The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 548: KassaCassaNasus

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker A: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks [00:00:11] Speaker B: and Velkoz and you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you [00:00:17] Speaker A: move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 548 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Sohlman and I've got with me three other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. We've got a mic of many names. [00:00:49] Speaker C: My God. We match the title. [00:00:51] Speaker A: We've also got Pillow Pet. [00:00:53] Speaker D: Hello. [00:00:54] Speaker A: And we've got Witch at Black Mass. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Wando. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Guys, we are the Four Wards Podcast. We have a Discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. We play a lot of normal drafts. A lot of mayhem. It's a good time. We got channels to talk about whatever you want to talk about. There's been a ton of gaming announcements for like other non League of Legends video games in the past like week. Come chat about them in the other games channel. It's a great time. Link is in the episode description. Come hang out in our Discord. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv. Jacksolman Mike can be found at Twitch TV Mikeo many names and Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillowpet and I want to give a shout out to our patrons at the Shoutout tier. Thank you Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Skippius Esquire for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier on Patreon. Now if you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com theforwardspodcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month gets you that same exclusive feed. And we'll shout your name out at the top of every episode for as long as you maintain your subscription. And all of those benefits also apply to our General Gaming Podcast. If you want to hear us talk about all those new video game announcements that have happened over the last week, check out From 8bit to 4k on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We publish it every other week. Last but not least, listeners, we got one question this week. We need more questions. I want y' all to write in to theforwardspodcastmail.com with your questions you want answered on the show. I challenge you Listeners, I want so many questions that we actually have a backlog carried over into the next week. That's your challenge. If you can do that, you get happy Jacks. Otherwise, I'm gonna stay disappointed. Dad Jacks. All right, again, that is the four words podcastmail.com or drop them in question submissions channel in the discord, but I prefer the email because it's easier for me. All right, patch week. We got patch 26.18 this week, guys, and this is a small one, but there are some changes that we think are important or interesting that we want to highlight, and I'm gonna kick it off with a champion that I think Riot is usually really afraid to buff, and I'm surprised at how much they buffed him here. Kassadin historically is a champion that if he has too much agency early, he just takes over games. So apparently they've decided he's a little weak and the way they're gonna buff him is to buff the AP ratio on his Q, bringing it up to AP 80% and buff the base damage on his rank 1 and 2 of his ults. Rank 3 being the same as it was before, but it goes up by 10 damage on rank 1 and 5 damage on rank 2. Mostly the ratio part is what surprises me because it has really high AP ratios, guys. I know people think of him as like, oh, he's the other mana stacking champion besides, like, rise. And he is, because that's how he's allowed to use riftwalk. But Bro's got AP ratios for days. Like now with this change, he has an 80% on his Q, 80% on his W, 70% on his E, and his ult is a 50 to 78% depending on how many stacks he has. AP ratio. That's a lot of burst. Please don't build Kassadin so mana heavy that you don't have any ap. You will not kill people as well as if you just built more AP instead. But I'm probably gonna be playing Kassadin more because of this because that, that. That's a good buff to his early and mid game where he actually needed the help. [00:04:42] Speaker B: I think the aim too is like, to keep his identity the still the same because, like, they don't want his early game to like, not be, for lack of better words, bad. You know what I mean? I think that the trade off is that he gets to be kind of like this Kalesque Demon king level, like 16 onwards. You know what I mean? Like, you're scared of a cast at that Point. And this just kind of like bridges a little bit of the gap in the. That. That middle part, I think where it's just quality of life from that like I would say level 9 to level 16, like area like Esque where you have a little bit of AP and then the level 2 ulti base damage on your R will be just nice. So that's where I kind of stand on it. His early game is still going to be rough, but yeah, I think his later on will be a little bit better. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Mostly the AP ratio change makes me more inclined to do the like Malignants into Seraphs, into Lich Bane into Death Cap type build instead of the like the Rod of Ages into Seraphs type builds that are more normal for him because Rod kind of sucks for damage. [00:05:53] Speaker C: It's such a scaling thing. It does give you 100 AP, so it's not a bad. [00:05:58] Speaker A: No, it doesn't. It doesn't give that much. [00:06:00] Speaker C: Mike, isn't it 60 plus 40 or is it 80 now? It's 80 now. I'm sorry, 80 AP. [00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Rod of Ages gives 45 AP and then another 30 when fully stacked. It is a 75 AP item when fully stacked. [00:06:15] Speaker C: When did they drop it to 35? I thought it was 40 and 60 [00:06:18] Speaker A: and 20, but nah, 45 and 30. [00:06:22] Speaker C: What a weird. [00:06:22] Speaker A: It is only 70 AP. 75 AP. Which that's after 10 minutes of having the item. [00:06:29] Speaker C: Oh no, they did this. They did this last year when Rod became the major first item. I remember now. Yeah, yeah, it needed to happen. [00:06:37] Speaker A: It needed to happen. But it means for a champion like Kassadin, you really need to be banking on the healing and the raw bulk of Rod of Ages for it to be worth putting money into. [00:06:49] Speaker C: I mean, and. And for him it's usually worth it. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Usually you have. [00:06:53] Speaker C: You have problems surviving so hard. [00:06:55] Speaker A: In a lot of cases, any lane where I can survive, I'm just going malignants. Malignants adds so much damage on your alt and gets its cooldown low enough on the rank 1 and 2 versions for you to actually interact with the map more. Which is a big deal on him. Yeah, because like once you get to level 16, you're riftwalking around the map regardless of what your ability haste is. [00:07:15] Speaker C: Oh yeah. