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Elemental Drakes and how they could be improved

Nomoreriptide·11/24/2018, 4:46:14 PM·9 votes·18,660 views

Elemental Drakes were introduced as a more appealing option to their former option, which gave only minor amounts of gold. While the idea behind them is universally acknowledge as nice and attractive, i think that some patterns related to their current functioning is extremely toxic and bad for the current gameplay.

The idea of my topic is to provide bad aspects of the current Elemental Drakes system and propose new ideas to make them healthier for the game

What is bad about current drakes?

First of all, I would underline my point of view: Team-based objective should provide Team-based benefits and rewards. In this sense, Mountain drake and Herald have perfect design patterns. Also, Elemental Drakes buff should not interact with dueling and combat between players. People spend time in studying match-ups. I should not lose a duel or my lane phase because my opponent has an Infernal/Ocean/Cloud Drake buff on his behalf. Imagine that toplane fight when your opponent scores a kill on you and he saved with 1-5% hp. This outcome should not be related to a Drake buff, that maybe your opponent got without interacting with rest of his team. The presence of these hidden buffs make the game chaotic, unfair and unclear: duels that you should win become defeats, situations in which you should be able to run away, u just get chased down because of a cloud drake buff. All this is very bad for the game, and causes loss of game perception.

Also, since Elemental Drakes are team-based objectives, players should not be able to solo them easily

How can we make drakes better?

I'll propose then some ideas that can make Elemental Drakes a better tool in the game: ** 1. Rework Elemental Drakes buffs**: Mountain Drake is a good concept, and should stay in the game, I have some suggestion for new buffs:

  • Sand Drake: reduce recall-base time
  • Iron Drake: slow resistance/tenacity (this has minor duel impact and greater team-fight impact)
  • Holy drake: Reduce % death timers
  • Ethereal Drake: Reduces trinket cooldown

2. Drake buffs should start later in the game: shifting the power from drakes when dueling and lane-phase are less important in the game: could be a set timer, or after the first tower falls.

3. Improve Drake fight patterns: For example, if only a champion is damaging a drake, it woudl get a 60% damage reduction (force "real-time" team cooperation to get it). Also i think drakes could use improved attacks and abilities.

14 Comments

ModUlanopo11/25/2018, 3:34:53 PM1 votes

Approved.

TheSingularity11/26/2018, 4:44:46 AM1 votes

Agree with and like the concept. But non issue is incentivising players to take drakes. If we think back in the past, when wind/ocean drakes were weaker no one would bother because there was no clear tangible result like earth/fire.

These changes would likely reduce the incentive to take dragons because there's no immediate power increase and it isn't as obvious even when they're in play. Given the nature of wind and ocean I feel they're on par with Mountain. They don't directly influence a duel because they stop working when one starts. Fire drake could extend the duration of wards

IArs3lynI11/26/2018, 4:45:04 AM1 votes

When it comes to the idea that reworking drakes is not much of a bad idea except Elemental drakes for the most part shouldn't passively give you power in dueling, however it should help in a long term sense, for example, Mountain Drake is honest perfect, as it suit for taking care of objective oriented like drakes, towers, and Barons, as for Elder Drake I found it good to have it that way, to inflict damage to minions and champions alike with a burn damage is good, helps close the game out quicker. I will also vouch that Ocean Drake is great as it is something you can easily deal with by poking the champion to make sure he dont get the benefits of the ocean drake or force him to back to safety away from the minions to heal up, it a great tool that i believe that should stay in lane.

As for the other 2 Drakes they needs to not be so interactive in duels especially how benefit late game they are, I agree strongly that Infernal Drake is too strong especially if you claim all 3 of them then add that with elder drake which boost that by 50% more, it is too strong late game and it also useful early game, instead i would say it would be nice to have this be more interactive with the duel itself rather then the idea of increasing their overall power, because champions that are like akali or high AD, high AP reliant champions scales way too strongly with this. as for cloud drake i presume that out of movement speed combat was something i believe should be strong but kept as it provide a way to get back to lane quicker, which i agree with it, It was so much better last game to help with those to get in position for a big fights or to help get back to lane quicker. Now it has movement speed no matter what, which is depressing to see let alone hear.

Overall good idea however i have a few more things to say. the drakes you trying to offer will definitely impact the game very much so, champions that already have CC resistance will now have a strong CC resistance, same with champions who got caught out, they can get out if they have 1-3 of those kinds of drakes, as for death timer drakes is a bad idea too especially late game, if it comes out too strong then closing the game will be too hard, the gap close for ending game needs to be on the dot if you want to end the game, Trinket is very disengaging especially since there already 2 runes that helps with trinket cooldowns being reduce, Sand drake is also another bad idea, as it can provide too strong of a recall clutches especially with baron buff and rift buff. it a rather dumb idea. as for Drake being stronger is also not something that shouldnt be done, there already a few champions that cant solo drakes early game, those who have downfalls included, making drakes stronger will making sneaking out with a clean drake impossible, in which making Junglers less impactful then they are.

