[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz and you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in League.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to episode 541 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me just one other ward to help
[00:00:46] Speaker C: you move forward in League of Legends today. It's Micah. Many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker D: You would have never guessed it was me, would you?
[00:00:51] Speaker C: No one is surprised.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. It is a great time. Link is in the episode description. By the time you hear this League Classic is going to be like two days away. I guarantee we're going to be getting some League Classic lobbies going in the Discord. So join the Discord and come play League Classic with us. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a mess. That's half the fun. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV
[00:01:21] Speaker C: jacksoman, where other than the aforementioned classic lobbies, it's probably going to be mostly Path of Exile and Super Metroid for the next couple weeks.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Mike can be found@twitch tv mikeofmanynames and
[00:01:32] Speaker C: when he's not being crushed by work,
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV pillowpet and of course I want to give a shout out to our patrons who support the podcast. Shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier.
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Last but not least, listeners, we need questions. None of y' all wrote in this week.
Our question barrel is dry, so write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com or if it's easier, drop your question into the question submission channel. In the discord so we can answer your questions on the show.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: Seriously, we literally have no questions to answer this week.
The four words podcastmail.com that better not be an empty inbox when I check it next week, guys.
Okay.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: With all of that out of the way, we were racking our brains to try to figure out a topic for tonight.
And what we've settled on is Mike
[00:03:07] Speaker C: and I are both avid watchers of
[00:03:09] Speaker B: pro play and pro play has been
[00:03:11] Speaker C: seeing a lot of non traditional bot lanes lately.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Sometimes they're playing mages in the bot lane, sometimes they're playing weird supports, sometimes they're doing both.
Generally we're not going to advocate for you guys trying to copy pro play in this.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: It works in organized play and often
[00:03:31] Speaker B: falls apart in soloq.
However, what we mostly want to talk
[00:03:36] Speaker C: about is you're going to run into people trying to copy what the pros are doing.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: It is inevitable because this stuff has
[00:03:44] Speaker C: been cropping up in pro play.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: A lot of the champions they are
[00:03:48] Speaker C: using are seeing play rates rise to 3 to 5% in bot laner support, which is way higher than the like 0.5% it should be.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: So you're going to run into it and we want to give you the
[00:04:02] Speaker C: tools to know how to deal with it when you run into it.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: So let's start with the bot lane carry role. What's been going on is there are
[00:04:10] Speaker C: a lot of mages that are becoming the bot lane carries.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Now.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: One of these is a long time member of that role. Ziggs has been a bot lane carry for years now. And we'll talk more about like what to do if you want to play a mage bot. We'll talk about Ziggs later in that regard. Cause Ziggs actually works in the bot lane.
[00:04:34] Speaker D: Yeah, there are a couple of exceptions where we know they are designed to also be bot lane carries. Seraphine being one of them. She's just not highly picked and she
[00:04:44] Speaker C: just got nerfed like this last patch. So.
[00:04:47] Speaker D: Yeah, that too.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: But like Ziggs is actually good. We'll talk about what to do as Ziggs later.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: But for now it's not just Ziggs. There's Seraphine. People are playing Melbot, people are playing Brand, bot, people are playing Syndra, Swain playing Swain.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: There's a lot of mages getting played bot.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: So you as a more traditional lane
[00:05:10] Speaker C: marksman with maybe an enchanter, maybe a
[00:05:12] Speaker B: mage support, maybe a tank support, we're gonna kind of COVID all of the bases. How do you handle. What is the common weakness these mages have that marksman don't?
[00:05:21] Speaker C: And how do you exploit it?
[00:05:22] Speaker D: The the biggest weakness that all majors have, every single one of them except Cassiopeia, but she's completely unique.
All of them are gated by cooldowns. All of their damage is based around throwing down a core amount of relatively medium to medium low medium high cooldowns. So usually between 5 and 15 seconds.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: Usually on the lower end of that.
[00:05:49] Speaker D: Usually 5:15 is usually the like rank one. They sit there for a while at rank one for their third ability.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: That's like their CC ability usually.
[00:05:59] Speaker D: But most of their damage is spent in the like 5 to 8 second cooldown window. And that that's the core of how they have to play is that ability is throwing out there to do lots of damage.
