The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 544: Stay In Your Lane, Kid!

[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. Hello and welcome to episode 544 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me both mother Wards are here tonight. We've got Micah, many names. [00:00:48] Speaker B: Hi. [00:00:50] Speaker A: We've also got Pillow Pet. [00:00:52] Speaker C: I have been here for 100% of the shows the last two weeks. [00:00:57] Speaker A: It's true. [00:00:58] Speaker B: It's impressive, guys. [00:00:59] Speaker A: We are the Four Wards podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. We've been doing so much normals and mayhems and classic mayhems and even a little bit of classic here and there. It's a fun time. Discord's where you can find us so you can play with us. Link is in the episode description. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV jacksoman, where you can watch me getting trolled as I keep trying to make it to Emerald. Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames and Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet. And of course I want to give a shout out to our patrons who support us at the shoutout tier. Shout out to CodexNinjaillopet, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Skippy Esquire has returned. Thank you for supporting us at the shoutout tier, you guys. We appreciate it. If you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes it's literally just episode prep, sometimes it's stories, sometimes it's a little of both. It varies. And then $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout you out at the top of every episode. And all of those benefits also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners, we had emails in our inbox this week. Thank you for your questions. Write in to the4wardspodcastmail.com with your questions so we can answer them on the show because we're probably getting through all the ones we have in the queue tonight. So again, that is the Fourwards podcastmail.com link is in the episode description as well, so you don't actually need to remember it. Okay. It is a patch week this week, so we've got a ton of patch changes that we have lined up to talk about. And Pillow, you've been very opinionated about one of them. What is changing with Nasus? [00:02:58] Speaker C: All right, so Nasus got some buffs in the top lane. They're trying to bring his. He's more popular in the jungle. They're trying to bring him on par with the jungle and kind of make them even power level wise. So if you've played Nasus, you know that your minions give you three and that your cannons would give you 12 stacks for your Q. They are buffing up the minions to 4 and nerfing down the cannons and monsters to 10. This has been pretty significant. And I don't imagine that this is going to stay the way it is very long because I've been playing some Nasus recently and he has now made his way into the mid lane because of this change. Because after 10 or 15 minutes, your NASUs now has 300, 400 stacks. Like last night I played a game and I was 13 minutes in the game and I had 400, some 400 like 30 some stacks at like 15 minutes. And there is not a mid laner in the world that can compete with a 99% slow from wither. That is your second max now and a 500 stack. Nasus, you just get two shot. Like they just run you down and you get two shot. There is no caster out there safe because Nasus can just build all tank runes or tank items the entire game and just be relied on on his Q. And you're not going to bully him out of lane because he gets a ridiculous amount of healing from his passive lifesteal which only gets amplified by his Q stacks. [00:04:42] Speaker A: I would say with these changes, it even skews him more heavily towards just build full tank than he already was. [00:04:49] Speaker C: I mean, Jax, me and you played a game and I played Nasus and I was just like, all right, yeah, I'll just get bully doll game. That's fine. I'm going to start off building like an iceborn gauntlet and just go full tank from there. And I could not die. [00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he was a full raid boss. There is no reason to build damage items. When you see people building these stupid crit nesses, those people are dumb. Critnasis does a crapload of damage, but he also goes splat in A split [00:05:15] Speaker B: second critnasses actually have somebody else who can take damage and you're just going there to be. I am now the threat that everyone has to deal with in a side lane. [00:05:26] Speaker A: I am not exaggerating. The crit build literally has a 12% lower win rate at three items than going the traditional like Trinity Force in a full tank build, which is usually what you should go if you're not behind. And maybe you go Force. [00:05:42] Speaker C: You know, Nasus has one item that he wants to make sure he gets and his build path typically goes now boots of lucidity. And then you want to get your sheen and you could just hold on to your sheen for a very long time and just go straight into your tank build. Like I can. You can go spirit visage into a an Mr. Or a AP person because you want spirit visage because it scales so good with your Q. And then the same for like if you're going into someone that's very ad heavy. Like you can just build your Iceborn gauntlet. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Yep. [00:06:17] Speaker C: Or into your tank items if you want to go Trinity Force still. Trinity Force is still very strong on him and it's always going to be his best, best sheen item. But don't feel like you're hard locked into Eternity Force as your sheen item because Iceborne is just good too into certain matchups. [00:06:40] Speaker B: Technically, Nasus works with every Sheen item except the double hit one. The passive one. Well, he can do let's bring an AP build. It's not great, but it's a thing. But the other one, the song is terrible. Dusk and Dawn. [00:06:56] Speaker A: Here's the thing. The reason Nasus goes a Sheen item is to cover up how weak his siphoning strike is before you get a lot of stacks. When you've made it to full late game and you have 700 plus stacks, you can sell your sheen item for more tank if you want. You'll still murder people. The purpose it's almost better is to cover that like 100 to 400 stack period where you're not yet able to just kill everyone. [00:07:23] Speaker C: Like argue like arguing it. Like late game. Sundered sky is just better than any sheen item mid to late game. [00:07:32] Speaker B: So I mean in my opinion, like [00:07:34] Speaker C: when it comes to team fighting, the [00:07:35] Speaker B: the reason why it's not specific. The reason why Nasus loves Trinity Force more than all of the others is very simple. [00:07:42] Speaker A: The move speed. