Caedrel cancels Chemtech? Chemtech drake disabled in League of Legends as Riot looks to make design changes

hextech chemtech drakes dragons

Update (February 12th 2022): We have updated the headline of this article to reflect this Caedrelverse video from the LEC YouTube channel. Couldn’t help ourselves!

Update (January 24th 2022): Riot Games has officially disabled the Chemtech drake in League of Legends following criticism from the playerbase.

Riot said in this announcement post on the League of Legends website: “When we introduced the Chemtech drake, soul, and terrain in pre-season, we shared our intent for it to have a higher impact on games than the original four elemental drakes.

“Over the past few months, we’ve heard your feedback across social media and surveys that, even with this goal in mind, the Chemtech addition has just been too frustrating to play with – especially if you’re on the losing team. It was clear that we missed the mark this time.”

Riot added that while the Chemtech dragon is disabled, it will be making design changes to solve the issues with current versions, that its primary focus will be on the terrain and that “there’s a chance we won’t bring the Chemtech drake back for a while”.

Original article (January 13th 2022):

Riot Games is considering removing or changing the new Chemtech drake in League of Legends (LoL, pictured right), following negative feedback from players.

The Chemtech dragon is one of two new drakes added in the League of Legends 2022 Pre-Season, the other being the Hextech drake (pictured left).

While the Hextech drake has been generally accepted by the community, with its ability haste/attack speed buff, portals spawning around the map and chain slow ability when claiming its dragon soul, the Chemtech drake has irked players with its ‘Chemfog’ gas zones that camouflage players and buff that lets players deal increased damage against enemies with more health than them.

It’s the Chemtech drake’s soul buff that is arguably overpowered too – it grants players a Sion-like passive when they die, reviving them momentarily in a zombie-like state, where they are able to use their abilities for a few seconds before dying.

UK streamer, LEC caster and former pro player Caedrel is one prominent member of the League of Legends community who has criticised the Chemtech drake, highlighting problems with the camouflage zone and more in this video from a Caedrel stream.

“If we come to the conclusion something is bad, we assess the priority to change or remove it, as with everything in League.”

GreaterBelugaWhale, RIot Games

League of Graphs shows that both new drake souls have a win rate of more than 90%.

Riot GreaterBelugaWhale said on Reddit: “If we come to the conclusion something is bad, we assess the priority to change or remove it, as with everything in League.”

When asked what metrics would be looked at to help Riot decide if a dragon change is ideal or not, RiotAxes responded: “We’re fielding a survey. It’ll be a bit before we get results. The Reddit and English-speaking social media backlash is clear, but that hasn’t always meant players overall disliked a feature in the past. This does not mean that Reddit feedback is worthless, just that y’all are a subset of players and we want good data.”

Yesterday in the UK/Ireland/Nordics European Regional League (ERL), the NLC, players from UK organisation X7 Esports all agreed the Chemtech drake should be changed:

We’ll update this article if and when Riot announces changes to the Chemtech drake or an outright removal.

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