Questions:
1. Everyone is saying that you get as much XP from capping a portal as you do by killing the portal wave. Does this scale? What I mean is, if they have gaints / cata and you cap it, do you get the same xp as killing a wave full of giants / cata? Or do you just get standard wave XP amount?
2. You get xp for capping a portal. But a wave can be killed by 1 player alone, or the entire team together. Is the xp from a cap portal split 3 ways automatically, or does it go to the person who capped it? Also, if an allie is dead, and you have a capped wave, is it split 2 ways, or still split 3 ways and one split is technically wasted.
3. By capping a portal you can get xp. But, by killing grunts you can get XP and gold. If question #1 answer is that XP scales, then what would be the most efficient creep wave level to cap at for xp gain / gold loss ratio? Of course, at level 10 with giants cata capping is not a question, it wins games, so gold / xp is irrelevant if you can turn the tide of battle and win with a portal cap.
Theory:
Also, what is more important early game? XP or Gold? I go with gold, there's a bunch of ways to get xp, and a bunch of ways to get gold. Thing is, the more gold you have, the better chance you can get items / cit upgrades etc. that can increase your chances of accumulating more xp, but no matter how much XP you have, your gold rate is the same - unless you XP gives you a level up and you pick an ability that helps you accumulate xp via creeping with aoe etc. - except that will cost mana in most cases - and mana early game is hard to come by because you don't have proper helms - and helms cost gold
XP: 1. kill creeps (also gives gold) 2. cap flags 3. cap portal flag for creep xp (no gold).
Gold: 1. accumulate gold as gold mines "tick" increase by capping their gold mine flag / buying currency 1 (xp + gold) 2. Get a kill / assist on enemy dg (gold - I can't believe after all the games i've played that im not postiive if you get xp as well haha, inform me? i'm pretty sure it does but im not sure how much as I've leveled up after killing people) 3. Kill creep wave (gold + xp)
One last thing to consider:
If you cap a portal flag early, you still get xp, but you also give the enemy the ability to get XP when they recap it, whereas if the portal was never capped, then that's one less flag for them to get XP from capping themselves. Also, in most cases 2 players are going to be sharing a creep wave at one point or another. by capping a portal flag early in a 3v3 1 enemy can be in each lane, getting a full creep wave worth of xp (even if they are near a tower and can't actually control the lane itself) while 1 enemy recaps the portal and gets to kill an entire creep wave for gold + xp + xp for recapping his own portal. Meanwhile your team is sharing 1 portal wave worth of creep xp / gold.
Even without looking at the exact numbers, there's a high probability that capping a portal early is not beneficial. Unless the numbers (that we curently don't know) can cover for all of the disadvantages of doing so.
Food for thought