[Request] Additional (Reasonable) Dominion Updates! (@Riot)

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"They seem to be a bit weak, especially when minion crowd a point, most points can't defend themselves and the point ends up being neutralized from minions. Not saying it's a bad thing, but it's an example that points are a bit weak."

Another alternative could be reducing the rate each minion push at. That would probably help more than increasing the damage. Not that 5 damage is a big deal though.

That's a lot more difficult than buffing the turrets a bit. 5 damage isn't much on one hit, but it'll add up to something on multiple hits.

"Why would it be better to lessen the impact of quests?"

Mainly because the quest system right now is somewhat broken. You can't really track it (I've tried in customs, it doesn't seem to be reliable, sometimes it spawns 5 minutes after you last got the quest, sometimes it doesn't, and you never know where it'll spawn), and it can sometimes spawn at very unfortunate locations. For instance, let's say you just managed to cap the windmill, but you're low and have to recall since they're surging top to retake it. Bam, quest spawns at windmill! It's a bit like the old 3v3 jungle, which had randomly spawning monster camps. Bad RNG can screw you over.

It also seems somewhat buggy at the moment, and it's very unclear how exactly it works. I've seen many games lost because of an unfortunate quest spawn. That's not good game design.

Quests more meaningful? They are already really important, people just underestimate them. I think dying and using a revive trinket just to prevent them from getting a quest is a good deal, maybe even two revives. Quests are really significant. They provide a damage boost for your team and chunks 20 Nexus health.

I don't know about customs, but in Normals, it always spawns at the 5 minute mark and 5 minutes after a quest has been completed. Give or take a second or two.

As for the bad quest spawn, that is a potential issue. Not sure how to counter it yet. I can think up something, but it'll probably be even more difficult than the update I recommended.

It's pretty clear how it works to me. Anybody with a brain can understand what the text on top right corer, the icons on the minimap, and the yellow rings around the 2 targeted points mean. What players may not know is that it gives a buff and saps the enemy Nexus by 20 points.

"Not saying it would be easy to implement, but why do you think it's not needed?"

Most of the time, it'll be 3-2 in points, right? So the team with two points would have to get, say, windmill + enemy mid in order to get quest. If they are powerful enough to turn two points into 4

Let's say it's 4-1 and quest spawns at bot. You'll get your mid back easily enough most of the time, and then you might get top. It's generally easier to get the windmill than the enemy bot, and the team that lost their mid and got it back will have three choices (top, backcap mid, or bot) while the enemy team just has one choice (bot). Besides, just because you're at a capture point disadvantage at some point in time doesn't mean you always will be.

You'll still receive the capture 1 point / defend 1 point if it's 3-2.

When the match becomes 4-1 it can be difficult for the losing team to regain more than 1 point. This is where the new quest system kicks in. When you recapture your mid or bot, you'll get a buff to help you recapture the next point, but if the winning team defends really well, the losing team wouldn't be able to recapture the points.

As for which points you'll have to capture in the capture 2 points / defend 1 point for the losing team, it'll be either recapturing the Quarry and the Drill or the Drill and the Windmill. The points they need to capture will be adjacent to the point they need to defend.

It also makes room for weird quests to appear. Say you were back-capping and the Refinery, but the enemy managed to cap all the other points, the losing team will have to capture the Windmill and the Quarry to complete the quest while the enemy will have to defend said points. So basically, this give the losing team back 2 points and they can then move on to contest the targeted points.

"It is supposed to be like Garrison's sister. The point of Fortify was is to give defenders a better chance to defend their point when being ganked or crowded and also to spice up the Summoner spell diversity in Dominion, where Flash and Ignite are still dominant."

Eh, maybe. Though you could use Exhaust to defend the point. Ignite is way overrated on Dominion, Exhaust/Flash or Exhaust/CV are better options most of the time (Exhaust/Ignite is legit on some champions though). Garrison is pretty bad, as is Ghost. Do we really need more Summoner spell diversity in Dominion, anyway?

I don't see Exhaust being frequently used in Dominion and yes I think we need more Summoner Spell diversity in Dominion.

