To Start

I've spent a ton of time playing Drogoz, and once you learn how to play him, he becomes an extremely strong damage champion that is a nightmare for the enemy team. I am a masters Drogoz, and find he often preforms extremely well, even into counters and hitscan. This guide will detail Drogoz's basic abilities, techniques, strengths, weaknesses, and usage.

The Basics

Abilities

Primary Fire - Shoot out a slow projectile every 0.85s that deals 850 damage and explodes on hit.

Spitfire - Shoot out an even slower giant 'spit,' that deals 150 damage on hit and causes its target to take 30% additional damage from all sources (this applies to shields too). You can shoot a rocket at it to cause it to explode, dealing 900 dmg in an area.

Thrust - Thrust almost straight up into the air, making yourself a great target for the entire enemy team. Propel is needed to make this useful. (Passive) - Gives you a booster. When you hold space, you fly up into the air.

Salvo - Loads up all your remaining rockets into one rapid-fire clip. Once you shoot, each rocket deals 250 dmg for a total of 1500 if you didn't load up a salvo with less than 6 rockets. Each rocket deals 200% damage to shields. The game also enforces a 0.5 second reload delay after your salvo.

Dragon Punch - Remain absolutely motionless for a few seconds while roaring just to make sure everyone knows you're about to come flying out with an instant kill ultimate. Then fly out at a moderate speed towards a target of your choosing. If you hit them, they're most likely going to die (unless it's a Zhin with Counter or Fernando with ult). If you choose not to hit anything with the ultimate, you get 30% of it back and keep all of your forward momenta.

Talents

Combustible - Exploding spitfire now deals an additional 300 damage and deals knockback to targets within its explosion radius.

(When to use) Use this talent when the enemy has a lot of bursty hitscan, or when you're dealing with shield spam. Playing safe and smart is the key to doing well with this talent.

Fusilade - You now deal 25% extra damage when hitting an enemy directly with your rockets. (850 -> 1062.5)

(When to use) This is your duelist talent. The extra dmg from Fusillade really makes a difference in duels with flankers, and helps greatly in punishing aggressive tanks.

Wyrm Jets - Your booster is now 25% more effective

(When to use) This is the go to talent when playing on a large map without a bunch of counters. Fly free, and do tons of dmg

Techniques

To become a good Drogoz, you need to know how to use his abilities. This part will detail how.

Flying

Flying as Drogoz is actually more complex than you might think. Drogoz players who don't know how to extend their airtime will inevitably fail horribly. To start, you want a certain amount of vertical distance. Flying straight up from the ground will not do you any favors. It uses up too much booster fuel for too little vertical distance. Either jump up while looking at a nearby wall or thrust and then, feather the spacebar rapidly. You never want to hold down space to fly upwards, as it consumes too much fuel.

Take advantage of the tops of buildings and areas of the map where you can lodge yourself safely. Oftentimes you can just feather the spacebar and use less fuel than you normally consume due to being on top of something. Whatever you're on usually provides a natural cover towards being seen and enemy fire.

To regain fuel during flight, you can also employ a technique that uses your thruster. Let go of space completely and let your fuel regenerate. Then use your thruster to cancel all your downwards momenta and boost yourself in the direction you want to go. This tip will extend your air time a ton so make sure you put this technique into practice.

There is also a technique that makes use of your horse that can be incredibly effective on maps with natural high ground. Ride your horse off a ledge without jumping, then feather your spacebar while you fall. You retain the momentum from your horse's speed, allowing you to position yourself faster than normal.

Spitfire

Using your spit properly is a great way to improve your ability as Drogoz. Oftentimes you can shoot your spit around walls or above shields to secure important damage that most champions cannot. Additionally, applying your spit directly means everyone does additional damage. It is crucial for busting down a Raum or dealing with an annoying off-tank. Your spit is also a very important tool for increasing your lethality.

Normally even with Fusilade, it will take 3 direct hits to kill an enemy squishy (2.55 seconds). If you rely on purely hitting shots with Drogoz, the enemy you're fighting will simply kill you faster than you can kill them. When your spit is added into the mix, however, the story is completely different. Your spit is not exclusively detonated by direct hits from your rockets; it is detonated by the explosion radius as well. This opens up a huge window for Drogoz burst.

Spitfire Salvo (don't use with combustible) - While a salvo is loaded up, fire out a spit towards the enemy. Then blast out all your rockets out at the target for 1500 damage. If done correctly, the explosion radius from the salvo will explode your spit, making it deal an extra 900 damage. This is an instant kill burst combo (2400 Wyrm, 2775 Fusilade).

