[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker C: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz.
And you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in League.
Hello and welcome to episode 540 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Of course, it's the usual crew. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: It is my 100th episode.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Huzzah.
We've also got Pillow Pat.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: I came at the same time as Mike, but It's not my 100th episode.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: You've missed too many. We're not sure exactly where. You'd have to go back and check.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: It's his 25th episode.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: It's not that few.
Guys, we are the Four Wards podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. Come play League Classic with us when it drops in like a week or so. It's a good time. Link is in the episode description. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV jacksoman, where you can see me getting trolled by the worst teammates imaginable and you'll be like, how in the hell is this what you get matched with in Platt? Pillow can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet and Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames. Also want to give a shout out to Codexninja, Pillow Pet Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast at the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much for your contributions. You're keeping us 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 will get you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout you out at the top of every episode. And all those benefits also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and listeners. I wanna be clear, we shout out the people who do the $10 tier. We love all of our patrons. We love all of our listeners. Thank you guys. There would be no point in doing this if no one was listening. Now, that being said, listen up. We need More Questions right into theforwardspodcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer them on the show. We also do have a question submission channel in the Discord, if that's easier for you.
All right. All that intro stuff out of the way. It's a patch week. We got patch changes to talk about.
And Pillow, you took one of the ones I wanted to talk about, so you get to go first.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: I'm gonna guess you're talking about Mordekaiser.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: What are you talking about?
[00:03:01] Speaker C: I was talking about Mordekaiser.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: I got a couple funny ones on here.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: That was also what I wanted to check out.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Mordekaiser's got a pretty decent buff.
His E is now does more damage. It's up 20 damage, base damage on his last rank. But the big kicker is it gets 5% more ability power.
And I think the big, most impactful change is going to be on his R. He gets an extra 3% stat steal. So it was 10. Now it's going up to 13, which is quite a. Quite a haul depending on what stats you're stealing.
3%'s not minuscule by any means.
All this came down from the Riftmaker bug fixes that came out in 2610, so hopefully we get to see a stronger Mordekaiser. He. He's been suffering a little bit. He's got. He's in a weird spot.
He does really good in like certain roles. Like I've seen him excel in jungle, but in the top lane, he kind of gets bullied right now.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Circumstance of what happened in top lane. Yeah.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: To be clear, this is his second max, so the buffs to the E don't do much early. The ratio is nice, but you don't have a lot of AP early. But that 3% stat steal is bigger than it sounds. Mordekaiser's Ult steals max health, ability, power, attack speed, armor and magic resistance.
And it reduces their ad. It doesn't steal it. It just reduces their ad by the same amount, the same duration.
This means if you two are on even footing outside the death realm, the spread. The disparity in how much stronger Mordekaiser is relative to his opponent is exaggerated by an additional 6% because he gets 3% and they lose 3%.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: And never forget, Mordekaiser is quite good into tanks.
And if you're facing a hyper tank up top, where he thrives, someone like I don't know or Horn or Mundo, you can steal a lot of power.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Yep. It can be really silly all right, Mike, which one do you want to talk about first?
[00:05:13] Speaker A: I'm going to save my first one for last because that feels like it's actually the one that matters.
So you'll notice a trend here in that there's not a lot to talk about in a lot of these things.
It's a pretty minor patch all the way across, but there's a couple things that are good.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: But, like, there's no big mechanical changes. There's numbers, tweaks.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Yes. There's very few interesting changes. Some of them are more impactful than others.
Jayce is getting a good tweak on the face. Nice. Nice slap upside the head, but not enough to really nerf him into the ground.
His bonus move speed on his passive, which happens whenever he does his flip, is dropping 10 bonus move speed across the board. It's. It's just 40 out of 30.
And then his R has a mechanic. When you get into the hammer portion where you gain bonus armor and Mr. And then it's multiplied by your bonus ad, you get a nice little percent bonus on that. The percent bonus isn't changing, but that base number is going down pretty significantly by its max. You're. You're. We're at 35. You're dropping to 26 by level 16 because you do have to level his are. And if you aren't leveling his are, what are you doing?
So Jason's. Jason's getting a little bit of a tankiness and a mobility hit. Still going to deal out the same amount of damage he does normally, which is potentially obscene.
