I like to just choose random every match because playing many different heroes keeps things fresh. Dominion seemed very well suited to that mentality.

It was fun for a while, but around 60 games in after I've gone up quite a bit of Elo, everybody literally just chooses the same 10-15 overpowered heroes every single match. Nidalee, Xin, Darius, Teemo, etc.

It just gets really stale.

i'm not sure this would be any different if you were playing ranked SR.

Just run a new account.

Draft queue is dead and there's no Ranked so no bans/counterpicking

Well, if you want to play other heroes, what's stopping you? So what if everyone else picks the same old thing, you don't have to.

If you want EVERYONE to play different heroes just do ARAMs. Dominion is at heart a competitive game type, same as SR and TT. MurderBridge is just there for funsies where everyone is forced to play with whatever the hell they get.

Nothing is stopping me and I do play different heroes.

It just sucks that nobody else does, and most of the heroes I end up with are a burden to my team because of the balance issues in this gametype. It's almost as bad as Twisted Treeline.

No ranked or draft means blind pick is Srs Bsns. Unfortunate, but that's the reality of Dom at the moment.

Alright let me break this down for you.

Every single new game that comes out has a grace period of people learning how to play the game.
After some time players learn what is strong and what is weak. The better players of that game will play what ever they want because they want to have fun - but because they're good they get good ranks for understanding basic game mechanics. This can be said about any competitive game.

So let's look at League.
When Dominion first came out, the most OP champion at the time was Rammus. His speed with Ghost was considered "broken" and "op". This lead people to believe Ghost was the best summoner skill to take. Teemo and Yorick were virtually unheard of in Dominion back then.
Let's take a HUGE leap forward. Now that the game has been out for over a year, players understand what champions work best for Dominion, so these players keep picking these champions because they keep winning.

These same champions will always be picked until one of two things happens.
One: The champion is nerfed because the are unarguably OP (see: Kassadin & Jayce, also nerf where?).
Two: Some other player finds out that the champoion(s) of choice are not as OP as one thought because of a counter they just discovered (See: Rammus vs Tenacity)

If none of these criteria are met, the players will continue to pick these over powered champions.
Players constantly picking these over powered champions are not good players. They might understand basic game mechanics, but if you give them a weak character they will lose every time where a skilled player will take the weak champion and make people rethink of they are UP or OP (See: Season 2 Karma)

Players constantly picking these over powered champions are not good players. They might understand basic game mechanics, but if you give them a weak character they will lose every time where a skilled player will take the weak champion and make people rethink of they are UP or OP (See: Season 2 Karma)

Those are a lot of assumptions you've got there bro.

1) On what basis are the people who pick OP champions bad?
2) On what basis do you think the people who pick OP champs are unable to play balanced/underpowered champs on similar levels to players who don't?

I play Khazix all the time. It doesn't really matter how skilled the person I'm playing against is. If I have Khazix and they don't have their own Khazix/Kassadin (and to lesser extent Teemo + Jayce + Eve), they are gonna lose, outside of a massive skill differential (which in theory shouldn't happen if matchmaking is accurate). Doesn't even matter if it's Sauron or *insert X high elo Dom player, if they get outpicked, they are going to lose.

This is partially what makes a lot of people play ops because skill can often get thrown out the window when you play vs these champions. Theoretically you need to be like 120% better than someone (for instance) to beat them playing an op champion, but if matchmaking is accurate, you should never be 120% better than someone (this is an arbitrary number).

So if you play the roulette of blind pick and you get matched vs more ops, you can have fun playing an uphill battle. All you can really do to maximise your odds is to play an Op of your own. That way, at least you have one on your team against X amount on theirs.

And I know that there are a lot of high elo players who rarely play the 'big 5-10 champions' that get banned in competitive play and still do well. You don't have to if you don't want to, but if they played those overpowered champions they could be even higher elo than they already are. Sauron would probably be 3500 elo, but he probably doesn't feel the need to do that.

--

In regards to fixing this issue? I don't think I'd get my hopes up for the next few months. Most of these champions are fun to play, and they win (winning is fun!). Some of these champions are probably impossible to balance, because of the whole SR thing, and Dominion's map design in general. For example, I wouldn't expect Kassadin to fall out of favor, possibly ever. Not even sure there could ever be an item to counter him that could be reasonably made, same with Jayce/Khazix. Furthermore, comeback mechanics in this game mode only help these champions, because all of these champions scale ridiculously well into late game because of their relevant damage/utility and mobility. Finally, I'm not even sure this is even a big issue in the grand scheme of things. Tournaments will have these champs on permaban, lower elos probably don't even care, or have their own problems to deal with.

Oh and even though Ranked mode would probably solve a large portion of this particular issue, we all know that isn't coming for a while too.

I wrote a lot, but I felt like getting most of my thoughts on the current situation of overpowered picks on dominion out. I don't really plan to write another wall of text on this subject on the near future anyways so may as well get all of it out =s

tl;dr, if you want to maximise your chances of winning : Play OPs. If you don't care, just play whatever. Also, don't expect any kind of solution to this problem for the next few months, because it's probably not coming.

In high elo, everyone is expected to get the basics of the game down. This is when champion selection really matters. This is why banning is required for ranked. There was a thread awhile back where Zileas talked about why Riot will not be increase the total bans for Season 3 be eight instead of six. He argued that banning is really about removing "S-ranked champions" from selection. He said that if people banned Anivia when the enemy mid is Froggen, then Anivia in the hands of Froggen is considered "S-ranked."

Also, someone did do some "kitchen math" and concluded if your goal is increase elo, using one powerful champion over and over again is the best way to do this. Examples being HotShotGG, Froggen, and other not-Dominion people I don't really care for.

In mid to low elo, champion selection is not as important as you think since players lack the critical thinking/quick decision making skill that are present in high elo. Even using the all-powerful Kassadin as an example. even he is weak against CC and burst damage since people know that Kassadin is broken OP so they use him. But they completely forget that it is Kass's mobility and infinite kiting ability that makes him powerful. They use Kass as a glass cannon. A good Brand can take down Kass pretty easily because Kass at lower elo will build glass cannon and refuse to run away.

So, I'll wait for Ranked Dominion before I start using those cheesecake tier champions. Until then, I rather use a variety of champions and have some fun. Learn the basics.

@Bma

Naotasan used a big generalization. But most people who only spam one OP champion will probably not learn the basics. I used to spam Jax all the time, I won a lot of my games and very few people could touch me. When I went bot, it was rarely fair. Even the mighty Yorick fell under the Grandmaster of Arms. Then I decided to stop playing Jax, that's when I learned I actually suck a lot at Dominion. I have lost bot lane in so many games, apologized to my team so many times, but each time I learned something from my experience and bring it to my next game. I now win bot lane sometimes, keep in mind that I have revive while the other guy doesn't. That's how much I suck at bot. If I used Jax, I could probably win over half of those matches.

But once you learn the basics, really get a grasp on them, then what Naotasan said is now irrelevant since it no longer applies to you. I mean, I am under the assumption that even if you do not get Kha'zix, you will still play pretty decent in your match. I mean, you have some metals that show me that you are a very competent player in other game modes. Which is very different from my situation where I stopped playing Jax and now I get beaten pretty badly at times.

Although, I have to say that at the end of the day, Dominion is just a game. A little competition is good for the soul, but the point is to have fun. I'm like a child, I get bored of the same thing if I use them over and over again. Excluding Wukong, but he's my favorite champion and I never get tired of using his decoy to trick people.