[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards podcast.
Hey, what's up?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: 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 552 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me one other ward and a special guest. To help you move forward in League of Legends, we've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Of course, whoever guessed it was me? You win. Nothing. It's always me.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: It's always Mike. And we've got special guest Taito joining us tonight.
All right, guys, we are the Four Words podcast. We have a Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. Join. The Discord link is in the episode description. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksonman Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames when he's not being crushed by work. Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV pillowpet and Tato, special guest. You can be found at Twitch TV ForbiddenPotato where the I in forbidden is a 1. The link will be in the episode description. Guys, I have to give him a follow. Tato's a cool dude.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: What is the forbidden potato?
We don't talk about it.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: We don't talk about the forbidden potato.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: All right, guys, I also want to give a shout out to our patrons who support the show. Shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Skippius Esquire for supporting the podcast at the shout out tier. Thank you guys very much.
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Last but not least, listeners, you're getting away with it this week because we had questions in the backlog but we're out of questions after this week. I need you to write
[email protected] or drop your questions in the question submission channel of the Discord so we can Answer your questions on the show. Alright. That being said, our topic, it's a familiar one if you've been listening for a long time. Worlds has started as of when we're recording this, the play in stage has completed and the main stage is yet to start. So we are gonna kick it off with our typical yearly warning. Please, for the love of God, don't try to copy the picks and plays you see at Worlds.
Just don't. They're playing a different game than we are. What works there and doesn't work there doesn't necessarily translate to your solo queue games. Even if you're really high elo, if you're frickin Grandmaster, Solo queue Grandmaster still looks nothing like pro play. And let's be real, if you're listening to this podcast and your Grandmaster help, thank you. But also why help help us?
[00:03:25] Speaker A: You can help make this better.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah, seriously, for the rest of us who are nowhere near that, our solo queue looks even less like what the environment the pros are playing in.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: So well, maybe like that last game, but that one does not count.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: True.
That being said, even though we're kicking this off with the warning of don't copy what you see at Worlds, there's a lot of things you can actually learn from watching pro play. So because Mike and I are both excited about Worlds and we've got tato here, we're gonna talk about some of the things you can learn from watching really good players play. There's that you can try to figure out how to incorporate into your own game. Mike, you want to kick us off?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So one of the things that we've noticed a lot of, especially at Worlds, is that you are very easy when you're at a pro level to understand the basics of how a jungle path is supposed to work. And so you start predicting where people are moving.
That predictability is what loses you early games and mid games essentially. So one of the things that you see quite a lot of when you get to that pro level is people playing creative jungle pathing so that they can start mind gaming the other people. And this works really well in solo queue where people have their set initial introduction and then they try and do some more stuff, the more innovative you can be without costing yourself a lot of money and time is that that's a key there. The more innovative you can be in that scenario, the better you are going to have. If you are a jungle player, you're going to have a great time being able to absolutely outfox people.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: I distinctly remember a Game I played as Kha' zix where I knew the enemy was starting on his raptors and then doing his buff. And I forget what jungler he was playing, but it wasn't a super high healthy, super fast early clear type champion. I started on my blue buff and then went and invaded him on his second camp on his red because I'm a Kha' Zix and I would beat the shit out of him. 1v1. And this poor SAP didn't think to check the bush, had no idea I was waiting there. So I wait until he gets the camp almost to smite range and then I just q smite it, steal the camp, beat the crap out of him. He limped away with a sliver of health, having done basically no damage to me.
I then left his jungle knowing he had to recall and then come back out. I left his jungle, crossed my mid lane who had pushed in at the time, so I had an easy crossing and went and caught him when he went back to his blue buff and killed him there and he rage quit the game.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: One of our frequent lesson you're not
[00:05:58] Speaker B: doing that all the time. You can't plan around these things. But when you're watching pros, you'll see they do stuff like that sometimes and it works. If the enemy doesn't expect it, they don't know how to react and it
[00:06:12] Speaker A: can get you into a spiral of downwards things. One of our frequent listeners, he he has noticed that very frequently there is a habit of people when they're going towards their second buff. Most of the time when you hit that second buff you're not at full health, you're at your median, probably at your lowest because it's just before you hit your four and you haven't spent or you've already spent your potion usually as the jungler. And so as a mid laner he will leave his lane and go down and go gank that jungle very frequently. And it works a lot of the time because people are predictable.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yep. You'll also notice if you watch pro, they're much more proactive at warding the approaches to the second half of their clear for that very reason their mid laner is going and warding to protect his jungler or pushing up so that the enemy mid laner can't leave so his jungler is safe to not have to deal with him.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Or leaving early to make sure that jungler does not have an option. Yeah, which we're going to slightly shift around with things because this one works very well with that one.
