I think the only bad drag is chemdrake, since all the other souls help you win fights while chemdrake is the only one that practically stops you from ever losing a fight
How is it bad lol? Chem soul makes your game safer if your team is ahead if your team lost a teamfight you get a second chance to reclaim your lead. Chem soul also makes the losing team have a chance to comeback.
@@Zero-zr6xx soo it's a crutch removing skill "congrat guys we were losing now we have to kill them a second time but with all our cd busted and close to no health" Don't even get me started about the fog areas
@@Zero-zr6xx That in itself is the problem, being given an almost immediate second chance if the 1st run didn't go as well. You can think of it like giving a whole team a bunch of lesser Guardian Angels almost like Nexus Blitz. Too put it simply, It's basically the team that doesn't have the Chemtech Soul gets overly punished for outplaying their opponents by being forced to fight someone twice even though they might be performing better than the team with the soul. This soul is much stronger than Sion's death passive in which it puts A LOT of pressure on the teams without it to either secure a pick when that target also has the soul, an objective with/without the soul active, and worse off to ensure near-indestructible defense to ensure their structures remain. If you haven't seen, a decent number of Sion players tend to split-push often in a match utilizing their passive to take down structures if someone rotates to deal with them. Sion in his passive can only utilize auto attacks and the actives/passives of items he has while this soul allows all champions to use everything. This is basically equivalent to Akshan's revive passive + Sion's passive. Riot had to pull another lesser Mercy on League with this soul. I hated Akshan's passive for what it could do and the overall implications of it, but this I have to say is actually worse for the game. It's not because it's terrible to use, but because it's obviously overpowered to do so. I'm expecting some pretty substantial nerfs to Chemtech Soul less than two months into the 12th season.
I like vars’s takes most of the time, but every once in a while he lets personal bias come through in anylasis videos a little too much. Most of this comes from the POV of a bruiser main, example, fire soul was given a bad score because late game people have enough ad to one shot anyways, but he missed the extra wave clear, poke, and objective taking. The fire rift also makes kiting jungle camps more rewarding for squishiest that would have the living daylight slapped out of them by bluebuff. Example2, chemtech soul is the most beneficial for bruisers and offers nothing for castor minions (adc’s) because they will just die to random aoe when the respawn anyways. IMO the fortnite fart gas is the worst map because it makes sieging mid inhib tower near impossible and drags the game out far too long. On top of that it makes blue and yellow trinkets obsolete. Bruisers are the ones doing the flanking so it makes sense for vars to like it the most. I don’t like leaving negative comments and I think this is my only one, but I think he missed a lot in this video
Same thing with his cloud drag bias. Ofc bruisers who just pop ult and berzerker into the fight would love it. But there are tons of champs that don't have simple anytime-use ults to pop in a teamfight that can also benefit from movement speed. Also chemtech soul has such high winrate not because of chemtech, but because of the stupid fog. Winning team gets even stronger map control and chokes out the losing team from contesting any major objective.
The fact that chemtech Drake won this blows my mind. This Drake is the single worst thing added this season. The fog is incredibly annoying to deal with for both teams and the soul is far and away the most busted soul. They need a complete overhaul on it.
its the Stop Drop and Focus on Dragon Prio mode, and its genuinely really shitty cus elemental dragons were meant to lightly sway the game in different directions (or at least that's what I assume). Cant want to see pro play devolve into "fight over chemsoul and halt most macro plays as to not risk dragon priority"
The fog would be fine if it was smaller or better distributed, the concept is good but wasn't implemented in a healthy way. Now any squishy champion can't go in the jungle without worrying about someon suddenly jumping onto you while invisible. ADC mains crying right now.
Before the video here are my opinions, let's see if it changes after: Hextech Drake is fantastic, I like air because I play non mobile champs this mobility feels good. And obviously fire is a all Time reliable
@@alejandropuma6734 Fire is still really good on Rengar because it gives extra burst, more open jungle lanes for him to traverse and doesn’t remove too many bushes. Chemtech however is fucked for Rengar as it removes literally all jungle bushes but Krugs and Top/Bot tri
I don't like the fire soul simply because i play qiyana, not having a bush or a puddle to use your W on is so annoying plus the walls are shorter so less ult potential
I, as many people in the comments, really don’t like the Chemtech dragon, even less their rift changes. Your trinket wards are now useless, unless you put them in a way you could see people either get in, get out, or farm jungle. Moreover, if anyone chases you, the range is so high it’s like the thing is useless. So you’re in a both overpowered but also underpowered state, because if we put wards to work there, it makes the whole changes useless, but if we tighten up the view range, the fog is op. In contrast, the water dragon just dodges the problem because they implement more bushes, which both hide better, but don’t hinder the use of your trinket. Unlike an unconditional camouflage, bushes grant both a better hiding, without also making it impossible to see if you aren’t physically there.
@@lal6005 they added it after I posted my comment. And as said the other, the trinket wards have become completely useless, that’s what I was talking about, trinkets as whole become useless when chemtech changes the terrain
I really like Ocean Dragon because the map becomes really nice looking and full with bushes to ambush people. Also, the Soul is not so strong as Chemtech or so useless as Cloud
@@marlikbudvergard So many champions can one shot like lb,zed,Qiyana. I think he/she meant that it is good for one tricks/shotters but bad for squishes which must be mentioned as adc are squishes mainly.
@@R_a_i_n_C_l_o_u_d u missed the point they said rengar enjoyer because renger benefits from the extra bushes on ocean soul not that rengar can one shot with ocean soul
I think the fact that the chemtech drake is objectively worthless on tank champions and serves as an anti tank buff should dock it some points. It should be 6% based on current health percentage, not health totals.
Perhaps this is just a personal gripe, but no one objective (especially not one that is a 1 in 6 chance with no ability to draft or play around it before knowing it will be selected) should drastically warp the game the way chemtech does. When that dragon is a minute to spawn, literally most macro plays just stop, the priority is just insane. Its actually absurd. Dragon should never dictate that much of the flow of the game, especially when it is entirely variable whether we will have to play around it or not. By comparison, the other dragons lightly sway the game towards a different style of strategies (cloud tends to support more cross map movement, infernal more action even in the jungle, etc.)
I feel like Mountain is the best design wise because it actually creates something completely new to play around while not changing the gameplay too drastically.
@@ABuriedSynth not just you as a tank as a mage player, having adc on second role, being almost unburstable because of shieldbow and mountain soul makes me feel amazing. Making the live of assassins harder is for me personally awesome as a dps backliner.
the wall makes it so easy to kite blue, you can run it around it and it wont lose aggro, I havent used it in a while bc damage is bonkers rn but before it was really nice to have
Then that would provides free advantages for champions that doesn't rely on healing, and it would make shielding alot more valuable, which at the same time, isn't good because the only thing that's countering shielding is serpent's fang which is limited to assassins and similar (and there's already enough GW items in the game).
Damn yes, I'm not sure I understand how to ward this shit (like the entrances, sure, but what about control wards?) and it just pisses me off as a sup to not be able to put down vision control. It's super unsatisfying lmao
Well we all know damn well it isn’t the chemtech drake. I would say it’s the ocean drake. I like the map change creating more plants and bushes for the team to interact with and I feel like it has the most interactive soul. The extra healing is something you have to think about and play around to get maximum value unlike the other drakes where the soul effect just happens (although cloud soul you can plan to make use of).
It'd be interesting if there were zones were you can't have (or have just 50%) of the shields and healing. It wouldn't stop the junglers to farm, but it would be interesting to have it in dragon or baron pit, instead of where they are now. It could even have that it boost your damage when in that zone or something.
@@Thegameshadow1 Vars has always had some biased/bad takes but I respect the man for taking the time to at least express his opinions with a youtube channel
I'm a Vayne main and cloud soul is probably the most wild experience in the game, especially if you are even slightly ahead as vayne. Flying around at the speed of sound dodging everything and shredding the enemy too, it's so addicting.
