My understanding behind the intent of the dragon buff changes
Let me say first that this is not a post about balance, or about the effect itself behind said changes. This is a post that focuses on the reasoning and the probable long term impact of these changes, or at least i try to. TL;DR at bottom page.
Quoting the patch notes:
>DRAGON'S WRATH (2ND STACK) +15% damage to turrets and buildings ⇒ Basic attacks burn turrets for 10-180 over 2 seconds. >DRAGON'S DOMINANCE (4TH STACK) +15% damage to monsters and minions ⇒ You take 20% less damage from turrets
As you can see those changes are aimed to give more tools for tower taking potential. For example, Wrath (2nd buff) widens the pool of champions effective against turret, since this dot can be procced by everyone, from the tank to the support, and makes it a more role-agnostic tool for destroying turrets. This is at the expense of straight damage % on turrets, which was more useful on tower-taking intensive champions like marksmans, and since this buff will be picked mostly around mid-game in a dragon-intensive strategy it can help the various champions that are still a bit scattered around the map on taking turrets a bit more evenly.
Dominance (4th buff) discards the additional damage on minions/monsters for a more brute-force buff against turrets. Minions were discarded because, keep in mind, this game is about pulling down the enemy nexus and that usually a dragon' s value is often compared to turrets. Think about every time you said "ok let' s trade x turret for y turret" and when you say "let' s trade x turret for a dragon": this is because both dragons and towers are taken in consideration when evaluating the whole map progress. Having to take a dragon so you have a buff that increases the chances to get the next baron somehow and that allow you to push better lanes to get more minions under turrets when there is already a baron buff is a bit too much convulsed, so it was a good candidate for a change. But for what? This buff is not picked randomly... Who benefits mostly of this buff? Melee champions, because are those that are more susceptible to tower damage while forcing a teamfight under a turret. Taking this buff also means that all those turrets that you did not take are meaningful mostly regarding structure invulnerability, and are less of a defensive threat themselves, so taking turrets first in order to kill the enemy team is less of a priority while it is still a necessity to dig more into the enemy base, a fair gain if you consider that you have to make a gambit until 4th stack to have this buff. Plus it reduces the need of minion waves, since you can have the support or the tank buddy take the hits so other team members can safely contribute on destroying a turret, in contrast to the baron buff.
Now, where does these changes will drive us to?
In my opinion, ** AD marksmans will be no more the only optimal class at taking towers**.
This might sound far fetched and is most probably still far from the present, but is a little step into that direction. The thing that made me think so is how marksmans are, in fact, not very good at taking objectives. Yeah i know you can solo a dragon with a carry by mid-late game but a proper jungler can do so far earlier and far safer ( not everyone thought, for example Rek'sai is not great for that); even with a team carries need a lot of time and gold to actually deal a lot of damage while other melees can do it far earlier. Even the carries that we have as junglers are not that good at objective control - Kindred has a bounty system targeted to champions and little sustain, Graves has bursty and healthy camp clears but low sustained damage and no sustain, Quinn is more focused on roaming and burst clears too.
If you compare them to an Olaf, or Udyr, or Xin or many other melee champions you see that those have much a better way to deal with dragons. And since now dragons give damage agnostically by item build or kit and also give damage reduction from turrets teams more focused around melee champions now have an outer outlet thank which they can step up their game against marksmans in the tower taking role. Those, on their own, do not care much for that stuff - tower taking is a thing integrated into their kit after all, and they will always be effective against turrets.
Let' s also clarify a thing - there are marksmans that are not optimal at taking turrets already ( see Jhin and Corky) and probably with this there will be more, widening the marksman role too.
TL;DR: 2nd buff gives more spread power to the whole game without being dependent to the role. 4th buff lessens the threat of towers not already taken and sets up a better role for melee champions at tower taking. All of this lessens the need of a dedicated role as AD marksmans for taking towers, probably leading one day to be not mandatory anymore.
