The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 439: Swarming the Patch Notes

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the four Wards podcast. Hey, what's up? It's Eric Brah, voice of Draven, Jerks, and Velcaz. 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 430. [00:00:38] Speaker A: I told you I was gonna do it. [00:00:39] Speaker B: 139 of the Forwards podcast. Yeah, you did warn me, and I still fucking got sidetracked by it. You know what? We're rolling with it, guys. I'm Jack Soman. I'm your host. The other voice you hear is free shooter. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Hi, I'm the troll this week. [00:00:56] Speaker B: It's true. He is pretty trolly, guys, we're the Forwards podcast. We're here to help you move forward. In League of Legends, we do stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV Jackson, where you can watch me bounce in and out of emerald, apparently. Although by the time you hear this, I should hopefully be back in Emerald, and then it'll just be path of exile streams for a couple weeks. But hey, that's fun too. And free shooter can of course be found at Twitch TV. Free eshooter. That's right. There are three e's in free. [00:01:26] Speaker A: Yeah, once I'm out of work, Hal. [00:01:29] Speaker B: Hopefully soon. [00:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah, end of summer, probably. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Fair enough. All right, so our topics to cover before we get to the main topic, we have shoutouts. Shout out to Codex, ninja and pillow pet for supporting us at the shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much. We could not do this without our patrons. We have a Patreon, guys. Patreon.com, the forwardspodcast. Your support keeps the lights on, it pays for our hosting, so we can actually have a show for you guys. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Yes, we do offer appreciate it. [00:02:02] Speaker B: Seriously, we do offer three tiers on the Patreon. If you just want to throw us a buck a month, we appreciate it. It tells us that you love us. Now, if you want to get goodies, $5 a month will get you an exclusive feed with behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. Sometimes it's actual prep work on the document, sometimes it is just us shooting the shit. Either way, $5 a month, you get access to that feed. And if you want to be extra cool, like codexninja and pillow pet, $10 a month will get you the exclusive feed and get you shoutouts to, uh, every episode as long as you maintain the subscription, especially pillow pet. [00:02:40] Speaker A: I hope we're saying that right. [00:02:43] Speaker B: I hope so. I don't actually know. Pillow Pet can certainly tell us. [00:02:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:02:53] Speaker B: Alright. So, guys, speaking of telling us, do you want to help guide new players. The Forwards podcast is hosting auditions. If you want to join the show, record yourself giving a trinket tip and send the recording to theforwordspodcastmail.com dot. We use audacity to record. There is a link in the episode description for audacity. If you do not already have that software, it is free. Our typical recording time is about 06:00 p.m. pacific 09:00 p.m. eastern. We are flexible on the day depending on what days the people we select are available. Guys, get those auditions in. The deadline is Saturday the 27th. If you do not get your audition in by the 27th, you won't be able to become a member of the Forwards podcast until the next time, which hopefully will be quite a ways away. But you never know what life's gonna throw at us. So yeah, get those auditions in. Guys, seriously, we wanna hear from you. We would love to invite multiple new wards to the show to come help us guide the next generation of League of Legends players. Last but not least, that email address is also good for sending questions. Send your questions to theforwordspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show too. All right guys, it is a patch week. This past week, patch 1414 came out. There is a lot of stuff in this patch. So me and Freeshooter are gonna do our best to highlight the stuff that we think is impactful or important or we just wanna grumble and vent about. We are gonna give a heads up at the top. As usual with new champions, Aurora is out. We do not yet have enough experience with her to cover her. So we are going to be ignoring that fact. Other than telling you that she is out. We'll cover her soon. [00:04:48] Speaker A: I have a quick grumble. [00:04:50] Speaker B: Go for it. [00:04:51] Speaker A: I hate that that is her name because that's one of those words that like I can't say without thinking about it. Like I have to be consciously thinking Aurora. And even still I just like slur it. So apologies. I will not be pronouncing this champion's name correctly because boy, my mouth hates that word. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Fair enough, I say. Maybe it just means you need to practice saying Aurora until you're able to just say it normally. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Aurora. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Hey, that wasn't bad. Alright, I'm gonna kick things off. My list is a combination of nerfs to champions that I like and play and buffs to some of my least favorite champions in all of league of legends. So I'm gonna kick it off with the nerf that doesn't do anything. Brand got nerfed specifically. They nerfed brand's e. The conflagration where he spreads the fire. They added a second to the cooldown and nerfed the base damage by five. This does nothing. Like literally this does nothing. They did this specifically. They targeted this because this is the second max for farming brands mid end bot farming carry. And this is the most annoying of his abilities because it's basically if he hits any other ability on a minion, that's 4 seconds that you can't walk up or you get hit by this. Go ahead. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Oh, it's just funny that like two patches in a row. Cause I was like this. This set at your saying sounds familiar. I look back at the last patch and it's nerfing his e damage. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:06:34] Speaker A: It's like, huh, that didn't work last time. What if we do it again? [00:06:40] Speaker B: It still doesn't do anything. He's still like all of his damage is in proccing liandries and Blackfyre for fucking forever because his burn passive reprocks them for its own duration. So any spell hit applies like five to 7 seconds of item burn. [00:06:59] Speaker A: Yeah, legitimately. [00:07:00] Speaker B: All of his damages. [00:07:01] Speaker A: They either need to nerf the items or just nerf the duration of blaze. And if they nerf the duration of blaze, Bran gets dumpstered. [00:07:08] Speaker B: So like, they need to make blaze not apply spell effects and then they can balance the rest of him accordingly. Yeah, but they're not going to do that because that would require intelligence and understanding game design. Something riot lacks, as evidenced by some of these other changes. You want to go next? [00:07:26] Speaker A: Um, sure. You know what? This one's not on my list. But if we're talking about annoying, uh, changes, aphelios, um, got buffed. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, because, hey, like, perplexingly buffed. [00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, every ADC in the game is strong right now. So let's buff aphelios right before world so we can nerf everyone else. And it's gonna be a felios met out worlds again. Yay. [00:07:54] Speaker B: See, but I don't think these changes do that. Run through what they actually buffed. And that's probably perplexing. [00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So they buffed three of his Q's. So they buffed the damage on the purple Q, which is the root after his hit someone and slowed them with the purple gun. Both the base damage and the bonus ad percentage. They buffed the white gun Q, which is the sentry base and percentage based on level of ad. And they nerfed the red gun Q. Just the bonus ad percentage. [00:08:40] Speaker B: No, it's a buff. [00:08:42] Speaker A: Did I say nerf? Sorry. Buffed. I was thinking they only buffed the percentage on that one, not the base damage, which is weird because that's already the strongest Q. [00:08:55] Speaker B: It's. That is the strong Q, but it also is the Q that actually makes him commit and be in danger of things, whereas the other ones aren't. That's the one. I don't mind them buffing if they think he's too weak. Yeah, the other buffs, like, buffing the damage on the root just doesn't do anything. And buffing the sentry, like, again, it doesn't really do much. But the cases where sentry does damage, like, it's obnoxious because, again, he's not in danger when his sentry is shooting. [00:09:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the sentry actually does less than the bind because the bind one typically is like, you know, if you have purple gun, like, you're, like, kind of acting as more secondary gauge. Like, it's way more useful when you're getting ganked in lane of, like, just having a little bit more cc. So it helps in those situations if it's just like, a little bit extra burst potential when you have purple gun out. So I don't mind that one. But yeah, I agree. I don't like the sentry gun buffs. [00:09:57] Speaker B: So what I'm thinking is, and I'm realizing as I talk through it, this is why the sentry buff doesn't matter. Like, the biggest abuse case for the sentry is popping it while doing baron with green white and just stacking up chakrams to high heavens. [00:10:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Because it makes it impossible to stop a baron. Because aphelios turns and one shots, anyone. Because he has 1520 chakrams. Because the turret just keeps chain procing them. [00:10:23] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:10:26] Speaker B: But buffing the damage of the turret doesn't change that. So it doesn't do anything. You are right that the. The Q is the biggest buff. It's just also weird. [00:10:36] Speaker A: Ah, but which Q? [00:10:39] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. The root. [00:10:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Aphelios is frustrating to talk about because he has five abilities on Q. Yep. [00:10:48] Speaker A: Thanks. All right, 200 years. [00:10:52] Speaker B: Let's talk about an ad. Carry on the opposite end of the spectrum for a moment. Tristan, short jokes. No, I'm not talking about Veigar. No. So Tristana got some changes specifically to try to make her a little bit less oppressive in mid lane. [00:11:10] Speaker A: Finally. [00:11:11] Speaker