There’s a lot to get excited about with the upcoming Dominion game mode, but I’m excited for one major feature above all else – the lack of a lane phase. It’s not just that I think the lane phase has gotten stale, which it has, or that I don’t really like trying to last hit, which I don’t. I’m excited about Dominion’s lack of a lane phase because it means teams will be playing with one another more. Honestly, I think the change could be the one thing with a shot at injecting some positivity into the LoL community.

I’ve thought a lot about why the LoL community tends be a negative environment, and I think it pretty much boils down to this – for the first 15-20 minutes of a game, it isn’t a team game. It’s 3-4 solo experiences (3 lanes and a jungle) that have the potential to ruin the team part of the game that comes much later. In some cases, your teammates actually become your enemies. If bot lane feeds 5 kills in the first 10 minutes, it’s going to be a very tough game. Because games are fairly long, it can often feel like that feeding lane has just wasted whatever amount of time you spend in the game.

Dominion should remove or at least reduce that initial intra-team tension. From the very beginning of the game, players have to work together to succeed. The way that the map is designed, teams will still split up, and there will still be moments that it feels like your teammates have screwed you. I think the key difference is that you’ll be playing as a team from the beginning, instead of playing as 3 solos and one team lane.

To that end, I’m really pumped about Dominion. What are you looking forward to?