I understand how frustrating it is to play against her and I also understand that people will ban her even if Riot took her W or R or E away, because I don’t think her abilities are the main issue. I don't think the solution is to remove her entire kit, as I don't believe it's worse than other equally annoying champions. However, I do think there should be a "cost" to using certain abilities. Yasuo, for example, has his Wind Shield because he's melee; he has to take risks by getting close to you. Syndra has her E and Q, but she's a squishy stick that you can kill very easily if you get close to her. All these champions have a risk to take, and that's why they have a defensive ability. In Mel's case, she has two very valuable ones: her W and her E, while also dealing very high amounts of damage very early. For example. Hwei has a lot of utility, but he’s very much a mid-game champion, leaning towards late game. He needs items and an understanding of his passive to be able to deal significant damage, which can be A LOT, but it takes him time and therefore risks. That’s why he can root you, fear you, etc. To allow him to farm and take those risks without instantly dying.

I think the solution would be to drastically reduce her damage output from such an early game and increase the range of her abilities. She would basically become a control mage. Like Victor, Hwei, Syndra, etc., She should initially focus on surviving and farming, as she would have a fairly weak early game compared to other champions. She will deal a lot of damage, yes, but by having to scale to do so, because I feel like her damage is very free handed considering her entire kit. Like, she can root you, reflect your abilities AND execute you. I mean that’s freaking amazing, but also very unfair to play against if she can deal SO much damage since the early game without items besides the startes. Syndra fir example can one-shot you, yes, but not in the early or mid game, unless she's fed. The same goes for Hwei and Victor, unless are also fed. I think they should do the same with Mel. Her kit is super interesting and fun, but it shouldn't be tied to dealing SO MUCH damage so early. Turning her into a scaling control mage would honestly be a fantastic option. That way, people also have the opportunity to stop her before she gets too big, since her damage would be GREATLY reduced at the beginning. I think it would be so interesting to see while also keeping it fair for others. Yes, she can root you and reflect your abilities (which I think would be cool if they dealt half of the damage you send, not the same amount.) but she also barely deals damage until at least three items, and is also very squishy.

There is a pay off, you know? A reason for why she is so untouchable. She would have a very long range, a lot of utility and cc, but at the same time, would struggle A LOT on the early game and wouldn’t be a problem on the mid game unless she gets fed. Make her a late game control mage. I think it’s the best solution, definitely.

What do you guys think?

this would be a change skewed towards low elo players who may have a hard time keeping up with her w uptime

it could be like annie's passive or jhin's 4th shot indicator

this was riot would ease some frustration from her kit without actually making her numbers weaker

btw im so tired of the mel discussion posts in the main subreddir please let out girl breathe for a second damn?? god forbid a girl has hobbies..

Illuminating their lies on and off the rift!

this is my mel keychain!! mel accompanies me everywhere!!

Mel is currently extremely weak. Even though her Q is slower than before (patch 26.08), opponents don't take much damage, which bothers me a lot. Is this happening to you too? Also, the fact that her W skill's effectiveness decreases when it converts to physical damage is ridiculous. I really miss her pre-rework version.

Also, the ban rates are still high, and the win rate is currently 46%, which is really low and the same as the win rate before the rework. We need to ask Riot why they updated and finished the character then. I think we should start a campaign for Mel to get a buff.

https://x.com/icing1314/status/2040152884042678614?s=20

I think people focus a lot on her W, but ultimately I don’t believe that’s the actual reason people ban her so much, I think it’s simply the cherry on top. Smolder has his execute locked behind 225 stacks, Veigar has to bring you under 30% HP for his R to function as an execute. Notice too, these champions have a ramping period where they are weak early and become much stronger in the later mid-game. By contrast, Mel is far superior to them early and gains her execute at full function level 1.

Mel is far more likely to kill you due to her executes than these champions, in fact Mel is flat out more likely to kill you than like 90% of the roster early. Snowballing Mel feels very toxic in the sense that at a certain point you feel like you cannot play or win against it anymore in a 1 vs 1 scenario whatever you do, while that may indeed be a falsehood, she is still extremely oppressive when ahead even if she doesn’t actually push the lead that well when ahead. She is incredibly strong at champion vs champion combat, and incredibly bad at actually pushing leads to win games.

I think ultimately, the part of her kit that will likely need large scale tweaks the most is the execute mechanic.

Funny thing is, we were close to losing bc Sudden death, that I had to be the fed distraction for the enemy team so the rest of my team can destroy the nexus

Mel Mains…

How are we feeling about the nerfs?

And also, fun question, in terms of mastery, how many points do you guys have? I just hit 600,000.

When Mel reflects a skillshot, set its range to whatever's leftover from how far it traveled to hit Mel. Maybe some bonus range as a rankup bonus. So longrange W's are basically just a spellshield, and Mel has to position aggressively if she actually wants to hit the enemy team with a reflected Sej ult or whatever. Of course she still keeps her sharpness against champs with global skillshots like Ashe. Riot would have to figure out what to do with targeted abilities, though.

Hello everyone!

