Ya know Dominion is actually pretty fun.

The Bearded Bard·Oct 28, 2015·81 votes·4,143 views

Gave it a try with some friends. The diversity of champions is quite refreshing. Sure the map itself has issues that should have been resolved forever ago, but for the most part it's a fun game mode that isn't nearly as frustrating as summoner's rift.

DOMINION RANKED WHERe?

Those of you saying it's not popular enough: make it team ranked only like twisted treeline. Solo queue is kind of a dumb concept in a team game anyway. Also, finding a queue for blind pick doesn't take nearly as long as a lot of you think. I was in the same boat 'Why are we queuing for dominion? it's gonna take us fore- oh wow that was faster than expected'.

62 Comments

Vistha KaiOct 28, 201531 votes

I once queued for Dominion Draft. http://cdn.meme.am/instances/63316581.jpg

Leather RabbitOct 28, 20158 votes

[{quoted}](name=Vistha Kai,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=h7yjXkZi,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2015-10-28T20:10:39.474+0000)

I once queued for Dominion Draft.

I'm in dominion draft queue right now, actually.

Philbo BagginsOct 29, 20152 votes

I love Dominion and if it ever became ranked, I would spam the shit of out it.

Rew711Oct 29, 20151 votes

I tried yesterday and saw the wait time was over 20 minutes. I waited 10 and just dropped out to blind pick. It would be very nice if more people would play. Its fun, I don't ever cry over a loss because of how it is, and its quick easy and painless. Besides, champs who are OP in SR are not in CS (and the same goes for TT) making room for a larger base of champ diversity.

RebonackOct 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I tried yesterday and saw the wait time was over 20 minutes. I waited 10 and just dropped out to blind pick. It would be very nice if more people would play. Its fun, I don't ever cry over a loss because of how it is, and its quick easy and painless. Besides, champs who are OP in SR are not in CS (and the same goes for TT) making room for a larger base of champ diversity.

Riot needs to hurry up and axe Blind and Draft to replace them with Blind Draft instead. The player base can't support two Queues and it wouldn't hurt my feelings much if I never saw LeBlanc again.

EatMyUdyrOct 29, 20155 votes

One time I waited 36 minutes. The love of dominion kept me going.

Then I never played dominion again

KüramaOct 29, 20152 votes

Was that in Draft queue? Cause in Blind queue you wait about 1 - 1.5 minutes for a match.

EatMyUdyrOct 29, 20152 votes

It was regular. Though it was late at night.

OOOOHHHHBABYOct 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

One time I waited 36 minutes. The love of dominion kept me going.

Then I never played dominion again

Ive has that happen quite a few times. I learned that if you have to wait double the ETA for a match Q, just reset it, youll end up in a limbo otherwise...or you couldve hit the draft mode button instead by mistake..

EatMyUdyrOct 29, 20151 votes

Now I just go with other people so it's way faster.

Vistha KaiOct 29, 20151 votes

I queued draft with a friend. After full hour the timer zero'd, but kept going.

At some point we forgot about it and went like, "3 hours 50 minutes. Maybe we should play something else?"

ltmetalOct 29, 201511 votes

Favorite game mode. No laning phase, nobody is put into a low gold income position, less snowballing, more teamfighting, and way more games come down to the wire or have epic comebacks.

Also there's a little side benefit behind the rarity of balance changes: strategies and champions you fall in love with are less likely to be gutted.

KingKong2350Oct 29, 20155 votes

Not to mention pure fun. No real pressure

Maple CrusaderOct 29, 201510 votes

No ranked or mastery points earned for playing Dominion.

KüramaOct 29, 20151 votes

Yet.

Talith PAOct 29, 20151 votes

Ha haaaaa, yet... ;(

1000angrybeesOct 28, 20156 votes

I like dominion, but god, I haven't played it in... years. I wish they'd hop on that so I'd have more options than just bots, ARAM, or SR. I don't count Twisted Treeline because it's in the same downward spiral that Dominion was in. (Fix that too)

MinardeOct 28, 20154 votes

DOMINION RANKED WHERe?

Nowhere, since there's not enough players currently for Riot to actively support the map, and the overall League population won't play the game mode unless Riot actively supports it.

PikmintsOct 28, 20157 votes

To be honest, I believe that Riot considers Dominion a mistake. It's fun yes, but some servers don't even have Dominion anymore because Riot didn't believe that keeping it up for those servers would be worth it. Submit a simple bug like "You aren't able to place the Dominion specific variant of Luden's Echo in an item set" (which is still true) and it will not get addressed. They do balancing for that map once a season when nothing big is happening, and even then it's never as big as balances for other maps.

