The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 435: Shame on LCS

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the four Wards podcast. Hey, what's up? It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, jerks, and velcos, and you're listening to the Forwards podcast, here to help you move forward and lead. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to episode 435 of the Forwards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman, and I've got with me three other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Crush. You is back this week. [00:00:48] Speaker C: Hey, I am no longer sick. Hooray. [00:00:50] Speaker B: Huzzah. You are also no longer ever present. Unfortunately, it happens. We've also got free shooter, of course. [00:00:58] Speaker D: Hello. [00:01:01] Speaker B: And we dragged him into this. We got witch at Black Mass back this week. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Not dragged. I wanted to be here. I love the enthusiasm, by the way. Free shooter. Damn. [00:01:11] Speaker D: Hello? [00:01:13] Speaker B: All right, guys, gotta. [00:01:14] Speaker C: Gotta test the speakers. [00:01:16] Speaker B: Yep, sound check, guys. We are. We are the Forwards podcast, and we do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV. Jackson, crush streams at Twitch TV crush you, where you can usually catch us recording the podcast live on Sunday nights, which can be found at Twitch TV. One, which underscore one, and Freeshooter can be found at Twitch TV. Freeeshooter. That's right. There are three e's in his free listeners. We have a patreon, and that means we have a shoutout to do. Thank you, codex ninja, for supporting us out the shoutout tier. We appreciate you. Now, listeners. If you want to get shouted out on the podcast every week, head on over to patreon.com theforewordspodcast. We have three membership tiers for just a dollar a month. That just tells us that you love us, we appreciate you. Dollar five a bunch will get you access to an exclusive feed with behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. It'll have, uh. It'll have all of our bullshittery, just us talking whatever games or whatever we feel like, and also just us discussing what we want to cover on the episode. [00:02:29] Speaker D: Spoiler. Next week, I'm probably going to talk about Elden ring DLC. [00:02:34] Speaker B: Yep. I'm fine with that. I have no interest in it, but go off king. All right. And, of course, $10 a month will get you a shout out like Codex Ninja did. So we appreciate all of our listeners, whether you support us or not on Patreon, but we definitely appreciate the $10 a month. Thank you. Thank you, listeners. This is where you get called out. We did not get a single new question sent to our email last week. Send us your questions to theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer them on the show again. That is theforwordspodcastmail.com dot. All right. There's all our plugs out of the way before we get to the patch, though. Crush, you were absent last week and you felt left out of our coverage of beginner champions. [00:03:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I had plans to talk about a couple of champions that you didn't mention at all. And one of them was Warwick. And Warwick in the jungle because he's like beginner mode jungling. He's. Yeah, his clear is so easy and you don't have to work at it and, well, once you get the tmNt, honestly. [00:03:53] Speaker B: All right. [00:03:54] Speaker C: And then his gangster. [00:03:56] Speaker B: I want to push back on that before you get to the. Your next champion. [00:03:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:04:00] Speaker B: We excluded Warwick on purpose. [00:04:03] Speaker C: Oh, really? [00:04:03] Speaker B: Because I do not think Warwick is an easy jungler. He is an easy clear, but jungle is more than just clearing. If you cant clear on a champion, either that champion is not designed for the jungle or you are doing something fundamentally wrong. Warwicks clear speed is mediocre at best and his ganks require actually understanding not just how to use Warwicks kit, like how to use your fear, but also understanding what the enemys likely to do. So you can latch on on their dashes and follow them. Warwick has a lot of ways to fuck up and Warwick from behind if you do not succeed in those first few ganks, is fucking useless. [00:04:50] Speaker C: I disagree, because, like, sure, he's better when he's ahead, everybody is. But, like, even if you're behind on Warwick, like, so, Warwick is easy because you don't have to start the fight. Like, you don't have to be the one hitting the go button. You don't have to be the one choosing the engage. Warwick is easy because his clear is mindless. You can do it without looking at the camps. Sure, it's better if you look at the camps with the cue and everything, but, like, there's not a lot you need to bother hitting. The only one who has a more brainless clear is, like, nocturne, because you really just don't need to touch the camps at all, just auto and look away. Yep. [00:05:37] Speaker B: And I think nocturne is one of the ones we did highlight. [00:05:39] Speaker C: You did? Yeah. The reason I like Warwick for newer junglers is that it's people won't invade you. Like, trying to invade Warwick is recipe for disaster. Now, a lot of people can duel Warwick just fine, but very few can invade him properly. Like you, he's already. He's so healthy in his clear that trying to fight him in his jungle is a bad idea. So that's why I like Warwick's jungle. [00:06:08] Speaker A: For newbies fighting over, like, scuttles in general too. Like, Warwick, like, often wins as well. Even like with like, cC ability champs. Like. Right. Just because his innate healing that he gets if you save Q stuff like that, like, he definitely does have some skill expression in that sense. I do agree that he's very telegraphed and in the sense of what Jax was kind of saying because, like, there's so many ways to stop his ulti. Like, he can be super useless in that sense in comparison to, like, let's say like a mu where it just always holds value to press R in a team comp. So I get, I get both sides of your guys coin there. [00:06:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:06:49] Speaker B: Fair enough. All right. What's your other pressure? Muted. [00:06:53] Speaker C: He's always the first person I tell people trying to play jungle to try to playing because you just can't die in the jungle unless he. [00:06:58] Speaker A: Yes, you can't. [00:07:01] Speaker C: But the other one I want to mention, it was a mid laner. And you guys talked me out of mentioning Ari. I did want to bring up the possibility of Talon for the mid laner. You mentioned that you specifically excluded assassins. Talon is the easiest assassin despite them having made nefiri to try to be new player friendly. I think Talon's the easiest assassin anyway. Yeah, he, he doesn't have skill shots. He has one, which is a huge ass cone. [00:07:34] Speaker B: Yep. [00:07:35] Speaker C: And one of his abilities isn't a combat ability. You don't. It doesn't, it doesn't matter in fights. And it just mostly is used for getting in or away. And you have time to think about when you want to use it. And it's super great. Yeah. I like recommending Talon for people who are interested in trying to play an assassin to see if they like that sort of playstyle. [00:07:57] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that's a good shout. [00:07:59] Speaker B: I can accept that. [00:08:00] Speaker C: All right, that's it. I felt left out. [00:08:04] Speaker B: Well, now that crush has been included, it's a patch week. Patch 1412 hit this past week. So we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about some of the changes we want to highlight. And since you started off talking about assassins, I'm going to lead off with a couple of minor changes to assassins or assassin like champions. First of which is a good start on fucking nerfing the shit out of Akali. They took a lot of damage off of her e. Finally, it's not enough. But they did knock down at rank 130 damage off of the ability and at max rank 100 damage off the ability, and they knocked the AP ratio down a bit. [00:08:57] Speaker C: The ap ratio is down. The ad ratio is up, which is a nerf, even. It's a nerf. [00:09:05] Speaker B: She doesn't build any ad normally, so. [00:09:07] Speaker C: No, it does count. Total ad. So it gives her her base ad. But, yeah, it's a nerf. [00:09:14] Speaker A: I mean, as this ability is the kind of integral part for her, uh, her, like, to enable her r to be undodgeable. Like, it's. It's like super integral to, like, her combo kit that having it lowered will. You will feel it if you're an Akali player. So. [00:09:35] Speaker B: Yep. That ability also just. It does way too much damage. [00:09:40] Speaker A: Yes. [00:09:41] Speaker B: I'm gonna put it out there. It had a base damage of 450. If you landed a shuriken flip and reactivated it. [00:09:49] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:50] Speaker B: At max rank. [00:09:51] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:09:52] Speaker B: That is psychotic. That is ultimate level base damage. [00:09:55] Speaker D: Yeah. Especially when you think about cases. It's her just, like, dashing back to you. That does, like, the visuals just don't match the damage you're taking. [00:10:06] Speaker B: Yep. [00:10:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like undodgeable too, on the hit, so. