A way to make domination mode balanced for all playstyles

[Sailor Vulcan]

Will domination mode be fairly balanced for all the mages after all? Or will there still be a strong bias in favor of mages with lots of creatures? I'm suspecting that aggro builds will tend to use more zone attacks and ways of dealing with multiple enemies at once, and will really try to stop the enemy creature sources, either by blocking LoS to them or destroying them. The problem would be that they would still need enough creatures to control the zones with the power orbs, so aggro builds would be in trouble since they generally don't pack that many creatures.

Assuming it's not already being implemented, my suggestion for making few-creature mages able to play domination mode on equal footing with many-creature mages is this rule:

Once it is captured, a power orb can never be under neutral control again. When a power orb's zone is under neutral control, that power orb remains under the control of the player who last controlled its zone.

I'm not sure how well this would interact with sslaks and the channel increase of power orbs though. I'm thinking those two things might be completely unnecessary though. If you want to increase channeling you can cast a mana crystal. If removing sslaks makes aggro op then just adjust the stats of the sslaks so that they're just weak enough that aggro can destroy them in the early game, but just strong enough that it can buy control some needed time for the late game when it will be ready to destroy them itself.

Thoughts?

[Shad0w]

One of things we looked at when my team first got this play more back around march was the fact that a solo mage could win this very quickly by killing the other mage. Then we asked the question why are you even playing a scenario if you can ignore the point of it. So as we looked over this more we had to make a choice do you want to allow people to ignore the scenario or do we want people to be forced to build for it. After going back and forth about this for a while we voted for forced to build for it. Yes it does make it very very hard for solo builds to win and in some cases near impossible but it is far more interesting. If you want to play all in aggro go ahead but if you lose tempo at all good luck coming back.

[Shad0w]

Once it is captured, a power orb can never be under neutral control again. When a power orb's zone is under neutral control, that power orb remains under the control of the player who last controlled its zone.

This would allow you to rush a point then wall it in and move your creatures to the next point while getting free points.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Um, what do you mean by "free"? You would still have to defeat the sslak. And how is allowing someone to rush a zone for its powerorb before walling in the zone an overpowered strategy? It would still come at a cost of fewer creatures, so if they don't win quickly the control build will overtake it with superior action advantage and destroy the walls, or simply send flying creatures over it. Not to mention don't sslaks hinder? Just make it weak enough that it usually dies in one attack (somewhere between 4 and 6 life). If there's the problem of taking control of two power orbs consecutively in the same action phase, why not make it a quick action to pick up a power orb?

[Wildhorn]

My question is... what happens if both mage get all their creature killed before someone win?

[Shad0w]

Um, what do you mean by "free"? You would still have to defeat the sslak. And how is allowing someone to rush a zone for its powerorb before walling in the zone an overpowered strategy? It would still come at a cost of fewer creatures, so if they don't win quickly the control build will overtake it with superior action advantage and destroy the walls, or simply send flying creatures over it. Not to mention don't sslaks hinder? Just make it weak enough that it usually dies in one attack (somewhere between 4 and 6 life). If there's the problem of taking control of two power orbs consecutively in the same action phase, why not make it a quick action to pick up a power orb?

We include the no tele or move rule for the sslak's for that reason. It still does not stop a player form using FP or tele and locking the other mage up at least now they can not move all the sslak's out of the way. Also remember in the first few sets of rules you could just kill the other player and win.  We recomended a two fold method to winning. You could either reach max points or most points when only one mage was left. This way it should force player to play the scenario.

Not to mention don't sslaks hinder?

When they did hinder it slowed down the play.

Assuming it's not already being implemented, my suggestion for making few-creature mages able to play domination mode on equal footing with many-creature mages is this rule:

Once it is captured, a power orb can never be under neutral control again. When a power orb's zone is under neutral control, that power orb remains under the control of the player who last controlled its zone.

As far as my free points statement goes. With the above wording I could take an orb and once it is under my control move all me creatures out to the next orb and still collect points for the first orb. Thus allowing me to wall off the orb so you have to commit to break the wall or flying over it. Unless you want to give me the free points.

[Shad0w]

My question is... what happens if both mage get all their creature killed before someone win?

Another reason we recomended a two fold method to winning. You could either reach max points or most points when only one mage was left.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Assuming it's not already being implemented, my suggestion for making few-creature mages able to play domination mode on equal footing with many-creature mages is this rule:

Once it is captured, a power orb can never be under neutral control again. When a power orb's zone is under neutral control, that power orb remains under the control of the player who last controlled its zone.

As far as my free points statement goes. With the above wording I could take an orb and once it is under my control move all me creatures out to the next orb and still collect points for the first orb. Thus allowing me to wall off the orb so you have to commit to break the wall or flying over it. Unless you want to give me the free points.

When you say free points, do you mean free mana points? I'm not sure I see the balance problem with this suggestion if the orbs' channeling bonuses were removed. Increased channeling really tends to be a characteristic of control builds, rather than aggro. So I move all my creatures out and wall off the zone behind me. I'm an aggro mage with only one or two creatures. A control build would want to bring out enough creatures to bring down the wall anyways whether there was a wall or not.

[Sailor Vulcan]

One of things we looked at when my team first got this play more back around march was the fact that a solo mage could win this very quickly by killing the other mage. Then we asked the question why are you even playing a scenario if you can ignore the point of it. So as we looked over this more we had to make a choice do you want to allow people to ignore the scenario or do we want people to be forced to build for it. After going back and forth about this for a while we voted for forced to build for it. Yes it does make it very very hard for solo builds to win and in some cases near impossible but it is far more interesting. If you want to play all in aggro go ahead but if you lose tempo at all good luck coming back.

Why not just temporarily remove mages from the arena when they die? Like say, when a mage dies, they are removed from the arena for 1 or 2 rounds before coming back?

[Laddinfance]

When we release Domination, there will be several variants to the scenario as well. Now, the standard Domination is more focused on having creatures out. However, there are a couple of variants that would help Mages who are not focused on creatures. So far in my testing, I have won with almost every mage. Now, I haven't had the guts to run the Forcemaster through the ringer yet.

In the end you're getting more than just the Base Domination scenario.