[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 545 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me one other host to help you move forward in League of Legends this week. It's Mike. Of many names, of course.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: You sure I'm not Pillow Pet? He was here too consistently recently.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: I know, I know. Unfortunately, Pillow Pet is stuck at work, so it is just the two of us tonight. But that doesn't stop us from being the Four Wards Podcast guys. We have a discord. Come join the discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. We've been playing a lot of mayhem, some norms. It's a good time. Link is in the episode description. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksoman where I'm still trying to push to Emerald and playing a lot of Map Rando and Path of Exile and whatever else I feel like. And Mike can be found at Twitch TV Mike and many names whenever we bully him into streaming.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: I also want to give a shout out to our patrons who support us at the shoutout tier. Thank you Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana, Uncle ChrisCo and Skippius Esquire for supporting us at the shoutout tier on the Patreon. Now if you want a shout out or just to support us, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us.
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So we're going to be out after this episode. We need more questions. I want you all to write in to the fourwards podcastmail.com I don't care if you think your question is inane. I don't care if you think you know the answer to your question, ask it anyway so we can answer it on the show again. That is the Fourwards podcastmail.com or you can drop it in the question submission channel on the Discord.
So, Mike, are our topic tonight. We want to talk about the right way to approach playing ranked in League of Legends. We've had a couple questions recently about like, when to jump into ranked and all that kind of stuff. So we decided for this week we want to kind of lay the groundwork so that when you decide you're ready to do ranked, you're going in with the right mindset, with the right expectations, armed with the tools so that you can have as good of an experience as you can have.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: This is not mechanical advice this time. We're not going through. We're not talking about laning, we're not talking about champion pools, we're not talking about any of these sort of things. This is a, a mental framework that you need to start building yourself so that you have this, the framework to, to properly go in and, and understand really. And we'll start with this topic. Understand what you're signing up for when you decide to play ranked. Because unlike every other game mode in league, ranked requires a certain mindset to play. And if you do not go in with that mindset, you're going to have a bad time.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Yes. So let's just set the stage for what is ranked. And this is true not just in league. This is true for Basically any competitive PvP game. Ranked is the place you go because you want to show off how good you are and earn the game confirming you are this good. It is. It is the, the. The sign next to the ride that says you must be this tall to ride. It is you trying to be as tall as possible. That's what ranked is. You are playing ranked to earn an icon on your profile that says you are this good.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: That is a much more polite way of saying that than I would have gone.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Because if you don't care about that icon on your profile, play ranked to get the skin and quit.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Like play norms, there is a secondary reason to play ranked over normals and that is the other people around. You also usually have a separate frame of mind.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yes, I was getting there. So in theory, we'll get later to our experiences of why this is only in theory. When you play ranked, this is a team game. You are going to be matched with four other people who are going in with the mindset of let's win this game. We are going to play our best and try to win. That is the theory of ranked. We all know that's often not what ranked games actually are, but that's what they're supposed to be. That's the idealized version of what ranked is.
So with that said, let's keep expectations in check.
Ranked does not mean the same thing to everyone.
Some people will fuck around in ranked.
Should they? No. I think that's pretty universally agreed by everyone who isn't them that they shouldn't be fucking around in ranked.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: It usually seems to be a.
This seems to kind of like quantifiable by rank, by where how often people fuck around in ranked.
And it's usually either the better you get, the more you get to fuck around because that's where people who are high quality go to actually play the game. Or you are the. Well, I don't give a shit about my rank. I'm down here. Who cares? I'm not getting any better. Fuck it.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So the other part of this to remember is it's not just your teammates. Your opponents are also supposed to be there to play to win.
Unfortunately, the reality is when people are playing in a higher stakes mode where they feel that their personal reputation has the chance to take a hit because someone else made a mistake because they will lose LP and go down in rank if they lose the game, people tend to get very, very, very upset in ranked.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: The thing that weirds me out with this is you'll see it. We commonly talk about the Draven blares and this is very common on certain types of people where, oh, I didn't do well. I guess, fuck this, not gonna try and win the game anymore. We're gonna try and lose it. Which is completely antithetical to the initial mindset of I want to show off how good I am.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: So you have this weird dichotomy of people who play.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Yeah. The other thing you'll experience if you've ever made it to higher ranks is you start seeing the same people multiple times in a row. Not necessarily literally from game to game in a row, but you will see names you've seen before. I see the same people occasionally in plat when I was in Emerald before, I was seeing the same names significantly more often because there's simply less people. The higher rank you go, I know in Masters and Challenger they are constantly against the same people, often on a game to game basis.
Whereas if you're just starting out and you're in bronze, congrats, half the player base is in bronze. You will almost Certainly not see the same names very often at all. I've gotten matched we'll talk about our experiences as a whole with Ranked in a bit, but I've gotten matched against former hosts of this podcast. I have played a match against George P. Burdell in Ranked. Literally. He was on the enemy team and he was like, oh, hi Jax. And I'm like, hi George. I'm gonna kill you. I was playing Tristana that game. It was fun.