Usually not at level one. Most of them because they are mages have fairly high to mid depending on the rate of speed at which they can throw those abilities out AP scaling. So usually speaking at level one an AD carry is on par or ahead of where a mages you're not as reliant on abilities. So therefore you're able to utilize your most powerful aspect, your auto attacks.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Easy way to think about it. At level one an ad Carry's auto
[00:06:46] Speaker C: attacks are about 20% better than a mages. And a mage's spell is about 20% better than an ad carries spell. Which whatever the one spell that each player has. Obviously specific champions will make that fluctuate. But that's a general like rule of thumb.
[00:07:00] Speaker E: Ish.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: You don't want to get in an
[00:07:02] Speaker C: auto attack duel as the mage level one.
[00:07:06] Speaker D: Yeah, you're. You're giving up the level one wave to try and and hopefully even it out in the fight down the line.
The second real like core aspect that mages have that most AD carries don't still revolves around that they're gated by their resource. Whether that be in 99 of these cases. Now we're talking mana.
Once their mana is gone, they are not a threat.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: The mana less mages are not popular and bought.
[00:07:33] Speaker D: Yeah, Katarina is not a bot laner, thank God.
And once once that mana is gone, you have free reign. You could be at half health as opposed to like being at full alt to try and do a trade beforehand. Once that mana has disappeared, it doesn't matter if the cooldowns are up. They can't spend them anyways. You're winning that fight.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: If they're smart, they've already disengaged before you get a chance to fight them because they are oom.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: But not everyone manages their mana perfectly.
[00:08:03] Speaker D: Yeah. Sometimes they don't realize how much mana a spell costs early game and they bring themselves in an unfortunate time. And now you just have free reign.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: I I speaking in mid lane experience. I have definitely gotten myself killed trying to all in someone and being 10 mana short of a full combo.
[00:08:22] Speaker D: Same.
[00:08:23] Speaker C: And then I'm just sitting under turret and can't troll pull as fizz to finish the job because I'm 10 mana short because I miscounted.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Mages can do that bot too.
[00:08:35] Speaker D: Yeah. The other the other big thing is going to revolve around taking minions. And this is especially the point of farming under tower. Once an ad carry has one item they can like one one item back at him. So pretty much usually it's just a long sword.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: They can a component item.
[00:08:54] Speaker D: They can one auto attack kill any of the casters after the tower has hit them. This is never true with any mage besides Mel and Kassadin.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: But he never sees play bot because he's super experience reliant.
[00:09:09] Speaker D: Kassadin would be the single most I'm dead mage in the bot lane ever.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: It would be terrible. Please do not like play.
[00:09:17] Speaker D: He's a hard enough time surviving mid lanes until level six. Get two people trying to jump on top of him. Oh my God.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: And get six later.
[00:09:25] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: So what this means is as the
[00:09:31] Speaker C: marksman lane, one of the ways you can beat mages is to just aggressively shove the waves in.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Force them to have to spend their
[00:09:40] Speaker C: spells on the wave to avoid just losing CS to their turret instead of spending those spells killing you.
[00:09:47] Speaker D: This also means your positioning matters a lot. Because all of these champions sans Cassiopeia pretty much are AOE based. All of their damage is done in areas.
You sitting in the middle of the wave means you're killing yourself and giving them minions.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Depending on the specific champion, you may want to stand behind your minions.
[00:10:08] Speaker C: You may want to stand to the
[00:10:09] Speaker B: side of your minions.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: That will vary depending on who you're up against, where exactly you should stand. But in the middle of the wave is basically always wrong in these matchups.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Whereas it can often be correct against a marksman.
[00:10:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: Because you want them to pull aggro from your minions onto them when they auto attack you.
[00:10:27] Speaker D: And also usually it's harder for other supports to waltz through minions to get to you.
[00:10:32] Speaker C: True.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: So the first thing is tend to
[00:10:36] Speaker C: be on the the pushing side. Aggress push the wave in so they have to spend their spells on the wave instead of you.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: The second thing Mike already kind of touched on cooldowns.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: If they because you're pushing in spend
[00:10:50] Speaker B: spells to hit the wave.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: That's your cue to go dash in and start auto attacking them or have your support throw their engage spell at them W Q on Alistair whatever it might be.
Obviously champion dependent on what the specifics are.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: But the general rule is oh, they spent their cooldowns to farm fight them.
[00:11:12] Speaker C: Cause they can't fight back because they're spells on cooldown.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: So this is all well and good, but what about when the lane goes south?
