The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 537: MSI Lockedown

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. [00:00:13] Speaker B: And you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 537 of the Four Awards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got just one award with me tonight. You can guess who it is. That's right, it's Mike of many names. [00:00:48] Speaker A: I'm living with unbearably insufferable heat. [00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, Mike is living through a heat wave with his AC turned off so you guys don't have to listen to it. I hope you appreciate it. Listeners. Post on the Discord how much you appreciate Mike for his sacrifices. [00:01:05] Speaker A: It is heat index over 100 degrees here. [00:01:08] Speaker B: So let's get this show on the road so he can go turn his AC back on quickly. Guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. We've been playing a lot of mayhem, a bunch of norms. It's a lot of fun. We've been watch partying msi. We'll talk about that in a little while. Link is in the episode description. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames and when he has time and when work isn't crushing him, Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV pillowpet Speaking of Pillow Pet, we gotta give some shout outs to our patrons. Supporting the podcast are Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the Dab. Thank you guys for your support. You guys keep us active on the Internet. Now if you want to support the podcast head over to patreon.com theforwardspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month gets that same exclusive feed. And we will shout your name out at the top of every episode for as long as you maintain your subscription. And all of those benefits also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out from 8bit to 4k on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your PO casts. I'm pretty sure we're talking about the Star Fox remake next episode, so check it out guys. That'll be in a week. Last but not least listeners, we did not get a single question from you this week. Surely we haven't answered everything you guys want to know about League of Legends. There's no way that's true. So write in to the Fourwards podcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer them on the show. We also do have a question submission channel on the Discord. You can drop it there too if that's easier for you. But Please email the4wardspodcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer them. Okay, well, before we get into the shenaniganery, we do have a patch this week. Patch 26.13 is out. Locke is out. We'll give a very brief primer on him in a moment. We have not played as him yet, but we have played against him couple times and we're going to tell you a general gist of what we've seen him do. But first let's talk about the patch changes that we feel we're actually qualified to talk about. Mike, what's happening to your favorite Bernie boy? Brand? [00:03:35] Speaker A: So Brand has been everywhere, kind of everywhere. He just, he has just been showing up in a lot of places now. I'm so Brand Bot been seeing Brand Bot been seeing him mid lane a lot. He is still a jungler every so often. It's probably actually his least played role now, even though he still clears like a beast. So they're giving him a little bit of a tone down. This is going to hurt, especially support Brand, but it will be impactful for everyone. His base mana regen going up a little bit. That's gonna matter because his E is now just a flat 90 mana cost. It has no scaling. It's now at its cap which is significantly higher than it was originally when you only put one point into it. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yep, this is typically his second max. So this means late game even though if you're not level 18 yet, you're still going to be about the same mana costs. But mid game and early game, the mana cost hurts. [00:04:37] Speaker A: This is his like key to poking as a mid laner because this is how he does his his spread. This is how he keeps you away from the wave. This paired with his other change, he got a change to his passive plays which really was just it has, it has a twofold thing. It has a base nerf because it went it's it's base damage at level one was dropped a couple percent but it now also has a scale above level 18 that they don't talk about because of course you could Play Brand in the top lane and it didn't properly scale above 18 so now it. It has scaling above 18. They don't show the numbers on it for some reason, but it's. It's assumably like a percent or two. [00:05:24] Speaker B: I'm morbidly curious. I'll go look it up. Anything else about Brand? [00:05:29] Speaker A: This is basically just. This is hurting his. His poke pattern. It's going to hurt a lot more in support than it will in mid. Even though you cast more ease in mid. [00:05:40] Speaker B: All right. I checked. He gets 0.71% max health damage at level 20 higher than 18. [00:05:48] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean it's a grand total of 6% across 18 levels. So 6 divided by 18. [00:05:56] Speaker B: It's very small. [00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's exactly another two levels worth of the passive. It's mathematically correct. [00:06:03] Speaker B: Not every ability scales linearly. It's worth looking at. [00:06:06] Speaker A: It's true. