New Dragon is Imbalanced, but Can be Fixed

This post concerns the new dragon buffs (particularly the +8% AD and AP), how and why they subtly warp and imbalance the game, and what we can do about this. A quick disclaimer is that this post is mostly theorycrafting, supplemented by some observations from watching the Intel Extreme Masters tournament, as I'm not a high-level player and the imbalance is not horrendously large.

The design intent of the new dragon seems fairly clear, as all the buffs are most effective when ahead/pushing. This is particularly obvious with the extra damage to structures, but also noticeable from the fact that the first dragon buff mainly affects offensive rather than defensive stats. Thus, Dragon (like Baron) is geared towards helping a team snowball a lead and push through for the win. This, in itself, is not necessarily a problem (depending on the game designers' priorities).

What is a problem, however, is that the AD/AP boost is a percentage rather than a flat bonus. This means that if your team can secure even a single dragon (which usually happens), all AD/AP items and stats become 8% more efficient. This effect is essentially equivalent to giving all champions 4 extra instances of the level-1 Archmage mastery, and four instances of an improved Warlord mastery (because it affects all AD, not just bonus AD). Clearly, some champions can make better use of this than others. Thus, all tanks and defense-oriented bruisers become subtly worse, and all offense- (or other AP-)oriented champs become subtly better. Moreover, it is a relatively common tactic to build extra defense when behind; this change makes that tactic significantly worse. If we allow the (admittedly suspect) assumption that the game/champions were balanced prior to patch 4.20, then the effects of the change are clear: defense-oriented champions/items are simply worse than offense- (or ability-)oriented champions/items (generally speaking), and players should be selecting their team comps so as to maximize their AD/AP.

Assuming we want to maintain a more balanced game, however, there are several solutions that I think are more or less palatable:

1. Change the first Dragon bonus to a flat boost. This still places pressure on defensive champs, but that pressure doesn't amplify throughout the game, and item strengths remain what they always were.

2. Change one of the other Dragon bonuses to percentage Armor/MR (and/or Health). Things would still be slightly biased towards whichever bonus comes first, but there wouldn't be a serious imbalance in a long game where both teams get dragons. Maybe we could replace the bonus damage to monsters/minions, since that one seems kind of lame to me.

3. Reduce the percentage boost from the first dragon, but make it also apply to Armor/MR (and/or Health). By boosting a larger variety of stats, the balance could be maintained.

4. Make the first Dragon buff the third or fourth instead. This delays the entire discussion until later in the game, at which point it seems to me like less of a bad thing to give the team that's ahead some extra punch to close things out.

And there's probably even more possibilities. Overall, it's clear that the design intent was to push offense over defense, but I just think they went a little too far.