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Alright, that's enough talking about Kassadin. Mike, talk about another mid laner who's supposed to be a late game champion, but for some reason is also an early game bully. [00:07:26] Speaker C: Unlike Kassadin, I could completely change and use the other one, but I won't [00:07:32] Speaker A: you know who I am. [00:07:32] Speaker C: It doesn't count. Yeah. No. Probably my current least favorite champion in the game. I hate Syndra. I hate Syndra. And Riot has looked down and went, oh, yeah, she's way too strong. And so they've given her two nerfs. One is always great. One is great later in the game, but not as good as I want it to be. Her passive nerf is. So when she activates Transcendent and gains stacks, she gets a little bit of mana back when she grabs the Splinter. [00:08:05] Speaker A: To be clear, this is when she procs a stack off of a champion. So she hits a champion with two spells. [00:08:11] Speaker C: Yes. [00:08:12] Speaker A: That is the condition where she gets mana back. [00:08:15] Speaker C: The Splinter mana scales with level, and it is now scaling, I would say, significantly less. It lost about a fifth of its power as it scales 255 to 199. So, like, significant amount lost. [00:08:32] Speaker A: They also tweaked the curve so it ramps up to that 199 later in [00:08:36] Speaker C: the total curve, which means it's a significant portion less mana back. She should have less burst power because she should be using her mana more. Unfortunately, her mana costs are quite low, and her build gives her mana regen very easily. So. [00:08:52] Speaker A: So this is for the reason for this. This. This change is to knock her down a peg in pro play. Because in pro play, they were going items like Rocket Belt first and just forgoing mana because they could get mana back off her passive. And the other solo queue, where you're generally not doing that, it's a mild nerf. [00:09:12] Speaker C: The other, the other, like, main thing in long fights, when you're surrounding dragons and Barons, that's when this will have serious impact for her outside of the long laning phases for us. So meaningful Nerf, actually very nice. Not as big as I want it to be, but the other portion of this Nerf, the one that I'm very happy to see, is her W getting a straight up second, longer cooldown at all ranks just one extra second, top down. Their response. W is doing way too much damage. So let's tune down how much she can use it. W is your second max, if I'm not mistaken, because you always max Q first and E doesn't scale damage. I think it only scales a little bit of cooldown. [00:09:55] Speaker A: Other way around, sorry, doesn't scale cooldown at all. It only scales damage. And it's like 35 per rank. [00:10:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And your E damage is. Your W damage is a bigger hitter. And with scaling cooldown. There, there. This is a. You Must rank the second. So your early game will now be massively impacted. It's not her power point. Her power point is the fact that she can Q stun you from a mile away and blow you up in one second. [00:10:22] Speaker A: Yep. [00:10:23] Speaker C: So the problem with her isn't solved, but this makes her becoming a problem harder. I don't. I don't think it's enough, frankly. I think she should have lost some [00:10:33] Speaker A: ratios, but I absolutely think her E specifically needs to have a much lower ratio. I think her Q and W ratios are fine. Her actual stun that she shoots out from a mile away does way too much damage. [00:10:49] Speaker C: I need. I like the. The actual thing I really want is for her to not throw her balls so fucking far on Q. That is way too much range. And other people who have had problems with interactions have gotten range Nerfs and Syndra has never gotten one. And it's every bit as not fun to play against as any of those. [00:11:10] Speaker A: All right, so Syndra mildly nerfed. I think we all agree it's not enough. Especially since some of those nerfs are only targeted really at pro play and different builds that we're not seeing in solo queue. Bello, I'm just gonna let you pick one. Which one do you want to talk about first? [00:11:25] Speaker D: I want to talk about Echo because it's small but mighty buff. So Echo, he. [00:11:32] Speaker C: He. [00:11:33] Speaker D: He got some pain and he's felt some pain from Dusk and Dawn's change mid year. And since the recent change of Halo blades, it's. He's been feel sitting in a little bit of a power trough. So they're giving him a little buff. His mana cost on his Q is going down by 10 at all ranks and his ability power ratio on the return of The Q is 10%. I think the return damage is going to do quite a bit, especially if you already have a two stacks on them. [00:12:06] Speaker A: I like that because the return damage is also the more skillful part. Yeah, it's the part that enemies have time to react to and use a movement skill to get out of the way of. [00:12:17] Speaker D: I have noticed a lot less burstiness from Echoes since the Halo Blades Nerf. So he probably definitely needs something and they're not going too far up in buffing him because they don't want to bring back another hail of blades. [00:12:34] Speaker C: Do not let him become. [00:12:37] Speaker D: So they're just testing. I feel like testing the waters here. Like, hey, you can cast more cues and they do a little bit more damage if you like you said aim the return correctly. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Question. Do you think that this change helps Jungle Echo any? [00:12:53] Speaker D: I mean he might be able to [00:12:54] Speaker A: clearly more damage on his Q. [00:12:56] Speaker D: He'll be able to clear maybe a little bit faster on his. With his cube being a little bit more damage, I think it's going to open up maybe some more runes capabilities. Like I'm thinking, you know, maybe they might run some Dark Harvest and they'll maybe hopefully stick with Electrocute more instead of doing the hail of blades. [00:13:17] Speaker A: I think hail of blades is just dead on him. He should be going electrocute. [00:13:20] Speaker C: This may give him the ability to double camp in those weird scenarios. So a lot of times we're seeing in a lot of the like the better and better junglers, they have very good amounts of knowledge on how to actually double camp things at a time. People will bring one camp down to half health and bring it into the next one. This makes him much better at doing that. [00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it is a little more damage. It won't change. So it's not as big as you think. Just because it won't change the first camp because you have no fucking AP yet. [00:13:46] Speaker C: No, no, no. It's. It's your first run. Yeah. But when you start getting into those mid games when you can actively and very consistently dual camp to bring things around, that's when it's going to change. So actually it's probably gonna help us invades more than anything else. [00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, more of a quality of life thing for sure. So. [00:14:03] Speaker A: All right. Well, speaking of, tell us about the changes to the supports. You've picked two different supports that are very different champions, but they're getting pretty similar. Like just some minor number tweaks. [00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So I chose Bard and Nautilus. I think their reasoning is like both very similar. So their armor ratio for their base. Sorry, the base stats went from 35 plus 5 per level to 32 plus 4.7. And then that's for Bard. And then for Nautilus it is. His attack damage is lowered from 61 plus 33.3.3 sorry. And to 58 plus 3.3. So the. The base damage nerfs for both champs is basically in the early game. Nautilus is like relatively like tanky, but also deals a lot of damage to people whenever they take early scraps. And the same with Bard. Bard is like unironically really tanky when you don't think he's actually going to be able to live through a lot of the trades that you do in the early game. And really for no reason, because the champion doesn't typically build. I mean he does build, let's say like Dead Man's plates. [00:15:18] Speaker A: I've been seeing a lot of like just straight up tank bards. They go the, the. The locket of the Iron Solari into like a dead. [00:15:25] Speaker D: Yes. [00:15:26] Speaker B: But like typically speaking like in the early game, Bard should be a little bit relatively squishy in comparison to someone like a Nautilus or whatever. But in as you've seen from like a lot of like even pro games or even