It feels that this is the queue that gets the least attention by both players and Riot, followed by TT, then HA, then all SR queues. Honestly I think that the largest reasons they keep it around is because it's an easy place to find and filter bots, and it provides new players with varied game modes to play around with and pull them in. I feel like no amount of support though could bring it to the levels of even ARAM levels of fervor as it's a lot less straightforward strategically with its map openness and strategic openness, there's less content and time to strategize around, and there are notably fewer anti-snowball mechanics in this mode. While I could see them adjusting these to make the mode more full and worthwhile, it would be radically different, so much so that I could see it warranting a new name.

MinardeOct 28, 20153 votes

Which servers had their Dominion queues removed? I know the smaller/newer servers simply never got Dom/TT queues at all or had them be time-restricted. EUW (or EUNE, I forget) had the dead draft queue removed, but blind pick is still around.

Not being able to place the Dom-version of Luden's Echo into an item set is a feature, not a bug. The item hasn't existed since Riot did that round of AP itemization updates for all maps. I agree that it takes an unusually long time for Dom bugs to be addressed though (like Azir leaving the summoning platform early).

I definitely think Dominion could at least match ARAM's popularity. Difficult, but not impossible. ARAM excels at being a straightforward game mode that quickly gets into the action: it's very approachable for casual play. Dominion is more action-packed, but is also massively more complicated: it's well-suited for high-adrenaline competitive play. If Riot rewarded good players like it does in SR (e.g. LCS-style promotions), Dominion could definitely garner a large following.

Less objectives and time to strategize is probably intended, since the design of the mode emphasizes tactics over strategy. SR focuses on slow, methodical development (e.g. focus on dragon control and win with fifth dragon buff). Dominion is much more about quick actions and immediate responses (e.g. enemy team is currently camping windmill, so we need to gank bot).

"Notably fewer anti-snowball mechanics"? Dominion has the most anti-snowball mechanics of any game mode released, outside of Ascension (which coincidentally was a simplified Dominion).

HawkefireOct 29, 20151 votes

And the fact that it has no ranked que is one of the reasons it has so few players.

Sakuri OnoOct 29, 20154 votes

Riot's been pretty proactively trying to bury Dominion for years. The player base gained momentum in the years over it's release. We had a pretty solid tournament scene going on for I want to say 3-3.5 years total. If you want to see the history of it nearly in full I suggest you give Gandair's Youtube a look since he's archived as much of it as he could.

https://www.youtube.com/user/VATOCLAN

But yeah, it's been a sad history of ill-hearted promises and some of the most passive-aggressive betrayals of customer faith a company has ever done. Riot makes Electronic Arts look like saints in that department. Not once, but twice the Dominion community had to make massive, month long pushes on the original forums, garnishing over thousands of posts and +'s just to get a Red to come on and say "Yeah, we lied, sorry."

They tried to pretend like they were going to pay attention, and for a while it looked golden. We got our own dev to do map specific changes, item balances, ect. And he was pretty proactively involved with the community...for about a month. Then Riot yanked him away once they saw things were actually being properly fixed and tossed a lower tier Rioter our way (not in an insulting way, literally just someone lower in the company hierarchy). Changes trickled slower and slower, outright broken things (see immediate post-buff Thresh) took several weeks to even be addressed. And all communication dried up again.

One more push was finally made with another massive topic and Riot finally came out and said "Nope, we don't care."

The community pretty much fled en masse after that. Tournaments died down. Forums changed to boards and Riot left anything Dominion related to languish in the sea of ARAM, TT, and Mode of the Month posts. So now all that's left is pretty much a small pittance of people who stick around just out of a mixture of spite and passion.

If you ever, ever see a Red post about Dominion it'll be because a topic like this somehow gets 300+ upvotes and I guarantee you it'll be nothing more than "Yeah, we screwed up. No, we're going to do nothing about it."

It's the same mantra they've been spewing since everyone realized they lied about the initial Ranked promise.

KüramaOct 29, 20152 votes

Riot has made broken promises but they're not trying to kill Dominion. It'll kill their playerbase and EVERYBODY would lose faith in the company, some would take their leave immediately, others eventually. It'll hurt Riot overall (and SR) so yeah, they're gonna keep Dominion and maintain it. They need to do more than just maintain it though.

bddesuOct 29, 20154 votes

Wait, you mean Hide and Seek?