"I don't understand why you think the Dominion Score should be removed, after all you get points from capturing and defending objectives, shutting down killing sprees, gaining killing sprees yourself etcetera, so it's not completely useless right now, there is just no meaningful reward."

I kind of get the feeling you're still fairly new to Dominion, are you? If so, welcome to the mode! The score system was found to be very misleading by the high Elo/MMR Dominion player base back in 2011, and there have been lots of threads over the years complaining about it. Ask nearly every high MMR Dominion player and you'll get the same answer: The score system is misleading and nearly useless. You get points for doing stuff you shouldn't be doing (such as capping instead of zoning/recalling, such as sitting on a point instead of controlling the jungle or pushing the waves, such as dying on a point for no reason, etc).

Adding a reward to a broken system would just make it worse. I'm not sure if I like Champion mastery to begin with (actually, I kind of dislike it), and tying it to a broken score system would make it even worse. Dominion would be a better mode if the personal score system were disabled. It's misleading to new players, experienced players mostly ignore it.

No, I'm not new to Dominion, thank you for the welcome though. :)

I don't see why you should get points for zoning / recalling. If you zone the enemy out, it means you're able to capture more points and increase your score. As for receiving points on recalling, no.

The point of Dominion is to capture and hold. I've seen a lot of players make the mistake of recalling on full health and significant mana (at least 50%+) right after capturing a point. I've actually gotten pissed at players for doing this on my team as well.

This isn't TT / SR where you need to recall to buy items so you can gain an advantage over enemy champions and be able to kill them easier. Recalling on full health or even half health instead of defending a point is just giving the enemy a free point and asking to lose.

There's a reason your score is increased from dying by a point, it's because you attempted to defend said point and that's what the mode is about. Capturing and Defending / Holding.

I think the score system is misinterpreted rather than useless.

"How would it promote poor gameplay?"

It sounds like it would promote pushing. If you're playing Dominion well, you won't spend much of your time pushing, unless you're bot. Having a buff that baits people into 4-man pushing would be a bad, bad thing.

The point of it is to promote pushing. It's supposed to add a side-aspect of the mode. Dominion is about Capture & Hold, but making it so blandly simple is what Riot thinks is starving Dominion of it's well-deserved popularity.

A 4-man push to recover a point to attempt a comeback or to gain more points to close the game is the core purpose of the relic. It promotes some teamwork in Dominion, something I think is a bit lacking sometimes.

{quoted} Part of the problem is that there's little incentive for the winning team to attack first. Facing a 4+ cap, the losing team has to make a play to seize back map control. The winning team just leaves someone to stall while the rest of the team waits in the jungle. If the losing team doesn't send enough people to recapture that point, the winning team collapses on the attackers, gets some kills, and rotates to the quest. If the losing team does send enough people, the staller disengages, and the rest of the team rotates to the quest.

I'm aware that the winning team would have little incentive to attack first and the losing team would be the one needing to make the plays.

Perhaps there are near the 2 points that need to be captured in order to complete the quest, this is very possible and a great way to ensure that the losing team doesn't capture the points and get their comeback.

The losing team could also make some smart plays by scoping out that area of the jungle before attempting to kill a defender and capture the point. The Scrying Orb Charge would greatly assist the losing team with this.

The losing team would need to make plays while defending their point, which wouldn't be easy, but like I said, if they do it well, they'll get their comeback.

Wouldn't returning the splash damage address defensive options? Riot only got rid of it because they removed summoner spell masteries and seemingly forgot about compensating Garrison. Plus, there's the interesting mid-teamfight consideration of juggling captures for attackers versus interrupting for defenders. Completely preventing captures removes all of that.

Returning Splash Damage would help address the issue yes, but not completely. If a point is still crowded with minion and 2 - 3 champions, the Splash Damage still wouldn't be defensive enough.

I agree that the Fortify I mentioned is somewhat powerful, and maybe a little dangerous but it's a Summoner Spell. There is no guarantee that everybody would take it and when they do, it has an approximate 3 minutes cooldown so it wouldn't prevent captures all the time. Basically, this spell is to ensure that your defenses aren't broken down easily.

