The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Today, Jonathan came over and was like “Seriously, boot up LoL right now, and try Dominion.” That’s what happened. He coached, and I played, and I died a lot.

I was really happy when they announced Dominion. I mean, I like League of Legends quite a bit. I’ve put a lot of time into it and I’ve got what I feel to be my money’s worth out of the 30 bucks I gave them. At the same time, I was hoping they’d do something with it to revitalize it. The three lane thing is fine, and a solid, strategic game. But I wanted them to experiment more like with Twisted Treeline. I wanted variety. Dominion looked like it was going to be that, and I was all for it.

Let me just say that Dominion is fucking ridiculous. If you think normal LoL is fast-paced, this will blow you out of the water. It is a non-stop, relentless game mode where you are fighting other champions immediately. There’s no rev-up period. It’s just go, go, go. It feels extremely different, and that is cool.
Basically, there are five points on the map. You capture them by clicking on them, and your champion shoots some energy at it until it’s yours. If you get hit by anything, you stop capturing and have to restart, though it does keep your progress for a little while. The more points you control than the other team, the faster the other team’s life bar ticks down until one side loses all their life and dies.

They’ve done some super interesting things. Capturing a point turns off the turret while it’s being captured, making combats around points very interesting. If you can sneak one guy to capture while the rest are keeping the other champions busy, you don’t have to worry about turret fire turning the tables. If I had any sort of skill at all, it would really make those combats more dynamic and interesting.

I got trounced, of course. I played Alistar, because I knew him, but I just had trouble figuring out the new dynamics of combat. I’m so used to being support and focusing more on taking out towers than fighting other champions, but this is all champion-fights and I was really no good at it, much less while being as rusty as I am. I’m not quick on my feets. Still, I’m looking forward to playing more. This new mode is totally going to make me look completely different at some builds and really rethink things, and I hope they’re willing to keep mixing things up like this. I may not have the staying power of Summoner’s Rift (that’s always going to be the main draw) but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun when it’s out in the wild.