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    The Art of Dominion - An FHL guide for Dominion mode

    The Art of Dominion


    You have played duels, you have played brawls, you know the art of battle system, you know how to take on one enemy at a time, now it's time to step up and get into the battlefield where swinging your sword nicely won't protect you from an incoming catapult strike and I'll tell you all you need to know to become a legend making your way through hell. This guide has been made by Free_Phalanx, member and admin of For Honor Legends with all the support and help from the rest of the admins of this amazing community.

    Check out our website and join the community! http://forhonorlegends.com/

    Come join us in our Discord! https://discord.me/ForHonor


    The basics of Dominion

    If you are a fan of this game whether you have played it already or not, you probably know the general idea but this section aims to cover every detail, so there might be some things that even fairly experienced players haven't considered about Dominion.

    Dominion is a 4v4 game mode where you need to capture and defend objective zones that will give you points over time based on how many of them you control at once and will also increase your points by 100 for each point you control, these are called soft points and you will lose them as soon as you lose the objective, when one of the teams reaches 1000 points the opposing team will start breaking which means their players won't be able to respawn until they rally which happens if they manage to bring down the enemy team points below the 1000 mark. You also get some victory points every time your team kills an enemy hero or minion. There is a 20 minute limit for the game, at which point the team with more victory points will automatically win.
    There are 3 capture points in Dominion:

    • A and C are placed in opposing sides of the battlefield, to capture one of these points you need at least one of your heroes to stay inside for 5 seconds (you will capture faster if more heroes stay inside), once a point is captured any friendly hero who stays inside will gradually heal themselves and boost the point which means that said point will grant more victory points per second, if two opposing players stay inside the capture point it will become contested which means the point won't heal the heroes inside and no team can capture the point until all of the opposing players are dead or have retreated from the point,
    • B is placed right in the middle of the map where the AI foot soldiers (minions) of both teams will fight each other in a stalemate until the heroes start tearing the opposing minions to pieces allowing their ally minions to advance further and capture the point once all the enemy soldiers have been cleared, after this the controlling team's minions will stay in formation and protect the point from incoming enemies. Point B will never heal heroes that stay inside and will never become contested or boosted. Waves of minions will spawn over time at each team's spawn point and start making their way to point B. Minions always die in one hit and don't deal much damage to heroes but if you get surrounded by them they can do serious damage, you also don't need to lock onto them to attack them.



    Different heroes, different roles.

    There are four different hero classes in For Honor: Vanguard, Heavy, Assassin and Hybrid. The class of the heroes that your team chooses will severely affect your performance and the tactics that you should use to win. I will now explain the four types and how they should be played to maximize your tactical utility allowing you to lead your team to victory.

    • Vanguards: As you have probably heard a million times, vanguards are well rounded heroes that can hold their ground in every situation, whilst this is true, there is one thing that is not often said and this thing is that they are the best heroes when it comes to kill enemy minions in a fast and efficient way thanks to their feats and AoE attacks which means they are great to capture point B. Having one or two vanguards will grant your team a big deal of versatility and make point B considerably easier to capture.
    • Heavies: The heavy class stands out when it comes to defensive capabilities making them ideal for defending ally capture points and withstanding a combined assault from several enemy heroes. A good heavy can stand inside a capture point that the enemy team is attacking and hold the line for ages which means that the enemy team will be wasting resources trying to bring the Heavy down, allowing your team to take this advantage to take control of the rest of the map and have enough time to send help if the Heavy needs it. The Heavy class is also the slowest type of hero so they take more time to move from capture point to capture point.
    • Assassins: Assassins are great duellists that can eradicate a single foe very fast so their main task consists in killing enemy heroes travelling from point to point. Their fleet of foot also makes them ideal as a quick response force for helping allies in need and capture undefended points. Their main disadvantage lies in their lack of reliable defence capabilities and low health that makes them vulnerable when facing multiple opponents.
    • Hybrids: Hybrids don't get bonus renown for any task in particular.