in your games too, like he's just deceptively tanky. So they're just kind of notching that down. And then same principle with Nautilus where like he is tanky and he's supposed to be tanky, but he's also dealing a metric fuck ton of damage just for fun against people in a lot of the trades. So due to that they're just knocking it down so that in the early game it's less oppressive really for people to deal with. And I think that's a correct decision to make for both of the champions. I think they did change something also with Nautilus 2. [00:16:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it's Q. [00:16:11] Speaker A: They nerfed the base damage on later ranks of his Q Rank one is the same. [00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's essentially the exact same reasoning as his attack damage is where like Q is his first ability that he maxes and supports and because that's the ability that he ranks the lower damage means that yeah, they're not people aren't going to be as surprised by getting full combo of my knowledge into ad carry follow up. So yeah, which I think in nerfs are needed for those two. [00:16:41] Speaker C: Well deserved. [00:16:42] Speaker A: All right. Speaking of well deserved, Cassiopeia has gotten some tap downs and up at the same time on her kit because Cassiopeia's identity that she is supposed to have is a relatively weak early to mid game champion who hyperscales. She's supposed to be a Ryze type champion and she's both been too strong early relative to someone like Ryze and also not really delivering on the power fantasy in the late game the way Ryze does. So they've tapped down the movement speed on her passive a little bit period. They have nerfed the base damage on her Q the like skill shot poison but buffed up the AP ratio. They have buffed up the AP ratio but nerfed the empowered AP ratio on her E. So it's the same total damage if they're poisoned, but more damage anytime the enemy is not poisoned. And Then they've knocked a little bit of base damage off of her ultimate but added a significant amount of ability power ratio. This went from 50% to 75% AP. [00:17:57] Speaker C: They doubled its ratio and. Yeah. [00:17:59] Speaker A: And lost 25 base damage at all ranks. So at level six it's going to be. You probably won't have 50 AP yet. But maybe it's roughly power neutral. Maybe slightly weaker by the time you've made it to level 11. It's just doing more damage than before. [00:18:18] Speaker C: Once you have one full item, it's just better. [00:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So this should maybe reduce the like Cassiopeia level 2 just destroying people problem. Also, they made her E slightly more expensive. So it's even more risky to actually try to all in people early on Cassia when you have no mana because you can dump your mana pool insanely fast on that champion. [00:18:41] Speaker C: Yeah. This is just better than her auto attack. [00:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah. But also she should have a slightly better late game power fantasy. Her ability to just blow people up when she hits. The petrifying gaze is higher. Her Q dot damage is higher and will add up fast in a late game team fight. Especially since you can hit multiple people with it. Instead of her just being Twin Fang Spam as her only source of actual meaningful damage which is still there. I enjoy playing her a lot. [00:19:14] Speaker B: I'm kind of surprised at the direction that took the E though to be honest because. [00:19:19] Speaker C: Oh, give it more base and then less enhanced. [00:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that the skill expressive part of Casio is to really hit the Q part and then your E. But it made it so that if you don't hit your Q you're kind of like. What's it called? Not. Not that you're. You still don't get the power damage but like you don't get the knock of like not dealing any damage. Because I can give you the reason for this beforehand. Like the. [00:19:43] Speaker C: This is. This is. She doesn't auto attack minions. This is her replacement for Auto attacking. This is how she does your last hitting. That's why they did that. [00:19:50] Speaker A: So. So in the early lane you do Auto attack because you weave an Auto attack and a Twin Fang together to burst Minions down. But after that. Yeah. This. This helps her with farming waves. Basically. [00:20:03] Speaker C: If they. If they. They wanted the total damage to remain the same. So they needed that slight shift because they are technically nerfing its base damage. They wanted to make sure that you don't ruin your ability to take a can't take of arms and yeah. A couple of ace damage at level One is about equivalent to 10% ratio, and the. [00:20:23] Speaker A: The other nerf here that matters is the mana cost going up by five per cast on a spell you cast twice a second. [00:20:30] Speaker C: If you're throwing this on a person, that's a huge deal because you do not get the refund if you miss a last hit. [00:20:36] Speaker D: Yep. [00:20:36] Speaker A: Which they don't mention it. I'm assuming it still refunds the whole value of the spell if you last hit. [00:20:43] Speaker C: I hope it only refunds. I hope it only refunds 40 mana. That'd be great. [00:20:48] Speaker A: It just refunds the full amount. Okay. They've. They've done stuff like that before when, like. [00:20:54] Speaker C: Yeah, when they didn't. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Kalista's the one that comes to mind where Calista had a specific refund amount and was abusing it by rending multiple targets at once and literally gaining mana. [00:21:04] Speaker C: Yep. [00:21:04] Speaker A: So they were like, oh, that's no good, and they went the wrong direction and made it so she'd lost mana no matter what. And now I think it's fine as long as she has to hit, like, two targets to get a full refund or something like that. I don't play Kalista. You can tell. All right. Speaking of champions. I don't play Mike. What the fuck are they doing with this stupid champion? [00:21:24] Speaker C: Seraphine is not stupid. She's fantastic. [00:21:27] Speaker A: She's literally Sona, but more scaling Sona, but better. [00:21:30] Speaker C: Sona, but better. Right. They're doing a very good nerf because it's a scaling nerf. It's a very simple one. She's not getting cooldown reduction as she levels up E. That's it. They're making it the same as base always. 11 seconds. This means you are almost never correct to level up. E is your first skill or as not level up. Rank ups. Yeah. E is for cc. It is not four damage. [00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah. The benefits you get from ranking it now are 30 damage per rank and 0.1 seconds on the CC per rank. [00:22:11] Speaker C: The CC is nice, but you're better off just doing more damage. Hell, giving yourself more shields is probably better. They may have actually just transitioned this into your last max. It's less likely because the CC duration is actually very important. [00:22:30] Speaker A: To be clear, it was already the last max for most supports, but now it might actually be the last max for farming Seraphines as well. [00:22:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:22:39] Speaker A: And I mean, her W just scales better with levels. Now. [00:22:43] Speaker C: There were times before when you. This was especially true when she was paired with Ashe, because ash Seraphine is a disgusting combo where you would be maxing E first because the more cooldown reduction on this was just correct. This makes that never, never a viable thing. So you're always going to be maxing Q first. You may still take E first because E first is very powerful. But I think this is just a healthy nerf that doesn't impact farming seraphine almost at all. [00:23:14] Speaker B: I think it's like a similar nerf. Like, I don't know if you guys know, like Cho'. Gath, his Q doesn't scale, like scale down with CD or anything like that. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Literally just adds base damage and nothing else. [00:23:27] Speaker B: It's the exact same thing. So like if you're going tank Cho', Gath, you would max E and then W and then Q last dependent against melee champions. Yeah, I mean like if you're against [00:23:39] Speaker A: mages, you're still maxing Q first because it adds fucking 55 damage per rank up. [00:23:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot. [00:23:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:47] Speaker A: It is one of the best scaling rank ups I've ever seen on any champion in terms of raw damage. [00:23:54] Speaker B: But similar concept in the sense that it. The CD for the ability itself doesn't change. So. [00:24:02] Speaker A: All right, Pillow, tell us about Zahini Weenie. [00:24:05] Speaker D: All right, Zaheen Zahin, he. He got a quality of life change and they cleaned up his Q2 damage. So now it used to be when you would take lethal damage and put into your resurrection form, or any form of resurrection with Ga Zilean, your Q would remain active. So now when he takes that lethal damage, it puts it automatically on cooldown. So when you come up from your resurrection, your Q is available and ready to go instead of maybe being put right on cooldown when it comes up. So that should make you a little bit happier. And they basically just doubled the Q2 damage of his Q1. So it was 25 to 125 scaling and now it's 30 going up to 150. They just doubled the damage from his Q1. Just cleaned up the numbers. [00:25:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So it. If that sounds weird, they mean it's exactly a double now as opposed to having a slightly weird number. [00:25:11] Speaker A: It was like a 2/3 to 3/4 depending on rank ratio of the Q1, which is just weird. [00:25:20] Speaker D: Yeah, they just cleaned it up. I don't know why they do those weird numbers. And don't just start with this stuff. Makes no sense. [00:25:26] Speaker A: I don't know why they don't just give it a flap like percentage in those situations. Like if they had just said Q2 is 75% more base damage than Q1. [00:25:35] Speaker D: Cool. [00:25:35] Speaker A: We're gonna get weird fucking numbers for what that entails. But it's at least consistent and makes sense. I don't know. They're weird. [00:25:43] Speaker C: They like doing raw numbers. [00:25:44] Speaker A: I think this is one they do. I think this is one that the change is confusing, really. It's just that you're not gonna have a situation where your Q is placed on cooldown in an awkward way to where you don't have it up when you come back alive. [00:25:59] Speaker D: Y. [00:26:00] Speaker C: Yes. [00:26:00] Speaker D: It's. It's essentially. Yeah. Instead of. It would remain active in your stasis when you're resurrecting. And you had a chance that when you came out of your stasis that it would start on cooldown. So now that's just not going to happen, basically. [00:26:18] Speaker A: Because his stasis lasts four seconds. It was always timing out during the stasis. If you had a Q2 primed and you were basically just losing however many seconds of your cooldown was remaining in the timer for Q2 before you died. [00:26:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:33] Speaker A: Now it just. That will be cooldown. So it'll probably just be back up either immediately or very shortly thereafter. You revive. [00:26:40] Speaker C: And Rocky Buffett's. Rocky Buffett's very nice. He needed a slight tweak. [00:26:46] Speaker A: All right, Witch. What are they doing to one of my favorite marksmen? [00:26:50] Speaker B: So with Zeri, with the recent changes to Hurricane, they've noticed her pop up not even just in pro play, but in solo queue a little bit more. I think the champion with like Hurricane in most games is like really, really good. So they're just nerfing the wave clear that she has early so that she could. I. I'm assuming that she. So she can be punished a little bit in the game, but also just the damage in general on one of her abilities. So her W. The total ad ratio is going from like, if you just hit it raw is going to. From a 120 total AD to 100. And then the wall damage is going from 180 to 150 total AD. So they're just nudging that down a little bit so that it's less damage, makes it a little bit more vulnerable to like pressure from Lane. So she's not instant clearing the wave whenever she is like in danger and just hoping that that helps with her game. Because late game, she's kind of a demon if she gets to a certain point in the game no matter what. So I think that the way that you can attack her is in the [00:27:56] Speaker A: kind of early game I'm Surprised that they're calling out Yuntal and Hurricane as the things that are, like, putting her over the top. Because her winningest first two items are Hex Optics and Hurricane, and it's not close. Hex Optics is so much better than any other first item on her. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think that Hurricane's ever like a rush item, but I think that Hurricane in general is a really strong item. [00:28:22] Speaker A: Hurricane is really good on her, but I think Yoon Tal is a trap. I think Hexoptics is just better. [00:28:28] Speaker C: So I've noticed a weird thing, and this might just be where I'm looking at it, or it might just be that they've already changed something on it. It also says there's a crit strike change and then there's no change after it whatsoever. There's just a numeric there and no other information. [00:28:42] Speaker A: All right. [00:28:42] Speaker B: I think it might be just remaining the same, but I'm not sure what. [00:28:45] Speaker A: I believe those numbers are the same as it was. I am double checking. [00:28:49] Speaker C: I don't know why it's on this. It looks like maybe they had changed its ratio and then decided to not change that because that may have been too much of a Nerf and then [00:28:58] Speaker A: forgot to remove it. [00:28:59] Speaker C: Then forgot to remove that from the patch note. [00:29:00] Speaker A: That's my read on it because, yeah, I just checked. The crit ratio did not actually change. [00:29:06] Speaker C: Yeah, okay. [00:29:07] Speaker A: Weird. All right, so, yeah, I think Zeri's still good. Build fucking Hex Optics on her, guys. Seriously. Her q has like 700 range. She's a really good Hex Optics user. [00:29:19] Speaker C: Build the Infinite Hydra instead. Play Mayhem. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Yes. If you get Ultra Hydra offered to you in Mayhem on her, fucking take it. It's so goddamn good. [00:29:29] Speaker B: She's also just a really fun champ to play. [00:29:31] Speaker A: She is so much fun. [00:29:33] Speaker B: It's very similar to like whenever you alter, it's like almost like. Like Jinx passive whenever, like you. You're just running about afterwards. Like, it's just so. It feels so good. [00:29:42] Speaker A: She's. She feels in lane like a weaker Ezreal and then gets to have a late game power fantasy of a hyper carry instead of a late game power fantasy of a poke mage. [00:29:54] Speaker C: Yeah. So the thing that I love playing [00:29:56] Speaker A: Zer, she is my second favorite marksman behind Azrael. [00:30:00] Speaker C: The thing that poisoned me with Zeri for a long time was Urf. Because playing her on Urf hurt my hand. [00:30:08] Speaker A: That sounds like a skill issue, Mike. [00:30:11] Speaker C: Hurts to tap that much Q when that's your auto attack. [00:30:14] Speaker D: I always wondered the Same thing about skill issue. People that played Cassiopeia and urf. I just wonder how their E key looks after the game. [00:30:24] Speaker A: Get a better keyboard. [00:30:26] Speaker C: It was. It's because it's the Q, which means it's not my primary