I really hate playing Dominion, here's why.

Roktan·Sep 12, 2015·3 votes·801 views

The only reason I still play it is it can be fun sometimes and I want the summoner profile medals. The rant starts about 13 mins in.

12 Comments

RebonackSep 13, 20155 votes

The people playing dominion don't seem to understand that the best strategy to win is to hold the 3 towers closest to your base and defend them from attacks.

Sitting around defending is a sure fire way to lose against players who know what they're doing. The best way to win is to keep the enemy team off balance. Gank bot. Set up ganks at the enemy's jungle entrances. Put pressure near their base and close out with a five cap. I've seen games where people are so focused on taking Windmill that the enemy team was able to snag bottom and mid basically for free.

The mode seems to favor certain champion types over others. What they are, I don't know/remember.

Champions with the ability to fight well in small skirmishes are most effective since the majority of fights range from 1v1s to 3v3s. The number of 4v4 fights are lower and 5v5s almost never happen. There are ways to fix this, but it would require significant changes to the map.

The towers SHOULD NOT ATTACK THE PLAYERS.

Hahaha...

If this went live then my AD Malz bottom lane would be more or less unstoppable. The only major weakness he has is poor tower diving. Towers are there to give the defender an advantage, especially the bottom laner. If towers didn't fire on enemy champions then champs like Jax would be able to dive bottom with complete impunity and a lot of weaker bottom laners would become totally nonviable. Bottom laners would also be even more vulnerable to ganks, which probably wouldn't be a good thing. Ganking bottom is already a really good idea. You just need to learn to juggle the tower capping.

The shield power ups in the middle are useful but not by much. I would like to see something similar to the DC MOBA where you get stronger minions that help push towers.

Pushing minion waves anywhere but bottom is a trap option in Dominion. If you're out in the lane then you're giving away your position, it's like standing on a Ward in Summoner's Rift. Typically all you want to do is blow up the caster minions in a wave so that a mass of minions will begin building up all on their own. Once a wave is built up you can either use them to help you back-cap or set up to gank an enemy champion who shows up to farm them.

The middle objective could use some spicing up, but I suspect that trading the position of Market and Windmill would be a better plan. Having the central point at Market would make it more intuitively obvious that you want to control the Jungle. It would also place more of the action near bottom lane, allowing the bottom laners to get in on the fun more option. Placing a major neutral objective at Windmill would make it harder to snowball to a five-cap in case of an Ace due to how far the bottom lanes are from Windmill.

FDruSep 13, 20154 votes

People will never learn how to play Dominion as long as personal score exists and caps/neutralizes are emphasized on the score cards. Useless and bad strategies being the only source of feedback the game gives players for how they're doing prevents "the bottom" from ever really understanding the map.

BergkSep 12, 20153 votes

1:24:40 that's longer than most people have ever spent playing dominion.

MinardeSep 13, 20153 votes

Rebonack covered most things, but I'll add on a little. Admittedly, I only skimmed through the video because 85 minutes is a little long for me.

The people playing dominion don't seem to understand that the best strategy to win is to hold the 3 towers closest to your base and defend them from attacks.

That's the Dominion-equivalent of trying to win in SR by never ever leaving your lane and slowly pushing minion waves into towers all game. Map control, rotations, etc. allow your team to pressure the enemy team, letting your team set the pace while the enemy team has to react.

The mode seems to favor certain champion types over others. What they are, I don't know/remember.

Supports aren't useless. There's been a number of support-mains in high-MMR Dominion in the past. Just don't build a gold income item and play around having minimal gold like in SR.

What I think is annoying is that I can't try to take [a tower] solo that's being defended unless I'm playing a ranged champ or a melee champ with ranged attacks. Often I find myself the only one trying to take back a tower/defend.

Again, defender's advantage promotes teamplay. Don't try to take points solo unless you can solo the defender. It applies when you're defending too. If you're trying to fend off one or more attackers, the tower helps you. Often, the goal isn't to actually defend the tower, but to simply stall long enough for your team to pillage the other side of the map. Sometimes it's even best to completely ditch the tower because it's unlikely to be able to defend for any useful amount of time.

People don't know how to play the map despite Dominion having been out for a long time.

That's a complicated issue. Essentially, most people don't know how to play the game mode. Information on Dominion is much, much harder to find than information on SR: guides are rare, and streams are even rarer. Unlike for SR, Dom players aren't slapped in the face with information on the meta. As such, players tend to use the strategies they're familiar with (e.g. huddling under towers, pushing minion waves) without realizing that those strategies are sub-optimal in Dominion. There's also the fact that proper map rotations and jungle control are incredibly hard to learn (and teach) compared to sitting in a lane pushing minions.

IlyaK1986Sep 12, 20152 votes

14:40: admits he doesn't know enough about dominion, then goes on to make a bunch of baseless assertions.

Turned it off at 14:40, obv.