B: First of all, they buffed her mana by 50. And this is counterintuitive. That sounds like a buff. That is a compensation to make sure that the first use of your q is net neutral in terms of mana. Because her Q now has a mana cost. It went from zero to 50. They also nerfed the attack speed steroid on it. And that's, in my opinion, the actual biggest part of this Nerfenhe she lost 15% attack speed at all ranks. They also reduced the rocket jump mana cost by ten, which is nice for when you're in reset city. You can actually get reset city sometimes, but it doesn't affect anything else. The mana changes here are a complete red herring. It's the loss of the attack speed makes it significantly harder to actually force stack your bomb in the early to mid game. [00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And just for like comparison sake to an item that's as much attack speed as a zeal gives you. [00:12:07] Speaker B: Yep, it's one and a half longswords or not longswords. Daggers. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Daggers. Yeah. [00:12:15] Speaker B: It is a meaningful attack speed loss with no compensation at all. So she's just worse. But also she can't spam nearly as much. And I think a lot of people need to stop building flicker blade on her and build phantom dancer instead to make up the lost attack speed. And just accept that you're not going to have Q 100% of the time because you can't spam it anymore because you'll run oom. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Yep. [00:12:44] Speaker B: Alright. [00:12:45] Speaker A: I. Yeah, long time coming too. Like she's been too oppressive in mid for a while. [00:12:50] Speaker B: She's still just as fucking oppressive. Admit this, this does not change the things about her that are oppressive, which is that she has mana less waveclear with her. E passive and really strong all in. Yeah, but it maybe means the other ad carries in mid can push her out better. Cause by the way, if you weren't aware, mid lane is the fucking ad carry Lane now. And mages get played in the bot lane. That is more true than I wish it was. [00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I watch the leC. Yeah. [00:13:27] Speaker B: No, in the LEC they're just playing. Ad carries in both and sometimes all three. [00:13:32] Speaker A: Sometimes they play them top two. [00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah, there's more than sometimes, but yes. Yeah, it's Marksman and pro are dominant as fuck. For the rest of us mere mortals, they're pretty fucking strong. Freak should be very happy because that was clearly his goal with the mid season changes in the first place. [00:13:58] Speaker A: Yup. [00:14:00] Speaker B: Alright. Want to talk about something that should make ad carries happy and supports not so happy? [00:14:05] Speaker A: Sure. I'll talk about warmogs. So warmogs is getting nerfed. If you didn't know the way the Warmogs passive works, the massive out of combat healing, you need to have a certain HP threshold, that threshold, and this is just bonus Hp that you've gained from any item, any source of just bonus Hp. You needed 1300, it's now 1500. And the reason for that is simple math. With supports, Warmogs itself gives 1000, the support quest gives 200. So with just natural bonus HP and runes, 1300 hp was easily achievable on supports with just your support quest and wombox itself. And that wasn't very healthy. So they just added an extra 200 health requirement, added a little bit more of a gold penalty for or a gold investment requirement for the supports that want about the warmogs, which, you know, support is the role that gets the least gold, so it affects them the most. This doesn't affect anyone else. Literally just supports. [00:15:15] Speaker B: Yep. To be clear, top laners were already going to meet the health requirement because of grasp. And junglers were already going to meet the health requirement because they're building it second, not first. And they have whatever the route is called that gives you health based on minion kills. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:35] Speaker B: I don't remember what the rune is. [00:15:36] Speaker A: Called, but I don't know. [00:15:37] Speaker B: It gives like 3.5% health overgrowth, some flat health. That's it. So there's other ways for the classes that are supposed to be building warmogs early ish to still reach the threshold trivially. [00:15:54] Speaker A: Yep. So this is a very deserved nerf. Very smart one. And well explained in the patch notes as well. Like, honestly, no notes on this one. Good job, riot. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a nerf we're happy with. Like, this needed to happen. And was it? I love that they actually gave the proper explanation. [00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, like actually giving the math on it. I love that. More of this, please. [00:16:20] Speaker B: All right, how about some changes we want to see less of? For some fucking reason, Riot decided to buff Zed. Yeah, let me just remind you, while we're at it, I'm just gonna go look up. Gee, what are the most popular champions in mid lane by pick rate? Oh, look, it's Aurora, the new champion. And Zed. Gee, I wonder who's the highest ban rate in mid lane. Oh, it's Aurora, the new champion. And then Zed. Fuck Zed. They buffed his q by ten base damage. And they gave more cooldown reduction on his e whenever he hits champions with it. I hate this. I have literally not allowed Zed to exist in my game since this patch went live. [00:17:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fair. Fuck this champion. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Which unfortunately means I have had to allow the other champion that I'm gonna briefly mention to exist in my games. Irelia got some changes. Riot bills this as an adjustment and not a straight buff, but Riot is also lying in these patch notes. So they reduced her ad growth from four to three and a half. Whoop dee doo. They buffed her attack speed on her passive and made it scale linearly instead of having break points. And to compensate for this, they reduced how much her cooldown reduction on her q is if she misses a last hit with it from her ult, which I didn't even know was a thing she got because the champion is so overtuned and so oppressive. Guys, my issue with Irelia is entirely the fact that she gets to build Bork and Q an entire minion wave to heal her entire health bar and be unfightable. [00:18:18] Speaker A: Yep. [00:18:20] Speaker B: I really wish they would remove the healing on Q entirely and make it not apply on hits. Make it just a spell so that she doesn't have so much pve healing, and then balance her accordingly, because she will need buffs if they ever do that. I'm fine with that. If they remove the part of her that's anti fun and anti interaction. [00:18:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it should be like, it doesn't apply on hits, and you only get the healing if you're already at max stacks, because then, like, you're not healing up from stacking on the way. [00:18:53] Speaker B: Make it heal on champion hits, and it can heal for more, but it doesn't heal on anything else. I'm fine with that. Plenty of champions have healing mechanics that only work on champion hits. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:19:03] Speaker B: Like Aatrox, for example. All right, that's enough of me grumbling about bullshit champions. How about you talk about one that's also kind of bullshit but is more fun? [00:19:17] Speaker A: I don't actually know which one you're referring to there. [00:19:19] Speaker B: The one you have in your notes. [00:19:21] Speaker A: I have two in my notes. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Well, go for both of them. I don't care. [00:19:25] Speaker A: Okay, well, I'm gonna talk about hecarim because I like hecarim. I'm not good at Hecarim, but I like hecarim. Fast horse. Go fast. So, um, he is getting a couple different adjustments. So his. So first off his base, his health growth is going up. It's going up by seven. [00:19:52] Speaker B: Seven health per level. [00:19:53] Speaker A: Yeah, seven health per level. But also people this so riots justification. People are tending to max e second instead of w. So they're just making it so that way, it actually makes more sense to max eternat second, because people were doing it anyway. So his e, it used to be a flat cooldown of 18 at all ranks. It's now 20 scaling down to 16. And his w, it used to be a five second duration. It's now four. But the healing is now increased. So it's basically the same amount of healing. [00:20:33] Speaker B: Kind of ish. [00:20:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So it was 20%, half to 10% for damage dealt by allies within the circle. It's now 25%, half to 12.5% for damage dealt by allies. [00:20:45] Speaker B: For those who didn't know when Hecarim pops his w, if his allies hurt champions that are inside the w, it heals hecarim. [00:20:53] Speaker A: I don't think I know. [00:20:54] Speaker B: People don't even know that's a mechanic. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I actually don't think I knew that. [00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So they buffed both parts of the healing, his own healing, which most people know that it gives him basically omnivamp for damaging champions inside it. But also the ally healing. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Yep. Oh, and the cooldown went from 16 scaling to 14 to just flat 14 at all ranks. So, yep. [00:21:20] Speaker B: Here's what irks me. They say in the notes that the issue is in lower skill brackets, people are maxing e second despite w max second being much, much better. So they're trying to make them closer in power. It's still wrong to Max e second. Max w second. Seriously, listeners, if you're playing hecarim, w is your second max. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah. The healing gets. [00:21:45] Speaker B: It gives armor and mister per rank, which you need in the mid game. [00:21:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:21:49] Speaker B: Whereas the e gives you, like, 30 damage and now scales the cooldown slightly, but you're not charging multiple times in a fight anyway. And if you are, that's a hell of a long fight. And you're gonna charge multiple times with or without this change. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think this, like, brings hecarim into too much relevance, but it's just a little bit of nice quality makes him a little bit better. [00:22:18] Speaker B: Yep. It is important to note this duration change does mean he cannot just have permanent w anymore, which was possible with some builds before. [00:22:27] Speaker A: And I'm also always going to be a fan of, like, riot, actually seeing, like, oh, people are maxing an ability this way. Like, let's cater to that instead of, well, what I'm always going to refer to as the Taliyah problem of, oh, they're not maxing the ability we think they should be maxing. Let's nerf it. [00:22:50] Speaker B: Well, and they also. I wasn't going to cover Corki. Cause there's no meaningful changes to Corki. He lost 30 base health. But the change to Corki is that his win rate is much lower than his power level would suggest. Because people are not maxing Q first. So they changed the recommended order of skills so that people are maxing q because it's recommended instead of maxing e because it's recommended. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:17] Speaker B: Like those are the changes. Like, it is shocking how much just changing recommended items or recommended skill order can buffer nerf a champion. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Mm hmm. I'll catch myself on it sometimes of like, I'll put a point in ability. It's like, wait, why did I just put a point in that ability? Oh, it was flashing. Damn it. [00:23:35] Speaker B: Dude. That annoys me so much because I've been playing a lot of volibear whenever I get jungle. You know what? It tries to recommend you max first Q. Q. Volibear's q is his second max. But the difference between q and w is stupid. [00:23:52] Speaker A: Yep. [00:23:53] Speaker B: There is no reason to ever be maxing Q first on Volibear. And I hate that it's recommended. It is suppressing his win rate so much. [00:24:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I get that a lot on like support champions where it always recommends the poke ability first. And I'm like, no, I don't want to. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah, like Milio where it tries to have you max your ball and it's like, but that's not correct. [00:24:15] Speaker A: Or seraphine where it's having you Max Q. And it's like, no, I'm maxing my w and you can't stop me. [00:24:21] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. You want to talk about the other champion changes you got in here? [00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Big dragon. Well, aceol, I guess little Dragon also got a change, but that one doesn't matter as all. So his base ad went up by three. Yay. Woohoo. Um, but the actual impactful change is, um. So I guess tap Q has been like kind of oppressive on him in the mid lane of just like getting up, you know, tiny bit of burst triggers like spell effects gets the comet proc. They are increasing the mana cost of just tap casting your queue. And the sustained mana cost doesn't kick in until it used to be a half second in, but now it's 1.25 seconds into the channel. And it also ticks the mana cost every quarter second instead of every half second. Though all these mana cost adjustments are unchanged if cast while using his w. And the initial mana cost went up a lot. It was 7.5 scaling to 12.5. It's now 30. Scaling to 50. So if you're using q, you want to be trying to get that, like, false second channel on someone if you can. You're going to be running out of mana a lot quicker. Just tap casting it, which. [00:26:01] Speaker B: Good. [00:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Other changes on him. They buffed their range of astral flight. It was. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Specifically. They buffed the base range. [00:26:15] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:15] Speaker B: Scaling per stardust is unchanged. Still gonna fly across the entire goddamn map in late game. [00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it was 1200 plus 7.5 for stardust. It's now 1500. Scaling to 1900 plus 7.5 per stardust. So that's a pretty big buff. And then the e, the singularity, it was eight. The mana cost was 80. Scaling to 100. It's now flat 80 at all ranks. So that's a little bit of the compensation for the Q cost increase. Um, and also the movement speed debuff. It was a non championship. Slowed to zero movement speed in the middle. It's now lane minions and jungle monsters are slow to zero movement speed. So it doesn't affect pets and. [00:26:59] Speaker B: Yep, huge, huge win for Annie and Ivern. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Yep. [00:27:04] Speaker B: And to a lesser degree, Yorick. [00:27:06] Speaker A: Mm hmm. And this is a kind of big one. So his aura. Falling star, and the skies descendental. So falling stars ap ratio went up by 10%. The skies descend. I don't know if this is changed. [00:27:29] Speaker B: It's just. They're just noting it still does 125% of falling stars damage. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Yep. [00:27:34] Speaker B: So the sky's descend is the empowered ult. Falling star is the regular old. [00:27:38] Speaker A: Yep. But the big change. So the empowered ult it used to, the big shockwave that went out would do 100% of the damage of falling star. So the center would be 125%, the shockwave would be 100%. That shockwave is now 90%, which is roughly. The shockwave is doing what it's currently doing. But the center of the small and big ults are going to be more. [00:28:07] Speaker B: Yep. It does mean AP heavy builds. The shockwave will hit a little less hard eventually, but, eh, it's mostly a wash. Yep. All right, you want to bitch about splash arts? [00:28:22] Speaker A: Yes. Let me scroll down. So, the only reason I put these on here is. So these are the hell is the skin line called the battle x. Skin line. [00:28:34] Speaker B: Battle critters. [00:28:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Battle critters. So the reason I wanted to bring up and complain about a couple of these is I looked at this Zaya splash art, and I was like, oh, that's an Irelia skin, because the wings behind her, to me, just read as Irelia blades because of how many there are and, like, how they're formed. Just instantly, I was like, the pose. [00:29:03] Speaker B: She'S in looks like how Irelia is always posed. [00:29:06] Speaker A: Mm hmm. And then I scrolled down and saw the seraphine skin and was like, oh, a kai'sa skin. [00:29:15] Speaker B: Yup. It's not. It's seraphine. She just looks like Kai'sa on a platform. [00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, I haven't seen the skins in game, so I can't comment on that. I'm actually gonna look at the Chromas because that shows the in game. Yeah, in game, they're fine. Like, the character models are distinct enough. But I just had a problem with the readability on the splash charts. Like, to me, it was the ig splash art problem again of at a glance. I couldn't tell what the hell champion I was looking at. [00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:52] Speaker A: And, like, it is kind of, unfortunately, a problem with the female champions because a lot of the female champions have very similar body types because that's what sells. [00:30:04] Speaker B: Like, riot has straight up said when they make women with different body types, like a laui. Laui's hot, by the way, in case you weren't aware. [00:30:12] Speaker A: But a lowie is a bisexual icon. [00:30:16] Speaker B: Yeah. She doesn't sell. No one cares. And it has nothing to do with the actual champion kits. Anytime they make any kind of, like, woman who is not a skinny, big, hip, big breast woman, she doesn't sell well. Like, I don't think Aurora is gonna sell well because she's petite. [00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it sucks. But it does lead to these readability issues with the splash arts. But at least it's not the in game models. Like, they've done a decent job at keeping those distinct. [00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Also, they gave Yuumi a fucking prestige skin. Are you kidding me? Fuck Yuumi. [00:31:04] Speaker A: I couldn't believe that when I saw it in the battle pass because that was the first I saw of it. I was like, really? The champion? You don't look at 90% of the game because you're attached to someone else. [00:31:16] Speaker B: I hope it sells really poorly. [00:31:19] Speaker A: I'm sure it will. Cause it's part of the battle pass. So. [00:31:25] Speaker B: All right, let's. You gave us a trinket tip. We can do that. And then we'll talk about swarm a bit because that also released this patch. And wrap up the pod that way. And we'll answer your questions next week, guys. By the way, you didn't send us very many questions. That's why we're skipping them this week. We do have a couple in the queue, but we are low on questions. The four wards. Podcastmail.com send us your questions so we can answer them on the show. [00:31:50] Speaker A: Yes, please. [00:31:51] Speaker B: Okay, what's your. [00:31:53] Speaker A: So this trinket tip comes from direct experience of me playing Smulder in Aram. If you have a smolder or anassus on your team, let them stack smulder. At least let him get to, like, the first or the second breakpoint where they bounce. Like, the 225 is big, but it's honestly not even as big as just getting, like, the 125 where they bounce. Like, just let him do that. Like, if there's no enemies around, like, you still get gold. Please let smolderlast hit. And for Nasus specifically, let Nasus last hit cannons with his q because he gets 24 stacks per cannon. That adds up so quick in Aram. Like, you will just win games off of letting anasus last queue. Every cannon. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Yup. Now, I. This original trinket tip was just if you have a stacking champion. But I do want to point out the other stacking champions in the game have stack conditions that do not rely on last hitting that are accelerated in Aram. So this is specifically for smulder and Nasus, where smulder is gated by cooldowns. Nasus is gated by cooldowns. Nasus doesn't stack by hitting champions. He has to last hit things. [00:33:16] Speaker A: Yep. [00:33:18] Speaker B: So just let them. Let them get the last hits so they can stack, so they can be useful teammates. [00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, if you've ever had a smolder nailer and been like, God, this guy's useless while you're wiping the entire wave. That's why the champion is gated around that stacking mechanic. Like, he's not a very useful champion until he's gotten to certain thresholds. [00:33:40] Speaker B: Yep. All right. Wanna talk about Swarm? [00:33:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I like swarm. [00:33:46] Speaker B: Let's briefly explain what swarm is first, which is swarm is what is it called? A bullet heaven is what people heaven. [00:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:56] Speaker B: So if you've played vampire survivors or other games like it, it is a mode akin to that or holo cure. Sure. I don't know what