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More Meaningful Dragon Buffs

matrinox·1/21/2016, 7:10:20 PM·1 votes·458 views

Right now dragon buffs feel like a swiss knife of random buffs. It's kind of like the old mastery system: you got a bit of everything, overall it was very strong and you had to get masteries but you never felt like any one of them made your game different (unless you were clearing the jungle, in which case all your stats are being tested to the brink). The new mastery system is a lot better and I feel like dragon can go through the same. Here's an initial idea:

  1. 10% turret damage
  2. +5% turret damage, 10% movement speed in lane and out of combat
  3. +5% turret damage, 15% minion damage
  4. +10% turret damage, 25% extra damage to baron
  5. Double all bonuses plus 25% damage buff (i.e. 50% turret damage, 20% move speed in lane and out of combat, 30% minion and 50% baron damage)

Right now, teams can get the first dragon and just forget it. It's the one buff that scales so well with the least effort. Basically, the only reason to get the 2nd is to get the 5th stack (or to prevent your opponents from getting the 5th stack). This system makes taking dragon buffs more and more threatening to one objective: turret taking and lane control. If you want to dominate the lanes, take dragon. The goal of this should be that taking turrets early is still better (due to the durability buffs over time) than taking dragons but if your team comp can't take turrets (or not enough), taking dragons should be the counter. The first buff is way worse than the old dragon buff (6% AD & 6% AP) against everything but turrets. The 2nd buff gives you more utility to get back to pushing lanes. The third gives you more minion pushing. The fourth gives you baron control, which then gives you control over pushing lanes. The last buff should function like the old dragon buff and is just a powerful buff with extra damage for team fights.

The idea is that your team fighting should suck until the 5th buff. No 6% damage buffs for 1 dragon. However, in terms of turret and lane control, your team should be way better. Split push should be a more viable strategy. The 4th buff gives the team the chance to close the game out with baron control and if they haven't won then, the 5th should definitely secure it.

What do you guys think?

1 Comments

masterdragon4811/21/2016, 7:25:19 PM2 votes

I don't think Dragon should become another tool used to end games quickly; they snowball quickly enough as is. Rift Herald already exists as the epic monster that helps accelerate the early/mid game; Dragon should remain as the late game investment.

However, I do think that the 4th dragon buff is completely useless. Up until there, it makes sense. The damage buff early might seem silly, but having it as the first dragon means a team that got behind in dragons has a chance to make up the difference, so I'm okay with it. The second buff does help with tower taking, and the third buff is great for rotating around the map and getting picks.

Its that fourth dragon that needs to be reworked. By the time you have the ability to get it, most champions are having no problem clearing minion waves, so the damage it gives is negligible. I would like to see that changed, though to what I'm not sure. There are so many possibilities, but I think it should remain a champion stats buff and not affect the lanes directly; the theme of the dragon has been kill it, make your champions more powerful. Maybe 4th dragon can be a buff to regen, or armor and mres (sorta a late game buff to tanks when the adc's start to pick up steam).

The other thing I would really like to see happen to dragon is to decrease its respawn time by a minute. With games ending so much faster, and priority shifting to baron much earlier, 5th dragon is sorta this mythical thing no one even has time to get in a game because of how rapidly the games end. Shorten the respawn timer, and 5th dragon can occur 5 minutes earlier in the games that are getting played right now; nevermind if priorities change because the 5th dragon suddenly became a possible.