I ask as someone who enjoys playing swain, but who is pretty damn weak until he gets his builds established for mana and defence.

jayce, jax, eve, teemo, they start off op and don't really have to suffer through a weak phase. For games that last longer he can do quite well it seems but my team is often taken out well before he has time to develop...

if I am wrong explain why and what to do about it.

>jayce

Scales extremely well with AD

>jax

Has weak early, one of the best scaling characters

>eve

Again, scales extremely well with DFG and AP. Next to useless before 6.

>teemo

Needs ult and BFT to really get going.

I feel that the opposite is true. Champions with amazing late games tend to Dominate Dominion (haha, I made a pun...I'm exiled now, aren't I?). In Dom, you start off at level three and you have passive experience gain. In SR, you have the option of shutting down those champions before they can reach that "critical mass" but in Dom, you just have to delay it enough for your team to keep the advantage.

Plus, in Dom, I feel that bad early games are more forgivable compared to SR. Just because you didn't win Windmill, that is not the end of the game. You could do poorly the entire first half of the game but if your team gets their act together and properly coordinate then you can make a big comeback. Which is why "in Dominion, it's not over until it's over."

Edit: Also, I find that most of the champions you listed, I don't consider any of them having a strong early game. It's usually late game when they reach "critical mass" where they become a problem. Until then, I feel that whichever team in better position and better coordinated is more important...unless you're Blitz...

Practically speaking, you need both. A good opposing team will shut you out if you have a bad early game, and a good team will crush you late game if you utterly lack decent late game champs.

What Konf said ^.
Early, mid, and lategame focused champs all have a strong place in Dominion.

Swain in particular is pretty strong because once he gets the ball rolling, he just becomes an extremely hard to kill AP bruiser who dishes out a lot of damage while also having pretty decent cc and aoe.

Well, the thing is you have to play a bit more conservatively during the early-mid game.

Since you are weaker during those stages, you should just play it safe while you wait for that power ramp, unless the rest of your team is earlygame focused and you're able to dominate the enemy team that way.

If your entire team is getting slaughtered during the early-mid game to the point where you are getting 5-capped, it's probably not entirely your fault.

This is a common issue and one that is often observed easily through the importance of early game objectives such as the first windmill capture. Windmill level 3 is an interesting fight, depending on team comp, it can go many ways. You can have 5 minute stalemates or instant caps due to team comps that scale earlier then others.

Late game scaling comps are not a problem, tank comps with AD carries and mid - late game scaling champions can work. The plan with these comps is not too much dissimilar from SR late game comps, you want to stimmy the amount of nexus damage you take in the early game as much as you can and wait to outscale your opponents into the late game. It works, and its completely viable.

There are great early game Dominion team comps that want to dominate the 5-12 minute game, and garner enough nexus damage as they can. And theyre are comps that work better as they pass the 12 minute mark into the mid-late to late game and can simply outpower and outtank the opposing team into the late game.