One question, answered from the books
Should I take Herald or Dragon?
Dragon. The trade sounds even and it is not: Herald pays in plates and tempo now, Dragon pays in a Soul later, and Soul-level pay is roughly ten thousand gold spread across your whole team. Never take Herald over Dragon when they are up together and you can only run one. The legitimate version is Herald alongside the Dragon timing, when you have the tempo to run both in sequence. And when your team pings both at once and you genuinely cannot tell, the tiebreaker is already written: if there is ever doubt, take the Dragon.
The decision, as a picture
What it looks like in a real game
14:00. Your mid pings Herald because plates are about to fall; bot pings Dragon because it is their second one. Split the difference and you get neither. Take the Dragon with bot-side priority, and if their jungler answers late, the Herald was never real for him either: he spent his timing walking. Two Dragons toward Soul beats four plates that stop existing at fourteen minutes anyway.
The concept: The objective ranking
The Sovereign Jungler ranks the neutral map so you never have to solve it live, and The Methodical Jungler supplies the price tag that makes the ranking obvious: Dragon Soul is equivalent to approximately ten thousand gold distributed across your entire team.
"The unified rule: never take Herald over dragon."
"Dragon soul is equivalent to approximately ten thousand gold distributed across your entire team."