Dragon Changes: Beginning of the End of League

Zullar·11/21/2019, 5:57:25 PM·2 votes·1,438 views

The power of the new dragons is way too strong and nobody likes it. But Riot invested so much time to make these changes. Will they listen to their audience and remove elemental drakes, or cling to their changes due to the sunk cost? My guess is the later.

Seriously though having powerful elemental dragon buffs causing a massive power discrepancy between teams is not fun. There is no come-back mechanic. Other team gets mountain soul... good luck winning a 5v5... game is over.

8 Comments

ModThe Djinn11/21/2019, 6:03:25 PM3 votes

Will they listen to their audience and remove elemental drakes, or cling to their changes due to the sunk cost?

They'll likely adjust and balance them. The mechanic itself isn't necessarily inherently problematic, but the values of the rewards may well be too high. Personally I rather like the elemental drakes and the Rift changes, but the Dragon Soul buff can sometimes feel a bit too strong.

Hotarµ11/21/2019, 6:09:27 PM2 votes

Will they listen to their audience and remove elemental drakes, or cling to their changes due to the sunk cost? My guess is the later.

My guess is that you're assuming the entire community overwhelmingly despises the Drake changes even though it's been a grand total of one day on the live servers.

Say what you want about the balance team and their decisions, they're not stupid enough to bankrupt their entire game and company due to pride or stubbornness. If the majority of the community (keyword: majority, not the occasional boards/reddit post) actually dislikes the change, then they'll revert it.

Edit: and for the record, I'm not the biggest fan of these changes, but I'm going to give it some more time before I cast final judgment. Would definitely like to see the RNG toned back or removed entirely. Maybe that's just me.

Chewee109812/3/2019, 10:37:05 PM1 votes

{quoted}

The power of the new dragons is way too strong and nobody likes it. But Riot invested so much time to make these changes. Will they listen to their audience and remove elemental drakes, or cling to their changes due to the sunk cost? My guess is the later.

Seriously though having powerful elemental dragon buffs causing a massive power discrepancy between teams is not fun. There is no come-back mechanic. Other team gets mountain soul... good luck winning a 5v5... game is over.

Really kinda overboard for calling it the end of LoL but to each his own. Anyway I think that the changes are all fine until you get to the dragon soul which is just unfair. It should be that the dragon soul just prevents more normal drakes and counts as an additional drake of that type. So killing the fourth cloud drake you need to get the soul makes you get the cloud drake plus another one while still making it so the enemy cannot get another. The Elder Drake's new execute passive needs to be gone because that is way too good. It should be like what it was before or you have it give more money for kills or a larger amount of money when you first take it. Also I just think the "map changes" are really lackluster. There is little to no aesthetic changes in the map but a couple gameplay changes. I think making it so that the map changes more could make each game feel cooler and more unique but overall the cooler thing in my opinion is to have the map have more changes for the appearance. Essentially do the following for each drake:

                                                   1: Ocean: The Alcoves in bot and top lane rise a little and turn into small fountains that spill water into a puddle on                                                                          
                                                                the lane that leaks into the river and for mid lane there are four trees that blossom on the walls of mid.

                                                   2: Fire: The river burns up and looks more like lava that is only slightly cooling with some cracks here and there of                                                                          
                                                                magma. The Rift Scuttler will also change in appearance to appear more obsidian in color and all plant life, 
                                                                including the grass on paths, looks charred a bit or blackened from ashe.

                                                   3: Mountain: The River dries up, the crab is now a dark brown, or perhaps red, The Alcoves in lanes jut out a bit more 
                                                                replacing the bulk of the bush they touch. The alcoves and most other places now have some sand leaking out of 
                                                                the stone onto the floor and the center of top and bot are more sandy in appearance. (Whackier suggestion to 
                                                                include would be to make mid lanes walls get thicker and lean into each other making two semi circles and mid 
                                                                lane much wider except for two openings that make the semi circle of stone split into thirds, for ganks.)

                                                   4: Cloud Drake: The center of each lane looks like there is a cloud that either slows or increases movespeed. The jungle has 
                                                                wind tunnels, **_actual_** tunnels that increase move speed towards the river one way and increase move speed 
                                                                into the jungle the other way. (Crazy idea of having a couple symmetrically placed and slowly moving janna tornadoes 
                                                               that just knock people up when touched by them, no damage)

 Keeping everything else the same is good enough by me, well other than the buffs of the dragons as mentioned.
 Also Riot should consider making map packs that people can buy to give summoners rift a certain appearance and even base it on champion skin themes 
 to potentially bundle them together.

ImSoBoostedWhy12/10/2019, 5:18:14 AM1 votes

My humble, unimportant opinion is this: I enjoy all the recent changes except for these three: The color of the map after the infernal soul, the strength of the dragon souls, and the strength of the Elder Dragon execution mechanic.

I know there are plans to tone down the tint for the infernal and ocean souls. Good, but I quite like the ocean colors. The colors are just so much nicer IMO. The red from infernal is just too overbearing.

The dragon soul just secures the whole game. I recently played one which lasted over an hour, with both teams taking Elders, Barons and inhibitors. You might say that we lost because they had more dragons. That would be correct IF they didn't also have a player go AFK at 30 mins. So in this 5v4 game, the dragon soul protected their team from an AFK player. I'm all for some kind of LP loss prevention but this is just obnoxious.

The Elder Dragon execution looks SO COOL. Ever hit a Jhin Jhin ulti with it? It's super satisfying, but also super broken. @patch notes, 20% is exactly as much as it looks like (a lot). Squishy champs are easier to squish, tanks are easier to shred, and teamfights devolve into slaughters when Elder buff is on. Taking it down to maybe 10-15% would please me greatly (for all the nothing that's worth).

With Baron buff, and dragons before the changes, games were still winnable if you failed to take a couple dragons, or if Baron got stolen, or if the enemy team snuck Elder. Now, however, jungle objectives are just too important. Junglers who can't take a dragon at level 3 like Warwick or Yi are automatically behind If their opponent has better early objectives. When objectives can compensate for a whole player, they need to be nerfed a little. A team with Baron, Elder, and 4 drags should still have to play well (with all five players) to win.

Just some thoughts. Looking forward for the post-preseason fixes.