[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast.
Hey, what's up? It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz.
And you're listening to the Four Wards Podcast here to help you move forward in League.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to episode 554 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your slightly sick host, Jack Selman. And I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends this week. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: I'm your slightly tired host
[00:00:51] Speaker B: and we've got Pillow Pat.
[00:00:53] Speaker D: I am your other slightly sick co host.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, unfortunately it is kind of that time of year. But that's okay guys. You can't get sick hanging out with us in the Discord. You can't transmit diseases over the Internet yet, so join us. Discord link is in the episode description. Come play video games with us. We've been playing a lot of the new Mayhem. It's a lot of fun. We also do stream on Twitch, at least when we're not coughing up phlegm.
I can be found at Twitch tv. Jacksonman Mike can be found at Twitch tv. Mike, how many names? And Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch tv. Pillowpet and I want to give a shout out to our patrons who support us at the shoutouts here on Patreon. Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana, Uncle ChrisCo and Skippius Esquire. Thank you guys very much. Now if you want to support us, head over to patreon.com the Four Wards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive fee to some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show or just us literally arguing and telling stories for 20 minutes and then doing five minutes of prep work, which is what happened this week.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Yeah, it's pretty common.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: It happens periodically and $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we'll shout your name out at the top of every episode. And all of those benefits also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Last but not least, listeners, one of you answered the call this week and thank you for that, but we need more questions, so write in to the fourwards podcastmail.com or drop your questions in the question submission channel in the Discord so we can answer your questions on the podcast.
All right, our topic this week, Mike, you came up with this one, so I'm going to let you take it away.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Okay, so the basics of this topic are not actually basic. It is a complicated topic that has a lot of complicated things about it. So I've, I've simplified it as best as I can and we're going to take bits and pieces out of it. So essentially the topic is there is a standard way that games should be won when you get to the higher levels of play that does not necessarily apply across the board to everybody, but we can take things that are used from that high level play and bring it down to everybody else. These are core tenants that I think people should be using because they are the most efficient ways to win games.
In general, using these things, you can more often than not win a game.
The four basic things we're going to try and grab from them need to learn how to properly use priority, which means your laning priority, which means movement priority, etc. You need to learn how to actively create and use objective control, which we're going to be talking about, objective setup and these things we're going to be talking about what objective control just actually is.
You need to learn how to, once you have used this priority and this objective control, how to actively use that lead that you have, how to leverage it. And then taking all of this in combination, we need to talk about how you actively close a game out. Because not learning how to close a game out is the greatest way to throw a game in your face.
These are, these are some of the ways of just giving your opponents the ability to take it all away from you. So these are the four real core tenets that we're going to try and take from this high level concept and bring it down into an easy level discussion.
And we started off we're going to talk about priority and that is started with pretty much what is priority. We've talked about this not terribly far, long ago. We can get a maybe slightly more in depth discussion over there, but we're going to talk about how to use that priority. Purity is essentially your ability to move your position in the lane. How you push yourself for minion control, how you push yourself for lane control, how you deal with the ability to move around your sphere of influence, which for laners is the lane and for the junglers is your half of the map. So when you, when you play any lane, you have to deal with what your champions are designed to do versus what your enemy is designed to do. And in a standard game, what the combination between what your lane does and what your opponent's lane does. Is how you have a basic determination of priority. You should lose and cede priority to something like a Draven because they are an aggressive champion that pushes their early stats in a meaningful way. That does not necessarily mean that's how things are going to play out for you though.
So usually your first one to three levels in any lane is this sort of jockeying over priority. This priority will give you Minion Farm. This priority will give you fights between each other, which will result in either your 1v1 or 2v2 kills. And then as this progresses into levels 4, 5, 6, so on. This is when you as a mid laner can start taking these priorities that you have and push it to, hey, I'm going to make sure that my Jungler has free access to Scuttle Crab. I'm going to make sure that when Dragon shows up, they're the ones who get to move first.
This is how priority feeds into objective control. Once you have priority in any position where you have, you now have access to move. And when you know objectives are coming, to start working towards either actively making it so you have vision advantages or just straight up take them.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: And to be clear, one of the things you can choose to do with your priority is hit the turret. If you're hitting the enemy turret, you are spending your priority to hit the turret as opposed to spending it to go around the map, place wards, catch people out, take objectives. Whatever else you're doing with it, the turret is one of the choices you can make for your priority. That doesn't mean it's the right choice, but it also doesn't mean it's the wrong one.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Yes, plates are very valuable, and plates are a sneaky amount of gold that you do not understand how much you can gain an advantage over your opponent by just taking more plates. There's what,
[00:07:06] Speaker B: two. Two plates is almost a kill.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: Yeah. There's like four or five hundred gold in a tower. If you were able to get all the plates.