The cloud dragon take is…. Definitely the best take, I completely agree that Cloud dragon is ridiculously underrated as a design and concept. It works well with the aesthetic theme from an artistic and design standpoint. Movement speed in general is highly underrated. I keep seeing enchanter supports playing with moonstone when Shurelya’s is almost always the superior option. If you run fast, the enemies can’t hit you, so you don’t need extra healing. It’s so good. When in doubt, run faster. For chemtech dragon,, The idea is good. But the balance isn’t great. The death revival passive is confusing for people when fighting. I think it’d be better to provide better visual contrast between zombie players and living players, and possibly decrease healing received to zombie players bc once I saw a full dmg build yasuo face tank everybody *three times* because he had shieldbow, death’s dance, AND guardian angel after his team got chemtech soul. It also disproportionately benefits bruisers, tanks, and adcs who have sustain. If you’re playing soraka or Xerath or something, good fucking luck lmao. You’ll get 3 seconds, tops, out of your revive, but most likely scenario is you chuck out two probably non-impactful abilities and die again. Meanwhile if you’re immobile and squishy, playing *against* chemtech soul, if the team fight isn’t over before the revives happen, you’re fucked like 80-90% of the time. The normal passive buff is good, but both the soul and the rift are frustrating (it’s incredibly difficult to ward around these stupid things, and it’s not always immediately obvious to players that normal stealth wards *dont work* so I keep seeing my teammates waste their wards trying to ward the fog). I think maybe giving non-pink wards a decrease in vision would be better. Ex: stealth wards become like blue wards, and blue wards become like teemo or jhin traps (in terms of vision granted). Or at the very least, give a visual indication that your ward isn’t working so my teammates don’t keep dropping a free 10-30 gold to the enemy team. At least the other buffs are minimal.
One thing I’d recommend to you trying, if you play enchanters more regularly is ingenious hunter, which gives moonstone 1.5 times the healing. I don’t think ms is better than moonstone tbh. The healing the item dishes out just can’t be matched and is broken in longer teamfights. Another thing I will mention is that most enchanters give ms anyways. Janna, lulu, yuumi, nami, Karma all of them give ms, but barely any of them having a good amount of healing, they usually on shield. Moonstone can not only help weaken the blow, but also help recovering through the fight. Another thing I am starting to test lately is Sololane enchanters, given the fact, that the power of protection they bring out, is far bigger than the support role once, due to them getting more xp and gold.
I'm not a big fan of the Cloud drake, while it may make top laners extremely happy, it's worthless for almost every ADC. Ashe, Caitlyn, Jhin, Kalista etc cannot utilize it in the way that a Mundo or Renekton can
@@tomwanders6022 Fair enough, if you like and prefer your play style, and it works for you, go for it. Moonstone is fine, I just think Shurelya’s is better and it works better for me. I personally don’t like domination secondary on supports bc outside of ingenious hunter, you can get more value out of a different secondary like resolve, sorcery, or inspiration. Mana and cdr are the most valuable resources for enchanters, second only to things that directly increase heal/shield power, which are more easily accessible in the other three trees. I would counter the movement speed thing with the reverse though: most supports already have plenty of sustain for their teammates, but they typically have very little to help themselves survive or kite. Shurelya’s solves some of that. Living longer = more shields/heals = alive teammates. You also don’t have to waste speedup abilities on yourself if you want to keep up with faster teammates, plus you can rotate with your whole team really quick. You can also spam abilities faster. You can do everything faster, which I like bc I like being speedy lol
One of the things that makes me think that the chemtech dragon is the most poorly designed is the fact that it gives the only buff the does not work for every champion. If you give any champ any other buff, it is usable. Bonus ad/ap, attack speed, cd, movement speed, etc can be used on everybody, but give a tank the bonus damage against champs with higher hp is useless for an entire class of champions.
I will never stop loving how goofy it gets when a fed Cho’gath gets Ocean Soul. Just this Godzilla mf walking at the enemy perma-regenerating faster than Mundo’s ultimate.
I think the thing that makes a drake well designed is when the buff you get for killing the drake enhances the soul, mountain does it really well, the shield is stronger the more resistances you have and the drake gives resistances, and infernal does a similar thing with damage. As much as I like ocean I don’t think it’s the best because the soul buff is the same wether you get 4 ocean drakes or 2. This doesn’t take into count the changes to the map, I think the best map changes are ocean, chem, and hextech
Not so; Healing amplifies healing, because it gives you more time alive to continue to heal. The same applies to shields. I do agree with the rest of your point though, just don't think that ocean is a good example of something failing to do this. For that, cloud is a better candidate.
@@LyonsTheMad I didn’t consider that for ocean. The reason I thin cloud is still effective at this concept is the drake reduces ult CD, while the soul give ms on ult use, the drake lets you ult more getting more out of the ms. Personally I think cloud is still a weak drake because there are too many champs that aren’t able to make use out of it, for one reason or another
Chemtech is the best when you are ahead, because the team that is behind cannot enter the jungle AT ALL and that's also why I hate it. It prevents the losing team from contesting anything as every into the jungle is a massive risk. Wards over the wall don't work, blue work becomes useless. I also find the chemtech drake to just not fit the theme it is based on at all. The Hextech-map took its inspiration directly from what is seen in Arcane. Hexgates. The Chemtech map though has nothing to do with Lower-city/Zaun as it was presented. The Chemtech soul is just stupid and random as well.
Hey vars, would you feel like taking a look at "passive" abilities like Vi's W and how they've disappeared in modern champions, the same way toggles has? It seems nowadays there are more active abilities with passive benefits than straight up levelled passives
It feels like you play with one less ability Vayne W could have been integrated onto her passive (wild rift gave vayne an active W) Teemo E is like you activate it and then forget about it (also changed in wild rift) They're dissapearing in favor of a more ''active'' gameplay. It would definitely make for an interesting in depth video though.
@@cleenash6 Well that depends on how you design the champion, you could increase the power in their other active abilities or increase the power of their original passive
@@sebastianrodriguez5280 the point is that playing with one less ability (vayne, teemo etc) when you´re used to play with 4 (like most other champs) feels meh. Even if the abilities were perfectly balanced and the champion was performing well, it just doesn't feel as good (for me at least). (also i haven't played league since i wrote that so maybe something has changed idk)
The only thing i don't like about drakes in general is that they are random, i think it would be nice to know already in champion select which dragon soul will spawn so we could try to draft a team that can benefit the most from the soul
Cloud has always been one of my favourites 'cause i play lillia and it is so fun to go that much quicker just by hitting R lol. It may not be super practical all the time, but it is just damn fun
My favourite used to be cloud because many of my mains have very cool ultimates such as bard, tahm kench and rengar. But now i guess ocean because i love nature and the map looks alive. But my favourite element is fire
Oh thank God that chem drake got removed. I was playing talon and I one shot the Caitlin. The horny police officer then came back to life and got a penta kill. All because they spend a collective total of 1 minute kicking the shit out of intoxicated lizard. I want to know who in Roit HQ thought it would be a good idea to give people an Evelynn passive made in China and a Sion passive with full autonomy of their abilities for full 10 seconds. I swear it made release Aphelios look like a minor inconvenience or just Viego in general. It also makes reworked Akali feel like fresh breath of air. You get the ideas of broken bs of 500 years bs mechanics.
Tbh I thought that the big elder hextech buff would make it so that it’s team had an extra item slot, or maybe make it so that mythic passives are applied twice, something like that. Obviously the extra item slot is kinda insane, but something to do with item manipulation woulda been cooler than “do damage + stun”
Vars: "I think Cloud and Water Rifts should have parts on the map where you would run faster in one direction and vice versa." Morgana and her Black Shield: "Yes please!" Malzahar and his Void Shield: Yes please!" Olaf and his Ragnarok: "Yes please!" Literally every other champion without CC immunity spells: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"
Umm, Vars, I know the game is snowbally as heck for the last year at least, but are tanks so bad for the game that a frigging dragon is created to screw them over?
Only thing I can think of that would be cool would be for Wind Drake. Have the movement speed be opposite per jg side. Meaning if you are on blue side, them blue sides wind tunnels will give you 10% move speed but take away enemies move speed by 10% and vice versa for the enemies on red side.
I despise chemtech with a passion, everytime I see that fog I want to alt+f4, it's by far the most "win more" of all the dragons, most map changes feel more or less neutral except chemtech, that stupid fog is like "oh, you are already losing ? let's make it so you can't get even get out of your own base without getting destroyed" and the opposite if you are winning, plus, it makes 2 out of the 3 trinkets feel pretty bad and considering the soul and the winrate it has, I'm sure it was made with the intention of not letting you comeback or lose in mind, so mission accomplished I guess.