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Alright. Speaking of linear scaling, LeBlanc gotta change this patch and I don't understand Riot's patch note. So what Riot says, and I quote, we want to better reward LeBlanc players for landing some of her less guaranteed damage rather than giving her more gank or lane support, both of which she does really well already. This is what Riot says. However, what they've actually done is just buffed her ULT across the board. Rank one is exactly the same. There is no change at level six. She does exactly the same damage as before, but ranks 2 and 3 have higher base damage on the first half of the RQ or the first half of the Revolution and the second half, it's a bigger increase on the second half of those and a damage increase on the RW. So it just does more damage at level 11 onwards. Riot. How does that reward her for landing her less guaranteed damage? I don't understand. I mean it is more damage on the RQ or re, but that was already true. If you got both parts of those, they were always the higher damage spell. I don't get it. I do think LeBlanc is incredibly fun to play and can often be put in a position where she can't find windows to assassinate and becomes kind of a slightly suicidal poke mage. [00:07:41] Speaker A: She's a Feaster Famine champion. She's either dominating the game or she's kind of worthless. [00:07:47] Speaker B: So I'm happy to see her getting buffs. I just don't understand why they think her RW needed to be buffed along with the other two. But as someone who plays her, I'm gonna enjoy blowing people up with wrwq Combos. Because that's what just. You burst people, there's nothing they can fucking do about it because you come from a screen away and explode them. It's dumb. [00:08:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:13] Speaker B: All right, Mike. Speaking of dumb. [00:08:16] Speaker A: Okay, this is actually. This isn't dumb. I think this is. Well, okay, it's kind of dumb. The dumb is the fact that this is the tuning now, that they go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. So this is the 40th change that Senna has received. [00:08:29] Speaker B: Is it? Actually. [00:08:30] Speaker A: Actually, I might be right. They're tuning the knob back the other direction again to make her a support. So far, Senna ad carry has been incredibly popular, especially with the new Statik shiv. So first, she's getting two changes that impact her a lot. First, her Q. The cooldown is now based on attack, not on hit, which means things that proc on hits don't proc the Q reduction in cooldown, which means Statik Shiv doesn't drastically reduce the cooldown of her Q anymore. That's just desygizing. Yeah, it's just desynergizing static shiv to be her most important item. It's still that decent item on her. It's just not number one and the other change, the lever that they keep knobbing back and forth. They have reduced the soul drop chance when Senna gets a kill and increased the soul drop chance when an ally gets a kill. So she's now more incentivized to be a support than an ad carry. To go along with this, they've done something different. She's receiving a base across her kit, 15% nerf on crit damage, and then a change with IE as well. So, like, she actively does less crit damage now. It's still her best because she has automatic free crit scaling. So I Edge is always going to be one of her base items if you get the ability to buy it. But, okay, now she has. Just because she had guaranteed crit, she's getting more of a crit nerf scale. What's the number, Jax? [00:10:03] Speaker B: I actually went and counted. I want you to guess. How many times do you think Riot has actually tuned her Ms. Wraith drop chance up or down? [00:10:12] Speaker A: I'm guessing 40 was a bit optimistic. [00:10:15] Speaker B: It is definitely less. [00:10:16] Speaker A: I'm gonna say 2514. Okay. [00:10:19] Speaker B: They have raised or lowered this specific stat on her 14 separate times. She's only been out since 2019. It's only been seven years. She gets this changed at twice a year on average. [00:10:36] Speaker A: So basically every six Months they go. We want Senator being Ad Carry support. Ad Carry support. Ad Carry support. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I am not exaggerating. It's literally twice a year on average. There are gaps where it's not changed and gaps where it's changed very rapidly. But it's just so silly. I wish they would just stop messing with that number and tune something else on her instead. The change to the queue is great. [00:11:02] Speaker A: The change. The queue is absolutely proper. The crit damage thing makes sense. You're pulling away from static shiv which means she's probably going to be building more crate items. Which means you want her to have less base damage now that you've made her a support. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Yep. [00:11:15] Speaker A: It's one of those things where she is a both support and Ad carry. So how do you make it so that she's balanced across both? It's really hard. And trying to tune that number perfectly correctly so that she's viable in both at once. I don't know if they can do it right. Because it's very easy to exploit one or the other. [00:11:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:11:35] Speaker A: We'll see. [00:11:36] Speaker B: Alright. You know what else we'll see? We'll see a lot more Imperial Mandate because what the fuck was riot thinking? We just last week talked about how broken and like underrated this item is. And then they go and give it an easier build path. You don't have to save up 850 for a blasting wand anymore. You can just buy amp tomes. It's super easy to build. Now it's 5 less AP than before. However, the vulnerable mark on enemies is 1% higher. So it is in all cases no matter what going to be more damage than old Imperial mandate was because there is no champion. In no situation where 5ap is less damage than 1% more damage is like it can make the difference. If you're talking about like someone like nami, maybe that 5ap is enough to heal someone one extra health so they live. It could make the difference in a circumstance like that. But for damage it's always as good or better. And then the other thing they changed is they increased the amount of ability haste that it gives to immobilizing spells. It now gives an extra 20 ability haste for a total of 3035 ability haste on your immobilizing spells. Because it has 15 just generic ability haste as well. Build Imperial Mandate on your CC mages, please. Your CC Enchanters, your Maokais and Zacks and Gallios. It's actually insane on them. [00:13:13] Speaker