League of Legends Dominion review

Not only have Riot Games brought us a new map to play on, but have also totally revamped a lot of things to try and streamline the experience. One of the most daunting things about League of Legends is that when you die, it really matters. Not only are you not available to defend a turret or help out teammates for a little while, but the enemy champion gains XP and gold from your death. Thus resulting in anyone who is new to the game to be verbally assaulted for 'feeding' the enemy team. Dominion mode takes care of this problem in a few ways. Gold and XP will generate all the time, not just for killing an enemy champion. So if you find yourself in a bad streak of luck, you'll still be able to buy some gear and keep up with everyone else. And because people aren't constantly harassing you every time you die, you can focus more on *gasp* having fun playing a video game.

The style of the Dominion map is a big circle with five points for you to capture, the more quicker you damage the enemy's nexus crystal thingy. Occasionally you'll receive quests to caption certain points which will give you a buff and further damage the enemy nexus upon completion. Another welcome addition is the various health packs you'll find scattered around the map. Being out in the field with half hp is a little unsettling, but now you can just run over and grab some extra hp when you get the chance instead of having to bring pots or hearth back to spawn.

Another cool buff is a run speed increase. There's also several of these scattered around and really help in a pinch if you need to defend a point or help a teammate out who's across the map. As someone who plays the game very casually, I feel like this mode was made for players like me, and I really enjoy it. I just wanna hop in and kill some guys and capture some points and not worry too much if I die a few times in the process.

Oh, I should also mention that there's now a personal score which sums up things like enemies killed, points captured, interrupting captures and so on and gives your character a score based on several things like that. As someone who likes to play more of a tank class I really love this idea because I usually don't have many killing blows, but assist a lot, and this new score now shows that. All in all I think Riot Games has done a fantastic job with Dominion and I can't wait to see how the further improve the game in the future.