draven is not fun to play against (wall of text)

... well I could probably leave it at that and get upvotes but I want to go farther so first why I personally think he's not fun to play against boils down to in order

1. his damage. and I don't mean "oh his q does so much" necessarily, I've played as and against and I'm fine with the balance it provides between predictable movement and damage and it lets me set up some encounters quite nicely, and it's not like I have to go in and 1v1 him every chance I get. no my problem is that once he hits two or three items, you just can't fight him, you're both squishy and he has more damage than you and lategame it becomes assassin level damage. the solution is just not to fight draven basically. it's quite uninteractive waiting around for someone else to take the draven out while you punch the tank for a bit to discourage them doing their thing.

2. his kit design. with his passive giving him a massive gold in boost in any kill if and when he kills you in a fight, his ult executes and his w steroids on a reset. draven is the dude that's thirsty for gold and your blood. every part of his lore and design is that one asshole that wants to fight everyone, but his kit means if you do there are very few outcomes outside "you lose." quite nice thematic design I must admit but it just feels so bad to play against in game, I think they actually did TOO good a job with draven's fantasy. you've all seen the draven. if or not he has flash and he's just peacefully farming in lane and the moment he sees you he pops his w and you're just like "well time to leave" because you know he's gunning for that bounty running in like some demented sea pineapple inhabiting sea sponge (yeah it reminds me of spongebob for some reason)

3.his power budget. it's pretty much all in his q and probably the real reason he is the way he is today. when you have someone in a class of characters whose defining trait happens to be that he's better than anyone else in that class at what they do, namely auto attacks, there's not much to do about it other than not try to play to his strengths.

so what to do? I've heard some suggestions of "make his q bleed" and that makes some good sense. after all it mirrors darius in design and nowhere in dravens kit is he "the dude that punches really hard." he's the executioner, and that for him means a slow drawn out spectacle ending in the enemy's execution, and bleeding an enemy out might just do the trick. other people suggest changing his passive to not be just gold stacks, and while I can see what it's doing, build up the audience and they throw stuff into the arena on kill. adoration could be a much more unique mechanic. if combo'd with his q bleed that may or may not stack it could reward progressively aggressive play with some of the damage the bleed may be missing or a general frenzy like his w is right now if it were moved to his passive to be used in and only in combat. building back up to the execution damage when he finally finishes off an opponent.