I'm going to switch which topic is going in here now you can have as great of a creative path as you want.
If your lanes don't have priorities, you're kind of screwed. Priority is.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Explain what priority is.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Priority is essentially who has the agency to move around the map from where their lane state is. If you have pushed forward and your minions are now on that tower, you have the priority in the lane, especially if you have higher health. If you're low health and high priority, you're kind of a not really an asset. If you have the ability to move around, help out and cost your opponent something, they have a choice to make. Am I going to follow you? Am I going to lose all that farm and xp?
But maybe I'll get to save my jungler getting a kill. Maybe it's. It's a game of who's moving first and that first movement usually dictates who has the power.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Ditto. How many times have I played a game with you and I've been mid lane and I've been like so and so is coming. I can't follow a lot. That's because I don't have Pryo and I'm telling my bot lane I don't have Pryo. And if they die to my mid laner, it's on them at that point.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yep. There's a second half to that priority in that most of the time when you have left and you have priority, you have the option of baiting the other mid laner when they're coming in. Now that you've got the advantage in there, if they follow you, you can collapse on them and do a significant portion of damage when they have no vision on you.
It's especially scary with assassins who frequently use this to gank lanes versus mages because, well, if the mage tries to follow, they're just dead. I would also like to add there was also a few times where you told that me told that to me and I've killed all three.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: That that has definitely happened.
Tato tends to play, shall we say, fast and loose.
Yeah, but we're not advocating for just try to win the 2v3.
Yeah, sometimes that'll happen but.
And it's more likely if you know they're coming. But it.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: It is not guarantee you're winning that 2v3. Your best bet if you know that thing is coming is backing off and going into your tower and then baiting them in.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And I just want to emphasize the threat of that turnaround so much. Most of the Time when I'm telling Taito that I do not have Pryo and I cannot follow, I'm playing some sort of mage in the mid lane. I'm playing Lux or Anivia or Ziggs or Malzahar, something like that. And if I follow that guy, a the person with priority is leaving the wards behind because they have the freedom to do so, whereas the person without priority is stuck on the wave and has not been placing wards. They're going to know if I am following them or not. And they're going to be able to set a trap anywhere along that path, often with friends.
Cause mid laners don't roam in a vacuum. They roam with the jungle. They're looking to four man bot, but if they see me leave mid to go, try to rotate to bot lane instead of opting into a 3v4 or 4v4 because they don't know if my jungler is there. No, they're just gonna wait for me and just 2v1me.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: The other thing you do with priority, especially in concert with junglers, is maintain control of the major objectives. Your dragons, your barons, your grubs Herald, etc. The laner with priority has access to that first, which means they can dump damage down, they can set traps up, they can support in case the other jungler is coming. And now it's a 2v1. Things like this. So using a good work of a combination of these creative jungle pathing and priority essentially wins games.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: It's also kind of how you get good objective setups, which is another thing we have on here that you can actually learn from watching pro play.
You will often see when you are watching pro, they will be moving around the objective, the dragon, the baron, whatever it is, 30 seconds to a minute before it spawns. They're putting down vision, they're looking for enemies, putting down vision and trying to pick them off. That one's a big one. That's what we don't see happen in our solo queue games. We've all played those solo queue games where everyone goes, oh, there's 20 seconds left to dragon. Let's all run to Dragon.
Now in Pro play, they're 30 seconds to a minute before dragon. They're already there. They're setting up, they're setting traps, they're clearing vision and setting vision. They're looking to make sure that the dragon fight is not a fair fight. And also because of that, frequently you will see in pro, the team that can't get that initial setup will just straight up concede the dragon, they will just walk away, let the enemy have it, do something else on the map.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: There's one thing that you will see significantly more in common in our games than you will see in pro games, which is the steal chance. The I'm going in alone, I'm going to try and steal this. And that's all you're doing. Because in a pro environment, you will more likely see people who are doing massive team fights around these objectives. Not just 3v3s, 2v2s. You will very frequently see 4v4s and 5v5s in the second dragon, the first set of grubs. Well, the only set of grubs now.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah. When you see steels in Pro, they're very much. You can tell from watching them how shoddy the setup is, because you will see the lack of steels in pro the other 95% of the time.