A: This is one of those people have not switched to building It a lot. This is going to take probably six months before a streamer goes this is bullshit. And does it. And everyone sees the streamer does it and then they copy them. And then Riot's gonna realize they have buffed Imperial Mandate. Too much. [00:13:34] Speaker B: Yep. All right, what do you want to talk about next, Mike? [00:13:37] Speaker A: Going down the line, let's get. Let's get rid of Scion's problems. Well, actually no, we're making Scion problems. So Scion is receiving a nerf. A good Nerf, logical Nerf that extends his weaknesses without making him weak. So what they've done, the easy one is they've just flat 10 extra mana across the board on his W. His. His shield. Great change. Make his mana more intensive. That's a good way to deal with Scion. The good, the best change here is the proper way to nerf the damage of Sion. Because Sion, if he's allowed to sit there for two and a half seconds channeling a Q to smack you, you deserve it. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Yep, that should deal shitloads of damage. [00:14:26] Speaker A: But having the min slash damage be as high as it is is a little bull. So they are cutting its damage across the board starting with level one and scaling up to be reduced all the way down like so. It's getting an increased scaling reduction. As in it's 10 less at first level and 30 less at max. It needs this because a quick Q, especially if you're the stupid lethality build does way too much damage. His dueling potential is way too high. So this is emphasizing that Sion is a beefcake and you should be being a beefcake, not being an all around murder machine in every scenario. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Absolutely. As much as I complain about tanks dealing damage, a tank dealing damage because he chose to CC himself for two seconds first, I'm fine with thank fuck that when he's not doing that, his damage is gonna kind of suck. [00:15:29] Speaker A: Now it's. It's a meaningful damage nerf. 10 to 30 base damage before the scaling on it from anything else. That's huge. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Yep. Alright, I got several champions that are all getting more or less the same treatment, so I'm gonna talk about them together. Olaf got a buff to the monster damage on his Q after rank one. Important note because rank one is the same as before, but every subsequent rank does more damage than it did before. So his clear speed should go up on subsequent clears, but his first clear should be the same. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Well, his, his first camp should be the same. Everything else after that. Well, okay, you. [00:16:11] Speaker B: Yeah, you. You can. You can take a second point in queue at level three. So after three camps, you would have slightly more clear speed. This is risky, but sometimes it is correct. So you might have a slightly faster six camp clear if you do that. All right. That's all that changed with Olaf. Poppy also got a change in the jungle, and this is, I think, the biggest of them. Poppy's Q got a damage buff to monsters. Specifically, it has a cap on how much damage it does. Because Poppy's Q does percent max health damage. They've raised that cap by 25 at all ranks. That means on your very first camp, that buff, every Q you cast is doing an extra 50 damage because it hits twice. [00:16:56] Speaker A: That is a full auto attack. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah. On every Q that you cast. And this is not a long cooldown ability. This is enough that we are seeing Poppy getting banned in msi. This is enough that Poppy is like solidly a tier jungle. She's kind of S tier in the pro environment, but outside of pro, like in your solo queue games, Poppy's a solid A tier jungler. And we need tank junglers that are good. There's not very many of them. Jungle is kinda dominated by fighters and assassins most of the time. Speaking of assassins, speaking of assassins, the other one, the one that we're annoyed about, Qiyana got a buff. Her Q has a higher monster damage multiplier. Qiyana is not very strong right now, but Mike and I both hate when she is strong because what Qiyana does, her ultimate is still the worst named ability in the game because it does not take any kind of supreme display of talent to just press R and watch people get wall slammed and killed by Cece. [00:18:00] Speaker A: So you say she's not strong right now. She is also majorly picked in msi. [00:18:05] Speaker B: Yes. Because again, her ultimate is bullshit. [00:18:08] Speaker A: In a pro environment, Kiana is very strong, which means people will play her because she's being shown in a pro environment. [00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah, speaking of people will play her. For the love of God, guys, you're not Caria. Stop trying to play Camille Support. I've already had one in one of my games today. I hate it. Stop doing it. [00:18:28] Speaker A: And as good as Busio was with it, even he couldn't do it, right? [00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, well, we'll talk about that soon. You got one more champion in your list. [00:18:37] Speaker A: Got one more champion. And this is one of my favorite champions, so I had to shout her out. [00:18:41] Speaker B: She's getting so much fun. [00:18:42] Speaker A: She's getting some much needed love. And this is a double buff in two different points. The first point is she's just getting a lower cooldown on her E a second across the board. That's just great. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Important to note, her E is her main tool to reset her fear Passive. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Yes. It applies her tick thing gloom, which allows her to eat it and gain all her stacks back. [00:19:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:19:09] Speaker A: One second is huge on that. The other thing she's getting, which I think is kind of amazing, is her alt reset window is getting 33% bigger, which means you now have a significant increase in time to cast your R again so that you don't have to R jump in, get a kill R again immediately. You have time to think about where you're doing things, plan it out, and actually pick a shot. But also give you some time to wait for a couple of your cooldowns to come back. [00:19:46] Speaker B: Yep, that's. That's the biggest part of this, because very often the correct play when you get a reset on it was to simply immediately ult the next person and blow them up too. But having more time to get the reset means you'll get resets you wouldn't get before. That's. That's the. What I just checked. This is a change to not how long do you have to cast it after you get the reset? This is a change to how long after you cast it. Do they have to die for you to get a reset? [00:20:19] Speaker A: Yes. This is a. A dead point after kill. [00:20:24] Speaker B: Yes. So this is if you get a takedown on the target you hit with your ult within eight seconds of hitting them with the first part. That is the. What has changed? [00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah, not the jump. The first hit. [00:20:39] Speaker B: And that's the biggest thing is very frequently on Vex, you would have situations where you mark someone you can't go in for, like, three of the four seconds they're marked because you need your teammate to actually arrive before you can throw yourself at the enemy. Then you'll go in and they'll, you know, flash or cleanse or barrier or get stasis'd by Zhonyas or whatever it might be, and then by the time you actually kill them, that timer had timed out. Now it won't. [00:21:08] Speaker A: This. This essentially gives you a Zhonya's window in extra time. [00:21:12] Speaker B: Yes. And actually realizing exactly what this. Because their patch note is not clear, guys. It is not clear what they mean by reset time window. [00:21:21] Speaker A: No, but it. Once. Once. Once the click happens, you go, oh, no, I understand exactly what you're talking about. [00:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's actually big. I had. I had written off this change initially because I thought it was referring to the time to cast it after you get a reset. [00:21:36] Speaker A: No, no, no. [00:21:37] Speaker B: Yeah, which that's whatever. No, it's referring to the window to actually get the reset in the first place. Very big. You also, by the way, if you just hit the first half of your Ult on someone and they die, you do still get the reset. You do not have to throw yourself in on people. [00:21:56] Speaker A: Yes. You can just use it as an execute. [00:21:58] Speaker B: I have absolutely used it on a like two health person who escaped from a combo just to kill them and then used it again on someone else to actually go and engage. It's a thing you can do. The first part does deal damage. Not a ton, but it does deal damage. Most of the damage in her Ult is in the second half. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, 40 extra percent or something like that. It's huge. [00:22:22] Speaker B: Speaking of most of the damage is in the second half. We are not experts on lock yet. This is not a how to play lock. This is a we're gonna let you know what lock does. So when you run into one you're not like what the hell is that ability? [00:22:38] Speaker A: And sort of an impression against playing versus him. Neither of us have had a chance to really play him except maybe a pickup like bot game here or there, shit like that. None of us have had a chance to play him in a real game yet. [00:22:53] Speaker B: So with that said, Lux Passive just gives him some on hit magic damage. On basic attacks. It's very straightforward, very simple. [00:23:03] Speaker A: It does scale with missing health. [00:23:05] Speaker B: It does scale with missing health. It does have an AP ratio. He is a melee champion. He has 125 attack range. We'll get to that. Lock's Q. He throws a nail in a direction. It travels according to the Wiki 950 range. So slightly shorter than an Ezreal Q but still pretty far. Ezreal Q I think is 1100 sounds right. This is farther than a Zeri Q to put that in context. If he hits you with this nail, it does a little bit of magic damage. However, he can recast it two more times. So this is similar to how Evelynn can recast her Q where Naafiri gets one recast on her Q. Locke gets two. Each nail that he hits you with adds a stack onto you and then L' ak's next basic attack. Or his dash will consume all of those stacks and do bonus damage. If L' ak hits you with three nails and then hits you with a basic attack, it will do at max rank. And this is his first max 522.207percent AP damage. That is the total you will take from 3Qs plus an auto attack, not counting his auto attack passive ratio. That's fucking crazy. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:25] Speaker B: We'll get to why in a moment on our initial. Well, we'll get to why next week when we talk about how to play him more. This is just me saying Lock has a lot of burst guys. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Mm. [00:24:34] Speaker B: Lock's W gives him movement speed and attack speed, makes him take damage over time. And he stores gray health based on damage he takes during it. When it expires, he heals based on the gray health. He can recast this to cause it to expire early and immediately get the gray health back. Or he can let it time out. It's a mundo W basically. Yes, it does cost a percent of his current health. So if Locke builds bruiser type items, he's gonna take more damage from this W to compensate. So you really don't want to build bruiser items on him because you're just taking more damage from your W and the healing does not go up. Lock's E is a blink. He blinks to a location. It's a short range blink. And then after he blinks, he gets to. Then his next auto attack will cause him to dash at a target and do damage. Weirdly, this is like a inverse of echo E. So echo E. He dashes and then he blinks. Lock blinks and then he dashes. Otherwise, they're basically