But this should help help keep all
[00:06:47] Speaker C: in you is the same. His ability to survive when he mistakenly all ins you when he couldn't actually pull it off is much lower.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: And his ability to run away is significantly hampered. 10 Move speed is a lot.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: It is, but it's only on the form swap.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: It's only on the form swap, but it only lasts for like five seconds, maybe even less than that.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: 75 seconds.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: 75 seconds. Okay. That is. Never. Never mind. That passive speed is negligible. Yeah, it'll get you another teemo.
It. It will be the difference between one auto attack landing and one not. That's. That's about the difference there.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: I'm just happy about this because I hate that Jace is able to just 100 to 0 people by diving in. And I prefer a version of Jace who wants to soften them up before he does that.
So, yeah, hopefully these nerfs are good and they keep going in that direction.
Speaking of good Nerfs. I want to talk about Senna for a moment.
Riot realized that Senna in bot lane, not as support, actually needs real adjustment, not just soul drop rate adjustment for once.
Statikk Shiv is distorting Senna a lot. They already fixed the on attack versus on hit part of her Q refund, but now they're targeting the AP ratios on her Q. They're nerfing both the slow ratio and the healing ratio. So the AP on static shiv that is her first item in almost every case is giving her less power.
They're also nerfing the damage critical damage modifier on her passive. So she now only gets 80% of the value of crits as opposed to other champions getting 100% value combined.
I don't think you should be playing AD carry Senna right now. Honestly, like, she's a lot weaker.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: I just played her in a mayhem and I lost the auto attack war at full items.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that. That crit damage modifier matters a lot. Late game and the Q nerf severely hampers her one item spike, which is when you want to spike on a champion like Senna.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Now, like, Senna thrives in long engagements where she is sitting there poking for a very, very long time. And eventually she will just outscale every AD carry in the game. But that give her enough souls that eventually is like 40 minutes now before she's at that stage. So, like, I've played one game in the past that would have that mattered.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I think this is a good Nerf. I don't like Senna being close to par with other AD carries in terms of raw damage output. She should be a compromise of I'm playing Senna. I'm bringing more damage than a typical enchanter support, but still some healing and shielding or less damage than a typical AD carry, but still some healing and shielding and CC that other AD carries might not break.
And this I think, puts her back in that spot. I don't think she's unplayable, but I think you need other damage threats on your team now.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I said that that was a full item Senna versus a full item.
Who goes with Rakan?
[00:10:13] Speaker C: Any Crit marksman?
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. What's your name? Zaya. So, like in. In the straight duel, I lost the duel, but I was able to poke out half of the enemy before that. But when she got to me, she killed me. So, like, there's no way in which that game could have gone long enough for me to scale hard enough. Because as we said Senna will scale and eventually win, but. But that's. You're. You're banking on time with that.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: I just kind of wish they would remove her like soul proc passive from working with Shiv. Just special case it so that she doesn't have to build Shiv because it's such a. A crutch to make her feel not shit to play.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Does it grab souls?
[00:10:58] Speaker C: It will grab souls if you've already proc'd the first half. And it will proc the first half if you haven't.
Shiv proc plus a single auto pulls a soul out of someone.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Okay. So that's. That's entirely why. Yeah, that needs to get removed.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: That's why she's literally hardbound to Shiv right now.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Because before that it was because it was doing reduction on her Q, which was insane.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: It was doing both before, which is why it was insane. Now it's still just doing the souls, which still means that ad carry farming. Senna is getting way more souls than she was before. And it's not from random drops.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Now, to be. To be fair, like, this is her only aoe. So static shave is actually good on her so that she has AOE to clear waves. But man, it's. It's hard to recommend this.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: Yeah. All right, Pillow, you get to go again. The rest of yours aren't even champion changes. Pick one.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. Blue buff is almost a champion.
The next buff I want to talk about is the blue buff. He is getting an Ability Haste buff on the.
On the buff you get on the buff itself. The buffs getting buffed from the blue buff.
So it was. Instead of being 10 ability haste, no matter the level, it's going to be 10 scaling up to 20, it's going to go 10 at level ones.
Up to level six, it goes to 15, and then up to level 11, it goes to 20.
Pretty big deal in a change. It's. I mean, the ability haste is being doubled into your late game, end of mid game jungling.
And what they say the reason is is they've almost made mana pointless for junglers in the jungle because you're constantly. You don't run out of mana very often when you're in the jungle. And except for maybe there's an early clear, you might. Maybe.
So they're trying to make it to where the bluff.
They're trying to make it to where the blue buff is meaningful in the jungle again.
But I do feel 20 ability haste is going to be a bigger change than we were expecting.