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Quicken. [00:07:43] Speaker A: Yep. [00:07:44] Speaker B: It has inbuilt ability haste. It already has healthy selects at the attack speed is good for him. But quicken the extra 20 move speed because 20 move speed is huge. Along with his slow means no one's getting away from him ever. Unless you're ye and you run. [00:08:00] Speaker C: But not to hang on Nasus all night. He's strong right now. Take advantage of it if you're a top laner or even a mid laner and go get you some lp. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:08] Speaker C: Go to norms first with it. [00:08:09] Speaker A: Still strong in jungle. He stacks a little slower off the big camps, but he's still. If you get two to three procs off of your raptors and like two of your wolves you get to stack on, you still stack really fucking fast. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah. If you kill the big wolf and a small wolf, you've lost one stack. [00:08:29] Speaker A: Yep. And you're still trading stacking speed for stacking safety. Which is the reason you play NASA's jungle is to bypass his weak early game. [00:08:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:40] Speaker A: All right, Mike. Speaking of weak early games. [00:08:42] Speaker B: Speaking of weak early games, this is the great one to go with Belveth is exactly how I've said, only maybe more so. I think she might have the single most abusive curve I've ever seen. She has one of the weakest early games period and one of actually be [00:09:04] Speaker A: weaker than Kayle early and one of [00:09:06] Speaker B: the strongest late games I have ever seen. And they went, you know what, let's tone down how quick that curve happens a little bit because it was quite sharp in both directions. So they're lowering her health growth a little bit and they're slightly retuning her true attack speed. The true form's attack speed change. So when you get it at R initially now it's 6% from 5% so it's a little bit higher. And then your subsequent ranks at 11 and 16 are going to be lower, 2% lower and 5% lower. That sounds like a lot. She's an infinitely scaling champion for attack speed. That doesn't matter as long as she still exists and she can still farm camps. Changing the attack speed base is a great way to tone down her power at certain points because there's only so much farm you can do and there's only so much anyone can let you to. And if you go around and are counter jungling and are farming like a madman, you deserve to be rewarded with that. So they haven't changed any of that. And then they have a slight indicator now where when she's in her special true form, the resource bar that you have is now purple. Which means you can get remoras for people who weren't aware that you could only Gain remorse when you killed the void creatures. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I have a question about that because the game I played of her where I popped off by the time we took Baron, we just kind of ended the game. The. The true form being infinite, does that mean you keep those spawn Remora effect until you die or does that effect still have a timeout and then you just go to regular true form? [00:10:47] Speaker B: I'm yet to see a timeout. [00:10:48] Speaker A: Do you know? [00:10:49] Speaker B: I'm yet to see a timeout. [00:10:50] Speaker A: Okay, now until you die is your impression of it. [00:10:53] Speaker B: Now also the. The true form like she has her. Her breakpoints the 45, 90 and then infinite based on 40. [00:11:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:01] Speaker B: Etc based on her stacks. That might also just be true. Straight up. 4590 infinite. And it means killing her is significantly more important than killing anybody else. If a Baron fight happens because she can single handedly push a wave and win because now there's 30 extra minions in that wave. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah, her minion spawning is fucking crazy. [00:11:25] Speaker B: So I could do it. Like I could do a quick test, but it would just be leveling up and getting checked. Well no, then I'd have to go through and do 80 fucking jungle clear farmer. That'd be a pain in the ass to do. [00:11:36] Speaker C: We can test it after the pods. [00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah, but I'm listeners. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Join the discord and ping mike and ask him what the result was of his test. [00:11:45] Speaker B: For the moment I'm assuming it's infinite because everything else is infinite for her. And it's pretty hard to get Baron sequentially Once you're post 16 until you hit certain points in which you can just solo it with ease. [00:11:59] Speaker A: She definitely hits a 10 solo Baron point faster than like any other jungler I've seen. [00:12:06] Speaker B: She gets the most disgusting DPS I've ever seen. And the break point is like you've seen the hard break points where sometimes you'll see like Volibear right before he gets Navori and then suddenly Volibear can do stuff. Her break point is I cannot single fight anybody. No one can stop me. They need three people to fight me. [00:12:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the. The game I played of her I went 21, 4 and 12 because I just didn't die much in the early game. And then once I hit that break point, I just never died again because everyone who went near me died. [00:12:43] Speaker B: It is great. It is dangerously powerful. And she's getting bans right now. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Deservedly so. [00:12:51] Speaker B: Deservedly so. But it's. It's very noticeable how to beat her. You. You smoke her out of the Jungle, she's just going and fight her. If you see a belveth, get an aggressive early game jungler and beat the shit out of her. Because if you can win pre 35 minutes, you pretty much won. [00:13:05] Speaker A: Especially if you're able to invade her and deny as many camps. It's okay if you yourself are not getting ahead of the curve. As long as you're keeping her behind the curve, you'll be more useful and [00:13:16] Speaker B: you're not ruining the rest of your team's play. [00:13:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:19] Speaker B: That's the other half of that. You need to make sure. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah, like it's okay if both junglers are suppressed as long as you're not snowballing someone else on the map. Because pretty much any other jungler suppressed is going to be more useful than a bel'veth who's been suppressed. [00:13:35] Speaker B: Uh huh. [00:13:36] Speaker A: Okay, I'm gonna talk about runes first. There are two big rune changes this patch. The first is a rune that I think most people have forgotten exists. Honestly. Fleet Footwork has gotten a significant buff. They added five healing at level one and 30 healing at high levels to the proc. Now it still has the the same ratios and the same penalty if you are hitting minions. So it mostly is going to be big healing when you're hitting champions. But this rune was already low key good in harder matchups on a lot of champions and it just got a lot better. That 5 health adds up when you're like for example throwing Caitlyn Autos onto Champions periodically and you just do that when you have a fleet footwork up in proc it you get an extra 5 health every time you do it. The other one that got big changes is not getting buffed, it is getting dumpstered and it deserves it. Hail of Blades is getting a significant hit to its melee attack speed because it was absurd how strong it was early on. A lot of Champions. And then it is getting a hit to the base bonus damage that it gives you, but a buff to the ratio. So late game Hail of Blades is actually better than it was before, but it should contribute significantly less to the oh well, they have Hella blades and they hit me once so I died instantly. For melee Champions specifically, it is exactly the same for ranged other than having a better ratio and slightly worse base damage for the added damage on it. So it's still good on ranged. If you were already taking it on a ranged champion, it's fine. Maybe even better than before because of the ratio change. [00:15:26] Speaker C: Jax, do you know who loves ability to pop people? Do you Know who loved to take this rune? [00:15:32] Speaker A: Tell me Camille and what's changing with Camille? [00:15:38] Speaker C: So if you've been playing for the last few weeks before this patch hit, you probably noticed that Camille was a up and coming support lane and support role that never actually was in the bot lane. [00:15:52] Speaker B: If you bought msi. [00:15:55] Speaker C: Riot is tired of it and they're trying to put a stop to it. They are finally combating the roaming support. Not just the roaming support, the never in the bot lane roaming support. And Camille was one of the all Star champions for that. So they are significantly buffing her in the top lane. And I say significant because it comes down to her passive. And this might be the first time that I've ever seen a level 19 scaling ability since they changed the quests. [00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah, there is. There is a 19 scale there. [00:16:31] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a handful of those, but not very many. [00:16:35] Speaker C: Camille's passive shield used to be just 20% of her max health across the board. And this made her incredibly strong when invading the jungle at level one. And I can attest to this because I was playing the Camille support because it was fun. And I would say 90, 80 to [00:16:55] Speaker A: 90% of the time stole all of my kills. [00:16:58] Speaker C: I did 80 to 90% of the time. I was getting first blood on the junglers because junglers cannot, could not duel a Camille with Halo blades with a 20 shield. They should, they just couldn't do it. So they are making it to where it is now 10%, scaling up to 25% at 1, 7, 13 and 19. So at levels 19, you get a quarter health shield of the, of the last damage type that you took, AD or ap. That's pretty big. That's a pretty big shield. The cooldown I think is going down to eight seconds at level 13. [00:17:37] Speaker B: It feels weird because in this iteration they're giving a level 19 and taking away a level 19 skill simultaneously. [00:17:46] Speaker C: I didn't even, I didn't even know that she had a 19 scale before this. I've never seen it, but it was six second at level 19 and now it's just going to eight seconds at level 13. So it's stronger mid game, weaker late game as far as timing goes. But you should still have it up every time you're in a going into a fight and you should get it at least twice in a teamfight situation, as long as it's not a turn and burn. Anyways. The next change on her she's getting a buff is her W and that's her tactical sweep. And this is where she jumps up in the air and she has two zones. The outside zone heals her. The inside zone I think just slows and does damage. So it was had a cooldown 15 scaling to 11 and now it's going to be 12 seconds at first rank and scaling down to 10. So just stronger at all ranks. This is just a one point wonder. I do believe it is our last max. So it wasn't before. [00:18:46] Speaker A: It definitely is. [00:18:48] Speaker C: It is now. So it's just going to be stronger. Be able to come up a lot. So the outer core or outer cone bonus damage is getting some slight percentage buffs. It looks like 1% up and the everything else stays the same. The maximum health damage. But it's big thing is the cooldown reduction. So this is just buffing her top lane just all across the board. [00:19:16] Speaker B: How often have you seen support Camille's a level 15 or 16 when they're starting to level this thing up? [00:19:21] Speaker A: Basically never. [00:19:23] Speaker C: So yeah, say so. Hopefully this means goodbye till the next weird quirk comes out of bot lane and supports and whatever lane. [00:19:32] Speaker B: That's what will carrier bring us next. [00:19:34] Speaker C: So I do want to say this like we'll get into it later when we start talking about like the system changes and all this does not mean that as a support you don't have to roam or you can't roam. This just is stopping the never being in your lane roaming supports. So you can still roam as a support. You just get penalized after a certain amount of time. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Yeah. They pretty much ignored the penalty and just got to go wherever they wanted very early. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Yep. [00:20:01] Speaker B: We will. [00:20:01] Speaker A: I will talk about going wherever she wants. [00:20:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I will. I will go with this. And she's not Mundo. She doesn't get to go where she pleases. [00:20:10] Speaker A: That's why I said once. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah, but. But Poppy does do a lot of wandering and that is. That is part of her lore. Poppy is getting a retool. It is seemingly all nerfs apart from the fact that it is significantly tankier. [00:20:26] Speaker A: There's two buffs in it. [00:20:28] Speaker B: There's two buffs in it and they are mostly to like the amount of fighting you can do and then some to tankiness there. She's just losing base ad. They're feeling she's too strong. And I agree. She's getting more mana regeneration and she's getting a higher base mana and mana per level so that she can actually stick around in a fight longer. They are retooling the the power of her Q. Its damage is just straight going down in the sense that you're losing 25% bonus attack damage. Everything else about it staying the same. [00:21:03] Speaker A: However, it's the the max health damage now scales up to the same point that it used to always be at. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Yes, yes. It is also losing its early game base Max out scaling and going into a scaling one with level. But it's your first max so you'll get there pretty quick. However, in addition, because of that damage Nerf, they don't want to ruin her jungle capabilities, so they've increased the target max health cap on monsters. So you're more likely to get realistically good monster damage out of this thing. Same as before. And the retooling here is the slow on her Hammer shock is now instead of being a static number, it is a static number plus 8% per 1000 bonus health. [00:21:51] Speaker C: Yep. [00:21:52] Speaker B: So this means at level one it's effectively the same because you won't have a thousand bonus health, but by the time you max it at 9, you may have a thousand bonus health. It'll be the same number there and it's hard to build more health and more health and more health. You will have a better and better slow. [00:22:12] Speaker A: I do think this means she now pretty much has to build Heartsteel as her first or second item depending on the matchup. [00:22:19] Speaker B: She's. She's very core liking into health and resistance stats for the second half of her build. Her buff because this is also a straight buff, but it's how Steadfast presence works, which is her total Mr. And armor gains a bonus percentage that is doubled. When you're below 40% of your max health. That percentage is going from 12 to 16% which means if you weren't building armor and Mr. You're not gaining any benefit. You're gaining a minor benefit. If you are building tank stats, you are getting a major benefit. This is a huge buff to Tank Puppy, which is her best possible build. [00:23:04] Speaker A: It's always been her best build, but it doesn't snowball like damage. Poppy does. So it's less explosive and less like attention grabbing. [00:23:14] Speaker B: Poppy is such a powerful tank, but her damage on Q her charge was so high that you really were just seeing people build into that damage as opposed to going into where she was with Tank. She's already good at tanking. She is going to become a monster tank. She's not quite into the hyper tank scales, although with her flat out flat percent increase and resistances below 40% health, she may feel like it. It's gonna be quite interesting to see Poppy hopefully become a jungler like. And she. She has seen play and seen a significant amount of bans throughout the world because she has been so good at controlling fights. But also we've also played with some terrible poppies. So I'm going to give you two bits of advice here as someone who likes to play Poppy a lot. Actually line up your E shots to try and hit terrain instead of just randomly slamming your E into people. It is a great little dash. You can help your person escape if you E into Q and then run away. You've failed to help people more often than not. By doing that, you're either costing a kill because you've now pushed them out of the way and no one can reach them, or you've just confirmed someone dead. You've killed someone by doing that. The other half think about who you're trying to ultimately. Because randomly ulting certain people is of no benefit if you don't ult the jungler away from the jungle camp that he's trying to smite. Steal. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:01] Speaker A: There's been so many poppies that just do not know how to use their Ult at all. [00:25:05] Speaker B: And you don't have to charge it up to full. Like just. Just tap it sometimes. [00:25:10] Speaker A: All right, I got a bunch of quick hits, guys. I'm gonna talk about some item changes. Zerker's Greaves got 5% attack speed because they were the worst boot. They're a little bit better. They're still not great because the stat they give is just something that you get a lot of anyway. The mid lane version is great because you get lifesteal, but the couple of [00:25:31] Speaker B: AD carries who don't build a lot of attack speed like this a lot. [00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Black Cleaver gained 5 AD but also does not give as much movement speed if you are ranged anymore. [00:25:41] Speaker B: They. [00:25:41] Speaker A: They re added the ranged and melee separation on the movement speed on Black Cloud. [00:25:45] Speaker B: Good. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Yes. Eclipse. They buffed the damage on it and nerfed the shield slightly. [00:25:53] Speaker B: Also good. [00:25:54] Speaker A: Also good. Yeah, the shield on it's dumb. Runaan's hurricane gave it a little bit more movement speed and made the bolts from Runan's Hurricane do a higher percentage of the primary attacks. Damage generally good. We think this item is generally weak as hell even with these changes. I still think it's kinda weak most of the time. But in the situations where it is already good because it is the correct item for the circumstance, it's now better. Sterak's got a little bit more bonus attack damage. Good. I think Sterak's is an underrated item. Sundered sky got a whole bunch of nerfs. Its build path got changed so that it's got a larger combined cost. It no longer has an extra ruby crystal in it, so you actually need to save up 900 gold to complete the damn thing. And then they also nerfed the healing on it. They did give it 50 extra raw [00:26:50] Speaker B: health that was needed. The healing on