The Dominion Thread

[Piper Juunanagou]

Xin Zhao is awesome-sauce in this.

[John Doe]

I'm glad you guys had fun with it. I hope to be able to play it myself, eventually.

[Ashe]

Wish I didn't have to work today now. -_-

[Super Buu]

And I wish I wasn't jobhunting in a new city, miles away from my own compy, but what can ya do D=

[John Doe]

Finally got a chance to play Dominion. Hella fun, Heimer IS a great defender champ. Early on I kept 2 of their champions at bay for 1 of me, while the rest of my team got a super early lead. When the other team finally got their act together, it was too late.

[Waffuru]

I like it way better than SR.

[Piper Juunanagou]

I just like that the games don't take forever and a day >_> Even if you get stuck with teams that don't surrender or ass-hole pugs you want to make suffer through to the end, you only have to bear 10 or so minutes instead of 30+

[Kaden]

Definitely like it.

Easily my favorite thing about it is how different it is from SR. I won't say I like it more/less, but I had a lot of fun and it's a completely different experience.

[Vad]

I'm great with Ashe in dominion. So much fun.

[Belle Hibiki]

I like teamfights and am terrible at farming creeps, so Dominion is right up my alley.

Haven't been able to play it yesterday and today, though, because work has wiped me out.

[Sigfried Hunin]

Ok, so a pretty good meta has been established.

Basically two go bot, two go top, and one person goes through "mid" to grab THEIR first turret. Then all of the people sort of stick to their prescribed turret and when people go to STEAL turrets off of you, the two ADJACENT turrets come in to defend.

Now, I'm not a big fan of this. When you have TWO people leave their turrets to defend ONE you've lost point advantage when the other team takes them off of you.

Ok, now here's the next bit: You only really have to hold THREE of FIVE. So you keep TWO people on either turret with one guy on the turret in the middle, and then you can have defenders join the middle turret and still leave at least one person on the turret.

This is a defensive strat, and I'm not really sold on it. A good majority of the time when I steal turrets from people is when they move to defend, but then again if one or two people is on a turret they can usually hold it pretty damn well unless they dump at least three on it, in which case your outer defenders can go and nab up the points they left undefended.

[John Doe]

I disagree. I see one to bot, one to mid, three to top (with one through jungle). Top is the highest point of interest early game, for sure. Since the two closest points are basically give ins to the team, sending anymore than one to secure these points is a waste of resources.

A turtle strategy is very ineffective. Assuming that they are spiting themselves up to defend points, as well as the quest system that rewards teams a huge buff and chunk of Nexus health with a capture, then what's to stop the entire enemy team from overwhelming one point and capturing it? Nothing, really. Dominion supports constant movement of both teams. Trying to turtle and hold the points you have is like standing still in front of a tsunami.

[Sigfried Hunin]

I disagree. I see one to bot, one to mid, three to top (with one through jungle). Top is the highest point of interest early game, for sure. Since the two closest points are basically give ins to the team, sending anymore than one to secure these points is a waste of resources.

A turtle strategy is very ineffective. Assuming that they are spiting themselves up to defend points, as well as the quest system that rewards teams a huge buff and chunk of Nexus health with a capture, then what's to stop the entire enemy team from overwhelming one point and capturing it? Nothing, really. Dominion supports constant movement of both teams. Trying to turtle and hold the points you have is like standing still in front of a tsunami.

Well once again, you have a network of two/three to defend each point. If they have a substantial enough force to go and push that team OFF then they've opened up their other points, which you now go and capture, allowing them to take that point.

Trying to focus on top point really won't get you any further than focusing any of the other points. Let them take the top point and have their bottom right.

The point is to fluidly, smoothly defend three points and take advantage of the other team trying to use too many people to bump you off of yours. The most EFFECTIVE strategy against this Arathi/turtling strat would be to tag one of their bases with two, have the ancillary defenders peel off to defend it and then aggressively take their other, less defended points.

The problem is that if you have a team that is successfully moving people to defend in equal numbers on a point, you have the burly ass tower to support you and you're just gonna win that fight. That's why the sliding defenders are so important. People need to be able to react to defend and be able to see when too many enemies are at once point and react to take THEIR points.

It's worked out very, very well for a lot of people.

[John Doe]

Every time I've seen people try to hold the three points they had (which was every game I played in Dominion), they failed because we ended up overpowering one point (the quest/buffed) and proceeded to wreck them at every encounter afterwards. Even with a tower, 5v2 or 5v3 is still going to win in favor of the majority. Since all 5 are there, the capture takes 5 seconds or so. If the enemy team attempts to capture the points the swarm team left unguarded, they leave their own points undefended which then get swallowed by the now buffed swarm team.

I've won every game in Dominion so far by playing against this playstyle. The exact same thing has happened each time. I can't see how it works.

But the gamemode is still in beta, which means there is no meta yet.

[Anzekay]

I'm just gonna say that I don't think there is an established "best' strategy yet aside from "don't waste time, keep mobile and don't be stupid". I've had success with and against both of the basic strategies you two have mentioned, and against more as well, and watched even more games played by people who have done different stuff still.

We'll just have to see how the meta develops, and that probably wont even be til after it's fully released.

[Super Buu]

The best strategy changes very fluidly. For example, if there's a quest up and 3-4 of them are advancing on your point, stop grabbing that buff or trying to backdoor and DEFEND. Any OTHER time they're zerged up, it's very often a good strategy to split up and grab a couple other points, or have most of the team defend whilst 1 or 2 stealth-nab a point. Like SR, map awareness is key. You have to be there already when they try and cap a point if you want to defend it effectively.

But yeah, since it's in beta, it's very hard to organise any of these strats =P

As a sidenote, the music is so epic.

[Kaden]

As a sidenote, the music is so epic.

It really is. I was hugely impressed with the music each time we played.

[Belle Hibiki]

Just had an extremely silly match with mundo where I stacked crit and lifesteal and forgot to buy boots.

Somehow we still won.

[Sigfried Hunin]

Every time I've seen people try to hold the three points they had (which was every game I played in Dominion), they failed because we ended up overpowering one point (the quest/buffed) and proceeded to wreck them at every encounter afterwards. Even with a tower, 5v2 or 5v3 is still going to win in favor of the majority. Since all 5 are there, the capture takes 5 seconds or so. If the enemy team attempts to capture the points the swarm team left unguarded, they leave their own points undefended which then get swallowed by the now buffed swarm team.

I've won every game in Dominion so far by playing against this playstyle. The exact same thing has happened each time. I can't see how it works.

But the gamemode is still in beta, which means there is no meta yet.

Yes, I agree that there are certainly winning strats against this style, which I'mma just call "Arathi" style. I haven't really had much success with defending teams yet, but then again almost NONE of the teams I've played with have come into the game with a strat in mind.

My playstyle thus far has been, thus far, diversionary and capture focused. In a less organized game I usually urge people to not defend almost at ALL unless it's a 1v1 scenario. If there are 2 people coming for a turret, that means there's a space open to be taken.

that's MY "meta" right now. Your job is to occupy more people on their team from capping so that the rest of your team can cap, and to cap while a few members of your team are diverting.

[Kaden]

The biggest problem I've run into so far is people grouping up on a single point. You should never be moving in groups larger than 2 people for more than 10~15 seconds.

Yeah, great, you 4-manned a point and took it. We lost two others while you did that.