Two Ideas to help Melees without completely fu**ing over Ranged
The top laner meta in the World Championship led to a rise in prominence of ranged champion picks in the top lane. While the data shows that melees are still the most popular champions up there (7 out of the top 10 are melees), a number of ranged champions has risen in popularity (
).
While daydreaming/being deep in though in the bath tub, I had two thoughts for items that could benefit the melees in the ranged-melee match-ups without utterly screwing the ranged champions over - after all, a good part of this forum wants diversity in the champion picks, as well.
First idea:
Some kind of active item that generates a linear skillshot, using the "initiating channel" animation from Dominion, properly paced to fit the auto-attack timing of the champion using it.
The active would only damage minions (as to not be abused as a harass tool) and feature a moderately low cooldown (some 20 seconds, lowered for nearby enemy minion deaths, reduced to 5 seconds if the shot is blocked by a champion). It could deal the user's AD + a part of his AP as damage. Also, it would have no upgrade paths.
This item would serve as a farming tool, to give melees a bit more tools to farm in an asynchronous match-up. However, it would be less useful/useless for direct champ-to-champ combat, which could be enough of an incentive that only those who really need a ranged farming tool would pick it up.
Second idea:
This is inspired by the King of Shadows from the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Tabletop. Basically, this character had an aura-effect that made him really difficult to hit from a greater distance.
Basically, it would be an item line that had a Mimic of this Shadow Cloak effect as a passive.
Unique Passive - Shadow Cloak
- Reduces damage from auto-attacks originating from farther than ~300-350 range away by a %-based amount. This effect works on-hit, meaning also affects Mystic Shot and Parley.
- Against champions who have an item with the Unique Passive - Last Whisper, the damage reduction is only half as effective (to mitigate the strength of the effect in the late game).
In-game, the effect would be visualised by a faint gray-to-black circle (think Rengar's Jump Circle when in brush) if you bought an item with Shadow Cloak. This circe around your champion is also visible to ranged enemy champions (and Gangplank), together with a distinctive visual effect (maybe something with a shield?) if the enemy's auto hit you and was reduced in damage (for visual clarity).
This effect would serve to protect melees somewhat from damage they would not be able to retaliate against, but would also allow ranged champions to close the distance if they wanted to avoid their damage being reduced. Optimally, the damage reduction's range would be set up in a way that allowed ranged champions to still kite the melee a bit if done skillfully, but not for an endless amount of time.
The effect would be on an item line that would not give Armor (no double-dipping!). Also, the effect should be somewhat out-of-reach for tank supports, at least until the late mid game.
What do you think about these two ideas? Bull? Workable? A lot of tuning required? Do they hit the purpose or can you see more potential abuse cases?