    Feats

    Feats are special abilities that heroes can use in dominion mode and the ones you choose will affect your tactical strengths. There are four different levels of Feats, the higher the level of the feat the more powerful it usually will be. Players will choose one feat of each level to use during the match. Feats are chosen in the character selection screen before the match and you will unlock new feats for a hero by playing matches using that hero.

    Whilst every hero has a unique selection of feats, some feats are shared between heroes of the same class or faction, meaning Kensei and Warden share some feats because they are both Vanguard heroes while Warden and Conqueror will also share certain feats because both are Knights. Feats aren't available to use from the beginning of the match since they are tied to the hero's renown level which ranges from 0 to 4 and determines the level of the feats that will be available to you, to level up you need renown which is gained every time you accomplish pretty much any task on the battlefield, from killing a minion to capturing an objective, but you will get extra renown when you accomplish specific tasks tied to the class of the hero you are playing. These class tasks are:

    • For Vanguards: Capturing objectives, killing minions and fighting multiple enemy heroes.
    • For Heavies: Defending objectives, reviving allies and getting kill assists.
    • For Assassins: Contesting objectives, killing enemy heroes and getting killstreaks.



    How to deal with multiple enemies


    There will be many times where you have to take on several enemies at once, when this happens you should always have in mind that keeping the enemies fighting for an extended amount of time will put the enemy team at a disadvantage since they can't control the rest of the map and your team will be able to use this to push your advantage, so remember that it's more important to stay alive than trying to kill the guys that got you surrounded so try to keep your guard up and block and parry as much as you can only attacking when you see an opening, once your revenge mode is ready you can fight a little bit more aggressively but don't get overconfident because revenge mode doesn't turn you into a god. If you are playing as a fast hero such as an assassin, you can also consider running away from the fight if you aren't confident in your chances at surviving but never try to do this if you are playing as a slower hero.

    You have to remember that this is a battlefield and not all the fights are going to be fair but also remember that you don't win this mode by getting more kills than the enemy team and it's all about being efficient so don't get frustrated and learn to enjoy the struggle of being outnumbered and the glorious feeling that comes when you are able to defeat the enemies that got you surrounded and thinking they were gonna slaughter you by yourself.

    Global Awareness

    In dominion mode, it's essential that you are aware of everything that's happening around the map and since all the information about the location of your teammates and the status of the objective zones is already presented to you, the thing that you are going to have to figure out for yourself is the locations of the enemy players at all times, this may sound complicated but you should get used to if you put some effort.
    Some of the things that should be always on your mind that will help your global awareness are:

    • How many enemy players can I see from my current position? This means that if, for example, you can see two enemy players directly and know what those two are doing you will also know that there can only be another two enemies in different areas of the map.
    • Are objective zones being contested right now? If an objective zone is contested, you will know that there is at least one enemy in said objective zone.
    • Did any of my teammates get killed recently? If one of your teammates just died that means that at least one enemy player has been around that zone not long ago.
    • Which areas of the map can I not see from my current position? If you can't see where the enemy players are that means that they can only be in areas that you don't see, so if you are standing on a vantage point you should be able to rule out most of the map to the point that there will only be a few areas that you can't see directly, meaning the missing enemies must be there.


    With all these things in mind you will be able to know with great accuracy the position of the enemy team at all times and act accordingly. It's important to understand that most of the times you won't have complete information about the exact location of some enemies and you must operate with small assumptions based on logic and past experiences but that's just the beauty of it. Of course, communicating with your teammates will always make global awareness much easier.


    Decision-making in dominion

    Possibly the most important and complicated part of Dominion mode, once you have a clear image in your head of your teammates locations, the status of all the objectives and the locations of the enemy players you are set to start with the decision-making part. Decision-making refers to the many quick decisions that you'll have to take during a Dominion match taking into account all of the information that you got from having global-awareness and applying it to win the game. Every time you go with a decision you must have the goal of that decision in mind which will ultimately always be winning the game, which means the priority is to get to 1000 points and then kill all the enemy heroes when they are breaking, these are goals that have to be accomplished by any means necessary.

