Three weeks after the official season 12 of League of Legends begins, Riot Games, producers of League of Legends, removes all traces of the recently added Chemtech drake from their game. While the Chemtech drake will most likely be added back to the game, it probably will not have the same effect on stats and the map as it once did.
The reason behind disabling the Chemtech drake comes from the community and their complaints about the power the drake has on the game. The stats also speak to this problem with teams that get the drake soul (4 drake take downs as a team) having over a 90%-win rate from the whole time the Chemtech drake was out. However, the biggest problem was the one Riot stated in their press release; the Chemtech drake’s effect on the map.
Upon defeating the first two drakes of the game, the third drake brings about a change to the map terrain depending on which drake it is. If the third drake was the Chemtech drake, parts of the map became zones of invisibility with a 10% damage buff for being inside one. This essentially made plays that were much riskier have much less risk and the team that was already ahead was able to take advantage of this much more.
While this one drake was on the map, it effectively nullified all of the comeback mechanics a losing team had to get back into the game. Due to the invisibility fields around the map, it became much harder for the losing team to approach any of the neutral objectives on the map. This made the newly added objective bounties, the largest change to the game implemented for season 12, useless because to get to the objective with bounty was so much harder with the Chemtech drake map.
The Chemtech drake was in the game from early November 2021 to January 24, 2022. This begs the question, why was this not done before the beginning of season 12? Riot had two months’ worth of data and complaints that explained the unhealthy nature of the Chemtech drake to the game. This is something that Riot will never answer. I believe it was because Riot believed they could fix the problem by nerfing stats and effects from actually defeating the drake. Through these nerfs though, Riot neglected the problem of the actual map changes the Chemtech drake brings.
When the Chemtech drake will be reintroduced to the game and the potential new affect it will have on the map is still unknown. That being said, because the Chemtech drake was first brought into the game in relation to League of Legends Arcane, it is safe to assume that it will have to do with something similar to what Chemtech did in the Arcane series.
So, let’s do a little theory crafting. Based on the Arcane series, a major flaw the Chemtech had was the user experiences bad side effects and withdrawals. If Riot was intent on keeping the invisibility zones, they could make it so after a certain amount of time within the zone, players begin to take a small ticking damage that builds up over time. I do not think they should keep the invisibility fields though. Instead, they should take a way the invisibility from the zone and just make it a damage zone, giving players 10% more damage if they are within it. The zones already do this but also have the added affect of invisibility. If Riot removes the invisibility, I have a feeling the player base would be much more accepting of the Chemtech drake.