And then we do a cute afterwards because I had to give him back the LP that he lost. But that's the key is like you will run into people that you've seen before. You cannot let that past experience taint how you play this upcoming game. Because even if you remember them, maybe you muted them and they're still muted. And that's why you realize it's someone you've played with before. That's the one I run into most of the time. They may not realize they've played with you before, but if they do, they might not like you and they may just choose to int your game because it's you.
So shut your trap and play the game. Play to win. That's what Ranked is. That's what you signed up for when you queued up for ranked. So I want to read a little bit from a very old Dota 2 guide for you guys.
Because I think even though it's for a different game, Dota 2 and League share a lot of DNA. And this guide is the best guide that has ever been written for explaining what a new player should expect.
So those of you old heads probably know I'm about to say welcome to Dota. You suck.
That is the name of the guide and I want to read a little bit. The very first heading is the task you are undertaking. You are going to be constantly reminded of how much you suck for about one to three months if you learn. If you read this guide and use your brain and be actively aware of how bad you suck, you can easily shame time off your complete noob status. You can even make some kids think that you're really good, but only if they are bad. Unfortunately, Dota 2 has a massive learning curve.
You need to play each of the Dota 2 had 110 heroes at this point in time. I have no idea how many Dota 2 has now. League is like 172.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: I think we're over 170.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: It's ridiculous at least once to have a basic understanding of the power levels of each hero each game takes on average 30 to 50 minutes prepare to play a lot of Dota if you want to cut this down, go to websites, read Hero skills and guides and from there you should get the basic idea of how to play these heroes. Now this guide was written in 2013.
Obviously the answer now is more like go on YouTube, find guides, watch guides than it is reading things. The Internet was a different place 13 years ago.
The guide continues. You are going to have to learn items, strategies, laning combos, abbreviations and massive amounts of teamwork.
However, I promise that once you get the basics down and you start playing casually with your friends that you are going to have a ton of fun.
There is no grinding for weeks to get that gear you want. Like in an mmo. Rolling a new hero is as easy as playing one game and each game you can go different skill or item builds with different team setups. Basically, it is going to take a really long time to get bored with this game. Every game is different. I've spent about three years of my full gaming time focused on Dota and Dota 2 and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. You may be interested in playing Heroes of Newerth or League of Legends, but we arguably all right, so he continues. I'm not gonna read that because it's old and irrelevant. Heroes of New Earth doesn't even exist anymore, but I'm gonna link this guide in the show notes of this episode. I do recommend you read the whole thing, at least up to the part where it gets into like Dota 2 mechanics.
What I just read is the introduction. It starts out with like how to survive public games.
Then it talks about like the phases of the game.
It's it's a genuinely good guide. It is the most well known Dota 2 guide period. And I think it I There have been many attempts over the years to make an equivalent for League and I don't think any of them have stuck the way this Dota guide has. That's why I'm referencing a Dota Guide.
What I just read to you sums up perfectly what you should expect for your first season of Ranked. This is the first time you're jumping into Ranked ever. You're going to get your ass kicked.
On that note, even if this isn't your first season of ranked, even if you've been around the block for 17 years or however long I've been playing this fucking game, at this point it is important to understand this is a PvP game. If you are being matched against people who are roughly your skill level on Average, you will lose half your games.
There is no way around that. That's just math.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yes. Statistically average to play 100 games, you should win about 50 of them. About.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: It's not to say you won't have a slightly higher and you not say one of a slightly lower if it gets your skill level right. Which means if it's wrong to start with and you're losing a lot of your early games, you might be in the wrong skill level even if you feel like you are better.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: And the key there is it will find equilibrium. You will keep getting games that you can't win until you've lost enough for the system to put you with people that you can win against half the time. That half the time is the important part. The best players in the world when they're playing solo queue still lose almost half their games.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It is considered a monumental victory for someone to have a 60% win rate. There are a couple of pros and like well known challenger players who are picked up by pro teams specifically because their win rate is so high in challenger because it's a statistical anomaly. How are you doing so well here?
[00:13:59] Speaker A: I mean here, let me put it this way. I just pulled up Vladi who is the mid lane player for Fnatic right now. He is the highest ranked player on EU west solo queue. Out of his last, what is that?
Nine games he won five, lost four. So literally the highest ranked player in Europe on solo queue only wins barely over half his games.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: That does not mean you will not go on win streaks. That does not mean you will not go on lose streaks.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: And every so often you will get a lose streak that goes so hard you will drop ranks.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: We'll get to that. We'll get to that.
So with all that said, we want to make sure that you are in the right headspace when you go to play ranked. When you go to play ranked, make sure that you have enough time to play a full game of League of Legends. Even if it goes ridiculously long.
Yes. Your average game is decided in 30 to 40 minutes. You should be setting aside at least an hour. If you do not have at least an hour to play, you should not queue up for ranked that.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, the 30 to 40 minutes is just game time. There's queue time, there's champion select, there's the post champion select because you're not going to get in immediately turn off your computer unless you're doing something wrong.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: I mean I've definitely done that where a game goes long and it's running into the time I allotted because you will also have games that go 50 plus minutes.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: There are games that go 50 plus minutes. But like on average with all of the other accoutrements, most people have about 45 minutes per ranked game cycle. It's about a 45 minute window. And giving yourself that extra 15 minutes because sometimes your games go that extra long is good. And actually the worse your rank, the more time you need to allot yourself because you are more likely to see 40 and 50 minute games in.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: So because the way those games happen is people make mistakes, teams throw back
[00:16:11] Speaker B: and forth or they have. You're not going to get close out again.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Yes. You're not going to get a 50 minute game where one team team fights excellently and wins every team fight because they're just going to win the game faster.
