Originally Posted by ActionButlerGO

EDIT 3: I'd like to give a sincere thanks to everyone posting in this thread for keeping the discussion on topic and civil. I had a question, you guys are answering it, and everything has been kept pretty tame.

So, while I'm waiting (again) for my data to process, I thought I'd ask the question that has been nagging at me for a while.

As SR players, why do you not like Dominion?

My primary thought is that, everyone here came here for SR. That was the initial draw so why switch now? If that is the case, though, I don't get why people feel the need to add such virulence to their Dominion commentary that I frequently see. When the conversations remain civil, though, I've heard a ton of different answers to this question, but the three that really floor me are poor balance, low skill requirements, and boring game play.

Poor balance is probably the most frequent, which I kind of get, but I still don't see. Lots of folks just disregard Dominion saying you only see Rammus, Jax, Akali, Shaco, Poppy, or Heimer over and over again because they are so OP. Well, until last night, I hadn't seen Rammus in two weeks. Jax has been a no-show for close to a week. Are they OP? Well, yes, if you know how to play them they are very easy to get a win with on Dominion. If you don't though, you become an instant liability. I've seen more people play Jax and Akali and end up with **** scores than I have seen end up carrying the game. Rammus is great for disrupting, but throw some thornmail on, take some CC, and he becomes a silly turtle-looking guy who just rolls his way into unwinnable fights really really quickly. Add to the fact that, now that we know that these are strong picks on Dominion, people are now learning how to fight them, so they do not run away with games nearly as easily as they are made out to.

Now... are they OP if the player knows how yo use them? Yeah, probably. But, is that not the case on SR? How many "Akali OP, nerf now", "Cait needs nerf now", "OMG Skarner godmode after buff" threads pop up on GD every day? So, honestly, what's the difference?

The skill requirement is, perhaps, the one argument that I can actually agree to. Is Dominion more casual than SR? Absolutely. Was it meant to be? ...Maybe? Is that terrible, though? Keep in mind, though, this is said without acknowledging the completely different skills required to excel in Dominion. SR demands last hitting, patience, coordination, good teamfighting skills, etc. Dominion requires the ability to adapt to unexpected developments, smart use of sustainability, tactical use of minion pushing, good teamfighting skills, etc. Does playing Dominion make you a worse SR player? Yeah, probably. I know I've had to get back into last hitting mode when I switch back to SR, but it has also made a **** of a lot better at teamfighting and adapting my builds to suit the situation.

The boring argument may be the one that confuses me the most, though. Now, take this with a grain of salt, since I'm new to the genre, but it seems that so much of the typical SR game is already decided before the game even starts that a lot of the actual game play is mechanical repetition. The current metagame seems to rule over every early game decision in terms of who to ban, what types of champs to choose, who takes what lane, when to gank, etc. I have, honestly, read threads on this forum where players have described, in detail, the first several minutes of completely hypothetical SR games stating that, that's how it would go because that's how the game goes.

That just doesn't sound fun to me. I understand that that is how some people here gauge skill, but I would, personally, much rather play a game where things are much more open to improvisation. The Dominion version of the above SR example is, obviously, four top (one stop for mid) and one bot. After that, though, everything seems much more fluid than the typical SR game. There are windmill pushes, bot pushes, ninja mids, and any combinations of the above.



tl;dr: Why do SR players not like Dominion?

EDIT: It hasn't been brought up yet, but, for what it's worth, I really, REALLY do like SR. It does have a more tactical feel to it, but I suppose I just see SR and Dominion as two games that compliment one another and not two that compete.

EDIT 2 (copied from page 4): Alright, from a number of the responses, a thought just occurred to me.

How many veteran SR players consider League to be synonymous with SR? As in, Summoners Rift IS League of Legends.

Perhaps this is my biggest problem since, being a new player, I'm looking at League as an umbrella under which there is SR, TT, and CS.