the same ability. Lock's dash does damage on the initial dash and then damage again on the on the initial blink and then damage again on the dash. [00:25:52] Speaker A: So we can get both on top of one target. You can double burst them. [00:25:56] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. He wants to dash on top of you with the first part so that he can apply both and really blow you the heck up. [00:26:03] Speaker A: There are two things about this ability that are important to know. A kill resets. This just flat out resets the cooldown. And the dash portion is AOE in that anything that he has his Q applied to it consumes. If you are within the circle radius of his dash, essentially the size of his initial dash. There's a little bubble. You'll see. It's not huge, but it's big enough. [00:26:27] Speaker B: Both parts are aoe, by the way, which makes it even more ridiculous. His wave clear with Q and his dash is extremely high. Alright. And then Lux Ultimate. This one is weird. This is one of the reasons we want to actually play as him before we try to tell you guys how to actually try to pilot this champion because I'm just gonna read the description of it because it's a weird ability. Luk throws a totem artifact that travels to the target location over half a second after landing. The totem fires latching nails at nearby enemies, dealing magic damage, slowing them by 99%. It's a decaying slow, similar to Zilean Slow where it speeds up. This is the reverse. It slows by a shitload. Thresh. Thresh is a good example of this. Threshold is a decaying slow. It reveals targets it hits and it marks targets it hits for five seconds. If a target is knocked below an execute threshold, they die instantly. If he successfully executes someone, everyone else who has a mark on them has the duration of that mark reset once all of the marks expire. If at least one champion was executed, the totem seals the souls of all the executed champions and drops to the ground over 2 seconds. It then lingers for at least 10 seconds. It lingers until his Ult is back up. And if he walks near it, he collects it, which reduces the cooldown of his ultimate and gives him a permanent stack of sealed Champion, which increases the execute threshold on his Ult. Every stack gives him half a percent of max health for the execute threshold. That does mean yes, if you get 180 kills with the Ult, you will just auto kill people with the Ult. Obviously not a real thing that'll happen in a real game, but it's very funny. [00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:27] Speaker B: I could see this happening in a really wild Aram. [00:28:31] Speaker A: Totally plausible in an Aram, especially with like Stackasaurus or some shit like that. [00:28:36] Speaker B: Yes, you can get this execute threshold really high. [00:28:40] Speaker A: Now baseline, it is a moderately low execute threshold in comparison to some of the others. 10% is one of the lower ones. [00:28:47] Speaker B: 10 to 12% depending on rank, is the base value. [00:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:50] Speaker B: By the way, it literally goes up by 75 damage and 1% execute per rank. This might actually be one of the first champions where leveling Your ult on 11 and 16 might actually be wrong. That is such a weak level up it is. The main balance of it is it gets a shorter cooldown. [00:29:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that's going to be the big one. The weird does not stop there. His art does odd interactions, especially with wind walls. His original throw of his arm is not a projectile, but every single one of the nails is. So the initial throw cannot be blocked. [00:29:34] Speaker B: So here's where it gets extra fucky. That's what Riot said. According to the wiki, the reverse is true. The initial throw can be blocked. But the nails that the totem fires when it lands cannot. I have no idea which it is. One of them can be blocked and the other one can't. [00:29:50] Speaker A: So this has been shown in their original testing footage doing the opposite that doing what they say. [00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:57] Speaker A: So maybe this is one person saying one thing and one coding person doing an accidental thing. Reverse. We're going to check that out. We're gonna give you the proper information by next week when we give you our impression. [00:30:08] Speaker B: Yes. So we just wanted to make sure you guys know what the hell he's doing. So when you run into one, you're not like, I don't understand what his champion does. That's what this week is for. Which leaves us with one more thing to do tonight since we don't have any questions from you guys. Mike and I have been enjoying msi. There's been four matches so far as of when we're recording this. There'll be another one tonight. But we're gonna give our, our initial impressions on the four matches that have happened so far at msi. So if you are not caught up with the first four best of fives of MSI play ins, this is where you should stop the podcast because you should go watch those instead of letting us spoil them. [00:30:50] Speaker A: You should, you should definitely watch every one of the T1 matches because all of those are fantastic. They have some of the funnest games of League of Legends I have ever seen. [00:31:04] Speaker B: And to be clear, at this point, we have seen two games from all four teams that are in the play ins. So him saying all of the T1 matches, that doesn't spoil anything. But this is, this is where the spoiler warning ends. If, if you're, if you're leaving us for that, I understand. We'll see you next week. For everyone else, we're going to start chronologically. The MSI opened up with Team Liquid versus T1 and. Oh boy, Mike, what a frickin series this was. This was. This was probably the closest of the series. Even though it was a 3 0. [00:31:40] Speaker A: These are all 30 matches. This is the one disappointment about the game so far is all of them have been one sided series. If you look at the final only, however, the games