Looking At the Gold Efficiency of the Patch 4.21 Dragon

By Kennan French

With Riot increasing their “strategic diversity” in terms of objective control, dragon now gives non-monetary rewards instead of the global gold it gave in Season 4. The most widely-appreciated of these rewards is the bonus percentage AD and AP. However, the balance team at Riot decided that the 8% bonus given in Patch 4.20 was a bit overtuned, so it has been changed to 6% in 4.21. For those not familiar with gold efficiency, it is the idea that champion stats have a certain gold value based on the basic items for that stat. In other words, it is a ratio of your benefit to your cost of buying an item.

This idea of gold efficiency can be extended to the dragon changes—a team can be thought of as forgoing the old global gold of the dragon (190 gold for each team member when dragon is level 7) to “buy” this 6% increase in AD and AP. For example, if someone got 190 gold worth of stats from the dragon, then they could be said to have 100% gold efficiency compared to the old dragon. Note that this is a sort of “scaling” gold efficiency, since we’re comparing a percentage AD/AP bonus (which increases over time) to the constant 190 gold a player would have received in Patch 4.19.

So let’s get into the numbers. An average time for first dragon (as computed by random games from various solo queue elos, IEM, and OGN) is something like 10-13 minutes. On Patch 4.20, the dragon bonuses would have been (roughly) as follows:

AP Champions
Role	Approximate AP@10	Bonus AP	Worth of Bonus AP	Gold Efficiency@10
AP laner/jungler	80	6.4	139 gold	73%
Support	Negligible        ------------------------------------------------------>

AD Champions
Role	Approximate AD@10	Bonus AD	Worth of Bonus AD	Gold Efficiency@10
AD solo laner	120	9.6	346 gold	182%
ADC	100	8	288 gold	152%
AD jungler	105	8.6	310 gold	163%

These approximate AD/AP values are estimates based on the base values of popular champions, common rune and mastery pages, and a few “normal” builds for those popular champions.

On 4.21, here are those same values with the 6% bonuses:

AP Champions
Role	Approximate AP@10	Bonus AP	Worth of Bonus AP	Gold Efficiency@10
AP laner/jungler	80	4.8	104 gold	55%
Support	Negligible        ------------------------------------------------------>

AD Champions
Role	Approximate AD@10	Bonus AD	Worth of Bonus AD	Gold Efficiency@10
AD solo laner	120	7.2	260 gold	137%
ADC	100	6	216 gold	114%
AD jungler	105	6.3	227 gold	119%

It is also important to understand the changes to the vales from 4.20 to 4.21, so here they are:

Role	Change in Bonus Value@10
AP laner/jungler	Lost 35 gold
Support	Negligible
AD solo laner	Lost 86 gold
ADC	Lost 72 gold
AD jungler	Lost 83 gold

This effectively means that champions which scale with AP were hit less by the 4.21 dragon changes—buying AP is cheaper than buying AD, after all. The dragon buff is still typically “gold efficient” on AD champions, but is just barely halfway to being gold efficient on AP champions (until they get 146 AP, when they “break even” compared to the old rewards). It is worth noting that since AP champions tend to amass much more AP later on in the game than AD champions buy AD, the scaling gold efficiency is better for an AP champion. An Orianna with 650 AP, for example, gets 39 AP, which is around 850 gold. That makes it 447% efficient, whereas a Zed with 330 AD gets only 375% gold efficiency.

To conclude, dragon in Patch 4.21 still benefits AD champions more than AP ones in the early game, and this reverses as the game goes on. Until AP champions get enough AP to break even with the old dragon gold, they aren’t too happy about the changes; once they hit 146 AP, though, they think maybe it’s not so bad after all.

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 By Kennan French 

Deck the Halls with Coast and Curse Academy!

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

Get ready, LCS Fans...ESL is about to launch into another full weekend of Expansion Tournament excitement, and I know you've all been good boys and girls, so Santa is bringing you some early Christmas goodies! First, we have a super fun opener match! It might not be very even; MakNooN and Nien are so far up the #GODLIKEHYPE scale that Final Five can't even see them from where they stand, which is down in a basement, where Storm left them after the NACL Winter Tournament the other day, but...Final Five should provide enough resistance to allow Fusion to put on a great show. (ShorterAce is amazing yo.) No matter what the score you should be highly entertained! And after you're good and warmed up...

Coast vs Curse Academy will be an amazing match worthy of an array of Super Bowl snacks. Buy a couple of subs, a big bag of Doritos, and some spinach dip or something, light a fire in the fireplace and curl up on the coach with a warm blanket while you bask in the glow of your big screen TV because this is the LCS's version of your favorite Christmas cartoon. It's a gift in a pretty silver box with a shiny red ribbon. And it's all yours to open a full two weeks before the real event. It even comes complete with it's own nativity - a real live Saint and a Sheep!! Santa is doling out the HOT goods, boys! I guess it pays not to rage in League!

The games kick off at 2pm est (+5 gmt)...barring any technical problems. (But it's live from ESL's studios in Burbank, CA...so what could possibly go wrong?)

NACL Winter Playoffs Kick Off Tonight!

