The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 543: Crutch Outplays

[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 543 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Selman. And I've got with me just one other ward to help you move forward in League of Legends. It's Mike. Of many names. Of course. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Of course it's me. I mean, I'm. Nah, it's not Pillow Pet. It's always me. [00:00:53] Speaker B: It is unusual for you to miss. You're about as consistent as I am. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Slightly more in the last year. [00:00:59] Speaker B: No, you had the sickness that took you out of several episodes. [00:01:03] Speaker A: I thought you were gone for two. Me and. Me and Codex did one. No, not Codex. Yeah, Codex. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Either way, guys, we are the Four Words podcast. We have a discord. Come join the discord. Come tell us which one of us you remember missing more episodes in the last year. The link is in the episode description. We also do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV jacksellman, where it's admittedly still mostly Path of Exile and Super Metroid content, but there'll be more League soon. Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames Whenever we bully him into streaming [00:01:36] Speaker A: again, I need to do it some more. It's just life is annoying and when [00:01:41] Speaker B: life isn't crushing him, Pillow can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet. Speaking of Codex, she's one of our shout outs. Shout out to CodexNinja, pillow pet, skip Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting us at the shoutout tier on Patreon. Yeah, there's some muscle memory there I'm gonna have to work on. Either way. Guys, we have a Patreon. If you 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, which this week is actually just prep work. And then $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout your name out on the top of every episode for as long as you maintain description. And then until I can get my muscle memory to stop saying your name. All of those benefits do apply to our general gaming podcast as well. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get Your podcasts. And last but not least, listeners, you guys have been bailed out by our former audio editor this week. We need more questions. Write into theforwardspodcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer your questions on the show or drop it in the question submission channel of the Discord, if that's your preferred way of sending us questions. But we need your questions so we can answer them. [00:03:03] Speaker A: It doesn't have to be a super serious I need help question. We're going to sort of make some of those things, but you can ask some silly things. We'll tell you if we're not going to do it. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. All right. So speaking of our Discord, our topic this week is kind of inspired by a discussion that happened on the Discord. One of our listeners was discussing playing Kai' sa and how to build her and mentioned relying on statikk shiv to farm. Well, so we want to talk about not just Kaisa specifically, not just statikk shiv specifically, but the general concept of when your build becomes a crutch and how to kick that habit. So we're going to start with the context of the the discussion that happened in the Discord. So the discussion was literally around. When I play Kaisa and don't use static shiv, it's a lot harder for me to keep up and farm because Kaisa typically either goes first item static shiv or first item Kraken slayer. That's her. Her two core starts of her build right now. And if you've played a marksman with statikk shiv, you know that that proc is up all the freaking time. And aoe's the wave for you. And especially on a champion like Kai', sa with spells can make it very easy to just hit the wave a couple times and press Q. And the wave's dead. [00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Once you get your Q evolve on Kai', sa, it's pretty much just hit auto attack spell proc and then Q and you've got the entire wave. Now, this puts you in a dangerous position, but Kaisa's waveclear does that, and that's sort of how she is designed to be, which is another reason that statikk shiv is kind of a crutch. It gives you a lot of extra range where it normally. And in a lot of frequent cases, you can't proc shiv all the time. That extra. Because it chains massively far. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Yep. So we wanted to talk about how to kick the habit. So statikk shiv is Sometimes just the correct item to build on champions like Kai'. Sa. I want to be clear about that. Sometimes it is just correct, sometimes it's not. An example would be if you are the primary tank killing DPS on Kai', sa, you should go Kraken. This means like for example, maybe you have a burst mage mid like a Syndra or something who's not great at dealing with tanks or an assassin even worse. And then the rest of your team is Tanks and like enchanters and they have like a Mundo or Sion or Cho' Gath or something that's like super beefy. High health frontline. [00:05:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we are talking the hyper Tanks here. Because Kai' sa will generally speaking mow through any bruiser building health. If you are of an equivalent level, make that point. We need to point this out to you. If you are seven levels down from the top laner, you're not killing that top laner even though you're designed to. You're going to just get killed. [00:06:00] Speaker B: Also, if you're fighting them 1v1, it's a very different case because a lot of those champions are very good in a 1v1 and very fucked if your team peels for you at all. [00:06:10] Speaker A: Also true. But yeah, we really are talking Ornn Sion Mundo. These. These champions who exist to be damage sponges. [00:06:21] Speaker B: So as far as how to kick the. The. The shiv crutch, honestly, biggest thing is just play some games without Shiv until you feel comfortable farming without it. You don't necessarily even need to build Kraken specifically, although that's what you should in the case of Kaisa, because that's Kaisa's other build. But like for example, if you're someone who's still building Statik Shiv on Zeri, A, stop that. It's bad. But B, play without it and learn how to play without it. You need to put in the games to do it. [00:06:52] Speaker A: The same is true with like Hydra items on several other people. You're using Hydra to clear waves too much. You're not properly utilizing your stuff. Hydra is the most classic. Like I need this to wave clear and clear things out jungles as well in a lot of cases. Yep, these are. These can be crotch items. They're very occasionally core items. [00:07:15] Speaker B: I've seen so many Jaxs build like Stridebreaker or Titanic in the top lane. And then they can't freeze the wave anymore. So their opponent is able to start getting gold and experience and farm that they could have just frozen the wave and forced the enemy to send multiple people to deal with them and won the game through pressure. And now they're just crashing waves on the turret instead. [00:07:38] Speaker A: The top line Hydra problem is probably as as bad or worse than Statikk Shiv in the sense that with that top lane, you can no longer freeze your 1v1. It's not possible. You will always push it. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Yep. This is also why it's usually wrong. Even on champions who rush stridebreaker like Darius. Don't build The Tiamat first 95% of the time. Don't build the Tiamat first because you're just guaranteeing you can't dominate the early game because they will always get gold and experience because you're auto shoving if [00:08:13] Speaker A: you have already beaten them down. Like if you've got an early kill, don't buy the Tiamat. That's the. That's the thing. The T that is when you want to make sure that you're not pushing the waves down so that you can force your strength early. If it's seven minutes, no one's gotten a kill, it's relatively even farm. They're probably not going to be beaten down by you doing the freeze anyways. You may as well hard shove and then go try and bully elsewhere. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Yes. Especially since at eight minutes, the grubs spawn. And if you're able to shove, wave and get Pryo for grubs as a top laner, you may just straight up win them early to mid game for your team. So that would be an example of. A lot of people build Tiamat first as a crutch on top and lose their lane because of it. They let that scaling champion like that Jax or that Kayle or whatever get the levels and experience that they're sorely craving because they built the wrong item. [00:09:12] Speaker A: Actually, now that I look at our list, every one of them but the final portion, and even the final portion sort of works. Here is all about aoe. And the last one, considering it's mana based, is Aoe clearing. [00:09:27] Speaker B: We'll get there. We haven't gotten to that yet. The other one that's in a similar boat is Runaans. Runans should only be built in very specific circumstances by very specific people. Yes, Runaan shines on mostly crit marksmen with like one or two exceptions into mostly melee teams. That is the important key. If the enemy is three ranged champions and two melee, the hell are you building Runaans for? [00:09:58] Speaker A: Yes, we understand Runaan spreads your procs. This is. This is a good thing. Runaan's as a single Item is just weaker than almost any other single item you could buy. If you're not hitting all three targets. [00:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, I think, the most important way to look at it. Ash is an example of someone that often we see Runaans built inappropriately on. If you're building runons, you're spending 2650 gold for 40% attack speed and 25 crit chance. And if you are not hitting multiple targets with those autos, that's literally all you're getting. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's about 80% of the time if you're hitting two targets. Yeah, it's okay if you're 90% hitting three or more. 50% hitting three or more. That's when it's like, now a good item for you. [00:10:49] Speaker B: But to put it in context for that same 2650 gold, if you go Phantom Dancer, you have 25% more attack speed and 6% more movement speed. And ghost, if you go and ghosting, you walk through units, so you can't be minion blocked. If you go Fiend Hunter bolts again, same price, you get 5% more attack speed, 30 ultimate haste. And. And when you cast your ultimate, your next three auto attacks are empowered. If you're not using the spread effect of Runaan's because the enemy is a bunch of melee champs, you're literally just leaving damage on the table. You could be killing their frontline faster. [00:11:32] Speaker A: There are no champions in the game who should be building both Hurricane and Feedhunter bolts. I'm saying this now for people who are playing Twitch and going, but I want. No, that's too much attack speed and not enough damage. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Yep. Twitch is a prime example of someone who often should be building Runaans. Because Twitch gets his pass through autos, he can proc. Runaan's on the backline when he hits the frontline in many cases. Sometimes Runaan's is still appropriate on Twitch. Into more ranged comps Sometimes. Usually you're just better off just doing more damage in the first place. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:07] Speaker B: And again, that extra movement speed and ghosting can literally save your life. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Mm. [00:12:13] Speaker B: The ghosting especially. How many times have you died to being minion blocked? If you had built Phantom Dancer instead of Runaan's. You literally cannot be minion blocked. You just walk through it. They can't body block you with their own champion. You walk through them. It's tremendously powerful. But it's hidden power. People don't think about it. So, Mike, you kind of alluded to our last one, which is overbuilding mana. And I want to explain what I mean by that, because this is my personal crutch when I say overbuilding mana. Most mana using mages build one mana item. It's one of the lost chapter items. The specific one may depend on game context, or it may just be a specific one that's core for your champion at all times. Like Brandt pretty much always goes Blackfire Torch, for example. However, unless you're playing one of the very specific mana mages such as Ryze Kassadin, Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia Anivia, that should be your only mana item. You should learn how to manage your mana with the one. [00:13:16] Speaker A: There is a single caveat we're going to talk about here. [00:13:20] Speaker B: We'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. Because what I tend to do on a lot of champions