finger that I'm slamming on things. [00:30:31] Speaker A: Build up those pinky muscles, man. [00:30:34] Speaker C: No. [00:30:35] Speaker A: Yes. How are you supposed to play League of Legends if your pinky is weak? [00:30:39] Speaker C: Buff up that pinky by using my ring finger instead. [00:30:43] Speaker B: We gotta do reps. Holy. [00:30:45] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't use my pinky. [00:30:46] Speaker B: All right. [00:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah, we're gonna have a future topic of how you actually hold your hand on the keyboard when you play League of Legends. Oh, because I don't know how the fuck you use your rig. [00:30:55] Speaker C: Dude, this is 100% because of WOW. From probably of us. QWe is your movement for strafing and then move forward. So they. [00:31:02] Speaker A: They moved on ESDF WASD. [00:31:05] Speaker C: So Q&E or a NED D just move up to Q and E and that's. [00:31:09] Speaker B: Guys, I'm gonna keep it real. You're making my mind break. I don't really think about what I put my hand on the keyboard and then. [00:31:16] Speaker C: And then you hit R. So I'm like, trying to think R. So infrequently you just shift your ring finger over to hit R. This is how you [00:31:23] Speaker A: know Mike does not play Kassadin. [00:31:25] Speaker C: I play more Kassadin than you do actually think I played a shit. [00:31:28] Speaker A: No, you don't. [00:31:29] Speaker C: I played a shit ton of Kassadin the more recent games. [00:31:31] Speaker A: All right, hang on. Championmastery, gg. [00:31:34] Speaker C: We're looking this up. Pure mastery. You're beating me because you play more raw games. I'm going to talk about recency bias. [00:31:41] Speaker A: How many games of Kassadin have I played this year in ranked? Let's find out. I know it's more than zero. Obviously, I'm not going to see my solo queue on that now that I'm, [00:31:52] Speaker B: like, putting my hand on the keyboard. I keep my pinky on shift. That's where I keep it. [00:31:56] Speaker D: That's where mine goes. And tab, because I'm always tabbing. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Crazy to me. That's crazy to me, Mike. I have played 13 games of Kassadin in ranked and apparently 26 total games of Kassadin this year. [00:32:10] Speaker C: I think I've played more than that in the last, like, four months. [00:32:15] Speaker A: There is no way. There is no way I've ever played champion in years anyway. Hello. You have a rant for us. [00:32:22] Speaker D: Yeah, so I wanted to take a few minutes and talk about Nasus and how he's just a monster. And if you're not abusing him as a top laner right now, you need to like, he's just free free. Like he. He gets stacks way too fast. You can get over a thousand stacks 25 minutes in the game. You can easily get four 40 to 60 stacks a minute. And that's easily. Like. Even if you have stacks that's like you can. You can have a bad early game and still break 700, 800 stacks at 20 minutes. That's it. Used to be the all in power spikes on Nasus was 60 stacks and a sheen by the time you hit six. Now if you don't have a hundred stacks by the time you hit six, you're not hitting your power spike, which just seems so weird. So I wanted to get your guys's opinion. What do you think they need to do to control him to where they can't put it? Can't put big monsters as 12 again because he goes back into the jungle. Four stacks too many. [00:33:32] Speaker A: I think the rate he stacks at is fine in an environment where he is unopposed. So if he's laning against someone who's just as weak early as he is like a kale or something, he should be able to stack that much. Someone who can't kill him. The way you fix Nasus is remove the passive lifesteal he gets when hitting Minions. [00:33:53] Speaker D: We talked about that. [00:33:54] Speaker A: Fine. If it counts towards monsters, it should be there towards champions. It could be a higher number. But he should get 0% free lifesteal on Minions. [00:34:05] Speaker B: I think that would be a really, really rough that. [00:34:07] Speaker C: That needs to completely change his claiming. Yeah. [00:34:10] Speaker A: Right. Then he would need other changes to go with it. Give him some base armor specifically. Not Mr. Armor. [00:34:18] Speaker C: Yeah. This becomes a very weird spot for him because he relies so heavily on Lifesteal to survive. Because the rest of his kit is so old, he needs lifesteal to sustain itself. [00:34:29] Speaker A: Then give him some life regen. [00:34:31] Speaker C: I think the best way to stop him from being the ultimate farmer is. Is make it so that. And this is going to sound weird at the beginning. Him farming throughout the game is a thing. He's just going to do it. Make it so that it scales based on certain levels where you get extra points at break points. So now the cannon is worth 2. Now the cannon is worth 4. Now the cannon is worth 6 based on level break points. [00:34:57] Speaker D: Thing is, you can miss all your cannons and it doesn't even matter because you're still getting four. Stacks, but per little minion. [00:35:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:35:03] Speaker C: Same difference. [00:35:04] Speaker A: In that scenario, you would also scale down the little minions earlier. [00:35:08] Speaker C: So yeah, change it to be if you want to change up with the Ultimate. And now it's double. Now it's double every time you rank up an ultimate level so that he actually scales into the game as he's supposed to. And yeah, you're going to have a lot less base damage. But increase the base damage on Q then. Because base damage means next to nothing. At light levels, everything is based on stacks and at early levels, give him some based damage. He has dual power. [00:35:34] Speaker D: I would almost argue. Sorry, go ahead. [00:35:37] Speaker B: The thing is that before like the stacking was changed. Is that. And is that he could be. And I think he could. And like the different changes with like where he's with like Doran Shield and like just like the inevitability of like him being able to heal back up like from being poked out and stuff like that, it means that like he gets away with a lot of like free stuff to be able to enable his Q stacking and stuff like that before as like. I mean this is still like a problematic thing like versus Darius. I'll just use a prime example because he's kind of like the bully in Top lane, you know what I mean? Like you would have to max E on Nasus before because you had to be able to wave clear and you wouldn't be able to actually farm Q effectively. But now almost with all of the like health stuff that you get back, you're able to collect it relatively safely under turret. As long as like the Darius is like, you're letting the Darius like shove into you. In the early game, you're able to actually get the health back from hitting the minions and from your just innate stuff in the game. So with all that extra stuff, it just means that his weakness is relatively not there in comparison to what it was before. [00:36:46] Speaker A: I just want to emphasize at level one, AQ will heal him on minions for 10 health at level one. That is too much healing for level one. [00:36:59] Speaker C: So. [00:37:00] Speaker B: Well, you think about like it's called call like on it. Like I think it's three or four healing per time you auto. You know what I mean? That's like a relatively. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Would you do less than one time a second in the early game because you're not supposed to heal that much early. [00:37:15] Speaker B: And then Nasus gets that for free. So here's like you think about that. That's. [00:37:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Here's another thing you need to replace. Probably thinking about this didn't used to be a problem with Nasus. His lifesteal hasn't changed that much to be this big of an issue now than it wasn't before. This is an item problem. This is a general problem with the game because his lifesteal has gone up, what, 5%, 10% total. [00:37:38] Speaker B: I don't. I don't think. [00:37:39] Speaker A: Two years ago his lifesteal was 9%. At level one, it went up 12% and now it is down to 10% at level one. [00:37:48] Speaker C: Okay, so at level one, 9 to 10% is 1%. Okay. [00:37:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fluctuated a lot. They change his lifesteal value basically every year. [00:37:57] Speaker C: That's. That's his range. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Anywhere from 9% is what I'm seeing in the last, like, five years is the lowest, up to 12% for level one and anywhere from 19 to 24% the max value. [00:38:13] Speaker C: But in none of the times when he's been at peak lifesteal has he ever been a problem like he is now. It is a problem with the game, literally. [00:38:20] Speaker B: I do think it's literally the Q stacking, to be honest. Like, I'll give you an example. Like, Ornn, in theory, should be able to pressure Nasus early because of the amount of CC and raw damage that Ornn has against Nasus in the early game. But because now of the changes that happen, Nasus is actually relatively a good counter into Ornn because you're able to get through that late early laning phase and then you're able to actually just w slow the Ornn and continually bop him whenever you hit six. It's like really unplayable for. [00:38:51] Speaker A: That's the key is because he gets four per small minion now instead of three. He hits the point with his 10% life steal. Like, by the time he gets to level seven, by the way, it's at 15% life steal. [00:39:04] Speaker C: When did that change to four? Was that this year? [00:39:07] Speaker A: That was this year. That was literally two patches ago. One month ago. [00:39:10] Speaker C: That needs to go away. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Yes, that's what we're saying. So I actually don't think his new stack rate itself is the problem. It's the fact that he gets to do that in lanes where he should feel pressured. He just can free stack should be rewarded. If he's against someone who plays poorly and is allowed to free stack because his opponent messed up. He should scale very rapidly, but it should be much harder for him to just be like, cool, I'm just going to ignore you and farm in your face. I had to play Against a Nasus mid where I would full combo him for half his life and he would be full health every single wave. [00:39:46] Speaker D: Well, this was like I was going to say like I played Nasus mid in the same matchup that you did. I went against a Hue. I didn't care. I just walked up and stacked the wave because I could just keep autoing the wave and just negate all his damage while he had cooldowns completely. Because I mean you get. You get to 100 stacks and now you get your Q base damage plus your 100 damage from your stack added to your. Your lifesteal like so you're just essentially you just heal back everything. [00:40:18] Speaker A: 300 damage. You're healing. 45 health per Q. [00:40:22] Speaker D: So is at a low cooldown at [00:40:25] Speaker C: that point is part of the problem stack CDR Wither in those scenarios or is that just a top lane thing? [00:40:32] Speaker D: Wither is. It is. I always be in my opinion the strongest ability in the game. But that is not the problem. Like with Nasus. [00:40:41] Speaker C: Yeah. Because it becomes hard mid to late game. [00:40:44] Speaker A: Yeah. But Wither early is a counter against specifically auto attacking champions and helps him stick to people. Wither late game is essentially a stun to auto attack champions and he kills you with his thousand stacks. [00:41:00] Speaker D: Yeah. Now I do think the cooldown on Wither is too low. Late game with his. [00:41:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:41:05] Speaker D: I don't think he should be able to continually cast it on you permanently. I think the mana cost is probably way too low. I think his mana costs aren't high enough. For what? For his laning. He can just buy any kind he could. He just can stay in lane without a problem. And then his, his Q mana cost is really low. His lifesteal is way too high. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I mean unironically whenever I play top lane Nasus and I know that I'm going to be chunked out of like I can sit in lane and I'm not going to be punished. I can back sit on a tier with my sheen or whatever and I can just indefinitely stay in lane because I know I'm not going to be punished. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Yep. [00:41:44] Speaker B: Because A people ignore top lane in the current state of the game. Like it's not. It's. It is like one of the least like ganked rolls like in the game. And B, like as I was saying, if in the early game, if Ornn hits me with two brittles and A, like his QE combo, he should be like he should be winning that trade in my opinion vs Nasus. But right now he's still losing that trade. That's not okay. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that's okay. [00:42:10] Speaker C: It's. [00:42:10] Speaker A: I don't think Champions should get free healing in PvE. Period. Like, there are a couple except exceptions like Warwick and Vladimir where that's literally what their identity is supposed to be. But like Irelia does this. Nasus does this. [00:42:25] Speaker C: I have another solution. [00:42:25] Speaker A: Most other Xin Zhao does this. It's the reason AP Xin Zhao had to be knocked down almost immediately after they brought it back to being a thing because his PvE healing was too high. Most other Champions have reduced healing when they hit Minions. Vladimir heals less on his Q on Minions than he does on Champions. [00:42:43] Speaker C: I have another solution. [00:42:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:42:45] Speaker C: Give him the Morgana treatment. Morgana's healing only works on champions and anything that reduces the cooldown of W. Yeah. [00:42:53] Speaker A: So minions, large monsters, etc. I'm fine with that. Let him life steal off cannons. I don't care. He should not be able to life steal off little ones. [00:43:03] Speaker C: That severely reduces the total power. It gives him the ability to still. Okay. I'm going to have to slow auto attack this one. If I want my health, I'm going to have to continuously auto attack the cannon to get my lifesteal going. [00:43:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:43:15] Speaker A: I think I don't mind him being strong. I mind him being inevitable. [00:43:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:20] Speaker D: I don't want him to like get nerfed into non existence, but I want it to be tough for him in lane. Like you should. Like if there's several champions that should just beat him and you should have a horrible time and make you want to forfeit until you realize you were Nasus. And then late game. He should be a late game, not a 15 minute game champion. [00:43:40] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:43:42] Speaker C: So I think we've complained about him a lot. Give your two best counters to Nasus. Because I think we've mentioned it before. Master Yi just ignores what Wither does and wins the auto attack game. [00:43:55] Speaker B: I think the Darius Lane is still relatively tough in the early game. I think it's just a matter of the way that Darius actually plays the Lane to its effect. I think Nasus still has to be careful in the way that he actually farms. But Nasus gets to. As I said, if the wave's shoved into him, he doesn't really care about Darius in that scenario. [00:44:14] Speaker A: Here's my counter to Nasus. Urgot. Yeah, Urgot's not bad because Urgot's machine gun when he goes into Purge is a fixed fire Rate. It's