A proposed change to Dragon

In my time playing League there have been a few iterations of Drakes which I will briefly go over:

Season 3 V3.14

Before season 3 Dragon was similar to the version on patch 3.14

• Dragon gave 125-260 (based on drakes level) global gold to EACH ally

• Dragon grants a bonus XP of +25% per average level difference

• Riot ended up changing this as the global gold/xp dragon gave was a huge snowball problem

• Dragon was often contested heavily by both teams creating fights and preparation for each drake that spawned

Season 4 V4.20 (The Weedwick Patch)

This patch dragon was changed from giving global gold and XP to the first iteration of stacking dragons:

• DRAGON'S MIGHT (1 stack): +8% total attack damage and ability power.
• DRAGON'S DOMINANCE (2 stacks): +15% damage to minions and monsters.
• DRAGON'S FLIGHT (3 stacks): +5% movement speed.
• DRAGON'S WRATH (4 stacks): +15% damage to turrets and buildings.
• ASPECT OF THE DRAGON (5 stacks, repeatable): Doubles all other bonuses and your attacks burn enemies for 150 true damage over 5 seconds. Lasts 180 seconds.

Dragon drastically lowered in value, in my opinion, compared to the previous iteration. However the first drake was often contested for the damage stats but once each team had 1 Dragon stack the rest of the drakes were less contested until a team reached 4 stacks. Then fights often broke out around dragon or the jungler was sent to attempt a steal to try to delay the 5th stack. Dragon no longer gave global gold but gave a small amount to the killer and some XP.

Season 6 V6.9

This was the patch that changed Dragon to the elemental ones we have today. They have seen minor tweaks to the stats they give over time. They spawn in randomly and get better the more of the same type of Dragon you kill. Elder Dragon was also added and spawns after 35 minutes when a Dragon is killed.

I feel with this iteration Dragon has been less contested than all the previous versions. Elder Dragon has been changed to be of a similar power level too Baron which his often heavily contested.

My Proposed Changes

Now that an overview of the versions of Dragon that have existed since I started playing in Season 3 I will put forward changes I would make to get dragon to be a contested objective again throughout the game. In the past I always loved the interactions some of the past Dragons created through contesting it. Forcing a fight to come out on top so you can take drake freely which then translated into an advantage or having both teams fight around the Dragon always created tense and action packed moments in the game which for me are fun to play in and to view at a competitive level. I do understand why the past versions were changed and I like the idea of elemental Dragons which give different stats but I never feel bad when the other team gets a couple of dragons unless they end up getting 3 of the same type.

What I put forward is something similar to the current version but would hopefully raise the priority of Dragon to the point that it creates interaction between both teams like old Dragons did.

• Elemental Dragon that gives AD (flat amount of damage that has an affect but isn't too overbearing)

• Elemental Dragon that gives AP (flat amount of damage that has an affect but isn't too overbearing)

• Elemental Dragon that is the current Ocean Dragon

• Elemental Dragon that is current Earth Dragon

• Current Elder Dragon after 35 minutes

Now you are probably thinking these changes are simple/negligible and to a certain degree they are but what I put forward now is how they interact in the game.

I want to put away with the stacking Elemental Dragons and have the way Dragons affect the game be slightly different. I propose that each Dragon affect last until the next Dragon is killed, the buff then goes away once that happens. For example:

• Blue Team kills the AD Dragon and gets the bonus affects

• Blue Team kills the Ocean Dragon and gains the bonus affects but loses the AD Dragon Buff

• Red Team kills the AP dragon and gains the bonus affect and Blue Team loses the Ocean Dragon bonus

This creates more interesting interactions between teams over an objective and makes it more contested.

• Blue Team might benefit a lot from the AD Dragon as they have multiple champions which benefit from those stats

• When the next Dragon spawns Blue Team may want to keep the AD buff over the other types so they can try to stop Red Team taking the AP Dragon to keep the buff.

• This creates fighting scenarios as Blue Team technically doesn't want to steal the Dragon as they want to keep the AD bonus over the AP bonus

Each Dragon only spawns once and in a random order each game creating different windows of different power spikes throughout a game. I like Elder Dragon in its current state as a major contestable objective so would keep that in a similar form.

This is just a random idea I had and would probably be terrible but I just want to see Dragon as a more contested objective as I enjoyed playing out and viewing the scenarios the older iterations created. There are probably many better ways to doing this than the random ideas I just came up with. One big thing I would change is to make Dragon less able to be killed solo as that is probably the biggest reason Dragon is less contested as most junglers can solo Dragon these days where in the past a select few champions could do it like Warwick and Nunu and that was part of their niche.

The changes I proposed aren't perfect at all but they are purely to demonstrate a concept of making Dragon a more contested objective than the current version where most drakes except infernal are left up and uncontested for long periods of time. With the concept I came up with it ALWAYS leaves one team wanting to take the drake either to get a temporary buff that lasts a minimum of 7 minutes time (till the next Dragon is taken) or to take away a buff from the other team whilst getting one yourself.

Thanks for reading and sorry if the formatting is terrible. I have never done a post like this but I tried.