The Ins and Outs of Contesting Dragon

It's been a little while since I've had the time to make a post so I figured I'd go all out on one. In this I'm going to break down the surprisingly large list of factors involved in a dragon contest, from the basics of vision and numbers advantage, to the more advanced mid lane advantage and wave management. While this post did get a little larger than I'd originally planned I really wanted to make sure i got all the moving parts of a dragon contest packed into here because I so often see some overlooked to disastrous consequence.

The Basics

Dude Potential:

A term blatantly stolen from Phreak, Dude Potential is the absolute basics of contesting a dragon and the first thing most people learn about taking dragon. Dragon hurts, and eats up some of your cool downs trying to rush it, so when you contest a dragon you want to balance out that power loss by being able to bring more people to the fight than the other team can. Advantageous dude potential is gained one of three ways. 

The most basic is to force an opponent to back or even kill them. So long as the opponent you forced away does not have Teleport you have the better dude potential by creating a 5v4 at the dragon. 

The second way in the current meta is to force a situation where the enemy top laner uses his teleport without your top laner doing the same. Once done you avoid fighting long enough for the enemy top to retreat back to his lane to deal with your top's push and then start dragon, again having a 5v4 dude potential advantage. 

Finally you can let the enemy create the dude potential for you when they roam to kill a low health top laner. Generally the enemy jungler, and sometimes their mid, will move top to dive your own top and take your outer turret, if you're paying attention you can respond with a dragon. Since the enemy jungler and/or mid can't teleport to the dragon you will have the numbers advantage and should be able to secure it.

Vision:

Everyone knows having vision on dragon can help you see where enemies are, if they've started it, and avoid baits. However knowing the efficient places to ward, where to expect enemy wards, and how to play around them can give a significant edge when contesting the dragon. 

1. These spots are where you can generally expect blue team to ward when their lanes are even or behind. Clearing the dragon pit and pixel bush are important for maintaining control of the area and making enemy smite steals difficult.
2. These are wards blue team will often place when lanes are ahead. The deep wards on the bottom half the map help in making decisions on burning the dragon or turning to fight. Many people don't recognize the importance of top half deep wards, but a well placed ward can spot an enemy jungler or mid roaming top giving your team the advantage in dude potential.
3. These are the wards generally dropped by red team when lanes are even or behind. The one directly in front of the pit is often overlooked since the introduction of scuttle crab but can make the difference in a close fight. 
4. Deep wards placed by red team when ahead. Again the deep ward in the enemy top half of the map can spot the enemy jungler out of position to give dude potential. Also important to note are the wards in the enemy tri-bush and behind their red buff which can be integral to stopping an enemy smite steal attempt. 

Advanced Tactics

Team Composition and Power Spikes:

This is something that effects the entire game, but as I see even LCS teams sometimes forget to consider their team comp when contesting a dragon it's important to add to this list. What your team comp and the enemy's excel at is important in deciding how to go about each dragon. 

AoE team fight teams love having the enemy team clumped up in the dragon pit. Disengage teams are great at using champs like Azir, Rumble, and Janna to keep the enemy away while they burn down dragon. Poke teams have no business ever being the team to start a dragon when the enemy has any dude potential to contest with. How both your and the enemy's specific team comps want, or don't, to fight dictates much of how you position around the pit, if you start the dragon, if you're just baiting the fight, if you're rushing the dragon and running away, etc...
Similarly knowing when specific champions are at their strongest is important to deciding if you can contest a dragon, and often something forgotten by teams. Even SKT in the first match of LCK(formerly better named OGN) this season got into a disastrous mid-game dragon fight when they didn't consider their Mundo and Tristana need significant time to ramp up. Where your team composition dictates much of how you fight, knowing champion power spikes helps to dictate when you fight. If you, like SKT, have champions who need to ramp up you want to avoid contesting mid game dragons. Or if you're a team who's Rumble and Corki just hit their item power spikes (liandry's and Trinity respectively) then you want to force a dragon soon. 

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your champions and how your team comp plays a team fight will tell you when, how, and even if, you should be contesting dragons. With that knowledge you then can extrapolate timing windows for when you need to set up each of the other important factors of a dragon contest to make sure it goes in your favor.

Cool Down Management:

This has already been touched on a bit with your top laner's teleport but it extends to other summoner spells and important abilities as well. Knowing your Rumble's just power spiked with a Liandry's is not very useful if you opt to fight while is ultimate is on cool down. Timing enemy cool downs and communicating your own to your team is another major part of the equation with power spikes and team composition that will dictate how and when to contest a dragon. 

Forcing, Turn or Burn:

If you've compared power spikes and team comps for the two teams and decided you're capable of winning a 5v5 if it comes on your terms you can "force" the dragon, which means you're the team who starts the dragon forcing the enemy into reacting or giving it up. There are two types of forcing which depend on what your team is better at. 

If your team is really good at controlling an area and zoning your opponents away, perhaps you have Azir, Rumble, and Janna, you're likely best suited to "burn" the dragon. Burning means your carries kill the dragon as quickly as possible while those champions skilled at zoning keep the enemy team away. If your zoning team is far enough ahead you can probably engage a fight afterwards but typically you'll disengage after securing the dragon as you'll have spent most of your powerful skills keeping the enemy away. 

The other good forcing team comp is the "turn" comp which is generally a strong 5v5 aoe team comp, something like Orianna, Jarvan, and Maokai together. This team is suited to fighting straight 5v5s and as a result the dragon can be used as bait to create the fight you're looking for. The only real difference between a bait and a turn is that in a turn you've actually started doing the objective with intent to finish if your enemy doesn't contest, where a bait you don't start and are just hoping the enemy runs at you blind. 