this item is disgusting. [00:26:54] Speaker A: It's still disgusting in the situations where it's able to be used correctly, but it's no longer ridiculous in 1v1s. So Sunfire keep has a higher bonus health ratio for its burn damage and accordingly because it will be doing more base burn damage, its minion and monster modifier has been reduced slightly. And then also they made it cost 100 gold more to accompany the extra power it's gaining. They specifically are comparing it to Hollow Radiance and saying they want to shift it to be more in line with Hollow Radiance in terms of power. The Mid lane versions of Murk Treads and Sorcerer Boots also got changes. The merc treads upgrade has 5 less Mr. Than it had before and then sorcerer boots are gaining 2 magic pen on their Mid Lane Upgrade version. Which is a good thing because speaking personally, I was almost never building this unless I was playing like luxury or someone who was just a one shot mage. Cooldown Boots are just so much better because they free up your itemization elsewhere to not have to get cooldown items and let you go Storm Surge and Shadow Flame and do more damage. Overall, last item change is one that I think has been a long time coming. Tiamat gained 5 AD. [00:28:17] Speaker B: The wording they have for this makes no sense to me because it seems like they don't understand why people don't buy this. [00:28:25] Speaker A: Yes, I think this is a good change. [00:28:27] Speaker B: To be clear, it is a good change. [00:28:28] Speaker A: But they describe it as it's in a state where if you're buying a Hydra item, it's optimal not to purchase Tiamat until you have all the other components and that's why they're buffing it. That is true for everyone. Not in the jungle because of wave management reasons, not because of the power or lack thereof of Tiamat. If you buy Tiamat before completing your whole item you have committed, you are now shoving every wave you cannot freeze anymore and that's such a powerful tool that you are giving up. But it's not worth doing unless you're getting like a stridebreaker or a ravenous Hydra or a Profane Hydra or Titanic Completed item to justify that trade off [00:29:09] Speaker B: or you were specifically buying Tiamat. Man, I need wave clear. [00:29:14] Speaker A: Yes. For the junglers who build Tiamat items, this is just a great change. They were building it as the first component already because it helps them take raptors faster. And that's the main reason that junglers were building Tiamat items. [00:29:27] Speaker B: Raptors and wolves. Yep. [00:29:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah, that's my. My item. Quick hits. I don't think any of those individually are big changes, but as a whole they do kind of shift things to like bruiser items are noticeably better and maybe stop building chain laced crushers as a mid laner unless it's actually the right situation to build it. There are times when you should be building the defensive boot upgrades, but it should not be your automatic choice. All right. We don't have a trinket tip this week. [00:29:56] Speaker B: We do have one of them. Yeah. [00:29:58] Speaker A: What are your system changes that you wanted to talk about? There are some stuff that is not like item or champion changes, but they do matter. [00:30:06] Speaker B: We. We mentioned briefly. I will go from back to front on this one because we mentioned it a couple times. They are changing how the support quest works to try and keep you in the lane more. So the stack consumption on champion thing that's going on is just straight up becoming weaker. 18 and 21 like it. It takes less to do things with that and you're gaining more for doing it on creeps. So you're. There's less of a penalty for hitting with creeps and more of a reason to not have to save it to try and hit a champion. So you're not penalized for hitting creeps as opposed to trying to fight. And now the big portion of this, if you left the lane before five minutes. Actually no, this. This didn't exist. It was before three minutes before level three. Yeah. Level level three. I'm sorry, before you are level three before now it will be level five. You received a penalty to XP and gold just straight up anywhere outside the bot lane. You. You got less gold, you got less xp. Meaning to creep xp, not kill xp. Which is why you'd see junglers roaming all of the time. They would roam at level two to hit level three and then immediately gain no penalties. Essentially they are enhancing that penalty making it even steeper. Instead of a quarter, it's a third and they're boosting it to level five which means sorry pillows playing with the [00:31:36] Speaker C: camera not tried to. [00:31:39] Speaker B: This is a huge for bot lane for multiple reasons. The second system change is Going to greatly impact part of this because of how powerful roaming supports were. They were systematically changing what was allowed to be in the bot lane. You saw a lot more mages because they're very independent, very few specific AD carries because, well, a mage is a lot easier to farm with versus a weak AD carry and a support. [00:32:07] Speaker A: That's why like Ezreal got to be so popular. [00:32:11] Speaker B: So I'm going to jump up to that one. The specific. There's a list of champions. I'm not going through all of them. The generally, just if you think of [00:32:19] Speaker A: them as an AD carry, they're probably on the list. [00:32:21] Speaker B: This includes like Kindred. So if they are an AD carry in any capacity, they are gaining base magic resist and losing a little bit of magic resist per level. Except for Tristana who already had a lower one and is going to the same as everybody else. She had a lower one because she was so powerful in mid lane. [00:32:46] Speaker A: True. Since the season started, basically. And that's why they're reverting it and [00:32:49] Speaker B: they realize, well, this just means she can't play in bot lane because bot lane has the AD carries. Now this essentially means your. Your magic resist baseline will be the same at level 18 as it was before or relatively close to, but you will have a better starting chance versus mages. The extra Mr. Means you have the ability to fight them on a greater level, especially in those early levels before they have any chance of wielding even the sorc shoes. And while we're talking about that, the other major change is the jungle pet is getting a tooling change that increases more people being able to be in the jungle. The AD change isn't