Xennith

@Vundal

Totally agree, some champions seem just stupidly good in Dominion, and can turn the game into a one-sided stompfest when played well.

Rammus, Poppy, Talon, Kassadin, Cassiopeia, Riven, LeBlanc, Ezreal, and Ziggs come to mind.

Hopefully more people start playing Draft pick for Dominion someday, so that we can start banning likely picks without having to wait through a 15-minute (or 3 hour, if you watch the Dominion High ELO streams) queue times.

I want Ranked Dominion so bad. ;_;

@Maseno

It's "a" metagame, not "the" metagame.

Yes, everyone does it, but that's only because it relies on a merely basic understanding of the gametype and keeps the strategic team organization to a minimum, sort of universally recognized level.

Note, this is not how the SR metagame works, and it will not be this way for Dominion forever.

There are a lot of really interesting potential Dominion team composition and distribution strategies that I like, and people have talked about extensively, but rarely ever see the light of day in solo-queue, as the drooling masses will proclaim "4 TOP 1 BOT" and never look back.

I look forward to when I get 4 good friends together to play Dominion in a premade, and we can actually try some of these possible strategies... especially the ones that make a team pay hard for following the 4T1B meta.

@Vazzaroth
While I kind of agree that MOBAs seem to cling to some old ideas like their lives depended on it, I do see some design merit to the idea of last-hitting being a useful and valuable feature to have in a competitive game.

If you didn't have to last-hit enemies in order to generate gold off of the kill, the money value of killing that creep would have to either be distributed based on presence (like EXP is) or based on simply whether or not you hit the creep at all.
The problem I see with this is that lane control through positioning and harassment are extremely valuable skills to develop because they allow you to -prevent- your lane opponent(s) from being able to effectively last-hit minions, which, if you are still able to last-hit, gives you a significant advantage.
It means that "beating" your opponent in lane, without necessarily killing them, but simply by forcing them not to be able to get creep score, can give you a solid advantage, and rewards skilled play, even when you aren't able to kill your enemy.
If simply hitting enemies at all, or simply being within EXP range, would merit gold off of minion kills, it means that you aren't as rewarded for pressuring your opponent out of being able to concentrate on effectively last-hitting, and it makes the laning phase even more boring.

One of the reasons the laning phase works the way it does is that the goal is for you to do as little as possible while earning the greatest rewards, use as few cooldowns, as little mana/energy, and lose as little health as possible while gaining maximum rewards (which means -only- last-hitting). Pushing the lane early, even if you are getting last-hits out of it, is dangerous for you, as you then have to extend out farther into the lane to be able to do anything at all, which puts you at severe risk of ganking, or simply getting bullied at a bad time and paying dearly for it.
If you had to do less to get maximum rewards, for instance just being present to get gold/exp, then the optimal strategy would be to literally do nothing to put yourself at risk until you are farmed... and that's boring.

@gandales

Ultimately, the idea of "worlds" being floating hunks of rock that drift through physical space in star systems and galaxies is a concept that is most suited to Assiah.
There are many different universes that make up Assiah, the Champions universe being just one, and each of those universes will have their own galaxies and wolds, all teeming with various alien lifeforms, potentially including alternate reality versions of humans.
Most aliens in CO are the mundane, in-universe aliens that simply come from other worlds.
It is reasonably possible that you could have an alien that is actually an alien from another dimension (the Karkaradons are actually something vaguely like this), hailing from an alternate reality, but not being from that reality's Earth.

In higher planes than Assiah, though, rules start to work differently. There might not even -be- other physical planets. I'm sure the books have quite a bit more about them, so I'm looking forward to follow-up articles.

@Skyydragonn

I'm pretty sure Patrick has said multiple times that he feels the archetypes are not equal, even in this article. Some of them have things that they are good at, but a lot of them are just plain mediocre at best, or downright terrible (like The Specialist) at worst.

The problem with the underperforming archetypes is that there isn't much to do in examining them except point out their failings. I'd much rather see good archetypes, what they're capable of, and how they can be used to maximum effect.

@oddshrub

Oh dear reader, how you missed the point entirely.

This metagame is not cheating. You call it cheating because you don't know any better, and for some reason need to label the actions as something abominable.

"Know thy enemy" is not cheating, it is just being smart, and these two alliances played brilliantly. There is nothing in the rules against spying to get that information (especially before the tournament even began) or against collaborating with other alliances to stack matches. Do you honestly have yourself convinced that this DOESN'T happen in other E-Sports? Because trust me, it does.

Knowing your enemies' strategies is paramount to winning in any game, especially in E-sports. Although the players usually don't have to resort to spying in order to get that intel, learning the other primary competitors' strategies and knowing how to beat them isn't just a good idea, it's mandatory.

The simple fact is that espionage is a long-standing traditional part of the game. That these other alliances, especially veterans like the former champions Pandemic Legion, left themselves so vulnerable to such information gathering prior to the tournament is shameful.

Congratulations to the winners!
Keep making scrubs cry for me, gentlemen. It never gets old.

@Neofalcon

Ignore the downvoters, brother, you've got the right idea. Some people just aren't willing to accept that they're holding themselves (and their teammates) back with that "how dare you criticize my choices" mindset.

@Stormwalker
"But in the long run they don't do spectacularly better than those who play for theme."

That statement is patently untrue.
For one thing, a mistake that almost every single person who has ever denounced min/maxing has made is the assumption that theming a character and building for optimization are inherently at odds with each other. This is a fallacy, as it assumes that the act of "theming" a character has to take place before deciding what you want to build for. In truth, there's nothing wrong with planning out a build ahead of time, making a strong, mechanically viable character, and then finding a good way to logically theme the resulting combination of abilities. Sometimes it's hard to do, but there's nothing preventing it from being done. I for one have at least five characters built in this way, and they're all both fun to roleplay AND still back it up with strong mechanics in gameplay because I took the time to come up with mostly optimized builds.

Powergaming and theme are not mutually exclusive. Demonize the former all you want, but it's still the best way to get the most out of your character.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure that min/maxed characters do get more out of gameplay. Dramatically more, in point of fact. Being able to do things like Serpent Lantern on Very Hard or Elite difficulties with a crack team of optimized characters that are able to steamroll through mobs and survive the seemingly impossible situations that wipe most parties is not something the characters that sacrifice having a strong build for the purposes of staying within the confines of their self-imposed, pre-fabricated "theme" can boast.

In PvE and PvP content, optimized, min/maxed, or powergamed builds, call them what you will, always outstrip the builds that sacrifice gameplay performance for theme by leaps and bounds. It's been that way since before the game launched.

You can enjoy your themed characters as much as you want, nobody is going to stop you, but don't delude yourself into thinking for even a moment that you aren't going to be playing second-fiddle to optimized builds in demanding situations.

I would agree that Bobby is definitively neutral evil, who pretended to be LN or even NG for a long, long, looooong time.

Look at the old story of the Guiding Hand Social Club, too. Deep undercover in their mark's corporation for an entire year, befriended the CEO and got an infiltrator into the vice position by being his friend (or at least pretending to be), and all of it was just leading up to killing the CEO and his ship and walking away with the corp's entire collected assets.

Neutral evil is terrifying.

The improved character creation system is supposedly one of the first steps towards introducing Incarna. Supposedly.

If Incarna is the next expansion after this (which I doubt), it will probably come out 2nd quarter next year. If not, we're probably going to see it next winter, if at all.