And that's something that I think is important to keep in mind in your own solo queue games. How often have you seen Dragon or Baron get stolen in solo queue? Because no one even tried to screen out the enemy jungler.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Like 20% of the time.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah, 20% of all dragons and barons, not like 20% of the time that it's stolen. Right, yeah. That's what I mean is you will almost never see that in Pro. It does happen on rare occasions, but almost always in Pro, you will see them actively trying to screen the enemy Jungler so that they cannot get into the pit and there is no chance of a steal.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: There is, however, the second half of that, which is they're setting themselves up for a team fight instead of taking the objective and they let a 50, 50 happen because they care more about the fight than they do about the objective itself.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: You will often see in pro play, oh, such and such team got the dragon, but they lost three to four people.
And that's kind of the catalyst for them losing the game. Because pro play is an exacerbation of what we already see in solo queue, which is that the objectives do not dictate the game. Rather, the team that is dictating the game tends to get the objectives, which.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Which statistically means more often than not the team who is getting Soul, the team who is getting Barons, is the team who is winning, who's going to win. It is a very unusual stat to see somebody have a high percentage of their games lost when they get Dragon soul. That's very rare.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Yes. And that's because the things that make you win games are also the things that make you get Dragon Soul are also the things that make you get barons.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: We can sort of tee off into either of the other points from this because 1. So essentially how to properly do objective setup requires ward location placement.
This is. This is core to how they play their game. You will see so much higher vision scores in pro games because they are going to be seeing frequently 7, 8, 9 wards on the map at a time. Many of those are pink wards because a lot of people use pink wards that are more than the support in pro games.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah. For the love of God, by your control words, I don't care what role you are. Yes, Tato, Even you, Even you playing ad carry buy control wards.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: I do forget to buy control.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: I. I definitely have my games where I buy zero because I've just forgotten. It happens.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Or you're frequently buying a full inventory of things and not noticing that you're not having a pink ward. More often than not, unless it is a large item, your combination things like a brutalizer or your like needlessly large rods. A pink ward is more often than not a better purchase than a ruby crystal, an amp tome, a longsword generally.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah, they can definitely be misused. And that's the other part of this is you want to make sure you're putting your control wards down in locations where you are getting value out of them. Now that doesn't mean they need to live a long time. You will frequently see in pro play, one of the common uses of control wards is simply to deny vision in an area temporarily. They're basically using them like purchasable sweepers and that's usually a correct use of them.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: If you kill one ward with it, it's mostly good. If you kill two wards with it, it's immediately gold efficient.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: That's gold efficient. But I would argue if you kill one ward with it, it has served its purpose and any vision it grants thereafter is a bonus.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yes. Now that you've had that there.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: So if you are putting a ward down, if you put a control ward in an area and it doesn't reveal anything that's incredibly valuable because now you know they don't have vision there.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: This, we say this most of the time. This can be a trap on yourself. It more often than not isn't. There will be points where you just can't see from a pink ward where they have vision just outside of it and they know you went in somewhere. So you'll think you're baiting yourself in and you're not.
That is a Rarity.
More often than not, your pink ward, when it clears a ward means no one knows you're there.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: And here's the fun part about low elo. Very often you clear that ward, if you just sit in that bush for five seconds, someone will come to put a new one and you can kill them.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Happens a lot. Very often that is, that is the actual power of buying pink wards is it's a bait.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: It's my favorite is doing it to top laners. Because top laners, for some reason they, they have that mentality of I'm on an island and they'll see me come up pink ward out their their or sweep their ward and they'll wait five seconds and go, oh, time to go put a new ward and walk right into me.
I don't know what it is about top laners. They just never assume that the jungler will actually waste time sitting there waiting for them.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: So here's what I'm actually going to say about this. We're not going to say precise ward location placements here.
You will notice in pretty much every game that was played, if you watch any of them, you will see more often than not every ward there is placed for a purpose. And those purposes are almost never wasted.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yep. Maybe the teams that got blasted are putting wards in smart places that make sense, that serve a purpose.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Maybe it's vision coverage to make sure you're moved forward and you have safety in your lane. Maybe it's the bait where we've been talking about. Maybe it's the clear. Now we know this area is clean and you'll see what we call the fanatic bush, where everyone hides in it and you murder someone.
