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Or is he baiting me in so his jungler can come kill me? [00:32:18] Speaker C: There is a pattern that we have just missed about talking about here. And it reminded me of this when you said this. Cannons are a bait. [00:32:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:26] Speaker C: People very frequently and predictably want that goddamn cannon and they will put themselves in bad situations for it. I do this. We all do this. And we do this frequently. [00:32:40] Speaker B: You're bad about this, Mike. [00:32:43] Speaker C: It's. [00:32:44] Speaker A: I miss most of my cannons anyway, so I don't care. Luckily, they're not worth like they used to be. [00:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:50] Speaker C: Not being 75 is. Or 85 is a huge, huge pain. [00:32:54] Speaker A: It was 90. [00:32:55] Speaker C: Was it 90? [00:32:57] Speaker A: It used to be 90 at end game. [00:32:59] Speaker C: Oh, the end of the game. Okay. [00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Now it's like what, 50 scaling up to 65 or something? [00:33:05] Speaker B: I think 75, but yeah, maybe. [00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:09] Speaker B: It's. [00:33:09] Speaker A: Cannons are a big bait. Wacky, you know. And to top on that, I don't know if you want to count this as a trinket tip if you want me to get into it, because it doesn't really have to do with laning predictability. Know what your gold buying points are. Understand them. Understand that if you stay for. If you go for that plate and greed yourself on a back and lose a wave when you back and you buy and you have 150 gold left in your inventory, that plate was for nothing. Like, you couldn't buy anything with that extra gold. And you lost minions and experience because you greeted. So understand what your buy points are. Know how much gold you need to buy back and have. And know that the 120 extra gold from a plate is not worth it. [00:33:53] Speaker C: The extra five seconds it takes to plan out what your item is and what it's going to cost you will usually save you 10 to 15 seconds later or give you better back timers for better positioning. So, yeah, this is a good. This is a good tip. [00:34:08] Speaker B: Okay. I actually looked up the numbers because I wanted to drive this home. A melee minion alone is worth 62 experience if you are solo. A cannon minion if you are solo is worth 75 experience. It is barely worth more than a single melee minion of experience. The gold is obviously much higher, but the experience is barely. Barely more than a regular melee minion. If you are at any risk of dying, just let the cannon minion die and still get the experience and you're fine. It really isn't that big a deal. Of course, if you can get it safely get the cannon but it is [00:34:50] Speaker C: worth expending resources that won't kill you. [00:34:53] Speaker B: But please stop greeting for cannons and dying. They're not that valuable. They're worth two and a half melee minions at the start of the game scaling up to about three and a half in terms of gold and barely more than one in terms of experience. Okay. Any other thoughts about predictability and unpredictability? [00:35:11] Speaker C: I think we got that pretty well covered. [00:35:14] Speaker B: Cool. Let's answer some listener questions. Our first question tonight comes from Cinder. Who writes under what conditions do you buy grievous items and who's the best roll to buy them? [00:35:26] Speaker C: That last question is a trap because that is a very much depends on the character not the role. [00:35:32] Speaker B: Yes. So the easiest answer for the best role to buy them is if you have a crit marksman and grievous wounds is required. They should just build mortal Reminder instead of Lord Dom's. They are building one of the two anyway. The performance difference between the two is very mild. So they lose almost nothing by just getting mortal Reminder instead. That is the only time that there is a true cut and dry answer to this. [00:35:58] Speaker C: Now there are scenarios in that case where hey there's a brand support. Brand should be the one doing it. [00:36:05] Speaker B: Right. And that's the key is that is assuming no one has bought it. Yeah because if no one else is buying it. Yeah the ad carry loses the least many supports who can spread it. Well brand is a perfect example of this. Are simply the best ones to apply it. So they should be buying it. [00:36:23] Speaker C: Tanks that can force people to attack them. [00:36:25] Speaker A: If the team if the team enemy team is heavy auto attackers then you're hopefully your top laner is going to buy a thorn mail or a bramble of some kind or your jungle or your support depending what they are. If they're heavy on the auto attacking [00:36:39] Speaker B: especially if they are a taunt champ like Mike said Shen Ramus Gallio can force people to attack them so it allows those tanks to proactively apply grievous wounds. Other tanks buying Thornmail is great but if they don't hit you they don't get grievous wounds. And if they're not an auto attacker like Vladimir is a prime example of a high healing champion that just never needs to auto attack you. Thornmail doesn't do anything. He does a magic damage and he doesn't auto