Spitfire Shot (Fusilade only) - Fire a rocket at the enemy, then immediately shoot out a fire spit directly at them. Shoot them 1 more time for the kill (2530). Make sure you're using this with Fusilade, and not saving your spit for area damage.

The Holy Grail - Fire a rocket at the enemy, then immediately shoot out a fire spit slightly off target. Shoot them 1 more time. If done correctly, the explosion radius from the second shot will also hit your SpitFire, causing it to explode (2600 Wyrm, 2900 Combustible, 3025 Fusilade).

When to Load up Salvo

Never load up your salvo unless you know what you're going to do with it. A ton of newbie Drogoz players will load up their salvo from behind a corner, then turn face to face with a flank/damage. They then proceed to unload the entire 1500 dmg (or less) salvo into the ground nearby the enemy. This never does full damage, and the enemy gets an easy kill because your reload is guaranteed to be 0.5 seconds longer than normal.

There are 4 good ways to use your salvo. Firstly, as a zoning tactic. You know the enemy team is likely to cross a certain space around a certain period of time. So you prefire your salvo into them (from a safe distance) as they peek the area, making them start the fight with 1500 less hp. Secondly, as an ambush. Kinessa is hard-scoping a sightline, oblivious to the fact you are hovering directly above her head. Fire out your spit and watch in guilty pleasure as she starts to realize something is amiss, before wiping her off the face of the map with your salvo. Third, as an escape tactic. Shooting your salvo at the ground does damage and applies strong knockback. Loading up a salvo before ulting allows you to fire it at the ground right after your ultimate. This helps you escape more easily. Lastly, as pressure for a frontline. Barik has set up his turrets and shield on point, fighting your frontline. Blast a salvo into his face, destroying his turrets, his shield, and his day.

Using Your Ultimate

When successful, a Drogoz ultimate will put the team fight into an instant 4 v 5. When partially successful, a Drogoz ultimate will result in an even trade. When done terribly, your ultimate will be wasted, and you will have put the team fight into a 4 v 5. In the enemy's favor. Your ult will almost always change the team fight massively depending on how you use it.

Never ult in line of sight of anyone from the enemy team. They can hear you gen it up, and you will be instantly focus fired to death upon usage. You always want to ult from high ground and around a corner. Random flicks in unpredictable directions will also result in you taking much less damage during the ult.

Before your ult, think about who you're going to target. Does the enemy team have 2 supports? Don't go for a support. 2 Frontlines? Don't take out a frontline. You always want to use your ultimate in the most impactful way possible, in a way that absolutely cripples the enemy team. Before your ult, think about how you're going to escape. A Drogoz ult is almost meaningless if you don't live through it.

As I discussed earlier, your salvo can be used for an easier escape. Your thrust, however, is the best tool for getting out alive. If you used it to get to a good starting position for the ult, you may not be able to escape. 2 cards in his loadout massively help with this: Thrill of the Hunt and Survival. Survival will reset your Thrust after dropping below a certain health percentage, meaning you have a better chance of getting away if you take a bunch of damage while you're ulting. Thrill of the Hunt is much better in this regard, however. It resets your thrust after getting a killing blow. This means you can utilize your thrust much more confidently to get to an unexpected position, then ult. After you hit the ult, you can immediately thrust out.

When playing Fusilade, you may want to consider not using your ult to get a kill directly. Sometimes ulting into a team means certain death - even if you know you need to do something to turn the tides. Remind yourself that you are an incredibly bursty champion, with the potential to instant kill squishies, even without hitting someone with your ultimate. I've gotten a lot of value out of using my ultimate simply to make people back off during the final push or using it in combination with Thrust to get to an advantageous position for a spitfire salvo. Don't do this too often though, you will be read and punished for it.

What to Buy

Best Buys

1: Haven + Veteran - Flying up in the air makes you a huge target for everyone on the enemy team, if they're smart enough to look up. On the other hand, your support usually won't give any shits about looking for you to give you heals while you're in the air. Defensive items are a huge priority. Staying alive longer is obviously extremely valuable, and after the veteran change, combining haven + veteran is incredibly strong. You should veteran along with haven in most games.

2: Cauterize - This item isn't needed as much on Drogoz as you simply kill enemy champions too fast for most supports to react to heal. Not only that, but your spitfire does not apply caut anyways. However, you deal a ton of poke with your salvo and rockets fired from long range. Making the enemy support struggle to heal up that damage is obviously a good thing.

