I'd like for Frozen Heart, specifically, to be toned down. It's a purely defensive item that still increases your DPS dramatically through the 20% CDR, and the way the attack speed slow functions shuts down Ranged DPS and other autoattackers even harder than they already normally are.

Taking out Warmogs was fine since it was a little too ridiculous on Dominion, but it'd be nice to have an alternative item in lieu of that.

The other defensive items seem okay; I especially like the more offensive gameplay Veil provides over the SR equivalent.

Well...to be honest, there needs to be other defensive items...don't get me wrong, the ones we have are nice...however there isn't much in terms of variety, and it's hard to deviate from the normal items (Locket of the Iron Solari sometimes is just so subpar...Atma's just isn't worth grabbing without Warmogs considering you can get more AD and crit for something much cheaper or efficient)

That'd be one way to make Dominion more fun...some more armor-based AP items would be nice instead of simply resorting to Zhonya's or building CDR/Armor. There's literally no room to build defensively outside of those items, and in many cases can render CDR runes inefficient in terms of building items. For instance, if specc'd into any type of Cooldown reduction you can literally get all the CDR you need with Frozen Heart + some other item...

Of course it'd make Tanky DPS more destructive too, but imagine if they build the wrong high-end item...maybe I'm just speaking out of my butt but it'd be nice for some variety.

it would be nice to see hybrid defensive items as more and more champions do hybrid damage. The champions that do well seem to have built in mechanics that just avoid, ignore, or reduce damage.

I understand that defensive properties are valued heavily on Dominion. I'm asking if it has a positive impact on game health though. For example, my understanding of the Dominion tier list is that tanks and fighters reign at the top (Wukong, Rammus, Alistar, Yorick, Urgot), with a few exceptions (Janna, Kassadin). From a game design perspective, if tanky/mobile champions are precluding the viability of non-tanky/mobile champions, then items that boost these properties should inherently be limited to promote balance and variability.

That leads me back to my original question, which is whether high-end defensive items like Warmog's or Frozen Mallet are conducive to healthy gameplay.

Aegis.

Sunfire Cape.

Odyn's Veil.

There's quite a lot of big-ticket health items.

If you don't want defense, just don't upgrade til you have the gold to spare.
Catalyst, Giant's Belt, Ruby Crystal, etc..



You're just not thinking it through properly.

Sauron's item tier list is a pretty good indicator that they aren't *healthy*, but are required. You can't go around on a champ with a build that can get gibbed in 1-2 ccs - some survivability is necessary in order to skirmish as required. They make for healthy gameplay in that they promote longer skirmishes, but also determine who the most powerful champs are (that is, those that can buy 2-3 of these items and still be dangerous). Odyn's, FM, FH, Warden's Mail, and a single Aegis are all way ahead of other items, IMO.

For the record, Kassadin is built more or less like Ryze, so he's also tanky. Alistar is at the top because he shuts down popular tanky dps champions.

Hm.
I'll probably have to go with Infe eD here. Frozen Heart limits variety by existing. Tanky items are strong, quite strong. Right now the champions who can make use of tanky items better are at an advantage, so the variety some of us are discussing is item variety - everyone gets the same defensive items. Providing more item choices will allow people to get different defensive items for different champions/situations. Which doesn't really happen now.

Health items are somewhat built piecemeal, I don't see a problem with items giving large chunks of health, most people get 300 health from this item, 250 from another (Triforce, Spirit Visage, Aegis, etc.). There's definitely a lack of items to get when you really want to get health.

The champion variety issue is orthogonal, and the intersection with defensive items won't be changed, I suspect, should you add more defensive items, but maybe there'd be more variety in what is taken. To change the intersection you'll probably need to either remove/modify some of the existing defensive item choices, or change the champions.

Warmog's in particular is not a good choice, nor is simply adding a "big lump of health" item going to be. Should you re-add Warmog's to Dominion, most champions will get it. Just adding one big health item to the game-mode won't add much variety, it might be health instead of armour/mr, but it'd be the health item to get.
You should add several health items, so there'd be a choice of which to get. Frozen Mallet/Rylai are applicable on some champions, and Sunfire Cape is still an underwhelming item on most champions.

Maybe a item like Randuins that's tailored against AD Casters, seeing as they are considered op here.

Kassadin is basically built as a pure tank in high Elo, pretty similar to Ryze but needs even less AP to work. Nonetheless even if he couldn't do that he would still be pretty high tier due to his mobility. The problem is with his ult.

Warmog's... well, its rather ironic that it is unhealthy, being what it is. But yes, Warmog's was giving way too much health and regen for its cost, and once you have only 100 or so defense, stacking health generally is the way to go from there.

For Frozen Mallet, you're either building Phage to eventually turn into Trinity, or you're building it into a Mallet to combine with Atma's (for the champions that don't use Trinity). The reason why people don't go for Entropy is because Entropy is meh. A guaranteed slow versus unstackable true damage, with somewhat tradeable stats after Atma's... yeah. Mallet's not a problem, its just that the only alternative for many champions isn't great.

FM isn't really unhealthy for gameplay; Warmog's was. But, the real reason why many of the casters drop down is because AP stacking is so expensive to do. Mages really are designed around farming/zoning as a way to match their damage with the right clickers, and with equal gold most of the latter will win. The only way you can get around this is to stack MPen over AP and go with pseudo-tanky stats on a caster. That's why so many Dominioners want to see Haunting Guise get an upgrade like Brutalizer did a long time ago, because an overhaul on item costs for Dominion only is probably out of the question.

Would you happen to know if raising the CDR cap for Dominion was ever tried? I'm talking something minor like 50% or 55%. It would help the burst casters a lot more than it would the tanky derps, especially with the new Grail adding CDR.

Ah yes, AP scaling was one of the first issues I identified in Dominion. I'd like to address it at some point.

You're right on tweaking item costs for Dominion; it'd be wise to shy away from that avenue to avoid burden-of-knowledge issues and uphold consistency between modes. I'd much rather address it through tweaking the existing item set and replacing problematic items with proxies tailored for Dominion.