But yeah, I played a 50 minute and 53 second game within the last week.
It does happen. Mike, you were there. You played Victor in that game.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: I did.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: So make sure you set aside enough time. Make sure you are free from distractions.
Make sure you're.
Make sure the kids have been put to bed or your spouse or significant other is available to take care of them and knows that you're occupied in ranked.
Make sure your homework's done. Make sure you don't have food in the oven that's gonna be done and you'll burn it if you don't go take it out.
Make sure there isn't a scheduled power outage because that's a thing. By the way.
I've literally had games get interrupted because there was a scheduled power outage and I didn't remember to check.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: We had to reschedule last week's recording because there was a scheduled power outage that I didn't know was a scheduled power outage until I looked at my email.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yep.
If you have the ability to do not play on WI fi.
Seriously, Ethernet is that much more reliable. I'm not kidding.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: It's. It's. It's 10 to 15 times better. Not percent times.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And you're not going to. It's not better in a way that you'll see in a speed test. It's better in a way that you'll feel in the moment when you will occasionally just not do the skill you pressed because you lagged in that moment. Because WI fi.
Make sure, just, just make sure that you can commit your full undivided attention to the game for as long as it's going to go. Obviously, if an actual emergency comes up if there's an actual fire, ranked is not that important. Go deal with the actual emergency. Yes, please be safe. But don't put yourself in a situation where you're going to have to address a non emergency because you didn't address it before ranked.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: And now that comes into the mental portion. If. Unless you are someone who deals with this specifically by playing to ignore everything else around you, which these people are few and far between who can actively play a game like this specifically to get away from other things.
If you're having a rough time in real life, a family member is hurt, you're having a problem with a relationship, things are going out. If your mental headspace is in an off area, I would not play ranked. Yeah, you are going to change your decision making. You're going to have a harder time dealing with that one person who's trolling with you. You're going to have a significantly like more distracted headspace because other factors that you're having in your, your real life are now affecting your game which is now making you even more frustrated because this is what you did to try and relax. This is a few and far between people who can ignore all of that and narrow focus completely on this. I would say probably no one who listens to us can do this. I can't do that.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: I definitely can, but also sometimes shouldn't depending on what the specific headspace thing is for me.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah, because you don't know in many of those scenarios, you don't know what it's going to do to change how you think and how you feel. That's the big primer for mental headspace on that. Then there is the smaller primer.
If you've had a bad day at work and you're just kind of tired or frustrated, do something relaxing first. Build yourself up to a point where you have a standard mental state. Like this is my. All right, I'm there, I'm good. You should find yourself like a standard mental like I'm at the point where, man, I just want to play some games. I want to do something. We're good. Because if you go in frustrated again now, your capacity to deal with anything else is compromised.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Yep. So with that said, Mike, tell us about what your experience was when you played ranked. Where were you rank wise? When was this? Because I know you, you famously do not really do solo queue anymore at all.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: So the last time I actively played solo queue to the point where I was ranked because I'll occasionally do some solo queue games, I'll do some duo Q games. But the last time I played solo queue alone to the point of getting ranked, I ended in gold. And I did that around 2022, 2021, 2022ish. The experience of playing ranked alone with, especially with what was going on in my home life at the time, made it so that I could not play ranked alone again. I was having roommate issues where what was dealing with my roommate at the time trying to go back and forth was not something conducive to playing more ranked. It put me in a bad mental state to keep playing.
I was having frustrations and I still am having frustrations with work where man, I'm. I'm not happy with how things are going and I don't want to deal with how this bullshit's going down and me and my boss are fighting, et cetera, et cetera. These are things that prevented me from enjoying the ranked experience because I play league, because I like league. And I was no longer having fun playing ranked. I was having frustration because I couldn't just relax anymore.
And this permanently ruined my ability to play solo queue. I have not gone back to play ranked alone. I haven't done it at all.
And frankly, anytime someone else is with me, if I have someone I can complain to, I can bitch to, I can talk to, we can strategize together.
Instantly something is lifted off my shoulders because I'm no longer putting everything on me alone.
Because in a ranked game without other people to talk to, because this isn't fives, this isn't clash. I have no coordinated communication with these people.
You have to go into every ranked game trying to be the one who carries the game and I couldn't be
[00:22:39] Speaker A: the one who wins the game. I think. I think that is an important distinction. Carries the game implies you are the one doing the killing. But there are the ways to carry without being the damage dealer. But you do have to go in with the mindset of I am going to do everything in my power to win the game.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yes. And to piggyback off that point right there. The single hardest single person impacting a game I have ever seen has happened from two separate supports. These are not people who who played the kill game, but each of them had such a high impact on the game that they made it impossible to do anything. But look at them in awe as they single handedly won their entire team the game. It was a thresh in a shen by the way.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: But like, fair enough.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Yeah, at that point, I'm now at that stage where Any other person makes it so that I don't have to shoulder that mental burden alone. And if I want to frustrationly, like, I can talk shit with someone, we can. We can deal with these things and I can joke back and forth or we can talk strategy back and forth, or we can actually coordinate at a speed that is reasonable without me having to type things out.
