The current state of dragon, an impractical chore rather than an advantageous objective.

The current state of dragon, as the title suggests, is impractical in its goal as well as it's existence as an objective on summoners rift. When the new dragon was announced as a concept, there was hints at multiple attacks like Baron Nashor, however what we got was an impressive VU with damage boosts and a knock back, and near meaningless buffs for slaying the beast. The old drag, was a loosing teams key to a come back. You could sneak a drag and time its re-spawn, then continue taking it if your team is too weak to take bigger objectives like towers. Eventually coming back from the gold reward of dragon. And the enemy team is awarded a free dragon timer when you slay the beast? So much for sneaking a dragon [slayer-jinx-unamused] Currently, dragon has little to no influence on a game. Taking 5 dragons will not win you a team-fight, and while taking those 5 dragons, how many towers did you lose, how many could you have taken? and how many of your team died in securing the dragon. The 4 primary buffs have a minuscule impact on the pace and tides of a game.

Take the first and easiest buff to secure, 6% damage increase in AP/AD

Darius, one of the highest base AD champs at lvl 18 in the game, with a close to normal build consisting of . With these items, ignoring runes and masteries. Darius will get a special ad bonus of 21.625 WOOOOO HOOOO( I can math XD)which of course is doubled with 5 dragons. Now even with the doubled AD bonus, this damage boost will not win you a team fight in most cases. As CC, positioning and the state of gold income of both teams excluding Darius all influences a fights outcome. Not to mention the time it took for a Darius to reach this full build if not fed, the fights lost due to 4v5, and the towers lost/not taken in place of a dragon. Now lets say the optimal occurs and a team fight is about to initiate, in a perfect world he'd flash pull a carry and start the ult spam but with this build, he'd likely get CC locked by tanks/supports if fed and popped by a carry. So maybe he built tankyer, a instead of and over . There's a whole lota dmg lost. And again, I emphasize the gold lead the enemy team may have with a tower advantage. To add, this is late-game, lvl 18, full build. And the damage boost is negligible. The boost early game? isn't worth the sacrificed objectives you could've taken/lost or the CS wave you missed.

That's not to say some of the buffs are not useful. I personally loved the speed boost on Naut at 3 stacks, but that's at 3 stacks and likely too far into the game to use it in ganks. The tower damage buff is also welcome in a team that lacks tower shred and one with too much of it, however this buff is useless if a team is unable to siege effectively. The 4th buff, seems thrown in there as a last resort when riot ran out of ideas, minion dmg? 24+min into a game? great it can help you last hit super minions that will still take 4eva to kill.

However this whole thing would be pointless if I were to not offer a solution so: Gold, I am highly in favour of re-adding a gold reward for slaying the beast equivalent to maybe 100-300(45min+) gold per player and having the gold value scale based on the games duration/amount of times its been killed, perhaps on top of the dragon buffs. To balance it they could make the gold go to those only who assist in killing the dragon. BUT! they could simply buff the dragons buffs, why not do that instead of this? Buffing any of the first 3 dragon buffs has a decent risk of being abused by different champions if they were to be buffed. Buff one. +6% ad/ap. For champs who have crappy scaling on their abilities (vel'koz, elise, other high BASE DMG mages) or are on-hit item reliant (kog, corki, jax, ect), who gives a dam? but on champs like veigar, syndra, annie and lux more AP means Fck tonnes of more dmg later in the game. Combine that with crit based marksman and melee carries like yi/tryndaqueer/(yas anyone?) and you've got a real sht hole dominated by pure ad/ap builds rather than MR/armour shred.

Buff 2: +15% dmg to towers. In the hands of most champs, this is meh. But as a split pushing shaco, yi or tryndaqueer this is a blessing. However they're merely frosting, the cakes are champs like azir, tristana, jinx and kog. 2 of which have tower shred built into their kits. A buff to this would be like running a chainsaw through the clouds.

Buff 3: +5% movespeed. Not really abusable by many like above, however exceptions include rammus, hecarim, olaf, vayne, garen, mundo and just about every assassin in the game. In a game where immobile slow mages, tanks and marksman exist, it would be pretty sad if the tanky peeling support, couldn't do the job because he/she was out run by a mundo.

What can an enemy of any champ category do with gold, that an ally cannot? NOTHING!, ZIP!, ZILCH! For example with my proposal, take Lux vs vel koz mid. Lux's team gets drag, she completes her mana item first, while vel stays in lane a lil longer and waits a little in fountain for his mana item. If the situation was reversed, the same would occur but in vel'koz's favour. A gold reward also offers an instant and visually clear incentive to take more dragons, even if the buffs are mediocre. You see that gold go up, you'll barely see your damage go up, and if so you'd assume it's mostly items. The move-speed increase is only half-decent if you've dedicated runes,boots and masteries to it. And no one even considers the 4th dragon when they start smacking towers. Most people love the satisfaction of completing an item or catching up in items with their fed carry. So what's not to love about sneaky gold boosts to get your team back in the game?

A final QOL change is to revert the addition of timers on the major beasts, drag and baron. They remove a vital job of a jungler, timing the major objectives and feels cheap for those who've dedicated brain space to the jungle spawn timers, and instead rewards the enemy team control through a timer, for the effort and risk undertaken by the executing team.

Just my 2 cents. Do you agree? if so fan-fuken-tastic, if not, plz post below your thoughts on the current state of dragon and perhaps you've thought of better solutions to dragons lack of value. GLHF everybody [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]