    You should always try to see the weakness in the enemy's formation at the moment of the decision and the opportunities that would come from exploiting it, like sneaking into an undefended objective zone without anyone noticing and start capturing, then you would have to think if you want to hold for long or try to go for a different task on a different location and so on. It's also very important to always have the layout of the map in mind at all times. You should always be able to be realistic with your personal skill when fighting and how it compares to the rest of the players so you know which and how many enemies you can take on at once or how much help from your team you would need to accomplish a task.

    There are two basic stances you could take in your decision-making process and that you should always consider changing during a match depending on the situation. If you want to go for an aggressive stance you should be aiming at always be pushing your advantage non-stop, always trying to exploit the weaknesses in the enemy's formation and being proactive. A defensive stance aims to keep the advantage that you already have by defending objective zones that the enemy is planning to attack and controlling the map in general giving the enemy little room for action.

    In the end, there is no magic trick that you can use to win every game since every game is different, you just need to adapt to every situation in order to win, always be able to see the opportunities that appear during a match and being able to understand what's the best course of action based on the information you have. You have to understand that while you may have an initial game strategy there are so many variables in this mode that you have to be willing to adapt and change your mentality at certain points.


    How to close a game (Breaking and Rallying)

    So, we all know that when the enemy team starts to break you just have to kill them and that's it, simple, right? Not really.

    When the enemy starts to break the first thing you have to do isn't start chasing them like hounds, the first thing you have to do is defending your objective points that they could take which would allow them to rally, for example, if your team has 1150 victory points with 3 objective points captured that means that 300 out of those 1150 points are soft points and you could lose them, so if the enemy team manages to capture 2 of those 3 points they will rally, so the first thing is to not give them any chance of accomplishing this.

    The second priority is not letting the enemy team revive their fallen allies, to do this you need to locate where their bodies are and start defending that location as if it were an objective zone and bare in mind that players that have been executed can't be revived.

    Once you deny all the possibilities for the enemy team to rally you should just hold your ground and let the enemies come to you, in the end if they refuse to do anything they will lose either way due to the timer so there is no point in trying to chase them around the map.

    If in the other hand your team is the one breaking, your priorities will be the exact opposite, meaning that you will have to try to take objectives and reviving allies. Always have in mind that once the enemy has scored 1000 or more hard points there will be no way for you to rally so you'll have to act fast and be able to rally before that happens. If you can't rally yourself, you could try to get enough points by any means necessary to at least be able to break the enemy team giving you the chance of winning if you manage to kill all of them. There will be times where there is no realistic way of rallying because the enemy team is doing a great job of preventing you from reaching the objectives you need and you don't have enough victory points to manage to break them, at that point you have already lost the game and it's up to you how you wanna go out.



    Conclusion

    Dominion is a more complicated mode than it seems where fighting skill isn't enough if you want to win games consistently. The more important thing in Dominion is knowing how to adapt to every situation and being aware of everything that's happening but having a well balanced team composed of different hero classes is also an important factor. Don't go trying to kill everyone in the enemy team and forget about objectives or you will put your whole team at a disadvantage. Every fight you get into needs to have a tactical goal.

    I hope you enjoyed this guide and found it helpful in some way. I also hope this has allowed you to have a better understanding of how Dominion mode works and how to achieve victory. I personally love Dominion and it makes me sad how all that many people think about this mode is how everyone gets slaughtered by multiple enemies all the time while in reality is much more complex than that so I would love if this guide makes people feel a newfound love for Dominion.


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  2. #2
    Fantastic guide! I for one have learnt a lot and I'm sure everyone can take away from this and learn something new
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  3. #3
    "bare in mind that the point will still generate victory points for the team that controls it even when it's contested." Pretty sure that isn't accurate.
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  4. #4
    awesome guide free! love how deep you go into it.
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  5. #5
    Great job, nice guide !!


    But for me , the most important thing is "don't loose your head" because without it, that will start to be very complicated to make fast decision during fight



    GL & HF ++
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