Because I mean that's quite a buff.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: It's. It's only adding 10. So like it's not like it's giving 20 ability haste over where it was.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: This is exaggeratedly strong for champions who don't typically build a lot of haste. So champions mages where they want to be itemizing like Storm Surge, Shadowflame, Death Cap type itemization, they're getting a lot more ability haste in the mid to late game.
I think it's weird that they're doing this now because the red buff has had scaling slow values at levels 1, 6 and 11 for literally a long time.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: I feel like the blue buff should do more than just give ability haste at this point in the like life of the game. It still does feel underwhelming. Like 20 ability haste. Doubling the ability haste is great, but I still don't feel like it does a whole lot other than gives you some mana regen which is great for a mid laner or other like a mana user. But like they said, the jungle just regenes so much mana when they're actually actively in the jungle.
I just feel like it needs more than ability haste. But that's just me thinking out loud my opinion.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: Wow, this is so much older than I thought. Do you want to guess when red buff started scaling its slow based on your level?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: 2017?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: I want to say it was probably within the last like five, six years.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: It has been in the game since before the game hit full release.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Oh my goodness.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: Red buff started applying a slow based on your level and not a flat value during beta.
I thought that was added in like season five or six.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: I thought they didn't. They recently changed something to do with this.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: They've changed the values repeatedly.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: They changed what it does with its like damage proc a couple times too. It wasn't true damage before or something.
[00:15:02] Speaker C: And the health regen on red buff used to be a flat amount and that was changed in season six. So 2016.
But the slow has literally always worked that way.
So weird that they're now doing that for blue buff.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: The thing that I think about the blue buff that like the level that this is going to be insane is that level six engage level so you reach level six on your second clearance. Five more ability haste at level six is a lot. It's a lot.
[00:15:33] Speaker C: It's several seconds off your ultimate in almost any case.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: So that's actually I think the point that's going to be the most skewed. And by level 11, it's going to the 10 ability haste is nice. It's an extra item of ability haste. By the end of the game, 10 ability haste isn't going to feel as much as it did. I think maybe they should increase that to 25.
[00:15:57] Speaker C: Nah, we have enough haste in the game already.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: That's fair.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Karthus will love this early.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Yeah, true Karthus.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Jungle buff boya.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: All right, Mike, you got two classic always buffed or nerfed together champions to talk about.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Pick one.
All right, well, we're going down the line.
The you'll be able to figure out what the other one is based on. Which one? This is because it's Corki and the Corki is getting a little bit of a buff.
His damage growth is going up a half.
So two to two and a half. It's good.
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Every two levels, he gains one AD more than he did before.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's good. It's not great, but it's good. And AD growth stat changes are actually like, incredibly important on AD carries and they skew it a lot. So getting half of a of a point is actually like something you need to watch on an AD carry. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it can become a lot.
And then the other change for him is they're making his recharge time with how his missile passive works a little bit better for him. So it did go from 2 to 4 seconds based on crit chance. Now it's going to to two to six seconds. So six seconds off of the cooldown for every crit based on. I think it's the levels and the ranks in the R.
It's.
[00:17:27] Speaker C: All this is, is if you auto attack a champion, you will reduce the cooldown on your next missile. The the recharge time by that amount.
Your attack does not need to crit problem is that.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: No, yeah. This is based on your chance.
So Corki kind of likes crit and kind of doesn't because Corki's burst damage is now insane. When they switched it over to being Essence Reaver, you would think a lot of more people would want an Essence Reaver, but he still really likes Trinity Force because it has a stronger proc and he is one of the best people to proc a Trinity Force.
So I have a feeling that the best possible Corki is actually a bot laner now, which is weird because Corki has been a staple in the mid lane for some time now.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: He's been predominantly a bot laner for a couple years now.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Corki Azir has been around like he was there last year.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: So like he has. He has the power to be a mid laner in the right meadows and he really ever only ever like meta shows up in mid lane. He's always had niche bot lane appearances and he's actually quite strong there. I think now he should be a bot laner because you do want to build crit with him, but you want that Trinity Force proc and you want the monomune.
And the only way to get 100 crit and do that is to be a bot laner.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: I mean, you could go Essence Reaper instead of Trinity Force.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: You could go essence.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: It's roughly the same in terms of actual damage output. For what it's worth, his winningest build right now is Essence Reaver Collector.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Ie.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Because most games do not go to six items. So giving him the Essence Reaver is just really powerful.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: I don't know, it's. I've never noticed this refund effect. Probably because by the time I'm in range to auto attack people, I'm either 100 to zeroing them or I'm dying.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: I notice it.
