12 Tips for Dominating in Dominion

Now that the new Dominion game mode is out, I wanted to offer some general tips and gameplay advice for those just starting to duke it out in the Crystal Scar.

1. Your position when capturing a point matters. Try to avoid stacking with the rest of your team when capturing otherwise a simple AoE effect will cancel it.
2. If you’re on defense and you are unsure of where the enemy team champions are, stay near an area with speed boosts. This way, you can trigger the speed bonus and head towards the area where you feel you are most needed.
3. While there is a higher emphasis on champion vs champion combat, try to sneak in kills against minions when you can. Each minion is worth at least 30 gold. Pushing creep waves toward enemy points will help speed up the capture process considerably.
4. Don’t overload a point unless the speed is necessary. After wiping our 4-5 members of the opposing team, have one player capture the immediate point. The rest of the team can move forward and try to secure (or at least neutralize) other capture points.
5. Teleport back to base when you feel it’s safe to do so. Don’t fall behind on items. It only takes 5 seconds to go back to base so unless there is an impending wave about to attack your point, go back!
6. If multiple enemies are capping a node on the far side of the point, you can easily interrupt them by clicking the tower to start your own cap. This will ‘break’ all of the enemy channels  without forcing you to attack them all individually.
7. If you’re playing a mage or another ability-based champion, and you’re ambushing a lone defender on a point, throw out all of your abilities quickly, and then start channeling to cap the point. This instantly stops the tower from hitting your teammate, and it forces the enemy to stay on point to fight.
8. As long as your team controls more towers than your opponents, your nexus’ health will remain untouched. Don’t give up hope, even if you’re at 5 points! Just push for that three cap and hold it for as long as you can.
9. Mobility is much more important in Dominion than it is in Classic League of Legends. In Classic, being able to move fast is unhelpful if your team cannot keep up, while in Dominion, using your mobility to take undefended points can be game-changing.
10. That being said, Boots of Mobility are very strong in Dominion, especially when used on high mobility champions, like Poppy and Rammus.
11. Knowing where your team is and knowing when they respawn is vitally important when choosing to defend or assault a node. Sometimes you can trigger a lemmings scenario where you go in to defend a node against two enemies, and you end up dying just as your teammate arrives, so he dies just as the next teammate arrives, and so on and so forth. Going in groups of twos or threes is ideal.
12. Global and long range ultimates are great for interrupting enemy caps, so consider bringing along a Gangplank, Lux, Pantheon, Karthus, or even Nocturne, if you hate getting backdoor capped.