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Inferno feels too strong in comparison to other Drags

Swollwonder··45 votes·3,299 views

The inferno drag feels like its stronger than the other drags. When an enemy gets a wind drag or an ocean drag my thought is "well that sucks but oh well." If were ahead I think "Oh that doesn't really matter." Even if they get two, I don't care all that much.

But if the enemy gets an inferno dragon, even if my team is ahead, I think "oh no we could lose this now." Once they get two it feels like its their game to lose not your game to win even if you are ahead. Why is that? Because inferno drag is just better than the other drags.

The earth, ocean and wind drags really don't scale. They scale a bit but only in certain parts of the game such as taking a tower or not being in combat but even then they don't scale as much. Inferno drag does. That makes it feel a lot better than the other drags in comparison.

In my opinion inferno should just give some flat damage. This way it still is useful and you will always be ahead of the other team but you also are not constantly snow balling in power. Its still useful but not game ending.

Disclaimer: This argument is made for bronze silver solo queue players. Wind drag is obviously extremely useful for rotations but the level of play this happens at, especially in solo situations, is extremely variable. The argument loses credit as rank is increased but I still think it warrants some consideration.

TL;DR inferno scales way better than other drags and thus feels more powerful. Perhaps changing to flat damage increase could negate this feeling. Feeling is not as bad in higher ranks because people know how to use each drag.

57 Comments

xWaters14 votes

I prefer the mountain drake over any drake.

statelesskiller1 votes

Gates

Danjeng1 votes

Same. Though preference is subjective. Maybe roaming supports like Cloud. Or skirmishers like Water.

EndlessSorcerer5 votes

Ocean is definitely my favourite.

I enjoy playing siege champions (i.e. Lux, Ziggs, Jayce) and junglers, so the added sustain is fantastic.

Kr1sys1 votes

{quoted}

I prefer the mountain drake over any drake.

Depends on the game, but mountain can change a lot about a game outcome rather than pure offensive stats. I think its more like Inferno>Mountain>Ocean>Cloud

Erractic Eick1 votes

As a tanky top later and tanky support main, I personally LOVE the cloud drake. The more the merrier. They get me to my lane faster, they allow me to roam to my needed lane quicker, they help me run away if I'm smart, and they're pretty easy to kill. I will BEG my jungler to help me take one. I will tank the ever loving SHIT out of it for him, so long as I get that move speed.

MunchCrunchLunch6 votes

because its combat stats. offensive stats already scale much better than defensive stats. nowe we add drags that give offensive stats. yay. tanks late game are uselss now.

Blue1014 votes

This is correct, but it's only half of the problem. Infernal drake is the ONLY one that still works in combat with other players. If ocean drake or wind drake were still active while in a fight they'd at least compete with infernal.

Escheton2 votes

{quoted}

This is correct, but it's only half of the problem. Infernal drake is the ONLY one that still works in combat with other players. If ocean drake or wind drake were still active while in a fight they'd at least compete with infernal.

But they are. Just not in all-in last-man-standing-fights. That regen matters when dancing around each other and going or short skirmishes looking for an edge. Or for poke. That cloud helps you position and collapse faster. That mountain helps you pressure objective fights (they HAVE to contest, or it melts) Which means you get to fight on your terms.

Troll for Trump1 votes

tl;dr

Ocean can only be used effectively by split pushers or a heavy poke comp.

Air can only be used well by roamers

Really, inferno's the only one that's always good no matter what champ you play, what team comp you have or whatnot.

ChaoticPinecone3 votes

Not really.

Ocean is great for rotations after skirmises. Fight it out, back off, then rotate - you get to take objectives without having to base, giving you more time on the map for vision, ganks, or objectives. Or if you win a 5v5 and go for some objectives, you arent stuck in that "overstayed at low hp" situation.

Air might be most beneficial on roamers, but the movespeed for warding/getting to objectives is pretty great. It also allows you to rotate that much faster when a fight breaks out, as well as coming back into lane from base or clearing side waves.

The problem is that people would rather do more damage than get utility. Sound familiar? Its that same thinking that makes Support the least desired role.

Troll for Trump1 votes

What use is utility if you can't use it in combat?

Make a support that can only do things out of combat, that's essentially what Ocean/Air do

ChaoticPinecone1 votes

Its not like a support that can only do things out of combat - its like purchasing out-of-combat stats to make better use if your in-combat abilities.

Its like buying a Refillable Pot or Mobis.

Troll for Trump1 votes

Yeah Air Drag is similar to buying Mobis, but Mobis isn't popular right now. You need the incombat MS to keep up with mobility, and you need tenacity/tankstats to keep up with the creeping in general.

