Can classic melee champs be stronger in lane than ranged champions?
Ranged champs already outscale them hard into lategame, why do they also get a free win in lane vs any classic bruiser or tank?
21 Comments
......
I don't even know how to respond to this thread.
You are aware that a) not all ranged champions outscale melee (I'd like to see you actually argue that Jax isn't incredibly strong late) and b) melee champs have inherently higher base stats
This thought has been plaguing me a year back. Ranged tops are the only thing I particularly care about in this respect since its so much harder to kill ranged champs with any form of mobility (Lissandra) as anyone melee who isn't 100% all in. Then you have someone like Riven who is all in, but has to burn up all her damage and defensive spells just to catch up and suddenly has no tools to actually finish the job once she has and is forced to get punished for it.
Bot and mid are completely different beasts, however. The shorter lane in MID allows for ranged to fight closer to their tower and get away just that much easier. It was practically designed for them. Bot also has a support who's sole job is to facilitate their adc's ability to farm and pour on damage safely from afar, which only becomes easier if the opponent cannot fight a ranged battle from the other side of some tanky CC support. Jungle is different too, because ambushes are far more likely if either of them knows what they are doing.
But yes pound for pound, melee should do much better in lane than any ranged opponent top if ranged champions achieve more late game or control the rest of the map.
Look at garen and pantheon, garen basically gets tons of speed and pantheon has a gapcloser. They can get close to ranged champions, take a look at katarina. She's not really ranged but for some reason she's OP, same with Ekko.
Most of the time picking a ranged top weakens your team comp...traditionally.
Gnar top is pretty dumb though, his ranged form is basically a ranged bruiser, and his melee form is a top-tier initiation bruiser.
From my experience, League of Legends is one of the few MOBA games that even attempts to make Melee a benefit over Ranged since they have much higher base stats usually.