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On April 11 2012 05:01 petered wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2012 04:45 Mogwai wrote:
Dominion is amusing but silly. Played my first 2 games of it at PAX and it just felt like it would be a bad idea for competitive play, but actually pretty good at conventions like PAX when you want to get games in faster and have more brutal action more quickly. a lot of people play a handful of games of dom, don't know what they are doing or the strategy, and decide that it has no depth. I think it is silly to dismiss the competitive viability of dom after two(!) games. I think it just needs greater incentive to play (i.e. a ranked ladder) and the strategy would take a leap forward.
Well, it only took a couple games for me to see a few things that really throw balance out of whack on the map as far as I can tell.
1. The fact that 2 cap points are right next to your respawn and 1 is actually in realistic neutral territory drives action to the neutral top location too much.
2. Farm scaling is all out of whack. So many balance decisions made for Summoner's Rift with regards to scaling vs. difficulty to get that farm falls by the wayside on Dominion because all it really takes is being present at skirmishes to get as much gold and exp as you can expect to get on Dominion.
3. Mobility is at such a ridiculous premium on the map. Any sort of consistent speed boost or semi-global feels completely nutty on the map. Characters without good mobility felt obsolete and clunky on Dominion other than Heimer, lol.
I dunno, it's fair to say I haven't played enough, but these things were big turn offs for me as far as taking the map seriously is concerned.
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On April 11 2012 05:26 Mogwai wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2012 05:01 petered wrote:On April 11 2012 04:45 Mogwai wrote:
Dominion is amusing but silly. Played my first 2 games of it at PAX and it just felt like it would be a bad idea for competitive play, but actually pretty good at conventions like PAX when you want to get games in faster and have more brutal action more quickly. a lot of people play a handful of games of dom, don't know what they are doing or the strategy, and decide that it has no depth. I think it is silly to dismiss the competitive viability of dom after two(!) games. I think it just needs greater incentive to play (i.e. a ranked ladder) and the strategy would take a leap forward. Well, it only took a couple games for me to see a few things that really throw balance out of whack on the map as far as I can tell. 1. The fact that 2 cap points are right next to your respawn and 1 is actually in realistic neutral territory drives action to the neutral top location too much. 2. Farm scaling is all out of whack. So many balance decisions made for Summoner's Rift with regards to scaling vs. difficulty to get that farm falls by the wayside on Dominion because all it really takes is being present at skirmishes to get as much gold and exp as you can expect to get on Dominion. 3. Mobility is at such a ridiculous premium on the map. Any sort of consistent speed boost or semi-global feels completely nutty on the map. Characters without good mobility felt obsolete and clunky on Dominion other than Heimer, lol. I dunno, it's fair to say I haven't played enough, but these things were big turn offs for me as far as taking the map seriously is concerned.
Two additional things I noticed (I only play casually and to try out stuff, so my ELO is probably really low in dom):
- The mana regen increase really screws up champ balance; it helps some much more than others.
- Bottom lane is really broken if you have a strong pusher and 1v1 champ.
I find Yorick in particular to be ridiculously effective bot lane. Get one level in E then max Q, then completely crush most champions and force their top to help bottom lane.
I assume he's always banned in draft mode; I've only played normals.
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On April 11 2012 05:26 Mogwai wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2012 05:01 petered wrote:On April 11 2012 04:45 Mogwai wrote:
Dominion is amusing but silly. Played my first 2 games of it at PAX and it just felt like it would be a bad idea for competitive play, but actually pretty good at conventions like PAX when you want to get games in faster and have more brutal action more quickly. a lot of people play a handful of games of dom, don't know what they are doing or the strategy, and decide that it has no depth. I think it is silly to dismiss the competitive viability of dom after two(!) games. I think it just needs greater incentive to play (i.e. a ranked ladder) and the strategy would take a leap forward. Well, it only took a couple games for me to see a few things that really throw balance out of whack on the map as far as I can tell. 1. The fact that 2 cap points are right next to your respawn and 1 is actually in realistic neutral territory drives action to the neutral top location too much. 2. Farm scaling is all out of whack. So many balance decisions made for Summoner's Rift with regards to scaling vs. difficulty to get that farm falls by the wayside on Dominion because all it really takes is being present at skirmishes to get as much gold and exp as you can expect to get on Dominion. 3. Mobility is at such a ridiculous premium on the map. Any sort of consistent speed boost or semi-global feels completely nutty on the map. Characters without good mobility felt obsolete and clunky on Dominion other than Heimer, lol. I dunno, it's fair to say I haven't played enough, but these things were big turn offs for me as far as taking the map seriously is concerned.