that is. [00:34:09] Speaker A: Another one of those games, but it's very fair enough. [00:34:12] Speaker B: So Swarm has a meta progression, so you're not going to be able to do everything out the gate. There's, like, nine champions you can play as, and two of them are unlocked at the start. [00:34:24] Speaker A: Yep. [00:34:25] Speaker B: Now, you don't have to spend money. This is free, but you need to play the mode to unlock the other champions. Here's let me give a brief rundown of the things I didn't understand my first game and wound up gimping myself a bit. Press tab in Swarm. It has a cheat sheet that shows up when you press tab, showing what stats do you need to allow you to upgrade your different abilities? [00:34:55] Speaker A: I did not know this. [00:34:57] Speaker B: Yes. [00:34:58] Speaker A: So I just kind of learned each. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Character has two active abilities that you can use. They're like default attack, whatever you want to call it. And then you get four other attacks that you're kind of roguelikey, like, picking at random. Like, it'll present some options. Some of them are stats, like more damage or more health. Some of them are going to be these abilities. [00:35:23] Speaker A: Yep. And you have, like, slots that, like, you can have up to five, like, active weapon or, like, five weapons and five, or, like, x number of passives. More slots unlock as you do the elements. [00:35:37] Speaker B: Exactly. So what you want to do is you want to pick weapons and stat shards that synergize with each other. [00:35:48] Speaker A: Yep. [00:35:49] Speaker B: So some of the weapons scale with, oh, if you have a health stat shard, you get that weapon, you'll be able to get an upgraded version of that weapon. Your basic starting weapon has a stat that it needs in order to be evolved into a more powerful version of itself. So what you actually want to do is you want to go, oh, I found this weapon. In this weapon, I want to find the stat shards that coordinate with that. And if you have a stat shard that already coordinates with a weapon and it offers you the other weapon that coordinates with the same stat shard, maybe pick that as well so you don't have to spread yourself too thin. [00:36:25] Speaker A: Yep. And it is nice about, on the screen, when you're offered the weapon, if you already have the corresponding stat shard, it will tell you, yes. [00:36:33] Speaker B: Um, even if you don't, like, I've had it where I. My first present presented option, I'm like, oh, this is a weapon I like. So let's pick that weapon, and then the next presented option, it's like, oh, that's the other weapon that uses the same stat shard. Let me grab that too. And then when I get the stat shard, I'll be able to evolve them both. [00:36:51] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:52] Speaker B: So that's why press tab. Tab is your. Is your friend in swarm. So you can keep track of all this? Because I can't remember what weapons scale with. What. [00:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So a couple things I like about it a lot, and in a couple ways that it actually differs from like the other vampire survivors esque games. Um, it's shorter. It's 15 minutes max from what I've seen. The hard modes might go longer, I'm not positive, but at least during the like, story mode, as they call it, as you're going through unlocking the characters, it's 15 minutes. And then you unlock a boss fight. And if you beat that boss fight, you beat the map and unlock the next map and probably a character as well. And the co op in it. I finally did a co op game with a friend just before this podcast. I'm not sure if there's other games in the genre that have co op, but it's really good. Like, it is a lot of fun to play in co op. It adds like kind of extra mechanics. Like, if one of you dies, it doesn't just end, everyone has to be dead at the same time. Like, the game is clearly designed around co op as well because it starts getting really hard solo. [00:38:08] Speaker B: Yep. Also, those of you with weak computers, please don't even try. You're not gonna have fun. Swarm is much more computer intensive than everything else because there's just so much objects on screen and effects on screen. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fair. And it's not like the pixel art of vampire survivors. It's actual league graphics. [00:38:26] Speaker B: And to be clear, anyone who can run league on max settings without issue normally is gonna be fine. Like, it's not a demanding game in Swarm, but it is more demanding than the base League of Legends game by a noticeable amount. [00:38:42] Speaker A: Good call out. [00:38:44] Speaker B: So I'm sorry. It is fun, and I'm sorry that you'll be excluded if you have a really bad computer, but you're really not gonna have fun if you're running at ten frames a second or less. Because especially in four players, with all of the different weapons triggering, when everyone has evolved weapons, the screen is just filled with enemies and spell particles. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. Like, even with just one person, it's like you can at least track it because, you know, you could just lock camera. You're always centered, but yeah, with in co op, it starts to get pretty messy. [00:39:25] Speaker B: Yep. Other things to note, you do move with wasid. It does not move with mouse movement like normal League of Legends does. And there is a key. I think it's c by default. [00:39:37] Speaker A: Yep. [00:39:38] Speaker B: That auto aims for you, so you only have to worry about movement and pressing your two active abilities. [00:39:44] Speaker A: Yep. And there are some characters where you want to turn that off. Like, I think specifically Aurora, like her, like projectile kind of aims like a Yuumi projectile. So you actually want to turn the auto aiming off on it, whereas some of the melee characters, you want to just be hitting the closest thing no matter what. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Yep. It also, the autoaim can sometimes make it hard to focus down a boss. [00:40:11] Speaker A: True. [00:40:14] Speaker B: So that's a summary of, like, swarm and some basic information about it. What are your actual thoughts? Is this a mode that is worth playing through and, like, trying to progress in the harder difficulties on? [00:40:26] Speaker A: Absolutely. Like, if you like this style of game, which it's not for everyone, I know you aren't a huge fan of it, but, I mean, I've. [00:40:37] Speaker B: I'm being positive here. I don't think it's bad. It's just not for me. [00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, and I played all the way through vampire survivors, like, multiple times. Like, I played all the way through it on PC and then again when it came out on mobile. So, like, I really enjoy these kinds of games and, like, this is a really good version of it. Like, it is. Like, they put a. You could tell they put a lot of love into this and. [00:41:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:41:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So I do think it is worth the time, like, actually sitting down, and I know more than a handful of people that came back to league just to play this mode. So, like, yep. Yeah. And, like, it is also definitely worth it to, like, try and hook up with some friends and do some of the co op because, like, it really is, like, well done and well executed. [00:41:26] Speaker B: I think that's the key is if you are looking to just. Should I play swarm solo? No, go play vampire survivors, frankly. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:36] Speaker B: Swarm succeeds and excels because it is a co op version of that. Get some friends together and play swarm. Yeah. I did not like swarm, and I had a lot of fun playing swarm with friends. [00:41:47] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:41:49] Speaker B: Like, that is, I think the. The biggest, like, praise I can possibly give it is I don't like the mode, and I still had fun. [00:41:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's some high praise. That's how I feel with TFT sometimes. Sometimes. [00:42:05] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's. That's swarm. Check it out. Hit us up and invite us to play swarm. Like, I'll play swarm if I. If we have a group. So invite me to your friend group and I'll play swarm with you. [00:42:16] Speaker A: Like, yeah. [00:42:18] Speaker B: We're not hard to find on league. I just. I'm just Jackson na one. [00:42:23] Speaker A: Yep. And I'm free shooter with three e's on a one. I like. Anytime I get a random friend request, I will just check OPG to make sure you're not a level one account because then I assume you're a bot, so don't be level one. But otherwise, like, I'll probably just add you and be like, hey, who is this? And if you just say a listener, then I'll be like, I go, oh, yeah, cool. Let's play games. Yeah. [00:42:45] Speaker B: So, yeah, invite us to play swarm. Invite us to play norms, hang out. We like hanging out and playing games with listeners. You don't have to be a patron to play games with us. We deliberately made sure not to have that as a tier because we want to play with all of our listeners. [00:43:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:43:02] Speaker B: Speaking of Patreon. Patreon.com the forwardspodcast to support the show [email protected] to send us your questions or auditions. Reminder, this is the last week to audition to be on the show. Record a trinket tip like the one you heard earlier. It literally, it just needs to be like 10 seconds. It does not need to be long. You don't need to record a deliberation of explaining it afterwards. Just the tip itself. Just send us a trinket tip and there's a chance you could be the next host to the Forwards podcast. [00:43:37] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:43:38] Speaker B: You got a Lucian top for us? [00:43:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:43:41] Speaker B: Um, it's a shame he's not in swarm. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Yeah, he's not in swarm. Um, it's because there's no. [00:43:48] Speaker B: He wasn't warm. [00:43:50] Speaker A: True. Um, I don't know. I got another. I don't know. [00:43:55] Speaker B: Good enough. Thats going to be it. This has been episode 439 of the Four Words podcast. Ive been Jack Soman for free shooter. Have a great night. [00:44:04] Speaker A: Bye. My brain broke at the end there. What just happened? Thanks for listening to the four wards podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected]. theforwordspodcast and of course, send your questions to [email protected] so we can answer them live on the show. That's the [email protected].