BEFORE YOU FLAME ME

I do not know many builds for the characters I've listed, so I've used random items, runes and masteries, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT HAVE I DONE WRONG IF YOU DISAGREE WITH THE BUILDS.

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Hey people from MOBAFIRE, it's Nerun again! This time I bring you a guide on our newest game mode, DOMINION!!

In order for you to win on this game mode, you WILL REQUIRE help from your team, so if you notice your team includes a troll, I'M WARNING YOU, THE QUEUE DODGE WILL BE WORTH IT.

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But before we start talking about the game and how to win, why did I list those characters?

- Those are the ONLY CHARACTERS, that will give you team a way to have vision on the places with fog of war (around the capture points and the center of the map).

These are NOT THE GAMBREAKING CHARACTERS, but they do offer a very great advantage when using their skills to place "wards" around fog of war, since a team that doesn't include these characters WILL HAVE problems with their map awareness.

The skills selected are the "wards" that each one has.

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An aspect of Dominion that has great impact on the gameplay is the lack of "phases" as we see in Summoner's Rift and in The Twisted Treeline, where you have a laning phase (by the early game) a gank and teamfight phase ( it WOULD BE the mid game) and a backdooring and teamfighting phase (the waaaaaay late game).

I'm going to be sincere when I tell you that I have absolutely NO IDEA...

But I could risk saying that you need a ganker / roamer, someone to solo the bottom capture points and three characters that will fight to get the top and mid capture points.

That team composition doesn't specify what roles they have to be though, and once again, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA, so I'm risking again: A would-be jungler (that in this case would be doing only ganks), an AD Carry, an AP Carry, a Tank and a Support. Yes, that looks like the actual metagame for 5v5 Summoner's rift, and indeed, it does sound like a VERY good idea to me.

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NOTE* I do think that it's possible to break the metagame on dominion by making fully tank teams or fully offtanks maybe, but it's a risky thing to do, specially since you need someone to take care of the bottom "lane".

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Dominion uses a different way to declare victory on an enemy team, you win by having more capture points than your enemy, thus, draining the hp of the enemy team's nexus. This makes the action be intense as both teams capture points around the battlefield.

The main thing you need in order to win in dominion is good teamwork "...if you notice your team includes a troll, I'M WARNING YOU, THE QUEUE DODGE WILL BE WORTH IT.", im serious guys, a single troll in dominion is more than enough for the enemy team to win, since everyone must agree to work in a way that each player is helped, for example, when an ally is capturing the point, check the nearby brush / fog of war to see if any enemy is around to try and interrupt you.

Now, what would be a good composition for a team? And what must we do in order to have a good start?

- Dominion has NO restrictions as in, which character should do what by the early 3 mins, in which both teams should capture their bottom and mid, leaving 3 characters to race for the top. THOUGH IT'S NOT NECESSARY, it's a good idea to leave the mid point to a character that didn't start his build from boots OR, to your tank / support who's going to the bottom lane.

So many times I've seen teams run a 4 top 1 bottom start... but none were actually smart enough to remember that top is the game winning point, so they would leave 2 people to capture mid or not even bother going to the top point...

Guys, just a note here:

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THE CAPTURE SPEED STACKED IS MINIMAL WITH 2 PEOPLE!!!

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So if your team is going for the top capture point, DO NOT use two people for capturing, but rather leave the one champion with less AoE to capture the point while the others take care of the around, or make everyone take care of the enemies first so you can fully stack the capture speed later. That way you do not risk an interruption from the enemy team, thus, an easy capture.

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A note on these few summoner spells for dominion:

Smite becomes VERY unviable
Teleport is unavailable
Revive becomes plausible
Garrison becomes available
Clairvoyance becomes slightly less viable

Why?

Smite is a spell used to kill neutral monsters / enemy minions, but since you don't need the minions to push to a turret on dominion, it's just not as useful at all.

Teleporting is a bad idea, since you would be able to interrupt an enemy's capture on your turret and make it invulnerable to any source of capture damage, thus, it would be a required spell for any team, and would make a loop with Garrison, since combining those two spells might just make any place on the map completely reachable and easily capturable.

Revive is a would-be noob spell, that indicates the fact that you're afraid of dying, in fact, you pretty much MUST suicide in order to keep some capture points, so it becomes a very good and solid choice for dominion, in which dying isnt the real trouble.

Garrison is a fantastic siege spell, it allows you to simply buff your own turrets or debuff your enemies' and potentially save or guarantee a capture. This spell, in combination with Ghost can be a VERY threatening way to dive enemy champions and leave after the capture point is kept safe.

Clairvoyance wouldn't bring much of a help, since knowing where your enemies are coming from is completely useless as you already have the vision of the outer ring (and you can see all unstealthed champions before the hit the capture point) where the capture points are.

Dominion had to be remade in order to fit the fast paced game mode, and so, Riot came up with a few new items for us to use! Sadly, they also completely removed some items, but I personally think that this makes the gameplay be a little more balanced, for example:

Sight Wards, Vision Wardss and all of the Elixirs were removed, NO SUBSTITUTIONS. The wards would provide WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to much benefit for a small map like The Crystal Scar, and the Elixirs lasted for a very long time, and would be a gamebreaking buff to skilled players. ONLY the Oracle's Elixir was transformed into Oracle's Extract, since stealth detection is needed in order to defeat some champions.

Doran's Ring and Doran's Blade were stackable, and thus, it would be an easy way to have a game won in dominion, thus, Prospector's Blade and Prospector's Ring were created, these items provide unstackable HP bonuses, making it harder for a character to acquire extra early game stats.

Banshee's Veil's shield passive is too powerful for this game style, as some long-ranged skills would be a viable form to interrupt capturing, and with this item on the enemy capturer, they would be able to finish their job without having to worry about Enchanted Crystal Arrow or Requiem, for example. To substitute BV, came Odyn's Veil, this defensive equipment is pretty much useful against AP carries, but it doesn't provide as much survivability as it's original.

Bloodthirster would become COMPLETELTY unviable, as the passive is lost upon death, and dominion is pretty much a game in which death can be well rewarded, therefore, it becomes a VERY bad choice, thus, Sanguine Blade was created to replace our lovely AD + lifesteal sword :D

Wriggle's Lantern has an active in which you'd be able to place wards... so imagine a team with 5 of those? yes, 5 wards when the map is already small, not really cool, so it was removed... In it's place, we now have the Hextech Sweeper, it reveals a place in the map for a very short time, also revealing stealthed enemy champions.

Madred's Bloodrazor was removed because of it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too high of a cost, and because of it's previous passive from Madred's Razors. This item was transformed into Kitae's Bloodrazor, an item with the same passive, yet a lower % damage, since the cost had to be reduced.

Entropy is an amazing item, that was implemented to this type of game, I don't see a reason behind it, but I'd say that this makes it easier for the ADers become a little more bulky, while still mantaining their high damage output.

The Lightbringer is another item from the royal AD + AS family, it's passive is very good for the corner cutters when you're an AD carry, as it will allow you to keep shooting regardless of the wall between you and your target.

V1.1 - Guide created, woot! 12 / 23 / 2011

V1.2 - Fixed a few typos