There are so many good ward locations that we can't give you anywhere near enough of them to tell you what it is. But it is more than just that one bush right next to your lane. It's more than the tribush, it's more than the pixel bush.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I think the last thing we want to talk about for what you can learn from watching Pro, is you can learn to position your champion better. This does not need to be watching a pro who's playing a specific champion you play. Although it can be if you're playing Viktor and you see a Viktor in Pro, you can learn how to position Viktor better by watching them play. But you can also learn how to position Anivia or Orianna or Syndra or any other control mage better by watching them play Viktor in Pro.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Most AD carries run off of the same positioning in A rough general area.
There are very few who have a significant range difference. And so they have different positioning values. Those are individual cases. Some of those are played in pro. So even those you will sometimes get an idea on how to properly utilize your positioning. Lucian positions very differently than other KD carries because of how he utilizes his ultimate or essence river. Actually. Yeah. Same thing with Samira. You'll see Caitlyn's most of the time not try and be on that front line.
You'll very frequently see. And this has been a common thing for this etc. Was.
Oh, Zeri.
How to position for team fighting versus how to position for baiting, etc. There are different forms of positioning and pro games have shown them all, both good and bad. And usually you get to immediately see what the bad one was.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Yep. And the casters will call it out for you. You don't even need to recognize it. The casters will be like, oh, he was too far forward.
Rewind that spot and see where he was so you understand what made him too far forward. That's something to learn.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: We didn't say this at this topic because it's something that I only thought of at this exact moment. Listen to the casters. They will very frequently have. If you have any experience in playing the game. Maybe if you're not brand new. Brand new to it.
Listening to how the casters describe a fight will very frequently teach you how a fight is supposed to play out. You get to see everything. You get to understand where things are going, why things are going. They will call out when things are good. When things are bad.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Specifically, listen to the color casters. The play by plays are there to shout and get excited.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: So the person who is doing the direct play by play is essentially the person who is talking while the play is going on describing what's happening.
That's the person you listen to less. He's telling you what's happening. Which if you're having a trouble figuring it out, great way of figuring it out. But the person who talks after them is almost always the one who's giving you the insight into what's going on.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. Any other thoughts on how to learn from pro play?
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Take absolutely nothing away from the final game. Clinton play ins.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah, seriously, it was a lot of fun. But there's nothing to learn in that game. Please don't try to study that game to learn. But you should watch it because it was fun.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: It may look like it might actually just be a solo queue game.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: All right, we've got A trinket tip this week, which is we wanted to explain how the turret damage ramps because I think a lot of people don't understand A that turret damage does ramp up and B how it actually works. So each time a turret shoots a champion, it gets bonus damage increasing by 50% per shot until it's doing 150% bonus damage, which is meaning it's doing two and a half times the original damage on the first shot.
The important part here is the effect resets five seconds after a turret last shot a champion. That means if you drop turret aggro and then continue the dive, it will still be the amplified heated up damage. It will not reset unless 5 seconds have passed in between.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: 5 seconds is a lot longer than you think it is, especially in a fight. But also this means it is four turret shots before it is always at maximum.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: So if you've ever been in those dives where you're like how did the turret kill me? That's how. It just hits like a truck after three shots.
And it never stops hitting like a truck until it's only targeted non champions for five seconds.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: I'm going to put an addendum here for a previous trinket tip because it no longer works. We have talked about how Niko has special interactions with tower shots before they found out that was busted and have decided to get rid of that. Niko can no longer sit there and hold turret shots without the mapping anymore. She does however make it so that it is five turret shots instead of four.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Because her first hit counts as a minion and breaks the camouflage. I'm guessing.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Yes it does.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: That's wild that it still counts as a minion. You'd think they would make it break the camouflage and count as a champion for Ramp Up. Anyway, that's our trinket tip this week. We've got some listener questions so we're gonna go through these these listeners this week. You guys wrote in some novels, so my apologies if we abridge here and there, but our first question comes from Jonathan who?
Dear Wards, many thanks for answering my questions last week. I've got some new ones that relate to a normal game I had. In the meantime I got filled top lane. The enemy team had locked in Yasuo, Kalista, Nocturne and Galio. We had Aurora, Smolder, Viktor and Shaco. What would have been your suggestion or intuition to pick here?
[00:24:16] Speaker A: One of those things absolutely needs to be mentioned there and that that Aurora is a support.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Yes, but you don't know that at that point.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: You're right, you don't.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: No, you do because it's on your team.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Oh yeah. This is. This is ours.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: You're looking at Yasuo, Kalista, Nocturne, Galio. You don't know if that's Galio support or if it's Yasuo top, but it's one of the two and you're playing top.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: You can 100% assume that that Nocturne is a jungler. Nocturne does not work well in lanes.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Tell that to Vettius Meh.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: You can tell that most likely because there's both an Aurora and a victor on your team. Galio is more likely to be a mid laner because it is a good counter pick into those.