that I shouldn't is I'll build my core Lost chapter item and then I'll build a second core Lost chapter item. One of the other ones. I've done this on Lux multiple times where I've built Malignants and Ludens. It's wrong. The reason it's wrong is twofold. One, you're simply spending a lot of gold on mana that could be spent on raw damage. But two, in the mid to late game, you should be getting blue buffs because your jungler takes blue and it creates a copy for you to pick up. [00:13:58] Speaker A: So Malignance is a weird one here because Malignance is a mana item. Most people who are malignant users Core Rush the Malignants. There are a couple who like very much like Ludens or who will build Blackfyre occasionally because Blackfyre has the increased damage for the AP Blackfire power, etc. [00:14:21] Speaker B: That one's mostly Karthus. [00:14:23] Speaker A: There are very few AP items that actually have as much AP as the starter core items. There are the big three. All three of the needlessly large items. Or four. Sorry, I keep forgetting about Banshees. You're usually not going to be building all four. You will frequently build three of them. And then your Void Staff. [00:14:46] Speaker B: Yep. And Storm Surge is also in the same boat as Void Staff. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Yes. So, like, you'll frequently be building this core. Three sets of major AP items and then your penetration item. Then you've got your boots. Then you've got your starter item. That's your six. [00:15:02] Speaker B: Yep. So what I tend to do a lot of the time is that second mana item. I'm building it because I'm wiping waves and I'm like, I need mana to wipe Waves. And then late game rolls around and I get a blue buff. And now I've spent all that money on mana that could have been spent on damage items. Like I don't have as much flat penetration and I'm less able to blow up a squishy character when I catch them out because I spent too much on mana. And Mike, we also have a subset of this which is inappropriate use of tier items. [00:15:32] Speaker A: There's. [00:15:33] Speaker B: Tell me about Manamun. [00:15:36] Speaker A: So I personally still in a lot of the Manamune is the real one of this because Archangels is. Archangels has a subset of purpose that we will talk about afterwards. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Manamune doesn't have any defensive value. It's mana damage and an extra proc on it when you get to the Muramasa. But Man Immune gives you a lot of mana on Spam Champions. And it is true that previous builds on a lot of Champions used manamune. That is no longer the case because of one item change. Essence Reaver fixes a lot of mana problems that many Mana Champions used to have. Almost every one of the major caster AD carries will buy an Essence Reaver because it's just correct. There are very few who want Trinity Force and Manamune. And it's pretty much corky. And that's only if he goes 80 on bot sound. So he can get 4 other crit items because Trinity Force is still stronger. But. But you should not do what I've been doing in a lot of my crutch cases and still building it on Smolder. You shouldn't be doing it. [00:16:56] Speaker B: Oh God. Mike. Stop building Man Immune on Smolder. Just build Essence Reaver and your mana is solved on one item. And it's actually good for your build. [00:17:06] Speaker A: It's so much of a crutch because you get to spam like hell and you don't get the blue buffs as Smolder. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Yep. And the reason he's doing this, by the way, is because Tyr is 400 gold so he can get it on first back as opposed to you have to manage your mana correctly until 2900 gold for essence reaver. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Whatever it costs. [00:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can. And in a lot of cases with Smolder specifically, you can get that tier item and then just still have a good lane. Because Smolder is a relatively safe laner. There's one scenario in which I will say Smolder should be getting a tier. When you're fighting Malzahar Mid, you're spamming that many more Qs at all times. Because you're basically spamming it on proc. No. [00:17:51] Speaker B: Cause your Q refunds mana when you last hit with it. That's not the time you need to be using it. What runs smolder Oom is overuse of his E or W in lane. As long as you're last hitting with your Qs, you'll never run Oom on smolder. [00:18:05] Speaker A: I do not remember that being a thing. Did they add that in? [00:18:08] Speaker B: It's been the case for quite a while. Smolder restores 15 of the 25 mana cost of his Q when he last hits that. [00:18:17] Speaker A: That is. That is the point there. Yeah. [00:18:19] Speaker B: And I'm checking to see when that was added, but it's been that way for a while. 14.23. [00:18:27] Speaker A: So two years ago. [00:18:28] Speaker B: Two years ago, Mike. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Two years ago, Tyr was still a core piece of his build though, so. [00:18:34] Speaker B: Yes. So the key here is on Smolder, specifically, the way to stop being Mike is to be more judicious with your use of W and especially E. Don't spam them just for the sake of spamming them. Yes, it's very nice when you're able to snipe a W and get stacks early, but it's very not nice when that means you don't have enough mana when their jungler comes to slow them and flap away. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Realistically, like your flap and your W are your big survivability tools. And W is a survivability tool more than it is a dueling tool until you get to those all ins. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Yep. [00:19:12] Speaker A: So this is like a. A small holdover that I have of previous builds. Don't do holdo like this. There are problems. We've said this with Zeri as well with static. Holdovers are huge problems for people. People continuously keep using them again and again and again. This is the one that I'm very guilty of because it feels very good in the short term. Feels very good in the short term. [00:19:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. So we have another category of crutch, and these are more like items that people typically build first or build because they think they're. Go ahead. [00:19:52] Speaker A: We didn't finish the reason to actually build the tier. [00:19:56] Speaker B: Ah, you're right. So seraphs is one weird exception to this over building mana, because seraphs has defensive value, unlike every other mana item that you actually could be building as a crutch. Because please, for the love of God, don't build a Rod of Ages when it's inappropriate to build a Rod of Ages. [00:20:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Rod of Ages is. We were not talking about it because it's more inappropriate use than crutch use. [00:20:24] Speaker B: Yes, if you're playing Rod of Ages on a mage who shouldn't necessarily be building Rod of Ages, you're just building wrong and you're nerfing your own damage. Cough. Cough. The massive number of pros we've seen building Rod of Ages. [00:20:36] Speaker A: Orianna. [00:20:36] Speaker B: I'm sorry, pros. I know you're better than me at the game, but you're also wrong. [00:20:40] Speaker A: In this case though, they also play a different game. So like don't. Don't follow what they're doing. [00:20:45] Speaker B: Yes, we talk about that one regularly. Just because a pro is doing it doesn't mean you should be doing it too. They play in a different environment entirely. So Seraphs gives you a shield. It's a Lifeline item. The same type of shield as like Sterak's or Hexdrinker all give in the shield it gives. Massive Lifeline is based on your mana specifically. [00:21:10] Speaker A: I believe it's max now. It used to be current. [00:21:13] Speaker B: So Seraph's embrace gives you a shield equal to 18% of your maximum mana. That means if you have 2000 mana, that is a 360 shield. If you have 3000 mana, that is a 540 health shield when you need it most. Because Lifeline only procs when you get knocked low and it absorbs damage following the proc that hit it. Important to note, Lifeline will not save you from actual one shots. If you go from above 30% of your health to dead, you're just dead. [00:21:48] Speaker A: If there is a single health that would have saved you. Boom. Shield Proc. This saved me in my previous game of Ziggs we were facing versus Nasus. Nasus queued me and it didn't look like my health moved at all because it ate the entire Seraph's shield in one shot. That saved my life. Got us another kill. [00:22:11] Speaker B: So Seraphs is the one exception. When you are against team comps who have the ability to access backline and burst you, it is sometimes correct to build Seraphs plus whatever your core mana item is for your champion. Whether that's Malignance or Blackfire Torch or Ludens depending on your champion. [00:22:33] Speaker A: I don't know who's going to do this. Don't build just a tier alone. Whoever is going to do that and ignore the mana core starter item. Why would you do that? [00:22:42] Speaker B: Yeah, the Seraphs alone generally will not be enough mana to get a big enough shield for it to make the difference. That's why this is the exception. So if you're like me and you really like building multiple mana items, that's the context where building multiple mana items can be correct. And not just me wanting to spam my spells to wipe waves and not have to worry about mana management because mana management is annoying. [00:23:09] Speaker A: There are like five champions who spam enough spells. We talked about a couple of them where multiple mana items and a tier is a required item. Yeah, when you get to those champions, [00:23:19] Speaker B: they're also most of the champions who are actually supposed to be building Rod of Ages. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Yeah. This is not a crutch. [00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah. The key to crutch is it's an item that is sometimes correct. But people tend to build every game because it's what their build is, as opposed to building it only when it's correct for the circumstances. Which is why our next group are specifically crutches when people rush them. Despite falling behind in the early game, these all are in the same group but for slightly different reasons. So I want to start with Voltaic Cyclosword. Basically every lethality champion is rushing this item right now. It's very snowbally, which is why everyone's rushing it. This is the one with the energized proc. When you proc the energized effect, then you get bonus lethality and do bonus damage based on their current health. This impersonate the problem, right? Hubris snowballs you because of the stacking and extra ad. Here's the problem with rushing Voltaic. It's expensive as fuck and the build path sucks ass. So what I've seen a lot of Talons, a lot of Zeds, a lot of Kha' zix players do is oh well, they have to build Voltaic Cyclosword first. So they get their two longswords and then they have troubles getting to 875 to buy a pickaxe. So it takes them forever to get to the Brutalizer and then it's another 963gold to combine the whole thing. And in that intervening time they are getting their ass kicked. They get zoned off farm, they may get killed. Whereas if they had just gone for Umbral, Glaive, Hubris, Axiom, Arc, youmu's Ghostblade, all of those are cheaper and have better build paths that are easier to piecemeal together and get as much power as you can in the intervening time. So yeah, they're not as powerful as a one item spike as Cyclosword, but by Going for them first, you'll get to your spike literally minutes sooner. [00:25:22] Speaker A: We're going to talk about this specifically here, because here is where it matters most. There is a crutch order that people are talking about here because Cyclo Sword is still a correct number on a lot of those things. Even if it's not your first item. [00:25:38] Speaker B: It just should only be your first item when you're actually in the lead. By the time you're going to buy, [00:25:42] Speaker A: there's maybe one assassin that requires the Cyclo Sword first. And that's because they are more casting based than they are attack based. That's Naafiri. [00:25:53] Speaker B: And even then she really doesn't require it. She's perfectly fine with the other items. [00:25:57] Speaker A: And. And because of how good lethality items are, you can very frequently, if you're still behind, get one of the ones that helps you out. Hey, you could. It's relatively cheap, I believe, to buy half of the other lethality items. [00:26:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Like for example, I just want to compare it to Umbral Glaive. Umbral glaive is 200 gold cheaper than Voltaic cyclo sword. It is more ad more ability haste, more lethality up front, but less during the proc. Gives you ward, destruction and spotting so you can roam or gank better and has a damage proc of its own. You do bonus damage to enemies when you've been