That puts me in such a better state to play the game at a serious.
In a serious, like hardcore. I'm going to try and win.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. I was gonna say, I think we've played like maybe 10 games of flex this year. Just when you've had that itch to play ranked with people, it's not like you don't get competitive and want to like prove yourself and everything.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Don't want to do it alone.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: It has been long enough that I do not have it. Like I have not done it since the reset. So I do not have a ranked thing to go look at.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Because I haven't played season three.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: So I'm kind of known as the ranked grinder of the Four Wards crew. So is my turn to talk about my experiences with ranked?
What you said about needing someone to talk to, someone you can vent to, is very true. This is the main reason that I stream my games.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Case in point, I never streamed, so I did not try and have that. Yeah. Relationship.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Because streaming means I have people who are at least kinda sorta aware of what's going on. I recognize a lot of the people watching are literally just my friends and they put me on a second monitor while they're doing something else. But that's fine.
It means I can vent out into the ether about someone being a dumb fuck and have one of my friends be like, well, what did you expect? You're playing ranked. And that kind of helps me. Even though it's like a sarcastic comment that helps me stay grounded mentally. Because yeah, what the fuck did I expect? I knew what I signed up for my experiences with Ranked. I play hundreds of games a year. I have currently played over 500 games of ranked in 2026.
Some of that's because I'm currently unemployed, so I have more free time than usual.
I notoriously get the most wild people in my games, both on my team and on the enemy team. I have more people losing their minds than anyone else I've talked to at any rank higher or lower than me. I have been in danger of being demoted to silver from Emerald within the same season. That's how bad I've had Lost streaks. It happens. There was a point in time where with a hundred games played, I had like a 30% win rate. I'm currently, I think plat one, plat two. Plat one. I'm currently plat one. I'm hoping to make it back to emerald soon. I'm hovering at a 50% win rate, which means I need to play better to make that last push, basically because right now I'm ranked correctly. I'm winning about half my games and losing about half my games.
And it.
It's kind of like it's. I almost feel like I've hit like a. A state of nirvana about ranked where like it just is going to be what it's going to be.
I'm going to do the best I can and everything else is outside my control. If the solo queue gods have decided that today I'm gonna have the top laner who tantrums after one death and makes the game unwinnable, so be it. That's what today's gonna be.
Some days I will just be the most useless jungler you've ever seen. But it doesn't matter because all my lanes won. So all I needed to do was show up for objectives and I did my job. I've literally won games in jungle where I did less than 5,000 PvP damage. It happens and I kind of just take it all in stride. I stream so that I can share that experience with other people so I can get some outside confirmation when I have bad streaks that, wow, that was cursed. You don't deserve this. It can help a lot to just have someone else validate that. It's not all in my head,
[00:27:40] Speaker B: but
[00:27:40] Speaker A: I enjoy it, honestly.
You mentioned earlier the, like, most people can't.
I'm having a bad day. Let me go play ranked to feel better. Like that's not a thing for most people.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: It's not just I'm having a bad day. It's the. There are things in my life that are chaotic to the extreme, like a family death or some serious other things. Things that are like unemployment draining to extreme. Unemployment's part of that, but it also does give you a little bit more Read on. But I'm. I'm like, there's a. There's a moment in your past relatively recently that I'm not going to bring up here. Could you play ranked after that?
[00:28:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I did.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Exactly. You're not the standard person. Most people would have gone there and gone, nope, can't do that.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: I'm aware.
And that's kind of why I'm the ranked grinder of our crew is for me, the way I make myself feel better a lot of the times is I'm a 40 year old man, I'm going up against these 20 year olds and I'm gonna style on them. And I do sometimes.
And then I feel better about myself. Like plain and simple, I play high skill execution champions like Yone and LeBlanc. I play Ezreal and sometimes play Ezreal in mid lane because sometimes it just works and I outplay people and then I feel better.
I'm weird. The point of why we're talking about our experience is everyone's experience is going to be different. You're going to have different people in your games, you're going to have different streaks, different pros and cons of the whole ride you're going on. But as long as you're going in with the right mindset and not letting it get you down, you can have fun in ranked. It is still a video game. Even though ranked is the first serious hardcore mode where you should be taking it super seriously and playing your best to win. That can be fun if you let it be fun. Don't let the pursuit of some pixels on your profile destroy your enjoyment of the game.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: And that is the second portion I was going to be talking about. At any point in time, if you are no longer having fun playing this game, you need to put the game down.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it'll be there when you're ready for it again. There's no shortage of great video games out there. If you want some suggestions for great video games, I recommend you check out check out from 8bit to 4k on this very podcast network. We talk about all sorts of other games on there every other week, just whatever strikes our fancy. So it's okay to take breaks, we take breaks.
