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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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'd like that in the burnt areas the fire dragon applied grivius wounds, no damage. Kinda like varus E

My issue with chemtech drake is that it so heavily nerfs supports power specifically.

I wish the chemtech rift would reduce healing and shielding instead of camo.

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.

The strongest dragon is the Space Dragon, and when you kill it you get the "Aurelion Soul"

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).

The water drake is my favorite simply because of how beatiful and serene the map looks, the little puddles in the camps and the huge amount of brushes are so nice.

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.

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 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'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.

Man, the song used in the background slaps, and the video's great. Thanks!

Tbh, as a Hecarim Main, am always amazed at how many people think cloud drake isn't good.

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

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

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

Yo im in love with your videos bro. NICE WORK THERE !

They're finally removing Chemtech Dragon...the end of a nightmare

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

I think fire drag should change jungle camps into “infernal” versions that do more damage but also offer different buffs

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

I preferred it when Yorick could solo baron at 20 mins with mountain drake and Rengar's viability didn't depend on rng

My man popping another high quality vid like its noting.

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.

This aged well

Nice to see you again!

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

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

What we need is a Freljord Dragon and Void Dragon

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

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.

I was always partial to the Ocean Drake. Maybe not the strongest, but I always appreciated that extra bit of sustain.

If you stand on a brush while its burning from fire drake terrain change you receive a small burning true damage

I'm waiting for a void based dragon because that'd probably be fun

My favourite drake is hextech, because of the map changes. If we look into the enjoyment rate of the soul I would say that Mountain is the best (helps a lot against assasins).

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.

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

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-"

As a nocturne main , any cloud drag with ultimate hunter and 45 cd is pretty much a win con on its own

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”

This video made me realize that the dragons are all just recolor versions of eachother with slight scale variations.

for hextech rift, they need to add a pair of hex gats linking the outcoves

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.

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.

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.

In vain glory the five v five map has a feature where in the river it would either be flowing out or in and if you moved in the direction of the current you’d move faster if you went against it you just went base speed since if it slowed you down it’d be abit rough

I wish some of the souls like ocean, mountain and cloud were flashier and had really cool effects like infernal and hex

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.

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.

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

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.

a void drag would be cool, have it in the same tier as elder

Let us have a moment of silence for the removal of the best toxic drag

Yes! Vars is a Cloud Drake enjoyer! I know I'm not alone!

Ah yes. The best dragon is the one that gives the two things every League player loves: Stealth and Refusing to Die

Personally, I liked old cloud drakes buffs to ultimate ability haste. Otherwise, I agree- cloud drake best drake.

you know if you used the last airbander intro for each element it would have been pretty great

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

the old mountain dragon buff was definitely broken. if they tweaked the numbers, like capping the true damage buff at 20% with three stacks it would be fine imo, but the old numbers are insane

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.

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 real though I think riot needs to hire Vars

would be cool to have a new version of this video for the S14

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 honestly love cloud dragon, I may or may not be a Janna main who loves the move speed for me to spam gank MORE

no amount of dragons can be killed or stolen for my team to start doing well

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

Chemtech map removes bushes true and u said u don't like it, not because of rengar. But it's gonna get better for rengar cause they said rengar will be able to do his jumps in chemfog, so it's basically bigger bush for him. (I'm not entirely sure tho, I just remember hearing that somewhere)

As a Rakan main I love Cloud Soul

I saw somewhere that they will make Rengar being able to jump from stealth if im not mistaken

Singed with Predator Ghost and cloud drake is nightmare fuel.

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 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.

Fiddle with cloud soul is real scary

Ik i am late but heres anoyher idea soul specific items for the team with the soul.

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

I don't agree with his rankings at all, but this video was fun to watch & think about! :)

I like ocean drake cause the map becomes lively compared to the others and more brush means more cheese

I mean, idk if they fixed this but last time I checked, (11.24b) cloud soul was bugged and still gave ult AH alongside the new stuff

Udyr + Cloud soul is my favorite combo

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.

Anyone know the song playing in the background?

As a Hecarim enjoyer I do enjoy cloud soul.

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.

I would talk about the dragons but I usually never see them in my games. The enemy team always gets them because I'm too scared to take dragons until I'm level 13.

I honestly can't tell if that with the Cloud Drake is a troll or meant to be serious-

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

Hello, just passing by to remind you that you can see Aurelion Sol's stars while he is in the chemtech fog, ty Riot :)

2 of my friends I play with a lot HATE the cloud drake since one plays pretty much velkoz and xerath exclusively and the other is a jhin otp so I think its a safe bet to not let them see that ranking

I though that hex soul migh increase the effects from your sommoner spells as they are also literal tools you take along the way and thus agree that a static shiv is a really boring outcome