happening because AD champions are just fine in the jungle. Right now. There's an enhanced damage. This is the Jungle Pet. Your assistor is getting more powerful based on now, if you have more AP, it gets more. If you have more armor and Mr. It is stronger. And if you have more health, it is stronger. All of those have been buffed while not touching the ad. So if you're a bruiser, yeah, you're going to get more from your health, a little bit more from the armor and Mr. Pure Tanks armor and Mr. And health, you're going to get more the mages more bonus ap. They're hoping to make the jungle pool more diverse because pretty much there has been this ad fighter just wave. You've seen J4 forever, but he's been stuck there. You've been seeing a lot of Vi Xin Zhao, these sort of people who are sort of Bruiserish, but not quite. They're more. They're. They're fighters. So they're. They're meant to do more damage than they are to take damage. And they would like more people to be able to clear the jungle quickly [00:34:35] Speaker C: so that they have this huge. I see this as just like a huge poppy jungle patch because of her increased stats now and plus this 5% increased pet damage from armor. No more. I think this is just gonna be a huge poppy jungle patch. [00:34:51] Speaker B: I think she should be. She should be an incredibly popular jungler. [00:34:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. All right, shall we answer some listener questions? [00:34:59] Speaker B: Let's do it. [00:35:00] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:35:00] Speaker A: All right. So our first question tonight comes from a new listener. Evan writes. [00:35:06] Speaker C: Hello. [00:35:07] Speaker A: I've heard the lacking questions in the 20 or so episodes I've been around for, so I figured I'd give one. Thank you, Evan. We appreciate it. I started playing around three months ago and I've put in around 150 draft games. Though most of them were just trying out new champs and figuring out what role I found the most fun playing. I found my place in the last 70 games or so playing Trundle and Jax jungle while also playing top lane here and there. That being said, I still have not played a ranked game. So when is the best time to jump in? I feel like it would always be better to at least do OQ ranked, but most of my friends are not super committed to playing most nights. Would it be better to just hop in solo and try it out? [00:35:43] Speaker C: That's a fair question. I would say when you're comfortable feeling on your champion pool, which right now seems to be Trundle or Jax, go in whatever role you feel the most comfortable in. And if you're comfortable on those two champions. Yeah, give it a try. I mean the worst that can possibly happen is you lose. [00:36:03] Speaker B: This is something I'm unsure about right now. For your placements, are you guaranteed your primary secondary? [00:36:09] Speaker A: I do not know. [00:36:11] Speaker B: So if. As long as we don't know that, I would say make sure you are comfortable playing every role. Find something in every single role that you can play before you're ready to go into ranked. [00:36:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:23] Speaker B: So that you have. If you get off filled, you're not going. Oh shit. My first experience in ranked that I'm not going able to play a champion or a game that I. I can do. So that's my. My first big point is, is make sure that you can in fact do something in every lane. Even if it's just one champion. If you're one champion gets banned and you're off road. That's a dodge. [00:36:44] Speaker A: Yep. Honestly the biggest thing to me is just it's. It's not about what your actual level of preparation is. It's about what your mindset is. Are you wanting to go and play something that you are confident in, that you are ready to do your best in? You are not experimenting and you're just gonna play your best and try hard? Basically, yeah. If that's what you're looking for, then play ranked. There is no shame. You've been playing this extremely complicated 17 year old game for three months. There is no shame. If the game says hey, welcome to ranked. You're ranked in iron four. That is the lowest rank by the way. There is no rank below iron 4. [00:37:29] Speaker C: I would like to make a recommendation though on your first trip into ranked. Whenever you decide. Turn off your chat. [00:37:36] Speaker A: Yes. There are going to be people in every one of your games who have been playing this game for years and are very opinionated on the correct way to play this game. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Telling them you're a new player does not help. [00:37:50] Speaker A: It does not. So just turn off chat. Trust me. Turn off chat. Your ranked experience will be better. And just play your best. And if your best puts you in bronze, awesome. If it puts you in silver, amazing. If it puts you in iron, there is no shame in that. Everyone starts somewhere if the MII in 2009 when I started playing this game, I was a Dota player before that. So I had transferable skills. If iron existed and I like Somehow teleported from 2009 to 2026 and picked this game up, I would have been iron. Like obviously there's a lot of context there but this game has 17 years of history where the people around you probably know champions better than you do just because they've seen them more. [00:38:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:40] Speaker A: The other played 150 games there are going to be champions you have never seen in those 150 games. [00:38:46] Speaker B: Yep. And the first time you see them will be in a ranked game. And it'll happen. It'll just happen. [00:38:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:52] Speaker B: My. My other main bit of advice. Ranked is a more serious play than than draft would be. Go into it trying to win your hardest. [00:39:04] Speaker A: Yep. [00:39:04] Speaker B: You're. You're going there in a competitive sense as if you were going to go play a sport you're trying to win. There are. There are fun nights. That's what drafts are for for your pickup games. And there are going on to do your competitive. I'm in a league. I want to try and do some stuff that's what ranked is for. You're trying to to move up a ladder. If you do not like the competitive environment, the, the sweaty try hard environment where people are are more on edge and people are significantly more like high strung. Maybe ranked isn't for you and you're fine with that. Draft