Talk:Draven/@comment-7497137-20160704202538/@comment-7095057-20160704205303

The problem was that it made draven too much of a heavy hitter. Sure it fit with his kit, but all Draven had to do was hit an adc once with his axe to chunk out over 1/5th of their health. once he hit level 2 he was near impossible to trade with, even with safe champs like Caitlyn because Draven would W, run up and throw an axe for a free win in trades. The only way to fight Draven was to do an All in with a heavy tank support like Leona or Alistar, and burst damage from a champion like Lucian and Graves.

It also led to another problem: Most dravens in lane during that time didn't really bother to CS. With the fact that by level 4 Draven had average of 90 bonus damage (44 from Axe, 46 from passive) on every Q, he could reliably just focus on harrass and killing his opponents to the point they can't farm or fight back at all.

This meant two things when you faced a draven in lane, and if you wanted to be reliably safe you had to do two things. Pick a champion with high range/poke and farm under tower (Ezreal, Caitlyn) or pick a heavy burst all in ADC (Graves, Lucian at the time). Your support tended to need to be someone with heavy CC and was tanky (Alistar, Leona. Braum wasn't around at the time), and you had the threat that Draven would have one of these monsters or even blitz with him.

Long story short... Old draven passive essentially forced a kill lane just by it's nature of bonus damage. No other ADC has gotten that much free power on a core skill since then where they haven't had to work for it, and the change to Draven's passive now heavily rewards him for CSing and catching his axes, which old draven wasn't doing a lot of either.

He's arguably a lot healthier right now than he used to be. He now has choices to consider: Do I farm a bit more and then go in? Do I catch this axe or go for some harrass? Do I all-in this fight even if I could die before I get a kill? It encourages focusing down a target for his passive and CSing.

Conversely, his opponents now have much more meaningful ways of counterplay. Without the threat of a 30-70 bonus damage bleed in the early game, they can harrass more. Now the counterplay is more focused around zoning draven away from his minions, denying axe catching, and a distinct focus on Draven before he can get a kill. Teamfights coul be important because between the ADC and mid laner, who do you want to focus down first. If Draven's just as big a threat but only has 50 stacks, maybe it's better to focus the midlaner who has AoE damage. If Draven has 300 stacks though, maybe it's better to shut him down first before he gets a kill so he can't cash that bonus 600 gold.