"By the time you see this video the chemtech dragon soul will have been nerfed or is in the process of getting nerfed" Hmm. Maybe try removed entirely? xD
Using criteria listed by Vars: Review 3 aspects of dragons: 1)Base Buff 2) Elemental Rift 3) Soul in priority order. Additionally review those 3 aspects with regards to 3 criteria: A) how well they influence the game, B) how well they are designed, and C) how strong they are (each equally contributing to final rating). My ranking: For all 3 aspects, they will be weighted for priority. Base Buff score x2, elemental rift score x1.5 and soul score x1. For each of the 3 aspects, the basic score will be average of the three criteria scores. Each criteria is rated 1-5 with 1 being "bad", 3 is "mediocre" and 5 as "high". Final List vs Vars 1. Ocean: 5.53 (+3 gain) 2. Fire: 5.23 (+4 gain) 3. Hextech: 5.1 (no change) 4. Cloud: 5.02 (-2 loss) 5. Mountain: 4.87 (no change) 6. Chemtech: 4.62 (-5 loss) Personally I would rank Elementary Rift > Soul > Base Buff which would make the list 1. Ocean: 5.67 (+3) 2. Mountain: 5.33 (+3) 3. Fire: 5.22 (+3) 4. Hextech: 5.06 (-1) 5. Cloud: 4.72 (-3) 6. Chemtech: 4.5 (-5) Disclaimer: Sup main Edit: Ranking Elder drag for fun. Giving default 3 for everything besides Soul category with triple 5 yields 5.17 with Vars criteria or 5.5 with mine. Putting it at 3rd place/ 2nd place. Not even best drag :P
I made a response on this already on a thread, but wanted a main comment too. I think the chemdrake's fog shouldn't remove brushes. That way you can controll ward in the bushes without being giggacucked. Also the layered vision reduction adds, rather than takes away tactical depth. It also keeps some bushes as entry bushes to the fog, meaning a team who isn't controlling the fog still has tactical counter play.
whenever i see ocean, hex or cloud, i always ping the dragon as many times as needed to kill it as fast as possibly, they have the best buffs in my opinion
Its not like i want to put salt into the wound or roost your opinion (Because its that, just an opinion and it would be stupid to say that its wrong) but the Cloud Dragon Soul is so useless that is not even in wildrift because the buffs werent noticeable, and the map change is redundant in the situation on a chase (the situation that would probably be the reason for existing) so yeah...
idea: make it so that, the 4 original drake change the wheater with fog of war. Example cloud drake gives you less fog so you can see further, infernal adds more fog of war so it's harder to see. ocean makes it rain so you can't see enemy health bar if they ar too far, and moutain idk, maybe gives a delay to fog of war so if it isnt warder it takes some time to clear up.
cloud soul might be awesome when you’re playing a bruiser, but it’s literally useless on champions like nunu and janna that have to stand still and channel their ultimate for several seconds. i personally feel like that extreme disparity in usefulness makes it poorly designed. also the chemtech map makes kiting half the jungle camps significantly harder because they lose vision of you so quickly, which can be extremely annoying. on top of that, removing so many bushes from the game removes a lot of interactions that champions have, which is imo a bad thing. if you have multiple dragons stacked up, you can get a legendary items worth of ap, or armor, or ability haste and attack speed. getting 4 cloud drakes is pretty much the same thing as taking relentless hunter and having the passive from swifties. i honestly don’t think the arguments for cloud dragon were strong enough to support the idea that cloud dragon is anything other than the individually weakest buff, with a dragon soul that can be amazing or useless depending on what champion you locked in during champion select. edit: the dragon soul winrate chart that was put into this same video shows that cloud has the second lowest winrate. i feel like it’s inclusion in this video directly contradicts Vars’ placement of the cloud dragon
As an Aurelian main, I agree with the assessment on cloud drakes, you already take relentless hunter so more out of combat ms means bigger, cheesier stars. Plus yeah, cloud soul op in general.
Personally the hextech dragon is my fav. The slow and ability haste is good without being completely overwhelming, and the gates it provides enables alot of plays and allows people to get to areas/fights much quicker after basing. However the strongest is unfortunately Chemtech. The cutdown like damage it provides isn't actually all that bad, but the problem is the rift and the soul. The camouflage zone does nothing but cause problems (esp to support mains like me) as there's no real effective way to ward it except warding the entrances which makes dealing with Jng much harder (esp since you can't deep Ward as effectively). And the soul is honestly just awful, as now everyone on the enemy team has Sion passive and you effectively have to kill them twice alongside whatever else they have (Zhonyas/GA, their own death passives, etc). And while I know souls are supposed to be overtuned like this since this is pretty much a win con but once the opps team has chem soul there's no way to actually mount a comeback as the losing team. The other souls make it much more harder to win but it's not impossible, with good decisions and coordination you can grab a W from the jaws of defeat. With chem you simply cannot, killing the adc does not mean you've grabbed a lead as they're gonna come back a sec later and can easily equalize whatever lead y'all gotten or worse and take down two or more allies. And this is just one opponent. Anyway this is long af so hex>fire>water>earth>wind>>>chem
I think there should be something about chemtech to be mentioned. Ofcourse it has such a high winrate compared to the others because the moment you fall behind the jungle is off limits for your team.
If you kill someone with the chemtech soul you can just walk away What are they going to do? Chase you? They are alive for a couple of seconds and that's more than enough to get away for some champions The rift with camouflage is definitely an interesting idea My favorite map on visuals alone is the ocean soul one It just needs to add waves and rapids to the river and that would be pretty awesome
Cloud Drake is absolutely my favorite. To be fair I enjoy champions like fiddlesticks, volibear, and Racken. Those ultimates are amazing with increased movement speed.
Me, as a Xerath main: Ah yes, Cloud drakes boost after using your ult... Truly a game changing soul. But jokes aside, great video, Vars. I always thought the fire drake was overrated. Especially now with how bursty the game became even without it.
I wish they changed the soul to this: Fire Drake = Increases AD and AP for every FD. FD soul causes the same explosive damage but also burns the enemy and can spread like to minions and other units, cause fire burns Mountain Drake = Gives Armor and MR and tenacity for every MD. MD Soul gives a shield and the (now) Chemdrake’s tenacity and increase shielding. Also provides a periodic (5sec) charged attack that stuns an enemy (1-2 secs) Ocean Drake = Gives more HP and MP Regen for every OD. OD soul keeps the regen buff after an attack, but also increases healing from all sources (think of it as a spirit visage buff) Ocean also causes attacks to deal splash damage and slows enemies (0.5-1sec slow) Wind Drake = Gives more MS and AS for every WD. WD Soul keeps the after ult movespeed, and increased out of combat movespeed, but this time give the wind the a charged up attack (30sec) that knocks enemies airborne (1-2sec) Hextech Drake = Gives bonus Armor and Magic Pen for every HD. HD Soul gives everyone the Statikk shiv passive but now bounces more times and can bounce in one target more than once, also either provides a slow or a silence or a root (you know cause when you’re electrified you’re basically paralyzed) and a charged up attack that when used on structures disabled them for 3 secs (instantly kills wards) Chemtech Drake = Gives increase omnivamp (not healing but the percentage of omnivamp) for every CD . CD soul gives a poison attack that deals little damage and is not lethal, but greatly decreases an enemy’s armor, magic resist, tenacity, and causes grievous wounds for shields and all healing. Cause Chems = Biohazard/Poisonous/Toxic. Think of it at a buffed up version of the Baron’s Void Corruption. Elder Drake = Keep the execution and burning buff, but this time increases the stats of all the captured drakes on your team 3x. If your team didn’t capture any drake before hand, will give your team a 1 time zhonya / GA (Honestly couldn’t think of anything that can buff up Elder, the buff from Elder is one of the best and most OP buffs in the game already) Note: the Buffs I gave for each “charged” up attack. I meant by every 3/5 secs the attack applies like how current FD’s soul works. Except for CD where every attack causes corrosion and poison. As for environmental changes. FD, MD, WD, HD … can’t think of anything that won’t be hazardous than what we have now OD = Give it the current CD’s change of plants and increase bush sizes/spots or floods landscape CD = Turns river into a chem river that buffs everything and increases to a cap (starts from 1% to 20/25%) buffs only apply in the river, once you go out everything percent increase, immediately decreases at a fast pace and slows you down incredibly. Kills bushes in river and turns the scuttle into a … Rammus-like creep. Causes reflective poisonous damage and has HP similar to the Red and Blue and his stats are also increased (but only like 3-5%) Elder and Baron also have their stats increased by 5-15%
It was bold of you to assume they're gonna nerf chemtech drake. They're gonna wait a few months, ideally like five or six then they're gonna address it. That's how riot balance team operates.
I feel like as a Dragon Chemtech drake is good. As a soul I would say any but except Chemtech drake. Hextech Soul is the best for skill casters like lb,Qiyana. So the best drake is any of them based on match-up etc. Elder dragon is good as a Dragon. Chemtech is great as a drake. Like having 1 hextech drake and one infernal is very nice to have.
Man, I really miss old Earth dragons structure damage effect. I despise things that make games last longer than needed and if you’re winning and getting this dragon, it feels so good compared to anything else.