I have played and beaten at least 20 non League of Legends video games in 2026.
I've gone weeks without playing ranked.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Yeah, but I have a bad habit of not, not finishing the games I pick up.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah, you do.
I have gone weeks or in some cases a month without playing ranked. And I'm the grinder. I've played 500 ranked games this year. So part of that is I have a lot of free time, admittedly especially right now. But part of that is you need to do other things. If I was just playing league, I'd have 1,000 games right now instead of 500 and I would be less happy for it. So wrapping up our right way to approach ranked discussion, we do want to give some tips and tricks? I think the easiest one is the general rule of thumb. If you have a bad game, take a breather. Don't, don't immediately queue up for the next game. Doesn't need to be long, five minutes, just a couple minutes. Something to help you just wash away the stench of that bad game before you go into your next one. If you have two bad games in a row, take a break, go do something else. That something else can still be league. Go play a mayhem or something that's totally fine. Or it can be something else entirely. Maybe go play a different video game. Maybe literally go do something that isn't video games.
I know, blasphemous coming from me, the guy who lives and breathes video games. Go touch grass.
When you come back to ranked, you will be in a better mindset, in a better place to potentially win those games.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: I'm a point off on this one. If you are having those multiple bad games in a row, the thing that you go off to do should not be another competitive game. Should not be something else that you have that could be frustrating. It should be a. I'm doing, I'm doing something to relax myself. I'm going to go watch my favorite episode of a TV show. I'm going to go watch, I'm going to go watch Robert Irwin, who is Steve Irwin's son, talk about animals because it makes me smile. I got that in because I really wanted to talk about him and I'm really happy that I got to do something that can give you a little bit of joy to reset your mental attitude. Because attitude is everything.
When you start coming back into it, once you're now in a positive mental frame, you can completely go back. It doesn't have to be long. It can be five minutes, it can be three minutes on a clip or you can have a 50 minute poop.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: I okay, if your poops take 50 minutes, please see a doctor. Also just saying, as someone who has long poops and always has my entire life, if they're that long, see a doctor. I would say after two games in a row that go bad, it should be longer than three minutes. I don't really care what you do, just do something else until you feel better. It doesn't, it doesn't need to be a long time, but it should be longer than three minutes.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: It needs to genuinely change your attitude. Something that can give you a fully different experience. And a couple of shorts, a couple of tiktoks isn't enough time. You need something that can genuinely improve your mood.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: If you've ever watched my stream when I have a couple bad games in a row, usually I will just switch to Mayhem if I'm still streaming league or I will switch to whole other games I've gone into to super Metroid, map Rando races, just public lobbies and joined a race that is something that is competitive but it's really just me competing against myself more because it's speedrunning as opposed to like actual PvP just because I needed a break from ranked because ranked went poorly. I do practice what I preach on this specific on this specific item. Don't keep playing when you're having a bad time. Take a break. Then when you come back you'll have a better time.
We already talked about making sure you have enough time for it, but I would also say make sure your equipment is in proper order. If you're using wireless headphones, make sure they are charged. Yep, it goes for your mouse.
We've had multiple people in our lobbies just disappear from comms partway through the game in discord. They're still in discord. They just stop talking and at the end of the game they tell us, yeah, my mic died, my battery died. So oops. In a normal game it's not the end of the world. But make sure for ranked that I recommend playing with headphones by the way, when it comes to ranked because you want to be able to hear game audio clearly and quickly so that you can react to like an ultimate that was just cast that kind of stuff.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Unless you have seriously powerful speakers that are blaring through everything else like I do. Yeah. Now there is another thing that I actually have not talked about this and this has been a thing that I think we should talk about. When you are sitting down for multiple ranked games in a row, there are three things you should have done beforehand. You should have gone to the bathroom beforehand. You should get yourself prepped with something to drink because in the midway through if you need to grab it, grab some water, grab some soda, whatever, something
[00:35:20] Speaker A: like that, I. I literally have a redeem on my stream to force me to hydrate because I will often forget to hydrate. Usually I have the drink right here. I keep it filled. But I forget sometimes and when Mike specifically has redeemed that I go to take a drink and it's empty.
That means that when I get a moment I go and refill my drink so I have water to stay hydrated.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: And this is more true for like timing on things like if you come back, you've gone home from work, you're getting on ranked, you got a couple hours. Make sure you have had food more recently than not. Something that has. Even if you have a tiny snack like beforehand something to make sure you are not randomly hungry.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: On that note, ranked is not the place to play when you are drunk or high.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: No. God no.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: I recognize there are people out there who think they play better under the influence of substances.
A, you don't. I'm sorry, you don't, full stop. But B, ranked is not the place for that. Ranked is the place for you to be sober and to play your best. If you're under the influence of something, play something else. It can be a normal game, it can be Aram, can be whatever, just not ranked specifically. There is an exception if you are in a five stack playing flex or ranked fives while it's open or clash while it's open. Any of those. And everyone in the lobby knows and consents.
Have fun. I ain't judging.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: That's, that's the, that's the key portion there. All of you need to know and all of you need to agree.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Yes. As long as everyone on your team knows what state you're in and consents to play with you, I got no beef with it. Have fun. But if you are playing solo, queue where at least three members of your team are randos who cannot consent to you playing under the influence. Play sober or don't play ranked. Any other thoughts on ranked?