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Yep, yep. The other change I wanted to briefly touch on for assassin like champions is yone. And the actual change is he gained three armor. It does very little. It's a nothing change. What I wanted to highlight is they stated in their description that about half of players playing yone are running legend haste guys do not build ability haste in your runes or items on yone or yasuo. They scale their important cooldowns, their q, and in Yone's case, his w off of attack speed, not ability haste. [00:10:50] Speaker C: Yep. [00:10:52] Speaker B: You should be taking legend alacrity or legend bloodline. Either one is valid. Legend haste is always wrong. And I think that's why he got such a mild buff, because he's actually not doing good win rate wise. But they don't know how much that is suppressed by people building the wrong rune. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's. That's why the brothers usually go berserker grease. Right. Just on the first back, often just because it. It's such a big power spike on cds and. And also damage in general. [00:11:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a third. More cues. [00:11:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. There's good times. [00:11:26] Speaker B: I want to go next. [00:11:27] Speaker D: I can kind of segue off that a bit. Uh, because Ezreal was another champion that, uh, they didn't buff last patch because they weren't sure how much people just building him wrong was actually affecting his low win rate. They updated his recommended items last patch so that way he would actually start building triforce first again and found, ya know, he was actually doing less damage than he used to be and was weaker. So he's actually gotten a couple decent buffs. His ad growth went up by 0.25. So, you know, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Um, but the bigger ones, uh, his q, the, uh, total ad ratio went up by 10% and his ult, the base damages went up by, um, 25, 50 and 75 based on rank. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:22] Speaker D: Which, uh, they're noticeable, like, especially on the ult because they've kind of been steadily buffing his ult's damage. His ult hits like a freaking freight train. [00:12:34] Speaker C: Is it really that good anymore? I don't know. [00:12:39] Speaker B: I mean, by late game with Ezreal, your ult is doing like 1200 to 1400 damage. [00:12:45] Speaker D: Yeah, it's not at all noticeable on frontline just because even with like an armor pen item, it just doesn't really cut through them. But on squishies, like, firing it over the top of squishies, like, actually does feel like it chunks, like. And granted, this isn't just like, because of this one patch, just like over the last year, it's like, probably gone up a couple, like, at least 200 damage with ratio changes included. [00:13:16] Speaker C: That Q buff looks real good. I know I've been playing against a bunch of ezreals recently. I'm just like, that wasn't that big of a deal, was it? [00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And to be clear, the correct ezreal build now basically amounts to trinity force, manamune, and a bunch of high ad items. Take your pick, depending on the circumstance. [00:13:33] Speaker D: Yup. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Or maybe a frozen heart. Like, frozen heart is the only non high ad item you should be building after second item, he gets a lot of ad. Yep. [00:13:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:47] Speaker D: And again, that's only if it's like you're against like multi marksman or all ad assassin comps. But it's totally viable. Like, Jax and I were playing before the podcast. I was just building maw third item and it was going great. [00:14:02] Speaker B: Yep. That's because we were up against like a Karthus Annie or like a Zyra Ziggs. [00:14:08] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:14:11] Speaker C: All right. I wanted to talk about quirky. [00:14:14] Speaker D: Go for it. [00:14:15] Speaker C: The. Okay, so he got a bunch of changes. Base attack damage dropped by three from 55 to 52. His attack speed growth went up 0.5%. Okay. His Q phosphorus bomb scales better instead of 70 to 250, it's now 70 to 270 and also 100% ap instead of 70% ap. As a reminder, it still scales. Yeah, as a reminder, it still scales 120% on bonus ad. So ad ratio is nuts. The cooldown went down was nine to seven. It's now eight to six. Just took a second off every, every rank. In exchange, they nerfed his e. It does less damage at max rank from. It used to do 280 at max rank. Now just 300 all the way around, but yes. Oh, right. Yeah. Used to do 300, now does 280. The same thing. Max rank. It used to shred 24 armor, measure this. Now it shreds only 20. And now its mana cost is higher at max rank. Basically what theyre doing is nerfing, taking e first. [00:15:30] Speaker A: I think maxing e two. Maxing e first. [00:15:33] Speaker C: Maxing e first. Yes. Theyre trying to shift it a little bit and make it so that the Q Max builds are better than what they currently are, and the emacs builds are worse than what they are. They don't see any huge problems with him, though, except for the emax lethality builds, which is why they hit the magic and Mister armor and Mister shred. But I don't think. I don't think this quite moves the needle enough to take it off of emax first, but maybe not emacs lethality anymore. [00:16:08] Speaker B: So I have a slightly different interpretation of that. I don't think this moves the needle enough to take him off of lethality builds, but I do think it shifts him back to Q max first. [00:16:19] Speaker A: I think it's not just the damage necessarily that got reduction e that will make it the change for Q. I think that just the wave cleared the safety of playing it with the phosphorus bomb in lane just makes it more reliable to play safe in lane and deal damage. I think that is the reason why people will max Q first. No, that's my opinion. [00:16:45] Speaker B: And also, like Q Max with rank one, E can clear waves at, like, level seven or eight just almost immediately. The reverse is not true. If you emacs, you don't clear waves as fast as Q Max. [00:16:58] Speaker D: I will say, I do think it probably pulls about, because I know we've been talking of, like, collector Corki is probably the best first. I've been seeing actually, a lot of opportunity first. I think this probably makes that less viable, like the pure lethality as opposed to the lethality hybrid. [00:17:17] Speaker B: On that note, that's where our trinket tip comes in. You're gonna hear this again if you listen to rundown as well, because I am gonna rant about it on rundown, but as you should because lcs decided to have a big banner on top of the scoreboard saying lcs on live patch. Try this at home listeners, I'm gonna give you a heads up. Please do not imitate the Corki builds you are seeing in pro. They are trash. For whatever reason. The pro players seem to really like going Trinity force into rapid fire cannon, which has a distinct lack of ad for his 120% ad ratio on Q, 250% over 4 seconds on e and 80% to 160% on his r, depending on whether it's the big one or not. [00:18:03] Speaker C: Yeah, because also remember I mentioned it, they lowered the base attack damage. That that applies to sheen proc items. So. