Preseason Dragon Critique

Played a lot of pbe matches this cycle, probably around 30-40ish at this point. I'm gonna talk about the dragons specifically in this post.

-- For the map changes, Ocean feels really, really well done. It's effect makes the macro/microplay and way you play very different. The visuals and fruit are also extremely well done compared to all the other dragons, this is by far the most polished and fleshed out dragon. -- Infernal is very nice too. I wish there could be like 1 or 2 extra spots broken other than the buffs because ocean grows almost every bush while this creates only a few differences. It also does nothing else outside of these 4 spots (ocean makes fruit spawn as well.) So it changes pathing and micro up -but only sometimes. -- Mountain feels like less interesting infernal. It adds rocks in a few places and just makes it harder to see. Overall does not add much to the map at all and is pretty lame. -- Cloud has a interesting idea but like infernal and mountain, does not feel NEARLY as impactful to the game as ocean. The movespeed increases aren't that major either, maybe make it double/tripled out of combat like old cloud if it isn't already.

Overall Ocean feels ideally what a map change should be like. A lot of differences from default rift and a little extra addition outside of the main effect. The other 3 dragons feel like they do way less than this one and could probably impact the map a little more. Like maybe make dragon break holes in the back of the objective pits or open a new path from river walls. Cloud could add little movespeed wisps on the river that you grab for a chime pickup type movespeed boost, respawning every x amount of time. Mountain could modify the future scuttles and their buff shrines.

For the souls, they feel good for the most part. Again, Ocean's soul feels like the leading one here. Infernal and mountain are good as well and feel nice to proc and use. Cloud has the problem of being overall shittier to make effective use of than the only 3. ANY champion can easily make effective use of regeneration when hitting something, ANY champion can make easy effective use of dealing luden/shiv damage after hitting something, ANY champion can make easy effective use of a malphite shield passive.

However, not every champion will be able to use movespeed after ulting as easily or effectively as they can the other drags. Cloud souls uptime and payoff for getting 4 dragons has felt really weaker than the other ones. I'd like to see it changed to be like a 5-10ish second cooldown, lower movespeed increase when hitting something with any ability or attack like the other dragons do.

Out of all the games I've played, I have seen elder once because people usually lose or wrap it up and ff after a team gets a soul. If the effect is too strong, just nerf the % down 5% or so.

TL;DR; Cloud/Infernal/Mountain have much less impactful/interesting maps than Ocean currently. Ocean not only adds a lot of vision cut offs and new brushes but it adds fruit to locations too! Cloud souls feels a lot less effective to use than the only 3 because its just movespeed on ultimate use specifically, rather than any damage like Ocean/Infernal. Add 1 little thing to the other 3 dragon's maps like how ocean gets fruit on top of brushes, and make cloud drake soul weaker effect but proc on any form of damage like ocean/infernal so all champs can make use of it.