League of Legends: Dominion at PAX

Dominion is a new battle arena for League of Legends. In a nutshell, it features Capture and Hold gamplay on a new 5v5 map. It is also a faster, more frantic game that only lasts about 20 minutes, with the longest timed so far at 26 minutes. Dominion is a response to player requests for a shorter game as current LoL battle arenas can go as long as 40 minutes or more.

In Dominion, the map is a roughly circular with five capture points arranged at the points of a pentagon, namedWindmill, Refinery, Drill, Boneyard and Quarry. Teams respawn at the south east and south west, in between the towers. A circular highway connects the capture points and in the center lays the forest that is obscured by the fog of war. In a departure from other LoL maps, there aren’t any neutral monsters lying in wait for you in the scrub but there are health relics that can restore your health and mana, and a central tower that when tapped, provide buffs for each team.

The object in Dominion is to control more towers than your opponents. The more towers you control, the slower a timer counts down. The side whose bar depletes first loses the match. Tactics and strategy will count, not just plain which side and out-damage the other. Do you rush to the central tower to get your buffs first or start capturing towers? With only five on a side, do you have a couple people on the team disrupting the other side’s capture of a tower and the other three capturing towers?

Towers first have to be neutralized before capture, and any interruption can disrupt the capture. However, minions spawn between captured towers and will immediately rush to neutralize and capture the next. Minions are more of a tool than a resource pool in Dominion, but their use can be strategic as Champions can be interrupted by opponents beating on them or casting a spell on them, minions can only be interrupted by death and will stand there being beat on, intent on capturing a tower. So a strategy may be to capture two towers as quickly as possible and protect them and the minions while they capture subsequent towers.

Keeping Champions balanced with enough of a change to make a difference for the fast paced Dominion game, but not so that they play differently is a challenge for Riot Games. As Dominion is a much faster game, there are a bunch of tweaks to the game mode. There are changes in the store and some stat changes and buffs just for Dominion gameplay. Casters for example have their mana regen buffed in the Dominion game, however, to keep it totally transparent to players and for the Champions to still feel the same, there are only tweaks and buffs. There is no change for example, to what skills do. Also to support the faster game play, Champions start at level three and players with 1375 gold to spend in the store.

Riot Games is still in the process of making sure every champion is playable and viable on the map and yet still feel the same. Dominion will be a free download and available “soon.” As soon, I’m sure, as they feel it is ready.

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