Recommendation to Epic Monsters on the Rift: "Apex Predator", Rift Herald Changes and Jungle Timers

#Introduction

In the mid-season update, Riot wants to make objectives more open to fight over. In pro-play, people often see just rotating from top-to-bot and taking towers. Objective trading and such. Now, with these changes, there's the elemental dragons (Which I think are cool), the rift herald changes (Which I don't think are that cool) and the jungle timer changes (Which I honestly just find baffling.) However, I don't feel these really solve the main problem of objective rotation. Here's a quick rundown why:

• The dragon changes will promote fights, yes, but the rift herald changes are basically there if you can't get to bot in time. "Just let dragon go, we'll take herald"
• The herald changes are an inelegant solution to the problem of objective trading.
• Elder Dragon and Baron will likely be traded more than contested over, considering they have similar power curves and similar rewards depending on if you have more or less Dragon buffs.

With this in mind, my prediction is that we'll see even more objective trading late game. If they see a team getting elder dragon, the enemy team will get Baron. Worse yet, with Dragon's buff possibly being better than Baron's buff, you could see a situation where a team takes Dragon, has a massive advantage and double-dips with baron buff for around a minute of pure, uncontestable power.

I wanted to recommend some changes to possibly alleviate this. Bear in mind, I'm not good at League. I'm only recommending something I might thing could help with both pro-objective control and lessen the chance for absolute unstoppable snowball.

#Change 1: Apex Predator.

Here's a quick idea for a monster buff. When there is only one epic monster on the rift (Dragon/Herald or Elder/Baron), that one monster gets the "Apex Predator" buff. Here's the herald/dragon version.

Apex Predator This unit is the dominant lifeform on the rift, taking 10-25% reduced damage or gaining 10-25% stat bonuses. (Designated by a slightly increased size/particle effect)

The ratios don't scale, I'm just assuming what the good bonus would be. This buff does a few things:

• Makes objective contesting a race against time. If you're doing herald and your enemy is doing dragon, you're in a time attack to whoeever can get the buff first, lest the monster suddenly grow more powerful and make taking it harder.
• Prevents snowball objective rotation. You can't easily take dragon and swipe herald unless you put your entire team behind it, at which point a giant teamfight can break out or the enemy capitalizes and takes several other, smaller things on the rift.
• Forces players to have a larger choice in objective. Do I want the herald buff and risk making dragon unobtainable or is dragon the thing we want right now?

The buff is similar for the Elder Dragon/Baron with one major twist. This buff only appears when both Elder Dragon and Baron are on the rift.

Apex Predator This unit is the dominant lifeform on the rift, taking 10-25% reduced damage or gaining 10-25% stat bonuses. This bonus increases if the enemy possesses the buff of the fallen monster.

Building on this:

• Makes Baron/Elder dragon plays far more time-oriented if it comes down to objective trading.
• Prevents easily taking Baron if you have Dragon buff or taking Dragon if you're suped up with Baron.
• Creates more dire "do-or-die" scenarios. We're behind, can we risk taking the stronger dragon? They're doing a more powerful baron. If we're gonna stop them, we have to do it now.

These changes, while not perfect, would give another layer of complexity to objectives and allow for both anti-snowball and dire comeback scenarios. However, this is also assuming that the death timers make it possible to contest. No point in having this sort of buff if your enemy has 2 hours until they respawn.

#Change 2: Rift Herald.

With the elder dragon change, Baron lost some of it's bite. Elder dragon, if you got even two dragons, becomes a powerful force that can easily rival and surpass Baron buff. With even one flame dragon and water dragon, the elder dragon buff provides bonuses pretty comparable to Baron with only a minute and a half less. Let's not even get into if you have more than two or three buffs, at which point Baron buff will start paling in comparison to the almighty elder dragon. With this change, however, we have a good chance to buff up Rift Herald and make it comparable to dragon.

Changes Herald is reverted to how he is on live. Stronger than dragon but with the doom's herald buff. Herald now lasts the same time span as dragon (Moving from 20 minute despawn to 35 minute despawn) Herald grants an additional bonus: "Encroaching Doom"

Herald sees play, sure, but he's always played second fiddle to Dragon even with his changes. It doesn't help that Riot's approach to making Herald more valuable is that he's a one-time objective that's harder to get. It just feels rather lazy and promotes solo splitpushing...which earth dragon should. Instead, with Dragon being a scaling objective, I feel that herald would have great use taking over for old dragon with a scaling buff system. Alternatively, you could make the buff simply improve baron buff. I've listed some examples below.

Encroaching Doom Each Herald kill empowers the Baron buff should this unit acquire it. One Kill: Baron buff will persist through death. Two Kills: Major objectives/kills extend baron buff by 10 seconds. Three Kills: Range on Baron Minions is increased. Four Kills: Each unit who received "Doom's Eve" will gain additional bonuses Five Kills: Baron buff is global to minions.

Alternatively

Encroaching Doom Each rift herald kill increases Baron's buff by 30 seconds.

Both of these would likely require Baron buff to be tweaked slightly but the goal here would be to improve Baron as an objective and make both herald/baron a competitor to Dragon. What I'd hope to see would be:

• Strategies built around taking Herald or Dragon. Does your team want more general bonuses or are they betting on Baron being the killing blow?
• More objective fighting versus objective trading. A blue dragon is good but you don't want your enemy getting another herald if you can stop them.
• Making baron on-par with Elder dragon. If these changes hit live, baron will be in an odd place where his buff doesn't have the potential Elder dragon does, despite being THE original epic monster.
• Removing Herald from being the selfish monster to something that teams will want overall rather than just one person.

Mostly theorycrafting but this is what would hopefully come about from these changes.

#Change 3: Buff Times

Short answer: Stop. Long Answer: If you want to promote objective fighting, there are better ways to do this. Have another smite/ward that lasts longer in the enemy jungle. Have tutorials about what to do with jungling/counter-jungling. Give us some actual detection tools to protect our jungle (Maybe make blue trinket available earlier?) but just making buff timers is not a great idea. I'm not spouting this as the end of League. I just don't think it's the best direction to take.

Those are my ideas. Lemme know if you have questions, comments, or otherwise. Feel free to propose your own as well!

#TL;DR

• "Apex Predator" buffs a monster if it's the only epic monster on the rift so you can't do dragon/herald easily.
• Change Rift Herald to have interactions with Baron. Make Baron spawn equally to Elder Dragon to compensate.
• Please stop Jungle Timers.