3: Nimble - Contrary to the opinion of some Drogoz players, this item does not affect your booster effectiveness. Only Wyrm Jets does. However, this does increase your fly speed on the horizontal plane. Moving faster in the air allows you to camp the top of buildings easier, reposition better, and ambush targets more effectively. This is an incredibly valuable item on Drogoz and should always be considered.

4: Morale Boost - Your ultimate is a game changer, having this execute more often, especially against tank carries can really tilt the match in your favor. This should be considered, especially when the enemy team doesn't have too much killing you during your Ult.

Good Buys

1: Life rip - You deal a ton of damage, you heal for a percentage of it. This is not as valuable on Drogoz because hitting his shots is very unreliable, and it does not apply to the Spitfire's explosion. Self sustain while flying is always valuable, however.

2: Chronos - Drogoz has a lot of long cooldowns - Chronos helps mitigate this. This is, however, a very expensive item buy, and it doesn't help you win in most 1 v 1 scenarios. It's something to consider, at least.

3: Resilience - Lots of cc? Good to have in general. You fly in mid-air, however, and you should not be getting hit with most cc abilities in the first place. Make sure to ask yourself if the cc you're trying to mitigate with an item buy is something you can't avoid entirely in the first place by playing a little differently.

4: Master Riding - Great for maps with a ton of distance to cover. Also a great late game buy in combination with my earlier mentioned technique with master riding to instantly dive and kill an enemy damage at 3-3.

Ok buys

1: Wrecker - You should be shooting around shields anyway. You can fly, have high mobility, and correct firing of your spit is a thing, you know. Against a Torvald or something, it's ok, I guess.

2: Deft Hands - You have a card called Hot Swap that does the same thing. If you need this, you might want to consider making a different loadout.

3: Illuminate - Using a combination of your blast radius and spit explosion, you should be able to work around not having this. Could be of help in detecting a flanking Strix/Skye however.

4: Kill To Heal - If you're carrying and your support is shit, this is a pretty good self sustainer. Otherwise, don't bother with this.

Never buy

1: Bulldozer - You kill deployables extremely fast. Why would you get this?

2: Rejuvenate - You get full healed by most supports very easily. An extra 5% will not do yourself any favors; it won't help them either. Even with Jenos / Corvus, Liferip will heal you more per level than Rejuv.

Loadouts

I don't care what you say, if your loadout doesn't have at least Propel 3 in it, that is a trash Drogoz loadout. As the flying washing machine of the Realm, Drogoz needs mobility to survive. I will detail some other good loadout cards below.

Best Cards

Propel (3 - 5) - This card is so good I find it mandatory in any Drogoz loadout.

Good Cards

Apex Predator - More hp always good

Hot-Swap - Helps you manage your ammo count.

Rain of Fire - Best card for managing fuel as Drogoz because of the various options for thrust resets.

Condescension - Thrust reset built around your fire spit. Very easy to get value out of and makes combustible a viable option in more open maps.

Thrill of the Hunt - Great for surviving after your ultimate or chaining kills.

Masterful - More spits = more damage

Fuel Tank - Higher capacity means longer airtime, great when combined with Rain of Fire

Ok Cards

Decimate (1 - 2) - Helps a ton to secure a spitfire salvo successfully.

Lung Capacity - Life Rip on your spitfire. Not really that useful, but still nice to have occasionally. Drogoz has better cards though.

Survival - Good thrust reset that allows you to Thrust twice in short succession. Mostly used when you need to duel enemy flanks on your own and need the extra mobility.

Altitude - A good booster fuel refill, but because of the existence of rain of fire and thrust resets, there are just better options.

Never Use Cards

Bask - Retard level life rip on your 20-second cooldown ability.

Decimate (3 - 5) - Having Decimate this high actually hinders your ability to Spitfire salvo. The explosion radius will detonate the spit too early, making the entire thing deal reduced damage. Why would you invest loadout points to ruin a valuable part of your kit?

Follow the Scent - Only increases the spit's radius, not its explosion radius. Actually makes it harder to hit because it will now catch on things.

Hyper Boost - Haven't I talked about stupid refills on 20-second abilities already?

Spitfire - Really weak. You're most likely going to get the cooldown of your salvo down to 13 seconds rather than 20 seconds, which is still a long-ass cooldown. Not only that, but you're locked out from reloading for half a second after firing a salvo anyway, so this isn't useful at all.