This patch feels like another giant middle finger to Dominion players, let's recount them all

Title says it all. I realize I'm part of the smaller community that actually cares that Riot removed Dominion nearly four months ago, but in those four months I feel like Riot has just repeatedly been rubbing our noses in it (albeit not intentionally... at least I hope). This latest patch just feels like another way of Riot saying, "We don't care about people who played Dominion, and didn't care when it existed." Perhaps I'm just being overly sensitive now that I have nowhere to go besides the Rift, and that Dominion was my favorite way to get the League juices flowing before jumping into ranked games, and cool down after them.

So this is gonna be my post where I list my grievances towards Riot for how they shut down Dominion, along with what they've done after the fact to just add insult to injury.

First off, and right from the beginning, they removed Dominion because it did not see a lot of attention from the community (I believe the official post said 0.5% of players consistently played the Scar). That's perfectly valid, if they had added another permanent game mode in its place that saw significant increases in community participation. I know URF (my personal opinions on the game mode aside) receives a lot of community support whenever it comes back into the games rotation, why not replace Dominion with something like that? Deleting the game mode and not providing an alternative sends the message, "We don't care that there are people who play this game mode, we'd rather have nothing instead." Using the numbers from 2014, which are probably lower than the 2016 numbers when Dominion was retired, if 11 million people played League daily, that's 55,000 people whose game mode you removed with no legitimate reason.

Secondly, you didn't even leave the map around in customs for people who used the Scar for other game modes, primarily Hide and Seek. Hide and Seek is another smaller community in League that you sent the same message to when you removed the Scar, "We don't care that you use this map to have fun in our game." Again, if you'd at least replaced the Scar with another map or game mode that more people played, you could justify it as a worthwhile sacrifice.

Third, "Definitely Not Dominion." When you remove a map because you claim it isn't worth maintaining because of a low community participation, then revamp the whole thing and tease it for a weekend, that's just a giant middle finger to the people you took the game mode from. As far as I know, people weren't overly upset with the state Dominion was in before, we didn't care that the map was old, or that some champs were a little stronger than others, because we at least had the game mode. I'd like to imagine if you asked the Dominion community, "Would you rather play Dominion with a few champs being stronger than others (no different from the Rift anyways) or not have it at all?" They would choose the former option. Then, after you remove the game mode for a couple of months, you bring it back: brand spanking new, with new mechanics and a new look (I personally still preferred the old five-point system, but I digress) as if to say, "We had the ability to update the map and put some polish on it, but instead we removed it entirely." It just adds insult to injury when you take the game mode out because you claim you don't want to put the time and effort into maintaining it, but you then put the time and effort into making it look better, show it off to us for three days, then lock it back up.

Finally, this latest patch, 6.12 was a patch dedicated almost entirely to ARAM. You've always claimed that the bulk of your focus is on Summoner's Rift. Everyone acknowledges that and is fine with that. But if you drop Dominion as a game mode on the claim that it takes too much effort to balance, then you make an entire patch dedicated almost entirely to fixing another one of the alternative game modes, how do you think the ex-Dominion community feels about that? If you feel like you can take a break from the Rift for a patch, despite there still being some champs that are far and away power picks in 6.11 that weren't touched in 6.12 (Vlad is a prime example), why could you not have done the same for the Scar?

I've been trying to get by without the Scar, and I have, but it has severely hampered how much fun I can have with the game. Dominion was a game mode I could jump in to when I had, say, an hour between classes, or I want to play one more game before bed and don't want to potentially be up for another 50 minutes. I knew that a game wouldn't last more than 20 minutes, so I could get my League fix in a quick fashion. There's no guarantee for that anymore. Treeline and ARAM can be short, but they can also be drawn into 50+ minute slugfests. Not to mention there were people who ONLY played Dominion. You're saying you'd rather have them not playing your game at all? I feel like the list of grievances goes on, but these are my big four issues I've had with Riot concerning what they've done since removing Dominion.

I realize that Dominion has been gone four months now, maybe I should just let it die, but some of my favorite times playing League have just been my friends and I goofing around in Dominion, or on the Scar in Hide and Seek. We can't do that anymore, and what have we got to show for it? A summoner icon. Some people don't even have that because they started to enjoy Dominion right before it was removed from the game.