[00:07:13] Speaker D: There's also. There's also an opposite to that. You can give up your whole advantage by staying and taking plates, by overstaying in your lane and then throwing away a whole advantage and putting yourself in a weak state.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: This. This is
[00:07:28] Speaker B: where it's very easy to not realize that you've already spent your priority and you're now putting yourself in a deficit.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: And now. Now that we've gotten to this point, we need to actively discuss this. Priority is very different in the pro scene than it is in your scene. Because a lot of the times Using priority too aggressively is what gets lanes killed because this opens you up to jungle ganks. Pushing too deep into your opponent's side is one of the most potentially double edged swords you can have. It gives you potential for a lot more money. You're taking plates, you're, you're leading your advantage. You have the ability to roam when no one else does. However, if the opponent has noticed this and notices that you're leading with too much aggression, you are now at a severe disadvantage in position because they can wrap around you significantly more easily, prevent you from leaving. They can easily make a 2v2, a 2v3.
So this is where you need to have with your priority vision control of your lane. Because this should be. And to be honest there's, there's also like you should learn rough timings on. I know that a jungler is starting over here because we have a vision, so he should be here in a minute, two minutes, etc. Rough ideas.
This is starting to get in a little bit more heavy advantage things. This is something that you get when you get higher and higher rankings, tracking junglers and pushing forward. But it's this priority dichotomy that wins and loses lanes. And that's why it's not just as simple as slam, advantageous ad carry support, etc. Push lane, win game, it's not that simple.
So as I was talking about feeding into that, we get to the next section which is objective control. Objective control usually feeds off of priority. When you have more sphere of influence we'll call it, you have access to move around the map easier and that means that you know more about what the goings on in the game than your opponent does. And more often than not, that informational advantage usually turns out in your favor. Using that informational advantage, you can set up traps, you can create spots where you aren't. I know there's two or three people on the top side, we have this objective for free, we just take it. You have screenings, etc. So there's a lot you can do with objective control. You can use your objective control to draw out and make a fight. But the point is that once you have taken control of an area, your influence in this spot is greater than your opponent's.
You need to do something with that because otherwise you're giving your opponent just an advantage across the rest of the map. If you do not use your active control. If you sit there and have dragon control for two minutes, well, great, your opponent has been able to do something for at least a minute. So you need to use this control meaningfully and quickly. Whether that means shoving away to try and get a kill because you now have control over the river, or whether that means we're taking this dragon uncontested and then roaming back to lanes.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: This. This is why occasionally I'm baffled and die to a gank. Because someone will give up control of the entire map to sit in a bush for literally 60 seconds waiting for me to step up. And that'll work. And great. They got 300 gold from that kill. Meanwhile, my jungler got a dragon or rift herald or whatever else. We come out ahead. Because they used their objective control poorly. They could have spent that minute taking that objective, contesting for that objective. So my jungler couldn't get it so that things would actually be in a neutral state, or just trying to force the gank earlier so they could then go on and do other stuff.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: We, yeah, we've talked about this. There is, however, a lot of games where no one has control. These are the 5050 team fight flips. These are people are just in zones. They're fighting it out. You're both contesting whether or not one person has advantage on the mid versus the bot, etc. So now you're in just a skirmish.
This is gonna happen probably in half of your games.
There's nothing we can really give you as more advantage there than learn how to smite really quickly, use your spells to your advantage. Because that's just team fighting. And team fighting can't be just explained. You have to experience team fighting to do it, and you have to experience a lot of it.
So we'll cut back away from that discussion and then move on to the next point, which is using that lead productively, leveraging your lead.