The top two are very hot takes, lol. I'm a Rakan one trick so my neurons go crazy when I go super fast, but I've always disliked the soul due to how bland it was. I understand that most drakes are bland with effects but I don't know why bias towards Cloud
I think the dragons shouldn be random as they are very important and there are often obvious good or bad souls for a teamcomp, giving unfair, chance based advantages. Additionally, if there was a way to influence which dragon a tam can get that would then by itself add a lot of depth. Implementing such a system might be hard, and makes the early game far more important than it already is, but I think it should be attempted. Even though some dragon buffs will need a few buffs in order to be able to compete.
Random drakes make the game everchanging and every match different. You need to play around what you have, what they have, you have to learn when it's not worth fighting a drake, it makes it more interesting.
@@sunnydargonnel Yes, randomness has exactly that advantage. It can make things more fun through making them more unpredictable. Thats why most casual games have huge amounts of randomness in them. But Lol at its core is a competitive game. Lol is supposed to get interesting through skill expression, of both mechanics and gamesense. So that at the end of a game, the better team should always win (In theory). But randomness inherently makes it so that this is not the case. It makes it so that there are other factors outside of the players control which will influence the outcome. Obviously such random elements can never be 100% avioded, as even without having machinces based on randomness in the game, there will always be some factors players cant controll. But those should be avoided as far as possible. Also, as a second point, most of the time the teams will want different dragons, depending on their team comps, so which dragon comes next will be contested, meaning that it will lead to more conflict and thus skill expression between teams. Also, again, depending on how it is implemented, there might be tactical opportunities where teams handshake to let a weaker dragon spawn. How exactly this system would look like would require more thought, but I think that it is absolutely possible to make a system, where there is a place for the kind of decision making u are talking about. And that aside, I think randomness by design is just an absolute no-go for competitive games in general (Outside of card games or other games that are fundamentally grounded in randomness. But those games are designed around randomness and they usually have many matches in succession to account for those random elements (Since the more random events happen i succession the more they will equalise overall). But in Lol there is usually only one random event (Which soul u get) that decides hole games).
The only adjustment I would make would be to put ocean drake in 2nd, and cloud in 3rd. IMO the versatility of ocean soul makes it more of a game ending buff than the cloud soul. I can't remember the last time my team had the winning bot side, and was disappointed to see ocean soul spawn.
The problem with dragons right now is that the soul requires you to take 4 dragons. This almost completely removes the potential to use dragons as an avenue for comebacks. Whichever team gets an early lead can take the early dragons, and to comeback later the losing team will need to win 4 separate fights to get a soul and come back, while the leading team only needs to win 1 or 2 fights to secure the soul, and unlike baron, the losing team cant wait out a soul, it's permanent. The importance of early drakes also puts way more importance into bot lane, and leaves top even further on an island.
Love that the two new drakes are top of the win rate chart for drake souls...and that Chemtech soul is 1.1 percent higher than Hextech soul. which is even funnier when you see that hextech soul's winrate is only 1.3% higher than the lowest winrate soul, infernal. I bet we're gonna see so many nerfs and adjustments for chemtech drake/map/soul over the next few months, whereas I bet the Hextech drake/map/soul will probably only see a small handful of changes.
As a teemo main i especially love ocean and wind dragon. Casting ultimate on teemo is easy and when you cast it you get easy speed buff on already fast unit and on ocean dragon when someone steps on mushroom i get my nearly %40 of my health and mana back. Edit: Typo
I can't agree with the cloud soul being the best. We have a ton of champs that can't move during their ults making it incredibly useless for them... Also, I don't think chemtech drake was nerfed lol.
The champions, which can not move during their ult get the speed buff after they use it. It can save lifes of champs like Xerath or Jhin. Moreover in higher elo, where they know how to better capitalise on you being rooted and revealed during your ultimate.
"Let's get into light hearted theory crafting and discussion" YOU WHAAAAAAAAAT THIS IS LEAGUE PLAYERS WHAT PORTAL OF DAMNATION DO YOU THINK YOU BROUGHT UPON US!!!!!!!! VARSSSSSSS (Jokes aside I am intrigued and love the content keep it up)
I wish the drake fights were more fights rather than meat sacs you keep smacking. Imagine if the drake moved around the river, or had special attacks like fire drake actually lit the ground on fire. Adding to that I wish, like you mentioned, there would be hazard zones based on drakes. Mountain could have rock slides, wind could push you if u stood still, ocean could do the waves in river, fire would make fire/lava zones, chemtech poison clouds for tick damage, hextech could be electric shock areas
I think hazard zones would make champions with displacing abilities like Vayne, Lee Sin or Tristana too strong. They'd have ways to push people into certain death.
I did not play this season, but by concept, this is ranking by gametime of the soul 20 minute mark: infernal & hextech, chemtech, water, cloud, mountain mountain soul is last because the shield is tiny at that point 30 minute mark: chemtech, mountain, water, infernal, cloud, hextech at this point teams become number-reliant, occasionally teamfighting. Sustain is important, a regenerating shield can mean escape with 1 health or an ace. Cloud doesn't matter that much because time between teamfights are quite long, hextech is useless because it deals neglible damage 40+ minute mark: chemtech, cloud, mountain, water, infernal, hextech damage is worthless at lategame. Cooldowns dictate wincon, and chemtech soul is OP in lategame.
i don't play lol a whole lot so this could be a totally horrible idea. but in the idea of creating a more fiery theme for red dragon, you could have torches get placed through river providing vision for both sides.
as a qiyana main, I dislike chemtech soul. Mainly because the bushes in the jungle that i can easily reach dissapear and it fucks up tfs for me so i agree with you on that. My favourite drake is ocean.
I think the only bad drag is chemdrake, since all the other souls help you win fights while chemdrake is the only one that practically stops you from ever losing a fight
No, no, you get it all wrong, You win harder from losing a teamfight, see?
How is it bad lol?
Chem soul makes your game safer if your team is ahead if your team lost a teamfight you get a second chance to reclaim your lead.
Chem soul also makes the losing team have a chance to comeback.
@@Zero-zr6xx soo it's a crutch removing skill "congrat guys we were losing now we have to kill them a second time but with all our cd busted and close to no health" Don't even get me started about the fog areas
@@Zero-zr6xx That in itself is the problem, being given an almost immediate second chance if the 1st run didn't go as well. You can think of it like giving a whole team a bunch of lesser Guardian Angels almost like Nexus Blitz. Too put it simply, It's basically the team that doesn't have the Chemtech Soul gets overly punished for outplaying their opponents by being forced to fight someone twice even though they might be performing better than the team with the soul. This soul is much stronger than Sion's death passive in which it puts A LOT of pressure on the teams without it to either secure a pick when that target also has the soul, an objective with/without the soul active, and worse off to ensure near-indestructible defense to ensure their structures remain. If you haven't seen, a decent number of Sion players tend to split-push often in a match utilizing their passive to take down structures if someone rotates to deal with them. Sion in his passive can only utilize auto attacks and the actives/passives of items he has while this soul allows all champions to use everything.
This is basically equivalent to Akshan's revive passive + Sion's passive. Riot had to pull another lesser Mercy on League with this soul. I hated Akshan's passive for what it could do and the overall implications of it, but this I have to say is actually worse for the game. It's not because it's terrible to use, but because it's obviously overpowered to do so. I'm expecting some pretty substantial nerfs to Chemtech Soul less than two months into the 12th season.
@@florianribault83 you 1000000% right...it just rewards for making mistakes
I like vars’s takes most of the time, but every once in a while he lets personal bias come through in anylasis videos a little too much. Most of this comes from the POV of a bruiser main, example, fire soul was given a bad score because late game people have enough ad to one shot anyways, but he missed the extra wave clear, poke, and objective taking. The fire rift also makes kiting jungle camps more rewarding for squishiest that would have the living daylight slapped out of them by bluebuff. Example2, chemtech soul is the most beneficial for bruisers and offers nothing for castor minions (adc’s) because they will just die to random aoe when the respawn anyways. IMO the fortnite fart gas is the worst map because it makes sieging mid inhib tower near impossible and drags the game out far too long. On top of that it makes blue and yellow trinkets obsolete. Bruisers are the ones doing the flanking so it makes sense for vars to like it the most. I don’t like leaving negative comments and I think this is my only one, but I think he missed a lot in this video
but chemtech drake buff itself is the worst for bruisers and tanks
Solid point. I follow you on that
Same thing with his cloud drag bias. Ofc bruisers who just pop ult and berzerker into the fight would love it. But there are tons of champs that don't have simple anytime-use ults to pop in a teamfight that can also benefit from movement speed.
Also chemtech soul has such high winrate not because of chemtech, but because of the stupid fog. Winning team gets even stronger map control and chokes out the losing team from contesting any major objective.
This ain't a negative comment lol. Negative = "You must be bronze or something."