I notice it in duels a lot. I don't notice it in.
In team fights because usually out of
[00:19:34] Speaker C: missiles before the duel's over, but usually
[00:19:37] Speaker A: I'm starting to duel, not at a missile.
I'm starting with a Q. Going in, procing immediately, getting a missile procing again.
[00:19:46] Speaker C: You're using your missiles to farm more than I am, is what I'm learning here.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: A bit of farmer, a bit of pokey, but yeah, fair enough.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: All right, I'm going to talk about something that makes me very sad. I believe I was championing this item a couple of patches ago. The mid laner upgrade version of the Gluttonous Greaves called Immortal Path.
I think has been under the radar op but clearly Riot has a better radar than the general League population because its pick rate still sucked. But they nerfed it because it was OP.
They've nerfed the damage increase from 5% to 4% and the healing increase when you're low, but from 15% down to 12%.
To be clear, I think the item's still really good, but I think that removes it from all of the champions who would have considered building it, even though they're not the right archetype for it.
Now it's pretty much just champions who are looking to stack it up and drain tank. And now it's just better for that.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
Do you think this is still a Cassidy pick?
[00:20:56] Speaker C: No. And that's kind of where I'm going with that. Is I think that's enough to remove it from Kassadin. Whereas someone like Vladimir is still going this. If he's not going cooldown boots because boots are often correct.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Well, now he has a reason to get blue buff. You can get blue buff instead of cooldown boots.
[00:21:15] Speaker C: So, yeah, Immortal path got nerfed even though no one was building it because it was op Riot was paying attention.
Damn.
Once again, I'm ahead of the curve.
All right, Pillow, you got one more change you wanted to highlight.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Yeah. The next champion I want to talk about getting a Nerf in the jungle is Nasus.
And Nasus is directly getting a Nerf because protoplasm harness is getting a pretty significant early game Nerf.
The cost of it is going up to 2600 gold from 2500 gold. And the bonus health that it would give you is now scaling from 100 to 300 instead of 200 or 300. And the healing is scaling from 100 to 400 where it was 200 to 400.
It is still going to be a strong item later in the game, but it's trying to.
They're trying to knock down the single item spike that this was giving champions like Nasus where he could just buy this as his first item and then he becomes unkillable.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: They really want this to be more of a like capstone item for tanks where it's a bunch of healing based on your armor and Mr. And not a win more item for juggernauts, which is what it is.
Still.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: I think there are a couple like specific health building champions who really loved this item who always would rush it. Tom Kench was one of those people. A lot of supports were doing it.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: Yep. And I think they still are. It's just a little worse.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: I will say I am happy to hopefully see Nasus getting out of the jungle with this Nerf because I do not enjoy seeing a Nasus on my team or on the enemy team as a jungle just because of how his playstyle is.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: I absolutely hate him being in the jungle. It's such a just oh, I'm in the jungle. Not because I'm a good jungler, but because it lets me completely avoid the part of the game where I'm actually it.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: It does mean. And that. That is the thing with NASA's jungle. You do sacrifice jungle power for it. Because he does not have the best of clears and he is intentionally slowing his clear down to make sure he's Q farming.
[00:23:32] Speaker C: To a degree.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: I think a lot of people overdo that. Like, you should not be trying to last hit the entire Raptor camp, for example.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Yes, don't do that.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: I have seen people do that. It's fucking stupid. You are slowing yourself down overall. Just make sure you last hit the big one and then whichever small ones you can.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: All right, Mike, you got the other half of your pair to talk about.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: All right. You may have heard me say it, you may have paid attention, or you may just automatically know it. And this is. I want to say this feels like the single most impactful change across the board for all the changes for champions here. This one, you read it and you go, oh my.
[00:24:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Azir is getting a pretty hefty buff on how his W works. Hussar is also getting a buff, but it's not really.
It knocks back jungle monsters now, Huzar.
Oof. Okay.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: That can matter occasionally in extremely close duels that happen in the jungle.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:35] Speaker C: That's about the only time it actually matters.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: But huzzah. He's knocking some jungle monsters back.
But this is where things are quite powerful now. Scorch, Liandry's Torment, Blackfire Torch and hextech alternator. All four of these are now having their damage 100% activated when he hits with his W instead of 50%.
It's doing full on hit damage now, which is big.
Double tap. Conqueror will give you two stacks now instead of one.
And the last portion is press the attack now applies to the primary target that you hit.
