Riot, can melee carries have their own teambuilder/champion page role?

Mãge··2 votes·587 views

**By melee carry **I mean the likes of Tryndamere, Master Yi, Fiora, Aatrox, and others like them. I feel that they're more specialized in basic attacks and avoiding death and enemy fire than fighters, who prefer to tank and soak up some damage for their teams. How about Duelists?

Duelists are melee combatants that focus on dealing high amounts of continuous damage to individual targets in 1on1 situations, but can remain significant damage threats even in unfavorable situations. Unlike fighters, duelists sacrifice some utility and durability for ultimately powerful death-defying abilities. A well-played duelist can exert significant pressure on their opponents when they're alone, and can even ignore the threat of enemy turrets to bring death to their enemies. During the late phase of a game, duelists pose a significant threat to structures and can take them down swiftly and ruthlessly.

The reasoning is because most of these "fighters" benefit more from damage items than their fighter counterparts. They also tend to use more basic attacks and all have some ability to defy death without being durable. And the major difference between these champions and assassins would be the goal of the champion itself. For example, whereas the goal of assassins is to seek out weaker targets and quickly finish them off, the goal of duelists would be to seek out individual fights. This would allow you to balance and change the kits of these "duelists" to their strengths enough for them to warrant a new class description of their own (ex. Fiora's recent nerf was something that decreased her threat in a teamfight situation, but preserved her threat in a 1on1 situation; a further continuation in this regard would make Fiora's potential as an "assassin" go down when there are multiple targets, but increase her threat when there is only one). Doing this would put them on the spotlight as viable options for teams looking to pick up a champion that poses a significant dive threat during the early game and a significant split-push threat during the mid and late game. After all, one of your goals with season 5 is the addition of more options and strategic diversity into League of Legends, isn't it?

Thanks for reading.

1 Comments

67chrome1 votes

Melee carries are, for all intents and purposes, fighters.

There's clearly diversity in what a fighter can do, but the same can be said for support, tank, assassin, marksman, and especially mage rolls.

A mage like Swain is as different from a mage like Syndra as a fighter like Mundo is from a fighter like Tryndamere. Or a support like Leona vs a support like Sona, an assassin like Evelynn vs an assassin like Zed, a marksman like Caitlyn vs. a marksman like Vayne.

Also - being a solid duelist is one of the most prevalent thing that defines the existing fighter classification. Whether it's a fighter/tank like Nasus, Shyvana, Udyr, or Warwick or a fighter/assassin like Aatrox, Xin'Zhao, Yi, or Tryndamere - they win 1v1 fights. They often try split-push tactics to push their 1v1 prowess even further, so I'm not sure duelist would be the best term to differentiate a fighter like Darius from a fighter like Fiora.

Unlike fighters, duelists sacrifice some utility and durability for ultimately powerful death-defying abilities.

This is pretty much all that separates fighter/tanks from fighter/assassins in your definition of duelists. Tanky DPS vs. Tanky* DPS (*tanky with abilities for a limited time. And maybe durable from lots of life steal).

And when it comes to actually playing out - there's not a whole lot of difference between a fighter like Mundo or Nasus being really hard to kill via itemization vs. a fighter like Jax or Tryndamere being really hard to kill via an ability that makes them a super-tank for a set amount of time.

TLDR: The Fighter classification fits melee carries as well as the other 5 classifications fit their pool of champions.

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