TFT Set 12 Guide: How to Play Dragon

How to Play Dragon — TFT Set 12: Magic N’ Mayhem

TFT Set 12: Magic N’ Mayhem is just around the corner, and this guide will cover everything about the new TFT trait: Dragon.

Of the new Origin traits, Dragon is one of the smallest, making it quite the simple trait to cover. Even still, there are lots of optimizations you can make while playing it. Let’s get into the guide.

Explore all of the new Set 12 traits here!

How TFT Dragon Works

Dragon Trait Bonus

• (2) Dragon attacks and Abilities 1% Burn and Wound targets for 5 seconds.
• (3) The power of friendship upgrades all Dragon abilities!

Burn: Deals a percent of the target’s maximum Health as true damage every second.
Wound: Reduce healing received by 33%.

When it comes to traits, the Dragon trait is quite simple. The (2) bonus provides a Sunfire/Morello/Red Buff like effect, burning enemies and providing anti-heal. The utility is quite good as anti-heal is often a late game requirement in order to place well.

The Burn damage can also stack up if you’re able to extend the fight to a long duration.

Dragon Synergy

Here are all of the Dragon Champions and their other traits:

• Nomsy (1G) – Hunter
• Shyvana (2G) – Shapeshifter
• Smolder (5G) – Blaster

While there isn’t any Class overlap between the Dragon units, that’s to be expected when there’s only three Dragon units. Furthermore, Dragon Emblem is not craftable, and there’s no Dragon Crest/Crown. This makes it so you need to find Smolder in order to activate Dragon (3).

With only Nomsy and Shyvana, the comp seems to incentivize rerolling in order to fully play around the Dragon trait. This hopefully lets you use Nomsy/Shyvana to carry through the mid game until you’re able to find Smolder as your final carry.

TFT Dragon Champions

Nomsy (1G) – Hunter

[See Nomsy’s Champion Page]

Nomsy is our first Dragon, and his ability fires a cone dealing Physical damage. The Physical damage is very noteworthy, as this means Nomsy isn’t a traditional AP scaling unit. His Dragon Upgrade increases the range of his ability, and also ignores enemy armor.

This effect should stack with Sunder, letting Nomsy rip through high armor enemies.

Shyvana (2G) – Shapeshifter

[See Shyvana’s Champion Page]

Shyvana is our 2-cost Dragon, and her Shapeshifter trait makes her very tanky. Shapeshifter provides a ton of bonus Health, which you can scale further with items like Warmog’s Armor or other Giant’s Belt items.

When she transforms, she will also knock-up and stun enemies in a large area, which is a very strong ability on a 2-cost unit. A majority of her damage will come post transformation as she deals magic damage to enemies in an aura around her.

Smolder (5G) – Blaster

[See Smolder’s Champion Page]

Lastly, we have Smolder, who is almost like Singed from Set 2 or Aurelion Sol from Set 3. Smolder will fly around the board instead of walking around. He’ll fire at enemies at regular intervals, and this will scale with Attack Speed.

As the final piece of the Dragon trait, finding Smolder will upgrade all Dragon abilities. Smolder’s Dragon Upgrade Sunders enemies, which synergizes well with Nomsy.

Best TFT Dragon Augments

Unlike other traits, Dragon doesn’t have a Crest/Crown Augment that gives a Dragon Emblem. This would be too strong as it would turn on the Dragon Upgrades for Nomsy/Shyvana too early. Even still, there are other good Augments you can use.

Draconic Mastery

Dragons deal 15% increased damage to burning enemies. Burning enemies deal 12% less damage to Dragons. Gain a Shyvana and a Nomsy.

This is the Dragon trait Augment, and it’s quite good. the 15% damage bonus applies to burning enemies, but the Dragon units will already burn enemies with their attacks/abilities. Burning enemies will also deal less damage to Dragons, keeping your Nomsy/Shyvana alive for longer.

For most of the game, this Augment will only apply to two units (Nomsy/Shyvana), but if they’re your carry units, it will still be impactful.

Eternal Growth

Shapeshifters that start combat next to another Shapeshifter gain 30 permanent health. Gain an Elise and a Jayce.

This is the Shapeshifter trait Augment, and this Augment can be extremely powerful if you find it early. If you can find Shyvana early and get this Augment, you can start stacking permanent Health very early into the game.

This can give your Shyvana upwards of 500 Health, which is further multiplied by the Shapeshifter trait.

TFT Dragon Team Comps

As of writing this article, the PBE has yet to even release yet. While I was fortunate enough to participate in the playtest for Set 12, we definitely need more time to test/theorycraft team comps.

Be sure to check back as I’ll be updating this section with potential Dragon team comps. We also will be updating our TFT Team Comps page as our team plays the PBE.

Dragon Shapeshifter Reroll

While not fully tested, there are a lot of low-cost Hunter/Shapeshifter units. This can build an early core of units to synergize around Nomsy and Shyvana for a 1/2-cost reroll comp. Here’s a list of some units to potentially reroll for.

• Nomsy (1G) – Dragon/Hunter
• Shyvana (2G) – Dragon/Shapeshifter
• Elise (1G) – Eldritch/Shapeshifter
• Jayce (1G) – Portal/Shapeshifter
• Twitch (1G) – Frost/Hunter
• Kog’Maw (2G) – Honeymancy/Hunter

These is simply a list of all the 1/2-cost Hunters and Shapeshifters. We don’t recommend rerolling for all 6 as this leaves you with Hunter (3) and Shapeshifter (3). We recommend skipping over Kog’Maw and using Swain (Frost/Shapeshifter) instead.

With this, you’ll have (4) Shapeshifter and (2) Hunter, which should be a solid core of units. At level 7, you can add a flex unit like Nasus (Pyro/Shapeshifter) or Hwei (Frost/Blaster). Level 8 will ideally be Smolder, but you can also add something like Varus (Pyro/Blaster) in the meantime.

At level 9, you can even run (6) Shapeshifter by cutting some other units.

Thanks for Reading! If you want to try and come up with your own team comps for Set 12, check out our Team Builder. For a full overview on the new set, check out our TFT Set 12 Reveal Page.