Please remove the storm altar from Dominion

Disulfiram·Oct 7, 2016·9 votes·522 views

For the love of Jesse Perring, just do it already, please! The team that focuses on it the most will lose - and this is such a regular occurrence that it gets tiring.

11 Comments

cocacolalipsOct 8, 20161 votes

You got it backwards.

The losing team is the one losing Windmill. To capture Windmill back, the losing team has to get some help, either with the storm altar of the super minion.

Here a couple steps on how to play the map.

1- Get Windmill 2a)- Do you have Windmill? Yes > Hold/Defend. 2b)- No > you are not going to win a tower dive 5V5 under the windmill turret, the turret is too strong, you need help. Get the storm altar, or the super minion buff to support you as you attempt to capture Windmill back, then dive as a 5 man team. 3- Repeat 2. until either team wins/loses.

Harvey RabbitOct 8, 20162 votes

{quoted}

You got it backwards.

The losing team is the one losing Windmill. To capture Windmill back, the losing team has to get some help, either with the storm altar of the super minion.

Here a couple steps on how to play the map.

1- Get Windmill 2a)- Do you have Windmill? Yes > Hold/Defend. 2b)- No > you are not going to win a tower dive 5V5 under the windmill turret, you need help. Get the storm altar, or the super minion buff to support you as you attempt to capture Windmill back, then dive as a 5 man team. 3- Repeat 2. until either team wins/loses.

No, what happens is one team usually has 4-5 players who understand that holding Windmill wins or loses the game. The other team has 2-3 players who understand it. The players who don't understand end up dicking around for long periods of time with the mini-objectives (which are blatant noob bait) and/or trying to play team death match, and whichever team has the greater number of these players automatically loses the game.

In other words, OP is completely right and it is a good suggestion. Although this whole mode should just be deleted tbh. Bring back old Dominion, I heard it was not a complete shambles like this one is. I mean, really, it would be hard to design a worse game mode unless you were trying. One objective decides who wins or loses the game 99% of the time, how is that fun? It's just like ARAM but with a whole bunch of noob bait thrown in to create inherently unbalanced matches and toxicity. Seriously, whoever "designed" this mode should be fired and never allowed to work as a game designer again. It would be SO easy to make it a fun mode, you have to have some kind of magic anti-talent to clusterfuck it this much. Ok, I'm in a bad mood, but it is true anyway.

cocacolalipsOct 8, 20161 votes

Those aren't noob traps, those are tools to prevent snowballing and help the losing team gets back on track and compete for windmill. If you remove them, the first team to capture windmill within the first minute always wins and then nothing happens for the next 10 minutes since the other team is not going to get windmill back ever in a 5V5 fight under the turret.

Harvey RabbitOct 8, 20162 votes

I understood what you said, but you don't seem to have understood what I said. I've played at least 30 Definitely not Dominion matches and have yet to see a single match where all five people on both teams felt that keeping and holding Windmill was a priority.

And if the mode is INTENDED to be a king of the mountain type game, as you suggest, then it is superficially obvious that the map is extremely poorly designed for that purpose.

cocacolalipsOct 8, 20162 votes

Well, as your elo raises, you will find more players who know what they are doing. I'm no disagreeing that it's frustrating when no one understands or follows the rules, hell, I'm not playing myself because when I do, I spend more time explaining what to do and have people argue back at me than playing the bloody game haha. The game is rather straight forward, -push windmill, hold if winning, push windmill with the help of the buff and minion if losing- but clearly still too complex for a rotating game mode.

RebonackOct 8, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Those aren't noob traps, those are tools to prevent snowballing and help the losing team gets back on track and compete for windmill. If you remove them, the first team to capture windmill within the first minute always wins and then nothing happens for the next 10 minutes since the other team is not going to get windmill back ever in a 5V5 fight under the turret.

Nah, they're pretty much noob traps. About as bad as actively pushing toward Windmill was in the original Dominion.

DnD is a snowbally clusterfuck compared to the old map. Jungle vision is so deep and the respawn times are so low that trying to back-cap the enemy mid is a fools errand. The two secondary objectives reveal your position and give a negligible advantage. Your best bet is to move as a team, get into the Jungle, and try to catch someone alone. Get a numerical advantage and seal the enemy team into their base. Because of the deep jungle vision, you'll always know where they're going.

That's more or less what happened over on Dominion before we figured out that Revive could thwart that kind of play.

If we wanted the Storm Alter to be useful?

Make capturing it neutralize Windmill and grant a buff.

cocacolalipsOct 8, 20161 votes

But the buffs already do that, the minion will neutralize windmill on its own, ensuring a fair 5V5 fight with no turret pressure and the storm altar gives you a buff.

RebonackOct 8, 20161 votes

{quoted}

But the buffs already do that, the minion will neutralize windmill on its own, ensuring a fair 5V5 fight with no turret pressure and the storm altar gives you a buff.

Capturing the Storm Alter does not, in fact, neutralize Windmill regardless of who is in control of it. Neither does summoning a super minion. The team who is ahead can also do these things, snowballing their lead even harder. It isn't an anti-snowball mechanism when it favors the team with more map control (eg, the one who is winning).

cocacolalipsOct 8, 20161 votes

The super minion will neutralize windmill, try it in a game, follow it, the point will go neutral as you engage the fight on windmill.

You can't realistically defend top, defend middle and defend bottom all at the same time, the objectives are too far apart from each other. That's why the map is designed the way it is. If the enemy defends top, you pick bottom & middle, if the enemy defends bottom you collapse on top. If you are losing on every front and every 5V5 fight regardless of the position on the map, you deserve to lose, your team is weaker, and that has nothing to do with the map layout. Better luck next time.

azrolatorOct 8, 20161 votes

This game is clearly take windmill/hold windmill/win. Not take crap mid buff and buff next to the other teams base then take windmill. If it were, then the winning team wouldn't always be the one that took windmill and consistently defended/assaulted it instead of running around mid looking for kills and pointless objectives. It is so very simple that it is clearly as the OP stated, you win by having the most teammates who understand objectives. Taking those little buffs while losing points and risking losing players back to base afterwards is like taking dragon while the enemy team is inside your base. Its just not worth it to end up down 1/4 of points. Better off to mass assault the top and at least hope for some time at stalemate until you manage to bring it down.

cocacolalipsOct 8, 20161 votes

That's the goal yes. Now you lost the first fight, you lost windmill, what do you do? Do you feed repeatedly the windmill turret and die over and over accomplishing nothing? You are not going to win a 5V5 under the turret on your own, the turret is too strong, it's akin fighting 5V6 or 5V7. No, you look for a way to make the fight even, so you have a chance to win it and get windmill back. And how do you do that? By buffing your own team, getting the storm altar relic and the minion. You are now fighting a 6V6 or 7V7 top, and you have a significant chance to win. Even better, the minion will likely neutralize the turret ensuring a fight in your advantage, since you have the storm altar buff and the opposing team doesn't. Now you have the windmill and you gotta defend it while the other team repeats the assault you just did.