out of their vision for at least a second for 200 gold less. And the build path is a bunch of longswords and cheap combines. The most expensive individual part of umbrella is the 750 gold combine at the end. Which means if you're behind, you can just buy another longsword or upgrade two longswords into one of the two components it builds into and get power immediately so that when that team fight breaks out at the Dragon, you can still contribute instead of being like, Well, I have 20 A.D. this is one of [00:27:14] Speaker A: the reasons why Hubris is built because it's very. It's high lethality, it's very high damage. It's cheaper than Cyclo Sword. But like the. If you have the ability and the necessity to easily. Like if you're losing a lane and they have a shield, you should be getting a serpent's fang. [00:27:33] Speaker B: Yep. Cause serpent's Fang is cheap as fuck and cuts their shields by a shitload. [00:27:38] Speaker A: If you're losing the lane and need a lethality item. Edge of Night. Yeah, it's three longswords and a fucking ruby crystal as your Base things. It's a tunneler and a serrated dark as your items. Yeah, it has good like combined costs, but so that's. [00:27:55] Speaker B: That covers Ad Assassins, but we got a similar crutch item that's used mostly in the top lane, although we see it in jungle way more often than we should. There is no point in building a Heartsteel even if you're playing someone like Sett if you can't proc it. If you're playing a top laner and you're against a Vayne or a Kennen, you're never proccing that damn Heartsteel. Build something that'll help you survive the lane and scale to mid to late game so you can do your job. [00:28:21] Speaker A: Heartsteel is such a. Such a. It's such a weird. Another one of these core mis built things. Yes. Heartsteel benefits a lot when you buy it early and you get to stack it for like crazy. Heartsteel also stacks based on your max life and buying it second or third because now you're able to fight in team fights is a reasonable place to buy Heartsteel if you can use Heartsteel. [00:28:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:47] Speaker A: Not everyone should be okay. [00:28:49] Speaker B: It's also okay to be like I'm a champion that normally builds Heartsteel but in the context of this game, I'm not going to be able to stack it well. I'm going to build something else instead. That's okay. That's generally correct. [00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Heartsteel is the. Is the. The stacking health like if you are a health scaling champion. Yes, you want mundo would be a prime example of this Mundo Sejuani. If you're not. If you're not doing a lot of ganking as Sejuani because who's playing lane Sejuani. If you're not doing a lot of ganking as Sejuani, you should not be building a hearthsteal. [00:29:22] Speaker B: Or for that matter, if your team is so far ahead and you're Sejuani that by the time Heartsteel is primed and you could proc it, the target's already dead. I've had games like that. I've had games where I go like seven and oh on Sejuani but my heart still sitting at 40 stacks because I literally just could not proc the damn thing ganks ended too fast. I would have. Obviously I still won that game but in a situation where my team made a mistake and we had a throw, I would have been at a massive disadvantage because I built heart steel and instead of building Something that was more appropriate for the context of what that game was. [00:29:57] Speaker A: Now, admittedly, by the time you'd built the heartsteel, you had no idea that people were going to be blowing up that fast. [00:30:03] Speaker B: No, that one I definitely did. Oh, this was one of those games where my lanes had all won their lane by the time I finished my first clear. [00:30:09] Speaker A: Oh geez. Never mind. [00:30:10] Speaker B: I shouldn't have built heart steel in that game. Matter of fact, because they all won their lanes, I should have built bandle pipes and just been their cheerleader. I didn't. I won anyway. But I got fucking carried that game. I did not pull my own weight. And part of that is because I spent a shitload of gold on a heartsteel that did nothing for me is also why I don't play Sejuani very often. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Admittedly, the last two are the same sort of thing. [00:30:38] Speaker B: Yep. [00:30:38] Speaker A: In different situations, they're essentially the exact same problem. Yeah. Yeah, they're the exact same problem. [00:30:44] Speaker B: So these are Bammy Cinder items. Sunfire Cape or Hollow Radiance or Thornmail. And the reason these can be a mistake. These are usually your first item. On tanks you're generally building a Sunfire or a Hollow Radiance, depending on your damage profile of your opponent first. Because on tanks it gives you wave clear potential and gives you a lot of DPS in extended fights, which is what tanks are supposed to be good at. And you're building Thornmail. If the enemy is a lifesteal champion. For example, if they're playing Aatrox, you kinda want a bramble vest as soon as possible to cut their healing. [00:31:19] Speaker A: I was about to say no, you're not building a Thorn Veil as soon as possible. You're building a bramble vest and then building something else. [00:31:25] Speaker B: But the mistake applies regardless of whether you finish out the Thornmail or just buy the bramble vest, which is these items take away your agency to control. When you pull turret aggro. Yes, if you finally get a chance to reach the turret when you're sitting on a Bammy cinder, all the enemy has to do is walk up to you and the turret starts shooting at you. If you've built a bramble vest and you walk up to the turret and they auto attack you, the turret is now shooting at you. You didn't do anything other than exist under the turret, but you pulled turret aggro because of your item choice. You have to be mindful of that. And often it is correct to simply build something else. I like Iceborn Gauntlet as an Example over Sunfire Cape. In circumstances where I want to be [00:32:13] Speaker A: allowed to touch the turret, this is mostly. This is a weird one in which it's those who are tanks who are also not trying to be the immediate person in a team fight. You're a secondary tank. Yeah, because. [00:32:28] Speaker B: Which is most of what I play, [00:32:29] Speaker A: admittedly, because split pushing is still your duty there. Whereas if you mean like on Sion, you're. You're supposed. Well, I guess Sion can sometimes split push, but