is fine. I play a ton more draft than I do ranked. I also don't do ranked alone but that is something that I've done after years of playing ranked alone and finding that I don't like ranked alone. I like having a person with me, but that's a personal preference. Jax does a lot of solo queue. [00:39:54] Speaker A: Yes, I do. I enjoy like I don't know how to play video games other than tryharding. It's the only way I've ever enjoyed playing video games. I always am trying to crush the game, do my best. I don't have fun with the like farting around kind of gameplay styles. I don't goof off in games. I guess the other play goof off games. [00:40:19] Speaker B: I guess the other main thing I could say if you're just trying to go into ranked is you want to make sure you have the ability to play on your own without your team. [00:40:29] Speaker A: All right, finish that thought. I have one more that just occurred [00:40:32] Speaker B: to me as is as a top laner especially sounds like with Trundle and Jax, you need to be able to kind of carry a game. At least be capable of carrying a game in which you are very ahead. And so if you can translate, hey, I've been winning my lane to winning the game. Yeah, if you can't do that, maybe don't play ranked quite yet. [00:40:55] Speaker A: So here's the last thing. When you are going to queue for ranked. Make sure you are on hardwired Ethernet, not WI fi. Make sure there are no scheduled power outages or like service interruptions that are scheduled. If you live in somewhere where those happen because there are places that have like rolling power outages scheduled. If they're doing construction in your area, that's not a time to play ranked. Make sure you have allocated an exorbitant amount more time than you actually expect the game to be. If you're looking to play three games, allocate two and a half hours for those three games. [00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you should. [00:41:31] Speaker C: You should. [00:41:31] Speaker A: Those three games take two and a half hours. [00:41:33] Speaker B: They shouldn't for for your first games because you don't know how long it's going to take to do Q. You don't know how long it's going to take to go into things for your first ranked game, allocate an hour and then you can base your times roughly based on how long it took you to take cues etc. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Yeah, if you have 30 minutes that is not a time to jump into ranked. [00:41:52] Speaker C: I'm going to give you a couple pointers to starting up at low elo. The main thing that you want to focus on is not fighting is nothing that has to do with the PvP aspect of the game. You are going to be focusing on PvE, worry about getting your gold, your income that comes from cs. Focus on your CS and you are going to win most of your low ELO games because you are going to out gold the rest of the team because most low ELO do not understand creep score and creep score is the one most important factors of this game and it is not because you can. If you get into a game where you kill your laner over and over and over again, great. Most likely that's not going to happen. Go into a couple norms before or even a a training tool and practice your last hitting in your CS creep score. You have to focus that or you will have a significantly worse time. And lastly make sure you go in with a good mental attitude. Like Jack said, understand and realize it is a game at the end of the day and you're there to have fun and make sure that you go back and listen to some of our other episodes where we talk about the mental aspect of this game and if you're losing and you're not having do a do a mental reset. Like Jax has said before, go take a bio, go for a walk, go get a glass of water, do what you got to do to step away from your computer screen because your mental is going to be 99% of your game outcome. [00:43:31] Speaker B: Two separate piggybacks off of that the gold aspect. Do not kill yourself to get gold. You are losing more gold to the tower to being dead than you are would have lost to just sitting there and watching the creeps die in front of you. [00:43:45] Speaker C: And I would be happy to work with you if you message me on discord on lane management and wave management and top lane specifically. I'm pretty decent at that aspect. I've been playing top lane a long time and I can no timings as far as when I can set up ganks and call them out or knowing how to set up waves. So it's going to be a healthy wave for me when I come back. [00:44:07] Speaker B: And the other part of that I heard you say bio that's the other half of that, make sure you take a bathroom break before you start any ranked things. Make sure you're not going to have to leave in the middle of your game for anything. [00:44:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Barring actual like emergent emergencies. [00:44:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:25] Speaker A: The game does punish people who leave a lot. Don't set yourself up to be that person. [00:44:30] Speaker C: I know you got a little bit more than you bargained for. You got a little bit more than you bargained for on that question. But we're excited to know a new player and especially be in this community and we are here to help you. If you have any questions at all, [00:44:43] Speaker A: you can join the discord. We'll play norms with you. [00:44:47] Speaker B: We'll be happy to draft with you guys. Draft is the most fun like co op thing that we can do together and it is a blast to have listeners play draft with. We had someone with us like last week Skippius came back and we were talking with him and he sat there and he went I don't know if I'm good enough to play draft with you guys. And he carried three games with us. [00:45:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't care. It's normals. There's no, there's no repercussions if you, if you truly are just terrible and out of your depth and get destroyed. Oh no, we had a bad game. Whatever will we do. [00:45:18] Speaker B: But also now you have us to sit there and back and go hey here's the things that we see that have been going wrong. Here's where we think you can improve [00:45:24] Speaker C: now and you can even call us out on our bad play play styles from, from an outside. [00:45:30] Speaker A: All three of us have real bad habits. [00:45:32] Speaker B: We have, we have bad habits. [00:45:33] Speaker A: We all know we have bad habits. We're not perfect. If we were we'd