Why do you guys think Dominion is not ready for ranked? SR has dominant/autoban champions just like Dominion.

If champion imbalance is a main hindrance in getting ranked, what solutions can the forum here come up with get around this issue? Perhaps dominion only nerfs for specific champs ie Rammus powerball has an MS cap in Dominion, Poppy ult is only 50% damage reduction or susceptible to disables, etc.? What can you guys think of?

Edit

The discussion has opened on solutions to bringing the god tier champions in line. The issue at hand is that binary champions in SR with strong lane/weak late or weak lane/strong late just become strong all the time in Dominion. So far, we have ideas presented towards dominion specific nerfs for OP champions, as well as a some people opting to balance these champions via persistent, global auras rather than dominion specific nerfs. Post your thoughts on either side, or present a new idea, here.

Some have also mentioned that autobans aren't a reason for not having ranked. Let us know what you think.

A couple of people have meant that items are imbalanced, but specific instances have yet to be named.

Anyways, these are the developing topics in this thread. I'll try to keep the arguments updated as I can. The more discussion we can get, the better the brainstorming. This thread is for people who believe that Dominion is not in a good spot right now. In my opinion, draft times take too long, and there is no reward to work towards, and attention to it has steadily been dropping. We need a larger player base. Ranked would make a huge difference here, in my opinion, but you may also have your own solutions. Let's work together to find ways to clean up Dominion to make it the amazing map it potentially could be.

The more people that give their input, the more we show Riot that we care, and, hey, maybe your idea turns out to be a great one that will really improve things.

As long as there are automatic bans I'd say Dom isn't ready for ranked.

WW, Rammus, Poppy, Yorick would need some adjusting specifically for Dom. Everyone else is at least counter pickable to a degree. (Oh they picked Kassadin, k tanky mages only) etc.

Also there aren't enough people playing Draft Dom.

I played for almost 3 hours yesterday and it was the same 10-15 people for EVERY SINGLE GAME. High ELO dominion is so empty of people.

So you think that dominion specific nerfs for certain champs is a good solution?


Yeah, I (and Jabe as well, from his quote) think that ranked is something that will help with that. Which is why I want to find a way to break down obstacles to getting Dominion a ranked system.

No, Dominion specific nerfs are NOT a good solution.

From a user perspective, say there are players who want to play both modes, and have a favorite champion. It becomes very frustrating for the player to have that champion feel and play differently in one mode to the next.

The items, and Dominion buff aura are the areas that should be tweaked, if any. They need to be global changes to Dominion mechanics, not champion mechanics. A global movespeed cap is an example of that.

Also, to clarify what I mean by item tweaking, I don't mean specific item changes just for Dominion. If a particular item is causing an issue (like Bloodthirster or Warmog's) lock it out and create an appropriate replacement. Again, this keeps the user experience consistent between the game modes.

I can deal with champions being strong and weak its like that in every mode.

What i cannot deal with (in a reasonable fashion) is the impact certain items have on this mode when coupled with the map / aura.

There's also so map polishing that needs to be done in regards to pathing and capping. Anyone whose fought on or near the cap understand the frustrations of trying to click a target only to start capping and die for it.

Except SR has had plenty of automatic bans in its history as well. Reworked GP, reworked Shen, release Xin, release LB, the list goes on and on. The difference is, Riot generally cares enough about imbalances there to immediately patch or even hotfix the imbalance out in a timely fashion. Start caring about Dominion balance and patch out the problem areas, and give us ranked already.

I am not getting why since there are insta bans for Dom that it makes it unfit for ranked play.

I think for the most part Dom just needs more exposure, that way tweaks that may have to be made to the game mode itself can begin.

My problem is that I think it will prove impossible to balance the champs between SR and dom because the games play differently. I think a global movement speed cap for Dominion would be a good idea, and would solve the problem with Rammus. But there are other champs where a simple solution like a global aura won't fix the problem.

Poppy is the perfect example. Poppy is mad OP on Dominion, because she is crazy strong with a long duration invulnerability on her ult. Her compensating factor in SR is that her laning phase is weak. In dom the laning phase is skipped. Riot has made clear they won't compromise SR for Dominion, so how do you balance poppy for Dom, without changing how she plays in SR? There is no global aura that can be instated to solve that problem.

These are the kind of issues that need to be addressed for Dominion; I think it would be great if we could brainstorm some solutions to these problems.

Perhaps Poppy just needs a rework in general so that she more streamlined to be less strong late game but have a better early game. That would make her more viable for both SR and Dom.

What items are you talking about?

I don't understand why having "autoban" champs prohibits the ability to play ranked Dominion.

Even though I much prefer Dominion, I'm 100% fine with champions continuing to be balanced solely around SR. I would hate to see Rammus nerfed because his mobility is so strong in Dominion, for example.

But why not acknowledge that these types of imbalances are going to naturally occur and compensate by allowing extra bans? I feel like allowing each team one more ban than you would get in SR basically fixes a lot of the issues that, IMO, cannot be fixed without allowing balance changes to creep into SR.

Allowing 4 bans per team instead of 3 (or 5 instead of 4 when SR's ban limit is increased down the road) would do a lot to help this issue.

This same approach would also help Twisted Treeline as well, IMO.

Just some thoughts... I think trying to balance champions evenly in SR and Dominion is a fool's errand.

You hit the nail on the head. Champions that have weak jungle + weak laning are very challenging to perform well in SR despite how well they scale with items. They can be denied and shut down very easily and therefore, even though they would otherwise be overpowered, are allowed to stand.

How do you curb that for Dominion? In Poppy's case... I'm honestly not sure. The movement speed hard-cap might help, but ultimately, she's designed to **** on whoever she chooses, in 8 seconds or less, and that's not going to change. My solution? Build tankier. She's only going to take you out in the duration of her ultimate if you're glass cannon, and if you've built that way when Poppy is on the enemy team... heh... your loss, pal .

Kassadin is another issue. One potential fix is to adjust how teleports work. In other words, don't allow for the range of his blink to go half way through the wall, and map-snapping to take him the other half of the way. That would have a significant impact on his mobility, but what about the tanky riftwalk-stacking madness? Build more MR? Pack hard CC? Use CV?

Urgot, and the dominance of AD. Remove the armor penetration bonus from the Dominion aura, or significantly reduce it. Would a tweak to Urgot's range and lock-on mechanism severely hinder his viability in SR? To clarify, could you increase the range of Q slightly, and reduce the lock-on range to the effective range of the ability. I find I can lock-on and hit targets far outside of Q's effective range.

Also, we need a way to remove the 1-bot, 4-top meta. I can't help but think 1-bot was unintentional, because it's basically laning... which Dominion was trying to remove from the game. How do we eliminate the effectiveness of that strategy to encourage fluidity. Rearrange the map? Add a 6th point? Move spawning points so they are 180 degrees from each other on the circle, and slap a point in front of the spawn? I'm just throwing ideas out there.