your orns, your. [00:32:39] Speaker B: This is why, if you've seen good shens, they're usually not building a Sunfire as their first item. They're building a Titanic instead. We talked about why sometimes Tiamat items can be a mistake, but Titanic at least is a wave clear item that you have control over. When you pull turret aggro, the worst feeling is when they just. You die because they just walk in and cc you. But by walking in, they've also pulled turret aggro onto you while you're cc'd. No one wants to get pulled by Darius and start getting shot by the turret because Darius pulled them. Yeah, that's a bad time. So be mindful of your items. That's. That's the whole point of this discussion, is be mindful of your items. Mike, we've got one more quick topic. Last week on the patch episode, you talked about the bel'veth rework and you were excited for the bel'veth rework that happened. You've gotten to play her, what, a couple times now? What are your initial impressions? [00:33:38] Speaker A: She's more Kayle than Kayle in every way. That. That sounds applicable. It sounds applicable. Apart from that, she doesn't get ranged. Actually, she does gain range when she ults, but ignore that. Belvets early game is gone. You have zero fight agency. You are a farm bot. And if you are put behind in any manner, you're screwed. Unless you can keep farming. And you need to keep farming. Yes, you can make a gank of circumstance. You have cc, unlike other people. If it's. If it's a gank where all you need to do to participate is walk up, knock them up and walk away. That's a gank. That's possible. Otherwise you are telling your team, hey, I need to be farming until 11 because I essentially am not a champion until I have 40 stacks minimum. Because you lose half the duration of your ultimate until you have 40 stacks. [00:34:38] Speaker B: So she's more like a jungle Kayle type. [00:34:41] Speaker A: Exactly that. This is why I'm calling her Kayle. It's 11 is her power spike now because by that time you should hopefully have minimum 40 stacks or more. I played. Now admittedly this is a game with Jax. The game right before that. I had one of the easiest power carry junglers I've ever done with Maokai massively carried that with with good ganks and things went into the next game played Bel'veth got destroyed because of a bad early gank setup. Because I tried to help something out. It failed and I got put so far behind I could never recover. The previous time I played Bel'veth I was invaded a lot. So people were coming at me to try and fight me and get in my jungle. I was able to escape a lot and then I was able to hard farm. I was like 2 in 12 in that game. It was bad. I was getting targeted massively because if you're playing Bel'veth you're going to get targeted massively now. And that game ended with me getting nine more kills and 13 assists. Because nothing can. Nothing can fight you when you are capped. She is one of the hardest scaling champions in the game now. If you can get on top of someone, they're just dead. There's a Mundo on that team. Doesn't matter. There's an Olaf trying to beat you down. Doesn't matter. [00:36:00] Speaker B: What about a Jax since he has counter strike and can literally go invulnerable to her damage for 2 seconds plus then the duration she's stunned. [00:36:10] Speaker A: So if Jax goes in, you should hit W Q away. Wait until the Jax finishes his thing. Q back in and then E like she has the ability to not instantly get blown up. Your E is still a damage reduction. It might proc through dodges. I'm not 100% sure because I haven't played against anybody. [00:36:34] Speaker B: Should didn't old Belveth E did not hit during dodges or while she was blended. [00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember because I didn't play against anything. It might not be considered an auto attack anymore because they. They pulled away some of the things that it used to synergize with which were lifesteal and other core things. Now that it no longer has those connections of those procs with like on hit items. It might not be coded as an auto attack anymore. But I haven't faced anybody that was able to blind me or dodge me. So I don't know. And until that's tested I wouldn't. I wouldn't bet on it. I will say Terminus. Yeah, real fucking good. She. She wants Terminus. The only tank item you need is a jack show is your last item or a little earlier if you're dying that heavy. [00:37:21] Speaker B: Which simply makes the terminus even more powerful on her. [00:37:26] Speaker A: To be a proper dueler, you do need some lifesteal in there. So you need a bork because Bork is the on hit item. When you're doing on hit damage, you have a little bit of flexibility with the other on hit things. Except for Rageblade. And I think Rageblade is probably your first item. First. It's weird to say first because you'd imagine that Kraken would be better. [00:37:46] Speaker B: I definitely would imagine that Kraken would better. Why Rageblade first? [00:37:50] Speaker A: By the time you finish Rageblade, you have the benefit on Bel'veth of having a true damage proc on every auto attack you do that scales every auto attack you make. [00:38:04] Speaker B: Okay? [00:38:05] Speaker A: And Gunsau's seeing what you're putting down is the only thing that makes that go faster. Now you're not winning any duels. 1v1. So one item isn't your power spike. And realistically your clear is the same or better between the two of them. It's. It's. Eh, who cares? Your clear is insane. The only other item that like might be a rush in comparison would be pork to try and sustain, which is [00:38:29] Speaker B: probably mostly only correct if the enemy has like a Tank Jungler and like a Sion Mundo type top lane. [00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah, unless you're fighting a hard Tank Jungler, you're not winning duels unless your lanes are so far ahead. Any time you're in a in a fight is just hey, I'm the extra body. We're now getting kills. You are not a champion until 11. This is the Kale scenario. So hard farm. Hard farm like crazy. And once you hit that 30 minute mark, 40 minute mark in some cases, now you win. Because I am yet to see something I haven't faced. Jax I haven't faced. And I'm yet to see something that can duel her. [00:39:11] Speaker B: Yep, I'm looking at stat sites and all of her three item core builds have insanely high win rates while she sits at like a 49% win rate. This is a prime example of why she's a Kayle type. Because as long as you're building attack speed on hit, if