themselves. Oh boy. Oh fucking boy. Yeah, I agree. I think TL vs T1 was the closest and there were some really fucking good matches in this. [00:32:08] Speaker B: So TL versus T1. We got to see T1 absolutely stomped game one. It was not close. [00:32:16] Speaker A: They, they played some fun stuff and I mean they actually had A relatively poor first five minutes or so. Yeah, there was some very good play by Jose Dioto and how they were like dealing with the jungle. [00:32:32] Speaker B: But that being said, this game one is why you are now seeing Camille support in your fucking solo queue ruining your goddamn games. Yeah, because Karia busts out Camille support. Game one with Pay's Mel and it looked brutal. [00:32:51] Speaker A: Now admittedly this is the best player currently playing the game playing the. Also the character like Kyria is the wildest support you have ever seen. He has picks that don't. No one should do. No one should do what Kyria does because Kyria shouldn't do what Kyria does. But he does it anyway and wins. No one should pick like him. But he's the best fucking player in the game right now. [00:33:22] Speaker B: And by God, literally his only competition for best player of all time is his own mid laner in Faker. [00:33:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I think it's, it's hands down we can say Faker is the best mid laner that has ever been and Kira is the best support that has ever been. Yes. [00:33:39] Speaker B: Just period. But yeah. So game one, after the good start by tl, it was basically just the Caria show. Karia was all over the map making plays. He got pays fed. Faker went insanely fed. It was brutal. And then game two happened. [00:33:57] Speaker A: Game two was such an interesting game because this is one of those games where you go, holy shit, this is not what I expected to see. And then midway through that game you're going, well, I thought this was over. How. [00:34:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. [00:34:21] Speaker A: Teal makes an exceedingly dominant first half of the game. Like they're 7 to 8,000 gold up. They're winning every single lane. And just. [00:34:33] Speaker B: We thought we were going to have a series on our hands. [00:34:35] Speaker A: We thought we were going to have a series on our hands. And we were looking at this going, wow, TL might have just like gotten the formula right. It does. They, they can figure things out. [00:34:46] Speaker B: To be clear, they drafted. We just talked about Poppy got buffed. This was a Poppy jungle game that got through. I think this was the only one so far of MSI that she got [00:34:55] Speaker A: through that I can think of. [00:34:57] Speaker B: Yeah, there's been a few games where she was just left up and not picked, but she's been banned a lot [00:35:04] Speaker A: and she got, she was a distinct like the, the, the play with Poppy was perfect for this. There's. There's an ambassador on the field. There's what? This was the Caitlyn game, right? [00:35:16] Speaker B: This was the Kalista game. [00:35:18] Speaker A: Kalista. Oh, even more painful. [00:35:20] Speaker B: Calista, literally Vi Ambessa, Kalista, all just getting cucked by Poppy. [00:35:27] Speaker A: This was. This was a master. This was a masterclass in how to team fight from behind. Not just how to teamfight from behind, but like some of the best individual moments moving into a team fight where multiple people individually carried the fights in different points in time. Individual moments, each carried them fight to bring them back in this game and win it. They were down in like 10,000. What was this? Nine for 919. They were down more than 10 kills. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Like, at 19 minutes, they were down, I think seven and a half, 8,000 gold. T1 was down versus Team Liquid. [00:36:08] Speaker A: But they. They are so even when they were down, they were doing things on the field to get them money. Which it. It's this. It is a masterclass on how to play from behind. [00:36:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. Also, I just looked on the subreddit. Someone pointed out that Oner literally only played the champions. He has a world skin on in this series. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Oh, my God, that's true. [00:36:35] Speaker B: Which is hilarious. And that's kind of the tone I want to set here is TL got 3.0'd despite a game they should have won by a T1. That was literally styling on them. [00:36:50] Speaker A: This. This was. And Jax and I have gone over the games with T1 a couple times. I am fairly positive the entirety of the series so far the T1 has played has been them going, let's limit test everything. They have not been. They have not been dialed in, ready to win until. Until halfway through that second game when they went, we're not fucking dropping a game. We're going to be here. Dial it in for this game. And then they did it. And then they went back to being insane in the next game. [00:37:23] Speaker B: By the way, they played Zeri Yumi in game three. [00:37:27] Speaker A: Disgusting. Disgusting. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Yumi should literally never exist in pro. Like, she is literally nerfed down to be not pro viable. And Caria just did it anyway, because. Why not? Okay, the other series that happened on day one was Carmine Corp versus Relove Deep Cross Gaming. [00:37:47] Speaker A: They're one of the, I guess, Vietnamese teams. [00:37:51] Speaker B: Yes, it's a Vietnamese team. We've basically only ever seen one of these players on the international stage before. Unfortunately, it kind of showed because Casey destroyed them with a near perfect game in game two. They gave up three kills in a turret. [00:38:08] Speaker A: Their first game was a very competitive game until it suddenly wasn't. [00:38:14] Speaker B: Yes. [00:38:14] Speaker A: And this brings me to the point of why that team was a new team. You could See it in game two being a. They're. They're mentally boomed. Completely mentally bummed. [00:38:25] Speaker B: Yep. And then game three was. It was closer, but it was closer. More off of Casey making mistakes than off of deep cross. Actually like doing anything good or Casey. [00:38:37] Speaker A: Casey would make plays and then they would overextend again and again and again. And they were. