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Draven's passive needs a change

Loken Stoneheart·5/24/2015, 2:02:08 PM·1 votes·778 views

Truth be told, I haven't liked it since they changed it. I play a lot of Draven, and not only is he weaker now (granted, this was the intended effect), but it also puts a lot of stress on the player.

I thought Riot didn't like snowball mechanics? Why should Draven have a passive that punishes him when the jungler or support last hits his kill? Why should Draven's lane opponents deal with him getting a big gold boost when they die?

Why should Draven have a worse TF passive, for that matter? Twisted Fate gets on average 4 gold a minion, risk free. Draven gets roughly 4 (perhaps closer to 5 thanks to the flat 50 boost) gold a minion, and loses half of this when he dies.

In the best case scenario, its overbearing for the enemy laner. In the worst case scenario, it's a useless passive. In an average scenario, its essentially an all-around worse, stress inducing Twisted Fate passive.

Now, what did they get right about this passive?

  • It accomplished the originally intended purpose-- nerfing Draven

  • It fits Draven's theme fairly well-- He loves showing off for his "audience," so his passive rewarding him for doing little tricks makes sense

If I were to have my way, I'd simply suggest we go back to the bleed, but Riot won't go back on changes typically. Either way, the passive cannot remain the way it is and be healthy.

I would suggest a compromise on his current passive, as I'm not creative enough to come up with a new one.

When Draven catches a Spinning Axe, kills a minion or monster or destroys a tower, he gains one stack of Adoration. When Draven kills an enemy champion, he consumes all of his Adoration stacks and gains 50 + (2 × per stack consumed) gold. Draven consumes (half?) of his Adoration stacks on assists. Draven loses (75%?) of his Adoration stacks upon death.

This would alleviate the pressures of kill-securing as Draven-- No longer can the jungler smite away your 300 gold cash in. No longer can your support auto-attack away your B.F. Sword.

This would also encourage Draven to better utilize his Whirling Death as the global it is-- it isn't a proper execute anyways, why should he be cross-map kill-stealing? I get that his theme is all about "Draaaaaaaaaven," but c'mon, we all know that this isn't a good way to think about a team game.

This would of course also open Draven's lane opponents to properly suppressing them should they get a lead, by causing him to lose more stacks. This is mostly as a trade off for the fact that, on average, he'll be better at cashing in his stacks even if he isn't strong enough to pick up all the kills. I don't believe he is terribly weak at the moment and I wouldn't want to tip the scales too much here.

The removal of the flat-gold bonus on assists would assure that he doesn't snowball just by throwing Whirling Death into a teamfight-- he won't be able to cash in on nearly 300g just by tagging everybody in a fight, he'll only be able to cash in on the number of stacks he has, which is essentially already the case.

TL;DR All-in-All, Draven isn't in a bad place, but his passive can feel pretty awful for either side of the fight. Allow half-stack consumption on assists, increase stacks lost when killed.

3 Comments

Loken Stoneheart5/25/2015, 3:17:22 PM1 votes

Bump? Do bumps still work? Shrug

Sona Ping5/25/2015, 3:50:27 PM1 votes

Do you really think that Draven would be satisfied with just assists?

The thing is, this is would just exacerbate the problem that you outlined above; It makes things snowball more in both directions. It's more oppressive for the enemy because Draven would be cashing in more often and a more "useless feeling" passive if the stacks are lost.

On the note about the comparison to TF's Passive, A: It's fine if it is weaker than TF's, because TF is a "weaker" character. In that a lot of TF's power is in his Ult and Yellow Cards (i.e. utility) while Draven has a lot of damage. So, IMO, it's fine that TF has the gold bonus to get the items to make up for his weaknesses. B: It's arguable or maybe even impossible to say whether or not Draven's passive is a worse version in the first place because the result is so dependent on the play of that game. It can be worse like you said with losing stacks but axes can be caught multiple times from one target leading to more gold than TF's Passive. That on top of the base gold that is dependent on the number of champions slain.