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How "secret" is getting a dragon kill supposed to be?

Snes C·4/8/2015, 4:05:36 AM·102 votes·5,427 views

When you see an enemy champion kill the dragon, there's a whoosh sound, a particle effect around each enemy champion, the countdown resets on the scoreboard, the icon on the scoreboard changes, each enemy champion gets a buff, and there's a chat message. If you don't see the enemy champion kill the dragon, all of the above happens, except the countdown doesn't reset and there is no chat message. Why? You make no attempt to hide the fact that they got a dragon kill; you still hear the sound effect, see the particles, and see the buff appear on each enemy champion. And yet the countdown at the top of the scoreboard continues to hide exactly when the dragon was slain.

The entire point of the jungle camp respawn timers was that it was decided that, of all the skills Riot wants to foster in their players, note-taking is not one of them. Players shouldn't have to keep track of any more long-term information then they need to. By not making the dragon timer public information when it's already available to the players, you're just adding unneeded complications. Either hide the information or don't.

76 Comments

A Squid Now4/8/2015, 4:57:29 AM6 votes

I completely understand your point, and agree with it wholeheartedly. Considering how often Riot likes to talk about their changes to champions adding clarity to their game, God forbid they actually add some clarity to a largely influencing mechanic present in every game.

Migrañaboy4/8/2015, 5:58:02 AM6 votes

ITT, post will be:

1 year ago: put timers, it's not skill related, I write down the timestamp anyway.

Now: why should they put it, you can write it down anyway.

Xrusa4/8/2015, 4:22:35 AM5 votes

It's not that hard to just notice when the enemy team gets the buff and say to yourself "Okay, 6 mins from now roughly dragon should be up again." and then you ward it preemptively. Just type the timer that it should spawn around into chat and then you don't have to worry about it, it's right there in your chat log.

Sinlaire4/8/2015, 4:28:38 PM5 votes

I remember when people flipped shit just at the mention of adding in jungle timers.

saying it was a right of the good players to be able to track jungle spawns and that the ones who didn't deserved to miss opportunities.

Now it isn't comprehensive enough.

oh how times change....

Ipols4/8/2015, 4:27:04 PM4 votes

before commenting everyone should read OP's text. He's 100% right based on what riot said in other posts about "why we let/do not let" people use custom timers and so on.

junglerboy164/8/2015, 1:18:07 PM3 votes

It isn't really supposed to be "secret". Your opponents can see immediately if you have the buff or not, the only secret thing is the exact time at which you killed it, which helps with setting up wards and preparng for fights. Before the dragon buff rework this preseason, Dragon was just a respawning gold generator, now it has a very real impact that is extremely direct. Having it be a complete secret for the enemy team would feel atrocious. Imagine playing a game, and not knowing how many dragons your opponents have. It's about 40 minutes in, you've gotten 2 yourself, so there should be too much of a risk exchanging their 3rd/4th dragon for an inhibitor, right? Then they come out of the jungle armed with a 5 dragon true damage DoT and wipe your team, proceeding to melt Baron and push for a win. If you had known the situation, you would NEVER have just let them take dragon 5 without contesting it, but that unfair knowledge cost you the game. When you can see people getting the buff, it tells you 2 things: roughly when did they kill drake, and can we afford to let them take another. This creates a very interesting strategic element to the game that making the buff count and timer secret would completely destroy, while also increasing the "not fair" aspects of Dragon Buff.

TL;DR: Dragon buff and timer shouldn't be any more secret than they are.

AMYS GRAVE4/8/2015, 6:36:59 PM2 votes

This, yes, if we have the sound of the dragon being taken we know when it was taken, so why not reset the timer.

tofutime4/8/2015, 8:58:15 PM2 votes

Yeah, they need to take out the noise and particle indication. Teams should be rewarded with the timer by having vision of the dragon. You shouldn't get a free timer just by seeing an enemy. People argue that you'll notice the dragon buff on them. Will people really notice the exact second they get the dragon? probably not. A good/aware player who always checks scoreboards and buffs should be rewarded for this as well. A free sounds and visual indicator doesn't award you for anything. It makes all these things public info.

iLuma4/8/2015, 9:21:25 PM2 votes

Funny thing is, even with all the whooshing and shooshing, people still go to Dragon to verify whether it was taken or not.

TenSlashTen4/9/2015, 2:42:39 AM2 votes

still not as bad as trying to play shaco in season 5. lmfao fucking new dragon buff ruins him so badly. And riot refuses to fix it or buff him. I don't even level his ult past rank 1 anymore Sometimes dont even level his ult until level 10.

Kuhn4/9/2015, 5:20:06 PM1 votes

this is flawed logic, you can look at a enemy junglers buff duration and backwards engineer how long it has till it spawns again. so should we also just start showing red and blue buff timers that you missed due to lack of warding?

Rikari4/8/2015, 11:42:28 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Snes C,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=fe4V0OkX,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-04-08T04:05:36.509+0000)

The countdown resets on the scoreboard, the icon on the scoreboard changes, and there's a chat message.

Only with vision. With no vision you have no idea when it respawns,as the icon lingers on the map.