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2nd and 4th dragon buffs kinda suck

kaellidor·1/5/2016, 10:13:57 PM·16 votes·1,926 views

Hello! I recently saw something in the state of the season post made on the front page of the client. I have a few ideas that could make dragon more valuable literally and figuratively.

The 2nd and 4th dragon buffs kind of suck. every league video I've seen giving tips has said don't worry if the enemy gets the 2nd or 4th. Just worry about getting your 1st and don't let them get the 5th buff.

One idea I had was to give the dragon 2 different buffs in the 2nd and 4th spots

Give the 2nd buff a gold over time effect. like the support items and call it heart of gold (because dragons like treasure). I would suggest something like the removed item philosophers stone. It would not a difference if any 15 min in, but in a 40 min game you could finish your build faster and be an item or so up on the enemy. Literally making it worth your time to snag it early. trading a tower would be worth a 2nd dragon in the long run. The enemy would get around 1k gold or so but your team could earn that back with interest in a stalled out game.
Make the 4th a constant minion buff. if the minions are always like 10-15% stronger they will always push giving your team a slight advantage. I know something similar is in play or about to be (I don't remember if they implemented the minion stuff as of yet) but it would add onto it and it would help your team end the game.
The 5% movement speed on the 3rd buff seems kind of small and only slight impact. Make it like a 10% move speed near enemies and make it a 1000 range. Phantom dancer is 500 range, so having something to speed you up get you into range, then you can be extra sticky to a target running or a little extra move speed to haul ass out of a bad situation.

Thanks for reading and leave a comment :D ill leave a poll also if you would rather just vote.

23 Comments

DeynaTaggerung1/6/2016, 5:29:13 AM7 votes

The 3rd dragon is actually pretty helpful, it doesn't need to be buffed

Erockandroll1/5/2016, 10:45:09 PM3 votes

The lower level Dragon buffs (Such as the first) Should have scaling effects to potentially stop the bleeding should the enemy start snowballing. And having a gold generating effect would be even more snowbally. If say, your opponent got the second buff while you have yet to score. It would take a minimum of 14 minutes to match that. After which the difference would be too great. (Unless you made the actual gold gen minimal, which defeats the purpose of making it interesting.)
The minion buff is weird in how it affects the game dynamic. (cause it's not entirely good for the wining side.) Yes this gives the winning side a good push advantage (which was designed to help people close out games.) This push means you can't starve out your opponents either by freezing the lane. The lanes with push to their side, giving them a shorter retreat distance, and you fewer safe spots. So I wouldn't throw around this mechanic randomly.
One last thing you need to consider is that the this buff, (along with the others I just mentioned) have to be balanced around the 5th dragon as well. Which is why most of these buffs are quite conservative. 10% doesn't sound like much, but once you get 5th dragon, that turns into a 20%.

Here's my argument for what should be changed.

Put it simply, Dragon is suppose to be a threat once the 5th buff is in effect. (perhaps rivaling that of Baron) The thing that happened with all the system changes is that it made the average game shorter. (by about 7%) For the YoloQ experience, lets round that up to 10% for a game designed to last between 30-45 minutes. that's a reduction of 3-4.5 minutes on average. And that could easily affect the ability for people to even reach a point where Dragon is an issue. Now let's say we reduced the respawn timer of Dragon by say, 30 seconds to a minute. That would reduce the earliest possible point where you could get 5 dragons by 2-4 minutes. Which would greatly make up for the lost in game length.

BluePolarizer1/5/2016, 10:56:24 PM3 votes

The 2nd buff is actually really good since it can let you take 2 towers in the time it would usually take you to take one, and allows for a greater margin of error in teamfights since you can now push fast even if your ADC died in a teamfight. Its not bad at all.

TurquoiseYoshi1/6/2016, 2:41:25 AM2 votes

One idea is to split the buff between the dragons.

For example:

3% AP/AD + extra tower damage Same MS + Minion damage Same You become OP

Then all of them would be equal.

Seenan1/6/2016, 8:02:00 AM1 votes

The 4th one is pretty worthless, but the 2nd one is amazing. Towers die exceptionally faster. Literally all of them but #4 are fantastic.

LaoBushido1/5/2016, 10:42:22 PM1 votes

i think it is a good spot right now , giving it too much power over RH's buff will make the game more bot heavy then it already it witch is the reason why RH was added in the first place

Laz19731/6/2016, 12:22:13 PM1 votes

5% speed is pretty huge. Your whole team has a noticeably better chance to either catch a running foe or to escape.

Dealth1/5/2016, 11:20:43 PM1 votes

The problem isn't that the buffs are weak, but that they are unnoticeable. With the first and third buffs you can physically see your stats increase however the 2nd and 4th buff you can't.

Spoofghoul1/6/2016, 12:45:06 AM1 votes

I suggested in different tread on this subject to swap drake buff 1 & 2

So first you get bonus damage vs towers

then you get 6% ad/ap increase

Bonus damage vs towers is pretty good especially if you get it when there are still towers but most of the time ppl just trade drake for towers and then get one later for the 6% stat increase. If you swap them you would need 2 drakes for that.

And drake 3 is already good, free bonus mobility is priceless.

Then all thats needed is to fix drake 4 I would suggest maybe health regen like regenerate 1,5% max hp per 5. Health regen is usefull for anyone and will help siege inhibitor & nexus towers.

Enrovy1/6/2016, 3:50:03 AM1 votes

then the minions would simply be a little too strong, and the gold advantage would be sometimes unable to catch up to.