What Dominion needs is a relaunch

Rebonack·1/7/2015, 1:49:03 AM·9 votes·2,313 views

I've been kicking around ideas. So many ideas. So many ideas, you don't even know. What are these ideas, you ask? Well, a couple things. The main objective is to remove some of the anti-intuitive play patterns from the game (beating one's face against Windmill and farming the lanes), addresses the issue of 5-cap lockins, centralize the action a little more, and provide players with a few more objectives to control.

So with that all in mind...

  1. The Relics in the middle of the map are replaced with a Capture Point. The Capture Point at Windmill is removed. Minions do not spawn from or assault the mid Capture Point (We'll call it The Market). This fixes the issue of beating one's face against Windmill because there are no minions and holding the middle of the map is all about Jungle control. Centralizing the Market Point will also allow the bottom laner to get in on the action more often.

  2. The upper portion of the map is now part of an expanded jungle. Some kind of major contestable objective spawns at Windmill and gives your team a choice. Go capture the objective and leave your Points exposed, or go on a Point capturing offensive when the objective is targeted by the enemy team.

  3. Controlling more than three points no longer causes Nexus HP to decrease more quickly. Instead, it provides a stacking buff for your team for every point you control beyond three.

  4. Neutralizing/Capturing a Point no longer removes 2 HP from the enemy Nexus. Instead, Relics spawn at the Speed Shrines and in place of the Health Relic at Windmill (there's a Speed Shrine up there now, too) that can be captured to reduce the enemy Nexus HP by (amount). This effect can't reduce the enemy Nexus' HP to zero.

  5. Quests now only spawn at the bottom two points for the purpose of reminding your team that ganking is cool.

  6. Personal score is removed because personal score is a newb trap.

  7. Blind Pick and Draft queues are replaced with a single Blind Draft queue to help address awful champions no one wants to deal with.

tl;dr: More objectives to control, less beating of faces against Windmill, more interesting Big Objective up top, no more 5-cap lock-in games.

14 Comments

FDru1/7/2015, 3:09:54 AM5 votes

1) The Relics in the middle of the map are replaced with a Capture Point. The Capture Point at Windmill is removed.

Love this idea. Pretty sure I've even suggested it a few times. Getting people out of the lanes and into the jungle is something that needs to happen, and this would do a pretty good job of that.

2) The upper portion of the map is now part of an expanded jungle. Some kind of major contestable objective spawns at Windmill

Not sure if want. It could work though.

3) Controlling more than three points no longer causes Nexus HP to decrease more quickly. Instead, it provides a stacking buff for your team for every point you control beyond three.

This in combination with #2 would be overkill. The dominant team already steamrolls pretty hard as it is.

4) Neutralizing/Capturing a Point no longer removes 2 HP from the enemy Nexus.

We could probably just leave it at that. Capturing is not something that should be emphasized, not even if it's just relics (how would that work anyway?)

5) Quests now only spawn at the bottom two points for the purpose of reminding your team that ganking is cool.

Wish they would have done this like, 2 years ago.

6) Personal score is removed because personal score is a newb trap.

See above.

7) Blind Pick and Draft queues are replaced with a single Blind Draft queue to help address awful champions no one wants to deal with.

Sure, why not. I think it's been demonstrated that Blind Draft matches startup pretty quickly so it shouldn't bother too many people... except those that want to spam one champ.

Solidair31/7/2015, 3:46:03 AM3 votes

Also, it would be nice if MWAB would get back to us. He said as soon as things calm down he'd make a new post. Maybe now that the new year has begun?

MWAB pls

Rebonack1/7/2015, 4:08:11 AM3 votes

Hi Dru! Thanks for the feedback. I'm especially glad that you're keen on the Windmill/Relic swap. If only one thing from my list got changed about Dominion, that would be the one I would wish for.

One of the things that Riot discovered when they were making the map was that sticking a Baron-style objective in the middle of the map usually resulted in the team that wins the conflict turning around pulling a 5-Cap. Putting the objective up at the top of the map would make the 5-Cap quite a bit harder to pull off since they're now up at the top of the map rather than chilling in the exact center. It wouldn't be too different from trying for a 5-Cap after a stomp at Windmill, very risky due to the travel times involved. And I don't think the 4/5-cap buff would be anything major. I was thinking something along the lines of the team's points gaining splash damage, something that would help with defending the points but could be easily overcome (just click the thing while I'm diving!)

As for the Relic capturing, did you try out Ascension? Same basic idea. You have a Relic that you channel on for a while and it can be interrupted. If you snag the Relic the enemy Nexus loses some health. While secondary to the Windmill/Relic swap in terms of importance, I still think this concept would help to spice things up a bit by adding another layer of objective control to the map. It would also help players to understand how important it is to control the area around the Speed Shrines. I think their spawn rate would need to be lower than Ascension because we would need to have enough downtime to do other things (like ganking bot).

