Dragon Idea (fixing dragon, while still keeping it strong)
Alright so I have been mulling over the "dragon issue" that has been in league preseason. Just for clarification, I like the concept of the dragons and what they bring to league, however there are clear issues I'd like to address, and express an idea to resolve them. The issues are compounding, so please try to understand where I am coming from.
EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: Just to clarify, the only reason I mention the "issues" is because riot currently sees only the first one as the issue to be resolved. Dragons are to strong, and thus they are going to nerf them. I do not want dragons to be weak, so this is a solution to keep them strong for teams that get them. end edit
First "issue": dragons are strong (not saying that is a bad thing, just bare with me) and they provide a lot of power to the team. This comes into play with the second and third issue Second "issue": Dragons are locked out. If you get the dragon soul, the enemy team is locked out of them. This is only an issue, because of the third issue.. Third issue: The actual issue is, the winning team always has the advantage this way. Dragon is meant to be an objective that is fought over sure, but if your team is behind you usually suicide trying to prevent it, and fall farther behind, or give it up and still fall behind because of the lockout issue. Usually if you can secure 3rd+ dragon, you pretty much are securing all of them, which basically locks out any "comeback" potential the enemy might have and just basically says "hey, the winners now have to throw if we wanna win". I understand this benefits the early game power more, but just makes early game bully champs feel that much WORSE than already making an enemy champ useless, since they now are providing scaling power to their team with that early game pressure, with little chance to fight back.
SOLUTION IDEA: Now here is where I get into my idea. I was thinking, why does dragon even need to be fought by both teams? It has been in the game since the start, but changes have been made to make it very strong, so why not make it a team wide objective FOR your team, rather than VS the enemy. What if, both teams had a "ghost dragon" in the pit, that only THAT team could attack. What would this provide you might say? Well it resolves the issue of "only the ahead team gets dragon". Instead it becomes a "time based" objective. So once one team gets all 4 dragons, they still "lock" the pit, and yes teams are locked out from further dragon other than elder (which, would still be fought same as current). So that means a team that focused their power on just harassing the enemy and never got dragons, and the other team just picked their dragon during enemys back, they have the potential to win the most dragons since the ahead team can't just "take it and back" like they currently can.
Now a question of how to balance it: First the dragon would need to be stronger. It should not be soloable. The reason for this is people should still be fighting over dragon, purely to PREVENT the enemy team from taking it and stacking towards the 4 dragon soul (IF you can fight for it that is). This means if you have a team fight and only 2 people are left alive, it should be like baron where pretty much those 2 people cannot take the objective anymore. It needs to be a bit risky to take it in the first place.
Second: When anyone takes their teams second dragon, if the dragon is at "resting" it changes element to match the map. This is to resolve if a team is might fighting with their dragon at same time and team A takes it first, it won't shift on team B until it goes back to resting spot. This way people can still 4 stack dragons IF they can prevent the enemy from taking third and forth before they get all 4.
Third: Dragons follow same order for both teams. Shifting only when second dragon is taken
Forth: You would need to add a second timer for enemy dragons on the tab screen. Obviously.
Fifth: Elder would make ghost dragons despawn, and be treated the same as it currently is, and fought over normally.
Sixth: Consideration idea, might not be necessary but could be a balance change, is make your dragon spirit grand vision, so you can at least SEE the enemy taking dragon at all times, and can CHOOSE whether to contest it.
End notes This would fit in thematically and practically into the new rift. We get a dragon "soul", so fighting spirits dragons already makes sense. In a practical stance, it would make it an objective you fight to PREVENT the enemy from taking it, if you have the strength to do so, rather than basically feeling you are forced to fight or you will lose just from their scaling. It also still emphases team fighting for it, since they will be stronger, and contesting the enemy as well. It would still benefit the team that had the best "map awareness" and still benefit the "early strength" of lanes, without being a flat snowball anymore. It would be the first "timer" based objective in league, where you need to get it a certain number of times in order to lock out the enemy. Ocean could be rebuffed with this change (since the lockout isn't as punishing), they wouldn't have to reduce the strength of the dragon so it is still worth getting, and so on.
Sorry this was so wordy, it has a lot of inner connecting parts in order for it to be balanced and work out. I know it is a big change, but I don't hate something just because it is different.
Let me know what you think!