Hello all, I’m Ânders, a dominion-only LoL player, who mains AP and captains the DD-regular team Cloak n Dagger Gaming. I play in what I consider relatively high elo and am currently +62 games in win/loss.

I frequent the forums, and as I’m sure most of us regulars have, have noticed the crazy popularity of the Ranked Dominion Petition.

Let me say something that, given my stance on the issue may be confusing; this petition pisses me off.

What precisely do we as a community think even a million “/signed”s will do?
- But it shows Riot we’re a vocal community behind Dominion!
- New Flash: They already know that.

Instead of mindlessly writing single word text emotes, I want to create a new post that actually aims to get something done. I want to, instead of just spamming digital signatures, gives Riot no excuse not to give us what we want.

How about instead of saying “just give us Ranked Dom!!” we say “this is how you make ranked dom, now make it.”

I’m talking an expansive collaboration by us, the community of dominion, using our first hand expertise on the gametype, to tell riot exactly what they need to do to make ranked dominion.

I’m not talking about BS unrealistic posts, I’m talking serious, no frill suggestions;

How many bans? 6? 8? 10? 12? why?

Who needs balancing before Ranked Dom and how do we do it without breaking them in SR? Could we introduce specific debuffs that are applied to certain champions when they’re picked for Dominion? How could we make those debuffs apparent enough not to confuse SR players? A display in champ select? A display in the shop? Both? More?

Do Summoner Spells need balancing before Ranked Dom? Which ones? How so? Why?

Does the Dominion Scoring system need a revamp before Ranked Dom? Should the introduce a scale that registers recaps at less point value than offensive caps? Should they weigh back caps more heavily? More lightly? Should they introduce champion kill weights that weigh kills as more valuable when within certain proximity to towers? Should they further weight that depending on the alignment of those towers?

How heavily will Elo be weighted with wins and losses? Do we want to keep the same one from SR given the length of Dom matches? How will this rate effect Elo fluctuation on a daily basis and how much of a stress would those calculations put on Riot’s resources compared to SR elo calculations? Is the comparative player base worth the comparative resource utilization?

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I think I’ve given more than enough food for thought to get us started here so let’s show Riot the real force and passion behind the dominion community. Let’s give them everything they need so they have no excuse any more.

Let’s get our ranked dominion. And let’s get it in a way where we’re proud of ourselves, because we know we were a part of it.

Thanks and Good Luck on The Scar,
CnD Ânders

Holy ****, someone who is trying to create a constructive thread and actually THINK about stuff instead of just asking "ranked dominion where?" or pulling an FDru and just whining about everything.

My hat's off to you, good sir.

Anywho, I think all draft modes, and not just Dominion need at least 10 bans. When I watched the World Finals, I noticed the exactly same 4-6 champions being banned/first picked all the time, and teamcomps were generally pretty stale, at least for the first 2-3 picks.

So yeah, at least 10 bans for sure.

As for some of your other suggestions, I'm fine with summoner spells for the most part.
Yeah, revive is freakishly powerful, but I like what it does for the game. It's certainly better than everyone running Garrison/Exhaust and just turtling on a point.

For champion balance, I feel that most of the extremely strong champs in Dom are also very powerful in SR, so no real need to worry about balance in that department.

The scoring system needs to be removed, period. It's just too inaccurate, and there is no way I can think of to properly fix it.

Let elo work the same way it does with all the other ranked modes. No need to fix what ain't broken.

I don't have any other thoughts right now, but if I do later I'll be sure to post.

I really like your rationale behind this. The "stale" quality of high level picks is definately something I find irritating. It's probably one of the things I value in DD tourneys because you can see any number of team comps from one game to the next and with the 10+ bans you even get the extra ban or 2 to put towards targeted bans which I think throws a whole new dimension into the pick/ban phase.

I agree with you here as well. As much as people like to rage about Revive... Revive is to Dominion, as Flash is to SR. The only difference is I think it's even better. Whereas in SR flash is a counter-climax mechanic, it avoids ganks etc and kills the excitement and potential for action, Revive in dom is the opposite. a close fight top get's even more pivotal and nail-biting when you are clenching your teeth over whether or not the revivers will get back in time to supplement the counter attacks or break the capture, IMO it makes the game better.

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I appreciate your feedback and your giving up the time to read my post, I know it suffers from WALLofTEXT syndrome.

If you'll humour me further,

You don't think they'd have to half the values at the very least? The way I see it, if your average player is running at +/- 12 elo (as they do in SR), at midrange, and dom matches average 16-20 minutes, you could nuke yourself 200 elo in 1 weekend day of gaming if you got into the wrong mindset and kept queing. I think the level of fluctuation would make Dom elo far to volatile and would sort of detract from it being a measure of genuine skill since it would be prone to such drastic shifts.

Thoughts?

It seems like a lot more people than I would've expected are voting for "<6, Dominion needs less bans than SR" would anyone who voted for this be willing to discuss their reasoning?

Not saying you're wrong, I'm genuinely interested by the potential rationale behind it.

I voted for 4 bans for each team totaling to 8. Even in Summoner's Rift I believe it should be 4 as well due to the increasing number of champion releases. For every 25 champions + 1 ban would be a nice proportion to progressively start.