[00:11:23] Speaker C: Because the lane does sometimes just go south.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Maybe you got camped. Maybe you misplayed something. Maybe your support is just the most brain damage support you've ever seen.
[00:11:32] Speaker D: Doesn't matter what the gods at skill shots.
[00:11:35] Speaker C: Maybe they just literally hit every ability.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: It doesn't matter what the cause is. The fallback pattern.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: There are very few marksmen that scale worse than any mage.
[00:11:45] Speaker D: Pretty much Kalista.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Kalista scales worse than mages.
Maybe Lucian.
[00:11:52] Speaker D: Even Lucian can rip apart a tank with one full culling.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: True.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: So like the fallback pattern is oh,
[00:12:01] Speaker C: you've lost the lane.
[00:12:02] Speaker D: Cool.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Collect farm and outscale and don't feed.
[00:12:06] Speaker D: Yeah. This. This now becomes the point of not only are you in the disadvantage state but you need to be much more careful about how you collect far they're going to try and sit there and throw spells at you under turrets. So you need to either have hopefully if you're someone who has long range farming capabilities Ezreal you've got ways of getting farm like that.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: Like Gin Israel would be one who doesn't scale any better than the mages though. I will. I will get that. I love Ezreal. He's.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: He does.
[00:12:40] Speaker C: He scales like a mage instead of better than a mage.
[00:12:42] Speaker D: Yes. Except he can still kill tanks. He's weird.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Not really.
[00:12:47] Speaker D: He is surprisingly. It's all about Ezreal is the the most unique out of every one of these ad carries because you hit skill shots it does not matter what's in front of you. It's dead.
[00:12:56] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: In that regard he's very much like Ziggs. He just lacks the aoe.
[00:13:00] Speaker D: Yeah. But then there's. There's that point of if you have a long range capability of farming, you do that. If you have the AOE capability of farming, you do that. Try and deny them the ability to throw their damage on you and then walk away.
[00:13:14] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: The other play is just go Mid
[00:13:18] Speaker C: with your support and gank their mid laner.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: There's very few mid laners that are capable of surviving. Getting engaged on by a support with a marksman shooting them. Even if that marksman is half an item behind plus their opposing mid laner jumping on them.
[00:13:35] Speaker D: They either have to be exceptionally slippery or insanely fat.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: So that's when the enemy is playing mages bot.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Do we have any other thoughts on how to handle when the enemy is
[00:13:47] Speaker C: playing a mage bot lane?
[00:13:49] Speaker D: The other thing that you usually have to your advantage outside of Ziggs, because Ziggs is the exception to a lot of these rules.
You kill towers so much faster than they do. If you are in a let's trade situation, you can trade into top lane and take plates like mad.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: The key here is mages actually tend
[00:14:10] Speaker C: to hit towers harder than most marksmen per attack. But they don't build attack speed.
[00:14:15] Speaker D: Yeah. And Ziggs is unique in his tower taking power. There are two champions in the game who can take towers at the same speed as Ziggs does.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: Yeah, Ziggs is special. He is special cased like bonus damage, two turrets. He's weird. So what about the other half of the equation?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Maybe they're. Maybe they are or maybe they aren't
[00:14:35] Speaker C: playing a weird mage bot.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: But you're also going to run into
[00:14:38] Speaker C: some weird supports in bot lane, the
[00:14:40] Speaker B: most famous of which is currently Camille. Because for some reason in pro play,
[00:14:45] Speaker C: Camille is showing up as a support a lot.
[00:14:49] Speaker D: If you. If you take a look at it a lot objectively and just take a look away. Why are people playing Camille? Her ultimate locks a target down. It doesn't matter who they are. It's un. It's unstoppable. She's going in. She's stopping you. She has very long range engage. She has an eight heal and slow. And she doesn't need items to do damage. But if she gets them, she's very powerful. These are the reasons why she's played there. The problem being Camille has an exceptionally high skill floor.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: She's hard to play.
[00:15:19] Speaker D: There's a reason she hasn't been seen as a top laner in pro or in general across the board for a while.
Because to utilize her to her fullest requires serious skill.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Yeah. Let me put it this way.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: She's currently getting picked in 4% of
[00:15:36] Speaker C: gold plus games in NA as a support. And that's 2/3 of her overall picks. She's really not showing up in top because she's just hard to play. She's hard to succeed with. However, while we're advocating don't play Camille for those reasons, she's showing up in 4% of games. So one out of every 25 games on average you're going to see a
[00:15:59] Speaker D: Camille support or something like them. There are others that are fighters that are a weird scenario. We've seen briar supports come out out of nowhere.