There are definitely a number of challenges for the map atm. However, it also has a lot of potential for a couple reasons:
1. It has much faster gameplay with more opportunities for "making plays" because the fighting is so much more frequent
2. much greater potential for comebacks/nailbiter finishes
As for concerns about the balance, I am definitely not the right person to speak to that. At least one top dominion player (Sauron) certainly thinks the champion balance is good. Check out his post on the LoL forums:
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1949008
In my own limited experience, dominion does value certain gameplay mechanics more than SR does, but there are still enough viable options for it to have a lot of depth.
I guess my TL;DR is that I think it has a lot of potential and that the imbalances are overstated.
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While I agree that imbalances are overstated, dominion just doesnt seem that fun to me. It might just be the people I play with but there just seems to be no strategy. Its really good to get to know the pros and cons of a champion though.
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Just spent a long time reading this thread from start to finish and am a little sad to see that most of the posts were theorycrafting before release and discussion during the chaotic mess of the first two months of it's existence. Dominion's changed a lot, but some people got things right. Here's a rundown on present-day dominion.
Bottom lane makes the game. If your bottom lane champions are not consistently holding their point then top starts to fall apart because someone needs to split off to bail out bottom unless they swap for a better champ. In most cases they aren't two bottom-lane optimal champs on the same team.
Bring the ability to delay because there are a lot of losing battles in dominion that can easily be swung into your favor by being able to delay until your teammates can arrive. There have been fights at windmill that came down to a 1v3 defense that was drawn out long enough for backup to arrive and save the tower from being taken. Had it been lost the whole dynamic of the engagement changes for the worse.
Supports are damned awesome because having a Janna or even better a Lulu on your team really extends the survivability of your teammates and does a great job of chasing and interrupting with the airborne and slow.
Make sure you have some health. Having survivability makes things more consistent. Dominion is a very chaotic game and comebacks from an over 400 point deficit happen often enough to not raise an eyebrow. A team that is 5 capping can easily become 5 capped without defensive items. If both teams build fragile then the game is an unpredictable roll of the dice every engagement to see who dies last. If one team builds defensive items and the other doesn't often they win out as the game progresses once they have the endurance to dive problem characters on the opposing team. If both teams build defensive items then fights are very consistent. Coin flip team fights become positional engagements and are much mroe decisive than graves building heavy AD and splattering half a team with a lucky shot due to bad positioning. It gives you the ability to make mistakes without being completely destroyed as a result
You can lose a point and get it back later. If things look bad don't be dive bait at low hp and die uselessly. Walk away and recall or interrupt/delay from a save distance and wait for your teammates. Don't die needlessly. You can let a point for for a minute then pick it back up again and be ok. If they're overly defensive just go somewhere else if they're secure on a point. Moving elsewhere on the map and forcing enemy champs to leave their tower enables you to catch them in the jungle where they lack defender's advantage then just go pick up the tower later.
Revive is amazing and everyone should have it. Revive enables a bottom lane champion to get a free pass if they get ganked. They will be able to return to their tower and prevent it's capture. Up top an early death isn't as bad since you can just pop it and head back to the right. This is especially powerful with Pantheon, Shen, and Nocturne.
Exhaust, Garrison, and Igntie are great because they benefit your whole team as opposed to just one member. Exhaust limits an enemy champ's damage vs all of your teammates, garrison interrupts captures of your team's points and reduces the damage their turrets deal to your team, and ignite limits an enemy champs ability to recover damage dealt by your team.
Promotes get killed off, surge only benefits one champion and isn't as significant a buff as exhaust is a debuff, ghost affects only one champion and doesn't improve their combat effectiveness (some champs have a speed to damage mechanic, but they are few), cleanse is a comp dependant thing useful mostly on champs like Jax and Darius who are deathly allergic to cc, heal works with some comps if your team builds around it a little bit, flash can be ok on alistar and similar champs but garrison is still better for the team, clarity is rarely needed ro useful, but clairvoyance can be amazing at times though is usually easily skippable.
It's safe to throw items like odyn's veil, frozen heart, frozen mallet, and hexdrinker into most champions' builds for added durability to make gameplay more consistent. Youmu's is an amazing item for it's pen and move speed. You will rarely see straight damage items like Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer. Pen is favored because it gives you a lot more mileage out of your minimal AP and AD that getting an item like haunting guise or brutallizer is a great idea early game. Hextech Sweeper is awesome for checking bushes and will save you from more than a few bad situations. It's reveal is also handy in a number of situations.
