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Dragon Buff - I think it needs a new order

Silverling·3/1/2015, 9:11:17 AM·3 votes·502 views

Alright, so... To start off I'm not saying that its buff ratios need to be adjusted or anything. I'm specifically am focusing on the order at which you receive the dragon buffs every time you kill dragon.

For those who don't know, the order at which you receive the buffs is this: DRAGON'S MIGHT: +6% attack damage and ability power DRAGON'S WRATH: +15% damage to towers and buildings DRAGON'S FLIGHT: +5% movement speed DRAGON'S DOMINANCE: +15% damage to minions and monsters ASPECT OF THE DRAGON: Doubles all previous bonuses and your attacks burn for 150 true damage over 5 seconds. This stack only lasts 180 seconds.

Over the games that I have been playing as of late, I've noticed that in most of them the rest of the game is determined on whoever can get the first dragon buff, which usually occurs within the first 10 minutes of the game. At that point, the team with that buff has a very clear advantage over the other making it difficult for them to be able to turn the tides of the game, or even gain that buff for themselves later on.

I feel as if the 6% increase in AD and AP comes far too soon in the buff order, especially at that early in the game. Perhaps maybe the increased damage to minions and monsters may be a better choice for the first buff? Or even the increase damage to buildings could work too?

What are your thoughts on this? I'm curious as to what others have seen in their observations over the issue.

8 Comments

Talamare3/1/2015, 9:37:01 AM1 votes

They did it like this so that if you're the team behind, you only need a single dragon for the best effect (which I think its stupid)

MrPerson103/1/2015, 9:39:57 AM1 votes

From my point of view, the point of its order is to put emphasis on the early game dominance.

The direction of the game lately has been moving towards the early dominance into mid-game objective pressure, ending before anyone can outscale by ridiculous amounts, prevents "boring" and passive play (Hi Nasus ), which in turn, passive play doesn't exactly make for LC$ play$ LeeSin

Amplifying damage later on means the rush dragon buff is less of a requirement than it currently is. Sure, that puts some jungles ahead of others who are easily capable of soloing dragon at 2 Udyr however, other jungles less capable of doing it so easily also have amazing early game damage and a nice kit to back it up Pantheon

ABlueQuaker3/1/2015, 9:53:49 AM1 votes

tbh the damage should be 2nd or third with Towers & Building Damage and Movement Speed before it.

COWmanLord3/1/2015, 10:59:49 AM1 votes

I think that is more due to the fact that whichever team is better at establishing dragon control and establishing it early is also typically a better team and will most likely continue that pattern. The 6% boost to damage stats adds up to a early on it isn't any that much.

With the first drag usually gets taken around 10 - 11 ish mins in to the game. At this point (using an adc as an example) most people should have roughly 70 cs if they are decent at farming. If they kills are still 0 - 0 in that particular lane then that adc should have about enough gold to have gotten a B.F. sword. This should mean hat adc will have about 140 ad total. That first drag bonus will give them about 8 more ad.

That is a solid 300 gold worth of ad for the adc, but it won't be too huge right away. This ends up being even less effective of adcs who don't get IE first. someone who bought phage would only have around 6 extra ad from drag and someone who got cutlass would have about about the same. If we use kalista as the example, then she gets even less out of it because many kalistas rush runaans which gives no ad.

Champions who build mostly tank items also get don't get very much out of the dragon, even during the late game. Ap champs have many different builds so its a bit harder to calculate all of those, but at 10 mins in I rarely find myself having much more than 100 - 150 ap, unless I got ahead early and bought Needlessly Large rod.

In my opinion the most likely reason for the teams that get the first dragon winning more games is that

The team that is better will typically establish better dragon control

and

The team that gets the drag has the timer and is better prepared to set up for later ones

I have won many games where my team was behind on kills and towers, but we suddenly turned the game around and won because the enemy team just wasn't stopping us from getting more dragons. Then suddenly around the 36 min mark we get number 5 and then BOOM exodia has been unleashed and we charge right through their towers into their base and win.

TLDR: The team the gets drag first has an advantage on getting later ones and it is typically the better team that was able to set up and get that drag.