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Yep, yep yes. [00:18:12] Speaker B: So the correct build on Corki, whether you are going fleet footwork or hail of blades, is to go collector into Infinity edge. From there. Hail of blades typically will build further lethality items. Fleet footwork versions will typically build further ad crit items such as Shieldbow, Unita, Wild arrows, Lord doms, etcetera. Either of those is valid. This trinity force rapid fire cannon shit does no damage. Please dont imitate the pros. The pros are wrong. [00:18:45] Speaker D: I will say in general, a lot of the times with item builds, just because theyre pro players doesnt actually mean they learn the ins and outs of item builds. Usually thats like the high elo one tricks and like pro players don't like changing what they're building a lot of the time. [00:19:01] Speaker A: So like thing with Trinity is that it just provides like the safety nest, right? Like because of the move speed and like a lot of the other miscellaneous things that it's just the consistency. That consistency that we're talking about, right? Going the lethality build, you're kind of like morph in front and like trying to deal damage and stuff like that. You're risking stuff that you don't have to on the other build. But in my opinion. [00:19:23] Speaker B: So because his ratios are so high, I don't even really feel that's the case currently. I mean, so I don't want to get too much in the weeds on Corki specifically, but the previous version of Corki, the reason he built like Manamune Trinity Force type builds is the rocket's ad ratio scaled with rank. That is not true anymore. At level six, he has the maximum ad ratio he's ever gonna get on his rockets and it's high as fuck. That's why he shouldn't even be bothering with a sheen item. He should just be building high ad items like collector Infinity edge, because he has really high ratios from the get go. And even if you're not putting yourself in danger with the e, not playing like high risk go, the fleet, footwork, build, still build those two items first. Your rockets hit like a truck, your q hits like a truck. You still have the safety of Valkyrie, and you can just build into a crit ad carry later. [00:20:23] Speaker C: Yep, yep, yep. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Okay. I wanted to get that out of the way. That was our trick and tip this week. I was so mad at lcs having that try this at home banner as the pros are literally building the champion wrong. [00:20:38] Speaker C: Yep. [00:20:40] Speaker A: Um, I briefly wanted to touch on first strike. First strike kind of got tuned down a little bit from where it was. So the flat gold that you got was 15. Now it's ten. And then the damage out damage amp was 8%, and now it's down to seven. So I just wanted to compound this with dark harvest currently, because dark harvest also got buffed recently in the changes. I personally think on the champs that you're playing first strike on in lane, at least I think it doesn't change too, too much. I think it's good to still run first strike. I think the biggest change that you could think about is in jungle on some champs, I think you can actually run dark harvest over first strike. That you're actually currently going because of the buffs that actually happened to the dark harvest, that you're not getting the full value out of the gold that you actually get out of first strike. Like, you're not procing it constantly unless if you're on, like, super gank heavy junglers. So I think that you can experiment at least on your build paths now, whenever it comes to dark harvest or first strike for the champs, because I would argue that the inspiration tree for jungle, other than free boots, is a bit rough in comparison to the red tree. So that is my thought process, at least with this change. [00:21:59] Speaker C: I agree with that first rate. The main thing that this does is that I don't think it moves it off of. So it used to be supports were playing first strike and getting lots of value off of it because it gave them so much money from just hitting, they didn't need to do damage. That's why they nerfed the flat gold here. It's still really good for supports. I think they still take it, but I think you're right that out of the jungle, I think Karthus is the only one that should still take first strike. [00:22:29] Speaker A: Karthus Kha'zix was taking it, but I actually. Dark harvest is a viable option for Kha'zix now. Yeah. So. [00:22:36] Speaker B: Yep, I. I've felt that way ever since they changed it to be larger upfront and less based on the damage dealt during it, like a couple patches ago. Kha'zix was taking it before then because Kha'zix thrives on assassinating isolated people. And first strike, a, it's bonus damage up front. That's what Khazix loves. But b, it meant that if you had someone on the enemy team who was a moron and got caught out, you got one to 200 extra gold for killing them. And that just isn't the case with first strike anymore. It doesn't give nearly as much gold based on damage dealt during it anymore. [00:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And then. Yeah, with the buffs that dark harvest got. I think that dark harvest on Kha'zix specifically, for example, I think you should be running it or at least testing it. So. [00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And still take inspiration secondary and get your free ass boots since that's the reason to be there. [00:23:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:23:34] Speaker B: All right. Is it time for me to rant about Aatrox? [00:23:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I think we're good for that. Let's do that. [00:23:41] Speaker D: Go for it. [00:23:42] Speaker B: All right, so they have some changes in here for Aatrox, and I want to. I want to read what they say the goal of these changes are first because then I'm going to explain why I don't think these hit the mark. Our goal with these changes is to return Aatrox to a successful heavy frontliner who deals lots of damage. Not a tank, not even a juggernaut, and certainly not an assassin. That is their stated reasoning for this. So what they've done, minor tweaks to his health, Regen and his armor. They have reduced the amount of healing that his umbral dash gives him. So this used to be just scaling per rank. It no longer scales per rank. It instead is a flat amount and then a scaling with your bonus health. And what this healing is, is this is basically it's like omnivamp against enemy champions. That's what Aatrox's e gives. They also removed this, had an increased value during world Ender. His ult thats just gone. So his omnivamp against champions is significantly down. However, they then have buffed the shit out of world ender, doubling its increased healing at rank one and more than doubling it at the other two ranks. He now gets 100% increased healing at level 16 from world Ender this is my problem. His healing on champions is going to be slightly down with assassin builds. His healing from any other source is massively higher from ocean soul or ocean dragons. From a soraka, from a redemption. All of those are going to be ludicrous on Aatrox. And if he does build sundered sky like hes supposed to, that also is getting a massively amped amount of healing. Aatrox is going to be impossible to handle during world Ender. You no longer have the choice of, oh, he popped world ender. Its fine. Burn him down in a cc. Its now unless you can hundred to zero him in that Cc, it is disengage and wait for world ender to end. Now we are allowed to fight again. [00:26:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:10] Speaker D: Yep. [00:26:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:14] Speaker B: My take on these changes, he's stronger during world ender and weaker outside of it basically. [00:26:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Specifically it didn't touch his damage numbers really. So there's no reason for him to not still go lethality. [00:26:26] Speaker B: Yep. [00:26:27] Speaker A: Yep. And then even with that, like you look at the changes at 16 his ult's on a fairly low cooldown I believe at that point in time. And he has more healing with the like even if he goes that so he'll be healing more and dealing a metric crap ton of damage to you. So it's, it's, it's a bit awkward in the way that they did it because I don't think it, as Jax kind of outlined out like hits the mark on the change in the way that they want to play Aatrox, but it's a step kind of in the right direction, I think. [00:27:00] Speaker C: Yeah. It's, it's a little, it's annoying to me because beforehand during world ender he had 60% healing from umbral dash. So omnivant versus champions and then 45% increased healing from all sources. Now it's 16 plus whatever bonus health he has. And then 100% increased healing from all sources during world ender. And it's like, that's very close to just the same thing. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Yep. [00:27:31] Speaker C: So he's, you didn't, you didn't touch his world under at all if anything. [00:27:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, I wonder if they really wanted to change him to go back to like his kind of like bruiser esque build that they actually want. They said that that's what they want. [00:27:48] Speaker B: They want him to be building sundered sky death's dance, that kind of stuff. [00:27:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:52] Speaker A: I wonder if like Bill, like basing his base damage off of like his health, like kind of what they did on e but like on his other abilities might change his direction a little bit. [00:28:01] Speaker B: But what they should have done that would fix the lethality. [00:28:04] Speaker C: They need to take them, the healing, the base healing from e down to like twelve. You can maybe increase the percent bonus health after that. But like you need to take the base down if you want him to stop building lethality. [00:28:17] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think that is what would push people towards actually building more health on them because like, I mean that's a decent increase ratio. But if it was higher and the base lower. [00:28:29] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's the thing is that all of these changes, even the one I mentioned, if you reduce the base healing it, it doesn't kill the lethality build, it just makes it so that he can't kill you and be impossible to kill. Yeah. He has to pick one. He has to pick lethality and kill you or health and not die. And I am okay with that. [00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, I just, I'm upset because I don't think these changes hit the mark. I do think they make him weaker outside of his ult, but during his ult, he's still gonna be just completely unmanageable. [00:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:09] Speaker B: All right, who wants to go next? [00:29:12] Speaker C: I want to hear about Skarner. [00:29:15] Speaker A: So everyone's favorite top and jungle champ right now. I'm kind of joking a little bit. So they're trying to nerf him a little bit. They change his base health from 650 to 610 and then health growth is up a little bit. So he's a little less lane dominant and also strong on the jungle. I suppose it doesn't change too much in the jungle. It's more. So for top health growth is just nice. It just means that later on he'll get the health back and then his Q quake. Sorry, not Q, sorry. His passive damage from quake magic is, was seven to 10% of Target's magic's health. Now it's five to eleven based on their level. So it's just a little bit lower. It's kind of to knock it down specifically in lane, I think. Because I think in lane is very, very oppressive. There's not too, too much that you can do unless if you're playing specifically counter matchup into him, if you're just like a tank v tank, Skarner is just going to unfortunately out damage you even currently, even with these changes, in my opinion. And I think he's still a very viable jungle. We haven't been seeing it a lot in like for example, pro play, but I think he is very good in the jungle as well. So I think you can get, like, a lot of LP actually playing this champion, to be honest. [00:30:33] Speaker B: He's busted. And I did want to clarify what that passive is because I think it's a part of his kit. A lot of people don't realize whenever he auto attacks you or hits you with either part of his q or hits you with his ult, he applies a stacking debuff and at three stacks, you take five to 11% of your max health over the duration. This is capped against monsters, which is why witch said this doesn't really affect jungle much because he's hitting the cap at 5% or 7%. It doesn't matter. [00:31:03] Speaker A: Yep. This is definitely. These changes are definitely more to tackle how oppressive he is in top lane. [00:31:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Expect more changes next patch with his pro play prevalence. [00:31:14] Speaker A: Yeah, like. Yeah, like. Skarner will have a trajectory because he got reworked to be really, really strong and he's just going to be gradually chipped and chipped and chipped and chipped to the point where he's not going to be overtuned and people think that other things can be played, so. [00:31:31] Speaker B: All right, which one of you two wants to round it out? [00:31:38] Speaker C: Yeah. So, noon quiver, I just wanted to mention really quick, one of the things that I absolutely hated when they redid noon quiver is that they took away the second longsword from its build path, which meant that you would never, ever, ever build this first anymore. Because one of the main reasons to build new quiver first was that it made last hitting a lot easier in lane, which is not true anymore. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Anyway, to be fair. [00:32:04] Speaker C: So. Yes, but they changed it. They literally, all they did was they just added the longsword back to the build path. The total cost is unchanged. It used to be long sword cloak, 450 gold. Now it's long sword longsword cloak. Hundred gold, same. Same price. There was no reason to take the longsword out so mad. Anyway. The reason why this matters is two longswords is good enough that you can start doing a lot more last hitting in lane. I will be specific. They did also nerf the noon quiver. When you finish it, its attack damage was 25, now it's 20, which I think is actually literally just the two long swords together. [00:32:47] Speaker B: Yep. [00:32:50] Speaker C: And I am pretty sure that this item still doesn't build into anything you want to rush as a first item. So this still isn't a first item anymore. But I like the build path being useful now. [00:33:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, buying cloak and sitting on it is one of the worst things you can do on ad period because it just means that you are increasing the variance in your lane because you're relying on something called critical chance. So that's why every ad carry that buys a cloak instead of just waiting. It actually makes me go, like, like a little bit. [00:33:27] Speaker B: So there is an exception on ash. It at least doesn't increase your variance. It's still not all that gold. [00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. [00:33:34] Speaker B: It's not terrible on her. [00:33:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Before, in the before times. Longsword. Longsword for 700 and then go back to lane and then come back another 700 to finish. The nun quiver was great. Now you can do that again. Hooray. I don't. Again, I don't think you build a. [00:33:54] Speaker B: Noon quiver early because it builds into shield, bow, yudhal, wild arrows, and Lord Dominic's regards. None of which should be your first two items, correct? [00:34:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:05] Speaker D: So speaking of Lord Dominicks, it now builds out of a noon quiver. It didn't before this patch. [00:34:13] Speaker C: But segue is so good. [00:34:15] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, basically, actually what they did is they took a lot of the items that had, like, high combined costs, a lot of the, like, ADC items, and just added