Agreed this dude is a clown 🤡
The fact that chemtech Drake won this blows my mind. This Drake is the single worst thing added this season. The fog is incredibly annoying to deal with for both teams and the soul is far and away the most busted soul. They need a complete overhaul on it.
i call it the anti-fun dragon
its the Stop Drop and Focus on Dragon Prio mode, and its genuinely really shitty cus elemental dragons were meant to lightly sway the game in different directions (or at least that's what I assume). Cant want to see pro play devolve into "fight over chemsoul and halt most macro plays as to not risk dragon priority"
Plus, it's bonus is just atrocious for any champ that builds health, cause champions just do more damage to you, untill you are like 30% health
The busted soul is exactly why it's the strongest soul lol, you literally get punished for trading
The fog would be fine if it was smaller or better distributed, the concept is good but wasn't implemented in a healthy way.
Now any squishy champion can't go in the jungle without worrying about someon suddenly jumping onto you while invisible.
ADC mains crying right now.
Before the video here are my opinions, let's see if it changes after: Hextech Drake is fantastic, I like air because I play non mobile champs this mobility feels good. And obviously fire is a all Time reliable
Except when you're playing Rengar
And did it change?
"I like air" haha
@@alejandropuma6734 Fire is still really good on Rengar because it gives extra burst, more open jungle lanes for him to traverse and doesn’t remove too many bushes. Chemtech however is fucked for Rengar as it removes literally all jungle bushes but Krugs and Top/Bot tri
I don't like the fire soul simply because i play qiyana, not having a bush or a puddle to use your W on is so annoying plus the walls are shorter so less ult potential
I, as many people in the comments, really don’t like the Chemtech dragon, even less their rift changes. Your trinket wards are now useless, unless you put them in a way you could see people either get in, get out, or farm jungle. Moreover, if anyone chases you, the range is so high it’s like the thing is useless. So you’re in a both overpowered but also underpowered state, because if we put wards to work there, it makes the whole changes useless, but if we tighten up the view range, the fog is op.
In contrast, the water dragon just dodges the problem because they implement more bushes, which both hide better, but don’t hinder the use of your trinket. Unlike an unconditional camouflage, bushes grant both a better hiding, without also making it impossible to see if you aren’t physically there.
You know that control wards do give you vision on the fog right?
Also, they added some of those plants that review in a area in front of them if you get the chemtech Dragon
@@lal6005 doesnt change the fact blue and yellow wards become very pointless
@@lal6005 they added it after I posted my comment.
And as said the other, the trinket wards have become completely useless, that’s what I was talking about, trinkets as whole become useless when chemtech changes the terrain
I really like Ocean Dragon because the map becomes really nice looking and full with bushes to ambush people. Also, the Soul is not so strong as Chemtech or so useless as Cloud
Ah, another Rengar enjoyer I see
@@marlikbudvergard So many champions can one shot like lb,zed,Qiyana. I think he/she meant that it is good for one tricks/shotters but bad for squishes which must be mentioned as adc are squishes mainly.
@@R_a_i_n_C_l_o_u_d u missed the point they said rengar enjoyer because renger benefits from the extra bushes on ocean soul not that rengar can one shot with ocean soul
@@steven-wl2bj thank you
i hate ocean drake since my pc lags hard on that shit
i have to get a new pc
I think the fact that the chemtech drake is objectively worthless on tank champions and serves as an anti tank buff should dock it some points. It should be 6% based on current health percentage, not health totals.
Perhaps this is just a personal gripe, but no one objective (especially not one that is a 1 in 6 chance with no ability to draft or play around it before knowing it will be selected) should drastically warp the game the way chemtech does. When that dragon is a minute to spawn, literally most macro plays just stop, the priority is just insane. Its actually absurd. Dragon should never dictate that much of the flow of the game, especially when it is entirely variable whether we will have to play around it or not. By comparison, the other dragons lightly sway the game towards a different style of strategies (cloud tends to support more cross map movement, infernal more action even in the jungle, etc.)
I feel like Mountain is the best design wise because it actually creates something completely new to play around while not changing the gameplay too drastically.
as a tank player. Having a huge shield + being even more tanky for free is what I live for
@@ABuriedSynth not just you as a tank as a mage player, having adc on second role, being almost unburstable because of shieldbow and mountain soul makes me feel amazing. Making the live of assassins harder is for me personally awesome as a dps backliner.
The extra wall in the dragon pit makes for much more interesting dragon fights.
the wall makes it so easy to kite blue, you can run it around it and it wont lose aggro, I havent used it in a while bc damage is bonkers rn but before it was really nice to have
I'd like that in the burnt areas the fire dragon applied grivius wounds, no damage. Kinda like varus E
That's an interesting idea but it should be minor, like 20% max grievous wounds or something.
Then that would provides free advantages for champions that doesn't rely on healing, and it would make shielding alot more valuable, which at the same time, isn't good because the only thing that's countering shielding is serpent's fang which is limited to assassins and similar (and there's already enough GW items in the game).
My issue with chemtech drake is that it so heavily nerfs supports power specifically.
It's funny how it's passive is just another "screw tanks" thing in league
Damn yes, I'm not sure I understand how to ward this shit (like the entrances, sure, but what about control wards?) and it just pisses me off as a sup to not be able to put down vision control. It's super unsatisfying lmao
The strongest dragon is the Space Dragon, and when you kill it you get the "Aurelion Soul"
Well Played!
Well we all know damn well it isn’t the chemtech drake. I would say it’s the ocean drake. I like the map change creating more plants and bushes for the team to interact with and I feel like it has the most interactive soul. The extra healing is something you have to think about and play around to get maximum value unlike the other drakes where the soul effect just happens (although cloud soul you can plan to make use of).
hahahaha
Found the rengar main
@@burntastic7547 Chemtech helps them more
Yeah but the soul effect is by far the strongest for the chemtech, it's literally broken since ocean's healing can be reduced by grievous wounds
@@burntastic7547 they made it so rengar can jump from camouflage now so it should not be that big of a problem for them
I wish the chemtech rift would reduce healing and shielding instead of camo.
Yes please, this.
It'd be interesting if there were zones were you can't have (or have just 50%) of the shields and healing. It wouldn't stop the junglers to farm, but it would be interesting to have it in dragon or baron pit, instead of where they are now. It could even have that it boost your damage when in that zone or something.
@@alejandrobarcenafigueroa4883 even if it affected jungles, 10 mins in the game they should have enough items to clear fine.
But picking enchanters would just be trolling then
@@breerae2226 how so? You would just have to position yourself better
They're finally removing Chemtech Dragon...the end of a nightmare
complete hilarious that vars put it at number one when everybody knew it was dogshit design and now even riot with 200 years had to admit it.
@@Thegameshadow1 Vars has always had some biased/bad takes but I respect the man for taking the time to at least express his opinions with a youtube channel
I'm a Vayne main and cloud soul is probably the most wild experience in the game, especially if you are even slightly ahead as vayne.
Flying around at the speed of sound dodging everything and shredding the enemy too, it's so addicting.
(Tank mains crying in the corner)
@@murkel7634 hope he don't play her top ;-;
The cloud dragon take is….
Definitely the best take, I completely agree that Cloud dragon is ridiculously underrated as a design and concept. It works well with the aesthetic theme from an artistic and design standpoint. Movement speed in general is highly underrated. I keep seeing enchanter supports playing with moonstone when Shurelya’s is almost always the superior option. If you run fast, the enemies can’t hit you, so you don’t need extra healing. It’s so good. When in doubt, run faster.
For chemtech dragon,, The idea is good. But the balance isn’t great. The death revival passive is confusing for people when fighting. I think it’d be better to provide better visual contrast between zombie players and living players, and possibly decrease healing received to zombie players bc once I saw a full dmg build yasuo face tank everybody *three times* because he had shieldbow, death’s dance, AND guardian angel after his team got chemtech soul. It also disproportionately benefits bruisers, tanks, and adcs who have sustain. If you’re playing soraka or Xerath or something, good fucking luck lmao. You’ll get 3 seconds, tops, out of your revive, but most likely scenario is you chuck out two probably non-impactful abilities and die again. Meanwhile if you’re immobile and squishy, playing *against* chemtech soul, if the team fight isn’t over before the revives happen, you’re fucked like 80-90% of the time.
The normal passive buff is good, but both the soul and the rift are frustrating (it’s incredibly difficult to ward around these stupid things, and it’s not always immediately obvious to players that normal stealth wards *dont work* so I keep seeing my teammates waste their wards trying to ward the fog). I think maybe giving non-pink wards a decrease in vision would be better. Ex: stealth wards become like blue wards, and blue wards become like teemo or jhin traps (in terms of vision granted). Or at the very least, give a visual indication that your ward isn’t working so my teammates don’t keep dropping a free 10-30 gold to the enemy team. At least the other buffs are minimal.
