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Problem 1: The difference between fire and the rest

Dauntless Kaiser·1/7/2017, 1:26:53 AM·1 votes·486 views

The relevance of each of the 4 buffs. Let's be honest, some dragon buffs are more useful than others. Like to me, the fire dragon is the best of the 4 and here's why. No matter what state you are in the game, you always need ad and/or ap. Last hitting minions, poking, killing, farming, destroying baron, etc... But do you always need the other 3? The mountain drake is only needed for objective control, not for combat. Like what does 3 mountain dragons means when you have that zed or yasuo outplaying your entire team and then proceeds to destroy your nexus as you slam your head against the keyboard? The ocean drake is only useful if you're not in combat and to me that's just bad b/c it's only useful when you're not fighting and let's be honest, you're always fighting another champion when you're in league and yeah those great escapes plays would be cool with ocean drake but meh, not really that good. Cloud dragon is only useful when you're moving around the map, not when you're running away or whatever. So yeah I think that maybe it's time for a redesign/revamp of the 4 dragons so that it can be applicable to all scenario, not 1 that's always applicable and 3 situational. Heck, if you think about it, the fire dragon is most relevant out of the 4 b/c of its applicability but its relation to its thematics as well. So I guess here's the part where I provide a solution (philosophical speech  incoming) Fire is supposed to be destruction and breaking down limits and yeah giving ap and ad would help you destroy stuff. The effect of the 3 both in relation to its theme are not only situational and needs an upgrade but also provide a misleading effect. (I'm perfectly content with the current fire dragon buff so keeping it this way will be just fine) The mountain dragon represent earth which, in my view, represents endurance, not a tool for taking down objectives. I think that it would make more sense and more applicable to give the mountain dragon buff resistances, damage reduction or maybe tenacity. Like to me, earth, which is supposedly a defensive element, isn't supposed to be giving you objective control like what? that makes no sense to me and honestly, if you make the earth dragon buff not give you turret dmg and helps you take baron faster (like seriously, some team comps will just run away with this like can you imagine a ziggs that can execute tower and have the 10/20/30% extra true dmg like bruh, he already can one shot turrets as it is or a cass that has so much single target dmg have this buff like that would be a recipe for disaster and the fact that this has been a possibility for the alst 7 months just make the game less fun). So yeah, more defensive capability for mountain drake please. The cloud drake to me is supposed to represent mobility and while the current cloud drake does give that, to me it's not impactful or feel good enough. What if cloud drake gives you slow resistance and/or permanent move speed? That way, it will have a more significant impact into the game (oh and some cool rasenshuriken effect would helps viscerality haha) I'm gonna be honest here, the ocean drake is the hardest one for me to think about but I honestly think this one should change so here's my idea: Increased healing. No I'm not trying to return things to the original ocean drake b/c that was broken (I get it, percentage permanent healing is broken). What I'm suggesting here is like a item 3065 type of effect. What if ocean drake gives mana and health back on damage dealt, sort of like a hybrid of item 3508 and item 3146. This way, there would need to be champion interaction for you to get mana and hp back. Like to me, water gives the impression of sustainability and honestly sustainability based on how long u can avoid conflict is pretty damn anti-fun so how about regeneration based on combat? food for thought So essentially, I think that in order to make dragons more relevant, we just need to make sure every buffs is worth the time and effort contesting. Keep in mind, this is only the prototypes and it's only an idea. I don't expect this post to get a lot of attention but you miss every shot you don't take so yeah there's that. Dragons shouldn't be a sideshow in the game of league of legends. It shouldn't be a last options for players, it should be more relevant as an objective. To do this, I think each individual dragon buffs needs to be stronger so that it would be punishing for teams to ignore dragons, not so that u can just ignore dragons and can still win everything.

4 Comments

ChaddyFantome1/7/2017, 2:13:28 AM2 votes

This is intentional. Not every Drake is meant to be equally and universally good. The reason is to give the means of decision making have more weight. Perhaps you know that an early ocean drake means your lane bullies wont be doing their job with all the free early sustain, and thus letting them have it would be bad in that situation. Perhaps the enemy has a Talon or Hecarim, and letting them get the cloud drakes would be situationally bad since it gives them more inherent power to their kits.

Fire Drake is meant to be that Drake that you don't want the enemy to have no matter the situation.

The problem with having all the drakes be equally impactful at all stages the game or having them all be situational is that in the former case, it just becomes a snowball effect where whoever gets first drag wins , and in the latter case becomes to the point where drags are typically all pointless and superfluous in most situations.

Lastly, in both cases it absolves the main goal of creating variance on a game to game basis.

Having em all be equally op would remove the actual variance, as there would be no decision making in getting them at all. the answer would be "yes and always".

while making them all situational would make getting them almost utterly superfluous.