Season changes for 2024 have been announced and the update is coming with a lot of great changes. In the update video, the new infernal mechanic was still missing but we’ve also just received an update on that.
The infernal drake will now spawn cinders randomly on the map which champions can collect like a bard chime for a boost in different adaptive stats. Different champions get different stat boosts of them and if you die, you drop half of your collected cinders, which could result in an enemy collecting them. So far so good.
I am really curious on how this is going to be implemented, because if this one goes south, it will ultimately lead to a super snowbally mechanic.
If the cinders truly end up spawning randomly around the map, the team that is currently winning the game, and therefore has map control, will always be able to collect significantly more cinders than the opposing team. This means, that champions that are already ahead in gold and xp could potentially also stack adaptive stats into infinity making them even more hard to kill than they are to begin with.
At the moment i think that this is going to end up feeling like the “On Fire” mechanic in Nexus Blitz. Sure, you can lose the stacks and potentially give them to an enemy like you give a shutdown to an opponent in nexus blitz when you died while being on fire, but an experienced player can still abuse the hell out of it.
We’ll still have to wait for some more info regarding the mechanic but currently this doesnt seem really well thought out.
What are your thoughts?
Their “adaptive stats” are inconsistent. I managed to get 30 on a game on PBE. You know what I got?
15 AH. That’s it. The real benefit was the mild speed boost upon picking one up, that decays. It doesn’t even give AD/AP. 15 AH disproportionately benefits some champ types (Assassins, Mages, Ability ADCs, some Duelists) while being next to useless for others (certain Bruisers, Tanks, Auto-attack ADCs. Even Enchanters won’t notice a radical difference cause they’ll already be stacking loads.)
It’s basically a diet Bard chime MS bonus, that doesn’t even remain unlike Bard’s (although it does work in combat unlike Bard’s). If anything I feel like the fact that there’s zero map changes otherwise honestly makes it feel a bit lacking compared to other elemental drakes.