That's not guaranteed, but you can expect that Yasuo is a good top laner.
You are either expecting it to essentially most likely be Yasuo or the whoever is countering you to be that last one. Galio can of course be as a support. Yasuo could theoretically be a support here because Kalista automatically makes him proc his ult if she throws him.
So there's a chance that that's a Yasuo bottom. It's a very, very low chance, I would say looking at the team comp that you have. You have plenty of damage. You have a smolder, you have a shaker, you have a vector, you have an Aurora. You have not the great instant form of cc. You don't have the tankiest of teams and the enemy isn't great at dealing with super tanks. Honestly, my pick here on top side
[00:25:54] Speaker B: is Sion tend to agree. I think Sion or K' Sante or Cho', Gath, those types of champions are the right choice here. However, let's continue what Jonathan has to tell us because like I said, these questions are kind of a story. I took Malphite and it turned out that Yasuo and Kalista were their bot lane. And my Lane opponent picked Sylas.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: I should have read three sentences ahead.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: You should have. I was then unsure how to itemize. Should I focus more on the lane matchup or on the other picks in the game?
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Boy.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: And then I thought I'd heard of a strategy to go bomby Cinder but sit on it while completing another item. Is that still a thing?
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: No.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Oh, did they kill that?
[00:26:33] Speaker B: We'll discuss that, he says. Anyway, I did that and completed Frozen Heart before going Hollow Radiance and Kainic Rukurn because the Sylas had gotten quite fed in the meantime. So let's address the Bami Cinder first. Bami cinder is 500 gold more than the ruby crystal itself. For that 500 gold, you get 5 ability haste and you get 15 DPS to people you are on top of.
And then a little bit of wave clear. That's it.
This item sucks for personal survivability to sit on. And you're in a nightmare matchup.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't build bomby cinder to survive. You build it to clear waves.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Yes. Which Malphite doesn't have problems with if he's allowed to touch waves.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: So the biggest problem you're having here is that Sylas is a better utilization of your Ult than you do.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: And him picking that meant that he is trying to take your Ult and throw it other places.
I think Malphite.
I can see where you would would think Malphite. There's a lot of AD on their team.
It's a snap engage, which you did not have. It's a tanky person and you thought you had seen the top laner, but there's no guarantee there. Especially with Yasuo going with Kalista.
So it wasn't a bad initial pick. I think I wouldn't have done it because I think I see more value in health bots than I do in a resistance tank against that team.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And the reason that I agree is because Yasuo gets massive amounts of free penetration from his ultimate. He's gonna cut through you no matter what you itemize.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: And Kalista is not good at killing super tanks out of every AD carry. She's one of the worst at it.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: So, yeah. It's not your fault for picking Mapa in that situation. It wasn't a bad call, but there were better picks.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: I think the bigger mistake here is itemization. The itemization Frozen Heart is a terrible rush item. A, your opponents don't have a lot of attack speed yet for you to be lowering, so the effects of it just aren't as potent. And B, it doesn't have health on it. It's purely an armor item.
Yes. They're mostly physical, but the way armor works, you need health to back it up or it doesn't do enough. It's a multiplier on your health. That's why items like Sunfire are so much more popular because they're health and armor at the same time.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Yeah. You. Unfortunately, to survive a lane and not feed, you need to as a tank build into it. You were either going to be building pure AP or a tank, and it Sounds like you wanted to build tank. So you should have built something that has Mr. First.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: So what I would have built first and what you should build first if you're in this situation where you suddenly got violently counterpicked. Go Zeke's first. Zeke has armor. It has Mr. So it's useful against the rest of the team and it has some Mr. To help you survive in lane. It's cheap and it provides exactly what you want. It gives ultimate ability haste and an extra proc when you ult. And the reason you're building Zekes is because you don't want to exist in that lane. Your job is to get the fuck out of top lane as fast as possible.
Every time your ults off, cooldown and go Ult Bot Lane. Go Ult mid Lane. Just get away from that Sylas. Because he can't steal your Ult if you're not there to steal it.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: You still need to get your lane quest on. Especially as that top laner in that thing. You want to stay in there until you get your lane quest the other.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: That's what your teleport is for. You back by Go Ganga Lane teleport to top When Sylas crashes the wave in. That's the way you play this lane. This way. You have to play this lane because you've been horrifically counterpicked. You are never beating the Sylas in a million years. And then he's going to steal your ult and kill your team.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So we should. We should talk about what there. There's. There's more to the options than just Zeke's here. Zeke's is probably the best of them because it is a little bit of both and a little bit of health. Plus the hastes Cannon Crooked is the wrong call. They don't have enough magic damage for you to want it. It's not enough Poke. He will go in and just rip that shield off and then you don't get it back again.