[00:16:08] Speaker C: Oh dear God.
[00:16:09] Speaker D: Things like that. These have realistically outside of our single exception we'll talk about later again most of these have no place as a
[00:16:18] Speaker B: support but that doesn't stop people from doing it.
So how do you handle a non
[00:16:25] Speaker C: traditional support like Camille?
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Well, the first thing we can do is just look at pro play. The answers pro play has had to
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Camille have been champions like Leona and Alistar.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: What do Leona and Alistair have in common?
[00:16:39] Speaker C: A They're tanks.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Camille's true damage early on is not
[00:16:44] Speaker C: that great and tanks can just kinda outscale her because she is squishy.
But they're also tanks with lots of peel and cc.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: If Camille goes to jump on your ad carry and then she's knocked up
[00:16:59] Speaker C: into the air by Alistair and then
[00:17:01] Speaker B: punted under your turret, she's dead.
[00:17:06] Speaker D: Yeah. The thing that Camille's support doesn't have is sustain. She is exceptionally squishy as are 99% of these. We'll talk about the exception.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: And unlike someone like pike that is
[00:17:22] Speaker C: designed to be an aggressive support champion. Camille only has committal engage and pike
[00:17:29] Speaker D: has inbuilt ways of sustaining himself. Even though he cannot get tankier. He is designed around the fact that he is a squishy squishy character. And even still he's not played a lot because he's a squishy squishy character.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: So the number one way to handle
[00:17:46] Speaker C: someone like a Camille is to just play an engage tank and peel her. When she goes in, she will go in. That's the key.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: No matter what the lane state is
[00:17:55] Speaker C: whether she's winning or losing, she's going to dive in because she literally loses the game if she does nothing.
[00:18:01] Speaker D: Mm.
A Camille is worth nothing in comparison to your Leona or Alistair which means
[00:18:06] Speaker C: you as the Leona or Alistair or
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Braum or anyone like that.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: You can win by doing nothing. All you need to do is just walk up and wait for her to take an action. And if she doesn't do anything cool. Your presence is keeping your ad carry safe. Your job is done. You don't have to dive in on their carry to win the lane in these situations because when you do that, you're opening your carry up to getting dove on by Camille, and Camille will
[00:18:32] Speaker D: still do damage if she's not.
[00:18:34] Speaker C: She will solo your carry early.
[00:18:36] Speaker D: She does surprisingly large amounts of damage even though she does not last. There is a secondary thing that you can do, and this is more along the lines of three specific enchanters.
There are specific enchanters that are exceptionally good into these hyper engage, focused fighters. Lulu Janna are really the premier two, because what are they gonna do to them? Well, Lulu immediately pops you into a squirrel, and Janna just punts you back out.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: And then the other one is Melio.
[00:19:14] Speaker D: Oh, Melio as well. I forgot about Melio entirely.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Emilio's way better at it than Car.
[00:19:18] Speaker D: Significantly better at it.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: So the key with all of these, just like the tanks, you have to
[00:19:24] Speaker C: hold your CC ability. If you're playing Janna and you throw
[00:19:28] Speaker B: a tornado at them and it doesn't hit, they can now aggress on you
[00:19:32] Speaker C: because your tornado's on cooldown, and that is your ability to CC the Camille off of your carry or yourself.
[00:19:39] Speaker D: The thing that all three of these enchanters also have in common, they still buff up your carry.
You don't need to be using your disengage to make your carry stronger.
[00:19:51] Speaker C: Yes.
So as these enchanters, a lot of what you do is just put your
[00:19:55] Speaker B: buffs on your carry and let them fight and hold your peel ability. Don't use your polymorph.
[00:20:01] Speaker C: Don't kick that soccer ball as milio. Holy crap. Milio players are bad about this.
[00:20:06] Speaker D: They're so happy about that. I forgot about Nami.
[00:20:09] Speaker C: Nami's good at this.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: I think.
[00:20:10] Speaker C: She's definitely a tier below.
[00:20:11] Speaker D: She's a tier below.
[00:20:12] Speaker C: She's just a lot harder to hit.
[00:20:14] Speaker D: She's a tier below, along with Karma. Karma is just solid disengage because of shielding.
