Played a few games in beta and I noticed a trend in the games. No one was picking mages except me and I only ran into another mage once, mainly lux. In most of the games I saw the following line-up: Akali, rammus, Tyrn, Irelia, Jax a lot of Jarvans, garen, Udyr seemed really OP in Dom and many, many Xins. I think since Dom is so fast paced and since many mages have pretty large cool-downs the auto-attack of melee is really dominating while Mages have to wait a few seconds. Another stupid thing I noticed is that the towers do half the damage of regular towers in summoners rift. So if I am super squishy and expecting a tower to protect me I am out of luck because melee can easily just tower dive these towers where as in summoners that could mean death most definitely.

Yea it seems to be the opposite of SR. I saw Olafs dominating 0.o, Eves and Twitches making comebacks. Twisted Fate is crazy on that map! It's refreshing for those long forgotten champs. Haven't seen a single Riven, Talon, Brand, or Vayne.

I played Katarina. Twice.

There's no reason to go back. Even if I wasn't interrupted during my ult, I'd have to have full build and a ton of spell vamp to stand against an AD carry of equal power. coughTryndamerecough

Damage to towers doesnt last though. So poke to stop the cap then back off then poke again.

yea certain archetypes shine because of the nature of what they did.. all of a sudden the ap carry doesnt have level advantage... try to outplay me on SR without your ****ed tibbers bomb annie.

I played ryze. He seems to be the only one really viable because of his passive CD reduction and if you stack cd reduction items. Yeah, I chucked out **** like I was vegeta but only ryze can do that.

Had a kat on my team twice.. she owned.. Had a Brand on my yeam he owned.

Here's the thing. Pretend it's a team game. And don't go off solo with your mage.

I think there are definitely some other mages that are quite strong on Dominion as well, but they're not the typical SR mages that dominate. I'm thinking about champions like Leblanc, Kassadin, and Karthus (OK he can do well on SR too, but you have to be really good with him). Whereas some of the mages that dominate SR don't do as well on Dominion (thinking Annie, Malhazar, Brand, etc). And you guys mentioned Ryze, but he's more of a tanky AP carry in my eyes. Either way, I think he's definitely viable on SR.

Then there's poppy, who could be classified as a mage.

EDIT: Whoops, obviously you don't build AP on Ryze, but for some reason I still call him AP. I think in general I use 'AP' and 'mage' interchangably, even though they're not. Tanky magic DPS is what Ryze is, not tanky AP dps