He has two more masteries or runes he can use now with Conqueror and press the attack with this Conqueror on two stacks per W shot is huge.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: Two stacks. Conqueror. So fast.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Now if he has three soldiers and you hit with all three of them, you may proc. Instant Conqueror.
[00:25:41] Speaker C: I don't think so. I think he's still limited to one proc per auto attack.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: It may be proc per auto attack. It might be proc per soldier.
[00:25:48] Speaker C: If it's proc per soldier, he stacks it the fastest of anyone in the game.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:53] Speaker C: Which is why I think it's proc per.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: It's probably Proctor Auto Attack. Because going from one to two, even at one, that would be three, which would be insane. So it's probably one per auto attack. But still it's not. It's giving him two per now, which is massive, meaning he can actively use it. Giving Press the attack on the W2
[00:26:14] Speaker C: Be Conqueror like a melee champion does, essentially, is what this means.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
And Liandry's Torment and Blackfire Torch doing and Scorch doing all of their damage on the hit now means you aren't punished for going a more haste oriented build that gives dot damage, that does more damage to tanks. You can do more builds with more efficiency. Hextech Alternator Proc going at 100 now is also kind of massive.
It gives you the burst option and it gives you the dot option.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: Important to point out Scorch and Hextech Alternator are single procs with a cooldown, so him getting them at half value before just meant they were worthless on him compared to every other champion in the game.
Andre's Torment in Blackfire Torch I think is more expectation based in that both of those are applying an effect on a person that ticks for a duration. And it felt really unintuitive for Azir to apply it on auto attacks from his soldiers, but only at half value, whereas his Q was applying it at full value. So most of the time it didn't actually change anything.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Yeah, he has been a weird champion in how he functions, but these changes make it so that essentially on hit effects for him are always good. You apply on hits from your W. You apply a lot of on hits that are like casting on hits from your W now as well from spell procs because W is still a spell.
[00:27:39] Speaker C: It's very weird.
Alright, I'm gonna talk about the elephant in the room. I saved him for last because I'm mad about it and I want to talk about that. So if you listen to us talk about Locke, what? Two weeks ago we we thought he was fun to play and he is. But now we're two weeks later and the community and the player base has had more time to play this champion and he's overpowered. I'm just gonna say that straight out, this champion is overpowered. Riot put some nerfs in this patch. They reduced the amount of time that you can just sit on the Q before it times out and they slightly reduced the base damage on the Q. That's the nerfs that actually do anything. The other nerf they put in is at higher ranks of his W than the first one. It has a slightly lower base gray health cap.
AP ratio is the same, but he loses up to 40 gray health at max rank. Most locks were maxing this last so that one does literally nothing except extreme late game. But this does absolutely nothing to fixing the reason Lock is winning constantly and frustrating people. This champion's ban rate, by the way, guys, is literally 75%. He is banned in 3/4 of all solo queue games in NA, Emerald, I'm scrolling down to Gold Plus.
It's only 2/3 in Gold plus, he's banned 2/3 of games.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: What is Zed?
[00:29:09] Speaker C: Let's look. What is Zed's ban rate?
Zed, one of the historically most banned champions of all time. 15% in Emerald plus and NA. If I drop it to gold, 12%.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Zed, for a long time, for a very long time was a 50 plus percent ban rate.
[00:29:30] Speaker C: He is historically the most commonly banned champion in the game.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: This is, this is the AP Zed of this.
[00:29:38] Speaker C: Yeah, the, the problem is, and we talked about this a little bit when we previewed Lock. Lock has all of the agency, so he's very, very, very, very frustrating to play against because Lock shoots a Q. If it hits you, you're slowed. So he has an easier time hitting the rest of the queues. He presses W. Once he's fired all three Qs, he engages on you or he misses the other two Qs and uses his engage to instead run away and you don't get to do anything. And then he presses W and heals back. Any damage you might have done back to him in that intervening time. And that's what frustrates people about Locke. That's why his ban rate is so high. His burst, if he hits all three nails is psychotic. I have seen literal just hundred zeros where the nail hits were shielded, but the pop killed someone outright.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Yeah. The amount of damage he does in a single burst combo is finally surpassed. Akali. Yep. As the highest burst combo in the game.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: It's insane and completely just frustrating to play against for a champion who's so goddamn safe.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Now the thing that we have been thankfully like his win rate has gone down by a significant portion in comparison to where it was earlier this week.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Yeah, he's only at 51% in mid now.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: He was up in the 60s earlier last week. One of the reasons for this is because of what we have been noticing is his counters. Because most people, if he's not banned, he's first picked, frequently gives you complete option to counter pick him.