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: But you buff them up, they can go forward and fight.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: And then you keep your CC to
[00:20:29] Speaker B: prevent the counter engage.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: You shut that down and then Camille sitting there looking like an idiot, standing still and getting shot to death.
[00:20:38] Speaker D: And the thing that all of these top three have, once they get their ultimates, they're allowed to use one of their disengage abilities and still have a second.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: Yep.
Oh, Janna used her tornado well. She still has ult. If you successfully dive in, she's gonna punch you away. Oh, Lulu Polymorphed you well. Now you can go in. But she has wild growth to knock you up again while she waits for Polymorph cooldown.
[00:21:08] Speaker D: He sees he's someone. Milio says no.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: So like the tanks, the main thing
[00:21:12] Speaker C: for these enchanters is peel the Camille
[00:21:17] Speaker B: or whatever because if she can't apply her CC and damage, you'll win the lane.
[00:21:25] Speaker D: Then once you've won the lane.
There's a very hard difference between the Leonas and this, this sort of disengage supports.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:21:35] Speaker D: Once you've won that lane. If you've won that lane. The engage supports are now engaging on Camille.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:21:42] Speaker D: Your goal now is get that Camille just dead. We're going to take her out so that there's no other problems. The disengage, the supportive supports are doing the exact same thing they were doing before.
Their, their goal never changes.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Absolutely.
And then you use that lead to deny wave access. Camille's carry can't farm if a Leona is standing between them and the farm and the Camille can't get past the Leona to kill the AD carry.
[00:22:12] Speaker D: And Leona is Leona and Alistair Braum. All three of these exceptionally hard for
[00:22:19] Speaker C: mages to kill, especially early.
[00:22:21] Speaker D: Yeah, all three of them the weakest in the weird scenario versus mages the strongest early is the weakest late. Leona is the most powerful early and by far the weakest late because both Alistair and Braum have no you, your damage does nothing. Doesn't matter how you how strong you are.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: They're both get percent damage reduction whereas Leona only gets armor and Mr.
Or
[00:22:47] Speaker D: in Braum's case, one, one, one scenario of no, no damage. Fuck you.
[00:22:51] Speaker E: Right.
[00:22:51] Speaker C: He gets 100% on one hit and then a lower percent for everybody.
[00:22:55] Speaker D: I think it's like 30 or 40 or something like that. Yeah.
[00:22:57] Speaker C: Which is still really strong.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: So you've made it through the laning phase. Maybe you're ahead of the mage bot lane, maybe you're ahead of the non traditional support, maybe you're not. The same holds true regardless after laning
[00:23:11] Speaker C: phase, when the teams start to clump
[00:23:13] Speaker B: up and Death Ball a little bit and objectives become the focus, the the team with the mage bot lane is
[00:23:19] Speaker C: usually going to have lower single target dps.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Unless they're massively ahead. What you're not going to see those
[00:23:25] Speaker C: teams succeed with doing is trying to force Baron, trying to force Dragon and force a fight out of doing so.
[00:23:33] Speaker D: Yeah, they're. Unless, specifically unless their jungler is someone with insane objective dps.
They're not forcing Dragon or Barrett. Yeah.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: The reason being when you're playing a marksman and you're on Baron. You're hitting Baron. You still have all your abilities.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: If the enemy shows up to fight
[00:23:54] Speaker C: you, turn, you fight them. You have everything up to fight them with.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: If you're playing the mages we're seeing
[00:24:01] Speaker C: in bot lane, you're not doing damage to Baron if you're holding your abilities in case there's a fight.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: The big exception to this continues to
[00:24:11] Speaker C: be Cassiopeia, who can do insane single target dps and then also turn really well. But Cassiopeia is not the one that's problematic showing up all the time right now.
[00:24:21] Speaker D: The one that's weird to me, and this is just an observation thing. Why isn't Azir being played there? Because he seems like he was the most natural one to be that flex. He functions like an AD carry. That's what he does. He sits there and he auto attacks a bunch at aoe at very high
[00:24:39] Speaker B: dps because he's really, really, really hard
[00:24:45] Speaker C: to play where even most pros can't play.
[00:24:47] Speaker D: This is also true. Azir is one of the highest skill we talked about. Camille's highest skill point. Azir's is higher.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Faker famously, like, spent a year not
[00:24:58] Speaker C: playing Azir and had a substitute mid laner when they needed to play Azir.