So if you have gotten your priority and you have used your objective control, you are 1000 gold ahead. You are two dragons up. You are an extra turret ahead. Now you need to use that to get yourself more ahead. You can either continue using that money lead. You have to get more objective control by utilizing your potentially greater power. I say potentially because just because you have a gold lead or a farm lead doesn't mean you are in an actual advantage. You need to spend your money and you need to know your level breaks, because if you don't, you're not actually meaningfully ahead. You can be 2000 gold up, but if you haven't spent any of it, you're the same as your opponent. So usually you will take your leads, build your pieces to the greatest degree. You can. And then use that to set up. Man. I have an extra 500 gold. I can buy two pink wards. Now we have extra vision control we didn't have before. Now I have a statistical advantage in a 1v1. I will just output more damage. That is the kind of thing you need to be using now. You are a PowerPoint. You have a lead. And by the time you generally speaking have a lead, you can start translating that lead across the map. Man. I've got this lead. My opponents are both relatively even in to my other laners. Which lane do I want to push in? Well, the mid is usually the lane you'll go try and have priority to first with whatever other lane has won. Trying to move it into mid or just winning in mid. Because mid opens up the rest of the map having.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yep. Once.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Once that mid tower is down, you have so many more paths you can take into the enemy jungle. So much more space. They have to place wards to be able to know when you're coming into their territory that it's so much easier to then leverage your lead. So that's why taking mid tower is basically the first step. Is it just. It blacks out the most important hub of travel.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: There is a caveat placement. And this is usually your top laner. If your top laner is ahead.
More often than not, top laners are someone who can sideline effectively. That's. That's sort of what they're designed for. Sometimes you'll have tanks and they'll be able to side lane and then do team fighting as well.
Most top laners do some form of side laning. It's very rare to have one that does not side lane well because they sort of have to survive on their own.
If you are a top laner who has your advantage, your goal is actually most often you're not bringing your priority power to the rest of your team. Outside of important moments. You want to draw pressure to you. I am the person who is too strong for one person to fight. They need to bring two people to me. Once there's two people on me, you, generally speaking have access across the rest of the map. More often than not, your team should be able to win a 3v4. So once you have that PowerPoint, your goal is to draw people to you. And if they don't respect you, then you just take free money and take free position by pushing down the side and taking towers.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Especially with the new Feylite feature, it's really easy for you to push up what should be too Deep for two waves, which is the duration your ward will last in the phalites before the vision goes down to just your ward to force them to Send at least 2 people to answer you because you're ahead. So they can't just send one.
And that's time. You're getting full farm, maybe some plates, maybe a kill if someone does something stupid. And if they send multiple people, you're the strong one run away.
But that means that the other side of the map where your weak people are now, can maybe have a numbers advantage and get something done. Or help them become less weak by maybe getting some plates or a turret themselves in your solo queue games. Is that always how it plays out? No. Oftentimes they'll be dumbasses. And the weakest person on your team will wander to where you are to try to save you and make the situation worse. Because then they just die.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: It happens.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: But. But we're not. We can't control what our teammates do. We're trying to teach you what you should be doing.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Yeah. The. The other thing that you can do, which is very effective is once you have your own priority in sidelines, push into the jungle a little farther than you think. Not just that, that little side lane. Move in a little bit deeper that that cross section between the buff and the. The roadway if you have free access. Take the Gromp or the.
The Chickens if you have access to it. Or the. The Krugs if you have access to one of those.
Taking that camp is surprisingly one of the most fought after things I've seen in the last fucking month.
Everyone is fighting over jungle camps to try and get this. More often than not it is. It is such a high priority because they're quick respawns of a surprisingly large amount of gold than xp. And if you're a laner, it's just kind of free for you. Most laners can, by the time you're pushing side lanes, grab that camp in like five seconds and then walk away. And also you're not on vision for the enemy to see. So now you've gotten out of the big vision. The free minion vision, the free turret vision. They don't know if you're coming for them. That's another piece of power that you now have access to. You've denied them sight on you. They don't know that you're not coming there. Unless of course they have warded their own jungle, in which case they've now used some of their very valuable wards to put vision in places that aren't necessarily at the objective they're fighting for. So no matter what, you've done something to devalue them on the other side.
And the last part. Yeah, the last part is legitimately the hardest thing, because we have seen this across the board, from the lowest of iron to the highest of pro play, is people fail to close out games properly everywhere, all the time.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yep.
Okay, I'm just gonna start with. Because this is the one you'll see in your solo queue a lot. The wrong way to close out a game is to take an inhibitor and then just group up in the lane you took an inhibitor in and push waves that you've already gotten the inhibitor on. Stop doing that. Stop being part of the problem.
[00:18:57] Speaker C: That is,
[00:18:58] Speaker B: I highlight that because it is the only thing that is absolutely 100% always the wrong way to do it. The only reason to barrel down a lane you've already taken the inhibitor in is if you've already killed the enemy team and you're just pushing to end.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Yes. So on that note, there is a point in time in which it doesn't matter. Baron doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. Push to win. You now have time to do it. Once a game has reached 40 to 45 minutes, unless you have to go through all three towers, you should be able to push down any one lane that your minions are at. Like the center line to to win a game. If you hit 40 minutes and you've wiped the enemy, you should almost always be able to just push to win. If you have lost three people, you only got two people left. You. You can push down to take an inhibitor and then back away to go take an objective.