you are making it to three items, you probably won that game. And all of the games where you don't make it to three items which won't show on stat sites for a core build are bec you lost because you didn't make it to three items because the game was too fast. [00:39:40] Speaker A: Pretty much. So don't play her with the expectation of being a dueling monster in the early game. [00:39:48] Speaker B: And for the love of God, don't pick her when you have like a Jynx bot, a Kassadin mid and a Kayle top. [00:39:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. You have all of the scaling in the world. You'll never make it there. [00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:00] Speaker A: You need at least one heavy early game person to sustain you. [00:40:05] Speaker B: I have a question for you. How do you feel about Gluttonous Greaves on her to solve the sustain without having to build Bork? [00:40:14] Speaker A: I think you just go both if you're that worried. She is the only champion that can't that physically cannot over index into attack speed. As we were saying before, she has infinite attack speed scaling. It goes up until 99999. And because of this she's pretty much like. If you're really worried about damage, you can go Berserker Greaves. If you're really worried about someone fighting you, you can go any boots you want. I think she's probably because she's a jungler, she should probably go for either the movement speed oriented Swifties because it allows her to move a lot faster throughout everything that she can get, or because she is actually surprisingly cooldown based. Lucidity is not a bad one with her. Her E is a long cooldown. Her Q. Each proc is its own separate cooldown. Lucidity is not a bad situation. [00:41:07] Speaker B: So the reason I ask, according to OP gg, Gluttonous Greaves are actually her highest win rate boot by multiple percent. [00:41:15] Speaker A: I can see it because it gives her access to free Lifesteal and Lifesteal is a very good thing on her. If your three items are not going to be a Bork in there, if it's going to be Kraken Rageblade Terminus. If that's your three, you should be getting Gluttonous Graves because within your first three items you need Lifesteal simply so that you can duel people. Yes. Your E has healing in it. It's not enough. [00:41:38] Speaker B: All right. We have a trinket tip this week. It's really simple and it only really pertains if you really are enjoying Aram Mayhem Classic Ish. Because on the Classic Ish Aram Mayhem map, if everyone on both teams feeds Baron their Poro snack, then everyone on both teams will get an extra augment. If everyone instead feeds Dragon their Poro snack, then everyone on both teams will get extra stats because Mayhem Classic Ish is a silly for fun mode. Go for the extra Augment. It's more fun. Everyone does it. If you've seen teams like walk over there and feed Baron and walk away, that's like the gentleman's agreement. Everyone wants to do it. Don't be that guy where nine people have fed Baron and then you just. Don't just go feed Baron. It's fun. Everyone wants more Augments. [00:42:34] Speaker A: You. You want the chance to get the Super Augment build? Come on. You want it? [00:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And sometimes the enemy will get it instead. And that's tragic. But it's more fun with more Augment. So feed Baron. That's our trinket tip this week. [00:42:45] Speaker A: That's the reason you play Mayhem is for the Augments. Get another one. Go on. You know you want. [00:42:49] Speaker B: Also, Aram Mayhem Classic Ish is boatloads of fun. Join the discord. The link is in the episode description, so you can play it with us. It's most of the league I've played in the last week has been Mayhem Classic ish and it's it. [00:43:03] Speaker A: It doesn't take the place of regular Aram Mayhem. They each have their own good feel to them, but they each have that unique little punch to them. They're good. But Classic ish might disappear. So play it while you can. [00:43:17] Speaker B: Yes. I don't think it's a might. It will disappear. So I mentioned at the start of the episode. Our questions this week come from Mr. Peabody. He used to be our audio editor once upon a time. I do that nowadays. But Mr. Peabody wrote in some questions, so we get to answer his questions this week. He writes, if Raya allowed you to toggle a setting to get your preferred role instead of being auto filled, would you accept that there's nothing worse than someone getting autofilled saying never jungled before. So I want to answer this, Mr. Peabody, by explaining why we don't have that option. There's multiple reasons. Some of the reasons we don't have that option are business decisions by Riot. Players sitting in queue for longer means players playing the game. Less means players less interested in spending money on the game. This is the primary reason they don't [00:44:07] Speaker A: get to play the game. [00:44:09] Speaker B: Yes, this is the primary reason Autofill was introduced in the first place was to get queue times down. Because high queue times was one of the driving factors of Churn of people leaving League of Legends and playing other games. Short queues means Riot makes more money. That's why we'll never get this toggle. So I wanted to get that out of the way first. Now, in a hypothetical world where that wasn't an issue, would I want to play the game where there isn't autofill instead of playing the game where there is? Well, let's look at the downsides. The downsides of there being no autofill is that everyone's queue times would be longer. By virtue of everyone's queue times being longer, matches would be less balanced. Right now, the longer the queue time is, the more leniency the system builds into how close your MMR needs to be to get pulled into a game. If there was no autofill, that leniency would have to go up to keep queue times under control. Which means you're gonna get more silver top laner against platoplaner type problems. Is that better or worse than having an autofill jungler who has no idea what they're doing? I personally would say that if you can't play all five roles at at least a. I kinda sorta know what I'm doing on one champion level, you shouldn't be playing ranked. You don't need to master five champions for every role. You don't need to be a crazy person like me and play literally half the cast of this game. But you should have one champion in every role that if you get auto filled, you can play that one champion. And if you get auto filled and