be Challenger. We're not. Alright, we have one other question and it comes from Toast and it's very simple. Toast writes, how do you deal with a fed Tryndamere? Like yeah, he's easy to kill if he doesn't have R but it's hard to force that when he has it every fight. And I agree his current builds give him a lot more ability haste than old Tryndamere used to have and he is much more annoying to deal with than he used to be. You guys have any thoughts on how to deal with a fed Tryndamere? [00:46:03] Speaker B: Play nasus. [00:46:03] Speaker C: Yeah so if you, if you, if you know you're going into a Tryndamere and you get to pick your choice you want someone that can a survive an all in and be Self peel off from that all in and try to disable them or slow them under the tower because they're not leaving that tower. And once you get out of that tower range, he's still just going to run you down. So someone that can a survive the dive, which is really hard to choose from, don't keep yourself vulnerable in lane. Give up your tower. Like you can give up your tower. It's fine, it's not a big deal. Press the B button. [00:46:42] Speaker B: There are I think three ways to try and fight a Tryndamere. There is I have so much CC you can't do shit. There is I can kite you for days. And there is. Yeah, but I'll actually just out duel you. And there's not many of the later. I think there's three. [00:47:00] Speaker A: That last one is what? Jax Jax Nasus by the maybe Nasus. [00:47:06] Speaker B: And that's pretty much the end of that one because we've talked about nasus [00:47:09] Speaker A: bullshit e. Maybe Rammus. [00:47:11] Speaker B: Yeah, we've talked about nasus bullshit E. It's really powerful. The I have CC for days. A lot of those like ridiculous hyper tanks don't have enough cc unless their name is Ornn and they have four forms of natural cc. [00:47:26] Speaker A: Alright, I have a question for you two then you're both talking about it from a top lane perspective. As in like a 1v1. I interpreted Toast's question differently. I'm thinking how do you deal with a fed Tryndamere as in he got fed in top lane. Now we in the teamfight phase of the game have to deal with this guy split pushing that no one can 1v1. And he mentions he's easy to kill if he doesn't have R. But it's hard to force that. That's because the key to forcing Tryndamere ULT is disengage. It does not matter how much burst you have. He he can press R before it hits. It does not matter how much CC you have, he can press R before he dies from it. And no one has enough CC to hold him full to dead. Including the time he's sitting in his ult that doesn't exist. [00:48:13] Speaker B: How long is his ULT for duration? [00:48:14] Speaker A: Three seconds, five seconds maybe Ornn. [00:48:18] Speaker B: No, he has a total of four and a half seconds of knockup. [00:48:22] Speaker A: Yes, but are you starting your CC when he's already ulted? [00:48:26] Speaker B: That's fair. Yeah. [00:48:28] Speaker A: So the key is to have enough damage to make him use the ULT and then be able to walk away. Someone like Janna or Alistair is amazing. At this because they can push him away from their team and then he has to spend his ult timer where he's actually unkillable trying to catch back up. [00:48:51] Speaker B: We've forgotten a great way of talking about dealing with Tryndamere from a different lane. And let's just wave clear. He can't take a tower if there's no wave for him to smack the tower with. He will take too much damage from a tower without minions. [00:49:03] Speaker A: But I think for the teamfight context, the answer really is just have enough disengage to be able to peel him away. Yes, it sucks having to force him to use his ult every single fight, but once he's done that, he can't teamfight anymore. [00:49:19] Speaker B: If. [00:49:19] Speaker A: If Tryndamere Squishy Melee fighter. [00:49:21] Speaker B: If Tryndamere is not picked last, there are. There are counters in every lane that you can play into it. There are ways of dealing with him in every lane. Like Anivia is a great way of dealing with him as long as he doesn't. As long as you save your wall for after he does his little spin. We've already talked about Jenna and Alistair. Poppy is really good against. Poppy's really good against Tryndamere. [00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you just interrupt his spin and he's very sad. [00:49:48] Speaker C: I've ulted don't ultimately these champions, I don't recommend going to first time these champions to try to deal with it without learning them. But if you're running into a lot of Tryndamere and they're messing with you, then it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick one of these champions up as a pocket pick. But if it's just every now and then you're dealing with a fed Tryndamere, you're just going to have to deal with the Fed Tryndamere. And like Jack said, you have enough disengage on your team. [00:50:17] Speaker A: I mean, it's the same thing as like an Olaf where, yeah, when he presses R, you can't peel him anymore. But if you can dash away, his ult time's out and then he's just useless. Tryndamere is the same kind of thing, except he can be cced still. And then once his ult time's out, he's just kind of useless. [00:50:36] Speaker B: Yeah, he doesn't have the sort of survivability that once he's in like Master Yi does. [00:50:42] Speaker A: Yeah, Master Yi can use his W to block a big hit. He can alpha strike to dodge things. Tryndamere has none of that. [00:50:48] Speaker B: He has a heel. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah, but his heal also makes him lose all of his damage for a few seconds. [00:50:54] Speaker B: He loses a good chunk of damage for a couple seconds. [00:50:57] Speaker A: So, yes, he has a heal, but it has repercussions. He doesn't want to be using that until the fight's over. [00:51:02] Speaker B: I mean, I guess the last thing we've overlooked is the best way to deal with him is just play Lucian in the top line. How the hell is he going to deal with you? He spins on you, you dash, he walks at you. You just lightbringer ult him. [00:51:15] Speaker C: There you go. [00:51:16] Speaker A: This has been episode 544 of the Four Words podcast. I've been Jack Soman for my community names for Pillow Pat. Have a great night. [00:51:25] Speaker C: Good night. [00:51:26] Speaker B: Good night, everybody. [00:51:28] Speaker A: 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 podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.