@Riot Any Changes Planned For Draven? (Underperforming) A few ideas to help him without overbuffing
A little backstory into the big question and answer:
I'm a pretty heavy Draven player who's been maining Draven since mid-late season 4(I started playing the game late season 3), and I've noticed that Draven really hasn't been doing as well as he could have been over the past few months. If you were to ask anybody about what meta is largely favored nowadays, the probable response would be a highly snowbally meta. Yet, Draven doesn't perform to his expectations of being able to just take control of a game through a hard snowball. I mean, yeah, it's possible, but it's just far easier to do with many other ADCs and requires far less risk. After the ADC rework, the reworked ADCs all ended up getting new niches but were largely all about dealing damage in different ways. What does Draven excel at? Dealing straight damage. What do the other ADCs excel at? Dealing more damage with more things to fall back on if necessary. Now hear me out, Draven's opportune damage output is easily one of the highest in his class early game (He prefers flat AD over crit which is largely what is built early), but he falls off so hard versus somebody like a Twitch, a Kog'maw, a Jinx, an Ashe, a Sivir, or even a Miss Fortune. These champs all take advantage of itemization and masteries (Fervor) better than Draven. Yeah, Draven can build warlord's better than most ADCs, but that's really the only mastery he uses better than other ones.
Comical thing: Draven is meant to be at his strongest in the mid game, but really, when you look at any statistics that is when he is at his weakest. Draven has scaled statistically abstractly for quite a while with a high early game winrate, with a major dip into the mid game, and a strong comeback late game.
Now: what should be done to bring back a general balance to Draven? A few different things could occur:
First: A change to reduce the overall power of MARKSMANS (Makes sense due to their large influence in games overall even when played in different areas of the map) Second: Give Draven the ability to shred (Bonus) armor over time with spinning axes (Gives a better fall back without increasing his damage against squishies) Third: Give Draven better synergy with crit (Perhaps increase dependency on catching axes by increasing axe damage by a percentage per crit percent) Fourth: Give Draven more DPS overtime by increasing axe dependency (Decrease upfront burst damage with ult, Increase damage on axes for flat AD, increase attack speed on bloodrush) Fifth: Give Draven a buff to his passive (Such as half of the stacks are cashed in for an assist)
I'm just gonna say this now: Draven should not be buffed in a way that increases his damage against squishy champs significantly since he can already get out of control there. Rather, he should be given means to play around his opponents that complement the changes in the preseason (Less flat armor penetration, less flat AD, more crit, more attack speed itemization, new keystones that benefit high AS or high burst)