It's a lot of Mr. It's a lot of health regen. But it's there for Mr. Against Poke. You don't benefit enough from spirit visage. Even though it does give you more of your shield. That shield isn't useful most of the time.
You have a very magic damage heavy team and it is a moderately cheap item. I think Abyssal Mask is a fantastic rush here.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Yes. I agree completely. Abyssal Mask would have been the Mr. Item of Choice. Obviously when Sylas got super Fed, you kind of have to get more.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: But I think if you want to itemize a full Mr. Item, Abyssal Mask is the right one because it contributes the most to your team.
It means when you ult in on the enemy team, you're weakening them for your Viktor, for your Aurora, maybe for your Shaco, depending on which Shaco build he went.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: And you don't do an insignificant amount of magic damage either.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: The other question here, when he got fed, was he feeding off of other lanes or did he first start killing you? Because the main problem that you have as a Malphite is clearing waves cost you all your mana.
The other option you have, and it's the least safe option because it doesn't give you Mr. But it will eventually give you a very strong defensive tool. Because Malphite procs it insanely well is getting Winter's Approach. If you were being zoned off of waves, Winter's approach is not the right call.
You're never getting anything. But if you're going in, clearing a wave, running away, Winter's approach is a decent option. Thimblewinter is immensely powerful for you.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you're getting constantly ganked. Tato, what would you do?
[00:32:24] Speaker A: I would just play under tower.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Malphite is hard to dive.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: It is very hard to dive.
And in that case, incidentally, on that
[00:32:32] Speaker B: note, when you are the Malphite and they are looking to dive, you do not ult before someone pulls aggro and then you ult whoever it was who pulled turret aggro. Yes, that will often result in you die in the dive and your lane opponent does not. But that is the only way you're going to get anything back. Your options are ult the dude tanking Turret and go one for one, or ult the dude who's your lane opponent
[00:32:57] Speaker A: and go 0 for 1 pretty much. Or if they're close to each other, you can get two for one.
Sometimes Malphite is one of the better champions at getting two for one trades. He does a surprisingly large amount of damage, and that ultimate is no slouch.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: But just make sure they've pulled aggro before you pull the trigger. Or alternately, make sure when you're ulting them, you are also killing the last of the minions that are under Turret so that it will turn to them because there's nothing else for it to shoot. That's also acceptable.
I've definitely gotten kills with my ult as Malphite because someone just was walking in to take plates and I just ulted the caster minions after kill clearing the melees, and they were the Caster minions and then took two turret shots before they could get clear.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: If you have the time, throw your Q before you ultimate because if Nocturne's diving you, he's gonna have his spell shield probably up to try and stop your ultimate.
And that extra movement speed is just immensely powerful. If you can get a slam ultimate steal the movement speed and then a run.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Yep. Other than that, I think don't take this particular game to heart too much. The odds of seeing Yasuo Callista bot lane are pretty low.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: The odds of you having support are pretty low.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Yes.
I would look at this draft and I would say 95% of the time you're not going to get put up against a Silas. You got that 5% where they're playing something absolutely whack. All right, let's get to our other question. This comes from Lebana Labana. Writes Labana here. Apologies, I started typing and didn't stop. There are questions here, but there's some distance down the page.
So Labana's got a bit of a life story.
We're gonna skip a lot of that.
So we're gonna start with just question one. Question one is iron is an interesting place, especially some of the Iron four games I get to experience.
How do I avoid learning bad habits from these games for when I make it out of iron?
[00:34:56] Speaker A: Mmr, huh? Oh boy. Who here has experienced an iron game?
[00:35:01] Speaker B: No, I don't think any of us have, unfortunately.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So herein lies one of our problems is none of us who are currently playing and being here get to experience that level. We've seen some clips and we've had a couple previous hosts who've lived in that world.
None of us have been down that far in a very, very long time. I think the lowest any of us have ever been is bronze.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: I've literally never been below Silver In 17 years of playing this game.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: I am still. If you make a new account, it auto fills you into bronze for a little while.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: That depends on what it reads your MMR as, as you're leveling. They have all sorts of heuristics to
[00:35:40] Speaker A: try to judge that that is true. They have changed how they figure things out with leveling accounts.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So the point of all this is we don't have first hand experience of iron, unfortunately.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: I would say take a look at some higher ranked games. Maybe it's watch some friends play. If they're higher ranked, maybe it's watch a couple of streamer games and take note of things that are very different between the two.