And he is incredibly counter pickable.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: He has champions you would expect that are usually good against assassins. And that's the frustrating part.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: Brianna does good against every other assassin and she gets obliterated by Locke.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Yeah. The weird thing about this is though, the people who beat him, beat him so hard, they have some of the highest win percentages I have ever seen.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: We're Talking like Locke has a 40% win rate against them kind of things.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah, like there's a couple people in the higher ends who have like a 75 plus percent win rate against him. There's not a lot of play against them, but there's not a lot of play in Grandmaster and Challenger anyways, so.
But things like Riven, things like Embessa.
Smoke him.
A lot of the other actual burst assassins, Echo, Diana Fizz, beat the shit out of him.
Because their burst. Yeah, their burst is not contingent upon hitting the Qs. So he tries to go in for a Q procs, they go in immediately.
[00:32:29] Speaker C: And Pantheon, he might just literally shield the three stack every time.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Yeah, my favorite counter into him is Naafiri.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Naafiri is the same idea.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: I love playing into him.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: She's across the board, across all ranks. Naafiri is the best counterpick to him outside of Riven.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: I would say the thing that all these champions have in common are a way to dodge or displace his entire burst, like completely.
[00:32:57] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Echo being on his R, Nafiri can go up in the air. Like you said with Pantheon, with his E, Riven gets a pretty beefy shield.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Like also a million dashes.
The one.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: There's.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: There's one outlier here. There's one outlier and it's a weird one.
Yep, the weirdest outlier is one of my favorite champions. Makes no sense in comparison to all of the others, but it is also like the people who play it against it win hardcore a soul for no reason whatsoever that you would think a Sol can smoke a lock.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't understand that one. It's true. I just don't understand it.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Never mind. I understand it.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: I think it comes down to him never having to interact.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Pop your W on her. On yourself. He's going down. He never has a chance to press the W. Re health. He dies to the execute.
[00:33:49] Speaker C: That's dumb.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: He's. He's executing himself. Oh my God.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: Dumb.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Oh my God, he's executing himself.
[00:34:00] Speaker C: I firmly believe for this champion, they need to make it so he cannot recast his W while he is hard cc'd.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: That would be a huge. That. That's probably the biggest thing that they can do to fix him.
[00:34:12] Speaker C: And then I would prefer they increase the damage of the Q nail throws and reduce the stacked pop at the end. It could be the same total damage if he.3 stacks and then pops should do a lot of damage.
I just don't want it to be literally 2500 damage on the pop.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Being able to take like half of that away is probably a great thing.
[00:34:34] Speaker C: Half of that so you can see your health bar go down instead of oh, I suddenly died because same reason I hate Rengar. When Rengar gets really fed, he literally just presses R, jumps on you and you're dead before you can react. Literally outside human reaction time.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: That's out of our human reaction time. I've pros are different people.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Those aren't reactions, those are predictions.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Well, no, I've seen the veins knock him back mid jump.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Yeah. Because they're literally have their mouse where they think he's gonna jump from waiting for it. So the moment they see anything, they press the button. It's a prediction.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: That's, that's a bit of both. But yes, I'll agree with you. I'll agree with you halfway.
But yeah, no, there's, there's, there's some problems with lock that needs to be fixed. His win rate is now back to roughly where a champion is. Okay. Being 51% isn't bad. It's not great outside of context.
[00:35:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Speaker C: The context is he is a squishy assassin who is a new release that is an archetype that should never have a high win rate early. Like if we are three weeks into him existing and he's a squishy assassin, he should be at a 45% win rate for him to actually be healthy for the game.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: His, his win rate, especially with his
[00:35:51] Speaker C: ban rate as high as it is because no one is getting consistent practice on him in PvP environments because his ban rate so high, lock is in
[00:36:00] Speaker A: this weird state of his win rate went in a perfect bell curve. It started low, spiked up to the insanity and is now dropping back down quite, quite quickly.
He will be, I think healthier soon.
This is, I think not enough dropping the, the real key here. The most important change they made there is that one second reduction on the nail. Hold time.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: Yep. It means he has less time to make the decision on whether or not to commit onto you.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: And that is, I think his big point. At four seconds, it might still be a little too long. Three, three and a half might be the sweet spot.
Force him to actively use them or lose them.
It's just, it's not a long goal down.