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Casey still dominated the game. [00:38:43] Speaker A: They were far enough ahead that, oh, no, we've given up two kills straight. [00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's move on to the other T1 series because Carmine Corp and T1 won their first round. So they played against each other in the winners bracket. And game one was not close at all. It took a little longer than it did against TL, but T1 came out swinging. We got to see pays on the Mel again. [00:39:13] Speaker A: And it was. It is showing that this. This is a man who is one of. I would say Pais Caria is the best bot lane in the world. Curry is undoubtedly the best. The best player. But like as a 2v2 team, their bot lane combos are amazing. [00:39:33] Speaker B: They're pretty nutty. I was frustrated with Casey. Did not look like they were practiced or experienced against Mel. There is a point in this game where Yike on Naafiri ults into Paz, is quite healthy and just immediately on arrival throws a Q which gets reflected. And that Q getting reflected meant he did not have enough damage to actually kill Pays in time. This is inexperience showing because when you go in on Naafiri against Amell, you just use your dash and wait out the reflect. And then you Q her. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. [00:40:14] Speaker B: She has to put up the reflect or else you're going to cue her and kill her. [00:40:18] Speaker A: Mm. The other thing that was like the important part about this game, Casey immediately went, well, fuck you, we're as good as you. And put Busio on Camille and Busio played very, very well. And no one else could. Could get into the same point. Camille just show. Yeah. [00:40:38] Speaker B: No, no, no. I'm not going to let you say that about game two, Kyahu took it to Faker. In game two, Kyahu plays Cassiopeia into faker Syndra and Kyahu destroyed Faker, pushed it there. [00:40:52] Speaker A: But this game one that I'm talking about is Busio is trying and he's trying. [00:40:58] Speaker B: Game one, Busio was playing Seraphine. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Oh, you're right. The Camille game was. It was game two, Game two. Okay. Game two was. [00:41:06] Speaker B: Game two is the one where Kanna and Yike let Busio down. [00:41:10] Speaker A: Yeah. It's incredible how that Works out. But this game one was so. And it functioned. It's actually, like, exactly the same way game two. Casey is doing real well because of that Camille. Because they first picked Camille. So T1, the people who invented it play their counter into it. [00:41:34] Speaker B: Yep. Turns out Camille puts you in the thunderdome. Bard can just say, no, I'm done with the thunderdome. [00:41:42] Speaker A: Bard can say, no, I'm done with the thunderdome. They play gragas into it. No, you're out of the thunderdome. The thunderdome is gone. [00:41:48] Speaker B: Yeah, they. [00:41:49] Speaker A: They sat there and went, we know what you're doing. And this is a second master class on how to play from behind. But they didn't int anywhere near as hard as they they had versus TL in the other game. [00:42:02] Speaker B: TLC had, I think, like, a 3,000 gold lead at one point. It was. They had a lead over T1, but it wasn't nearly as dominant as t this one was. [00:42:11] Speaker A: Was T1 showing? All right, you can get leads, but we will forcibly get leads elsewhere as you are getting things there. We are going to make sure that when it's time to fight, when it. When the chips are down and it's time to throw down a team fight, we will win. [00:42:26] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:27] Speaker A: And this was game one or this was game two. So this was with the renekton and the kiana. Kiana. That kiana got real fucking fed because of the camille. It was a scary, scary time. And then you got to watch it be torn apart because T1's draft went by the way, we know exactly what this is. Watch it fall apart. [00:42:55] Speaker B: It was brutal. And then game three happened as well. Game three. T1 just kind of dumpstered bot lane and Casey dumpstered top lane. Kanna is legendary. At one point on gnar into a yorick. The problem is because Casey's bot lane got destroyed so bad, so hard, so early. Oh, and also yahoo. Is again taking it to faker. For most of this game, like yahoo. Is kicking faker's ass. [00:43:25] Speaker A: Yahoo. Is spending every ounce of his his energy doing everything he can to faker at all times. Faker loses one death to it because he wants to try and trade a kill. And he goes, all right, I'll try and trade a kill against you. He loses, Barely survives. But. [00:43:41] Speaker B: But again, two out of the three games Kyahu had faker's number. [00:43:46] Speaker A: It just didn't fucking matter because faker knows. Faker knows again. He has the debuff of faker's on the map. They're coming for him. Cause everyone Always does. [00:43:57] Speaker B: The key is these weren't team plays. This is 1v1. Kahu was beating the shit out of Faker. And. But it's the same thing that makes Faker so special is he's not the strongest laner in the world. He never has been the strongest laner in the world. There has always been a mid laner who is a better laner than Faker is. [00:44:15] Speaker A: I think maybe in 2013 he was the best. Maybe in 2015 he was the best. [00:44:20] Speaker B: But 2013. But I don't think in 2015 he was. [00:44:23] Speaker A: Since then, no, he has always been in. [00:44:27] Speaker B: He's the best team fighting mid in the world. [00:44:30] Speaker A: Or if it's not a team fight, he is the best strategist by far in the game. Because you see him do things and you go, why is he over there doing that? And he goes, by the way, they're coming for me. There's