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Feedback on level 1 dragon buff: imbalancing, too early

Drinniol·11/21/2014, 8:01:38 AM·3 votes·568 views

The level 1 dragon buff gives 8% ad and AP. What do people think about this? I'm not a fan. Chances are in most games that are decently close both teams will eventually get a dragon kill. So, basically, the offensive power of everyone goes up, and offensive - especially burst - champions are favored over everyone else. Also, 8% AD and 8% AP aren't really equivalent. The 8% AD applies to the base AD - so it's a flat 8% damage buff for an autoattacker, and almost as much for AD casters. For an AP champion, however, it doesn't affect their base damage at all. It's mathematically equivalent to increasing their AP ratios 8% across skills. That's really nice, but it's not as nice as what AD champs get.

Also, it just doesn't seem right that the first dragon buff is probably the strongest and most important (before getting the five stack super buff). Riot has stated they want to decrease the importance of early dragons, and have dragon rewards scale up, but right now it feels like first dragon is huge, and the remaining 2-3 dragons are just meh that you take on the off chance the game goes long enough that someone could actually get the five stack buff (keep in mind, at 6 minutes a dragon, it's basically a MINIMUM 35 minute game before that buff could come online if you took every dragon as soon as is feasible. Typically it takes even longer because the enemy team gets a dragon or 2).

And finally, it's kinda weird how it's the only buff that straight up makes you stronger. Doing 8% more damage is pretty significant and is going to put any close duel or fight over the edge straight up. The other buffs are more strategy and objective focused, but it feels like the first buff gives you WAY more objective control and strategic options because it just makes you stronger so you can do more!

So yeah, that first dragon buff, it's really out of place with Riot's stated objectives, and the other buffs are just kinda boring and low impact by comparison.

I know that the dragon buffs have gone through a lot of revision, so clearly Riot knows that they didn't quite hit it the first time around. But honestly, I don't think they're much closer to the mark this time. I can't imagine anything like the current dragon buff schema lasting into the start of the season let alone to the end of it. It's gotta change.

2 Comments

Fuyu No Kitsune11/21/2014, 4:24:20 PM2 votes

I completely agree. I haven't played a ton of games yet with the current changes, so I can't speak to all situations just yet, but the game in itself feels really imbalanced and snowball-y in general now. I also think the first dragon buff is one of the main causes of this. What I've noticed is that being on the team that doesn't get first dragon feels like being the team that's under siege from the old baron buff--an old late game objective.

One of the games that I've played already exemplifies this--our team was slightly behind by the time either team started looking to take the dragon. Go figure, the enemy team took it because they had the slightest advantage (i.e. only 2 kills up on the entire team and maybe ahead in cs by 10 at most in two lanes). Afterwards, we couldn't hold towers, no lane could duel without straight up losing, our jungler's ganks were much more ineffective than they had been prior to the dragon, and so on. It certainly wasn't because of one team being better or having a better comp than the other--that's a completely different feeling than what happened there. We ended up getting the second dragon, but it was too little too late. The enemy team had snowballed too hard because of their first advantage from their dragon buff.

Compared to the past where advantages could be built up slowly, I feel there are a lot more spikes in the game now and it is harder for a team that's behind to get back into the game. I know that in the past Riot has tried really hard to make it possible to get back into the game if you're behind by playing well and taking objectives. This feels like a complete departure from that mindset. Sure, the team with the dragon buffs take more damage from it, but from what I've experienced that hasn't made contesting it any easier because on the Rift, 6 minutes between dragon spawns is a long time to build up your advantage. It's not fun to have so little chance to come back in a game simply because your team didn't get one objective.

So what can they do to fix it? Perhaps switching the first buff to the 3rd or 4th buff and then shifting the 2nd and 3rd down to 1st and 2nd? How about making the buffs run out after a few minutes instead of being permanent (like how the ultimate 5th dragon buff is now), but then renew with the next time dragon is slain? The old amount of gold that each person would get from the dragon would never have bought the same amount of damage that people get with the buff now. I get that it is change, and it is not supposed to be the "same old Rift" (let alone the SR visual change which is a completely different topic). But it almost doesn't even feel like the same game anymore. No other season transition was this polarizing, even though some have had some overpowered, game-breaking items. I just hope the upcoming tweaks will bring back some of the old spirit of the game.