[00:37:19] Speaker B: That's the major gist of everything else.
The only other thing I can possibly think of would be, oh, actually, yeah, yeah. There are certain places in the world where you have weather condition problems and you know that there are weather condition problems coming.
I have a storm.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Thunderstorm is not the time to play ranked.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
Weather conditions are a bigger factor than you might think you will very frequently. I have had massive power fluctuations that have killed my game for five minutes. We lost because of that. But I haven't been playing ranked because I knew that was coming.
I think that's, I think that's my, my main set of other prep work you can do for ranked.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: All right. So Mike, you prepared a trinket tip this week that we had questions about and wound up testing during the pre show. So I want to frame this of you listeners may have wrong information about how Zed work works because at some point that we could not find it changed.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: In season four, Riot changed it. So Zed Ult always arrived behind the target. He Ulted however, current behavior is that Zed Ult will place him on the far side of his target from where he was standing.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: This may have been not a change with Zed, but a change with game logic.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Could be. It used to be you could position your back to where you wanted him to be and that is not true anymore.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Now it will always put him on the far side between where he started and where you end.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yes.
So this is important because it means, for example, if you see Zed Ulted and you use a dash skill or a flash to put yourself under tower, he will be farther under the tower. And since you know where he will be, you know where to aim your skillshot cc. So he is accidentally tower diving.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Zed is still one of the most popular champions in the game. He is now played in more than one role. So you can see him more often in different places. These are, these are. These are things that we're like.
These are a trinket tip that. That's something that we should try and bring out again. We haven't done a bunch of trinket tips in a while and I think this is something where like little bits of information are great places to talk about it. If you have trinket tips for us, something of a similar nature, pop it in the podcast in our. In our discord room. We'll be happy to hear it. And sometimes we'll put them up on the channel.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: Ping ping the the four wards roll. So we'll see it. But yeah, so that, that's what it is is if you still think that Zed is going to appear at your back, you are wrong. It doesn't work that way anymore. I. I literally combed through the patch notes I could not find when that behavior changed in season four. He appeared at your back.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: Yes. And. And that is why I think it is a logic change for the game and not for his alt behind became positional from him as opposed to positional from you.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah, but that does still mean it is still consistent. You should know where he arrives and can target where he arrives with good timing to hit him the moment he lands. Alright, so we have two question submissions tonight. A real one and a troll one. But we're gonna do the real one first. So this question comes from Cinder who writes how would you rank the dragon souls? What dragons are worth giving up for grubs or herald?
So these are two separate questions. First is just the dragon souls and I want to briefly summarize what they do. In case you've forgotten, I'm also going
[00:41:05] Speaker B: to point out he says dragon souls for Grub Herald. Most of this is not actually dragon souls. It's dragon stacks then soul afterwards.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Yes.
So that is the important distinction is soul chemtech. When you're below half health, you deal deal increased damage and take reduced damage. Cloud, you get movement speed at all times. And for six seconds after casting your ultimate, that movement speed is a lot higher. Hextech when you deal damage with an ability or basic attack, it'll set off a chain lightning that deals damage and slows. This has a cooldown infernal same trigger condition. It just causes an explosion. Has a shorter cooldown, does more damage than hextech. But no slow Mountain Soul gives you a shield after five seconds of not taking damage.
And Ocean Soul dealing damage to enemies causes you to start regenerating health and mana.
So that's what all of the souls do.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Every dragon soul is now good. There's no longer a just bad dragon soul. No one wants them. Yes, all of them are beneficial. Some of them are better for certain teams.
But soul as a whole power wise is very strong.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Yes.
So as far as ranking them, I think pretty much everyone agrees hextech is the best because the slow is incredibly powerful.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: I think hextech has now become the most powerful. Yes.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: I would argue that Cloud is the second most powerful, but it's subtle in a way that most people will not recognize its power.
I think 15% movement speed at all times is incredibly strong.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: I think Cloud is good most of the time. Unless your enemy team has no alts that benefit from it. And the 15% movement speed is good. But I think other souls are better than just that.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: See, I disagree. And. And that's why this is an interesting thing to to rank them.
I think for the two, the three defensive ones, ChemTech is definitely the weakest because it only does anything below half health.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: It can become the strongest depending on your champion.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Yes. There are some champions who have their own effects when they're low health that make it exaggeratedly powerful.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Poppy.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: But as a general rule. Yeah, Poppy is a good example of that.
As a general rule, I do think it is the overall average weakest of the defensive ones.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: I concur.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: And that's partially because it's not just defensive. It gives increased damage when you're low too. Mountain Soul is generally the most like visibly strong because the shield is just up front. Burst protection.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: The. The power of Ocean, when they changed this soul to be on hit meant that it became a weaker soul. It was Just the most powerful soul when it was just static regen.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: If you are going to be in combat with Champions for at least five seconds, it's still better than Mountain Soul.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: But you need to be in combat four or five seconds for that to be true.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: And. And it sounds like we're talking that that firesoul is the weakest. It is not because of how the
[00:44:20] Speaker A: most average it is.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: It is the most powerful based on what you also get with it depending on this thing. Because don't forget you're also getting two other flame dragons minimum.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: So that is I think where the more important part of the trading Grubs or herald for it is is Grubs and Herald are going to be first and second dragon that you you could be theoretically trading for.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: You will never see soul for either Grub or Herald can't spawn.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: Literally can't happen.