But going down the lane and at least taking an inhibitor if you have access to is almost always the right case scenario.
Next up on closing out a game.
Baron is incredibly powerful. Baron allows you to take waves that you should not be able to take and just crash a tower and win a fight there. Because
[00:20:14] Speaker B: yeah,
[00:20:14] Speaker C: Baron minions do a crap ton of damage and are very hard to kill.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: The biggest thing by far is that the minions are hard to clear.
Champions that can just instantly delete an entire wave. Normally often if they do a full combo. Still can't clear a Baron wave. I play a lot of Lux. Lux can delete the entire wave with an er. Except sometimes the cannon Minion lives with a little bit of health and you have to Q it afterwards with Baron up ER&Q won't even kill the melees.
[00:20:47] Speaker C: There are, I think, three champions in the game that can Clear Baron minions as effectively as they can. Clear everything else.
They are the premier I shove Waves characters, and even they take a little bit longer. It's not instantaneous. But they are the people who are designed to clear Waves. And unless you have one of those champions specifically, Baron is a threat.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Who are you thinking of? Sivir Anivia?
[00:21:15] Speaker C: Those are the two main ones that I think of immediately. And the other one that
[00:21:19] Speaker B: you said three, though.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Yeah, the other one I can think of now is actually Viktor. Viktor throws down a giant stun zone, throws an E, and that minion Wave doesn't even go anywhere.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: I'll agree with that. Because of the stun zone. I forgot about the stun zone. And Baron does not help the minions resist the stun zone at all.
[00:21:38] Speaker C: No. Yeah, they. They bunch up into a giant. So
[00:21:40] Speaker B: on that note, Aurelion Sol, for the same reason
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Aurelion Sol actually might be better than all of the others because of he's stuck in place. But Minions do literally nothing when Aurelion Sol is using his E. Every other champion has to at least do something else. And the minions are always capable of attacking during it. Aurelion Sol is monstrous at Wave clear.
But that is. That is slightly beside the point of what how to actively close the game.
So with Baron, almost always, one Baron is not enough to win you a game. You don't take Baron. You don't throw down one lane and just win. It's not usually how it happens unless your first Baron is at like 35, 40 minutes. The first Baron is generally used to shove waves to get towers to get more money.
And then you use that advantage that you have in money to take Dragons take towers, set up traps. The next thing you need to do is with your advantage now that you've taken those extra towers is as you're retreating. Take everything you can while you're walking out. Take your opponent's jungle while you're walking out. Put vision in every bush you can conceivably think they're gonna walk through. The more you pull away from them as you're retreating, the less they have when you do your recalls. Because once you've done your push, yeah, you. Your 5,000, 6,000 gold out of them.
Until you spend that money, it's worthless. So you do your retreat. You spend your money. Now you're an item. An item and a half up on your opponent. A level or two up on your opponent. You use this advantage in the next push. Now they have an inhib down. They have to send somebody to that. Because unlike just even a Baron Wave, a Super Minion Wave is a brutally powerful thing. Super Minions will win games on their own if they're not attended. That happened in the finals of a pro match where they did not respect the fact that there were two inhibs down and they lost the game. So you use that advantage now that you have a pressure advantage. That pressure is now giving you priority. I now know that if we sit here and just. We don't even have to do a Baron match. If there's two inhibs down, you will eventually have to send someone to go take care of those minions. And once someone has gone to take those minions, we can take Baron and fight at our leisure. You're not sending enough people to face our entire team. Now you have another Baron. And now you have a Baron plus in hips down. And you use those advantages to just push in. And now you have maybe all three waves done once all the inhibs are done. Double Super Minions is one of the scariest things in the game.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: And if you can combine it with Baron, it's literally without Aurelion Sol, you cannot stop those waves in time for them to crash.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: Exactly. So that is the general speaking standard in a lot of games. However, you'll also see that other objective go up, which is Elder Dragon. And Elder Dragon warps the game a little bit.
Because even if you're down in fight power, Elder Dragon can mean you just win fights because it gives you a severe power advantage. Once you have an Elder Dragon, you want to fight. You don't want to fight alone. You want to fight as much as a team as you can and push your advantage together.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yep. Elder Dragon. Often the correct play with Elder Dragon is to dive them because they'll die before the turret kills you.
And when you're making attempts to end the game, you're not looking to get a five for zero team fight. Five for zero teamfight often means the game has ended because then your five people can just push and end before they respawn.