[00:36:45] Speaker C: Let him not be allowed to recast the gray health while he's hard cc'd so you can actually catch him out and burst him. Please love a God, I hate that so much.
I play champions like Lissandra and I would be able to 100 to 0 him during the ult. Except that he can just recast W. And, oh, now my burst combo wasn't enough because even though he couldn't move or cast or do anything, he could still press W. Yeah.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: So realistically, yeah, the thing we will now say is learn some other champions to play against Lock right now, if you want to let him through.
Time to practice some bruisers in mid or some other assassins in mid versus it, literally.
[00:37:29] Speaker C: I think Pantheon's the easiest one to pick up. You just have to make sure you e the three stack or whenever he engages, however many stacks he gets and you win.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Pantheon Duel versus him is the easiest. Yeah. Pantheon's easiest is the easiest one to learn against Locke. Specifically. The easiest champion to learn would probably be Nefari, because she's still a very easy assassin to learn. But how to fight versus Locke is still not immediately intuitive.
[00:37:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
Anyway, we do have some trinket tips that we've got queued up from.
Yeet sent them in. One of our listeners, we're gonna read one of them for you this week, which is if you are about to hit level two, the optimal play is to hit Level two and start the fight right before you hit it.
So, like, for example, throw your spell to CC the enemy champion and also last hit the Minion at the same time. That kind of stuff.
This is most important in bot lane, where the 2v2 having two people hit level 2 is an insane power spike over the two level 1 people.
But it's true in every lane. If you're, let's say, playing Syndra and you last hit the first melee to hit level two while also hitting them with a Q at the same time. Well, then you skill up E and stun them, and they're still level one. They can't do anything about it, and they just lost a crap ton of health.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: So this is. This is true everywhere, but it's most true in bot lane.
All right, thank you for the trinket tips, Yeet. We will keep using the other ones for the next couple weeks.
We have some listener questions. Our Discord provided some questions. We're going to read them.
Reminder. You can write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel. On the Discord Cinder writes, how should my team be playing differently if it's mostly one fed enemy champion? Like in my last game, the Shyvana Jungle had 15 kills at 20 minutes and the rest of their teammates had one or two kills.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: You 100% need to play that game differently.
[00:39:32] Speaker C: So there's a question that has to be asked first. Does your team have reliable hard CC to kill that champion with? Because if the answer is no, the way you handle them is very different than if the answer is yes.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Mm.
The answer is yes. It's very obvious. You try and force fights and you explicitly target them. They are your priority target. They're who you throw things at. They're who you go towards.
[00:40:00] Speaker C: You gang bang their fed person. Because even if you lose someone gang banging their fed person, whoever you lost is probably less valuable to the team fight overall than them losing their person who has all of the kills.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: And a shutdown gold bonus is huge.
[00:40:14] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: Now if you don't have that, there are multiple answers at different points in time in the game and this is really where it's going to be a point thing.
We'll assume it's the jungle here because that is the most impactful person to have an insane lead on.
So realistically, as a playing against a hyper fad jungler, you need vision everywhere. And this is true for mid lane and top lane as well.
Less so in top lane. But like you need extended vision and you can't overextend to get vision, which is the problem because they are the ones who are going to be catching you.
So if you do not have a lot of cc, you go in pairs places. You drop vision down where you can and then get out by the fast way. Fastest way to get to your safety as possible. That gives you your easiest method of a zone of safety.
The problem with this is you don't have a reliable way of getting away from them.
[00:41:16] Speaker C: Yep.
A lot of the time the correct way to handle their gigafed and we don't have the ability to gang bang and burst them with CC is to just track them as best you can and overload wherever on the map they aren't give up turrets, it's fine because you're. You're gonna get turrets on the other side of the map. And your goal is basically to make someone on your team strong enough to be able to kill their fed person.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: The. The biggest problem has always been if you don't have that hard cc, how are you killing them?
[00:41:47] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: And this can be.
Especially if someone like an Olaf who you can't cc, how do you stop that? You need to find ways of properly like kiting back and. And giving up without giving up too much because you need to understand the moment they overextend.
[00:42:07] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Because that is the Key point in time for your team, even if you don't have Mega cc, if they've overextended a screen and a half ahead of their their teammates overload and kill that champion now. Now, while they don't have anything else, do everything you can with three or four people to burst the shit out of them.
It's. It's really hard to take care of one hyper fed person without cc.
But Poke also works. Like if you have a significant amount of poke, play the Pokemon.