[00:25:02] Speaker D: Yeah, that skt skin isn't for Faker for Azir. That's for a character called easyhoot.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's how hard Azir is. It took Faker a year to get good enough to feel comfortable pulling out Azir on the pro stage. And he's fucking Faker.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: So because those mage teams tend to have lower single target dps and can't
[00:25:26] Speaker C: turn and fight easily. If they're burning their DPS on Dragon
[00:25:29] Speaker B: or Baron, they tend to want to look for picks instead of starting the
[00:25:35] Speaker C: objective and forcing people to come fight you because you're doing the objective. And if they don't come fight, you get it for free. They're going to be denying vision.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: They're going to be hoping you walk up to this bush that they're hiding
[00:25:46] Speaker C: in so they can blow you up.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: One of the biggest things you can
[00:25:49] Speaker C: do against these mage teams is remember to switch to blue trinket.
[00:25:53] Speaker D: That's exactly what I was going to say.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: If you can check the dragon and see, oh, they're not on Dragon.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: They're probably waiting in a bush to try to kill you. Don't face check bushes.
[00:26:07] Speaker D: This is one of those ends.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: And at the same time.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah, and sometimes you check the Dragon
[00:26:13] Speaker C: and you see they're on it cool. You now know you can check that bush because they're on the dragon.
[00:26:19] Speaker D: Yeah.
If you have. If you're ash, you just. You just win this because you just get to Hawkshot and go, oh, we're safe. Oh, it's time to go do this. There are other ad carries who's. Now your job is skill shot to check a bush. And that's. That's actually. This should be something that you do anyways around this time is skill shot to check pushes that you don't have vision in.
Yeah. Because why would you walk up to a bush right there and not know?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Not every champion has a skill shot that can check bushes, but a lot of them do.
[00:26:53] Speaker C: You're playing Lucian. You throw your W into the bush. You'll see if it hits someone because it stops early.
Caitlyn's cue will spread once it hits a target.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: There will be sound effects that play
[00:27:04] Speaker C: in the case of many skills.
[00:27:06] Speaker D: This is actually.
This is a side tangent now that you've brought up. That is a pet peeve of mine from other people. Keep your sound at a point where you have SFX up.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:19] Speaker D: You know, I don't have the music
[00:27:21] Speaker B: up to listen to league's music or
[00:27:22] Speaker C: not, but you should be able to hear the game sound effects the number
[00:27:27] Speaker B: of people we've played with and I'm not calling anyone specific out who are
[00:27:31] Speaker C: unaware that Sion has ulted. Sion ult by the way, makes a global announce noise. So every player on the map should know when Sion Alta is cast. No matter where they are. No matter where Sion is.
[00:27:44] Speaker D: These are.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: These are things there's multiple with many players who just don't even know Sion is coming because they didn't hear the alts because they don't have game sounds on. For the love of God, please play League of Legends with game sounds. It will literally make you a better player.
[00:27:59] Speaker D: Speaking of, I'm upping my SFX volume right now.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: So the other side of this. Maybe they have a traditional marksman, but
[00:28:06] Speaker C: they're running a Camille or some other
[00:28:08] Speaker B: like assassin or fighter support those supports have in common. They are much easier to catch out
[00:28:15] Speaker C: if they slightly misposition than someone like Alistair or Leona.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: If you're Alistair or Leona or some other tanky support and you step half a screen too far, you're probably gonna die.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: But maybe you bought enough time for your team to be able to counter engage on the enemy that engaged on you.
[00:28:34] Speaker D: You have the tools at your disposal to either maybe survive or maybe cause a fight that you can still win.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: If you're playing Camille support and you
[00:28:45] Speaker C: get caught out, you're dead before you know it hit you.
[00:28:48] Speaker D: You're either you're winning that 1v1 fight alone, or you're dead.
[00:28:52] Speaker C: Yes.
You do not have the tools to buy time for your team to show up the way that a tank support does.
[00:28:59] Speaker D: Camille can run away, but most likely you're trying to engage instead.
[00:29:03] Speaker C: Right, you can try to run, but that's not the same thing.
[00:29:05] Speaker D: Yeah. If you're caught on the cc, you're still dead.