Yorick makes an amazing bottom lane because of his sustain and ability to push. Urgot also makes a great bottom lane due to his range and AD Malzahar performs well bottom too. Ahri, Maokai, Ryze, and Udyr make fair bottom lane champs for the same reason of sustainability. Dr. Mundo does some work down there occasionally, but not as much in recent days.
Janna and Lulu are borderline bans for their ability to support. Strangely Sona and Soraka don't get much attention. Soraka was a bottom laner for a while, but has since fallen off. Due to everyone building items like frozen heart and abyssal scepter auras are usually widely available. They'll sometimes pick up an aegis since not that many other champs do, but generally they are there to interrupt and keep the focus target alive. Their damage shields and healing are much more pronounced in the high survivability environment of dominion.
Kassadin and Poppy are the two most bannable champions in dominion. Kass building frozen heart, odyn's veil, tear of the goddess, and more leads to high durability and a lot of riftwalk spam. Since his riftwalk base damage increases he doesn't need to build a lot of AP to be dangerous. AP Poppy is a nightmare especially with a sheen opening and some conservative play to maximize sheen procs in the opening fight. Her ultimate is downright unfair and there's so much terrain devastating blow just powers through people. Both of them have extreme mobility, chase, and escape ability making them dreadful to play against and powerful assests to a team.
Wukong and Warwick have good surviability. Warwick has nice sustain, chase, and the suppress is nice. Wukong's ult is great for diving towers and his stealth causes so much minor trouble it's a major boon. Both are picked fairly often. Pantheon and Jax make a hellish combination when on the same. Pantheon is picked extremely often due to his ultimate, his duratbility, stun, and damage output. Jax is the lord of AD and an amazing duelist against the other AD champs.
Malphite and Alistar come up a lot in this game type. Both are durable. Alistar's CC and ult make him a great defender or diver and Malphite makes AD champions unhappy. Malphite's slow has secured mroe kills than I can count plus his ult is nice to have handy. Blitzcrank makes an excellent dps. The amount of disruption and damage he can cause gets him a lot of game time.
Rammus and Shaco have falled off significantly. Rammus is still a solid pick, but people have figured him out. Back door games are a lot less effective than before especially in a post-priscilla's dominion. He's certainly durable and his airborne+taunt are useful, but his difficulty engaging holds him back a bit. Shaco is so fragile that if he dies all the advantage of playing him is immediately lost. He's a great distraction, but dies quickly when exposed to anything. Kinda like white phosphorus in an oxygen rich enviroment. As AP he can pull off some ganks, but is a one-and-done champs. No one bothers to chase him they just retreat to a point so the vision prevents him from ambushing. Also the prevalence of high defense play limits his gank potential significantly. Shaco is largely ignored now. Twitch and Eve met a similar fate.
Kat was heralded as being broken, but dies quickly with a fragile ult and the need to be amid the enemy team to deploy sufficient damage. She's a fair gank and an amazing cleanup champ, but during the fight her damage is minor and easily ignored except to interrupt her ult. She also suffers from the defensive prevalence and doesn't clean up fights with the efficiency she used to. Master Yi has the same issue of being extremely susceptible to CC and needed to be in the fight. However AP Yi sees play due to his ability to soak damage and harass with Alpha Strike. The rapid fire killing with Highlander on AP Yi is rare, and unheard of with AD Yi.
Darius is what Katarins used to be. Darius can machine gun down champs as he gets killing blows using his true damage ult. He's only been in the game for a little while, but is a priority ban for his durability and clean up potential. He excels in the drawn out fights that occur on dominion where people get low on hit points then retreat, but his true damage ult spits in the face of the defensive meta that exists. He's vulnerable to kiting, but should he be able to engage when he wants things usually go his way.
Teemo's mushrooms are great on speed shrines, health relics, and towers. AP Teemo's poke and speed make him a good candidate for hit and chipping away at people's health. His blind is extremely useful given the dominance of AD champs. AD champs seem to reign supreme due to their ability to survive. Many AP champs are fragile and easily killed. It's also much easier to build defensively with AD than AP. Champions like Brand, Morgana, LeBlanc, and Veigar see a little bit of play, but die a lot. Veigar has a lot of untapped potential, but no player has shown a clear mastery of his control with him yet that I've seen. His margin for error is almost nonexistent, but when played well can be competitive. The same can be said of most AP champions actually, but one mistake is very costly whereas with many AD champs it will be ok.