So the individual buffs are different than what the soul gives.
Chemtech Drake gives tenacity and heal and shield power. Cloud Drake gives slow resistance and out of combat movement speed. Hextech Drake gives attack speed and ability. Haste Infernal Dragon gives percent AD and percent ap.
Mountain Dragons give percent armor and percent magic Resist and Ocean Dragons heal a percent of your missing health every five seconds out of combat.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: Right. Or is that still in combat?
[00:45:35] Speaker A: That's in combat too. It does not care about combat state.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Perfect.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: So you're going to be trading potentially one of these buffs for grubs which remember grubs make it so you deal bonus damage to turrets and potentially a second one of these buffs a different one than the first one. Because the first two dragons are always different.
For the Rift Herald, which one is the best is going to depend on their team comp and game state. If the first dragon is Ocean Dragon and you can take it during laning phase, that missing health regen can often be the difference between someone being able to stay in lane and catch the cannon wave and not being able to.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: There is a second portion here that we did not talk about and that is your team composition. What you have built can determine whether or not you even fight for them.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: Yep. Sometimes this is not a choice you get to make. The enemy team is simply stronger at level 6 or whatever point the the the dragon is potentially contestable and if you go and fight that you will lose and they will get the buff and multiple kills worth of gold. So the best course of action in those is give up the buff.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: The the most valuable numerically of the dragons is hextech it gives 375 gold worth of stats to each player on its team.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: The the most fluctuating ones are Mountain and Fire. Because if you have no defensive champions, you're entirely an offensive poke team. Mountain Dragons give you next to nothing.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: If you are a hyper tank team with one damage dealer, them getting 10% more at potentially cap is okay, but the rest of your team is hardly benefiting from that.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Yeah, the. The. The key there is Infernal Dragon gives ad and ability power multiplier. It does not give a global damage multiplier.
If you're not dealing your damage primarily through scaling your ad and ap.
Infernal Dragon sucks like the individual stacking buffs.
And this can sometimes be champions you might not think about if you're playing Brand.
Most of Brand's damage is percent max health damage done by Liandry's and his passive. His AP ratios are mid at best. Getting 12% more AP. I mean yeah, it's not bad, but it's not.
[00:48:05] Speaker B: It's not weaker with 12% more apart.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: Exactly. For Vhagar, it's almost just 12% more damage.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So here's. Here's you. You and I are probably going to have a different answers on this one. I'm going to start with Harald.
I do not care what dragon it is. If I have already taken grubs, I'd rather have Herald.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: And I'm going to completely disagree because I would always choose Dragon over Harald if I was just eyes in the sky. Just get to pick. Regardless of game circumstance, I will literally choose Dragon 10 times out of 10.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: It is specifically if I already have grubs, I'd rather have Herald.
Because if you have all of the grubs and you charge a herald in, you are taking that turn. Almost always the amount of grubs that you spawn there. Unless they have put four to five people there to defend it, that tower is almost assuredly dead.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: All right, so hear me out.
Even with that, a Hextech Drake stack is always going to be more gold value for your team than that turret can be.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Yes. On raw gold value in substats.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: If everyone properly utilizes them most, almost everyone will use Ability Haste.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Every champion is going to use Ability Haste or Attack Speed. Many champions will use both. But every champion is going to use at least one of those two. There is no exception. Every champion is going to enjoy at least one of Ability Haste or Attack Speed.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: And that is why the. The individual dragon that is more important like that is. That is A a just binder view that the tempo from a herald into a charge is very powerful.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: And often you will get situations where the herald and dragon are not synced up. And taking herald can lead to your team getting dragon because you can throw Harold down and go to dragon. And the enemy team has to have a split decision of do we defend against this herald or do we go contest the dragon and they make the wrong choice. So you just get a turret and you get dragon because you had herald.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: But the other thing with that is if they are taking dragon and I have taken herald, I know they're on the opposite side of the map. I'm getting two charges often. So now I've automatically gotten ahead in the gold advantage off of a single dragon's worth of stats.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Outside of my argument that I think hextech is always just more gold for your team in terms of raw power than taking a turret is. I do think the rest of them. It really comes down to more. Can you get a whole turret with the herald then the herald is probably better than any other dragon. If you can't get a whole turret. If. If it's one of those games where your herald charge is going to get you two plates and the turret is still going to be up. Go for whichever one of the two the enemy doesn't contest.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: If you can utilize herald into a teamfight, that is something that is surprisingly powerful that a lot of people don't expect.
