Originally published on LinkedIn.

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League of Legends is the most popular esport in the world when it comes to overall viewership. Last year's World Championships boasted an average viewership of 1.113m concurrent viewers across 126 hours of airtime, according to Esports Charts.

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One of the game-defining objectives in the game is Dragons (or Drakes). They’re an important means of powering up your team and improving your chances to win.

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But the way they work hasn’t always been the same, there have been numerous changes, tweaks and patches throughout LoL’s history.

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Ahead of Worlds 2021 kicking off today, some of our LoL experts and traders have put their brains together to offer a short history of how Dragon (or Drake) mechanics have changed over time, and how the current Dragon Meta influences how markets are priced by traders.

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What is the dragon and where is it located?

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If you're unfamiliar with what Dragons are in League of Legends, they're a neutral creature (or objective) that exists in the lower half of the map.

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They live in a 'pit' (the blue circle), waiting for members of either side to enter their area and attack them, hoping to slay the dragons to power up their champions.

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The dragon is powerful enough that it generally takes multiple members of a team to take down. After being slain, there are several minutes before it respawns.

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The rewards for slaying the dragon have changed over time and had immense impacts on how teams prioritise and play around them.

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Random dragons era

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Prior to the 2016 season, the Dragon simply gave gold for slaying it. Simply put, it was a treasure chest waiting to be taken. This meant that teams would focus on killing as many of these as soon as possible to get as much gold as quickly as they could.

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This all changed in Season 6 when they introduced 4 different types of dragons based on different elements:

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• Infernal (Red)
• Cloud (White)
• Mountain (Brown)
• Ocean (Blue)

For the first 35 minutes of the game, a different elemental dragon would spawn, around every 5 minutes. Additionally, after the 35-minute mark a much more powerful Elder Dragon spawns – offering teams who slay it powerful buffs that stacked with multiple dragons slain.

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Teams began to build strategies around dragons, particularly around which elements to prioritise. Infernal Dragons were prioritised because it offers a percentage damage increase on all your attacks and abilities – a very straightforward means of buffing you and your team.

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Cloud Dragon was often considered less valuable as it provided movement speed compared to strict combat stats, while Mountain and Ocean were considered quite situational.

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Depending on the team's composition, they would prioritise Cloud or Mountain drakes to boost their playmaking abilities across the map and at objectives. Or focus on taking Ocean drakes early in the game to boost their health and mana regeneration for bigger advantages in the laning phase.

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As they were random till the Elder Dragon at 35 minutes, strategy around them was somewhat reactionary, with teams adjusting their strategy on the fly at every spawn timer.

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Dawn of Dragon Souls

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For the 2020 season, a new mechanic was introduced: the Dragon Soul.

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With the new season came updates to the individual Dragon buffs:

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• Cloud: Ultimate ability cooldown reduction
• Infernal: Bonus Attack Damage (AD) or Ability Power (AP)
• Mountain: Bonus armour and magic resist
• Ocean: Restores missing health
• Elder: burns enemies and executes champions under health 20% (temporary buff, lost on death)

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With the new Dragon Soul mechanic, a team that slays four elemental dragons gains a bigger bonus on top of the buffs they've accrued along the way. The first two dragon types are completely random, and once the 3rd dragon type is decided, the element and dragon soul is determined.

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• Infernal: Your attacks and abilities trigger an explosion that deals damage to the target and surrounding area
• Cloud: A permanent movement speed buff and shorter cooldowns on ultimate abilities
• Mountain: A shield that regenerates when out of combat
• Ocean: Dealing damage to enemies restores your health and mana

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Once the soul is decided there are also changes to the topography of the map, depending on the element.

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Overall this change meant that every dragon and soul has a direct impact on the combat capabilities of each team, and how they relate to the map changes.

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Case Study: How are drakes valued in Europe?

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After a full season of the Dragon Soul mechanic, teams came into 2021 with more focused strategies around the dragon, albeit different regions and the teams within them have come to value Dragons and Dragon Soul.

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In Europe's LEC, Drakes and Dragon Soul has been a high priority objective. After scrimming and playing European solo queue in preparation for the Mid-Season Invitational, reigning World Champion mid-laner ShowMaker noted that "EU server is unusual. People are obsessed with dragons. They're dragon slayers."

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The shift in how Elder Dragon works has made it incredibly valuable when it appears past the 35-minute mark. With a buff that executes enemies, it can seal a win for the team that's ahead or turn the tide in your favour if you're behind.

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There is no better example of this than in the recent LEC Summer Split, where G2 Esports had a 10k gold advantage and Mountain Soul – most fans and traders considered this a victory for G2.

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Elder Dragon spawned with G2 returning to their own base – their opponents, Misfits capitalised. They took the dragon, killed every G2 player before sprinting down the mid lane to win the game in a flash. There were memes and banter abound, including from the official LEC Twitter account:

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Every international competition develops its own meta, from draft and early game to how teams play around objectives and the late game.

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The true test will be seeing how teams from (nearly) every region prioritise dragons against other objectives on the map.

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Trading Dragons at Worlds 2021

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Coming into Worlds 2021 in Reykjavík, Iceland our resident LoL experts and traders have noted a few things to watch.

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As the second half of the season rolled on, a few of our Pandas noticed that teams appeared to be valuing Dragon Soul less than previously, particularly beyond the 20-minute mark.

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Pierre-Andre, one of our LoL experts has observed that "when choosing between the two, Baron Nashor seems to be given more priority over Dragon Soul. Even with 3 stacked Dragons and being on 'Soul Point', many teams prefer to take Nashor for its temporary buffs rather than the permanent Soul when both objectives are up."

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On the trading front, there are quite a few variables to account for. One of our LoL traders, Arthur Gariglio, notes that "Dragon Soul will always have an influence on the odds, but the level of that influence has a lot of interplay with other metrics. In short games, it's not uncommon for losing teams to in fact have more Drakes taken than the winning team because the winning team has prioritised gold earning objectives.

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"The kind of Soul it is also has an impact on how teams play around it, and how it's traded."

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Another of our traders and resident Open Tour France star Brian 'Jaka' Maillot echoed Arthur's sentiment, "Infernal is broken, but Cloud much less. If it's not a Cloud Soul up for grabs then the team that isn't ahead on Drakes needs to start contesting at the third Drake spawn.

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"There's power in the Dragon Soul and it can make a notable impact on the odds. If a team is losing but they take Soul it can really flip a match. The same can be said for Elder." Arthur points out that "the power of Soul comes from the fact that it's permanent, compared to a Nashor or Elder buff."

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When it comes to Elder Dragon, Arthur stresses that "Elder is always more powerful than any Soul. You have to be very clinical with Elder, just as with Nashor."

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As the 2021 League of Legends World Championship kicks off today, fans and traders alike will be watching closely how the meta develops around these key objectives. Who knows if we'll see any more G2 vs. Misfits upsets?