Patrick Mackey

@c0gnit0
Kassadin is definitely more dangerous than Shaco, but like I said most characters are more dangerous than Shaco. Kassadin isn't quite as slippery as Shaco, doesn't give as much map awareness and can't place mez traps. Yes, Kassadin is disgustingly deadly, because his role is to kill people. Shaco's role is to be an obnoxious jerkface. He's really good at it.

@oddshrub
Definitely the nerfs hurt box stacking and AP Shaco is pretty weak. However, the Lulu patch buffed the base damage on shiv, and it kept its 1.0 AP and AD ratio. I personally would not play AP Shaco anymore but it's not a totally useless build. I like playing Trinity Shaco in Dominion, which gives me a lot of extra burst and keeps my JitBs pretty threatening. YMMV I suppose?

@epilepticemu
I don't really find that to be the case. If you won a fight at top with 3 people he can't ult in a way that can hit all of you if you spread out on the point. He's kind of weak as a ganker, and most good bottom laners can just walk backwards to their point, zone him out, and ping for help - assuming they can't fight GP and whoever the other bottom lane opponent is 2v1. A lot of good bottom picks can.

@(Unverified)
Mages are boss in dominion. Dominion is a game of small skirmishes, and a lot of those are won by poking, which mages are really good at. The "tanky dps" rumor is mostly something spoken by a lot of SR players that have no idea how to win in Dom.

I'm not sure I agree with all your picks for Dom. Amumu is... I dunno, kinda ignorable most of the time. GP is hit and miss too, though on the whole I think he is pretty strong. Alistar is good, but he seems kinda mediocre on paper. I'm always sort of impressed with good Alistar players because it always feels like he's non-threatening. Jax is bad in general, though he is better in Dom thanks to small skirmishes, he's still kind of a weak champion now since the rework.

That being said, there are very few actually -bad- Dominion champions. We always laugh when Katarina gets picked, but truthfully there are very few characters like that.

@(Unverified)
In SR, I've won a -lot- of games 4v5. As long as at least one of your team is much better than the enemy team's average, it tends to be more favorable. This is especially true in lower tiers if one player is good at 1v2 lanes and the enemy doesn't have a jungler.

By comparison, if someone feeds in SR, you basically lose, guaranteed. In Dominion, an AFK usually kills your team, heh.

@(Unverified) I don't think Riven, LB, or Ezreal are anywhere near as good as the other characters you listed.

Of all the characters in Dom, I feel the only real problems are Rammus, Kassadin, Cassiopeia, and possibly Ziggs. Everyone else is more or less okay. Having 30+ strong characters is fine, having 3 or 4 super dominant ones is not.

@EvilCartographer
I hope you don't leave. The only way Dominion will get official support is if you play. We've already had a number of balance changes that ARE Dominion-focused (Priscilla's, Yorick/Karthus nerf, Kassadin nerf, Rammus nerfs, etc.) so they aren't completely ignoring us.

@(Unverified)
STO is pretty pay2win. You can get cash shop stuff from dilithium sales, so you're never truly excluded from it, but the cash shop stuff is the best in the game, period.

@Zenn It does make it a little harder to kill the golem camp, I did forget about this change. I normally support as Sona or Alistar so it has basically no effect on me (other than some mana lost). That is a good point though, I haven't really attempted to do that camp with no masteries or a different comp. I did write this basically on the same day as the Fiora patch notes so I should have known, but I didn't put two and two together. Good to know, thanks!

@SnarlingWolf

The SC2 team is extremely large relative to the amount of content that is output for the game. Because of its esports impacts, any changes to SC2 have to be much more closely monitored. The esports scene heavily drives current SC2 sales, so it is important that community is well taken care of, while the feel of the low and mid-level play is not compromised. It's a hard balance.