an extra component to the build path to make it feel better. So, like, lord doms went from last whisper cloak and 950 to last whisper noon quiver and 150 gold. [00:34:36] Speaker A: That's really nice. [00:34:37] Speaker D: Yes. Scout Slingshot got an extra dagger into build path, which is still a bad, like that tier of item, but still. [00:34:48] Speaker A: That'S nice of way put it. [00:34:50] Speaker B: And just like noon quiver, scout slingshot, the upgrade literally only gives you the thing that's unique to scout Slingshot. The two daggers give you as much attack speed as scout Slingshot has. Yep. [00:35:00] Speaker C: Right. Which why it's really nice that they put the two daggers in the thing. So you just build the two daggers and then. [00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yep. [00:35:08] Speaker D: Like, legit. If you don't have enough to finish whatever scout slingshot builds into, get two daggers and a ward and a control ward, it's. You're gonna get more use out of it. [00:35:18] Speaker B: Yep, yep. But speaking of what it builds into. [00:35:22] Speaker D: Yes. Static shiv got a pickaxe added to its recipe. So it's now scout slingshot, retrix and pickaxe plus 225. And actually, I think retrix, like, for that item is actually a really good, like, component. It's only 25 more gold than pickaxe gives. Five less ad. But also I think, like, 20% attack speed. [00:35:45] Speaker C: Like, I guess boost. [00:35:47] Speaker D: Oh, movement speed. That's right. [00:35:49] Speaker A: A lot of ads are building that on their first back, actually, instead. [00:35:53] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a good item. And then the last item I want to touch on, which didn't get a build path change, but it did just get a buff. And it's also a buff that helps ezreal, which is part of why I want to highlight it and why Israel got better. Serelda's grudge, the item we've been dunking on since preseason, when they changed it, I think they finally realized. They finally realized it wasn't actually super viable as an armor pen option. So they just increase the armor pen on it. It was 20% plus .11% per lethality to 25% plus 0.11 per lethality. So with the lethality it gives, you get 26.65% armor pen from it. [00:36:40] Speaker B: Yep. [00:36:40] Speaker D: With no other sources of lethality, which before the changes, it used to give 30%. So you know what? It's actually a lot closer to viable now. [00:36:51] Speaker B: And also to compare this to other armor pen items, black cleaver provides up to 30% shred at max stacks. [00:36:58] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:59] Speaker B: Lore Dom's is 40%. Armor pen moral reminder is 35. So serildas is not terribly far behind the other armor pen items anymore with this change, and it does still provide other value. It gives the lethality. It gives the. The slow effect, like ability, haste. [00:37:19] Speaker D: Yep. [00:37:19] Speaker B: Well, yes, but black Cleaver also has ability, haste, sort of focus on the things that are unique to it. [00:37:24] Speaker D: Yeah. It used to be that you couldn't even, like, approach the other items, even on, like, a fully thoudy build. Now it's like you're probably still not approaching Lord Dom's, but you're comparable with the rest. [00:37:36] Speaker B: Yeah. You are beating black cleaver and roughly on par with mortal reminder as a lethality champion. If you. You build Seryldas and you're probably still beating black cleaver in most use cases, unless you're a champion who really rapid stacks black cleaver? [00:37:50] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:52] Speaker B: Like Vi or I was thinking more like wukong, where his ult alone full stacks it. [00:37:57] Speaker C: So while they're airborne, I would say that the difference between black Cleaver and Serilda's is mostly about whether your damage is front loaded or not. If your damage is front loaded, Serelda's is better. If your damage is not front loaded, black cleaver is probably better because of the move speed passive on blacklever and because health. [00:38:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:16] Speaker C: Right. All right, fatality item. What? So sorry. Huh? [00:38:24] Speaker B: Okay, you want to tell the listeners what you're hanging about because most of us have no idea. [00:38:29] Speaker C: There's apparently a limit of. You can only build one fatality item, which is anything that builds out a last whisper and also terminus. [00:38:39] Speaker B: Yep. [00:38:39] Speaker D: Yep. Anything that gives percent penetration, basically. [00:38:43] Speaker B: Yep. This. This is true for all of the armor pen items. This is also true on the magic pen items. You cannot build a void staff and a crypt bloom, and you cannot combine either of them with the new version of abyssal mask that has a percentage shred. Understandably, the intention is yes or terminus. The intention is that you should not be able to completely negate someone's resistance with a single champion. Abyssal mask and black cleaver exist to allow you to stack two of these effects by virtue of two different people applying them. [00:39:18] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. [00:39:21] Speaker B: There's some. Some team utility value there as well. [00:39:26] Speaker C: I'm just heavily amused that terminus isn't part of both classes. [00:39:30] Speaker B: It makes sense. It gives armor. [00:39:31] Speaker C: It does. It does. Yeah, it does. This is. The entire point is you don't want. You don't want to let people stack armor pen or stack magic pen. So. Makes sense. It's just terminus does both. It's the only one that does. [00:39:42] Speaker B: Yep. And there are still champions that have armor or magic pen in their kit. It is important to note that the percentage penetration from those stacks multiplicatively with the one you get from items to prevent you from having, like, oh, I'm Mordekaiser. I have another 20% magic pen plus void staff. I now ignore 60% of your mister. No, you'll ignore about 50%. [00:40:03] Speaker C: Right, yeah. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Or Darius. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah, Darius. Same thing for armor pen. There's a few others. [00:40:09] Speaker C: Corky, it's a flat. It's a flat reduction. [00:40:12] Speaker B: Yep. Corki's a flat reduction. So he's allowed to stack it normally. [00:40:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:17] Speaker B: All right, let's get some of Grundy's questions done before we wrap up. So Grundy nine rode in, and we're going to start on question two, which is AFK jungle farming. I loved season five, jungle Xin Zhao with SATA devourer, which was somewhat farm simulator PvE. And then at 20 minutes, I could fight and kill anyone, slash anything I wanted, being old enough to be Jax's father. Yes. True. Doubt, grundy. Doubt. I'm sorry, just. You'd have to be, like, 60 years old, which, if you are, kudos. [00:40:56] Speaker A: Respect, respect, respect. Thank you for listening, but, yeah, I. [00:41:01] Speaker B: Don'T think you're 60. Alright, so, uh, the reason I don't think he's 60 is, uh, he says. I grew up going to the bowling alley's arcade to play Pac man, so the complexity of league's teamplay is mind blowing. I don't play enough ranked in a season to seriously climb, as I often can't guarantee I won't be needed by my family work during a game, but I did reach silver for many seasons with league being my first moba. That sated devourer pve mentality clearly ingrained a lot of bad habits. I know some champions example, Shyvana and Master Yi are called farm to six before ganking champions. Is that because they are scaling or because their early ganks are so bad? Or both? What are the warning signs that will let me know? I should not farm selfishly in a particular game, but should look to gank earlier and more often? [00:41:46] Speaker A: Um, I'll take this as a little tidbit, but I think that those champions are still good to power farm in the sense that you're kind of saying. I think that to determine whether you should be selfish or help is dependent on how gank heavy the enemy player is playing their jungle. I wouldn't necessarily say that you should be spam ganking on mastery, for example, but I think that if there's a gank that happens, a counter gank can be used and is actually particularly good if you are ready for it. So I think that's, I think that's the perspective, at least for me, that you could do where you're not actually going for the gank and like engaging, but as soon as they go, you go to match what they're doing. That would be my suggestion. [00:42:41] Speaker C: My preference on. So for context, right now I'm playing basically nocturne and Lilia. Neither of them are very effective gankers before six. My preference when the enemy jungler ganks is to go counter jungle them if because Nocturne finishes his clear so bloody fast, like you finish the clear and you recall, and then the enemy jungler ganks top go kill, go kill their gromp or go take their bot side camp. Gromp or Krugs, whatever. [00:43:10] Speaker B: Whichever side they started on, their first respawns will be there around that time. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:15] Speaker C: Yeah, they took the time to gank so they won't be there at the spawning of their camp. And you can be, if you, if you wipe your jungle, kill the scuttle and immediately recall, you can, you can be there before they are. And because you're nocturned, you can probably kill it before they get there too. [00:43:31] Speaker A: The reason why I suggested what I did. And I see your point. Crush, in what you're saying is that in like, higher people can see that you're doing that. [00:43:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:40] Speaker A: And that you're punishing him from his mistakes. If your top laner ganks three times and you don't, like, counter gank it, he might tilt off the planet playing solo. Queue and silver. You know what I mean? So that, like, that is my reason behind it. [00:43:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:54] Speaker A: I understand completely what your reasoning. [00:43:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Which is like, unironically correct, you know, I mean, like, you're not wrong. I don't think so. I. [00:44:01] Speaker C: But, um. Yeah, so the idea. So the concept of the enemy jungler is camping my lane. Should I go counter gank them at some point? It. Who. That depends if they were successful in their first three ganks. If they do a fourth one, I'm not showing up. [00:44:22] Speaker B: You'll lose the two v two. [00:44:24] Speaker C: Yeah. This point, like there's, it's obviously, it. [00:44:26] Speaker A: Depends on the extent of it. [00:44:27] Speaker D: Unless you like tower diving, in which case you could still probably, like, get. [00:44:32] Speaker C: A shutdown if, like most. So the majority of the time, when I see an enemy jungler ganking the same lane three times and getting something off of every, every gank up there, that means that my player up there is not good. [00:44:53] Speaker B: They're not worth investing your time into. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:56] Speaker C: Because anybody, anybody and everybody can die to a two v one. Like, it's ok, it's, it's legit, it's fine. Happens to everybody. Don't worry about it. Three times in a row, though, there's this concept of playing from behind that this person doesn't grasp, grasp. And I can't help that it's better for me to try and get something else wrong on the map. The easiest thing is counter jungling if I keep track of their camp timers. And the second easiest thing is to just gank the opposite side of the map or take an objective on the opposite side of the map. Like, I hate losing my top lane too, because I love getting grubs as nocturne. Because he loves grubs. But I'm sorry if you're dying to ganks this many times in a row. There's. It's not my fault. [00:45:52] Speaker A: No, by no means. [00:45:54] Speaker D: I'm going to pivot slightly on the question because I think there's another, like, easy, like, sign of, oh, I can be ganking more and is, if you like, especially around, like, silver, gold, because, like, this is still an issue. I have a lot in my games is like, overstaying when I've pushed in, and that's really easy for a jungle to recognize of. Hey, that guy is at, like, the oppo, like, my laners tower, and has stayed there for, like, two waves. Go gank that guy. Like, he's, like, either on a ward. [00:46:37] Speaker A: But he's not respecting you. [00:46:38] Speaker D: Yeah, he is not respecting you. That's the best way to put it. [00:46:41] Speaker C: Yeah, this is. I want to be precise. This is different from the situation I described of someone was ganked several times and died several times. If someone's getting ganked several times or they're getting pressure pressed under their tower, that is a perfectly fine and good time to go gank them. Even if I don't get a kill, I at least make them. Oh, you're right. There's a jungler in this game. I have to be careful when I approach the tower, giving my laner some room to breathe. That's. That's good. So if they're being pressed in and your laner is playing correctly and not dying and holding, holding his own as best he can, then, yeah, go, go gank. To help relieve pressure. Even if you don't get a kill or a flash or anything. Yeah. [00:47:24] Speaker A: Sometimes they just need to collect, like. Like, the minions without getting harassed. [00:47:28] Speaker C: In a sense. [00:47:28] Speaker A: You sitting on a ward means that they get to collect it, because unless if the top laner is egoing, and then you get a free kill. You know what I mean? So it's. Yeah, I usually in top as an example, because the majority of the time, that's where people eat. Go. [00:47:42] Speaker D: So, yeah, I. [00:47:45] Speaker C: This is. This is true. [00:47:46] Speaker D: And, like, I have a perfect example of that today of. I was playing. We were ezreal Lux into Lucianami, and they just kept pushing us to our tower, and our Zach kept ganking them when they would push us to our tower and stay for more than a wave because he would be on gromp or. Yeah, on gromp. Because we were red side. See that? We were getting pushed in. Just walk to the tribrush, wait there for a second. And when he saw that they pushed up again, that he would jump it. [00:48:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's great. That's one of those signs of, you should go gank them. I am a greedy jungler, and I will generally never gank if my camps are up at all. Getting me to gank when my gromp is up, good luck. I'm killing that first and then coming to gank. Unless you're in the process of fighting him and I can actually get to the fight quickly enough to kill it, then I'm staying on my gromp, which is why I play nocturne, because I can actually get to the fight faster. [00:48:42] Speaker B: Yep. Honestly, I think if you enjoyed the season five jungles in Jazza, to devour style, just play nocturne. [00:48:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, nocturne is really, really good at clearing. Right now. [00:48:54] Speaker B: He's good at clearing, but also he's the closest to that style of just. You live in the jungle, you farm to 20 minutes and then you just murder people over and over. [00:49:03] Speaker D: Introduce you to jungle Karthus. [00:49:08] Speaker A: Don't press r, don't gank, just continue. [00:49:12] Speaker C: What is a ganking? Gank is the r key, right? I press that button. [00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. You're providing pressure by it. [00:49:18] Speaker B: I will argue that the difference there is that jungle Karthus is really bad at taking dragons or grubs because he takes so much damage doing them. Whereas nocturne, it is free as fuck. If you are not going to be interrupted. How many times will help if someone shows up? [00:49:33] Speaker D: How many times did you solo kill that Karthus because you kept walking in on him doing objectives? [00:49:39] Speaker B: So before the podcast free and I played a game where I was Malzahar and I just kept walking to wherever the Karthus was doing objectives and just murdering him and then walking away. I think I killed him like four times over the course of that game. Just because I just walked over and was like, oh, he's doing dragon, he's dead. Oh, he's doing grubs. He's dead. [00:49:57] Speaker A: We are. You're dead. [00:49:58] Speaker D: Yep. [00:49:59] Speaker B: Basically, yeah. If he was. If he was smart and turned on