ChaoticPinecone1 votes

No, Mobis arent popular. Mainly because of of past buffs to other types of boots, mainly swifities.

But you cant deny the usefulness of a large amount of out-of-combat movespeed.

Sagan Forever1 votes

Inferno is literally useless for a tank, plus 24% to 0. So inferno is good for carries, the other drakes literally help all champs; higher move speed, sustain, true damage to objectives.

Troll for Trump1 votes

Thing is, true tanks aren't exactly popular. The "tanks" that are popular all benefit off the dmg.

xelaker5 votes

{quoted}

This is correct, but it's only half of the problem. Infernal drake is the ONLY one that still works in combat with other players. If ocean drake or wind drake were still active while in a fight they'd at least compete with infernal.

^ so what we'll do is make infernal drag only work outside of combat...wait....no, yea that works carry on

50000000000000003 votes

It could definitely work as a bonus during the first few seconds of combat. Still very useful, but maybe not as overbearing?

It Hertz When IP1 votes

If Ocean became active in combat, Mundo would become even more unbearable than he already is.

Blue1011 votes

on the contrary Mundo would benefit much less than other tanks as this effect would be redundant for him.

LankPants1 votes

yay. tanks late game are uselss now.

This is why each Earth Drake should give an 8% increase to resists and Earth's effect should be moved to Ocean.

Drahcir1 votes

what about Oceans current effect?

LankPants1 votes

I think it's the weakest of the drakes, it has the weakest identity and overall is the least worth keeping.

Drahcir1 votes

i personally prefer the Ocean drake effect over Infernal.

LankPants1 votes

Most don't agree with you, it's generally considered as the weakest drake by a wide margin and I've seen people as low as low gold understand this and trade the drake away for even very small advantages such as a buff camp. The drake just isn't worth contesting, if there's any risk at all it's better to give it over because the impact is so minimal.

Infernal on the other hand is the only drake I see people unanimously give up a tower for. It is clearly the best of the drakes and it certainly generates more gameplay than Ocean. The simple fact is Infernal and Mountain are good enough for people to want to contest, Cloud sometimes is, no one ever contests for Ocean, so it spawning is removing a potential point of contention from the map currently.

Even if you prefer the buff personally you have to admit that simply by Ocean's existence gameplay is removed. If there were just an Infernal or a Mountain there'd be more happening because teams would contest them.

Fairyfleur1 votes

Are you saying Ocean is worse because people don't often contest it? The effect doesn't fit every comp but it aids in sieges and skirmishes, along with sustain in lane.

Nuparu1 votes

Ocean's effect is amazing when used/is stacked though.

Sometimes you need to (slowly) siege an inhibitor turret. It's very possible to get poked off and lose the siege - with ocean, it's not.

Mountain lets you rush it but you can still get obliterated. Ocean gives you enough passive sustain to force the long siege.

It has a strong usage in ending close games and it does well early as well (sustaining in farm lanes, for example Ashe vs Caitlyn bot lane or something along those lines, or jungling and being able to clear even healthier on champions like Olaf who run out of mana or Kha'Zix who gets rolled by Wraiths)

LankPants1 votes

I haven't seen it personally. I just don't see people put enough priority on Ocean for it to be stacked.

It feels to me like the strongest case for Ocean is when you can get one incredibly early, but even then it's probably outclassed by the roaming provided by Cloud and Cloud certainly outscales it.

It also doesn't feel like the majority of champs who want to be in a long siege need help with it. Cait for example pays the cost of setting up traps, then her mana costs aren't really existent. You don't spam Qs, you shouldn't have to be replacing traps too much, if you are then you're getting tons of head shots. You have lifesteal to shrug off poke that they can put on you. It seems better overall to just have Mountain or Infernal to push faster.

It Hertz When IP2 votes

Are you kidding? Early game during the lane period, Ocean is possibly the strongest Drake hands down, especially in bot lane.

Escheton4 votes

Yes. It FEELS stronger. But that is only to those that don't properly seige and rotate. Or rush barons/dragons. If all you do is run it down mid and teamfight of course Inferno feels better.

GayFluffyUnicorn2 votes

Thank u. Can't tell how many times i could sneak a baron at 20 mins with my team just because we had one or two mountains

AlienPrimate4 votes

I personally could care less about Inferno dragon. 10% ad and ap bonus on most champs does almost nothing for them. Take a mage for example. The only middle laner I play is Galio so I will use him.

I have 400 AP and get an inferno drag and now have 440 AP.

Q: 300 + 400*.6 = 540 damage before drag 300 + 440*.6 = 564 damage after drag

E: 240 + 400/2 = 440 before drag 240 + 440/2 = 460 after drag

R: 720 + 4001.08 = 1152 before 720 + 440 1.08 = 1196 after

**Before drag a full combo does 2132 damage and after it does 2220 damage. Damage increased by a total of 88 or 4% and only with the full combo. **

JhomasTefferson2 votes

I think halving or lowering the percentage it gives to 5% would be ok too.