But a 5 for 0 teamfight is not the only way to end. If you get elder and there's turrets up at their base and you dive them and you wipe all five of them because you had Elder, but two people died in the process.
Cool. You just wipe five of them in their base. Your three people end the game.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
So the only thing you need to worry about, generally speaking, once you're at this stage of the game, is your opponents having one lane that has so much priority. It's shoved to the other side of the map. That's pretty much the only way to do that unless you're in an incredibly even state and it's a back and forth game and both people have missing towers and then things become complicated.
And really the way to win those games is to win a team fight and push. And that's not something that I can heavily recommend because team fights rely heavily on individual skill.
So this is the. The bare basics of how to push a win and the lead using the sort of step by step process. In this you get priority which gets you money. You use that money to take objective control, use that objective control to take more objectives and get more money. You use that money to take big objectives and close out game by by shoving advantages where you have them.
That's the, the step by step basic process. It is not as easy as it sounds. It's not as easy as it sounds, but there is a a basic template that you can use. And if you are capable of doing those things in more than more often in your games, you are more often to win your games.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: All right, any other thoughts on this topic as a whole?
Hello?
[00:27:06] Speaker C: Yeah,
[00:27:07] Speaker D: no, I pretty think you guys pretty much nailed it on ahead.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: I just feel bad because it's mostly been Mike talking and me chiming in. I feel like. Well,
[00:27:16] Speaker D: I mean,
[00:27:17] Speaker B: squash the only points you had to make.
[00:27:19] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean he's covered a lot of it and anything that I would have said was kind of just umbrella in it.
You know where I mentioned, you know, wave control is part of using your advantage being able to manipulate your waves.
But I mean that's just. That's getting in the weeds there. You know, that can get complicated. That's where, you know, subjects become topics on their own is wave management. And you know, we talked about it before and so this is a good general umbrella. This is like a. I mean all of the stuff we have talked about individually over all the course of episodes, this is just an umbrella. Hopefully it'll tickle your guys's brains enough that you're gonna write in some questions so we can get more detailed on certain parts of this.
Because like just even talking over this for the last 30, 40 minutes isn't even enough to cover the greater scheme of things of how this is. You know, I always look at it, League of Legends in a whole is a game. Whereas like even like football is a game, it is going to always been be played the same way. There are playbooks and League of Legends has playbooks. Even though if they're not written out. They're always going to be played relatively the same, with few, you know, exceptions here and there and audibles that get called. But just like any, any game of football, it's the same way things change. You got to adjust. But they all start the same and they all end the same.
[00:28:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:58] Speaker D: And it's in that middle part where you have to change your play calling or throw in an audible and make decisions. Even if you're down and out, you can still always come back.
[00:29:10] Speaker C: Now, another thing, we have learned a lot of this last couple weeks.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:29:15] Speaker C: Just because you are at a disadvantage does not mean you cannot win.
So, like, every one of these topics here can be expanded into its own singular topic into significantly more minutia than we've talked about. But we're not gonna do that right now.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: No, instead, we're gonna talk about something fun real quick before we go to listener questions, because yesterday I made a comment in the Discord that I wasn't sold on this Battle of the Bands Aram Mayhem thing until I got Pentakill. And Mike responded. Wait, what the hell are you talking about?
So, FYI, guys, Mayhem got a new set. There's new Augments, and there's a new metagame. Mayhem is now Battle of the Bands.
One game you'll have kda. Another game you'll have Pentakill or True Damage or Heartsteel. Or maybe you'll get the B Band or the Cafe Cuties. Or apparently Space Groove is one of them.
[00:30:14] Speaker D: I don't think. I
[00:30:15] Speaker B: don't even know if that's all of them. I don't even know if that's all of them. There's a lot of bands that it has options for, and each of these morphs the game in different ways, some more interesting than others.
Some of them give you raw power. Some of them give you extra Augments.
Some of them make bees fly across the map and explode and deal damage to you. There
[00:30:39] Speaker D: used to be an Augment like that.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Yeah, there used to be an Augment that did something similar. It's now just a global effect when the B band is the one going. And this also dictates what music plays during your Mayhem, which is one of the reasons why Pentakill is by far my favorite, because it means that you have Pentakill playing for the entire Aram Mayhem. And the sound design is really cool because the songs change as you push and get closer to the enemy base.
Even the horrible B Band music changes.
