I recently read the patch notes regarding changes to Draven’s passive that will be coming up in patch 3.9. I usually don’t voice my opinion on balance changes because I feel as if I am underqualified to make such statements. However, Draven’s new passive is so blatantly bad that I feel as if balance expertise is not needed to point out its negative aspects.
For those of you unfamiliar with the passives, here are the old and new passives:
Wicked Blades: Draven’s critical strikes deal 30 + (4 × level) bonus physical damage over 4 seconds. Spinning Axe also causes this effect even if it does not critically strike. If Wicked Blades is re-applied to a target, its duration is reset to 4 seconds and any damage not yet dealt is carried forward, increasing the amount of each tick of damage.
League of Draven: When Draven catches a Spinning Axe, or kills a minion or monster, he gains one stack of Adoration. When Draven kills an enemy champion, he consumes half of his Adoration stacks and gains 3 gold per stack consumed. Draven loses half of his Adoration stacks upon death.
I’m going to cover three of the biggest points from three diverse perspectives – why the passive is mechanically bad, why Riot’s justification of not fixing the old passive is bad, and why the passive is unfitting to Draven’s character.
—
Winners keep winning and losers keep losing
If you’ve known me for a long time, you might know that I was a diamond-level player on the old Twisted Treeline, before they revamped the map and added altars. Since then, I stopped playing the new Twisted Treeline because I don’t like it for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons I dislike it is because the map is oriented towards helping winners keep winning and losers keep losing.
The same concept applies to Draven’s new passive. If he is winning and getting kills, he gets rewarded even more by his passive. However, if he is losing and he is never getting kills, his passive never goes into effect. If he is losing even harder and keeps dying, his passive becomes even more useless – the amount of gold he is never going to get becomes lower.
This is a bad gameplay mechanic for both scenarios. If Draven gets more gold for getting kills, he becomes unfun to play against, because he snowballs out of control and gets exponentially stronger. On the other hand, if Draven never gets anything out of his passive because he is doing poorly, it becomes discouraging for the Draven player.
Do-nothing early-game passives don’t make them invalid
One of the reasons Riot gave for remaking Draven’s passive instead of adjusting and balancing the old one is that, if they were to balance it, the passive would become nearly useless during very early levels. They say that as if it is a problem, even though, in the past, they have demonstrated that there are balanced champions who fall under this category. For example, Tristana’s passive has no effect at level 1, and kicks in at level 2. Syndra’s passive has no effect at level 1, and continues to have no effect until level 9.
Where is this money coming from?
Finally, the concept of the passive conflicts with Draven’s lore and character. Previously, he was one of two blood brothers, and Draven’s passive made his enemies bleed, just like Darius’. Now, he randomly gets gold out of nowhere.
Twisted Fate is able to use the concept of gaining money because it fits his character – he is a gambler and has close ties with casino games. One could argue that bounty hunters could use the concept of money, but Draven isn’t a bounty hunter, he’s an executioner.
Overall, it creates a disconnect and breaks continuity with how the lore and character development was originally made.
—
Is Riot going to change Draven’s passive? I don’t think so, because a lot of people complained about it with valid arguments when it was released on the public beta environment, and Riot still chose to release it as-is. However, now that it’s about to be released to millions, I think the potential for Riot to reconsider the passive more seriously, due to the imminent public disappointment, will increase.
No, I will not be regularly checking my Ask.fm, so if you missed your chance, you’re out of luck. However, I will go on another answering spree in a few months, so feel free to continue asking questions, and I will get to them eventually.
If you’re interested and/or curious, you can check out my answers. Some of the questions I answered include (reworded for simplicity and clarity):
Yes, my banner is literally plain black with a random white 
To her, it was clearly a non-issue. 
Upon arriving at our family business, I used a inkjet printer to print out a sign to post up. This was the first time I had used a inkjet printer in an extremely long time, because I usually use commercial laser printers at university or at my workplaces. I had forgotten that inkjet means that there is actually ink on the paper.
Oops.
After sticking around the family business for a little bit, I went to martial arts. After the curriculum and sparring classes, we had two students stick around, and we played a modified version of basketball with them, using a dodgeball.
One of the students went for a shot from a distance. D’Shawn, one of the assistant/training instructors, who was my teammate, jumped up and spiked the ball so it wouldn’t go into the hoop.
(These photos are poor quality because they were taken from security camera footage.)
The ball made full-speed impact into my face, and bounced off to the side.
The ball then proceeds to continue traveling and collides with the student’s face as well.
The destruction finally ends, and both of us die, giving D’Shawn a double kill. Simon, the head instructor who is standing near the blue pillar, facepalms.
As you can see, D’Shawn can get very passionate about games, even at the expense of his own teammate.