Gilgayu11/26/2018, 10:11:11 PM1 votes

Just some counter points to OP...

In terms of dueling... It is okay for dragons to have some influence. True, League is a team game, and team objectives like dragons and baron should affect the team rather than just a few fed individuals. Advantages granted by dragons during duels, however, just means your/enemy team's jungler is better in some way. After the xp nerf to jungle camps and the nerf/buff of the DH, junglers already have some of their carrying tools taken away. I think giving them the abilities control "team objectives" would be fair.

In terms of able to solo team objectives... In pro plays, you can see players sacrificing 1 minute or 2 just to kill a drake for their team very early into the game. In solo-que, however, most "first dragon" are taken around 8/10 minute mark (or even later into the game depending on the jungler), depending how fed you are. Certainly not all junglers have the power to solo dragon. Shyvana can solo it as soon as she hits 6, ww can solo it as soon as the dragon spawns. Other junglers like ivern, nidalee, amumu, or sej can't because they already provide so much utility for their team.

Dragons starting later into the game... Riot already did that, and pushing it further back would only weaken the junglers even more and "encourage" them to gank a lot before dragon spawns. Do you want to be camped 24/7 ?

As for the new dragon ideas... I think they are really cool, but since it is the "elemental dragons", meaning fire, water, earth, and wind, I'm not sure if Riot want to make a change. Adding more types of dragons will probably result in pushing the spawn time of the elder drake... but let's be honest, elder drake do come a little too early into the game considering it is almost as impactful as baron

Shahamut11/30/2018, 4:44:09 AM1 votes

Heres my personal opinion on it:

Each Drake element should only spawn once. (One fire drake, one wind, one earth and one water)

After each drake has been taken, Elder dragon spawns. Capturing Elder drake will have one of two effects:

1- steal away an elemental drake buff from enemy, transfer to your team.

2- Grant a temporary increase to drake buffs.

Drakes should have buffs that dont necessarily favor a particular group of champions, and thus in my opinion should not grant raw stats that cause scaling issues. (Granting raw movement speed, AD, AP, causes certain kits to scale much harder than others. Combat stats are fine, but they need to be the same for everyone imho)

Fire Drake: Dealing damage to an enemy champion or structure causes the target to burn, taking 3-54 magic damage per second for 2 seconds. Multiple occurrences do not stack but refresh the duration. ELDER BUFF: Damage is now true damage.

Earth Drake: Should basically replace the bone plating rune in resolve. ELDER BUFF: For elder duration, gain 15% damage reduction from all sources.

Air Drake: Grants 50% slow resistance. ELDER BUFF: For elder duration, immune to slows and grounded effects.

Ocean Drake: Out of combat Health regeneration based on recent damage taken (grey health style). ELDER BUFF: Gain 10% omni-vamp for Elder buff duration.

Each drake only being on the map one time makes the objectives more predictable. The elder becomes a contestable objective to help end games that are already won, but also offers a way to fight back into the game when behind.

This is all just off the top of my head, so take it for what its worth. XD

1 Wing12/5/2018, 12:36:18 AM1 votes

I like the idea of considering new drakes.

With the current drakes, the problem is: one team "may" benefit enormously from a single, randomly generated dragon. Ocean drake is "fine," until it's the enemy trundle, nasus, and whomever else getting it. When they get it, it quickly feels like "that side won the game."

A team of squishies is fine. Then they secured the random fire drake. Now, that squishy team will win the game; and it's difficult to come back, when the squishy team was already strong and their weakness was their squishyness: Now, they become "just too strong," and I often feel the opposing team can't win a fight even when they are doing the right moves.

And then it's like: "oh, why do we have to play out the rest of this match. . . .of course they take baron, of course they catch "X" player out at 38 minutes and we're going to lose. . . " And that's not a fun game to play.

But if it was mountain drake, that doesn't "demand" that one team will win, "a team fight." And the same is true, with wind drake, and ocean drake "can be okay;" maybe it needs to work a little differently, like maybe you're always gaining a little health, instead of "a fairly strong amount of health gain when out of combat."

I see this option:

Fire Drake: nerf it a bit. . . or remove it.

Wind Drake: Is okay.

Mountain Drake: Is okay.

Ocean Drake: "a little change," like a very small amount of health gained at all times, instead of the current style.

Maybe there could be a few new drakes!

I think some new drakes would really work well. I dunno. . . "void drake: each member of your team can gain a one use 'bonus flash' item. [or maybe it's a steampunk drake. . .?]"

Penguin212112/7/2018, 6:08:18 AM1 votes

I completely agree! Adding more elemental drakes would be awesome. The visual effects on a sand drake would be awesome too! :)