The Randomness of Dragons

Dakkimchi··1 votes·580 views

Since I started League in Season 7, I lack both the mechanics and the experience compared to most of the community. So whenever people tell me advice, I try to learn as best as I can, especially in control of objectives. What to do when you win a teamfight, what to do when you lose one, the importance of vision, roaming, etc.

Among them are drakes. What people tell me about them are very simple: only prioritize the infernal drakes, get others whenever you can. Whenever a team takes another kind of drake, there's barely any response from the other team. Streamers and YouTubers say that only the infernal drakes matter in solo queue, as the other buffs are miniscule compared to taking towers and farming to snowball harder.

I understand this logic, and I am fine with playing by these rules. If we make every drake overpowered, there's obviously more occurrences of teams that are ahead snowball to the point that teams who lose the laning phase cannot catch up. What I don't understand, however, is the randomness of their spawns. When I play ahead, I am frustrated to see three cloud drakes spawn in a row because even when my team controls the bottom of the map and subsequently the drake pit, we are rewarded with "useless" buffs that do not give us much advantage. When I play behind, I am also frustrated to see three infernal drakes spawn in a row because RNG gave them more useful buffs. Objective control is fine, and it's great. What I don't like is the randomness that can fail to reward superior teams who play the macro or the dumb luck that can punish teams that give up the important and limited objectives that spawned three times in a row (as only three drakes of the same kind can spawn in a game).

Part of the reason rift herald was buffed is because nobody really contested it. The clear difference between the drakes is fine, but I feel that their random spawning is one of the frustrating parts of the game. The starting drake can be random, but maybe there should be a clear order to which will spawn next.

Then again, I am an inexperienced player, so I obviously do not have the best perspective on this matter. I just wanted to share my thoughts, sorry if I sounded like an annoying child.

4 Comments

50000000000000001 votes

First off, infernal drakes are very overrated, and cloud drakes are very underrated. All dragons grant powerful buffs. That said, you're right that the drakes are random. If you see a dragon that isn't very beneficial (either generally or situationally), that means you can just do something other than secure dragon. Taking dragon takes time, which means less map pressure is applied while taking dragon. You can use that time to do something else instead. If there are outer towers available, take those instead of dragon. But most of the times, you're probably better off taking the dragons, since they grant powerful buffs.

EngineeredUrMum1 votes

NEVER take ANY drag over an inner turret or baron, even infernal. After ~12 minutes, ALL drakes should ALWAYS be a priority over farming, even cloud and ocean. Make sure you start to set up vision and start to group ~1min before a drake spawns.

Also, people overplay how good infernal is compared to the others. 3 mountains is INSANELY good because you can burst baron supa fast or pop turrets. If it doesn't fit your comp(no assassins, and noone is building heavy ap/ad) infernal is the worst drake. If your team has split pushers, clouds/mountains are INSANELY good. Ocean is very strong early in the game, and if you have poke/siege type champs it is good.

At the very least if you get NO benefit from drake (never going to happen, they are all quite good) then you will have it for elder in the late game. So drakes are always very important.

As far as Rift Herald vs. Drake, I have no idea. I imagine it depends on the comp, if you have good tower pushers or ults that can make big plays then rift is probably better. It's still pretty new and I have seen it maybe 5~ times so far.

UKP LK1 votes

Ocean is worthless unless u have like 3 of them, cloud drake is good, earth is good at 2 or above. Im diamond only but that is my thoughts

The Last Ballad1 votes

Since I am a support main, Earth and Fire drakes are next to useless to me. Obviously I try to get my team to get them when they are up, but I don't let that juicy Ocean drake or Wind drake to sit there(in fact I campaign for ocean asap whenever it is up. Usually in full caps). They are invaluable because nearly every support can use the extra staying power of Ocean(especially Soraka as it reduces your workload) and the ms from wind allows you to ward at the speed of light or rotate to the adc who IS FAR TO FORWARD ONCE AGAIN to save them.

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