[00:29:08] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: So those champions have to be extra
[00:29:12] Speaker C: mindful of checking bushes, which means when
[00:29:14] Speaker B: you're playing against them, buy control wards, control ward bushes.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: If they don't have vision in that
[00:29:21] Speaker B: bush, they can't walk up to it.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: Or more accurately, they often will walk up to it, but shouldn't, because now you can kill them.
[00:29:31] Speaker D: Or you can do my favorite thing. Put a ward down they know is there, they're gonna want to clear it.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I.
I literally have won games by just. I know where their blue ward is. So I throw down a control ward to clear their blue ward, but don't actually clear their blue ward. Wait three seconds, some idiot walks in to try to kill the control ward and dies. To me, sitting in the bush that they had a ward in because they
[00:29:56] Speaker B: forget that that ward is disabled.
[00:29:58] Speaker C: They can't see whether I'm there or not anymore.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: So I'll throw the ward down and
[00:30:02] Speaker C: while their vision lingers, I'll start walking away. So they'll think, oh, he put down the word and started walking away. And then once I know the vision has faded, I walk into the bush and wait.
It works so often.
[00:30:16] Speaker D: Yeah. The other thing that all of these, specifically all of these assassin fighter supports have in common, their CC is in melee range, unlike multiple others. Even Braum has an aoecc. That's long range.
Not all of your support tanks are going to be that close range. Cc. Every single assassin fighter that is not meant to be a support is a melee stop.
[00:30:43] Speaker C: Yup.
[00:30:44] Speaker D: Or knock up, but same difference.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: We've talked about these a lot.
If, despite all our warnings, you really,
[00:30:51] Speaker C: really, really, really, really, really want to play the mage bots or the weird supports because you're seeing them in pro and you really, really, really want to do it. A, please don't. For your LP's sake, just, just don't. But B, if you really, really, really gotta. Ziggs as the bot Lane Carry is the one who Brings most of the
[00:31:14] Speaker B: same things that a marksman would to a team.
[00:31:17] Speaker C: He does structural damage. He has good, not amazing, but good objective damage on a low cooldown so he can actually still turn and fight.
His his bouncing bomb is literally like a three second cooldown in mid game.
[00:31:31] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: So Ziggs is the one that like. I'm not gonna be mad at you if you play. I've played Ziggs in the bot lane in ranked in the past two weeks.
[00:31:41] Speaker D: Yeah. Ziggs functions similar enough to an AD carry in two out of three aspects that he is acceptable in that spot. The other one, the support I've been hinting at this entire time is Pantheon.
He is a fighter assassin that functions like a support in one key aspect more than any others. He has a way of avoiding getting blown up.
[00:32:05] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Pantheon is like a Camille with shorter engage range, just as much burst and the ability to say hey you, everyone in your direction, fuck you.
[00:32:15] Speaker C: You can't kill me for a second and a half.
[00:32:17] Speaker D: And this just functionally means he is one of the best supports and is a point and click easy stun with immediate follow up damage on it. He's very powerful as a support.
What's that? You want to go roaming Ult, he's very good with the roaming there.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: To put this in context in gold plus pantheon has a lower pick rate than Camille but a 3% higher win rate.
[00:32:41] Speaker D: That is a significant amount of win rate percentages like that. That fluctuation is large.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: He is perfectly viable. He's not optimal a lot of the time, but he's perfectly viable.
[00:32:55] Speaker C: I'm not going to give you weird side eye for playing Pantheon, so here
[00:32:59] Speaker B: are some things to keep in mind. If you want to play Ziggs or some other mage in the bot lane,
[00:33:04] Speaker C: don't do it with an enchanter.
Enchanters suck at making mages feel good.
[00:33:10] Speaker D: All three of the best enchanters we just talked about, none of them benefit you. Janna's shield gives AD Milio's attack range increase. You you're not an auto attack champion. Lulu gives things based on attack speed.
Yep, none of those things you have.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: So don't play mage bots with enchanters. It genuinely is a bad pairing. Mage bots are fine with both mage
[00:33:32] Speaker B: supports and with tank supports.
And then don't play a kill lane
[00:33:38] Speaker C: support like Pantheon with a scaling marksman like kog'.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Maw. Yeah, occasionally you'll get those weird games
[00:33:45] Speaker C: where you just go six zero with kog'. Maw. Pantheon in Five minutes.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Does it happen? Yeah.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: It's a lot less likely than if you play Pantheon with a Draven or Vayne or Elution or someone else who's designed to be aggressive early.
