Problem 3: Dragons spawn and the Elder drake
A bit of head's up: this is my 4th post relating to dragons so if you want this post to make perfect sense to you, read the other 3, I post it already.
Since the beginning of the game, as far as I know, there has always been the 6 minutes timer for dragon spawn time. Starting with the mid-season changes last year, there has been a system where at 35 minutes, there will be no more elemental dragons and it will be replaced with the elder dragon. I find this system to be odd because at maximum, you can only obtain 6 elemental dragons before the elder dragons spawn. This is quite problematic because it seems like the elder dragon's strength is based on the number of times a team has obtain the elemental dragon and hell, there may not even be an elder dragon for teams to obtain because there will be scenario where the game is over before 35 minutes (or 40 minutes in the case where a team secure an elemental drake at 34 minutes). Obviously I don't like this system and here's why:
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It removes the presence of the elemental dragons. I like the elemental dragons, I like the idea of having 4 different dragons and when I play league, I get pretty upset when I make it to the 35 minutes and not see any more elemental drake and to me, the elder dragon is less interesting so yeah...
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The dragons spawn are too long. 6 minutes seems like an odd number for spawn time to me so why not make it shorter so that there will be more dragons interaction?
Now that I voiced my problems with the system let's go into more details on how I would like to see these problems fixed:
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Make dragons spawn timer shorter (You know this was coming). I don't want to set a guide line for "oh, 6 minutes are too long in League" and shit like that but I genuinely do believe that making the spawn timer shorter will increase the relevancy of dragons in the game. My frustration with the current system is that I feel like it should be more dynamic (not dynamic in the sense of pure laning but dynamic in a sense of BOTH laning and strategy). What I mean by this is that right now, League is more focused on tower taking and controlling towers and all that jazz. If we make it so that dragons are spawn in a shorter time interval while powering up their collective strength, that would definitely makes it more interesting and feelsgood to take dragons. Obviously, you don't want to make dragons spawn every 30 seconds so I'm suggesting somewhere in the ball park of 4 to 5 minutes to speed up the dragon spawn time for a bit.
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Separate the elemental and elder drake. Seriously, the one thing that I never quite understood was why can't Elementar and elder drake exist on the map at the exact same time? If you have the elder drake spawn at a MUCH later time than each elemental drake then fine, go for it but rito why can't they both exist at the same time? As far as I can tell the elemental drake has 2 functions: to fuel the power of a team that obtain the elemental drake and to provide a power boost. I think that there should be 2 separate camps, 1 for the elder drake and 1 for the elemental drakes. This would provide a scaling for the dragons. If the elder drake spawn in one camp, then it's still possible to obtain the elemental drake so that each elder drake that's to be obtain will be more meaningful than the last. Before you say anything, it's EXTREMELY rare that 1 elder drake will be slain, much less 2. The reason is because having a 35 to 40 minutes starting spawn time is already asking for too much but asking each elder drake to be respawn in 10 minutes is just an asinine expectation when one is expecting to obtain multiple elder drake.
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Make elder drake spawn earlier into the game and overall, more reliable. Of course, I only want this idea to be implemented if you're going t implement number 2 as well. Here's why: If the Elder drake are to be as powerful as Baron (and I believe it is, just in a different way), then why is that it has to be less reliable than Baron? Let's compare the 2:
Baron: spawned at 20 minutes, last for 3 minutes and 30 seconds, grants bonus ap & ad, power up the minions, baron recall and is extremely hard to obtain which is why teamfights happens Elder drake: spawned at 35 minutes, lasts for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, grants true damage DoT, and power up the elemental dragon stacks if one happens to have it.
I understand that if we make elder drake spawns at their current power 25 minutes into the game while keeping them separate from elemental drake then they would become too powerful so why not make them weaker than they are on the live server, have them reach the same power if at 35 minutes and then have them surpasses that. I believe the strength of the elder drake should be reliant on the number of elemental drakes the team has already obtain. That way, it rewards the winning team for perpetual elemental drakes control.
- Redesign the map. I think this is a topic for another time but I think that if we were to create a world where both elder and elemental drake were to co-exist then it's vital for us to have a new room for the elder drake so I would suggest a second pit for the elder drake next to the baron? Idk I don't want to go into details about this right now but I will say that for right now it's necessary because we need a new pit for the elder drake.