New dragon is hilariously oppressive or sometimes useless

Tychusfindlay919·May 22, 2016·24 votes·2,091 views

If team's start stacking fire dragon it's game over no matter what.

Just played a game where the enemy team had three fire dragons. 24% damage is hilariously fucking oppressive and makes for a hopeless situation.

And then other times the other team has like 2 mountain drags and a cloud drag or we do and it's worthless. Or if we have a fire dragon or two (or three) then it makes the game hilariously oppressive against the enemy team.

New dragon is shit.

It's either oppressive or worthless. It's random so it's very unreliable, and makes for shitty games overall unless we're the one's stacking and it's fire drags that we're stacking. Old dragon was a lot more reliable and provided a noticeable buff without the possibility of breaking the game towards one team's favor.

17 Comments

FoxstepMay 22, 20164 votes

Then don't let them get three fire drakes in a row?

Tychusfindlay919May 22, 20163 votes

{quoted}

Then don't let them get three fire drakes in a row?

Haha funny.

#1 I can't control my team

#2 It's very easy to snowball with fire dragon due to the insane amount of damage it gives

RisenDarkKnightMay 23, 20161 votes

With the old Dragon, you could potentially give away 4 to give your team time to scale if you were playing a late game comp or fell behind early. Now that works 75% of the time if they don't get fire drakes, but fails due to RNG the other 25% of the time. Besides, one player can't control every dragon, there's not much you can do if a player on your team gets caught out when dragon is up. Especially if you are the top laner. And getting 1 fire drake gives more stats making it easier to get the next and so on.

Critmaster GarenMay 22, 20163 votes

with the ocean drake nerf, only fire drake is worth something now.

its already anoying me how peope run straight to wind drake instead of taking the enemy inhibitor when they could. these dragons are so overappreciated.

unless you have a splitpush comp, there is no reason to go for any of the other drakes anymore.

i mean these things give you literally nothing of worth to win a fight anymore. no gold, no buffs that actually help you. chances are, when you have a normal team and are able to hit a turret, that bit of extra damage due to part of your damage being converted, doesnt mean a lot.

the old drake at least gave in combat movement speed and ad/ap reliably. the new drake has like a 25% chance to be useful now.

Tychusfindlay919May 22, 20163 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=o18yah8b,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-05-22T03:37:14.574+0000)

with the ocean drake nerf, only fire drake is worth something now.

its already anoying me how peope run straight to wind drake instead of taking the enemy inhibitor when they could. its so overappreciated.

unless you have a splitpush comp, there is no reason to go for any of the other drakes anymore.

i mean these things give you literally nothing of worth to win a fight anymore. no gold, no buffs that actually help you. chances are, when you have a normal team and are able to hit a turret, that bit of extra damage due to part of your damage being converted, doesnt mean a lot.

the old drake at least gave in combat movement speed and ad/ap reliably. the new drake has like a 25% chance to be useful now.

And when it is useful (fire drake) it's absolutely, undeniably oppressive as fucking hell.

CaythelesMay 22, 20163 votes

Ocean Drake is good for keeping pressure without going back.

Wind drake is good for being faster to initiate in teamfights

Earth drake lets you take down Baron Skuttles, and Herald faster along with Turrets.

Fire lets you do more damage.

All of them have their perks. use them correctly

Tychusfindlay919May 22, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Ocean Drake is good for keeping pressure without going back.

Wind drake is good for being faster to initiate in teamfights

Earth drake lets you take down Baron Skuttles, and Herald faster along with Turrets.

Fire lets you do more damage.

All of them have their perks. use them correctly

Ocean drake is useful.

Wind drake is worthless.

Earth drake is usually worthless.

Fire is oppressive as all hell.

I bet you five bucks if teams could choose what dragon could spawn, 90% of the time we'd see fire dragon, 9% of the time we'd see ocean dragon, and 1% of the time bronzies and trolls will ask for the other two dragons.

2 have noteworthy perks. The rest are forgettable. One is broken and tends to make for lopsided games depending on which team gets it and possibly stacks it.

Old dragon was a nice but not overbearing buff, and it was very predictable as opposed to unreliable and random.

Critmaster GarenMay 22, 20165 votes

{quoted}

Ocean Drake is good for keeping pressure without going back.

Wind drake is good for being faster to initiate in teamfights

Earth drake lets you take down Baron Skuttles, and Herald faster along with Turrets.

Fire lets you do more damage.

All of them have their perks. use them correctly

none of those, except for fire, has priority or is worth the risk of contesting it unless your team is either specialized in split pushing (earth and wind) or in sieging (ocean).

and this in return makes the elder drake worthless most of the time, since it just grants a boost to the other weak to mediocre buffs.

youre telling me what the dragons do. i know what they do. im saying theyre not worth the time when you could take turrets or rift herald (which actually gives a really powerful buff).

dont forget that youre taking damage on early dragons and run the risk of getting collapsed on by the enemy team when you try to take it. are you telling me 20 out of combat movement speed is worth it?

the only drake that is really useful in all cases and worth always contesting, is fire drake.

MunchCrunchLunchMay 22, 20161 votes

i mean tbh if you let the team have 3 fire drakes your probably losing already and beyond help until you get lucky in a late game team fight and ace them and push for win. but thats just bad way to play the game for. and dragons limit that.