[00:42:38] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: All right.
[00:42:40] Speaker C: We also have a question from Yeet the Dab this week who writes, I've been playing Ash recently and Fleet Footwork's been feeling like a very forgiving rune while I learn the champ. It bails me out of some mistakes and makes Kiting a breeze. Do you think it's worth it to sacrifice Press the Attack or Lethal Tempo to guarantee a stable early game. And I'm gonna expand this to not just Ash, but AD Carries in general in hard matchups. Yes.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: I love Fleet Footwork. And not just like it's great in all roles for the exact same reason.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Fleet is one of the most defensive runes you can get because it gives you an extra ability to move and heal.
It's quite potent as a defensive rune. The biggest problem is if you need to be your only source of damage. Lethal Temple. Especially for AD carries. Lethal Temple or PTA are really how you kill beefy things.
So it needs to be in a scenario where you're not giving up too much. If you're just going to die anyways because the enemy has killed you 17 times. Yeah, Fleet Footwork is the correct decision. But if you have a neutral matchup, you're losing because it's you who's.
There will be people who you're at at a time you are not. You're playing too safe because you're used to Fleet Footwork and that has now cost you your ability to understand how to play with PTA and Lethal Tempo.
So don't always do this because it's giving you too much safety and it's costing you how to play the game. With other runes, it it will dynamically change. Especially Lethal Tempo will dynamically change how you play the game. But yeah, it could definitely be worth it.
[00:44:27] Speaker C: I have been known to run Fleet Footwork when I play Zeri a lot. I definitely should be taking Lethal Tempo in some of those matchups. But it's just the big thing with Fleet Footwork is to learn where the move speed can let you aggress and create Leads you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get because you wouldn't have been able to catch people to try to make up for the loss of raw damage that you're losing by not having PTA or Tempo.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Ash is one of the unique scenarios where you almost always have the speed advantage.
[00:44:56] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: So it's less impactful on her than on most other champions. The safety. The safety is where she is the big one.
[00:45:03] Speaker C: On Ash, you mostly want to take it in the hard matchups on champions like Zeri or Caitlyn or Draven. Probably don't take it on Draven just because he's so snowball oriented, but it can. You can sometimes use that move speed proc to continue chasing someone down. It lets you get in range to get another auto after your first auto.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Does fleet footwork still function like an energize?
[00:45:29] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Does it function with the energize power that you get from the Stormrazor?
[00:45:36] Speaker C: Stormrazor hasn't given energized power in years.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: They put something else back in the game that did energize stuff.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: There's other energized items, but energize power, what you're thinking of hasn't been a thing since the mythic items.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: I think it used to be the more energized items you had, the slower or the faster it charged up. And I don't think it works that way at all anymore.
[00:46:00] Speaker C: Not anymore. Not. Not since the mythic item system.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: I remember going Energizer Bunny Teemo.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: There was. There was something that gave you increased energize. I'm just trying to remember what it was.
[00:46:11] Speaker C: Voltaic cyclo sword lets you proc. Energized off of spells, but that's the only. And then static shiv lets you charge energize faster from auto attacks.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Okay. Static shiv was the one that gave with no, but does that might. The static shift one might actively make fleet foot work faster for you.
[00:46:31] Speaker C: Yeah, it will.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: So you may want to change a build orient around that as well if you're doing something like that.
[00:46:38] Speaker C: I wouldn't. I don't think fleet footwork is strong enough to reproc over and over to justify not on ash. If you weren't already on ash.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: No, no, not on ash.
[00:46:47] Speaker C: But like you're either already building static shiv or you're not.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: No, but someone like Jin might want that.
[00:46:54] Speaker C: Oh, don't build static shiv on Jin.
That shit's bad.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: Come on. Get five fucking energized items let go.
[00:47:02] Speaker C: It's more like if you're in a hard Senna matchup, Statik Shiv makes Fleet Footwork more appealing than it already was.
Either way, yeah, in on most champions, I do think fleet Footwork is a viable I'm learning the champion. But you need to only pick it in hard matchups or you're going to create a crutch that will hold you back later.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: All right.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: Of course, the easy answer is you don't need Fleet Footwork if you just play Lucian in the top lane. He doesn't even need runes and he'll smash the game.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: I guess so.
[00:47:32] Speaker C: Guys, this has been episode 540. I've been Jack Soman for Mike of many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Good night.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards Podcast.
And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can
[00:48:00] Speaker A: answer them live on the show.
[00:48:02] Speaker C: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