Because you will very frequently see things that are very different between the two.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: I'm. I'm thinking it's not necessarily iron specific because I don't think she will ever touch ranked. But Tato and I have a mutual friend who is very not good at League of Legends. Barely plays this game. She prefers deadlock. That's her prerogative that we have played league with. And my number one thing I've noticed her doing that I think is very common in iron and is one of the reasons people get put in iron is fighting to the death when you don't need to.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Especially in iron.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: Oh, and one of my other friends.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You and I have a few friends that are in that boat. But you know the one I'm talking about.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Yes, I know the one you're talking about.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: I'm being nice. You do? I'm being nice and not calling her out. Not that she listens to this, but she's been on our shows before on the other podcast, so I'm gonna be nice.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: You essentially just called her out there.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: I know, but it's fine.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: It's funny, I do have another habit I think I can think of right now.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Go for it.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: It's based on how you use your skills. As in most lower ranked players that I have seen do not use skills for anything other than fighting.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: See, I've seen the opposite.
I regularly see low level players who use all of their skills to farm when they don't need to and have nothing to fight back.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So that is the, the, the answer we'll put here is improper skill use is a bad habit that you're going to see.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah. You don't need to scatter the weak on Syndra to clear the wave most of the time. Sometimes it is correct. But I've seen a lot of low skill Syndras just shoot that off and then wonder why suddenly they can get dove on and killed.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: That is, that is another thing that I immediately think of. That is one of them. Ezreal's jump is another. Your mobility skills, improper use. You will find that there is a big curve in.
There is a perfect bell curve in.
Uses it aggressively, uses it defensively, uses it aggressively. In terms of skill ranks.
You will find that low rank people and very high rank people use things hyper aggressively for very different reasons.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Yup.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I use, when I play Samira, I'm
[00:38:38] Speaker B: very aggressive with her, sometimes to a fault. Yeah. Tato is the type of Samira who is either turret diving and Walking away with a triple kill or turret diving and dropping dead having done almost nothing. And there's no in between wild card. Yes.
So this apparently question two was what bad habits am I likely to find down here? Which is kind of what we started answering because it's the same thing is don't emulate your peers when you're in iron.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're, if you're looking to climb and you want to take a look outside of things, you don't have to. But if you want to have a reference between what is there and what is out there. For references on what are and aren't bad habits, you should, you should watch some streamers who play the champions you're playing.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: So let's move on to question three. How do I carry iron games? Team fights are less coordinated than an octopus on roller skates and happen simply because someone saw an angry blade of grass.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: That's a pretty good way of putting it. I have a very simple answer for you.
Get more gold.
It's a difficult thing to do, but it is the answer. The more gold you have, the easier it is to carry. Farming is one of the things you will notice the greatest discrepancy in between lowest and high ranks. It is very infrequent.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: You will notice the biggest discrepancy in between iron and like silver. From silver onwards, the discrepancy shrinks dramatically but is still there.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: Even still like it becomes the point of a half an item between people.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yes. But like in iron, it's literally the difference between like two items and four items at 20 minutes.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yes. So you'll, you'll frequently see a game.
Yeah, you'll frequently see like a 35 to 40 minute game in iron where nobody has over 200 farm.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Yep.
So for me the number one way to carry iron games is learn to recognize mistakes.
Now some of this is going to be coming from I play mid in jungle.
These are roles that are very, very good at punishing mistakes and snowballing out of control. I can very frequently go, oh, they cast their scatter of the weak. I can just kill them Now I'm LeBlanc and the Lane is over because they're dead.
Same thing for jungle. I can go, oh, they just dashed forward on my laner. I guess they're screwed now. Time to kill them.
Learning to recognize those moments and identifying where they have made a mistake. They might, may not even know they have made a mistake yet, but you're going to capitalize on it. Learning to identify those moments and act on them is how you get out of iron.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Realistically, you can frequently like the easy way of learning that mistake. Thing is almost every champion will have either a mobility skill or a CC skill. Not everyone does, but they will have one of the two.
Once they have used one of those. Yeah. Sometimes they'll have both. Yeah. When they have used one of them, you can frequently go in on them afterwards because. Well, now they don't have their defensive tool.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: Yeah. If Leona blows Zenith blade and misses, what's she gonna do to you? Especially Pre six.
