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Problems with Domination Tree and Hail of blades.

Laceration·5/4/2018, 2:09:03 AM·28 votes·13,925 views

Would like to express my thoughts as a master player who primarily plays champions who use Domination.

I'll start with the keystones:

Electrocute - Obviously the best option here, adds more burst to your combo. DarkHarvest - Lackluster at best, If there's ever a time you're dealing more damage than Electrocute with this, it still won't compare to the damage you could have dealt if you ran electrocute. Does not fulfil it's purpose. Predator - Catch22 where you could have all the movespeed in the world, but if you don't have enough damage you will not kill. That's why you only see champs like Skarner or Volibear run. Not to mention it's like not having a keystone in earlylane phase which in design pushes it towards junglers. Hail of Blades - Here we have the most useless of all, here's a rune in the Assassin page so that adc's can get better earlygame with higher flat damage in runes but still run lethal tempo. Because adc's really needed double the compensation for losing that base AD. Essentially this will negate the base AD nerfs while they also get to have high ADperlvl.

Alright time to move onto tier 1 runes:

CheapShot - The damage is too low, assassin already have a hard time to proc this and if they can, sudden impact would have dealt more. If this rune was meant to give more poke earlygame then it should have a longer cooldown and just proc on spell dmg dealt. ** Taste of blood** - It's decent and does it's job. It's place is also fine, you can chose between healing or more burst. Sudden Impact - it's okay.

Tier 2: Domination " Target Access and Burst Damage "

Zombie Ward - This belongs in inspiration.
Ghost Poro - Is this suppose to be funny? Okay fine keep zombie ward, but then why would ghost poro still be in the same line? If I had to give a serious analysis, vision radius is too small and should reveal as much as a normal ward. Yet again this kind of rune belongs in Inspiration. ** EyeBallCollection** Not that great but much better than the alternative. "season 8 is about choices and selecting playstyle in runes" when the options are this bad there's no choice to make but take the least bad one.

Tier 3: This should be Tier 2 all of these effects are decent but ingenious hunter isn't strong enough to ever want to be picked over healing/movespeed

When you compare Domination to the other 4 rune pages you can clearly see it sucksand we're 6 months into this. Give us more options for burst damage and target access instead of these weird and awful utility runes that feel out of place.

42 Comments

flibitydoo5/4/2018, 3:25:31 AM18 votes

I don't remember the Rioter who said this, but Domination was stated that they specifically made the nodes weaker to compensate for the fact that all the Keystones in domination are way stronger than the other keystones.

SpongebobIsLife5/4/2018, 4:10:03 AM8 votes

I actually think ingenious hunter is really good, but only on champs that use actives like fizz and ekko. 5 stacks reduces protobelts to about 20s and reduces zhonyas heavily too (i forget how much). It's just more niche than the other two.

Shåwn5/4/2018, 2:13:31 AM7 votes

Yea I agree hail of blades seems to be bad for not only assassins but also mages, adcs, fighters, tanks. Not sure who its good on. The power level of the keystone itself is just so low.

Ok sure but why5/4/2018, 5:37:06 AM4 votes

Wait, I found someone Hail of Blades is good on!!!!! RekSai You knock someone up, then you get three really fast autos so you can get full Fury and hit your spicy, spicy true damage!

Ok sure but why5/4/2018, 5:12:24 AM3 votes

Cheap shot should have made you deal a % of your damage as additional true damage against cc'd champs without a cooldown, imo.

But don't go dissing my Ingenious Hunter, though. You'd be surprised how helpful item 3060 item 3153 item 3152 item 3030 item 3146 item 3139 item 3222 item 3383 item 3074 item 3748 item 3905 item 3090 item 3157 item 3142 can be when you can use them more often.

DW Diana5/4/2018, 8:05:28 AM2 votes

Keystones - I agree Teir 1 I agree except for sudden impact (Basically can give you true damage on squishies later) Teir 2 Zombie ward is good, ghost poro is a joke, eyeball collection is ok Teir 3 I agree except ingenious hunter is good on ap assassins

DoktorKaiser5/4/2018, 4:43:10 AM2 votes

Domination sucks ??? What the hell? Electrocute literally pushed me from playing mid lane single handedly, it adds unbelievably retarded amounts of damage early game so that any braindead assassin with point and click abilites can abuse it in combination with another broken one - sudden impact and ignite to burst you as early as lvl 2. Harvest makes champions like Kha, Shaco or Graves, or any AD jungler for that matter have incredibly bullshit burst late game, once I was against a Shaco late game, he had 2 tank items and 2 damage items and a ton of harvest stacks, I was a 6 item 550 armor monster Malphite and he killed me in 3 autoattacks from behind. Only predator is on the weaker end, but its quite useful on niche junglers that can use it properly. I think 3. and 4. row are balanced, but seriously first 2 rows are mostly heavy bullshit. Now when I think about it all rune trees are bullshit when it comes to damage they deal, even resolve, no wonder the gameplay is so shitty.

Morcleon5/4/2018, 5:44:43 AM2 votes

Ingenious Hunter is quite useful on supports. Redemption+Locket is the typical combo (and having them up can often make the difference between a won and lost teamfight), but it also lowers your sweeper cooldown to ~40 sec late game. And if you're picking up stuff like Mikael's or Twin Shadows, it's even better.

Kanzler5/4/2018, 11:23:47 AM2 votes

How are you people taking OP seriously? He just said that adc will run hail and lethal tempo. I think quite a few classes would be a tad op if they could run two keystones.