One thing I’d recommend to you trying, if you play enchanters more regularly is ingenious hunter, which gives moonstone 1.5 times the healing. I don’t think ms is better than moonstone tbh. The healing the item dishes out just can’t be matched and is broken in longer teamfights. Another thing I will mention is that most enchanters give ms anyways. Janna, lulu, yuumi, nami, Karma all of them give ms, but barely any of them having a good amount of healing, they usually on shield. Moonstone can not only help weaken the blow, but also help recovering through the fight.
Another thing I am starting to test lately is Sololane enchanters, given the fact, that the power of protection they bring out, is far bigger than the support role once, due to them getting more xp and gold.
I'm not a big fan of the Cloud drake, while it may make top laners extremely happy, it's worthless for almost every ADC. Ashe, Caitlyn, Jhin, Kalista etc cannot utilize it in the way that a Mundo or Renekton can
I love cloud drake, especially since I play Anivia
@@pointlessfeather5830 Jhin would probably love more movement speed but I agree with the others
@@tomwanders6022 Fair enough, if you like and prefer your play style, and it works for you, go for it. Moonstone is fine, I just think Shurelya’s is better and it works better for me. I personally don’t like domination secondary on supports bc outside of ingenious hunter, you can get more value out of a different secondary like resolve, sorcery, or inspiration. Mana and cdr are the most valuable resources for enchanters, second only to things that directly increase heal/shield power, which are more easily accessible in the other three trees.
I would counter the movement speed thing with the reverse though: most supports already have plenty of sustain for their teammates, but they typically have very little to help themselves survive or kite. Shurelya’s solves some of that. Living longer = more shields/heals = alive teammates. You also don’t have to waste speedup abilities on yourself if you want to keep up with faster teammates, plus you can rotate with your whole team really quick. You can also spam abilities faster. You can do everything faster, which I like bc I like being speedy lol
One of the things that makes me think that the chemtech dragon is the most poorly designed is the fact that it gives the only buff the does not work for every champion. If you give any champ any other buff, it is usable. Bonus ad/ap, attack speed, cd, movement speed, etc can be used on everybody, but give a tank the bonus damage against champs with higher hp is useless for an entire class of champions.
it is current HP% so a halflive sion deals more damage against a 70% tristana for example
@@mandragorius9637 A half hp sion definitely has more health than a 70% adc
Ah yes. The best dragon is the one that gives the two things every League player loves: Stealth and Refusing to Die
I will never stop loving how goofy it gets when a fed Cho’gath gets Ocean Soul.
Just this Godzilla mf walking at the enemy perma-regenerating faster than Mundo’s ultimate.
Tbh, as a Hecarim Main, am always amazed at how many people think cloud drake isn't good.
Probably because your champ is one of the few who benefit from it more than fire ocean or mountain.
I think the thing that makes a drake well designed is when the buff you get for killing the drake enhances the soul, mountain does it really well, the shield is stronger the more resistances you have and the drake gives resistances, and infernal does a similar thing with damage. As much as I like ocean I don’t think it’s the best because the soul buff is the same wether you get 4 ocean drakes or 2. This doesn’t take into count the changes to the map, I think the best map changes are ocean, chem, and hextech
Can’t wait to see the video to see what you say about them all!
Ocean depends on the meta. It used to be much more op when fights took longer and the reg hat the time to kick in.
Not so; Healing amplifies healing, because it gives you more time alive to continue to heal. The same applies to shields. I do agree with the rest of your point though, just don't think that ocean is a good example of something failing to do this. For that, cloud is a better candidate.
@@LyonsTheMad I didn’t consider that for ocean. The reason I thin cloud is still effective at this concept is the drake reduces ult CD, while the soul give ms on ult use, the drake lets you ult more getting more out of the ms. Personally I think cloud is still a weak drake because there are too many champs that aren’t able to make use out of it, for one reason or another
Chemtech is the best when you are ahead, because the team that is behind cannot enter the jungle AT ALL and that's also why I hate it. It prevents the losing team from contesting anything as every into the jungle is a massive risk.
Wards over the wall don't work, blue work becomes useless.
I also find the chemtech drake to just not fit the theme it is based on at all.
The Hextech-map took its inspiration directly from what is seen in Arcane. Hexgates.
The Chemtech map though has nothing to do with Lower-city/Zaun as it was presented.
The Chemtech soul is just stupid and random as well.
Hard agree. I personally find hextech drake to be right behind ocean for best Drake design wise.
I think fire drag should change jungle camps into “infernal” versions that do more damage but also offer different buffs
Hello, just passing by to remind you that you can see Aurelion Sol's stars while he is in the chemtech fog, ty Riot :)
This aged well
Just the fact that part of the cloud souls effect can littlery do NOTHING on some champs lowers it's overall placement so much imo
Yuumi ulting inside someone be like: What is a cloud soul?
Let us have a moment of silence for the removal of the best toxic drag
Hey vars, would you feel like taking a look at "passive" abilities like Vi's W and how they've disappeared in modern champions, the same way toggles has? It seems nowadays there are more active abilities with passive benefits than straight up levelled passives
It feels like you play with one less ability
Vayne W could have been integrated onto her passive (wild rift gave vayne an active W)
Teemo E is like you activate it and then forget about it (also changed in wild rift)
They're dissapearing in favor of a more ''active'' gameplay.
It would definitely make for an interesting in depth video though.
@@cleenash6 Well that depends on how you design the champion, you could increase the power in their other active abilities or increase the power of their original passive
@@sebastianrodriguez5280 the point is that playing with one less ability (vayne, teemo etc) when you´re used to play with 4 (like most other champs) feels meh.
Even if the abilities were perfectly balanced and the champion was performing well, it just doesn't feel as good (for me at least).
(also i haven't played league since i wrote that so maybe something has changed idk)
The only thing i don't like about drakes in general is that they are random, i think it would be nice to know already in champion select which dragon soul will spawn so we could try to draft a team that can benefit the most from the soul
True, but that might boost dodging
@@Malnair so punish more the dodging! 😁
@@ILcrash1993 no?
I preferred it when Yorick could solo baron at 20 mins with mountain drake and Rengar's viability didn't depend on rng
Cries in chemtank and fire drake maps XD
Cloud has always been one of my favourites 'cause i play lillia and it is so fun to go that much quicker just by hitting R lol. It may not be super practical all the time, but it is just damn fun
My favourite used to be cloud because many of my mains have very cool ultimates such as bard, tahm kench and rengar. But now i guess ocean because i love nature and the map looks alive. But my favourite element is fire
Oh thank God that chem drake got removed. I was playing talon and I one shot the Caitlin. The horny police officer then came back to life and got a penta kill. All because they spend a collective total of 1 minute kicking the shit out of intoxicated lizard. I want to know who in Roit HQ thought it would be a good idea to give people an Evelynn passive made in China and a Sion passive with full autonomy of their abilities for full 10 seconds. I swear it made release Aphelios look like a minor inconvenience or just Viego in general. It also makes reworked Akali feel like fresh breath of air. You get the ideas of broken bs of 500 years bs mechanics.
Tbh I thought that the big elder hextech buff would make it so that it’s team had an extra item slot, or maybe make it so that mythic passives are applied twice, something like that. Obviously the extra item slot is kinda insane, but something to do with item manipulation woulda been cooler than “do damage + stun”
Maybe apply the mithyc passive one more time would be cool
Vars: "I think Cloud and Water Rifts should have parts on the map where you would run faster in one direction and vice versa."
Morgana and her Black Shield: "Yes please!"
Malzahar and his Void Shield: Yes please!"
Olaf and his Ragnarok: "Yes please!"
Literally every other champion without CC immunity spells: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"
Umm, Vars, I know the game is snowbally as heck for the last year at least, but are tanks so bad for the game that a frigging dragon is created to screw them over?
The best dragon is that one asol you encounter in GM that knows what to do beside the nerfs.
As a rengar main, you can notice how many times rengar is mentioned in the game, the champion is a lot reliable on which drake is on at the time
Only thing I can think of that would be cool would be for Wind Drake. Have the movement speed be opposite per jg side. Meaning if you are on blue side, them blue sides wind tunnels will give you 10% move speed but take away enemies move speed by 10% and vice versa for the enemies on red side.
I despise chemtech with a passion, everytime I see that fog I want to alt+f4, it's by far the most "win more" of all the dragons, most map changes feel more or less neutral except chemtech, that stupid fog is like "oh, you are already losing ? let's make it so you can't get even get out of your own base without getting destroyed" and the opposite if you are winning, plus, it makes 2 out of the 3 trinkets feel pretty bad and considering the soul and the winrate it has, I'm sure it was made with the intention of not letting you comeback or lose in mind, so mission accomplished I guess.