Zair UmbrasOct 29, 20153 votes

"Shit League Players Never Say." -Sky Williams.

Solidair3Oct 29, 20153 votes

Can we noy start this again, please?

Riot made some promises, broke some promises and has decided to completely ignore dominion for this entire season.

I'm really not in the mood for riot's bullshit.

hhaavviikkOct 29, 20153 votes

tried dominion on my lvl 15 account as my main is on EUW, got matched with 8 bots which is why I never play it, to many bots at this low level.

KüramaOct 29, 20151 votes

They've been combatting bots really hard in NA, I used to get a lot of those as well but now they're scarce.

rand0mredneckOct 29, 20152 votes

I like Dominion cause it's quick. I love Summoners Rift and all, but the game length can get a bit tiring at times.

jmaishereOct 29, 20152 votes

Dominion is fun, except for the sheer number of botters in dominion which makes the game sucks when 70% of the players are bots in a game, yes it happened to me, my whole team was bots besides me, it sucked.

OOOOHHHHBABYOct 29, 20151 votes

I think there was like 1 bot that i met when i played Dominon... but im pretty sure it was just a person who really couldnt give less of a damn about anything in life

jmaishereOct 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I think there was like 1 bot that i met when i played Dominon... but im pretty sure it was just a person who really couldnt give less of a damn about anything in life

When I played dominion a few months ago, there were bots in every game, every time they took ghost heal took the same build and always rush bot with at least 12 deaths in a game

OOOOHHHHBABYOct 29, 20151 votes

Maybe thats at low levels... would make sense for people to bot dominion until they reach lvl 30 anyway. Because i routinely play dominion and almost never encounter them.

jmaishereOct 31, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Maybe thats at low levels... would make sense for people to bot dominion until they reach lvl 30 anyway. Because i routinely play dominion and almost never encounter them.

I'm level 30, and yeah most of the botters were around level 20, but it still is no excuse to mess up someone else's game just because you don't want to grind

OOOOHHHHBABYNov 1, 20151 votes

Yea, it is frustrating

Hay5eedOct 29, 20152 votes

Riot comes up with A LOT of really fun game modes...and most of them just go away after a short bit...why? I loved ascension. I loved Doom Bots, I loved Urf-mode and 1 for all...so why just have them available at all times?

SwaidOct 29, 20152 votes

It's my preferred game mode, with most of my wins being from Dominion. I would play it more, but my friends just can't seem to shift out of the Summoner's Rift mindset, being unable to think on their toes or grasp the core concepts of Dominion such as not to chase, reserving health shrines for low health allies, reacting to changes on the battlefield, choosing the right items, or plain ole choosing niche champions that don't do well in Dominion (usually being mages with high cooldowns). I think people aren't use to the faster gameplay, having been grinded down over the year's by the slow nature of Summoner's Rift or the simple nature of ARAM.

SKOBODOOct 29, 20152 votes

Plugging my top lane tier list so people might get some help with picking champions: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/summoners-rift/A8pjhBtA-dominion-top-lane-tier-list

Dominion is a lot of fun, though.

ayNigerianPrinceOct 29, 20151 votes

I wanted to try it. Entirety of both teams run ghost and heal...

Hmm....

Yuumi or LoseOct 29, 20151 votes

Dominions is a lot of fun.

I wish they would keep some game modes permanent that reflect towards league events. Like ascension and bildgewater events. Make it a different looking map and bam. More variety in gameplay.

SuchSwagSuchweedOct 29, 20151 votes

Too bad it takes 10 minutes just to find a match.

The SoulforgedOct 29, 20151 votes

I stopped playing after getting into it because I have this glitch when I alt tab which makes the thing say failed to create dump file and makes me reload.

ZeurthOct 29, 20151 votes

I would agree but considering you can literally finish a match in 6 mins, something needs to be done about the mode.

RebonackOct 29, 20151 votes

I've got decent MMR on Dominion and it typically takes me less than 5 minutes to get into a game.

I think Riot has altered the MMR algorithms for Dominion to make it more forgiving.

Give it a shot.

MysticFlameHazeOct 29, 20151 votes

my friends and i also play dominion often and it is very competitive, but always seem to have more afks in that game mode which sucks because it makes a huge difference in there compared to summoners rift.

ChoaruOct 29, 20151 votes

I love dominion, but the only thing I don't like is the fact that the matches are usually one sided.