gonna be four people on me. Do whatever you want. On the other side of the map, I know this. I'm gonna die. [00:44:46] Speaker B: We see that in this game. He realm warps out of situations he shouldn't be allowed to realm warp out of because his positioning is so perfect. He just fancy feats, everything. [00:44:56] Speaker A: I don't remember if this was versus T1 or vers versus or TL versus or versus KC where he offensively, mid teamfight in Dragon uses the realm warp and no one goes in it. And everyone on the map turns to that realm warp and goes, we're gonna kill Faker now because he's gonna go through the realm warp and he just cancels it. [00:45:16] Speaker B: Yep. But the problem Kayce had in game three was basically bot lane was so heavy, they had to have their legendary Kanna in team fights. They could not let him just beat the shit out of Dora to make Doran useless because they would just lose the 4v4. [00:45:30] Speaker A: And. And by the mid game when this was a thing, they had killed Paz once by having Kanna throw everything. [00:45:40] Speaker B: Everything. [00:45:40] Speaker A: And then three other people throw everything to kill Paz. [00:45:43] Speaker B: Yep. [00:45:44] Speaker A: And once that was done, Paz1v1'd him [00:45:47] Speaker B: in the next fight and in the fight after that. And that was basically the game right there. [00:45:52] Speaker A: And then it was out. Out of nothing. 27 or something minutes. And it was just, oh, they're just dead. [00:45:59] Speaker B: Random team fight mid. It's an ace game ends unceremonious. If you had to pick between Gnar and Lucian, you're always going to pick Lucian to be where your gold lead is. Which brings us to the last series Of MSI so far. Team liquid versus Deep cross gaming. The first elimination match of the tournament. Loser goes home. And this was also not close. Team Liquid 3. Zero Deep Cross Gaming. We saw glimpses in game one and two of what could have been if this team had more experience. That's about it. [00:46:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's. It's telling that TL is a less explosive team than Casey because they didn't knock DCG out anywhere near as quickly as Casey did. But they did it more methodically and they gave up less. [00:46:52] Speaker B: Yep. There's really not much else to talk about in this series. I had one other thing I wanted to talk about before we wrap up. Out of these four, I think Doran is the third place top laner. [00:47:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe. [00:47:07] Speaker B: We saw both Kanna and Morgan beat the shit out of him in the 1v1. [00:47:11] Speaker A: So we saw him lose the 1v1s. Doran single handedly won half the team fights. We have found that Doran is a not good laner but a brilliant team fighter. [00:47:24] Speaker B: Yes. [00:47:24] Speaker A: Which is exactly what you're doing. [00:47:25] Speaker B: Is the entire strength of T1. [00:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And T1 plays by owner controlling the map, making sure that paze and kyria have power. And then Doran being the control faker, is just the mastermind behind the strings. Sometimes he is an individual beast like on that Akali game. Sometimes he is. Yeah. I'll take everyone's threat, Come and kill me, spend everything on me because I'm the teamfight. Everyone knows me. Come and kill me. And he uses that psychologically so much. [00:48:03] Speaker B: Yep. So by the by, did you do your pickums before MSI started? [00:48:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:48:13] Speaker B: Has it proceeded exactly as you expected in terms of results, even if the matches themselves weren't as you expected? [00:48:21] Speaker A: I think I may have even included the same. I didn't put scores down. But let's see where were. I believe I am exactly. Yep, I'm exactly correct. The next one is going to be the one where I may actually regret my original thought because as much as Casey, I put Casey to win. [00:48:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:40] Speaker A: Because I thought Casey showed better in domestically domestic, But Teal I think has showed better here. [00:48:49] Speaker B: So this is where my pick em is going to hurt me. As you may know if you've been listening to me podcast for a very long time. I used to be on an esports podcast and I had a thing that I would say regularly on that podcast which is fuck team liquid. So I predicted DCG to beat them, not really knowing anything about them other than it's a young Vietnamese team. I'm disappointed that that did not pan out, but at least it means we get an NA EU grudge match. [00:49:16] Speaker A: This, this is very, hopefully, very, hopefully a five game banger because we have young, brash and explosive versus relatively old, experienced and methodical with one insane player. Someone who just does things because they can. With Jose Dioto, he is, he is their young sort of crazy man. But most of KC is crazy. So we're going to see whether or not the the leashed crazy versus the unleashed crazy will win. [00:49:57] Speaker B: Yep. And that's gonna be it. You guys don't get a Lucian top because we didn't have one at MSI and you didn't write in any questions. [00:50:04] Speaker A: We did have a Lucian bot, though. [00:50:06] Speaker B: We did have some Lucian bot. This has been episode 537 of the Four Wards podcast. Write in questions, write to theforwardspodcastmail.com or drop them in the question submission channel of the Discord so that we have stuff to talk about for next week, guys. Like seriously, we have no questions in the queue right in. We will literally answer them on next episode. That's it. I'm Jack Sohlman for Mike and many names. Have a great night. [00:50:35] Speaker A: Good night everybody. Nakatima AC on. [00:50:38] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our Patreon at patreon.com theforwardspodcast. And of course, send your questions to theforwardspodcast at gmail. Com so we can answer them live on the show. That's theforwardspodcast at gmail. [00:51:00] Speaker A: Com.