RoktanSep 12, 20152 votes

Ok if you're unwilling to watch:

The people playing dominion don't seem to understand that the best strategy to win is to hold the 3 towers closest to your base and defend them from attacks. I keep seeing people run off by themselves to take a control point on the other side. Yes, you only need 3, but the closer control points are easier to take and defend. I don't think the towers on the other towers should be pushed for until the closer ones are well secured OR if you have good team communication and use it as a distraction, i.e. while they are taking the closer tower back on their side, you're doing the same thing. If you're not willing to communicate, DO NOT DO THIS.
The mode seems to favor certain champion types over others. What they are, I don't know/remember.
The towers SHOULD NOT ATTACK THE PLAYERS. It gives an unfair advantage to the person defending, they can sit under their tower and use it to help them defend and get kills. No other game that I've played that has a control/ hold objectives type map/mode do they attack the players. On top of and right next to the objective is where the most intense fighting happens. In LoL Dominon, all of it needs to happen AWAY from the control point otherwise you just die faster. This doesn't allow you to truly contest them.
The shield power ups in the middle are useful but not by much. I would like to see something similar to the DC MOBA where you get stronger minions that help push towers.

SKOBODOSep 13, 20153 votes

Rebonack and Minarde have already responded with most of the obvious responses to your post. I'm not going to watch your video since it's too long and based on the forum post you don't really know what you're talking about when it comes to Dominion. And while I believe that one should focus on the arguments over other things (and I will focus on your arguments), I think it might be worth mentioning that you only have 157 Dominion games. If you had been playing Dominion exclusively you wouldn't even be level 30, so you're basically a non-level 30 player when it comes to Dominion (although playing other maps have taught you quite a few things, obviously).

{quoted}

The people playing dominion don't seem to understand that the best strategy to win is to hold the 3 towers closest to your base and defend them from attacks. I keep seeing people run off by themselves to take a control point on the other side.

Running off by themselves to take a control point on the other side (also known as backcapping) is a legit tactic. I do it quite often in my games, sometimes for a neutral, sometimes for a full cap. You do this to apply some pressure. You cap the point and then force at least two people to come take it back. While they're taking it you either pick a fight top or in the jungle or gank bot. This is a great tactic if the enemy team have four people sitting on the windmill (the top point). This is a bad tactic if you get caught and killed. It's generally done by mobile champions such as Janna or Rammus.

The mode seems to favor certain champion types over others. What they are, I don't know/remember.

Every champion type except auto-attack based ADCs are strong on Dominion. Auto-attack based ADC take a lot of skill to pull off, and even then they're situational. Tanks, supports, bruisers, caster-based ADCs, assassins, juggernauts, mages, melee ADC are all strong on Dominion.

The towers SHOULD NOT ATTACK THE PLAYERS. It gives an unfair advantage to the person defending, they can sit under their tower and use it to help them defend and get kills.

This is a good thing. You shouldn't generally fight on their point in the first place unless you have a number advantage, and sometimes not even then. If they removed this people would just push the lane over and over again, since the defender's advantage would be gone.

The shield power ups in the middle are useful but not by much. I would like to see something similar to the DC MOBA where you get stronger minions that help push towers.

The Storm Shield is a really powerful buff, try getting it on a champion that has a lot of magic penetration and preferably some poke abilities. Generally, you don't want to push that much unless you're bot lane, so buffing minions is a trap option.

A lot of what I said was kind of repeating what Rebonack and Minarde already said, but eh, it needed sayin'.

RoktanSep 13, 20152 votes

Maybe you're right that not having the control points attack would make certain champions a terror. However, the fact that the towers can attack you just makes it feel unfair when I'm tying to take a point. As I said in the video, people don't do proper teamwork which to me is to take two to three max champions to a point so they can help take it. What I think is annoying is that I can't try to take one solo that's being defended unless I'm playing a ranged champ or a melee champ with ranged attacks. Often I find myself the only one trying to take back a tower/defend.

The problem is when a tower is under attack often everyone goes to that spot and leaves the other towers undefended. It reminds me of certain WoW Capture/Hold Battleground PVP type maps like Arathi Basin: People don't split their forces and send too many to defend one place from attack while another is being taken sneakily by a stealthed rogue.

SKOBODOSep 13, 20153 votes

{quoted}

As I said in the video, people don't do proper teamwork which to me is to take two to three max champions to a point so they can help take it.

Proper teamwork: Group up in the jungle and try to force a fight. Improper teamwork: Push the lanes together and try to dive.

Most of the time, you should move in the fog of war. If you move through the lanes you give away valuable information. Map awareness on Dominion is very important, and you really don't want to give away much information unless you have to. Not to mention that it's rather easy to gank someone pushing. If four people are pushing together, what prevents the enemy team for defending as four, giving them an advantage since they have the point on their side?

Proper teamwork: Have one person gank bot while the other play safe. Improper teamwork: One person ganks bot while the others push aggressively and get caught.

What I think is annoying is that I can't try to take one solo that's being defended unless I'm playing a ranged champ or a melee champ with ranged attacks. Often I find myself the only one trying to take back a tower/defend.

It sounds to me like you are the problem. You aren't grouping with your team in the jungle, instead you're trying to take a point back that's being defended. That won't work unless you manage to harass them really hard or if you can kill them 1v1.

disregardableSep 12, 20151 votes

You are the only person that's going to listen to yourself talk unedited for an hour and a half.

MorlachianSep 17, 20151 votes

If you hate playing dominion, then why do you play it?

RebonackSep 19, 20151 votes

Honestly, I think topics like this are really helpful.

If Riot had any intention to work on the anti-intuitive aspects of the map, topics like this show them exactly what they need to focus on. Or at the very least add in some little pop-up tips that let people know that 4-man pushing and smashing their face against Windmill rarely gets any results.