not affected by wither. [00:44:26] Speaker C: That's true. [00:44:27] Speaker A: And Urgot does percent max health damage on his shotgun legs. And he's literally a bruiser designed to kill juggernauts in tanks. [00:44:36] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:44:37] Speaker B: The good thing with this whenever he hits that 6 threshold is that Nasus isn't able to like, drain tank with his Q to be able to actually sustain the fight. You're able to basically execute him at that point. [00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So Urgot is my choice for like. That is, I think, the best Nasus counter. And according to stats, I'm not far off. Holy shit. He's the second highest win rate against Nasus in the top lane of all champions. On op gg, in Emerald, in NA Is number one. [00:45:06] Speaker D: Is number one a fighter? [00:45:08] Speaker A: No, number one is a straight up tank. [00:45:11] Speaker D: I was gonna say maybe straight up tank. Not even a juggernaut. [00:45:16] Speaker A: It is a tank. Any guesses? [00:45:19] Speaker C: Is it a popular top tank? [00:45:21] Speaker A: Yes. [00:45:22] Speaker B: Wonder, no. [00:45:23] Speaker C: So we're thinking like Scion. We're thinking, like, probably not. [00:45:27] Speaker D: I'd say Scion's a juggernaut. He's a juggernaut. [00:45:30] Speaker C: Cyan doesn't do enough damage to fight him. [00:45:33] Speaker A: No, not at all. [00:45:34] Speaker C: Or does it? Like, Ornn is the one that I think of immediately. [00:45:37] Speaker A: Orn is pretty high up there still, despite your comments about how the trades go, Ornn actually does beat NASA statistically most of the time. But it's not Orin. [00:45:49] Speaker C: Is it a Mumo? [00:45:51] Speaker A: No, it's Shen. [00:45:53] Speaker C: That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. [00:45:55] Speaker A: That makes perfect sense. He gets to block Qs with his spirit's refuge. He does percent max health damage, and he also just can interact with the rest of the map. [00:46:05] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's. That's. That makes perfect sense. [00:46:08] Speaker D: What's funny is I didn't even think of Shin as a tank with how he builds anymore, but he is definitely a tank. [00:46:15] Speaker C: My thought was the other, like, major staple in Pro, which is one of the reasons why we don't see him. Rumble feels like he should destroy Nasus. [00:46:23] Speaker A: Apparently not. Or there's just no sample size in NA Solo queue. Because actually, I don't even see Rumble in the list at all. I do agree. Rumble feels like he should destroy Nasus. That might let me. Let me go to Global. Let's. Let's see what it says in Global. [00:46:39] Speaker B: Think it on Rumble, though. Once Nasus builds, your Rumble eventually gets outscaled by NASA's. [00:46:45] Speaker C: That's just true. [00:46:46] Speaker A: Rumble just. He has a lane kill rate, but he loses the game. More often than not. [00:46:51] Speaker C: Yeah, because you can stop the beginning stack. But eventually Rumble plays for team fights and Nasus just ignores that. [00:46:58] Speaker A: There's one that showed up in Global that I wasn't seeing in NA that I think is actually a good choice though. Gangplank. [00:47:05] Speaker D: That was my first thought, was Gangplank just because of the true damage and the w. Wither. [00:47:11] Speaker A: True damage. The penetration on his barrels, the ability to eat fruit out of wither. Gangplank just kind of counters everything Nasus does and he has single target bullying on Nasus to where like some of the other champions like Urgot kind of auto pushes the wave. You can't avoid pushing a wave. Gangplank can be like cool the waves pushing towards me. Nasus, you never get to touch the wave again because I'm stronger than you and I'm. [00:47:35] Speaker C: I'm sitting here in front of the wave. You're not touching it. If you want to cut me, I've got a barrel. [00:47:40] Speaker D: My answer for this was going to be it's just wave management. Early game. Yeah. [00:47:44] Speaker A: That is the real answer. You want to put Nasus in a position where he can't farm with Q. Yep. Okay, let's get to our listener question. Toast writes in I've been picking up Jax jungle lately and I'm kinda conflicted on builds. What should my thought process be for going AD versus ap? Is it ever good to do a mix of the two? For example, Dusk and Dawn into AD or AD with the Zhonyas? Or am I losing damage by not going all in one? So we're gonna answer the question about Jax, but I want you to think about this. With any champion who has divergent builds, not like, oh, well, you can go this item or this item, but like actual, they can go AP build or AD build, or they can go tank or they can go fighter. Those kinds of like divergences. [00:48:29] Speaker C: Kai' Sa Kayle. [00:48:31] Speaker A: Those would be other examples of the same kind of thing. The way to think about it for Jax, specifically, AD gives Jax DPS and it gives Jax sustained fighting power because his ultimate gives him armor and Mr. Based on his ad, it does not scale the armor and Mr. Bonus at all with AP. AP on Jax gives burst damage. The reasons to build AP on Jax are to one shot people. The reasons to build AD on Jax are to stay in a fight and beat people down with multiple rotations to be a juggernaut. [00:49:10] Speaker C: Basically, if you can't win in two burst rotations as Jax. So essentially 1, 2, smack 1, 2, smack. You want to be going ad. [00:49:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:21] Speaker C: Or some form of like bruiser tank. The second portion of this one, you're talking about mixing the items together. You see this a lot in pro play where they will grab one item and hold it. Almost always Aizonia's. We've advocated this multiple times in multiple ways. Zhonyas in Pro is not Zhonyas for everybody else. [00:49:40] Speaker A: Yep. [00:49:41] Speaker C: Unless you have the ability to do something once your Zhonyas is up, like Lissandra, or are using it to stall for other things or using it to [00:49:51] Speaker A: dodge a specific telegraphed point and click spell like a Syndra Ult. [00:49:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Then a Zhonya's is not your item. It doesn't matter that it's an armor item. It doesn't matter that it's very high AP if you're going ap. A Zhonius is not a bad item. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of ap. It gives some bulk, which is the weakness of AP builds. [00:50:09] Speaker C: But to mix the two, you almost always give up the amount of power you would gain for the singular effect, Dusk and Dawn. You lose the the raw base damage that you gain from Trinity Force with all the other things that Trinity Force gives you. Trinity Force gives you extra movement speed towards people. Trinity Force gives you extra attack speed. It does more damage, it gives more health. It might actually give more health than Dusk and Dawn. They may have upgraded that. [00:50:36] Speaker A: It does give more health and more attack speed than Dusk and Dawn. Less ability haste and then AD instead of ap, but they both give similar amounts of the stat for the gold. [00:50:47] Speaker C: Jax is one of the more unique people in that he can proc Dusk and Dawn multiple times relatively quickly. So yes, it does stack his passive much better. But I think Dusk and Dawn is probably not something that is good to build in that sort of scenario because you're not doing enough. So Dusk and Dawn really, really shines on champions who have something with their auto attacks and a multi attack reset. So something like where Shyvana used to be ap. Shyvana builds with their two to three resets on her Q. I think you [00:51:18] Speaker B: guys touched on the Zhonya's part. I just wanted to kind of like touch into that. The reason why Zhonya's is typically built in games where they're going