My Take on Dragons, And Why RNG Drags are Good, But Need Work.

Up until recently, I genuinely loved the idea of diverse dragons. A factor like RNG with dragons seemed great to me, because I thought it would help diversify play styles in league. Depending on which dragons you got, you would change your play style to make the best use of it. I think that was what riot was aiming for too, and I think that's a great idea.

The problem is, that's not what's happening in games. When you get 3 infernal drakes and an earth drake, it feels WAY more powerful than getting 3 air drakes and an ocean drake, or one ocean drake, one earth drake and one air drake. Having great dragon control as a jungler can be game winning in one game, and borderline worthless in another. This is made worse by the fact that A jungler won't know if it's better to gank, or to go after dragons in the hopes that they'll get something good as the next dragon spawn if the current one is shitty.

What I'm wishing for isn't the changing of random dragon spawning, but the rebalance of each dragon. The current iteration of Dragons is (I assume) to provide game altering effects, where one effect is not necessarily better than another, but equally influential in different ways. In current games, I'm not getting that feeling.

Hell I just played a game where our jungler recommended not to fight for air dragon because "it was worthless", and the whole team unfortunately had to agree with her. In no situation should a dragon be worthless, unless the game is at a point where it's impossible to adapt a play style to make the best use of it.

-Currently Air Drag is really shitty. This isn't news. Yes it is very helpful with rotations, and yes that is a fun thing to have, but compared to 10% of your Damage being dealt as true damage to towers AND baron/drag?

-New Ocean drake had it's power toned down (Understandably so),but with the addition of the 8 seconds of no combat needed before it's already delayed effects kick in, there are many situations where you can't even get health back in between team fights, because of poke. Since what it recovers is missing HP squishy ADC's who are low in HP are probably better backing all together and avoiding the risk of being instagibbed, than sticking around and waiting for the effects to come through. It's arguably worse with tanks because, while they presumably have the tankiness to stick around at low% Health in a fight, they're probably frontlining, making them far more susceptible poke which deactivates Ocean drake. While dealing damage or being hit by minions doesn't count against the start of the effect, It still feels underwhelming, and there are times where I don't even really feel the buff in play.

-Earth Drag Feels really powerful when you get it, but I feel like it's slightly overshadowed by It's older brother Infernal drake. While 10/20/30% true damage on structures and legendary monsters is great, Infernal drake still applies it's Bonus ad and ability power to EVERYTHING. That includes minions, jungle camps, Champions (of course),and...Structures and Epic monsters. Now I would bet anything that getting 30% bonus true damage against towers and epic monsters is going to do way more than 24% bonus AP and AD against these structures, but the infernal dragon buff is so powerful, that I would bet it would give earth drake a run for it's money in these area's to being far more flexible in terms of its use. I would even go as far as to say that that a level 1 fire drake is better for pushing than a level 1 earth drake, because the 8%ap and AD applies to minions as well, allowing for you to wave clear better than you would be able to with Earth drakes 10% bonus structure damage. Even if this is not true, the fact that Fire drake can provide some of what earth drake does, while doing other things better, steps on earth drakes niche quite a bit.

After all, isn't the point of having different dragons with different effects to diversify game play? If I get an earth drake instead of a fire drake, I should want to focus on pushing towers and epic monsters more right? So then why should the same play style be an option for fire drake, in addition to focusing on kills and what not like with fire drake? If I get Air drake, I don't get to choose between sustain and rotation to utilize my dragon. If I get ocean drake, I don't get to choose between rushing objectives, and sustain/poke. So why is fire drake different?

TL;DR: I feel like dragon's should have different, but equally influential effects, and while air drag is the obvious sore thumb, the current dragon system as a whole needs work.

(Little side note: I still like this system, a lot better than the old dragon system.)