Anyone know the song playing in the background?
What we need is a Freljord Dragon and Void Dragon
Cloud rift is the most boring change the rift has ever seen. And Chemtech just straight up got removed
"By the time you see this video the chemtech dragon soul will have been nerfed or is in the process of getting nerfed"
Hmm. Maybe try removed entirely? xD
Using criteria listed by Vars:
Review 3 aspects of dragons: 1)Base Buff 2) Elemental Rift 3) Soul in priority order. Additionally review those 3 aspects with regards to 3 criteria: A) how well they influence the game, B) how well they are designed, and C) how strong they are (each equally contributing to final rating).
My ranking:
For all 3 aspects, they will be weighted for priority. Base Buff score x2, elemental rift score x1.5 and soul score x1.
For each of the 3 aspects, the basic score will be average of the three criteria scores. Each criteria is rated 1-5 with 1 being "bad", 3 is "mediocre" and 5 as "high".
Final List vs Vars
1. Ocean: 5.53 (+3 gain)
2. Fire: 5.23 (+4 gain)
3. Hextech: 5.1 (no change)
4. Cloud: 5.02 (-2 loss)
5. Mountain: 4.87 (no change)
6. Chemtech: 4.62 (-5 loss)
Personally I would rank Elementary Rift > Soul > Base Buff which would make the list
1. Ocean: 5.67 (+3)
2. Mountain: 5.33 (+3)
3. Fire: 5.22 (+3)
4. Hextech: 5.06 (-1)
5. Cloud: 4.72 (-3)
6. Chemtech: 4.5 (-5)
Disclaimer: Sup main
Edit: Ranking Elder drag for fun. Giving default 3 for everything besides Soul category with triple 5 yields 5.17 with Vars criteria or 5.5 with mine. Putting it at 3rd place/ 2nd place. Not even best drag :P
I made a response on this already on a thread, but wanted a main comment too. I think the chemdrake's fog shouldn't remove brushes. That way you can controll ward in the bushes without being giggacucked. Also the layered vision reduction adds, rather than takes away tactical depth. It also keeps some bushes as entry bushes to the fog, meaning a team who isn't controlling the fog still has tactical counter play.
whenever i see ocean, hex or cloud, i always ping the dragon as many times as needed to kill it as fast as possibly, they have the best buffs in my opinion
Its not like i want to put salt into the wound or roost your opinion (Because its that, just an opinion and it would be stupid to say that its wrong) but the Cloud Dragon Soul is so useless that is not even in wildrift because the buffs werent noticeable, and the map change is redundant in the situation on a chase (the situation that would probably be the reason for existing)
so yeah...
I'm waiting for a void based dragon because that'd probably be fun
its really cool to see a toplaners view on this topic
i would say hextech, water, cloud, chemtech, earth and then fire from my least favourite to most
idea: make it so that, the 4 original drake change the wheater with fog of war. Example cloud drake gives you less fog so you can see further, infernal adds more fog of war so it's harder to see. ocean makes it rain so you can't see enemy health bar if they ar too far, and moutain idk, maybe gives a delay to fog of war so if it isnt warder it takes some time to clear up.
that's a pretty cool idea, mountain drake could make certain spots gain more 'height' and give greater vision to those on the spots
We all know shyvana is best dragon. Not because she's thicc or smth...
I was always partial to the Ocean Drake. Maybe not the strongest, but I always appreciated that extra bit of sustain.
cloud soul might be awesome when you’re playing a bruiser, but it’s literally useless on champions like nunu and janna that have to stand still and channel their ultimate for several seconds. i personally feel like that extreme disparity in usefulness makes it poorly designed. also the chemtech map makes kiting half the jungle camps significantly harder because they lose vision of you so quickly, which can be extremely annoying. on top of that, removing so many bushes from the game removes a lot of interactions that champions have, which is imo a bad thing. if you have multiple dragons stacked up, you can get a legendary items worth of ap, or armor, or ability haste and attack speed. getting 4 cloud drakes is pretty much the same thing as taking relentless hunter and having the passive from swifties. i honestly don’t think the arguments for cloud dragon were strong enough to support the idea that cloud dragon is anything other than the individually weakest buff, with a dragon soul that can be amazing or useless depending on what champion you locked in during champion select.
edit: the dragon soul winrate chart that was put into this same video shows that cloud has the second lowest winrate. i feel like it’s inclusion in this video directly contradicts Vars’ placement of the cloud dragon
Just to note here, cloud drake still gives Ult ability haste because it's bugged (see vandiril's video on it)
Although it doesn't change much does it?
@@kelving420 pretty sure that was fixed a whole ago
As an Aurelian main, I agree with the assessment on cloud drakes, you already take relentless hunter so more out of combat ms means bigger, cheesier stars. Plus yeah, cloud soul op in general.
Personally the hextech dragon is my fav. The slow and ability haste is good without being completely overwhelming, and the gates it provides enables alot of plays and allows people to get to areas/fights much quicker after basing.
However the strongest is unfortunately Chemtech. The cutdown like damage it provides isn't actually all that bad, but the problem is the rift and the soul. The camouflage zone does nothing but cause problems (esp to support mains like me) as there's no real effective way to ward it except warding the entrances which makes dealing with Jng much harder (esp since you can't deep Ward as effectively).
And the soul is honestly just awful, as now everyone on the enemy team has Sion passive and you effectively have to kill them twice alongside whatever else they have (Zhonyas/GA, their own death passives, etc). And while I know souls are supposed to be overtuned like this since this is pretty much a win con but once the opps team has chem soul there's no way to actually mount a comeback as the losing team. The other souls make it much more harder to win but it's not impossible, with good decisions and coordination you can grab a W from the jaws of defeat. With chem you simply cannot, killing the adc does not mean you've grabbed a lead as they're gonna come back a sec later and can easily equalize whatever lead y'all gotten or worse and take down two or more allies. And this is just one opponent.
Anyway this is long af so hex>fire>water>earth>wind>>>chem
As a nocturne main , any cloud drag with ultimate hunter and 45 cd is pretty much a win con on its own
I think there should be something about chemtech to be mentioned. Ofcourse it has such a high winrate compared to the others because the moment you fall behind the jungle is off limits for your team.
no amount of dragons can be killed or stolen for my team to start doing well
Yeah try beeing An adc and you Will swich inferno and ocian soul any Day of the week
Man, the song used in the background slaps, and the video's great. Thanks!
This video made me realize that the dragons are all just recolor versions of eachother with slight scale variations.
Personally, I liked old cloud drakes buffs to ultimate ability haste. Otherwise, I agree- cloud drake best drake.
I actually think that Cloud should be first. I don't really like Chemtech drake (maybe because I don't play bruisers).
If you kill someone with the chemtech soul you can just walk away
What are they going to do? Chase you? They are alive for a couple of seconds and that's more than enough to get away for some champions
The rift with camouflage is definitely an interesting idea
My favorite map on visuals alone is the ocean soul one
It just needs to add waves and rapids to the river and that would be pretty awesome
Cloud Drake is absolutely my favorite. To be fair I enjoy champions like fiddlesticks, volibear, and Racken. Those ultimates are amazing with increased movement speed.
Chem Drake was so good it was removed
Me, as a Xerath main: Ah yes, Cloud drakes boost after using your ult... Truly a game changing soul.
But jokes aside, great video, Vars. I always thought the fire drake was overrated. Especially now with how bursty the game became even without it.
I wish they changed the soul to this:
Fire Drake = Increases AD and AP for every FD. FD soul causes the same explosive damage but also burns the enemy and can spread like to minions and other units, cause fire burns
Mountain Drake = Gives Armor and MR and tenacity for every MD. MD Soul gives a shield and the (now) Chemdrake’s tenacity and increase shielding. Also provides a periodic (5sec) charged attack that stuns an enemy (1-2 secs)
Ocean Drake = Gives more HP and MP Regen for every OD. OD soul keeps the regen buff after an attack, but also increases healing from all sources (think of it as a spirit visage buff) Ocean also causes attacks to deal splash damage and slows enemies (0.5-1sec slow)
Wind Drake = Gives more MS and AS for every WD. WD Soul keeps the after ult movespeed, and increased out of combat movespeed, but this time give the wind the a charged up attack (30sec) that knocks enemies airborne (1-2sec)
Hextech Drake = Gives bonus Armor and Magic Pen for every HD. HD Soul gives everyone the Statikk shiv passive but now bounces more times and can bounce in one target more than once, also either provides a slow or a silence or a root (you know cause when you’re electrified you’re basically paralyzed) and a charged up attack that when used on structures disabled them for 3 secs (instantly kills wards)
Chemtech Drake = Gives increase omnivamp (not healing but the percentage of omnivamp) for every CD . CD soul gives a poison attack that deals little damage and is not lethal, but greatly decreases an enemy’s armor, magic resist, tenacity, and causes grievous wounds for shields and all healing. Cause Chems = Biohazard/Poisonous/Toxic. Think of it at a buffed up version of the Baron’s Void Corruption.