[00:31:16] Speaker D: I'm
[00:31:17] Speaker B: sorry,
[00:31:18] Speaker D: but the B Band Just anytime I hear it reminds me of Conker's Bad Fur Day when you're in the B area.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: I mean, that's fair. Maybe that's what they were going for, but yeah, it's a lot of fun. Some of the new Augments are crazy. I had a Heavy is the Crown augmented that gave me percent AD and gave me other stats, but made me slower. And I got it on Smolder. It wasn't very good, but I could totally see that on a dash Heavy champion who's not as inhibited by the move speed. Like, Heavy is the Crown on Kassadin sounds amazing.
[00:31:55] Speaker D: I had it on Katarina, and at the end of the game, I had like 1400 AD.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds incredible. So there's. There's. There's craziness in the Augments. There's all sorts of fun shit. I got one that gives stacking mana. Every time you hit people with two passive two spells, you just get extra mana permanently.
[00:32:16] Speaker C: It's. And
[00:32:17] Speaker B: I got it on the regular champion, so it was underwhelming. But like, imagine that on Rise,
[00:32:22] Speaker C: it's great. On someone like Rise, it's great on someone like Assassin. It is really strong for a different reason than I expected.
It means you. Because
[00:32:30] Speaker B: it also does damage with your mana, by the way.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: It does. It also means you don't need to build mana sustain. You can build a raw burst. You can change your item build. When you get that, it's great.
[00:32:40] Speaker D: I mean, there's also cool Augments that change, you know, what your abilities do based off how much mana you have.
So there's really cool synergy. I really like that they're starting to add Augments that synergize well with other Augments.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Except that pressure cooker still pisses me off for the same reason it always has, which is that it's overpowered as hell if you get another burn Augment with it and incredibly weak if you don't.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: There are like two or three Augments where if you get the combination between them, they are some of the most disgusting things in the world.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely saw Lee Sin, who got the like, Weapon of Destiny on a lethality item and was literally just one shotting people with his Q.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: We saw there was a stupid fucking combination. We got. We. We got kind of lucky that I had an involved power during that match. But there is something.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Yeah, we had the one that gives crit damage based on your attack speed, and it was on a Shaco
[00:33:39] Speaker C: Shaco.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: I was playing Yone and I also Got it.
[00:33:43] Speaker C: Shaco, if you did not know, already has a crit damage amp. That is an autocrit. He can do with that ability with full items over 5500 damage with a single hit.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: It was dumb.
[00:33:56] Speaker C: Which meant did I see Shaco before he showed up? No, I'm dead. Did I not?
[00:34:01] Speaker B: That was very funny though when you did know he was coming and just ulted and then he just smacked you in the back and didn't do zero damage because you predicted it
[00:34:09] Speaker C: and then immediately died. Yeah.
Is it warps the game some of these
[00:34:14] Speaker B: but in a fun way, which is the point of mayhem.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: So join the discord so you can play mayhem with us.
All right, let's get at least one of these listener questions done because Grundy9 actually wrote into the email theforwards podcastmail.com by the way and asked us some questions and we're gonna answer the volibear one.
Grundy9 writes Bronze Silverjungler here. Last year I wrote in about an attack speed AP Volibear build that was yielding me insane jungle farm. But then I would get blown up if I was ever cc'd in a team fight. Last month you talked about Volibear's traditional build changing due to item changes. Dusk and dawn versus Spear of Shojin versus Flickrblade. I'm wondering if I should go back to Voli and try a traditional build. Yes.
[00:34:59] Speaker C: I mean if you like how Volibear plays, you will still enjoy him on the slower attack speed builds because a lot of his core gameplay is still just the same.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Pretty much.
What is his best build now and why do I lack the skills to play it? Well, you don't. He's very easy to play from the jungle specifically. His best build is still Dusk and Dawn into Flicker Blade into Tank and tank just varies depending on the context of the game.
[00:35:27] Speaker C: Yeah. I think the reason that you say you don't have the skills to play it is you're over indexing into attack speed, which means it doesn't matter that you can burn someone if you get cc'd. Like you said, you just die. And more often than not they're going to have some form of CC that can stop you from doing that and so you will just explode because you have no form of survivability once you go in. Volivar scales exceptionally well with tank stats and a little bit of damage because that little bit of damage goes an exceedingly long way on him.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Yep.
And that recommended build with that Flicker blade, the key there Is Flicker Blade is the only item you're building that does not give you health. So with that recommended build of Dusk and Dawn into Flicker Blade into Tank. Is he a diver? A frontline tank? Bruiser? Ultbot? Drain Tank? What is he? I'm confused as to what to do as Volo Bear when I'm not in an early game in the jungle or ganking or skirmishing.
