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Elemental Dragons sound... RNG?

ValyrianBlade··1 votes·178 views

Elemental dragons sound like a really cool idea, but it also sounds like it introduces a whole new level of randomness to the game, and not in a good way.

E.g. you've got a great late scaling team comp that wants to play passive early. Water/Air dragon spawns and you're great as it doesn't hurt much when your enemy gets those buffs. Earth dragon gives them a chance to end a bit earlier though. Fire dragon lets them scale harder than you and really hurts a lot.

E.g. Your team relies on MS boosts to engage. A few air dragons suddenly help the enemy team get away a lot easier.

If you don't know what type of dragons are going to spawn before the game starts, how can you create an appropriate strategy?

I think it would be more fair to have the dragons spawn, but rotate in a set order. E.g. Fire dragon spawns, then turns in to a Water dragon at the first point it's out of combat after 4 minutes, then Earth after 6min, Air after 8min, fire at 10, etc... You need to time when you start contesting Dragon to make sure the one you get is the one you want.

I'd just hate to start seeing players complaining that they lost a game because they picked a siege comp and only got fire/air dragons, etc...

2 Comments

ModWulf Helhammer1 votes

They don't need to change the RNG aspect of it because each dragon benefits fighting a particular just as much as getting it benefits that comp.

Fire: more damage is good for everyone. Water: more mana to keep up poke comps, but more health to fight against them Wind: more MS to keep up rotations, but also more MS to out rotate the split pushing team and render them moot Earth: more damage for the sieging team, but more damage on epic monsters for the other team to sneak a baron and stop the seige

ValyrianBlade1 votes

{quoted}

They don't need to change the RNG aspect of it because each dragon benefits fighting a particular just as much as getting it benefits that comp.

Fire: more damage is good for everyone. Water: more mana to keep up poke comps, but more health to fight against them Wind: more MS to keep up rotations, but also more MS to out rotate the split pushing team and render them moot Earth: more damage for the sieging team, but more damage on epic monsters for the other team to sneak a baron and stop the seige

Even if I were to agree with your point (I think the Earth dragon one is lopsided at least, but no point arguing it), you've still left out one of my cases: Some dragons are going to be stronger than others in certain circumstances, and if your team's power spike is earlier or later that will affect the game.

Let's just imagine that the Fire dragon is insanely OP, it makes your team win every teamfight easily. If the first dragon that spawns is Fire, it's really important to contest that dragon and win it. Except your bot lane is a late scaling duo that wants to give up the first dragon. They just lost the game due to RNG. Alternatively, let's say that the Air dragon is worthless. Your team just missed an objective they could have gotten early to help them get ahead of that late scaling ADC.

Of course Riot will try to balance the dragons, but even in a balanced state there will be dragons that are more valuable than others depending on the team comps. Even if we suppose they're equally valuable to both teams (again, I disagree here, e.g. one offers team A +10% for getting and -1% for missing, offers team +1% and -10%, the gap may be equal but team A benefits more from that spawn) a more valuable overall dragon will benefit the earlier-scaling team while a less valuable overall dragon will benefit the later-scaling team. Either way, it's RNG that affects your team's ability to win the game, possibly by a large-ish margin.

A lot of challenger players preach "playing to your win conditions". Your win condition may be to secure a fire/earth dragon. How do you play to that if one never spawns?

Of course I'm bringing things to extremes here, I'm just saying I think the RNG is unnecessary. Add some element of control to it - it's not hard.

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