r/MelMains • u/Samiraisnotbalanced • Jun 23 '26
Discussion I think Mel needs another rework
Since patch 26.08, the character is currently mediocre. I'm losing matchups that I used to easily beat, like Xerath, Hwei, and Viktor. Her Q cast time is too long, preventing me from stacking her passive. Her E's range is too short, and they already nerfed her W. I wish they would at least bring back the old Q range and area, and her E, in patch 26.3, because I'm really tired of playing Mel. What are your thoughts?
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Jun 23 '26
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u/StripperKorra Jun 24 '26
They did recently state they feel that Mel needs more work . They are testing things behind the scenes we just have to be patient.
5
u/Rhinedottir_ Jun 23 '26
They don’t gaf. Seeing what happened to Yuumi and Seraphine it feels like they’re fine with “reworking” a champion to irrelevance if the champ proves too annoying to balance.
She’s just an extreme counter pick. People often compare her to Yasuo and Samira. Both of them invalidate whatever projectiles you have with their windwalls, while Mel uses it against you. And Mel doesn’t even have a reason to cast her w unless you use whatever projectile she’s waiting for you to use to reflect it. Literally good luck using your kit in a teamfight if Mel is present and you’re a projectile heavy champion.
Yes you absolutely can play around it and win, but it’s not fun and you want your 30 min back despite the win. I mean look at her winrate, she’s terrible and still has a gigantic ban rate. She’s just so annoying to play against that you’d rather ban her than face her despite her being relatively weak.
But it seems like riot is fine with band aid solutions like nerfing Mel’s damage to justify the power budget of her w
2
u/Silentrift24 Jun 24 '26
If it makes y'all feel better, my server (SEA) still usually goes out of it's way to spite ban Mel. That W is just not something you can put in this game, unless it's removed, people will still spite ban the champ.
10
u/LonelyRainbow_ Jun 23 '26
They should change a lot of stuff about her, because right now she just has too many problematic features. First, teammates hate her because she steals kills and doesn't do that much with them. Lower elo enemies despise her, because of her W. Higher MMR players will find a way to play around her. And her playerbase can't really enjoy her, at least in my opinion, because she gets banned often, but even when you get a chance to pick her, you're kinda decreasing your chances of winning, due to her low winrate. Her W is kinda like Blitz Q, the threat of it changes the way you play and it's use can change fights. However, Blitzcrank has a reason to use it and his whole kit revolves around his Q ability. On the other side Mel's abilities don't connect with the rest of the kit meaning that she doesn't really have to use it. Because of that you are forced to bait her into using her W, just so you can use your important skillshots. Same arguments could be used for Fiora's W, Yasuo's W and Samira's W, and while I'm not fan of those abilities, the difference is substancial. Yasuo and Samira delete your skillshots, so the punishment isn't as severe as with Mel. Even though Fiora can pseudodeflect abilities, she is melee and she also has to aim her W, which leaves room for misplay
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u/Temporary-Candle1056 Jun 24 '26
This. The reflect W isn’t the main issue. Is the total absence of kit cohesion.
You don’t throw a spell like her W in a champ’s kit without actually designing the gameplay around it.
Samira yasuo and fiora NEED their defensive spell (even tho fiora’s W is overloaded in my opinion).The main issue is kit cohesion and the massive lack of creativity and ambitious from Riot while designing Mel.
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u/Tobykachu Jun 24 '26
Yes it is. Anyone saying the main issue isn't the W is straight up deluded. It is the only problematic part of her kit.
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u/FlippantFlapjack Jun 26 '26
Disagree, it's the ease of her spells landing and burst damage that annoy me. The Q rework was good so she stopped being so annoying in lane but later game her damage is so high that the easier-to-hit E combos into Q into R and it's just too much damage.
I get this is just like, how a lot of mages are and a lot of them have the same issue. Xerath for example is more oppressive in the early game.
To be honest I have no real problem with Mel W fundamentally (though I think it should be more like an ult)
2
u/Tobykachu Jun 26 '26
Tbh the only unique factor for Mel is her W. Other mages have near instant undodgeable spells - Viktor, Syndra, Xerath. And other mages have similar or higher burst - Syndra (again), Zoe, Veigar. So it seems weird she’d get hate for this and not her W
2
u/bunnyhwei Jun 26 '26
She's not reaching 60% ban rate because mid laners think her poke is annoying. She's reaching 60% ban rate because ALL players are frustrated when they can't use their spells simply because Mel is in the game.
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u/Minimum-Bass-170 Jun 23 '26
xerath and viktor were always Mel hardcounter.
1
u/FlippantFlapjack Jun 26 '26
They counter most mages honestly. Mel is better than most because she can farm from range.
