How will general balance be affected? I mean, it's hard enough to balance 80+ champs for just one mode on one map (insert joke about how people hate Riot's balance/how TT is imbalanced), but to have to balance them for a very different mode seems almost impossible.

As an example, take heimerdinger. People know that he's not exactly the best pick right now, but he might be really strong in Dominion, since his turrets will help him deny enemies access to the control points. In this case, Riot has 2 choices:

1. Nerf heim's turrets so he won't have such amazing control, making him a weaker pick in normal games.

2. Buff him so he can be played competitively in ranked, but making even more amazing when denying area control.

Seems like quite a paradox. If any1 knows this, or if this has already been answered somewhere else, could you post a link?

Disclaimer: Im sorry If the heim example is bad, just the first thing I thought of. Also this isn't QQ about balance, just a legit question

Edit: not sure how fast these forums move, so im heading out while waiting for responses, sorry if i dont respond for a little bit

They've said in other threads, and in some of the press articles, that balancing is being achieved by the inclusion/exclusion of various items, and by some gameplay tweaks (they mentioned changing how armor & magic resist work, for example).

They also said that it's a design goal to make all champions balanced on both SR and in Dominion, and they've been working on this for a year now, so I doubt they're going to just launch this and then realize "OOPS, need to balance!"

One other thing to consider (note that comes from my understanding of the game, rather than anything they've explicitly stated):

Neither SR nor Dominion are won simply by killing other champions. Obviously, this DOES help to achieve the main goal, but even if there are a handful of champions in each mode that are a bit stronger/weaker than others, that doesn't make or break the match.

Personally, I'm ok with there being some characters (like heimer, perhaps), where it's just known that they're better suited to one mode than the other. So long as they are still viable in both (and not Eve status in one).

i had heard that there were new items for Dominion, but i didnt hear about taking some out. although, its not killing power im wondering about, its specialty power with denying area control. Although i guess considering how long they've been working on it, i imagine they will have figured out any problems with current champs, and are aware about this when the release new ones

Of course they're not gonna get it right the first time, as only a small pool of players have actually tested the map. When it goes live, people will learn the little tricks that make winning easy, and the devs will pick up on it.

Expect your balance changes after the Dominion patch.

Easy, they start making balance by maps instead of champions...

e.g. TT Heimer can only have 1 turret, that turret is 2x the strength
SR Heimer can have 3 turrets, turrets power split into 1/3.
Dominion Heimer blah blah blah.

I know they said they've removed Banshee's Veil (I guess the passive made it too easy to protect yourself while capturing?), and replaced it with something new. Have also heard that there are no wards, and the usual Doran's items are gone (possibly replaced by newer ones to reflect the higher starting gold) - that last one I've only heard from other posters, so not sure how accurate it is.

And you're right about the area control - usually when I think of people saying characters are imbalanced, I think to killing power. I could see somebody like Heimer being pretty good at area control, but I wonder how effective that would really be. This is all guesswork & theorycrafting on my part, but I'd wager that even if he can camp one turret really well, that puts his team at a disadvantage in regards to the other 4.

You can probably counter strong area-deniers with the Dominion versions of backdooring and split-pushing. Still, I'm excited to see how that plays out!