AD as well is that whenever it comes to late game fights, Jax is typically the type of person to dive into the back line and create space for the team. That's the primary reason and why Jax is used, simply because typically speaking, the AD carry is like playing back. And Jax gets to say it. No, you don't. I'm going to, you know, use my E to block the damage from it. And in doing so leaves him vulnerable once he comes out. And then he's Zhonya's create, still creating space to enable him to come out and use his ability again onto the targets that are there. But the more games than not, I think Zhonya's is actually the incorrect item to go simply because people don't utilize it that well in ranked and in like typical play. Whenever you're actually playing the champion, there's other items that are good on Jax just as a base that don't. That I don't think that Zhonya's is that important versus like another item that you could build. If you're going like an AD fighter esque type. [00:52:24] Speaker C: If you're going fighter, in my opinion, Death Dance is just better. [00:52:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, true. Or even like Sterak's. Like in certain situations too. Like, I think it's fine. [00:52:35] Speaker C: There are, however, we've talked about a couple of them, people who have good hybrid builds and hybrid builds are very, very difficult to properly utilize. Almost all of them are attack speed on hit, and they want something from the ap, something from the ad. Kai' Sa was the big one who wanted to get both because she had things that were explicitly gated around. I need this much ad, I need this much AP to gain the full benefit of my champion. And that's how she got these hybrid builds going really powerfully. She's become slightly more AP or she's gone slightly more on hit. But now a lot of on hit items give a little bit of both. You've got your statikk shiv, you've got your Gunzhou's Rageblade. Gunblade is back to doing another one. So like, the reason to build one item is significantly reduced in the world where there are hybrid items. [00:53:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I generally just don't like AP Jax. I think he's too fucking squishy. [00:53:36] Speaker C: You have to build so. So specifically. And it's very, very telegraphed. [00:53:40] Speaker A: It's very feast or famine. I much prefer the inevitability of Bruiser Jacks, where if you make it to 3, 4, 5 items, you beat almost everyone at similar item points. [00:53:51] Speaker C: There are like four champions in Beach. [00:53:53] Speaker B: He like similarly to. I'm just gonna use Kassadin as like, like Jax late game whenever he hits like even like level, like level 20 threshold. And you have like four or five items like he's A menace if you're full items and like you're just straight Trinity Force Death Dance. Like all these extra items like even at like Bork in certain games like he. He can just. And he destroys towers on side. So like not only can he scrap players, like he can also split push if needed. So like he has multiple options that he can do with the that build path at least. So [00:54:31] Speaker C: to give a context on that, the most powerful tank killer in the game is Vayne. Vayne cannot beat Jax in a one on one unless she explicitly does the outplays with her ultimate the proper dash into invisibility, into knocking him away into stops. Because Jax is one of the few people who can just say fuck your auto attacks. I'm winning. [00:54:51] Speaker A: Yep. [00:54:52] Speaker C: There are almost no champions in the game who can just out duel him because of that. You have to be able to not be an auto attack based person to fight him and they're few and far between that. [00:55:05] Speaker A: Or you have to be able to create space during his his immunity to auto attacks and then beat the shit [00:55:10] Speaker C: out of him afterwards, which is also not easy. [00:55:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then kind of the same thing applies if for any other champion you can think of where there's an actual like build split like AP X in Zhao is very squishy if he gets cc'd and burst and nigh unkillable if he's allowed to freely auto attack because he heals so much. Whereas if you go the more traditional 80 bruiser Xin Zhao, he's burstier and does more damage but can actually be burned down through sustained dps. [00:55:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And for context too for that. The way that because I play Xin Zhao a fair amount the way that I kind of constitute like if I want to actually build AP or not, which is very few games to be honest. [00:55:54] Speaker A: Usually just wrong. [00:55:55] Speaker B: Would be also. Yeah, would be if also they have like four melees. If they have four melees, AP holds more like holds upper value in comparison to. If they're all ranged. If they're all ranged, it's really hard to keep up time for you to be able to heal up and you're. Because you're less tanky and it's harder for you to hit versus if you're against all melees, you're able to actually auto attack to be able to keep basically healing from your ongoing. [00:56:22] Speaker A: Also most APs in Java builds are going static shiv and if they're in melee you're more likely to get more procs. Which means more healing. [00:56:28] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. [00:56:30] Speaker A: So you. You got to think about these divergent paths like that of like, what does one give me versus what does the other give me? And what do I actually need to be in this game? If you're playing Jax and you have. Let's say you're playing Jax Jungle and you have a Scion top and a Galio Mid and AD Carry plus Leona Bot, that might be the game where you go AP Jax. Because you actually need to just be straight up damage. [00:56:58] Speaker C: The other thing, those games where you [00:57:00] Speaker A: have squishies everywhere and very little CC [00:57:02] Speaker C: don't go AP Jacks Splash items are very hard to get in properly. Like Statik Shiv is a splash item properly utilized if you have the ability to just splash a static shave and go raw AP afterwards. Some people do that. Teemo can do that sometimes. Splash a static shave and then go raw ap. Yeah, it needs to have the effect of the item needs to offset the value of the raw stats lost. Because individually, AP and AD on one singular item are never enough to offset the rest of your build. Stacking it against on top of itself over and over, giving yourself more power. [00:57:42] Speaker B: Yeah, but do you guys know who could beat jax in a 1v1 scenario? Specifically Luciano. [00:57:48] Speaker C: That's not wrong. [00:57:50] Speaker B: No matter what always wins. [00:57:51] Speaker C: You're fucking Culling just ignores the spin and he's jumping right at you. Or he's running away from you. So like, I'm not even saying this is wrong. [00:58:01] Speaker A: You just have to make sure you're smart about when you use your relentless pursuit to dodge the counter strike. And that's it. That's the only thing Top Lane Lucian has to care about. [00:58:11] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:58:12] Speaker A: Then you just call right through the counter strike. [00:58:15] Speaker C: God, does that do damage. We saw Culling do some serious fucking damage last night. [00:58:21] Speaker A: Yes, we did. Guys, if you want to see Culling do some serious damage, join the discord and come play games with us. It's a lot of fun. This has been episode 548 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Zoman for Micah. Many names for pillow pet for one witch at Black Mass. Have a great night. [00:58:37] Speaker D: Good night. [00:58:38] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:58:40] 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 podcast gmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.