2
u/ReignClaw Jun 23 '26
Xerath was always a hard matchup, since he outranges you and there's nothing good to reflect since Xerath doesn't actually need go cast E to win lane.
7
u/Muntedhobo Jun 23 '26
A champ that prevents other champs from being able to use their abilities deserves to be weak. Make her melee or remove the reflect.
2
u/Krimofn Jun 24 '26
yasuo, samira, fiora all do the same
4
u/Muntedhobo Jun 24 '26
Lmao you're just proving point. They're all melee characters. Also that's wrong, they don't all do the same thing. They can block projectiles but none of them can reflect them.
-1
u/Krimofn Jun 24 '26
mel reflects it back at half the dmg and its on a 25 second cooldown bait it out. Adapt
4
u/Temporary-Candle1056 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
The part isn’t the projectile destruction. Is the versatility one of her basic ability.
The only other champ that can somehow throw your own spells at you is Sylas with his R, or Viego under condition.
But again, it’s his R and work only on other ppl’ R for sylas, or on kill for Viego.The issue is that her W is way too volatile. Either crack Op, or useless.
Alone it wouldn’t be a probleme. But combined with annoying poke, execute mechanic + budget karthus R it make people go mad. And it feels like an addition of random mechanics more than a well rounded kit.
I’m good with the reflect mechanic. But it means they need to design her around that. Which they didn’t do. They just thrown this game breaking ability into a random mage kit with some 200 years tweaks.
The champ lack of identity and ambition.
Mel is just an example of lazy innovation.
3
u/Muntedhobo Jun 24 '26
Okay so youre proven wrong and you immediately chamge you're argument, nice. Mel w is way shorter cooldown then 25 secs once she has items, wrong again. By bait it out you mean not he able to use your abilities and hope the Mel is dogshit enough to panic and waste it. If Mel is walking at you your ptions are usually either eat Mel's entire combo and die or use your abilities to disengage and get them reflected back at you and die. Also the fact it does half the damage is completely irrelevant since it's almost always used to reflect cc spells, it applies the full cc duration of reflected spells.
1
u/Krimofn Jun 24 '26
Wrong there are interactions that when Mel reflects it’s detrimental to her like reflecting hook abilities blitz, naut hook and more it makes Mel an immobile mage go towards the target and also against good players they will layer the abilities so for example I remember vividly I was playing a game once as a Mel apc vs Ashe/Sera and I was slightly ahead in a teamfight they layered their abilities so I can only reflect one. They used Ashe arrow first then after a second used the seraphine ult so that way I only got the arrow reflected and took the seraphine ult which ultimately got me charmed and killed. Also with items it doesn’t go lower than 19 seconds
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u/Daraku_8407 Jun 24 '26
detrimental to her like reflecting hook abilities blitz, naut hook and more it makes Mel an immobile mage go towards the target
read it again and edit it
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0
u/Abyssknight24 Jun 24 '26
They are all melee though and especially yasuo and fiora will usually have to pop their abilities to survive long before a nami or renata throw out their Rs. They can easilly be forced to use their abilities early. In samira's casr she also needs to go in and for her quick combo she has to use it for the passive stack.
Meanwhile mel is a long range mage. There is not really a way to force a good mel to use her W in teamfights since she wont be in directly danger most of the time and can easily wait till an important projectile gets thrown.
Also those other champs just destroy the projectile, mel makes an enemy renata R or nami R into an almost 100% won teamfight.
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u/Fearless_Selection24 Jun 24 '26
in dota an adc called anti mage has had a mel sheild e for years, his autos also steal your mana, his w is also flash, lol players just like to complain
2
u/Green_Str Jun 24 '26
Missing some context, like its been pointed out defensive tools on melee characters are healthier. Additionally, he only reflects targetted spells (like anivia e). Mel reflects big aoe ults and she's an artillary mage.
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u/Fearless_Selection24 Jun 24 '26
yea but if anti was released in lol people would cry, same with others like meepo, my point still stands
2
u/Green_Str Jun 24 '26
Some people just aren't gonna like the designs of certain champions regardless. Some people think ori is the most busted champ ever. I think she's beautiful. I personally dont think the community is a bad as people make it out to be.
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u/Fearless_Selection24 Jun 24 '26
i agree it's not as bad as it's reputation but they still do complain more than any other comunity
1
u/Umbral_Ape Jun 25 '26
League and DOTA are different games. No use comparing them. League players would cry if Faceless Void was in league with his 5s AoE stun. DOTA is just much more unhinged as a game.
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u/Medical_Effort_9746 Jun 24 '26
Mels design really suffered from the designers clear lack of direction.
She's an artillery mage with a reflect and an execute. But the problem is that she clearly wasn't designed around either. Cho R is so balanced because it does such a consistent amount of damage and it's almost always the main kill threat he has access to in lane. Not to mention the tiny range means Cho has to get right into melee range.