his, like, damage aura, he'll kill all my voidlings. But the, er, still was doing like 80% of his life and then I hit a queue and he's dead. [00:50:12] Speaker C: Yep. [00:50:12] Speaker A: Nice. [00:50:14] Speaker C: The last thing I want to say real quick is I don't consider it necessary in low elo until about gold, honestly, to be ganking heavily at all. Like, yes, you can win games that way. If you get a gank and kid a kill and get a snowball going, it's not that bad of a deal. But you can also just win a lot of games just by efficiently clearing your jungle. This is kind of the same concept as. You could just win games by just farming. Well, on ad carry. [00:50:45] Speaker A: Yeah. The consistency factor of it is like, just there. [00:50:48] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:50:49] Speaker C: So my suggestion would just be, be efficient at farming, then look for ganks. [00:50:53] Speaker B: I want to get to Grundy's next question before we wrap up because it is a series of questions about Volovair. So Grundy writes, I played a jungle AP attack speed volibear build that was 100 two and 300 cs at 31 minutes. Yes, it was a bronze four game. I could skirmish anyone and instantly clear all camps. So fun. I farmed all four quadrants, ignored my team and split, pushed taking in hips three times until at one point I was level 18 while the whole rest of the game was still around level 14. I ended the game at 9.2 cs per minute, whereas the next highest was the enemy ad carry at 6.1. This was so fun, yet so confusing. Question three a, why is this a bad strategy? So before we give grundy's answer, do you guys have any thoughts on this? [00:51:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't. Did you win, people? [00:51:44] Speaker C: I don't think this is a bad strategy. [00:51:48] Speaker B: I will say for top lane, the build that everyone is doing right now is rod of ages into flicker, blades into ten, fidget spinner bill. And with context of top lane, I do think that's fine. Top lane always has the passive up. And that's, I think, the big difference why I don't like AP as much from the jungle. Because you have to restack your passive at least twice in your clear. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Yeah, ap jungle. AP in the jungle is just like, really not as reliable as the other ones because let's say, like, you start a cat, but someone invades you, it's still rough because you used your e already on the buff, and then, like, yeah, it's awkward. [00:52:30] Speaker B: I mean, that's true. Regardless of what version of holo area you're true. So go ahead. [00:52:36] Speaker D: I was gonna say I could give an actual, like, answer on why any, like, hype split push strategy can be bad. And that's if you are never, like, literally never joining your team. And like, they're losing four v five s, it will eventually get to a point where you won't, like, shouldn't be able to solo win the game their south, whether that be through them getting dragon soul, them getting Baron, or like, your team just being far enough behind that they can two v one you and the enemy team can three v four. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Yes, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, that's the one that always happens to me when I have a game like this. So Grundy's explanation is, while I often found someone in their jungle to murder, the rest of my team was really struggling to hold them off. And the resulting four v four on the other side of the map to prove this point. When we finally went in to end the game, I ulted the two Nexus towers, turning them both off, got stunned by their jacks, took two shots from their ad carry, and was dead before the towers even turned back on. Sheepishly. I didn't even notice that the rest of the team went over to kill and hip hash three instead of diving with me until I watched the replay to learn why I died so fast. [00:53:41] Speaker D: Oh, happens to be all the time. [00:53:43] Speaker B: This is a reason to do replays, guys. [00:53:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:53:47] Speaker A: Yep. [00:53:50] Speaker B: So Grundy's lesson here is I don't really value teamwork as I should and sometimes still treat this game like it's PvE. And that pretty much sums up why I don't really like the the AP builds is you are really squishy. Anyone that you are not actively in the process of murdering will just murder you right back. Yep, yep. Volley's shield and his heal both scale off of HP. They do not scale off of AP. The damage on his shield scales off AP, but not the shield itself. [00:54:24] Speaker A: As the resident volibear expert, yeah. [00:54:29] Speaker B: The craziest part of Volibear's AP scaling is honestly his passive. That's why I said for top lane. I think the AP build is more valid because Volibear's passive has a 50% AP ratio for the on hit portion and it scales the attack speed you get per stack because a lot of. [00:54:46] Speaker A: People does like stand in the wave and like wait a second. Ow ow ow ow. [00:54:49] Speaker D: Yep. [00:54:50] Speaker A: Wait a second. [00:54:51] Speaker B: Why am I taking 100 damage every auto from the volibear that autos twice a second when he's not even hitting me, right? [00:54:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:00] Speaker B: All right, so he has question three b, which is if I am very far ahead, how can I tell when split pushing versus objectives versus teamfighting is the best path to victory? And he follows this up with Jax. I know you've played a lot of volley prioritizing, HP. That is hard for me to play correctly because then I seem to farm slower, limiting my fun power and influence in the game. [00:55:23] Speaker C: The split push question is, if you're very far ahead, okay, if you're very far ahead, split pushing is sort of the thing that happens if your team doesn't follow you. [00:55:34] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:35] Speaker C: Your team should be following you on Volibear. When you're ahead, you can split push. He can do that. But as you found that the if you hit a team fight, it doesn't really do so well. [00:55:47] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:55:47] Speaker A: And without your volibear alt in general, like with you building health, you're able to enable your teammates in the sense because you're able to disable a turret that people are standing by and then the fight underneath. [00:55:59] Speaker B: Yep. [00:55:59] Speaker A: Of which afterwards you're gonna be tanking it. Like, whatever. Like in that sense, you're enabling your team to actually do what you want. [00:56:05] Speaker B: On that note, generally it is wrong to disable the turret before it has started shooting. Generally let the turret shoot a shot and then disable it. A, the turret heats up per shot. The first shot doesn't really do very much to begin with. And b, this maximizes the amount of time that you're spending in the dive where the turret is not shooting you at all because you are already actively in the dive by the time it has started shooting someone on your team. Yep. That's a common mistake. I see with volibears as they initiate the dive with their ult and then the turret turns back on before they've killed the person. [00:56:42] Speaker D: I will say to answer the when to split push. More generally, if you are far ahead and the rest of your team is even or ahead split push. If the rest of your team is behind, you should probably bring your lead to help your team. Like, I feel like Riven is the classic example of I'll see a riven be 100 out of lane, but then just stay top lane and never join fights and lose the team that their team the game because the rest of us just start winning. Five v four s or like three v one. Killing the riven for shutdowns. [00:57:16] Speaker B: Yep. And especially when there is one strong person on the enemy team. Someone like a volibear is really good at just saying, hey, you. You in particular. Fuck you die. Yeah, he's got a single target stud and you just murder the one fed person on their team. Then it doesn't matter that the rest of your team's behind because you've just equalized things. [00:57:36] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:57:38] Speaker B: So question three. C is why is HP a better strategy than AP