Sohleks1/7/2015, 7:01:13 PM1 votes

5 capping is bad how? It's not that common. If your team stands no chance why should the match be prolonged? If you lose a lot of points because you were shortly 5 capped but recovered you still have swing mechanics like a respawn advantage. It's subtle but does have an impact. It's an uphill fight from getting 5 capped but 5 capping should somewhat be rewarding.

There should probably be another minor mechanic to help the losing team though. I agree getting from 2 to 3 points is quite hard. Something to break the ice.

Last I played Dominion laning to get windmill was usually a fail strategy. You either gank bot or pressure the jungle and mid points to split and draw them out. Can't imagine why this would change unless everyone forgot how to play dominion.

Rebonack1/7/2015, 9:20:58 PM1 votes

Last I played Dominion laning to get windmill was usually a fail strategy. You either gank bot or pressure the jungle and mid points to split and draw them out. Can't imagine why this would change unless everyone forgot how to play dominion.

You're quite correct, laning to try to take Windmill is a fail strategy.

But in spite of it being a bad play, you see it happening time and again, especially when new players are involved.

Why?

Well, they see a lane, a tower they want to take, and immediately think of the sort of thing they would be doing over in Summoner's Rift. It's an anti-intuitive play pattern that sabotages new players when they're trying to learn the game. By placing a point that does NOT get sieged by minions in the middle of the map rather than at Windmill, it'll make it immediately clear to new players that Jungle control and ganks are the way to play, not pushing the lane.

This is a change meant to make ideal play line up with intuitive play so that new players can pick up (and have fun with) the map more quickly.

Dr Easter1/7/2015, 10:52:35 PM1 votes

Not a fan of making Dominion a new ascension... I think Dom is nice as it is, need a visual upgrade and a few changes (like a proper balance) but the idea of the mode itself is good enough. The main thing it lacks is a tutorial to teach players about what to do. I agree with you on the score and blind draft. Could and should be done asap. The current place of windmil is good to allow a better strategy about where the enemy is going, if they'll gank bot or try to go to other points. Placing it in the center would be bad for this part, would end up making the map just an arena. The idea of an extended jungle with another objective could make one of the teams op and impossible for the other to take it back, at the same time if the objective is not that strong people will just ignore it. I think as it is now they'd only need to remove vision from the area if the minions aren't there. Nothing is going to make people right if Riot does not invest in the mode anyway and that's why people get it wrong now. Another thing: allowing 3 points captured to damage the nexus is good if the team is made of early game champions. Gotta be fair for everyone if you change that I believe only late game champions will be strong. But I do believe there needs to be tools that could allow the loosing team to hold the game a bit longer at the same time the winning team could push to "stop" these tools, just like you can pretty much do in SR by playing safe. In Dom you have to push non stop, it's cool and all but I think having this option would make the game a bit more versatile

TerrifiedApe1/9/2015, 5:19:00 PM1 votes

It would be nice to see Dominion be just more involved than running around in ball form Rammus capping to win. "ok". Larger map, greater tower defenses and so on would be good, making it actually require some team effort to take towers so its not a case of who can get to the undefended turret the fastest. Slow down gold production a bit too, as it is currently, there is almost zero incentive to kill minions in Dominion accept if you are trying to out-push bot while the rest of your team goes running in random directions trying to cap the other turrets as fast as possible. Maybe even add certain turrets giving different buffs when in their control area, top centre can give a move speed buff, mid left and right give health regen and attack speed buff or something.

NorthernDruid1/10/2015, 11:13:48 AM1 votes
  1. should be implemented yesterday
j j1/12/2015, 12:51:27 AM1 votes

Delete dominion... bring ascension... Dominions time is over.

Rebonack1/23/2015, 4:01:55 PM1 votes

By the power of item 3345 I bring up this post!

We would love to have some input on the state of Dominion from you, ManWolf. Even if the state is 'we're not doing anything' it would be better than silence.

NoFunWithNunu1/23/2015, 4:06:26 PM1 votes

Im sorry dude, this game is focused on 5v5 summoners rift (or just rift since summoners do not exist anymore) so any other map gets no love from players and riot, check how many guys play other maps against summoners rift, i dare to say, all the 3v3, aram, dominion-only players, all together cant pair rift players

Rebonack1/25/2015, 1:14:30 AM1 votes

The game mode had quite a bit more support from players before, but Riot's constant neglect caused this problem to begin with. If they had started with map-specific balance right away and enabled ranked Dominion with the start of Season 2 things would have been pretty different.

Also!

I made a mockup of what a relaunched Dominion might look like!