Expert

Both of the items in this section, Mid Lane Advantage and Wave Management are often overlooked as the power comes from areas away from the dragon pit and even when done correctly can amount to nothing if a team loses the dragon fight due to a little bit of impatience. I have seen teams at all levels from OCE challenger scene all the way up to the height of OGN be punished by overlooking the importance of Mid Lane Advantage and Wave Management in a contested dragon.  When properly done though, they can compound the lead gained from a successful dragon, or even reduce the deficit caused by a lost dragon contest.

Mid Lane Advantage:

Mid lane advantage is pretty much exactly what the name gives you, it's the advantage gained by positioning your team between the enemy team and the middle lane. This tactic is most important for poke comps, or those who're behind/unsure if they can win a fight, but any team can still get the benefit from it.

1. This is the general position you want to hold to gain mid lane advantage while pushing the other team down beyond the red line towards position 2. From here you have more choices than the other team, you can sit and poke hoping to dissuade the dragon, you can engage the team fight, you can disengage if there's no advantage for you, or you can move up to take mid turret (3) without an easy reply from the other team. This is why you will often see a player shoving the mid wave at the start of a dragon contest, they have the basic understanding of mid advantage and want the wave in position to be used.
   To properly use this positional advantage you must know what your team does best and be decisive in your calls. If you're going to poke you want to lay it on heavy before the other team starts the dragon and be wary of them hard engaging on you. If you're going to turn and rush a turret instead of the fight you need to be patient and let the enemy start the dragon, but decisive enough to turn up the mid lane the instant they commit to the dragon attempt. 
2. This is the more disadvantageous position as it has fewer escapes and attempting to rush position 4 is incredibly dangerous to do. Still being here is not the end of the world when your team comp is suited to it. A strong team fight comp can actually find this position advantageous, using the dragon to bait the other team into mispositioning and a subsequent team fight you'll hopefully win.
   The advantages of this position are heavily team comp dependent, and the mistake I see most often when it comes to mid lane advantage is a team with a weaker 5v5 comp voluntarily taking this position for the dragon contest. Usually it's a red side team making the mistake by trying to rush to dragon and pathing through their own blue buff, but teams on both sides have fallen prey to the mistake. If your team is not better in a straight up 5v5, and you have a choice, you have no business being in this position for a dragon contest. 
3. This is obviously the mid turret, you will often see teams who've successfully figured out mid lane advantage choose to rush down mid instead of fighting a dragon or a baron. These are either teams who do not expect to win a 5v5, and are taking something in exchange for the objective they're giving up, or they've decided the value of the turret is higher than the objective they're giving up. For example a siege team generally will get more value from knocking down mid inner/inhibitor turret than they would securing 3rd or 4th dragon buff. 
4. This isn't actually a good option, I only added it to the map to illustrate why mid lane gives the advantage it does, a question I've been asked by players I've worked with in the past. Sometimes when you decide to rush the turret instead of taking the dragon fight the enemy team will stop dragon and pursue you. If you've rushed up mid (3) to their turret and the enemy team moves to pursue you there's lots of escape paths. As you can see from the lines marked in yellow if your vision is good you can just run straight back to the safety of your own mid turret, you can run into the river headed towards your top turret, or because all the enemy team are near the dragon you can run up into their top side jungle to escape because no one will be there to cut you off. Now compare the escape routes in black from the bottom tower (4). Because the enemy has just started the dragon (2) there are no actual escape routes from the bot turret, you can run straight up the lane but the enemy has a shorter distance to cut you off from the safety of your turret forcing the fight you were trying to avoid, you can run straight at the enemy again forcing the fight you didn't want to take, or deep into their jungle except unlike in mid they're in position to cut you off long before you reach safety. The superior escape routes and extra decision allowed by mid lane advantage is what makes it a powerful tool. 

Wave Management:

This skill is equally important whether you're contesting dragon, baron, trying to take an inhibitor, or just baiting a team fight. It's also one of the harder things to wrap your carries heads around. They've spent plenty of time chasing every possible bit of farm and listening to casters and analysts talk about how someone won the lane because they were up a few dozen cs, and now you've just told them to only kill half a wave and then let a bunch of farm go to no one at all. I'm of course talking about the most basic form of wave management, the slow push. You kill just the enemy caster minions and then leave the lane alone and since your minions die slower than the other team's the wave will gradually grow in your favor until it's an unruly mass that someone on the other team has to deal with. 

A slow push is just one part of it though, equally important are the who and when of building that slow push. If you send your ADC bot lane to build a slow push when baron is a legitimate possibility you very well may have thrown the game off that one single tiny mistake. Similarly mistiming your slow push can result in it actually being worse than if you'd just cleared the whole wave. Set up a slow push too early and an enemy can easily go and collect the massive free farm you've sent them. Start the slow push too late and not only can they collect the free farm but there's nothing pulling their attention away from simply forcing whatever objective you were hoping to contest.
The slow push is not the only form of wave management of course. Things like fast pushing to deny an absent enemy the wave, rebounding the wave so it'll push to you, and freezing the minion wave are also important aspects of wave management throughout the game. However those have far less impact on a dragon contest than the slow push.
Done right proper wave management amounts to having a 6th or even 7th member of the team split pushing for you while you have your team grouped as 5 for the dragon fight. It can force weaker enemies to surrender objectives to you by making them decide between contesting a dragon or backing to save their turrets. It can delay stronger teams long enough for you to scale back into a game by giving them only tiny windows to force a fight before they've got to back and save their own base. Proper wave management, combined with mid lane advantage, can turn any dragon contest into a win-win scenario for your team where you either get the dragon, or you secure multiple mid and top lane turrets.

There are many facets to a dragon contest. While not all of them need to be used to be successful the more advantages you can apply to your contest the more likely you are to come out ahead.