attack you. [00:37:06] Speaker A: There are a couple still doesn't apply Grievous on cc right. Like that's nothing they took that out a long time ago. [00:37:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:13] Speaker A: Okay. [00:37:14] Speaker C: Are a couple of tanks who you want them to. So here's a perfect example of a tank who you need to hit him or he will just kill you. And it's perfectly viable for him to get it. And it's Mundo. Mundo is perfectly viable to get thornmail on, because if someone is attacking Mundo, they need to attack Mundo. He's coming for them and no one's going to stop him. [00:37:39] Speaker B: Again, the problem here is if you're buying it specifically to cut like a Vladimir's healing. [00:37:43] Speaker C: Yes. [00:37:44] Speaker B: Vladimir is not going to auto Mundo. [00:37:46] Speaker C: There are a couple of people who are essentially immune to one of them and not the other. Vladimir is the. The big number who's like, he never does auto attacks. Why would he have to care about that? [00:37:59] Speaker B: He does auto attacks. Unless you have Thorn mail. [00:38:02] Speaker C: Yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't have to auto attack, shall we say? [00:38:05] Speaker B: Yes. Whereas for example, if a soraka is your problem, but her carries are auto attackers, you need to apply grievous on the carries, not on the soraka. So thornmail is fine conditions to buy grievous items laning against certain champions. Vladimir being an example. [00:38:24] Speaker C: Aatrox, if you. [00:38:25] Speaker B: Aatrox being an example, if you are laning against those champions and you have a condition where you can fight them in the first place. So like if you're playing Kassadin or Kayle, don't fucking bother. You're not killing them anyway. You should be trying to itemize to your power spikes. But if you're playing like for example Uracindra against a Sylas, Sylas is another high healing champion. Yeah, maybe you just buy an Oblivion Orb first and then he can't win trades anymore. [00:38:55] Speaker C: So I don't know if this is true across everyone, mostly top lane versus bot lane in mid lane. You should never buy the specific healing reduction item as your first item. Not just the Morella Nomicon or whatever is fully completed. The Oblivion Orb. You waste so much time going for that first, you need your piece first before Oblivion Orb. Because most things that need healing like crazy don't get their insane healing until you would have a first full item. [00:39:24] Speaker B: The big exception condition is if you are already a champion that can bully those healers. I gave the example of Syndra versus Sylas. Syndra can bully the shit out of Sylas. Going Oblivion Orb doesn't really put you behind and exaggerates that bullying. It can be worth it sometimes. But you have to already be Bullying him. If you've made it to 800 gold and you're not bullying that Sylas, maybe this guy's better at dodging your scatter the weak or whatever it might be. Or he's just not playing aggro enough for you to need to don't fucking bother. If he's not using his W on you, he's not healing. So what the fuck is the oblivion orb doing that? That's the. The thought process you have to go through in your head when you're deciding do I rush a grievous item or do I wait? [00:40:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. It is very rarely the case where you want it as your first item. Apart from some top laners who will grab a bramble vest first and then build into whatever the hell they want. Because most people really want their full item first. [00:40:20] Speaker B: That was going to be my big exception is the tanks buying bramble vest usually want to just straight up buy a bramble vest immediately for their direct lane opponent. Or they're buying it third or fourth item. It's. It's usually only going to be one of those two. If you're laning against a Yasuo or a Yone, you're probably just buying bramble vest immediately as a tank because those champions are rushing. Bork. Same for laning against an Irelia as a tank because she's going to heal every time she fights you and she wants to fight you. But as far as outside of your [00:40:50] Speaker A: team, I'll say if there's a singed on your team, you don't ever have to buy grievous wounds. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Assuming the singed is playing correctly. [00:40:57] Speaker A: Yeah, true, true. [00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah. There are a couple of champions who have grievous wounds built into their kit. Singed is one of them. Singed poison whenever he is ulted applies grievous wounds. Katarina's Alt and Varys hail of arrows are the other ones they've taken away. [00:41:15] Speaker C: They've taken away grievous wounds from a couple other people. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Those are literally the only ones currently. [00:41:21] Speaker C: That's still. That's the last three. Yeah. Because there were more. [00:41:24] Speaker B: Yeah, there used to be a lot more, but those are the only three that remain. Other stuff to consider. Ignite applies grievous wounds. If you are dealing with someone where burst healing is the only concern. Like let's say you're leaning against a Mundo and you just need to cut his healing when he ults to make sure you can finish him off before the ult runs its course. Ignite can usually be enough until late game. [00:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Level 16 is when he pretty much becomes unignitable. [00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And by then, like, you're gonna be building a Heal Cut item if your team hasn't anyway, because you just need to at that point. [00:42:00] Speaker C: I think the other point, if you have an ignite, you shouldn't be buying the Heal Cut item unless you're, of course, one of the people. [00:42:07] Speaker B: Until late game. Sometimes in late game, it's correct. But until then, you shouldn't be like. [00:42:13] Speaker C: Or if you're Katarina. Yeah, don't do it. [00:42:15] Speaker B: If you don't take ignite, don't take ignite against a Vlad and then immediately rush an oblivion orb. You will have a bad time. You are. They don't stack. All right. Any other thoughts about Grievous? [00:42:26] Speaker C: It's stupid and we need to fix it. [00:42:28] Speaker B: They really do. It's. It is so frustrating how in the right conditions, Grievous Wounds is an impactful stat to get when a game is out of control. Grievous Wounds does not help you get it back in control. And when you're ahead, Grievous Wounds is insanely oppressive. Like, if you are beating the shit out of Vladimir, getting Grievous Wounds just helps you beat the shit out of him harder. If Vladimir is beating the shit out of you, Grievous Wounds does not stop that from happening. It annoys the hell out of me. I really wish it was more consistent. Anyway, this is not a podcast about what we wish was the case. We're trying to help you guys. So let's answer the next question from one of our listeners, Anonym. I have had some issues with Teemo in the last couple games I play AD Carry. So already my usual strategy for dealing with Teemo is to avoid him because it's not my job. However, my team will not always commit to shutting him down so I can step forward to deal damage. What are the strategies to deal with Teemo, especially with Auto Attack based champions who get punished very hard by his blind? [00:43:31] Speaker C: There's a couple different things here. Is the Teemo in your lane? Because Teemo has suddenly become sometimes an ad carry with the new builds. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Yep, Static Shiv. He does show up Bot lane as a counter pick to Auto Attack AD Carries. [00:43:44] Speaker C: Sometimes if he's in your lane fighting you, you need to try and like outrage, poke him if you can, or do ability damage or leave it to your support if this. This really depends on the champions you're playing. So, like Auto Attack Based Champions. Yeah. As an ad carry, there are so many different variables here. Like you obviously are not talking about Ezreal because Ezreal is the least affected by the blind in the game. Yep. [00:44:11] Speaker B: His mystic shot still hits. So he really does not care. It's mildly. [00:44:15] Speaker C: I think the only person who cares less is Corky. [00:44:18] Speaker B: I think Corky cares more because he's more likely to build crit and have his autos actually hurt. [00:44:22] Speaker C: He is. He is going to hurt with that, but his damage is still not going to be dropped by much. [00:44:28] Speaker A: I want to chime in and say like the easy answer here is like if you're dealing with him in lane is just abuse the cooldown of his Q. Yep. Early that's like just abuse that cooldown late. It might not be a thing, but he will cast his Q at some point in a team fight or when you see that and if you're paying attention and you're noticing that yeah, that's your windows. [00:44:48] Speaker C: If he cast it on someone else, that's your go window. If he is just targeting you, there is nothing you can do because that becomes a permanent blind. [00:44:57] Speaker B: That that's the key is this depends on Teemo's build press tab. If Teemo is building statik shiv into on hit, he's gonna have very low ability haste. At max rank, his blind is a 3 second blind for 7 second cooldown. If he has no ability haste, that means he has less than 50% uptime. Be mindful of his blind disengage and then re engage once it wears off. If he's building like malignant liandries into ability haste type builds, that might be a four second cooldown and you're blinded for three of those four seconds. You don't get to play the game anymore. I'm sorry, you just. Your job is to avoid being near Teemo. [00:45:32] Speaker C: You need someone else with you at all times whenever Teemo is present or you don't get to do things. That's just how that game is gonna work. [00:45:41] Speaker B: He's extremely binary in that regard. So here's the other thing. This is a strategy to deal with Teemo regardless of role, regardless of champion Sweepers. If you are against a Teemo, your team should have three to four sweepers, period. There is no way around this. You need to have three to four sweepers. The remaining ones should be blue trinkets. Like there's. That's just because Teemo's shrooms are so zone control impactful. He has so much ability to control where you Go. And how you're able to do things. You need to be able to not always clear the shrooms because sometimes it's dangerous to do so. But like, oh, you're