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

Oh, hello NACL Winter Playoffs. I nearly forgot all about you between the lengthy Expansion Tournament and the excitement of IEM, and yet, here you are, ready to let us have a second look at some great upcoming LCS talent.

Starting tonight, eight teams will be competing over a period of two weeks for their share of a $15,000 prize pool, with the final 3 teams being flown to the Live LAN Finals at the cool ass AFK Gamer Lounge in San Jose, Ca. Featured teams include expansion tournament semi-finalists, Final Five, tournament stand-outs compLexity White and Enemy eSports, and challenger veterans, COGnitive Gaming. Zenith eSports, Ignition Gaming, Inertia Gaming and Storm round out the diverse roster of Winter Playoff hopefuls.

The games will be called by everyone's favorite rapidcaster, the experienced and talented Reid "RAPiD" Melton and will be viewable on the NACLeSports' Twitch channel. Patch 4.20 will be in use. Who will be the NACL's newest breakaway stars? Come watch and find out! Games start at 8pm EST!

Cloud 9 Take Home Intel Extreme Masters Title With Dominating Performance

Congratulations to Cloud 9 as they clinch a spot in the Intel Extreme Masters World Finals in Katowice to take place in March with a 3-0 series defeat of the Unicorns of Love in the finals of IEM San Jose!

Next up for the Intel Extreme Masters series is IEM Cologne which will take place from December 18th-21st. The ESL will also be hosting the EU Expansion Tournament bracket stage at this event.

Unicorns of Love Rout Team SoloMid to Reach IEM San Jose Finals

By Matt “It’sPure Luck” Lee

           

When the lineup for the Intel Extreme Masters San Jose was originally announced some people seemed to feel that the fans voted in Unicorns of Love simply for their name. Or maybe it was because of the Poppy pick in a do or die games versus Millenium in the EU LCS Spring Promotion Tournament. It simply didn’t seem to fit that a team who recently rose up from the Challenger Series should be voted in to a tournament as prestigious as IEM over a long time standout such as SK Gaming.

            

Yet in the end it was UoL who proved all doubters wrong as they managed to 2-0 tournament favorite Team SoloMid. The victory earns them a berth in the Intel Extreme Masters Grand Finals to take place later today where they await the winner of Cloud 9 versus Alliance. Using a combination of off-meta picks to catch Team SoloMid by surprise and seemingly impeccable team fighting, Unicorns of Love looked much sharper in this set than they did in their previous series against Lyon Gaming.

            

It didn’t take long for the mind games by UoL to begin. They caught TSM unaware in the pick and ban phase of game one by baiting Bjergsen into a Xerath pick when Twisted Fate had been taken the previous turn by UoL. The only problem was that it wasn’t Twisted Fate mid; it was going to Kikis in the jungle.  Power of Evil responded by last picking LeBlanc and it was a selection that worked out brilliantly for UoL. Only three minutes into the game, Bjergsen was caught pushed out a bit too far and we saw the first successful Twisted Fate jungle gank off a flash plus gold card combo. The game would calm down for a few minutes until the first Destiny attempt from Kikis came with an attempt to catch Dyrus out in the top lane. It was unsuccessful but it put more pressure on Dyrus who already had a tough matchup as Rumble against Gnar.

            

Kikis would try his luck top lane again a few minutes later but Dyrus escaped with a sliver of health. However, while this was going on, we saw something that seems to be incredibly rare as Power of Evil was able to pick up a solo kill on Bjergsen. UoL was able to pick up their first dragon a bit after this and they had control of it almost the entire game. TSM was able to pick up a kill on Vizicsacsi in the top lane off of a gank by Santorin, but Power of Evil responded by grabbing a solo kill on Bjergsen again in middle.  Kikis was also able to answer back for UoL in the top lane with a pick on Dyrus with a use of Destiny.

           

From there the game seemed to snowball out of control for Team SoloMid. UoL would make a few mistakes; including an over aggressive play by Power of Evil trying to zone Baron. But the gold difference was simply too much to overcome and the Unicorns would close the game out in 38 minutes.

           

Game two would start off slightly better for TSM, but Bjergsen continued to have trouble with Power of Evil in the mid lane. The UoL mid laner was able to pick up yet another solo kill just after the sixth minute mark as Syndra on Bjersen’s Azir. Power of Evil wasn’t shy about using his ultimate whenever he wanted to. Even if he was not picking up kills, he was forcing Bjergsen to return to base constantly.

            

UoL simply seemed to be one step ahead of TSM the entire way. The gold deficit didn’t grow as fast as it did in game one, but SoloMid just could not cut the gap as much as they needed to. It was Santorin’s steals of dragon that helped ensure they were in this game at all as it progressed. TSM did a better job this game of trading objectives with UoL, but team fighting from the Unicorns was a notch higher than that of the North American Summer champions. The gold lead slowly grew to just shy of 10k after the thirty minute mark and it seemed as if TSM could see the writing on the wall. In a desperation play they opted to try and base race UoL but it didn’t work out in their favor and the Unicorns would take the game in thirty-three minutes and the series two games to none.