that champion gets picked or banned, maybe that's your dodge. That is what I think should be the expectation of ranked and I would rather play with if you're one champion [00:45:49] Speaker A: in other roles as a frequently banned champion, you need to learn another champion. [00:45:53] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe don't have Zed be your mid and jungle autofill champion. He gets banned a lot. [00:46:00] Speaker A: Now there, there is a. Speaking of classic. Classic ish. Classic has the best queue system that I have seen and I think it is the way that they should take cues going forward. They should take this and pull it into normal. Classic has. This is the role I want now line up everything else in the order in which I would prefer to take them. [00:46:23] Speaker B: Yep. So there, there's no like primary, secondary and then auto fill. It's primary, secondary, tertiary and then fourth and fifth choices. [00:46:33] Speaker A: You are very rarely going to see those fourth and fifth choices and almost [00:46:38] Speaker B: always that's when you're in a four stack and one of you gets your fourth or fifth choice. [00:46:43] Speaker A: It's. It's a. It's a better system period. And it should be adopted across the board, I think. [00:46:50] Speaker B: Agreed. I would Prefer it. It would again, it would reinforce my opinion of everyone should at least kinda sorta know how to play every role. You don't need to be an expert jungler, but you should have a champion you can jungle on. [00:47:03] Speaker A: And this gives Riot a perfect metric. A perfect metric to see what are the most and least popular roles. Because now you have every single person who does a queue up telling you, this is the role I want the most, this is the role I want the least. And they can now balance them around that. [00:47:22] Speaker B: And that's important because they know right now what are the most popular roles. Because we have primary and secondary. But for example, if jungle is the least popular role, as in there's the least people queuing at primary and secondary, we don't know if it is actually the least popular role. As in most of the people who aren't queuing as Jungle main have it fifth or maybe it's third and it's just not as popular as the first two choices. But everyone has it as their third or fourth choice kinda situation. Having that ranked voting system would help Riot go, oh wait, everyone who is into top lane main hates top lane and has it as their last choice. Maybe we should make changes to make top lane suck less. For people who aren't top lane mains, that kind of information would be really useful to riot. [00:48:14] Speaker A: This is because of the previous system where there was no priority system before. This didn't exist in the original. In classic you had to call your role the least called role because they had the metric of every chat. They could tell when people were going, this is the role that people hate the most. And they worked on that one, which was support. [00:48:38] Speaker B: Yep. [00:48:39] Speaker A: And they have done a whole lot [00:48:40] Speaker B: to support is currently I think the third most popular role. Now it's both, which is crazy. [00:48:45] Speaker A: It's partially more, there's more champion diversity now than there was back then. The quests make it so that you're not poor as fuck. So like this is a system that you should want to be in everything so that better information is across the game and you have the less the least chance of getting thrown into your least favorite role. Because there are plenty of people who are like, I'm okay with everything but this. This is the one thing I don't do. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Absolutely. So we have one other question from Mr. Peabody and I think this is a good question. Peabody writes, we have fish champions, toad champions, Yordles. Why is there no beaver champion? Using that beaver tail to CC and Peabody, I think you're thinking too Small. We need a beaver champion who builds a talia wall perpendicular to a fight and just splits a team fight up. [00:49:37] Speaker A: So my absolute first thought when I saw this was he can build river dams. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:44] Speaker A: He should be able to block off sections of the river for long stretches of time and change what the river does. Yes. I'm aware that this makes horrible balance, but like make a wall that gives extra movement speed on the one side because it's in the river or something like that. We have plenty of creation characters. Make it last another like five seconds because it's a beaver dam. Maybe allow him to be the only one who moves through it because beaver dams are actual houses. Yeah, you could do. [00:50:14] Speaker B: But in general, just. We have so many generic human champions. We absolutely should have a fucking. [00:50:20] Speaker A: We need more monster champions. Yes. Or crazy animals. Less. Less like Yumi, though. Let's, let's, let's keep things like that out of the game. [00:50:30] Speaker B: Yeah, but like we got bears, we got wolves, we got all sorts of animals. Give us some more animal champions. I want a beaver who has super chomp as an ability where he just latches on and you just see him like flailing around as the enemy runs around because he grabs them with his beaver teeth and won't let go. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Give us actual bees. [00:50:53] Speaker B: No, you've gone too far. [00:50:55] Speaker A: Real bees. [00:50:57] Speaker B: No. Now if there was a bee champion, would they be able to handle Lucian in the top lane? [00:51:02] Speaker A: I mean, they'd just sting him and he'd fall over because he's obviously allergic to bees. [00:51:06] Speaker B: There you go. That's the counter to Lucian Top guys. It's a bee champion. Alright. This has been episode 543 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Soman, you've been Mike of many names. [00:51:19] Speaker A: I have. [00:51:19] Speaker B: We've been very off the rails today. [00:51:21] Speaker A: We have. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Guys, seriously, we need more questions. Write into the four wards podcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel on the Discord. And we'll see you next week. Bye bye. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Good night everybody. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Fourwards Podcast at Gmail com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards [email protected].