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Riot's Response to Doublelift's Mountain Dragon Post

/u/Blaustoise tweeted in response to Doublelift's tweet:

Thoughts RE @TLDoublelift's Mountain Drake post:

(1) MAKE OTHER DRAKES MORE IMPACTFUL - DLift mentions that the other drakes (cloud ocean fire) are "basically stat buffs" and that "there's strategy that revolves around having a mountain and setting up Baron.

Maybe we should make other drakes just as impactful/strategic. @RiotKingCobra had a good point in a chat with me: if a team takes 1 earth drake I will ping baron because they can rush that but I'm never like "oh they have cloud drake their rotations are faster!"

(2) DRAFT AROUND DRAKES - one of the other core issues I could see with mountain drake being more impactful in pro play is that you can't draft around it. The "R" in the RNG of the drakes has counterplay: you can see well ahead of time what's coming up.

But what if your team drafts a comp that can't easily contest drakes early? If cloud or ocean appears, you're okay, fire causes a bit of sweating, but then earth may be too influential because the other team getting 1 or 2 can secure an earlier baron for them.

Potential solution for this could be to show the first (or 1st and 2nd?) drake that will spawn in the game during champ select. That way teams won't get screwed just from the draft and the first 1-2 drakes. Still I think point (1) is more important than this one.

(3) CHANGE EARTH DRAKE - I responded to DLift with a not-so-great solution in hindsight: make earth drake cause reduced damage from epic monsters and turrets. Thematically it makes sense: earth/mountain powers harden you against the biggest threats on the rift.

Goal would be that the baron dance still lasts longer and you can't rush down the baron, but your team is rewarded by being healthier during the dance. Issue is that I think it's a HUGE satisfaction downgrade.

I would argue it's more visceral and satisfying to have the 16% damage amp to baron than say... even something INSANE like 40% reduced damage from baron/elder. Maybe not from turrets though, as those are BIG chunks of damage where you could more easily feel the reduction.

FINAL THOUGHTS - I think we've been pretty happy overall with the elemental drake update (historically it had some of the best sentiment for a systems change from our regional surveys), and it might be a great opportunity for future iteration.

I like (1) the most: make other drakes have more impact. I also think that if we go down that route, it would be good to couple it with (2), giving more information in champ select at least for the first drake if we're going to make it more influential on strategy.

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