Colton1475/4/2018, 10:21:49 PM1 votes

Nocturne Shyvana MasterYi Kindred Diana XinZhao Twitch Aatrox

The Chillin5/4/2018, 2:44:51 AM1 votes

Make some options in tier 2 either give vision not related to wards, some other damage:bounty system, or some vision denial aspect similar to sweeper or duskblade. (maybe internal cd 1 ward detection? 2 mins~)

Puppet33r5/4/2018, 8:20:32 AM1 votes

How Twitch is Kindred hall MasterYi of Nocturne blades Udyr useless XinZhao ? XinZhao ?XinZhao ?

Kairoptra5/4/2018, 11:16:47 AM1 votes

Allow me to disillusion you on something: any given tree is not necessarily meant for one particular class. Look at Comet; certain ADCs have been taking it like MF and Jhin. Revitalize is obviously a support rune, and yet it’s in a tree you would think was purely for tanks. Phase Rush is great on fighters, even though it’s in a tree you might believe is for mages. Similarly, domination should not be restricted to one class of champs, hence why certain runes (Ingenious & Relentless Hunter, Zombie Ward, Ghost Poro, etc.) are not expressly for assassins. A champion should have as many rune combinations as possible to give diversity of choice to meet as many play styles as possible.

Also, what do you mean "but still run Lethal Tempo"? Hail of Blades is a keystone; you can't take both.

Cðulrophobia5/5/2018, 1:47:23 PM1 votes

Dark Harvest isn't lackluster, just not used by alot of champions. Some might say that its busted on AA assassins (for example Shaco has higher pickrate and winrate with DH than ELC)

also it feels like you're biased towards elc, at any time that DH is stronger than ELC it's more useful in every way. 1 AA proc, multiple uses in teamfights, no cooldown and it still grows stronger than ELC.

on my regular build you need like 200-250 DH at level 18 to overpower ELC at level 18 with the same amount of AD. Which is quite easy to do.

GhaelWinds5/4/2018, 12:21:16 PM1 votes

The issue with domination is that its identity is very skewed. Sorcery is your straight with ad/ap tree. Precision is full of percent damage and increases in atk speed. Resolve is the fully tank tree with health and resistances, inspiration is the gold tree where its main goal is to preserve gold.

Domination is... what? It has so much of everything that it's such a general tree. However, since it is a generalist tree its numbers are deservingly trash. I propose domination to be a tree focused on mobility and vision. This is what would help assassins the most since they can get their straight ad/ap from sorc secondary.

Let's look at the tier 1: This looks to be the tier best to include in the vision effects. Zombie ward and ghost poro are fine (could use a vision radius buff). but instead of what eyeball collector is now I propose a change that you get adaptive ad/ap based on how many wards you kill. This will incentivise red trinket on assassins and has very good synergy with duskblade giving a better option than just scalar off of takedowns. it's drawback is it doesn't give any vision on its own allowing the radius-buffed ward runes to actually be a choice.

Tier 2: This one ahould be where a lot of the mobility effects could be placed in. Sudden impact is a good rune for this and arguably a bit overtuned. However, taste of blood and cheap shot need a bit of work. I would propose removing taste of blood entirely in favor of something more like giving movement speed after dealing a set amount of damage. Cheap shot just needs more ways to proc and personally I think it should be something more akin to sudden impact where upon exiting stealth or dashing it will deal true damage on hit. This would mark a difference between skirmishing assassins and pure assassins. Skirmishing assassins would take sudden impact and pure assassins would take cheap shot.

Tier 3: This one is the best one of the tiers and is what domination is all about. It has vision with ingenious hunter that also works for assassin items. It has out of combat movement speed for the mobility and it has a utility one in the form of healing.

As for keystones I have no idea. But these are my ideas for a better domination tree in general.

Vlada Cut5/4/2018, 12:28:46 PM1 votes

Wouldn't Hail of Blades help Talon at least proc his bleed on his AA at least? Pardon my if I misunderstood how Talon works, I haven't exactly played him.

FilDaFunk5/4/2018, 12:45:44 PM1 votes

DH is for ARAM.

Sire Hippington5/4/2018, 2:56:45 PM1 votes

I think you forget that domination is not strictly an assasin/burst path, but also mapcontroll focused. Zombiward is very powerfull and kinda fits, and ignenious hunter is pretty strong as it lowers the trinket cd for huge visioncontroll, but also helps for anyone with ative items. However, i think there are to little options for damage given that all keystones imply that you want to do damage. Cheap shot is ok, it gives bruisers and tanks and some mages an option in the tree while assasins have sudden impact if they want damage from that tier. Zombieward is the rune for visioncontroll and that's fine. However, ghostporo is has a similar niche to zombie ward but is just worse, it really could get replaced. Eyeballs is ok but rather boring.

In Tier 3, i think stuff is a bit to niche. Igenious hunter is overall strong for vision controll, but hardly helps if you want damage unless you have some item actives that add damage and even then it's not that great, most items still will only be used once a fight. The spellvamp has the issue that many champs can't really make great use from it. i'd prefer omnivamp with no aoe penalty but vs champs only. The out off combat ms is generally usefull but not really that strong, it's mostly something you take cause the others don't fit. I wouldn't mind a 4th choice that adds some damage

For hail of blades, i feel it would work better in the precision tree, and fleet foodwork could work in domination. It certainly focuses on champs that have some AA focus, so you'd want some of the small runes from precisiion to back it up. But even then, it will just cause issues. If the numbers are any decent, it will break the upfront burst of adc and some other users like XIn, and if the numbers are to low it will just be usless.

Slice n Dice em5/4/2018, 4:24:52 AM1 votes

Hail of Blades - Here we have the most useless of all,

I am still wondering who would even take this? A bit of adaptive damage(AD or AP) along with AS will probably fix the problem of it being too lackluster.

Malak5/4/2018, 3:18:02 AM1 votes

Yea the domination tree is messed up, and it seems riot doesn't realize it considering they are adding that dumb new keystne