KirbyCake2 votes

inferno drake is actually not that overpowered, you can see skt gave up 3 inferno dragons and still easily won.

for ap mages, their total damage scales at around half the amount of % increase in ap, so even triple inferno drake is only like a 12% increase in total damage.

for ad players is probably more like 75% increase in damage, so triple inferno is like 18% increase in damage, which is nice but if you gave up too much to get triple inferno you're still going to lose.

and thats only with triple inferno, for 1 inferno drake the effects are barely noticable.

Apollogy1 votes

It increases AP and AD by 8% per stack... So it's 24% at 3 stacks.

That's your AD and AP, though, and abilities that scale off of those stats will decide how effective it is depending on your champ. A 1.0 AP scale would use that bonus AP at a 1:1 ratio, but a 1.2 AP ratio would get more use out of the fire drake, and a 0.5 AP ratio wouldn't be influence all that much unless you stacked a lot of fire drakes.

Same thing applies with AD and AD ratios. However, most AD champions use their auto attacks for a huge portion of their damage, such as marksmen and many melee champs. That's really the only reason they'll sometimes get more use out of it... But a mage with 650 AP before any fire drake buffs is going to blow people up insanely fast, vs the moderately low AD on a late game marksmen in comparison, of maybe 250 to 400, depending on the builds.

There's a lot of things to consider when you're looking at these percentage increases. It's not just a 24% increase in damage with 3 fire drakes, and at the same time, you've gotta remember that everyone has resistances as well.

Zerenza2 votes

Infernal and Ocean are super strong but they only feel that way really in Solo Q. In solo Q you won't be coordinating with your team as much, roaming and pushing down objectives, and in most cases for Solo Q flat stats are better so your boosted teamates either, die less or get more kills.

In LCS and probably soon Flex Queue we'll be seeing the important of Mountain and Air go up since it becomes more about team pressure and map control than just snowballing.

Apollogy1 votes

...

Solo queue is about team pressure and map control too...

It's not a struggle anymore once you realize that the game isn't just about snowballing and hard carrying. There are ways to carry a game or win a game without having a massive lead.

I've carried games with scores as abysmal as 1-7, with two allies trolling. The macro game is extremely impactful in solo Q.

i am very high1 votes

Just sounds like RNG is stupid to me. We should really be asking Riot to remove all aspects of RNG from the game. Nobody likes RNG.

GayFluffyUnicorn2 votes

so games become even more stale and boring?

OHminus2 votes

Screw you RNG is my favorite LPL team

\s

Rivuo1 votes

Its funny how whenever I notice a team is doing too much damage or I say on skype '' why does he fucking do so much damage to me '' I press tab and they have infernal dragon or somethin.

Even when I spectate games

TheHappyReaperz1 votes

Ocean Drake and Earth scale into the lategame, as both of them are percentages of some stat you have.

VexingRaven1 votes

I feel like I only ever get ocean and cloud drakes, and my enemy always gets infernals. I've seen enemies get 3 infernals several times this week, but whenever I have complete control of dragon it's only a cloud or ocean.

Automated Riven1 votes

Like skt at worlds

Frius1 votes

Jhin 3x dragons and elemental

Apollogy1 votes

Flat damage would be added to champions that normally don't do much damage and don't gain much benefit out of Fire Drake... Some champions with a lot of attack speed or are just bulky will be dishing out a lot more damage than usual. Your carries will suffer and get deleted more quickly. If it's flat damage in the form of AD, it might scale even harder than the %AD bonus...

For example, the AD scaling on Udyr's Q is absurdly high, so maybe 15 or 20 flat AD would go a long way.

Twitch Chat1 votes

The only dragon that feels weak to me is ocean. It's still pretty nice on people with large mana or hp pools but it's definitely situational while the other dragons are good almost all the time.

Cowseed1 votes

It's not that the other drags suck, it's that they are underrated.

The best drags in my opinion in order are:

  • ocean
  • wind
  • infernal
  • drake

I mean like infernal is good for team fighting but the sustain from the ocean drake is just way to good. Especially since I like to empty my mana before backing and wind makes it way less taxing to go back and buy something. Infernal doesn't even help much if you are behind anyways.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

Infernal is actually really overrated. People think it's really good because of "muh damages", but it's really not that great except for a few champs that can get a lot of AD like Jhin. Infernal is really only something to fear if the enemy team has all 3 of them otherwise it's not anything really game changing. Mountain and Air are easily the two best right now.

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