Elder Drake = Keep the execution and burning buff, but this time increases the stats of all the captured drakes on your team 3x. If your team didn’t capture any drake before hand, will give your team a 1 time zhonya / GA
(Honestly couldn’t think of anything that can buff up Elder, the buff from Elder is one of the best and most OP buffs in the game already)
Note: the Buffs I gave for each “charged” up attack. I meant by every 3/5 secs the attack applies like how current FD’s soul works. Except for CD where every attack causes corrosion and poison.
As for environmental changes.
FD, MD, WD, HD … can’t think of anything that won’t be hazardous than what we have now
OD = Give it the current CD’s change of plants and increase bush sizes/spots or floods landscape
CD = Turns river into a chem river that buffs everything and increases to a cap (starts from 1% to 20/25%) buffs only apply in the river, once you go out everything percent increase, immediately decreases at a fast pace and slows you down incredibly. Kills bushes in river and turns the scuttle into a … Rammus-like creep. Causes reflective poisonous damage and has HP similar to the Red and Blue and his stats are also increased (but only like 3-5%)
Elder and Baron also have their stats increased by 5-15%
This video didn't age well LMFAO, love your videos btw I just found the irony here delicious.
If you stand on a brush while its burning from fire drake terrain change you receive a small burning true damage
It was bold of you to assume they're gonna nerf chemtech drake. They're gonna wait a few months, ideally like five or six then they're gonna address it. That's how riot balance team operates.
for hextech rift, they need to add a pair of hex gats linking the outcoves
Yo im in love with your videos bro. NICE WORK THERE !
I feel like as a Dragon Chemtech drake is good. As a soul I would say any but except Chemtech drake. Hextech Soul is the best for skill casters like lb,Qiyana. So the best drake is any of them based on match-up etc. Elder dragon is good as a Dragon. Chemtech is great as a drake. Like having 1 hextech drake and one infernal is very nice to have.
ocean dragon supremacy
I feel like a good idea for rifts would have been minigames. like capture objective that gives bonuses or something like that.
Man, I really miss old Earth dragons structure damage effect. I despise things that make games last longer than needed and if you’re winning and getting this dragon, it feels so good compared to anything else.
The top two are very hot takes, lol. I'm a Rakan one trick so my neurons go crazy when I go super fast, but I've always disliked the soul due to how bland it was. I understand that most drakes are bland with effects but I don't know why bias towards Cloud
My man popping another high quality vid like its noting.
I think the dragons shouldn be random as they are very important and there are often obvious good or bad souls for a teamcomp, giving unfair, chance based advantages. Additionally, if there was a way to influence which dragon a tam can get that would then by itself add a lot of depth. Implementing such a system might be hard, and makes the early game far more important than it already is, but I think it should be attempted. Even though some dragon buffs will need a few buffs in order to be able to compete.
Random drakes make the game everchanging and every match different. You need to play around what you have, what they have, you have to learn when it's not worth fighting a drake, it makes it more interesting.
@@sunnydargonnel Yes, randomness has exactly that advantage. It can make things more fun through making them more unpredictable. Thats why most casual games have huge amounts of randomness in them. But Lol at its core is a competitive game. Lol is supposed to get interesting through skill expression, of both mechanics and gamesense. So that at the end of a game, the better team should always win (In theory). But randomness inherently makes it so that this is not the case. It makes it so that there are other factors outside of the players control which will influence the outcome. Obviously such random elements can never be 100% avioded, as even without having machinces based on randomness in the game, there will always be some factors players cant controll. But those should be avoided as far as possible. Also, as a second point, most of the time the teams will want different dragons, depending on their team comps, so which dragon comes next will be contested, meaning that it will lead to more conflict and thus skill expression between teams. Also, again, depending on how it is implemented, there might be tactical opportunities where teams handshake to let a weaker dragon spawn. How exactly this system would look like would require more thought, but I think that it is absolutely possible to make a system, where there is a place for the kind of decision making u are talking about. And that aside, I think randomness by design is just an absolute no-go for competitive games in general (Outside of card games or other games that are fundamentally grounded in randomness. But those games are designed around randomness and they usually have many matches in succession to account for those random elements (Since the more random events happen i succession the more they will equalise overall). But in Lol there is usually only one random event (Which soul u get) that decides hole games).
the bruiser main thinks mountain and infernal are bad. yea i saw this coming lol
For real though I think riot needs to hire Vars
The only adjustment I would make would be to put ocean drake in 2nd, and cloud in 3rd. IMO the versatility of ocean soul makes it more of a game ending buff than the cloud soul. I can't remember the last time my team had the winning bot side, and was disappointed to see ocean soul spawn.
The problem with dragons right now is that the soul requires you to take 4 dragons. This almost completely removes the potential to use dragons as an avenue for comebacks. Whichever team gets an early lead can take the early dragons, and to comeback later the losing team will need to win 4 separate fights to get a soul and come back, while the leading team only needs to win 1 or 2 fights to secure the soul, and unlike baron, the losing team cant wait out a soul, it's permanent. The importance of early drakes also puts way more importance into bot lane, and leaves top even further on an island.
Love that the two new drakes are top of the win rate chart for drake souls...and that Chemtech soul is 1.1 percent higher than Hextech soul. which is even funnier when you see that hextech soul's winrate is only 1.3% higher than the lowest winrate soul, infernal. I bet we're gonna see so many nerfs and adjustments for chemtech drake/map/soul over the next few months, whereas I bet the Hextech drake/map/soul will probably only see a small handful of changes.
As a teemo main i especially love ocean and wind dragon. Casting ultimate on teemo is easy and when you cast it you get easy speed buff on already fast unit and on ocean dragon when someone steps on mushroom i get my nearly %40 of my health and mana back.
Edit: Typo
I can't agree with the cloud soul being the best. We have a ton of champs that can't move during their ults making it incredibly useless for them... Also, I don't think chemtech drake was nerfed lol.
The champions, which can not move during their ult get the speed buff after they use it. It can save lifes of champs like Xerath or Jhin. Moreover in higher elo, where they know how to better capitalise on you being rooted and revealed during your ultimate.
I wish some of the souls like ocean, mountain and cloud were flashier and had really cool effects like infernal and hex
"Let's get into light hearted theory crafting and discussion"
YOU WHAAAAAAAAAT THIS IS LEAGUE PLAYERS WHAT PORTAL OF DAMNATION DO YOU THINK YOU BROUGHT UPON US!!!!!!!! VARSSSSSSS
(Jokes aside I am intrigued and love the content keep it up)
I wish the drake fights were more fights rather than meat sacs you keep smacking. Imagine if the drake moved around the river, or had special attacks like fire drake actually lit the ground on fire. Adding to that I wish, like you mentioned, there would be hazard zones based on drakes. Mountain could have rock slides, wind could push you if u stood still, ocean could do the waves in river, fire would make fire/lava zones, chemtech poison clouds for tick damage, hextech could be electric shock areas
I think hazard zones would make champions with displacing abilities like Vayne, Lee Sin or Tristana too strong. They'd have ways to push people into certain death.
I did not play this season, but by concept, this is ranking by gametime of the soul
20 minute mark: infernal & hextech, chemtech, water, cloud, mountain
mountain soul is last because the shield is tiny at that point
30 minute mark: chemtech, mountain, water, infernal, cloud, hextech
at this point teams become number-reliant, occasionally teamfighting. Sustain is important, a regenerating shield can mean escape with 1 health or an ace. Cloud doesn't matter that much because time between teamfights are quite long, hextech is useless because it deals neglible damage
40+ minute mark: chemtech, cloud, mountain, water, infernal, hextech
damage is worthless at lategame. Cooldowns dictate wincon, and chemtech soul is OP in lategame.
Yes! Vars is a Cloud Drake enjoyer! I know I'm not alone!
i don't play lol a whole lot so this could be a totally horrible idea. but in the idea of creating a more fiery theme for red dragon, you could have torches get placed through river providing vision for both sides.
as a qiyana main, I dislike chemtech soul. Mainly because the bushes in the jungle that i can easily reach dissapear and it fucks up tfs for me so i agree with you on that. My favourite drake is ocean.
a void drag would be cool, have it in the same tier as elder
Infernal drag should make a mini corki dash line with also glacial. So it looks like glacial, but it's a mini corki carpet
I don't agree with his rankings at all, but this video was fun to watch & think about! :)
Nice to see you again!