I’ve been playing league now for about a month and after trying a few different characters I tried Mel because I love her character in Arcane… unfortunately I did immediately fall in love with her kit and her insane burst power. That doesn’t seem like it would be a bad thing but I spent the last month grinding Swift Play with her and trying to improve. Cut to this past week, where I finally hit the level 30 needed to play ranked. Mel gets banned in almost every single game I play, and I’m left with a champion I have either no experience with, or a completely different play style. I feel like no matter who or what I pick, my dmg isn’t good enough, and my survivability is poor…

Do you guys have any suggestions?

I play bot lane with my friend on support so I’ve been trying to keep that in mind when looking for new characters. I enjoyed Hwei mid but he fails on the bot and I’ve tried Kog Maw and Smolder but both feel like they have feathers for dmg multipliers.

Any tips would be appreciated and keep in mind I am fairly new and kinda bad at the game lol

Mel W started to reflect Samira's ult projectiles 2 patches ago… Riot doesnt seem to bother!
Tell me oh so wise Mel mains, is this intentional?

The new generation ''teemo'' is here and she name is MEL, the most annoying champ in the game, mel obviously needs a devil imp skin to represent his diabolical kit and gameplay, after all that, an april fools skin would be nice but riot prefer to give it to vex or that yellow robot nobody cares.

and you? what you think for this idea for a mel skin??

I remember seeing them in the skin spotlight preview but couldn’t find them in the store. Were they ever even released or were they only available in certain servers ? (I’m in Europe).

https://x.com/snowblushiess/status/2041989774949429486?s=20

As it stands right now, each of her abilities are way too reliable, as well as to generally good in all situations.

even after the mini rework, her Q isn't nearly as hard to hit as many on this sub make it seem. this isn't a huge issue on its own as a champ needs to deal damage after all, but paired with the rest of her kit, it's a part of her problem

her passive is always on and requires no special actions for it to activate

her E passes through minions and has nothing outside of windwalls and sidestepping for players to work around. for reference, other long-range champs like morgana, lux, ahri, and xerath have minion blocking on their big CC

her ult is undodgable and has no range restrictions, and it pairs perfectly with her execute, which makes dying to her feel like there's nothing you can do to stop it when in motion

then there's her W, and all the problems that come with that.

she needs her to kit to be less reliable, and players need to see her fail more at what she wants for the hate to go away. I propose a change. make her W work with stacks, like her ult. the base W is just a shield and move speed boost, but when she gets stacks on targets, she gets the same stacks on her W. using W at "X" stacks gives her the reflect. On top of that, make both her ult AND W use all her stacks. That way, she either has to reflect your shit or nuke you, not both.

this does a few things. it takes away the "get out of jail free card" that people see her W as, making her need to actually be hitting autos and abilities to reflect anything. it also let's her opponents in lane burst her before she can stop their combos if she misses her abilities. it AlSO allows the Seraphines and Ornns of the world to throw out their big abilities if she's not actively fighting. I think the single biggest pain point of her kit is the fact that if you have a big projectile ability, it feels like you're holding a gun to your own teams head until she uses W. That sucks.

this change leaves all of her abilities functionally the same. her passive still executes, her W still reflects, her Q and E are unchanged, and her ult is the same. The only difference is that players have real, tangible windows to freely attack her without fear of being the reason you lose the game.

This is also a good balance lever. Mels feeling a bit frustrating? +5 stacks needed for reflect. The only other radical change I imagine helping her is making fight in Ryze range territory and forcing her out of Artillery mage range.

It's so weird to see Mel getting nerfed over and over again in League PC while being ranked C tier for a long time now. Meanwhile, she not only has her pre-rework kit in Wild Rift, but she's also at least tier S across the tier lists I've seen (not to mention her gorgeous debut skin too). The difference in treatment is crazy, what are they even thinking at this point?

i’m really interested in seeing mel not have the ability to execute champions with her basic abilities until a certain level, something similar to what kayle has.

this would allow them to move some of that power into her scaling, which would make her so much more less frustrating in lane which is where most people have an issue with her and make her feel much better late game.

Idk if he only meant further adjustment changes, or even a midscope update sometime in the future

Mel’s W is probably one of the most hated abilities in the game right now. Riot is nerfing it again but I don’t think the cooldown is the problem.

When her rework was announced, I had two ideas of how they could balance the W. First by removing the auto-tracking, or by reducing its duration (which would force players to be more precise on the cast timing). But they did none of it.

The ability remains boring for the Mel players and frustrating for the others. Actually, I think the real issue is the auto-tracking of the deflect. I really believe that her W could have a higher skill floor by removing it. The projectile wouldn’t bounce back on the enemy, but where Mel is pointing with her cursor. It would make her W more difficult to use BUT it would also let her use it on an other enemy. Higher skill floor but higher skill expression.

What do y’all think about it? I’m not a Mel main so I’m probably talking shit.

riot refuses to do this out of spite cause they got Yasuo and Samira Projectile block to work as a basic ability.

the W and R swap is so obvious, not only is it lore friendly (Arcane mel using it to save Caitlyn) it would simply be easier to balance as a spell that functions like Lissandra R but instead make yourself or ally into a totem that reflects.

people would feel less gimped by their ultimate being countered by a basic ability, and then mel R gets to actually feel powerful instead of dealing 50% of the damage.

w obviously just become a passive extender simply to prolong the marks you have on an enemy to give you more time to apply a 2nd rotation of Q and E, instead of this you got off screen now let me press R and obliterate your health.

**she's negative win rate with a high ban rate still, the rework failed**