Battle heralds are a thing either the charge from herald knocking people up or the ability to drop herald and use it as an escape tool. These are like surprisingly tricky things with herald that can win you team fights.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: So that's herald. What about grubs? Do you think that there is any dragon that is as good as grubs? If you were set with a situation where you could just choose one or the other, but not both.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: If I am a split push team and I am required to go and utilize opposite ends. Grubs are more powerful because that is what their champion is designed to do. They're not trying to do team fights. We're trying to do split pushing which means the objective is the tower. That is where grubs are more powerful. Otherwise, I think dragons are always better. Maybe. Maybe belveth.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: See, my perspective is different. Grubs give you something that applies in every game in every circumstance.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:51:53] Speaker A: Which is damage to turrets. If you are going to win a game, you will have to damage turrets no matter what.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: The same is not always true for dragons. You can give up soul. You can give up elder and still win games.
You cannot win games without taking turrets. I think grubs are better than any one individual dragon always partially.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: This is because grubs is the first thing. And you'll always have seen dragon. You will know what dragon it is before grub spawn. So you will always what dragon it
[00:52:25] Speaker A: is, but not which soul. Yes.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: You will always know mechanically just on sheer gold. What's the value of that stat there? You'll always know it. How beneficial is that? Am I denied this soul? Because you'll always know you're not getting a certain soul once you have that.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: It's true.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: Grubs are incredibly powerful. I say the split push thing is my automatic. This is always grubs better because that is. That is now a. I am not making that choice at ever for dragon. I'm always going grubs.
The real factor between grubs and dragon for me has nothing to do with team comp with what they are with anything else. It's entirely based on state of game.
I don't care if they have better scaling, I don't care if we have better pushing. If I cannot fight bot side because they have shoved us in and they are actively moving on the map, why am I even going towards the dragon? I will never get it.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: Yep. Now, that being said, there are times where it is correct as the jungler to go for a steal. Even if it is almost certain death.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: If you have the ability to go over a wall and get back out alive, the steel is almost always worth trying for. Trying for.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Unless you got even if you have that ability sometimes you won't get to do it.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: If you go in early, early enough dragons, you should probably be able to go in, try and grab a steel and then get out. Most people don't have the damage power, the CC power at that first or second dragon to try and destroy you that fast.
[00:54:02] Speaker A: And if your jungle smite is upgraded beyond what theirs is, you should always try to steal just full stop.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: There are I think two other champions that I think are. It's almost always worth trying because I have better power. Cho' Gath and Nunu, they can't smite as high as I can.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: That's fair.
So the. The jungle thing, for example, like sometimes second dragon, one jungler will finish their quest and one will not. That means one of them has a better smite than the other one does. That's 400 less damage that you have to do before you can smite. Before they have. They're allowed to smite it.
That's why.
[00:54:40] Speaker B: And if you've been playing for a long time, it's a thousand damage and 1400 damage, not 900 and 1200.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Unless you're playing classic, in which case good luck.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: Good luck. It's based entirely on what level you are.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, Classic is its own beast. And on that note, if you play a lot of classic, maybe retool by playing some norms to get your smites back where they're supposed to be before you play ranked.
We didn't really talk about the impact classic can have on ranked. But like I've been avoiding playing regular classic because I don't want to fuck myself up in ranked.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: It. It will complete if. If Jax was not playing. Like if he plays jungle, that's gonna mess him up for normal jungles. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.
[00:55:25] Speaker A: Yep, very much so. Alright, we have one other question and it's a troll one from Mr. Peabody who writes hello 4 wards. This question goes out to our friend jax. Congrats on top 20 on map Rando. But let's be real. You can do better. Why are you playing LeBlanc when you could be playing Sylas? Or Galio, your friendly neighborhood hero who curses your games with. There's no way you lose this game, Mr. Peabody.
[00:55:51] Speaker B: I'm going to shout him out in that. He definitely put a punctuation under why are you playing?
[00:55:59] Speaker A: Yeah, he did, but I wasn't gonna call him out for that. So that's on Mike. I will, but.
So here's the thing, Mr. Peabody. I have a 20% win rate out of five games on Sylas. I do play him, but it has to be a very specific circumstance for him to be good. I have a 33% win rate on Galio. I do play him. I have a really high KDA on him because I only have I'm 14 and 13 in two losses and a win. I do not have a good time playing tanks in solo queue because I am often not on the same page as my teammates. You will notice the tanks that I do actually play in solo queue are more like Volibear who just kinda does damage or like Amumu where I'm the one going in and deciding when we fight and my team has to follow up. Galio is not that he is a more reactive oh, they're engaging, let me ult onto my teammate kinda thing. Or oh, my team is engaging, let me ult in to follow up on it. I'm not as great with that in solo queue, so that's why I'm not playing much Galio. As for why I'm playing LeBlanc because LeBlanc is fun as shit. And yes, you're right, I can do better in my map Rando. I should have gotten a sub hour time by now but sometimes I just fail. Now the real question you should be asking Mr. Peabody is why the fuck are you playing LeBlanc mid when you could be playing Lucian Top?
[00:57:28] Speaker B: Damn it, you took it from me.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: Cause if I was just playing Lucian Top, I'd be masters by now. Let's be real. Nah. Guys, this has been episode 545 of the Four Wards podcast.
I've been your host, Jack Sohman, you've been Mike of many names. Have a great night.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: Good night everybody.
[00:57:47] 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.