or attack speed on Voli? Um, as I mentioned earlier, Voli's shield skills with HP, his w damage and healing scale with a HP. And when you are ahead on volibear. Yes. Just building HP will farm slower than building AP. But there's nothing stopping you from building a Titanic hydra and or overlords bloodmail if you're ahead, which will turn that HP into more offense as well. Yeah, especially, like, I want to blow up with one fed dude. Like, Titanic Hydra is an auto reset. It's a lot of fucking damage. [00:58:25] Speaker A: Yeah, in addition to that, like, you going to the attack speed AP build. Let's say you're also very squishy in that sense. Right. So you going in to kill someone. If you don't kill them immediately, they have a chance to retaliate. [00:58:36] Speaker B: Yep. [00:58:37] Speaker A: Whenever you're playing the ad at HP build, you're able to do the. Do the fight. Like do the fight back and actually live for an extended duration afterwards. Like slow play. The fight where you're healing with your w. Quite often with it. So. Yeah. [00:58:55] Speaker B: Yep. Especially like when you've built a lot of HP and you're hitting someone tanky. Like the recasting with your w. Yes. Oh my God, yes. [00:59:04] Speaker A: So much like you're hitting the ad intentionally and then you're just like Wilna and then you're hitting and then you w. Leona. Like you're just healing it up. [00:59:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that one. Not so much because you're w ing the ADC to kill them, but it's more like once the ADC is dead and you're fighting their cho'gath or whatever. Yeah, you just. You heal so much with the w when you're able to recast it on people. And even though I was down on the flicker blade rod of ages build, I think even for the ad builds, fitting a flicker blade in like, fourth item is totally valid. It is actually dumb how much more w and e spam it gives you. [00:59:44] Speaker A: Yep. [00:59:45] Speaker B: Alright, so question 3d is what items are currently best on Voli and how do you know when to build more damage versus more health? Um, the answer to that is you always want more health. The question is whether you want health and defense or health and damage. [01:00:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:05] Speaker B: So I'm of the opinion, unless it's flicker blade, you should be building health on every single item you build. Foley is not a champion. That should typically be building frozen heart. For example, if you want health offense items, sunfire cape and unending despair, or whatever it's called, you never remember our good offensive tank items. Hollow radiance if you need the mister version of Sunfire Cape. Also, if you're playing top lane, hollow radiance is nuts for tank build because of the way it wave clears. If you want offense and health, I mentioned Titanic and Overlord's bloodmail. The two of those combined are hilarious. You do so much damage with your like 5000 life. Heartsteal is also a valid. Just lots of health gives you damage against champion's item. That one won't help your clear speed much, though. No other items that are just generically good if they're magic heavy. You have a shield and healing in your kit. Build a spirit visage. It's great. Your healing relies on you getting a second cast of your wife. Jack show can give you a lot of resist to last long enough. It encourages long fights. There's a lot of options, but basically it amounts to build health offense. Like Sterak's gauge would be another like health and offense item option or build health tank. Those are your two options. Even a volibear that is built full tank like sunfire cape unending despair, spirit Visage jack show and something else does a lot of damage. Like a lot, a lot of damage. [01:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Volibear's base is very high damage. So yeah. And it scales with health. [01:02:09] Speaker D: So what about Riftmaker? [01:02:12] Speaker B: So Riftmaker has the same problem as other AP items of. It's just you can't rush it and be tanky. Riftmaker is actually a valid like fourth or fifth item for a traditional HP stacking volley. I'm not gonna hate on it. Jungle volley still has the problem of it takes a long time to ramp up. You're not hitting minions before a brawl like you are in a side lane. So you don't get value out of the AP until you're fully stacked. Like you have to hit five basic attacks or abilities to start dealing that 50% ap damage on hit. [01:02:51] Speaker A: Here, guys, let me do it. Start the wolves and then I'll join the integral team fight. Okay. Yeah, give me a second. [01:02:56] Speaker B: That's why I don't have that problem with jungle specifically. [01:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:02] Speaker D: Wait, do you have to trigger riftmaker to get the bonus? [01:03:06] Speaker B: So health maker just. Well, no, it's a riftmaker gives omnivamp after 5 seconds of combat. [01:03:14] Speaker D: Mm hmm. [01:03:16] Speaker B: Volibear is the like, you have to trigger your passive to get the AP as on hit damage. [01:03:23] Speaker D: I see. Okay. Gotcha. [01:03:25] Speaker B: Yes. Volibear's passive is the, the lightning clause. [01:03:29] Speaker D: Yep. Misunderstood what you're talking about triggering. Gotcha. [01:03:32] Speaker B: Yes. [01:03:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:34] Speaker B: It's good to clarify though. All right. He has one follow up to all of this volibear talk, which is I also play shyvana jungle with the wrong builds. Does any of this apply to Shyvana as well? [01:03:51] Speaker C: I don't think so. [01:03:52] Speaker B: Bruiser Shyvana then. Yes, but you shouldn't be playing bruiser Shyvana right now. [01:03:56] Speaker C: I was like, I think Shyvana is still AP Shyvana, right? [01:03:58] Speaker A: Yep, she is. Yes. [01:04:00] Speaker B: She goes ap just burst dragon out and just breathe at people. [01:04:04] Speaker D: Her highest win rate build is spira shojin into Liandry's while taking jack of all trades. [01:04:10] Speaker B: Yep. [01:04:11] Speaker C: And rift maker. [01:04:12] Speaker D: And rift maker. That's what got me thinking about. [01:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, she just, yeah, she just spinning fireballs the whole entire time, like, transforming, getting, like, resets on her ulti. [01:04:21] Speaker C: And I feel like I need to try playing Shyvana because also it's press the attack shyvana, which is very interesting. [01:04:25] Speaker B: And the point of that build is her Q applies two on hit, so it resets the cooldown on e really fast. [01:04:31] Speaker C: Mm hmm. [01:04:32] Speaker A: Yep. And you get your ultbecle really, really quick by doing two camps, I think. [01:04:37] Speaker B: Yep. [01:04:37] Speaker A: So, yeah. [01:04:40] Speaker B: All right, that's a good point to stop for Grundy's questions for this week. Let's save some more for next week because, listeners, you guys didn't write in any questions this week, send us questions to the four wards, podcastmail.com, so we can answer them on the show. Otherwise, we just have Grundy's questions left. We love you, Grundy, but thank you. [01:05:03] Speaker C: For carrying the show, Grundy. [01:05:06] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:05:07] Speaker D: Oh, wait, no, hang on. I got it. This advice might not apply to Shyvana, but it does apply to lucian top, so you can split, push away to victory. [01:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:17] Speaker B: God, titanic, hydra, lucian top. [01:05:20] Speaker A: No, no. Ap. He's going ap. [01:05:22] Speaker C: Attack speed. [01:05:26] Speaker B: Loosen top. [01:05:28] Speaker C: Jack of all trades. Let's do it. Let's do it. [01:05:31] Speaker B: Oh, God. All right, guys, this has been episode 435 of the Forwards podcast. I've been Jack Soman for crush, you for free shooter, and for witch at Black Mass. Have a great night. [01:05:43] Speaker D: Bye. [01:05:47] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Forwards podcast. If you liked what you heard and you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com, the forwardspodcast, to give us some support. We appreciate you. And, of course, listeners, please don't forget to write your questions into [email protected] so we can answer them on the show.