[00:34:01] Speaker D: The. The. The reason to play a Pantheon is to get a kill. And the reason to play Kog' Maw is to be the late game damage monstrosity.
These are not coincided culls, so the
[00:34:15] Speaker C: last thing we want to give is
[00:34:16] Speaker B: just a generalized warning. When you are against a team that
[00:34:20] Speaker C: has a hyper tank.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: Obviously some champions are tankier than others. But if the enemy team has someone
[00:34:26] Speaker C: like sion, Ornn, Maokai, Dr. Mundo, those
[00:34:31] Speaker B: sorts of champions, you might have a
[00:34:35] Speaker C: bad time after the laning phase. Even if you smash your lane when you're playing a mage bot or a kill lane support, because those champions have the ability to shrug off your damage and fuck you over.
[00:34:52] Speaker D: I have had this multiple times where the tank is the single deciding factor. Because no one could kill him because he was able to build four Mr. Items.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah, you can build Void Staff. It doesn't matter when he has 300 mister, that means he still gets 200 mister and 4,000 life against you.
[00:35:12] Speaker D: And many of them scale in some way with their defenses.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:35:18] Speaker D: So you can do half of their health when they've done three quarters of yours and they've soaked up for other people's damage.
So it's not impossible to play these things. But be mindful of these specific archetypes because in general, when these happen, that's when you've made yourself have a harder time for a game.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: So we're going to finish up tonight with a trinket tip we got from Yeet the dab that we both agree with, which is when you are playing to hit level two.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: So for solo lanes, this means your first melee minion plus the entire first wave. For bot Lane, that means the third melee minion plus the entire first wave. That's when you hit level two.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: You do not want to last hit
[00:36:04] Speaker C: that minion that levels you up with an ability. You want to hit them with abilities early and then finish them off with autos.
This is so that you have those abilities. Back off Cooldown when you go fight the enemy with your level 2.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: This is not universally true, but almost always.
[00:36:23] Speaker D: Yeah, your ability needs to be something that intentionally goes through minions and can hit the enemy champion whilst you're doing it. So like my core example is going to be Nefari. Her Q is a fine way of doing it because now you've got one shot. It's killed a Minion. You get your E now or your wife. Now you're moving in, and you're getting a guaranteed second shot on your Q. Similar scenarios.
Very few champions have abilities that function this way.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: Yes.
So that would be an example of when to use your ability to last hit.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: If you're Naafiri and you last hit that first melee minion with a Q
[00:37:01] Speaker C: that you aimed at the enemy champion, Cool. You hit level two, and they're already
[00:37:05] Speaker B: hurting from your ability.
[00:37:07] Speaker C: So now you can follow up.
But in that same situation, let's say they're sitting back and just conceding level two. Why would you throw your cue at the Minion when you can still have your cue to fish for them while you're level two and they're level one?
[00:37:23] Speaker D: A lot of people are not so great with ranges. Level 2, one of the most common things you'll get is either your CC or your movement.
[00:37:32] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:37:33] Speaker D: And a lot of the time, if you get that movement, especially if you're like an assassin, you use that movement to go forward, and then you're poking with your other ability. Now you have free poke, and you've pushed them off the wave.
[00:37:42] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: All right, since we don't have any listener questions, that's gonna be it for this week. You guys don't get a Lucian Top when there's no questions. That's how it works.
[00:37:52] Speaker D: I have a recommendation for a bot laner that everyone should learn to play because he functions as a support, as a tank, and as an engage, and he's directly against Lucian Thresh. Learn to play some Thresh.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah, Thresh is a good support, although
[00:38:10] Speaker C: he's very frustrating, especially in lower elo when you throw perfect lanterns and no one takes them, no one uses them.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: The most frustrating thing as a Thresh
[00:38:19] Speaker C: is when you throw a lantern to save your teammate and they ignore the lantern, run up to the wall and flash over the wall that you would have gotten them over for free and faster.
[00:38:28] Speaker E: Mm.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: So that's where we're gonna end. This has been episode 541 of the Forwards Podcast.
Seriously, Write in, guys. We need questions theforwardspodcastmail.com or drop your
[00:38:39] Speaker C: questions in the question submission channel of the Discord.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: I've been Jack Silman for Mike and many names. Have a great night.
[00:38:47] Speaker D: Good night, everybody.
[00:38:49] Speaker E: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the 4Wards podcast and of course. Send your questions to the fourwards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