Perhaps I could teamfight better if I actually knew what my role is supposed to be. Well, he's a skirmisher. Volibear is kinda bad in 5v5s,
[00:36:34] Speaker C: so his goal in a 5v5 is very similar to something like an Olaf's or an Abessa's. He jumps past that front line and goes directly into the Squishy Squishy targets. And then he uses his surprisingly large burst to smack stun AoE. Get a shield up and draw people to you. You want people to be turning away from the frontline of your fight to turn onto you to try and save their ad carry. Because otherwise you'll probably. Unless it's like a six build perfect ad carry, they can sometimes still kill you because a lot of them have ways of fighting tanks. However, that doesn't guarantee you can't just merc them.
So his. His goal is to merc the Squishy Squishy Backline.
But also he is a surprisingly strong duelist into other tanks. He has a good amount of sustain. He does a surprising amount of damage. He absolutely duels on side lanes relatively well. Like, once you hit that Flicker Blade power spike, you can be almost like a half an item to an item down and win. Because Volibear scales incredibly well with this, but he is incredibly susceptible to being gang stomped.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: Yep. Basically, once you have the Flicker Blade, you can hold one dude in place for an oppressively long amount of time over the course of the fight.
And you're healing a lot and you're shielding a lot, it's very hard for one dude to fight back. But if there's two dudes, you're only holding half of them in place for a large portion of the fight. If there's three dudes, you're only holding a third of them in place for a large portion of the fight.
So that's why he's better in small skirmishes. And he's just. He's okay in 5v5s.
[00:38:18] Speaker C: Yeah, you're really sort of relying on the rest of your team to do a lot of work in the 5v5, but you're drawing a lot of Heat. So if you're doing fights to play 5v5s, expect to get more deaths.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Grundy continues. What is your ability usage like in your Voli build? I think I remember Jack saying the W heal is unfair in a long fight. When do you go in and who do you target? How do you play your team fights?
[00:38:42] Speaker C: I think we accidentally said half of that.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: We did.
The biggest thing with the W is you have to get two uses before it's a heal. If you are targeting the Squishy, you are not looking to heal. You are looking to blow someone up. Which means you are unloading all of your abilities all at the same time as fast as possible to just 100 to 0 that, dude. If you are fighting someone bulky, maybe you're fighting a set, maybe you're fighting an actual tank. You're wanting to use the W immediately. You're not necessarily wanting to use all the other abilities all at once.
You're usually wanting to use the Ult to dodge some form of CC from your opponent. And you're usually wanting to use the stun and the E together to force the enemy to get hit by the E and allow you to stand in it so you can get a shield.
[00:39:33] Speaker C: The other reason to use your Ult is to turn off a tower to help a dive work better. So sometimes you will throw that right away.
Sometimes you will go in first, do a little bit of a combo, then Ult to turn off the tower. Because once the tower is turned off, when it turns back on until damage is done, it does not recognize you as the priority target anymore. So
[00:39:56] Speaker B: assuming there are minions underneath it for it to choose, that is an important distinction. If there's no valid targets other than you, it's just gonna start shooting you.
[00:40:04] Speaker C: Well, the other thing is it turns off whoever was priority. Now it's targeting whoever does damage first.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:40:10] Speaker C: So you can use it to do what a lot of people do in Juggle Tower. Background turn off tower aggro. Tower aggro comes back on for whoever does damage first. Which means you can keep people under a tower for a very long time.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Alright. Grundy continues, having sort of plateaued with my off meta Voli build. I've been more recently playing Shyvana and Trundle. The Shyvana rework has also made her more AD than ap. How do you compare these three junglers in style and specialties? Do you have any recommendations for playing these three?
[00:40:41] Speaker C: Shyvana is much more similar to Volibear than I think Trundle is. Because Trundle is a very unique style in this.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: They're very similar in that they're all run at you and punch you repeatedly. Champions. Yeah.
[00:40:53] Speaker C: Trundle is unique in that he is one one of the best sideline shovers in the entire game.
2 He is the anti tank. He loves seeing an enemy tank whereas the other two are okay, there's a tank. I'll maybe win that fight. Trundle goes cool tank, tank ult. Look at anyone else beat the crap out of them or just murder the tank. Like Trundle is a little bit warping in this because of how specialized his power is. As opposed to Shyvana and Volibear who are better at diving because each of them have tools of just fuck everyone else. I'm getting in the back. You can't stop a shimana ult. You can't stop a volavar ultimate. So when they ult they're going where they're going. You can stop a Trundle which means he is much more front to back
[00:41:40] Speaker B: pretty much.