Tychusfindlay919May 22, 20162 votes

{quoted}

i mean tbh if you let the team have 3 fire drakes your probably losing already and beyond help until you get lucky in a late game team fight and ace them and push for win. but thats just bad way to play the game for. and dragons limit that.

You'll be surprised how easy it is to start snowballing dragons when the very first one is dumping 8% more damage into your lap.

In any case, it's not so clear cut. There can be baron-dragon trades. It can be one bad fight that we had and they were able to capitalize with the fire dragon. It can be a steal.

teams dont even need all three fire dragons. Just two dragons alone at 16% pretty much spells the end of the game. three fire dragons at 24% just makes the game an instant FF game no matter how far ahead or behind a team may have been. It's been a while since league has introduced something so capable of making such a hopeless situation. But it's not just that. Other games, if we're winning, the dragon are all mountain or wind, which compared to fire, are worthless. It's unreliable, hilariously unreliable. THAT is my issue with the new dragon.

Besides, you're missing the point. Look at LCS Mid Season. Teams would have up to 3-4 dragons stacked and it made a difference but it wasn't HOPELESS. Teams trade dragons for things. The new dragons, if fire, simply cannot be traded unless you risk outright losing the game. That is annoying.

Everyone predicted the RNG dragons would be a bad addition, and it is.

alfavhunterMay 22, 20161 votes

How to change them properly

Fire gives damage at 5/10/15% (nerfing it to make it less oppressive) Wind gives a spell shield every 3/2.5/2 minutes (elder drake reduces the CD of spell shield by 50%) Earth gives tenacity for 10/15/20% (elder doubles this) Water is fine as is

Bamb all are useful but not overbearing

RisenDarkKnightMay 23, 20161 votes

I think the tenacity one would be too weak is most scenarios (and too good as a very tanky team against an all cc comp). It really doesn't do much good for squishies since they will die in a 1.8 second root/stun just as easily as a 2 second root/stun. The spell shield one is a good idea as is the fire nerf.

Maybe earth dragon should give bonus health? Like 10/20/30 hp per lvl? So it would give everyone a ruby crystal at lvl 15 per Earth drake? That might be too OP IDK.

alfavhunterMay 23, 20161 votes

{quoted}

I think the tenacity one would be too weak is most scenarios (and too good as a very tanky team against an all cc comp). It really doesn't do much good for squishies since they will die in a 1.8 second root/stun just as easily as a 2 second root/stun. The spell shield one is a good idea as is the fire nerf.

Maybe earth dragon should give bonus health? Like 10/20/30 hp per lvl? So it would give everyone a ruby crystal at lvl 15 per Earth drake? That might be too OP IDK.

or they could make earth like this

dealing damage to an enemy slows them by 10/15/20% (40% max) this basically makes it so if you get the earth you slow them a little more, this is useful for kite and escape for many champions (some champs like anivia wont see much change due to slow being designed into most of their kit but can still trigger the slow with an AA to help land skill shots)

RisenDarkKnightMay 23, 20161 votes

While fire drake being OP is certainly the biggest problem right now, my biggest issue is that Elder Dragon does absolutely nothing for you if you don't have any dragons prior.

Like compare it to baron 3:30 of Empowered Minions+Recalls and 40 AP + AD each or 45 true damage over 3 seconds for 2:00. One is just way better than the other. On the other hand if a team has 3 fire drakes, that becomes 36% bonus ad/ap and 180 true damage over 3 seconds which is impossible to teamfight against. They should make the true damage not so useless with no other drags and not too strong if a team has a few drags (the +50% dragon buff bonus should be enough to reward getting earlier drags).

BrujahbrMay 23, 20161 votes

ya ok op stop whining that the first dragon gives enemy a snowball lead; say they get their first fire drake at 15:00 and the enemy rengar has 250 AD. 250*.08 is 20

he'll have 270 AD

270 now keep in mind it's EXTREMELY unlikely that rengar would even have that much AD at this point unless you or your team fed him to begin with. he'd have more of a 150-200 range It's not a problem, if you actually complain that 8% is too snowbally you're the issue and the dragons are just fine

I need a shaveMay 23, 20161 votes

I like the dragon changes. For the first half of the split there was basically no reason to get dragons unless you were planning to drag the game out and get 5.

SpoofghoulMay 23, 20161 votes

earth drake would be nice if it gave your own existing towers a resistance buff like -10% damage or something as an extra buff.

currently its useless because towers are very weak and its not needed to siege or splitpush at all.

Meanwhile firedrake pretty much does the same thing it will increase your damage which means more damage vs tower and other objectives aswell but in addition your damage vs champs and minions also increased so yea firedrake easily outclasses earth drake.

Ocean drake is nice, the regen is noticeable especialy from #2 and #3 lets you keep up pressure or siege better.

Wind drake just feels obsolete if i want to roam ill buy mobi boots safes me the hassle of contesting a worthless dragon. because why would i contests the damn thing if my goal is to AVOID contesting things simply by getting places faster then they can. If its ever worth anything it defeats its own purpose brilliant design really rofl As far as buffs go it should increase the softcap on movespeed by the same amount.