The main issue I have with this solution is that TT is not supposed to be just a smaller SR. TT is about having a tight 3-man team. A lot of people play TT to have those smaller skirmishes: it's easier to keep track of all the action and easier to co-ordinate some really kool moves.

Think of that awesome feeling of your jungler ganking a duo lane 3-2 on SR. Pings, chatting about who inits, really paying attention to ur positioning relative to everyone else. TT gives you that feeling ALL GAME. Maybe for more advanced players, that feeling is acheived even in 5-man teamfights. But i think for many of us, it's the 3v3 that really makes TT what it is.

This is exactly what makes TT great, it's manageable communication and teamwork. It is simply impossible to communicate as clearly to 4 other people than to two. I've seen really cool gambits and moves that I know could only be made by a cohesive team.

defense might need a bit of tweaking, but I've seen dominion hurt squishies almost as much as tankydps, and feeling less rewarded for opting for defense instead of more damage which is hard on any carry feels trashy.

Plus there is no punishment in dominion for HP stacking, which would just become more prevalent when atmogs is so popular.

I agree with Azura.

Hmm... How about implementing a Diminishing Returns HP Aura. That way, Vayne can build a BV without worrying about inefficient gold use, but HP stacking looks less appealing to Tanky DPS. This, coupled with a %Pen aura, ultimately encourages Tanky DPS champs to biuld, well, as Tanky DPS, instead of stacking defense and tanking full focus for 30 seconds straight.

Now, this seems like it would discourage true tanks from building defense (or from being picked at all), but the key here is that tanks will still be able to tank a 3-man team with gimped defense stats; they simply will not be able to tank that 3-man team for unusually long periods.

added a link in the OP to another thread in the TT forums essentially discussing the same issues. Head on over and keep these conversations lively! Together we can get Riot's attention and help them make informed, player-centric decisions.

Buff or not, Twisted Treeline will always be unbalanced. It's fun and I love it too, but there's just too many ways to abuse the map. Blinks can go through pretty much any wall, dragon is much too easy to kill, the speed buff you get from Wraiths is ridiculous, and the mid jungle is too small which makes it that ganking wins games and not much else.

If you still think it's balanced, play someone with good self sustain, preferrably Tryndamere. Go solo top and see how ridiculous it is. You push like crazy, then clear the top jungle, come back, farm lane, repeat.

The whole map needs to be remade for 3v3 to ever be even close to balanced.

All the problems you describe here are either numbers that can be balanced, or features of TT that simply need to be learned. "Lane sustain and jungle-clearing time is important" isn't an imbalance in the map, but rather a meta-environment to be understood and played within. When I TT with my premade, we don't win be just ganking. We ward, watch the enemy positions, counter-jungle and time pushes accordingly.

What IS imbalanced on TT is that late-game tanky itemization is too strong for 3v3. Also, as you mention, dragon is a little to easy to kill late game (rewarding a slight position advantage with a secured dragon) and perhaps black buff is too strong. But unlike your assertion that things cannot be fixed, Dragon's eHP and black buffs speed boost CAN be changed.

Items that should be removed for Twisted Treeline:
* Warmog's Armor
* Rod of Ages
* Doran's Items
* Leviathan, Sword of the Occult, Mejai's Soulstealer
* Possibly Rylai's and Frozen Mallet as they stand.

Basically, nearly anything that lets you stack absurd amounts of health, combine health + damage, or allows you to snowball to unmanageable levels. These can be replaced with cheaper items that offer less health.

I honestly think this could be implemented as-is from Dominion, and we could tweak it from there. Probably needs lower healing debuff, and less free xp, but aside from that . . .

In other balance ideas - the map needs to be about 25% bigger to reduce the power of wall hops and blinks.

I like the diminishing returns idea for stacking HP, and having some minor buffs to penetration (ala dominion) would help as well, but as for implementing the dominion buff "as is," I don't think it would work. Mana regen isn't as desperately needed (the pace of the map, while faster than SR, isn't nearly as frantic as dominion), the XP gain would be too much (I think that due to the smaller number of players XP is gained at a good enough rate as is), and a nerf to all heals wouldn't be necessary. SELF-heals, maybe (lifesteal/spellvamp) - to try and hit those self-sustain junglers like tryn/fiddles that are just ridiculously powerful early game thanks to their silly amount of healing. Given the map, the blinkers like tryn/kass/ez are just going to have an advantage over others due to the vast number of escape routes they have anywhere on the map, but it's not an advantage that would win the game for them every time, hands down. It has appropriate counter-play that isn't as damaging as, say, the counter-play to stealth was on SR in eve's heyday.
It's a fun map, but I would completely agree that some numbers need to be tweaked if we want the meta to be anything but self-sustain and bruisers/fighters.

noooo, many of these items, rylais and mallet, help out casters and AD carries to survive. Snowball items are always a risk and I haven't seen them since.... a looooong time. Dorans can keep you alive if you fall behind on a caster or AD, in fact they're critical. Rod of ages is a caster item which tends to do poorly due to the need for early game power, what are you doing? Warmogs is the counter to pen-stacking no matter what champ you're playing.

I get that you want to change things, but I'm telling you, the items based around 5v5 aren't that bad, and casters and AD carries will burst through warmogs and armor, the only item I could see removed is atmas, due to the nature of building survivability and yet gaining damage.

The huge flaw in your plan, carries have lower base HP than tankydps, and this will be a bigger problem if you remove itemization routes to fix the issue.

If you have ever played a tank super late game, against an equally funded carry, you'd know, they will kill you through all your defense if they have time, and without true carry damage yourself, they will. Endgame damage outscales defense.