Alright, we got one more PS in this before we wrap up in the same episode. You mentioned Nasus being a terror. I think I might like him in the jungle. But you do want to dissuade me, right? Pillow, tell us about Nasus in the jungle. What should Grundy be doing here?
[00:41:58] Speaker D: I think Nasus in the jungle is still really good.
I he gets to do what he wants to do and that is free stack.
Sure they reduce the stacking but that doesn't even matter because you still get a ridiculous amount of stacks and you usually get to do it for free. And by the time anyone decides they want to interrupt you, you're already going to be plenty stacked to be able to fend for yourself.
He's got one of the strongest abilities in the game wither which gives ganking. If you can get in there past vision. Even if you walk up on vision, you just cast a wither on him and it slows him by a ridiculous amount. He's got a armor shred and I think magic shred on his E Mr. And armor on his e shred on his e. He's just a really good just all around champion and with the strongest ability in the game who infinitely scales and he gets to do that for free in the jungle gets to catch side waves.
I just don't think he's a bad jungle now.
He doesn't carry a lot of tempo in his kit especially early where he's not going to be able to control a game where like Some of these other jungles like Shyvana would, where Volibear can kind of just control the tempo there, uh, Nasus has one playstyle and it's going to be slow and steady.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: That that's the biggest thing to me is if you play games of Nasus jungle you are inevitably going to have games where through no fault of your own, your entire team is throwing a tantrum at you because you didn't win the game for them because you're a Nasus and you're ganking early is kinda shit. Whereas those same games, if you're playing Volibear, you can just run in and cue the enemy and beat the shit out of them because you're Volibear and you're actually strong at level three.
[00:44:02] Speaker C: The one
[00:44:03] Speaker D: like Nasus, I was gonna say Nasus to me has the same gank pattern as like Darius Mordekaiser. They don't have any inherent. Like can just go in and mess you up, minus maybe Darius because he has an active CC and Mordekaiser does, but it's kind of. It's better telegraphed and dodgeable when it comes to Mordekaiser. But like Nasus comes in, slows you in hopes that they kill you before the slow wears off. Darius runs in, pulls you, slows you and hope that you die. Mordekaiser comes in and pulls you and pastor just Rs you but like it's not what's.
I forget what point I was getting at. Like he's not. It's televised ganker. It's not the best ganker unless he has the right length of lane available to gank. But he is an incredibly strong diving champion.
[00:44:58] Speaker C: Yeah, they're. They're
[00:44:58] Speaker B: telegram to be clear. If they're pushed up to tower in top or bot lane, which is the long lanes and you can get behind them. Literally every jungler can gank that. That's not special. But that's the only time Nasus is good at ganking.
[00:45:13] Speaker C: Yeah, so
[00:45:13] Speaker D: it's.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: Yeah. So the one thing I'll add into this Nasus thing is if you are going to jungle Nasus, do not over index into trying to get your Q farm. Do not sit there and try and queue every single Raptor. Tempo matters more than stacks. By the time you sit there and intentionally kill every Raptor through your own queue, you will either have lost position to do anything else once your camps are cleared because by the time you would finish you have to go clear again or you've lost the literal minions because people know Nasus is going to try and farm. They're gonna come for your jungle.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Yep. Just make sure you last hit all of the large monsters and as many small ones as you can conveniently do while clearing the camp quickly. All large monsters should be last hit with Q. Any small monsters you can also last hit with Q are a nice bonus.
[00:46:08] Speaker C: The best camp for Nasus is honestly wolves. You should be able to get all three with your Q. And that's about the standard for every single one of them. If there's more than three, you're probably gonna get three.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Of course, the easy answer is, instead of worrying about all these fighters in the jungle, just go play Lucian in the top lane. Push straight down to their nexus. What are they gonna do about it? You're Lucian.
[00:46:34] Speaker C: Do not play Lucian Top. And Annasus, that is a bad call.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: True. But NASA's in the jungle, so it's fine.
[00:46:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: All right, guys, this has been episode 554 of the Four Wards podcast. I've been Jack Sohman for Mike and many names for Pillow Pat. Hopefully we won't be sick next week and we'll see you next time.
[00:46:53] Speaker D: Good night.
[00:46:54] Speaker C: Good night, everybody.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Bye bye.
[00:46:57] Speaker E: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our Patreon at patreon.com theforwardspodcast. And of course, send your questions to
[email protected] so we can answer them live on the show. That's the fourwards podcast at gmail. Com.
