League of Legends: Theorycrafting New Elemental Drakes Based On TFT

With early game dragons in League of Legends being fairly weak without stacking, we try to create some new, more interesting ones to shake up the Rift.

Right now, the League of Legends pro meta is quite slow in the early game and a big reason why is the decreased importance of early dragons. This may seem counter-intuitive because most teams are playing towards a Dragon Soul win condition late, but the individual dragons themselves are worse if you don’t stack them. In addition, the new Elemental Rifts, while nice, aren’t as optimized and unique as they could be, since they mainly just change the layout of the jungle quadrants.

While the Elemental Rift is changing the League of Legends map, over in TFT the Rise of the Elements also shook up the meta by introducing element-based origins for champions. The four big elements from the League of Legends map – Inferno, Ocean, Cloud, and Mountain – are all represented there along with many others, which gave me an idea. Could there be other dragons in League of Legends that would give the capturing team new, unique bonuses, souls, and change the Rift in new ways?

I’ll be proposing new Elemental Dragons based on the TFT elements as well as giving the stats a basic dragon would provide, the soul effect, and how the Rift would be changed. If you have any feedback or ideas of your own, let me know in the comments!

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Crystal

Crystal in TFT allows certain champions to not take more than a certain flat amount per attack. While this might be too OP to take into League of Legends, I do like the idea of Crystal Dragon being something that could counter burst comps.

Basic buff: Grants bonus magic resistance.

Dragon soul: After not taking damage for five seconds, you cannot take more than 10% of your maximum health from the next damaging attack or spell.

Rift change: Spawns spires (where Skarner’s crystals spawn) that can be activated and grant your teammates bonus armor and MR for five seconds.

Desert

The Desert element in TFT reduces the enemy team’s armor, which makes the basic buff easy to decipher. The soul and rift change, though, is a little harder.

Basic buff: Grants bonus armor penetration.

Dragon soul: Dealing damage to an enemy grants 5% armor shred for the next five seconds (refreshing and stacking for every auto-attack, but stacking only four times).

Rift change: The river dries up (meaning the Waterwalking rune no longer works and Qiyana cannot grab the river element) and nearby brushes wilt.

Electric

In TFT, this element does AoE damage when dealing or taking a critical strike, so this could add some really unique interactions to hyper-scaling ADCs.

Basic buff: Increases critical strike damage.

Dragon soul: Does AoE damage every time you deal or receive a critical strike.

Rift change: Gain attack speed in a certain area of the jungle (the same area where the Cloud Dragon adds movement speed).

Glacial

TFT’s Glacials get a chance to freeze and stun enemies so this would be the heavy CC dragon.

Basic buff: All crowd control abilities last 0.5 seconds longer.

Dragon soul: Every five seconds, your next basic attack has a 25% chance to stun the enemy champion for 1.5 seconds (not affected by the basic buff). This has a 30-second cooldown per target.

Rift change: The river freezes increasing movement speed and making movement in the river more difficult (you’ll drift when turning and stopping like you would while walking on ice).

Light

Lights in TFT gain attack speed and heal back a flat amount when an ally dies, which would work very nicely in League of Legends.

Basic buff: Grants bonus attack speed.

Dragon soul: After an ally dies, heal for 15% of your maximum health.

Rift change: New vision plants spawn permanently in the jungle that grant vision (you can no longer hit them to scout, though).

Lunar

The Lunar origin is one that is based around helping your teammates and scaling up during the fight in TFT. This could be an interesting way to help out teamfight comps.

Basic buff: Increases heal and shield power.

Dragon soul: When you or your allies take damage for enemy champions, your next attack is 10/20/30% stronger, stacking every five seconds you are in combat.

Rift change: Area in the jungle (same for Cloud and Electric Dragons) grants a shield when you enter it (30 second cooldown).

Poison

The Poison element seems pretty self-explanatory and even League of Legends players are familiar with the damage over time effect.

Basic buff: Increases mana regen.

Dragon soul: Every five seconds, after dealing damage to an enemy champion your attack does bonus burn damage over time, cutting healing and draining mana from them.

Rift change: Honeyfruit plants are replaced with noxious plants that leave an area that grounds and slows the enemy team (the team that hit the plant is unaffected).

Shadow

In TFT, Shadow is really more meant to represent the magical dark power of the Void. Shadow Dragon would therefore be a great opportunity to give more power to casters.

Basic buff: Gives increased magic penetration.

Dragon soul: Your first spell at the start of combat does double damage, refreshing on takedowns (30 second cooldown).

Rift change: Your vision and vision wards’ radius are both decreased. In addition, in a given area of the jungle, you gain 5% bonus AP or AD, adaptive.

Steel

Steel champions in TFT gain a brief window of invulnerability (similar to Taric ult) when taken below a given health threshold. The trick is, then, making the Rift unique to reflect the Steel theme.

Basic buff: Grants bonus health.

Dragon soul: After being taken below 50% of your total HP, after a brief delay (2 seconds) you become invulnerable to damage from enemy champions for the next 3 seconds (30 second cooldown).

Rift change: The terrain walls are replaced with steel, with several spots that have doors that will open or close.

Woodland

Finally, Woodland in TFT is the element that allows champions to create copies of themselves. I don’t know how that translates to League of Legends (especially when it hasn’t really been that effective on someone like Neeko).

Basic buff: Grants out of combat movement speed.

Dragon soul: Every five seconds, your next attack roots the target (30 second cooldown per target).

Rift change: Some walls in the jungle are overgrown with brush, becoming traversable but blocking vision.