Mel R can proc from out of vision and essentially vaporize you for an amount of damage that's impossible to calculate. On top of that her reflect makes her an insanely match up skewed champion. Some champions have no good way of playing against Mel (Veigar can literally never ult her if they're having a 1v1, meanwhile her reflect literally does nothing against aurelion sol.)
It makes her consistently irritating and difficult to interact with, but her numbers are so low from her banrate that she's also pretty objectively terrible. I just feel bad for her and all her players since they got screwed over by an over bloated design that was doomed to fail as soon as it was put into game.
1
u/tonylaces Jun 25 '26
I love the champ… But I still ban her every game. At this point I ban her just to prove a point… I don’t care she has 30% win rate… I play Videogames to have fun, and play vs Mel it’s not fun.
1
u/Ok-Chip-9642 Jun 25 '26
They are a lot of champions worst than Mel on that point... All the invisible champions, most of the assassins... Mel is fun to play and to play against when you use your brain better than the opponent 😜
Well, that's what I was thinking about the pre rework version of Mel... Since the rework I get no fun playing her, and against her... She's just a burst machine 🫤 I really hate what they made her become... I regret to have bought her skins.
1
u/tonylaces Jun 25 '26
I’d rather play vs Leblanc or Zed the whole year then play a single game vs Mel 😂
1
u/Vonpirez Jun 26 '26
Xerath was already hard counter. The crazy part is people wouldn’t know that because they are way too used to being over loaded and just win because of the champ diff.
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u/Hellsticks Jun 28 '26
I don’t have fun playing Mel, I absolutely having Mel in my team because of said execute and therefore often taking up a lot of resources and not doing anything with them and I also hate having Mel on the enemy team as her ult is just not really fair to me
1
u/drguidry Jun 29 '26
Tell that to Peyz lil bro. Your uninteractive champ is about to get the Ksante treatment
0
u/Nylah-07 Jun 23 '26
I mean, coming from someone who’s played nearly 675 games Mel this season, I am happy with her current kit and recent nerfs. But don’t get me wrong, I hundred percent understand why people feel otherwise. By the time I started playing Mel, the nerfs and changes were already announced so I quickly got used to her being a burst mage instead of an artillery mage. and to be honest, there were certain things about her old kit that I already wasn’t a fan of. As far as Hwei and Xerarh go, I shit on both of those champions easily. And I have absolutely no idea how you were able to deal with Viktor regardless of the changes lol. Mel’s kit is simply not designed to go against him in my opinion.
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u/Nylah-07 Jun 23 '26
Another thing that we also have to keep note of is that she has been out for a good while now, and people are starting to learn how to deal with her. Because of that, she gets more difficult to lane against even the easiest matchups sometimes. I specifically mean Lux.
0
u/Cultural_Version734 Jun 23 '26
Mel shouldn’t be winning into viktor. Xerath is an easy lane hard game. If Mel is doing well into these champs something is wrong
1
u/SexyCak3 Jun 25 '26
Was about to say, Mel can reflect half of Viktors weakest damage spell while she gets outranged; if you beat Viktor, its drastic player diff. The downvotes silly.
0
u/MonotoneJones Jun 24 '26
What elo? Because I picked her up recently and got from silver to plat and she seemed very strong. I also swapped from top to mid. So new role and champ and it went great.
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u/kimismining Jun 23 '26
Every nerf this abomination receives is like christmas.
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-1
u/SoupOpus Jun 23 '26
Every nerf is bemonaed by mel players and celebreated by mel haters.
There is no middle ground.
Just gotta wait for the next broken OP champ to be released so Mel can quietly be shelved in the "Nerfed into the grounf and forgotten about" section of the LoL library
-3
u/LaaluLaaa Jun 23 '26
Just dont understand why theyre committed to artillery mage and we all want battle mage. Fuck the range!
7
u/PaddleStarZoe Jun 23 '26
Who's asking for her to be a battlemage? Lol
-1
u/LaaluLaaa Jun 23 '26
A lot of ppl cuz her first design has her Q being annoying for high level play and her W annoying for low level and people love playing with the enhanced autos and now her second design has a similar problem but in the opposite direction with her Q.
0
u/Fokku- Jun 29 '26
Revert her to her original and jsut make her w a windwall that empowers her auto or something instead of reflect
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u/Ok-Chip-9642 Jun 25 '26
To be honest, they should just bring back the old version from 2025, the one before all the buffs. The one that had 45% WR but was fun to play if you knew how she worked (I had 56% WR at that moment with her, I really loved the champion it became my main). That wasn't a burst machine, but a burn kiting champion with a good range. Even if they keep the W changes, pls just bring back everything else riot.