Like she's gonna run at you. You can just run away while shooting her because you're a ranged champion. Mm.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: If Syndra fails her scatter of the week and uses it, well, now she's got nothing to stop you.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Yep. So yeah, that. That's the biggest thing for carrying iron other than just git gud. Because obviously, like raw skill will win. You carry the iron games if you just have better mechanics, better farming than everyone else.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: We can't. We can't extol that through a podcast. That takes practice and repetition and time.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Practice last hitting minions.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Yes. Strongly recommend doing some minion drills. If you're an iron, you should be doing minion drills. Go in practice tool. Practice last hitting.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Yes, practice. Go into the practice tool. Utilize the tools that the game gives you.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: Yes. So we've got one more question from Labana, which is I play Smolder. Because I enjoy the stacking mechanic and late game. I do become a carry monster. I'm currently targeting 25 stacks by five minutes, 125 by 17 and 225 by 25 minutes. I hit them between 60 to 70% of my games, depending on the matchup and how the game is going. Are these sensible targets? Should I be aiming for faster stacks? I'm ignoring Malzahar matchups. I had 225 at 16 minutes, so I'm.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: I'm probably the biggest multiplayer here out of everyone.
You can ignore. Yeah, you can ignore everything but that last one. Your 25 and your 125 numbers are less relevant than when you hit 225. But more importantly, it's. You're. You're. You have to push them a little bit later because of iron. You have to assume that it's going to be later.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: So not because you're farming better or worse, but because you're in. Put in more situations where you have to fight instead of where you can have just a laning phase where you're stacking yes.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: So 25 stacks happens when it happens. 125 means that you suddenly have good farm and you should be focusing on farming. But those numbers are less relevant than that 225 number. And as an Iron player, I would drop maybe a minute or two off of that because the standard for high end in the like diamond, etc. You expect to see that 225 before 20 minutes.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Like 19ish.
Obviously, iron bronze is a very different world. You have to add time onto that. You're not getting perfect farm with your Qs. You're not getting as much proper harassment.
So I would say probably 23, 24 minutes.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Yeah. The. The other part I would touch on is you gotta remember that while Smolder is a stacking champion, the items matter too. Because Iron games are so bloody. If you're hitting three items before you're hitting 225, you're still doing all right. 225 is the magic number because it's when you get your execute. But the biggest thing on Smolder is just to make sure that you're not getting starved out of being allowed to stack. As long as you're able to get stacks, you're able to hit Minions, you're able to hit Champions. You're gonna get to 225.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: I. I think with Smolder, you hit your ability to carry late games with 125 stacks.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: Because all you need to do is throw damage and It'll smack everyone. 225 is. Is a power point. Very few other ad carries have the same strength. Some of them are better at 1v1ing you. Not a lot of them are better at carrying a team fight.
The issue then is that like how you. You should focus on this.
You're doing too many little mini targets. Focus on a broader picture. And I think just. Just try and hit 225 by.
Let's give you a higher end goal and go 23 minutes. That'll. That'll give you a better goal to try and reach.
Even if you're not hitting it by quite that, it's a little bit closer to where you want to be.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: You should always be aiming for faster stacks. If you farm better, you'll get more gold. You'll hit that essence Reaver point faster, which means you'll start stacking faster because you stop being mana gated. If you're fighting better, you're hitting more spells on Champions and not dying, which means you're getting more time to get stacks. You're always aiming for faster stacking no matter what you're at. Even that 16 minute and 13 second Malzahar matchup with 225 could have been faster with better play. Yeah, not criticizing, just pointing out that's always true. No matter what the numbers are. You could always do better. So you should always be striving to do better.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: You do have another option and that, you know, maybe you could just take Lucian into the top lane instead. It doesn't stack like Smolder does, but he uses a lot of the same itemization.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: And then once you've destroyed their inhibitor turret in the top lane, you can go down and give your Smolder a pat on the back as you destroy their Nexus.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: It works.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: This has been episode 552 of the Four Wards podcast. Thank you once again Taito for joining us.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: Yes, it's good to hear from you.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Go give Tato a follow at Twitch tv. Forbidden Potato again that I in Forbidden is a one link will be in the episode description.
I've been Jack Solman for Mike and many names and for Potato. Have a great night.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Good night everybody.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our
[email protected] the Four Wards podcast.
And of course send your questions to the Fourwards podcastmail.com so we can answer
[00:47:27] Speaker A: them live on the show.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.