In terms of Summoner's Spells, I believe they are fine as they are. Just how Flash is almost mandatory for Summoner's Rift, high elo players would argue that Revive is on the same level.

For balancing, I believe Riot does a heck of a job. Indeed, it obviously could be better as everything else in this world, but they do it quite well. Some champions have their lime light in certain spots over the others. Take Wukong for example. He is very rare in SR top lane or jungle, but in dominion he is quite a strong pick. To have number changes in mode can be quite scary for balancing, and in my opinion it as fine where it's at.

The dominion design itself is beautifully done in my opinion. From scoring to concept. The only slight bone i would poke at would be Death Timers fluctuating, and only slightly.

Elo system is fine as is. One Unit Vs One Unit. Every Limb on top, heart on bottom is the current meta. For now. Symbolically i like it.

All in all, Dominion Ranked please. Colorful. Adapating. SR is more like chess. I love the design as well, but i feel almost as if Humanity isn't quite ready to understand the beauty behind it either. Dominion, is about survival. We are doing okay at that.

Wow. I hadn't even thought about the death timers in Dom until you mentioned them. I find myself confused by them on a regular basis in matches. It would be interesting to see what the actual coded determinants for timers are.

I'm often dumbfounded by how they work and I think they could improve but I wouldn't dare poke at them until I knew 100% how they work currently.

Garrison needs to be looked at.
It has four* positive benefits when used defensively, and only one benefit when used offensively.
50% AoE Damage + Increased Attack Speed + Stops captures + Restores HP vs Reduced Damage
*(Because everyone takes the mastery point in revive, you also get one for Garrison)
An idea here would be to split up Garrison to have defensive and offensive areas in the mastery trees.

Revive could probably take a good nerf hit. I'm not quite sure where, but possibly change the speed mastery to increased HP and then remove the increased HP you normally get. (Just a quick idea)

The fountain lasers don't do enough damage. I've been dived on so many times while their player just tanks the turret. I've even seen some people do a lap in it as Hecarim and Rammus.

Now, my idea which I have thrown around a bit here and there with minimum response was that we create entirely new mastery pages dedicated to Dominion. "Classic" would have the current mastery pages, "Dominion" would have all new mastery pages. When you start a game up, it detects if you're in Dominion or if you're in anything else. If in Dominion, it brings up your Dominion pages. If in anything else, it brings up your Classic pages. What exactly is inside of the new pages is something up for discussion. Thats 90 things that could change and help balance dominion on its own.

Wise words, and a great idea.

I will start saying that I do not even like exclusive picks draft system.

1) I think Bans are also bad for the game in general. Why we have bans?
Bans are Aid-band fix for Riot or any game designer of games. If something is broken it should be fixed, not just add bans so you can temporarily ban the problem.
Giving more bans to the game is just telling riot is ok to Aid-ban fix the problem instead of actually solving it.

2) If someone has amazing play with a champion, the fact i just can ban the problem instead of facing it, seems terrible for strategy development, also terrible for spectators. "X have the best Leblanc ever,is amazing, sadly no one can even see it because if anyone suspects they are facing him or knows, they just ban it"
It discentivize really improving with a champion because if you become really good at it, people can just ban it against you.

3)I think players should be able to pick what they want as often as possible.

Let's say that there are a few champs that really break the game and we need some safeguard against that because riot will not focus that much interest i dominion, 2 bans per side allow the team that do not first pick to control the bans so they are not in a terrible position. Like today, I find the only broken champs are Kassadin, Teemo and Jayce. Second pick can ban Kassadin only, so if first team picks Teemo or jayce they can get the other. No matter the number of champs you consider "broken" second pick can always ban properly and be left with equal or more "broken champs".

(note this wouldn't even be a problem if there were NOT exclusive picks, but I guess that's a war is lost at this point)

So for all those reasons I think 2 bans per side is more than enough.

Note*: I created a thread about "how to improve dominion" that was thought for ranked play.

You make some interesting points.

I've never really thought of garrison needing offensive vs defensive nerfs. That seems like a balancing of the specific spell as opposed to a balancing of the spell vs other summoner's though, at least to me. I agree that it is better used defensively than offensively but why is that an issue? It means that you have a much easier time defending, and are thus penalized if you have to go offensive (IE lost it with your huge advantage)... Just my thoughts.

I don't agree or disagree that revive could probably use a nerf but as opposed to where you think it needs it, why do you think it needs it?

I like your points about the fountain laser. I know I've been on both the giving and receiving end of fountain dives. But I almost feel like it adds to the game a little bit. If you have a mid cap, it's REALLY hard to hold without letting a slip through that can back-cap you. The current damage of the fountain let's you minimally dive and contain your opponents at least to some degree, but at extreme risk. Not sure it really needs a buff.

As for the mastery pages I have to be honest, I really don't like it. At that point you're looking at a complete redesign of the entire game type. Remember, we're looking for fine-tuning before ranked, not an entire redefinition of how the game mode works. I don't mean to shoot you down because I'm sure that it would be great for balance and, if it could be done in a streamlined fashion, would greatly improve the game type. But, as far as ranked dominion is concerned, I just think it's far too ambitious.