in the middle of a team fight. Put out the sweeper so you can see a shroom instead of running into it in the middle of a team fight. I am not kidding. It is a combat spell to use a sweeper when Teemo is in the game. [00:46:34] Speaker C: And then it just. [00:46:34] Speaker B: I have literally had team fights one because we used sweeper and managed to sidestep a shroom that had been placed five minutes earlier. [00:46:41] Speaker C: Yeah. The other thing I can think of is every AD carry has some form of spell. I don't think there is any ad carry that does nothing but auto attack. Some of you have things that are 90% but you still have one or two things that are not the blind point is when you use them. This is when Vayne does tumble and Q. This is when Yunara throws her W. [00:47:05] Speaker B: So there is one other aspect of this Blind is affected by tenacity and can be cleansed. But Mikhail's will not remove it. But cleanse the summoner spell and QSS will. It can sometimes be correct by a qss. If it's. Well, I don't get to play the game unless I buy qss. Then buy qss. It's the same ideas when you have to buy it against Malzahar. [00:47:30] Speaker C: If you are an AD carry and this is a AP building person by late game your 6 items versus his 6 items. You should be able to 100 to 0 a Teemo immediately once cleansed before he gets another blind off. [00:47:49] Speaker B: Yep. [00:47:49] Speaker C: These are. These are points where if that is what your main threat is and that's what's stopping you. Yeah. QSS is sometimes not just the Malzahar attacks. [00:47:59] Speaker B: Yep. I just wanted to emphasize that it is reduced by tenacity. So Bert treads help wit's end helps. And it's cleanseable with QSS or the Cleanse summoner spell. Cause I think a lot of people don't know either of those aspects. [00:48:13] Speaker C: Or just pick up a smolder. [00:48:14] Speaker B: Man. Yeah. Smolder is the actual answer for ad carry that cares the least about blind. It is actually smolder. There are a few other things that do cleanse. Gangplank can eat fruit out of it. Alistair can Ult out a blind. But why would he care about blind? Olaf's ult will remove blind. [00:48:32] Speaker C: Olaf cannot be blinded while ulted. Yep. [00:48:36] Speaker B: Which is really annoying. [00:48:37] Speaker C: That People need to figure out, do not try and blind Olaf while he is ulting. It will do nothing. [00:48:42] Speaker B: Yep. And if you're not the ad carry milio ult can remove blind, which is pretty fucking magical. I'm not gonna lie. Like it is so crazy when your support is like, oh, let me just let you do damage again. Alright, we got one more thing to talk about tonight before we wrap up, which is last week we called out Kangajrew because he asked us what we would do for a rework of zillion and we were like, kangadru, it's your turn. What do you want to do for a Zilean rework? And he actually responded to the call out. So this is what Kangadru wrote us. Caveat I am not a champion designer, but that will become incredibly obvious. Numbers are left out because I don't know what they are. Passive Zilean can see slightly into the future. Enemy champions have an indicator below their health bar when they are very close to leveling up. Q Timing bomb. Zilean throws a bomb that stays on the ground or sticks to an enemy champion for four seconds with a countdown indicator. After four seconds, the bomb explodes, dealing some damage. If the bomb sticks to a champion, Zilean may recast. The bomb explodes, dealing some damage. If he recasts at exactly three seconds, all enemy units in a small radius are briefly stunned. W Tick Tock Zilean starts a dance party, punishing those who do not participate. On cast, Zilean creates a clock shaped dance floor on the ground. A timer starts counting down from five seconds, after which any champion, allied or enemy takes damage if they are not dancing. Dancing must last for one second, after which a crowd applauds like on Draven kills and the dance floor disappears. E the same speedy slowy ability as original Zilean and the darkest timeline. Zilean splits the timeline and has the opportunity to return Summoner's Rift Champions, Monsters, minions, terrain, turret, HP, etc. To a previous moment in time. First cast Zilean marks the current timestamp for all players in the entire map of Summoner's Rift. Gameplay continues for 15, 20, 25 seconds, after which Zilean has 3 seconds to recast. Second Cast Optional Summoner's Rift and all champions position, cooldowns, experience, gold, etc. Return to the marked timestamp. Literally, Chrono breaks the game. [00:50:58] Speaker C: So I'm going to throw out two things immediately. Your passive is garbage. I am actually. Yeah, the passive is garbage. And no champion should have a Passive. That does nothing. That does nothing for you. You have no power for it. It's only a little bit of indication. 2. I understand the joke with TikTok, especially with how you spelled it. [00:51:20] Speaker B: Yep. [00:51:21] Speaker C: TikTok dancing exactly like the app is the fun way. I understand you cannot force people to emote. Doing the dance emotes. I understand that's not something that people are frequently doing. You can't have that happen if you made it be something like they have to move in a pattern. Like they have to do a square. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Oh God. They have to do the safety dance from. Wow. [00:51:45] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. Something. Something like that where you have to either dodge or move or do a thing until that happens. I think that would work, but you know, that one. That one not work. I like the Q. The Q is an interesting way of keeping it very similar in flavor while also giving it a new ability and still having that feel of recast and chrono breaking. The game is bullshit strong, but the time you're talking about actually makes it so that it's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's definitely a bad thing. [00:52:19] Speaker B: The problem with the alt idea is that it's too predictable in the optimal way to use it because it basically amounts to when Dragon spawns and your team is ready to contest Dragon, press this button. If the contest went well. Cool. Otherwise, reset and that's the correct way to use that. Ultimate. [00:52:35] Speaker C: This. This also has to be like a 10 minute ultimate because moving the game back and forth this much is very dangerous for the like code of the game. That's why Chrono Breaks are not done often. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Yeah. For listeners who don't watch Pro, Chronobreak is Echo's ultimate. But it's also the name of a tool Riot uses in pro play to rewind a game to a specific point in time when there is a bug that is impactful in pro play, this is a very specific thing and it's very costly and has a chance of just bricking the game. So they only use it in circumstances where they do not feel the game can continue unless they try this. And if it fails, they have to remake the game anyway. [00:53:22] Speaker C: Chrono Breaks have failed multiple times in very, very stressful environments. Yeah, this of this ult cannot be allowed to happen because of what it is. [00:53:36] Speaker B: It literally cannot be made in League of Legends. The game is not architected in a way for it to exist. Now, listeners, I want to be clear. We read that because I called Kanga Drew out on his email. Please do not Send us your champion rework ideas or champion ideas as a regular thing. [00:53:54] Speaker C: However, if you want to throw those, [00:53:55] Speaker B: if you want to join the discord, I will create a channel. If someone tells me they want somewhere to do this, one person. I just need one person to tell me they want this. I will make a channel for champion ideas. Please feel free to drop them in there and people can comment on it and respond. I'm fine with that. I just this is a podcast for helping new players. I don't want to go too much into conjecture, but it was a fun one off. [00:54:21] Speaker C: But before we continue off into a side T, I'm going to make a quick side tangent that has nothing to do with League because by the time it's done, it's gone. By the time we would talk about it on our other podcast, it would fail. Like it's not going to be around There is such a big sale going down on a specific genre of games going down. There are a couple things that are just straight up free. The entirety of any video game that has anything to do with Warhammer for the last week and going through until Thursday is on sale up to 100% off. Many things are 70 many things are 90 on Steam. On Steam. [00:55:02] Speaker B: Okay, you didn't say that part, so I figured it was important to actually say that out loud. [00:55:07] Speaker C: This is. This is not, this is not something I'm going to caveat often. This is something that we would talk about normally there, but it's going to end right before we do that podcast. So I, I can't fail to mention something that is that much of a sale. Every single thing that that is a produced by Games Workshop, I think that has a Warhammer tag on it is on some form of sale. Take a look. There's. If you like a genre, it's probably there. [00:55:37] Speaker B: I know, I know there are Warhammer left 4 dead likes. I know there's Warhammer RTS games. I know there's Warhammer character action games. I have no idea what other Warhammer [00:55:47] Speaker C: one of those left for dead ones is 95% off. Yeah. So if you, if you like any form of the games, take a look, they're gonna be real cheap. If anything has taken your fancy, it's possibly there. There is one free game going down. It's called Gladius. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Mike loves Warhammer. [00:56:04] Speaker C: Can you tell I'm a huge Warhammer fan, but this is such a. This is like if we were talking about Steam sale ever and we we had something that we wanted to advocate, I'd talk about that, but this is over before I can even get a chance to. So take a look. [00:56:19] Speaker B: So, listeners, I think you get a warhammer instead of a Lucian Top, so. Wagh. [00:56:23] Speaker C: Wah. [00:56:26] Speaker B: All right, this has been episode 532 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Zoneman for Mike of many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:56:36] Speaker A: Good night. [00:56:36] Speaker C: I blew out the mic. Good night, everybody. [00:56:39] 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 Fourwards 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 Four Wards podcastmail.com.