Theorycrafting: What would be the effects of banning Govern

If anything I'd say it might be worth testing how the game would play out if Govern, Enchant, Reunion Kamut and the like would start at 0 stealth instead of +1.

It is appropriate from a canon perspective that Dominate be the most powerful discipline in the game. The two Methuselahs in the Chicago by Night* books used Dominate as their principal tool to manipulate events around them, followed by Auspex.

I know that the Dominate cards will never get rewritten, but I think the most appropriate way to have tempered the power of Dominate would have been to strictly enforce the limitation from the RPG that says Dominate may never be used on a lower-generation vampire (older vampire in VTES).

Examples: Deflection would only be useable on allies and vampires of the same age or younger. Redirection and Seduction would affect allies, but their superior version would only include vampires of the same age, not any vampire. With the idea, any bleed action or bleed modifier with Dominate would have the clause "if more pool is burned during this action than the number of this vampire's capacity, ignore the difference".

*(In case you haven't read one of the Chicago by Night books, it's like a game of VTES put into a narrative form for an RPG. Two Methuselahs, Helena and Menele, are in a jyahd against each other, each controlling other influential vampires using Dominate.)

IMHO, if we are picking a card to get banned, it would be Deflection. I can't really think of another card that deserves to either edited harshly or turned into recycled paper more.

People graft or crypt-select secondary vampires specifically to access that card. If that isn't a sign its distorting the metagame (and has done for a LONG time) then I don't think anything could be considered to 'distort the metagame'.

With respect to your OP, on which I don't have a comment other than to agree with what Ralf said, I think that changing Deflection's and Govern's 1 to 1 would go a LONG way to bringing these cards' power level back into line with their peers.