Global shot champs Ezreal and Ashe perform ok. They are too strong or too weak and fit solidly in the middle. Ezreal is a little more popular because arcane shft is awesome and ashe's slow is nice, but almost everyone AD frozen mallet if not Trinity Force. Gangplank and Karthus almost never see game time for reasons unclear to me. Perhaps Karthus suffers from the defensive meta and Gangplank is CC bait and easily exhausted away.
I'm sure there's a lot more that I missed, but it's nice to see some of the September era posts foretell the future. NonY's post about Yorick being a dominant bot lane was spot on and another poster's mention of Revive also had great foresight. There's a small but dedicated competitive scene for dominion and my thoughts in this post come from having observed that for several months.
I might be able to address a few recent posts too. High mobility champs are countered with a lot of heavy delay. The advantage of mobility is their prompt arrival at other points. Due to players building more survivability those highly mobile champs often get delayed long enough that their benefit is lost as reinforcements arrive to deter them. Bottom lane really dictates the course of the game. Windmill is definitely the point of contest unless something happens bottom lane and often a team will make something happen bottom lane for that very reason. Bottom lane supports the entire game. A "standard" game of dominion only takes place when bottom is consistent. If the two bottom champs go 0/0/0, but neither loses a tower then it's completely fine. Decisive tactical decisions win games. The window to execute strategy is small and has to be seized upon quickly. There may be barely enough time after winning a fight to neutral a point that the enemy team owns. Knowing when it's safe to make a play for a point after a team fight is a key thing to learn. Additionally knowing whether you have time to neutral or fully cap is also important. Getting a sense of timing will really improve a player's effectiveness on the map. It's easy to turn a game around through tight execution in fights and being situationally aware. Losing a fight isn't crippling however because kills aren't worth too significant an amount of gold or XP. Time is the most valuable resource in dominion and timing is what makes things happen. The acute sense of where to strike has a major importance and being able to arrange where engagements happen based on which point you attack or where you reveal yourselves on the map has a dramatic effect on the outcome.
Hopefully this post doesn't suck.
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nice post sir
i dont play dominion much, and the SEA scene isn't great, but my team and i have won the past 2 dominion tourneys here so i guess that must count for a little (:
time is indeed a key resource in dominion. i always tell my team that no matter what you do, you cannot be wasting time. walking around doing nothing = wasting time . engaging an enemy champion 1v1 = evens out (except when you're on less capped) . engaging 1v2 and wasting their time = net gain in time. small things like that. never be walking around doing nothing. always be sieging an enemy structure, threatening a backdoor, or outright raping enemy champs
another thing to note is 'tempo', in the form of defending vs attacking. tempo + time is the reason why revive is so important.if you go into the initial 3v3 fight at top without revives, you're risking a lot more than if you had revive. revive gives you that upper hand / safety net to retain your winning position.
some champs obviously do better defending, while others are better at attacking. the key to both (imo) is range and to a smaller extent, mobility.
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On June 03 2012 21:19 nyxnyxnyx wrote:
nice post sir
i dont play dominion much, and the SEA scene isn't great, but my team and i have won the past 2 dominion tourneys here so i guess that must count for a little (:
time is indeed a key resource in dominion. i always tell my team that no matter what you do, you cannot be wasting time. walking around doing nothing = wasting time . engaging an enemy champion 1v1 = evens out (except when you're on less capped) . engaging 1v2 and wasting their time = net gain in time. small things like that. never be walking around doing nothing. always be sieging an enemy structure, threatening a backdoor, or outright raping enemy champs
another thing to note is 'tempo', in the form of defending vs attacking. tempo + time is the reason why revive is so important.if you go into the initial 3v3 fight at top without revives, you're risking a lot more than if you had revive. revive gives you that upper hand / safety net to retain your winning position.
some champs obviously do better defending, while others are better at attacking. the key to both (imo) is range and to a smaller extent, mobility.
Are there VODs from the tournies you've played in? I'm collecting info from broadcast dominion games. Right now I know of Devastation Lan 2011, NESL's Conflict on the Crystal Scar, and DominateDominion's tournaments. I'd love to watch your games if they're online somewhere.
Hell if anyone knows where I can find VODs or brackets from dominion tournaments that have been broadcast I'd love to know where to find them.
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Btw, Nunu is a good counterpick to Yorick. Karma is amazing bot or top. Kitae's Bloodrazor is pretty good for its cost. Champs with % armor reduction are good for breaking beeftanks that are stalling for time.
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wah, i need dominion buddies. 
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When Darius came out everyone cried OP. Now people just cc or kite him like all the other dangerous ADs. If you play him assassin style and wait to come in and ult someone he can get bad if used as fight cleanup. Haven't seen much Draven though. He seems like standard ranged AD.
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EPT
