Should We Revert Dragon?

I've been meaning to make this thread for a while but I guess now's as good of a time as any. Wall of text incoming.

I'm not a fan of the rng dragons. I know it's not pure rng and it leads to some different gameplay when you get some of the same dragon buffs on the same team

gameplay such as: 3 water drakes: lame it out 3 mountain drakes: literal paper towers 3 fire drakes: surrender 3 wind drakes: rotations?

Jokes aside, the reason you change your style is because teams can become so strong in one aspect if you get 2 or 3 good dragon buffs of the same kind that you are forced to play around it- not that the rng itself has made you play around it. The rng doesn't actually add anything special to the mix other than "I'm so glad that fed riven only has water drakes" vs "oh fuck that fed riven has 2 fire drakes now".

RNG like this doesn't feel good in the game to begin with but the part I particularly dislike is elder dragon. I don't dislike it thematically or because of the burn effect it gives or anything like that. It's just that it cuts you off. Once elder is in the game that's it... you've been cock buff blocked. You cannot get any of the available buffs even if your team never got a single one the whole game. You now have this burn effect to get and that effect needs to be strong enough to warrant getting it without any previous dragons to be slain. Strategically, this dampens the diversity of objectives for me.

Before the dragon was a goal to be worked towards. One dragon wasn't worth a tower trade early game but after 2 or 3 of them? You were getting strong at that point. The buffs it gave were strong on their own and even if the next buff wasn't ideal for your champion it was still seen as progress. When you got that dragon it wasn't just "okay now we deal a bit more to towers" or "okay this doesn't help us but at least they didn't get that one." You still got that sensation but you knew every dragon brought you closer to that coveted 5th dragon buff that it was so worth it. The buff that was even stronger than Baron. This was a buff your team had to work the whole game for. Every game which a team got 5th dragon it was completely earned.

Dragon is no longer a stacking buff you know will pay off if you commit to acquiring them. It is a "potentially" stacking buff (if rng is kind to you) which you have to capitalize on in the early-mid game and hope the next one that spawns is useful to you because after 35 minutes (29 minutes at the earliest) you are locked out of any stacking. This puts dragons at an early-mid game strategic objective. But wait... We already have both of those in the game.

Rift Herald is here now and that thing is more powerful than any one dragon when used properly. RH can be used to make your own siege stronger in a single lane or to apply pressure elsewhere on the map. It's strong enough to take 2 towers by itself and can put your team way ahead. RH usage is a great early game strategic weapon to use on the Rift for map pressure.

Mid game you have Baron Nashor who offers quick recalls and strategic plays for split pushing, defense, or a good old 5 man siege to force towers down. Baron offers strategy on the map as its buff is focused on minions instead of teamfighting. Baron is also quite strong late game as well due to the pressure it gives.

Here's my last problem with elder dragon: stealing it functions too similarly to Baron. Before, if a team with 1 dragon stole the 4th drag from someone. It wasn't the end of the world because you still had 3 other dragon buffs and were still ahead in that aspect. Now, if a team steals elder, even with no previous dragons to their name, you probably have to go back to playing safe and trying to turtle. That's what Baron forces you to do. Why repeat that with dragon too?

Herald and Baron are the map pressure buffs. Dragons are the teamfight buffs.

Elder dragon, because it is the only dragon that spawns after 35 minutes, by design, has to be strong enough to warrant you to kill it without having committed any attention to other dragons before it. It's strong and devastating even when the team that has it has no dragon buffs to their name but is atrociously strong on teams who did get them. So for this, the elder dragon fulfills it's niche as the teamfight objective... but It does so in a way that is subpar to that of the previous iteration of the dragon.

So, to sum it up the problem I really have with dragons now are:

1. rng is annoying and doesn't inherently affect the game in a positive way
2. strategic diversity only noticeable after 2 or 3 dragons of the same type accumulated on one team
3. elder rejects your ability to catch up in buffs
4. outclassed by Rift Herald as early game objective
5. baron is a better mid game objective
6. stealing elder feels pretty much the same as stealing baron

Ideally, I'd like it if the dragon types stayed as they each feel different to fight against and the dragon that spawns should stay random (as this type of rng only dictates how you play while fighting the dragon) but the buffs they gave went back to the "set buff" style we had before.

So it'd go something like:

1st stack: 8% ap/ad buff 2nd stack: 35 out of combat movespeed 3rd stack: bonus true damage vs turrets and 10% damage resist against turrets (btw buff turrets) 4th stack: 8% missing hp and mana restored every 5 seconds when out of combat 5th stack: double all other bonuses and gives burn damage over time on auto attacks and abilities for 150 seconds

I'd actually settle for elder dragon still spawning at 35 minutes and giving the burn effect anyway (along with whatever stack would be next of course) to preserve it's current "get me to be teamfight gods for two and a half minutes" identity. The elder buff as the 5th stacked dragon would double the burn damage it provided.