A Few Dragon Changes That May Need to be Implemented

Currently there is no added difficulty to taking multiple dragons where there is supposed to be. First dragon gives 8% extra AD and AP making the next one easier to take. Second gives minion and mosnter damage which makes all subsequent ones easier to get. My point being, when you get the first dragon, it isn't realistically or tangibly harder to get the next 4.

I have a few suggestions that should be implemented to curb Dragon's snowballing potential, because it's frankly ridiculous right now. These changes will be in order of priority with change 1 being the most important.

Change 1: Give Dragon a 1000 range aura that lowers smite damage by 10-12% for each stack of its buff.

Since Smite deals true damage, it becomes impossible for any damage reduction to actually matter in a contest. This gives the team that's ahead because of the buffs a VERY noticeable advantage when contesting it because their Smite is likely to deal more damage because of a level advantage. Lowering the damage of Smite per stack of the buff would be an easy way for a team that's behind to get back in it.

Change 2: Make the Dragon buffs only active while it's dead. Or at least not have its own buffs affect it.

This is simple. To get your buffs, you have to kill the monster. When it's alive, everyone's back on equal footing, just like every other buff. Pretty easy to do, very large balancing factor. If that's too far, at least don't have the 8% AD/AP and 15% minion/monster damage affect it.

Change 3: Global buff counter. Whoever killed Dragon most recently has the current number of Dragon stacks. Implemented preferably with Change 2.

This would make games more swingy, so it's down the list a bit. Sometimes swingy can be a good thing, but sometimes it just prolongs games that should have otherwise been over.

Change 4: Remove the real combat stats from the buff.

Seriously, they're just oppressive. 8% AD and AP is a lot, for a 300 AD ADC, it's an extra Pickaxe of damage, for a 600 AP mage, it's like 60 AP if you factor in Deathcap. That extra 5% movement speed is close to an extra pair of boots on anyone with ~400 MS. Dragon should be a means to an end like helping take Baron, or lowering a tower's stats when you're near it to make it easier to dive or for minions to kill, not just free stats. It's another thing that just makes contesting Dragon harder and harder to do.

Change 5: Remove the ward intelligence requirement to know when it's up and give a global message(other than the heaven beacon) when it goes down, also increase the vision range of Scuttle.

Again, this makes stacking Dragons too easy and makes it too easy for a snowballing team to snowball harder. Scuttle crab doesn't see far enough IMO, it should be able to see Dragon and Baron sitting in their pits, but no further.

Change 6: Finally, give Dragon a relatively large shield that activates at 1 HP that only affects the team with more dragons.

The idea is they have to overcome damage that the other team doesn't, and if they're positioned right and engage properly, they get to take the dragon. Note that the shield will only activate if one team is at a buff deficit to the other team, and will increase based on the deficit. So, say 1 dragon difference = 500 shield, 2 = 1000, etc.

So that's all I have for now. Dragon was always a snowball thing, but never multiplicatively. I trust Riot will notice how powerful it is and nerf it because it's basically the only strategy available right now.