I have no issues with this, aside from worries about potentially overloading the trinket slot. New players already seem overwhelmed with the Revive trinket.

It will take a little getting accustomed to, but players should learn about it sooner rather than later.\

It barely does though. Generally the only time top-laners are around minions are if minions happen to be nearby during a gank or possibly a dive.

Agreed, but if the point is heavily defended, you'd want to kill the enemy minions and allow your buffed minions to reach the point and start attacking the point (Weakening it) or the champions to weaken them.

Personal score is, at best, ignorable, and, at worst, misleading. Sure, it's helpful for completely new players, people who don't even know what the map looks like. "Capturing points is more important than kills." Great! "Defending points is helpful." Good to know!

Unfortunately, the system breaks down once players know their way around the map. According to personal score, capturing is more important than zoning. Unfortunately, if no one's zoning, an enemy can just run up to interrupt the capture. Likewise, dying on a point gives the same points as capturing. Oftentimes, it's better to give up the point and recall to regroup with the team rather than suicide trying to defend. Yes, dying to stall is the right action sometimes, but this nuance isn't reflected in personal score. There's also the issue that "point defense" increases personal score despite the fact that constantly standing on a point is generally a bad idea. Similar to standing on top of a ward in SR, hanging around a point needlessly gives information to the enemy team.

Basically, personal score is only useful for introducing the basics of Dominion. It's absolute trash beyond that, particularly for players trying to improve. The system points out potentially useful actions, but completely misses all considerations involved. It's like the tutorial on SR. Yes, buying items is important, but Thornmail on Ashe is only a good idea in specific situations.

You already receive points from being near a point upon capture or neutralisation. You don't need any (more) points for zoning.

Recalling over dying, defending a point, I agree, sometimes that would be the better thing to do.

You get very little points from standing on a point, 5 per 10 seconds to be accurate. If you're fighting for first place, you'd want to be helping your team get kills (which will grant you assist points) or getting kills yourself and then capturing points.

You're blowing this out of proportions with the "buying Thornmail on Ashe". The score system isn't useless after learning the basics of Dominion, like I stated, you receive points from performing the core actions needed to win the game.

The system can be misinterpreted as useless, but can also be, and should be interpreted as a guide as to what you should be doing in order to win the game. Following said guide, which is pretty accurate and useful will reward you points.

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Again, you are misinterpreting the score system. It's not trash and doesn't encourage noob behaviour. The moment you stop defending a point, most of the time, is the same moment you lose the point.

If you lost a 4v5 in bot while you're on top protecting the Windmill, you should capture the Drill, since all 5 of them would have been bot attempting to capture the Quarry.

The point of the game is to capture points, killing enemies in order to capture these points is necessary, but the ultimate goal is to capture points and for doing so, you should be rewarded. This isn't SR / TT.

You say my ideas are pretty bad, but offer no explanation as to what makes them bad. Same thing with your assumption that I'm inexperienced with Dominion. What's the basis of your assumption, that you don't like my ideas? Just because I may not have been playing Dominion as much or for as long as other players, doesn't make me inexperienced, it just makes others somewhat more experienced than me.

And in case you decide to take the liberty and check my profile like another player did, Wins =/= experience.

Rule #1 of Dominion: Never stand in the open. The score system rewards you for sitting idly on a point. Proper play would have you near points, but in the jungle fog and out of sight, and closer to the middle to allow you to reach other areas faster. As sylian said, it doesn't properly reward zoning/defense as opposed to actual capping. and the worst thing you can do with a team that just killed the enemy at a point is to all try to cap at once (which is the only way to get credit in the score system) instead of leaving 1 to cap and moving out to pressure other areas. The current system is 100% trash and does not reflect on actual performance whatsoever.

That's not to say that it's flat-out impossible to create a good system, just that Riot has zero clue what they are doing. It would require a lot more effort tho, and a lot of it would be based on tagging allies who were near you before you make a play, and crediting them properly with being a part of the overall play.