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Why does Riot favor ranged over melee so much ... according to these boards?

Ofalling·11/21/2014, 3:11:39 PM·17 votes·2,640 views

I've played against a few Kalistas now. They've never won the lane. Sure, she probably takes a lot of getting used to (and I'm looking forward to finding out firsthand when her price drops), but she's obviously not the most broken thing since... breaking bread.

But what I'm curious about is the legion of people saying how Riot wouldn't dare give her passive to a melee champion because they hate melee and want melee to suffer and poor Garen is probably whipped to sleep every night for daring to not launch things at things.

Now, I agree, a melee champion with Kalista's passive would be cool as hell - mostly 'cause it's just cool as all hell no matter what. But what's the logic for why Riot apparently hates melee champions? Especially while Lee Sin (who is incredibly mobile, come to think of it) seems to be the most viciously vilified individual on the internet not involved in debates on sexism.

Similarly, in Dota, melee carries are a thing. In League they aren't. So obviously they do actually favor ranged to a degree, just in the way the game goes. I'd say probably for all the skillshots. But I still fail to see what they get from, in this narrative, deliberately and maliciously punishing melee champions.

Riot, explain yourselves. Did the concept of melee kill your fathers? Care to comment on allegations that the only reason you don't kick puppies is because that's melee?

31 Comments

ValyrianBlade11/21/2014, 3:38:09 PM11 votes

It's because people like to complain. Melee is stronger, but ranged has range to counter it.

A melee carry can't really work because of our meta, not because of riot. When your carry needs to build full glass Cannon they're going to die fast. A ranged champion can deal damage from safety, the same is never true for a melee champion (excluding stealth). I'm no expert, have no idea why melee carries work in dota as I don't play it, but would imagine stronger (and cheaper) defensive items would have to become a core part of a carry's build if melee carries were to be viable. Introducing such items would just make tanks/bruisers the norm though here.

Sir ArmaMalum11/21/2014, 3:27:07 PM9 votes

The way I understand it's not that they hate melee's, but that melee carries are very 'slippery' in a power context. A small buff can make them dominating, and a small nerf can make them unplayable. The reason being their paradoxical kit requirements. You need to give melee champs a strong base kit to make up for their lack of range, or else they'll either:

A) die before they can deal damage

or

B) stay alive but not deal enough damage to be a threat

As such you need fighters to be able to both deal damage and take a hit for them to be relevant. This makes their kit some of the strongest in the game, and as such their power levels become 'slippery' and can veer out of control quite easily either by buffs/nerfs directly to them or a buff/nerf to another element of the game holding them back (i.e. a counter pick or item).

Also, keep in mind when balance is ever questioned it always completely depends on the skill level your reference comes from. Yi, Fiora, and Riven are easy melee carries in Gold and below but run into difficulty at higher skill levels because their opponents usually know how to deal with them at that point, just as an example.

Are there fighters that aren't in the best of places? Of course. Garen, Warwick, and Aatrox are example of fighters that could really use a gameplay update imho. (In Warwick's case simply from a design point not from a power level point). But that by no means equates to all. Renekton, Yasuo, WuKong and Riven are examples of fighters that have fine kits and power imho. So I completely disagree with your logic that "Riot apparently hates melee champions".

shppy11/21/2014, 6:54:42 PM6 votes

They're not 'deliberately and maliciously' punishing melees, they are doing so through of ignorance and bias.

Riot consistently fails to properly value the power of range and mobility (especially the combination of the two), repeatedly weakens defensive stats and itemization while maintaining or even buffing the strength of offense (which favors champs that get to draw their 'defense' from outranging opponents and therefore can commit more heavily to offense), and adds in or maintains mechanics external to champ kits that are implicitly favorable to ranged champs (such as adding Barrier and modifying heal, designing supports specifically for defending ADcs, allowing Red buff to deal the same damage for ranged champs and still slow, buffing Youmu's/Mercurial to full effect for ranged, allowing lifesteal and crit to function the same for ranged champions despite the significantly lower risk involved in using them, etc).

It may not be things they're intentionally doing, but the actions they take virtually all make life better for ranged champs as a generality, generally at the cost of melees, and either they don't recognize it or they just don't care. Hell, just look at the jungle changes; they've severely increased the risk to junglers and diminished jungler farm and ganking potential... a general nerf to the influence of junglers, a nearly-completely melee set of champs, and a relative increase in the safety net of laners, primarily populated by range. Will they recognize in the least that they've lowered the average power level of melees down even further with the changes though? No, not unless players point it out to them, because Riot has shown a range bias time and time again, and they seem incapable of recognizing it.

PentaSho11/21/2014, 6:03:59 PM2 votes

Kalista hard counters melee champions, but her 1v1 power against other ranged carries leaves a lot to be desired.

Wheatloaf11/21/2014, 8:43:55 PM1 votes

I don't really understand why people want Kalista's passive on a melee. Kalista has infinite dashes so long as there's a targetable enemy unit within 550 units. A melee champion would have infinite dashes so long as there's a targetable enemy unit within 125-175 units. That's not a lot of space to work with. They'd end up dashing to the side only to have to walk back farther to the person (which is, by the way, one of the reasons Kalista goes farther when dashing backwards; if she dashes back and whoever's chasing her can just switch targets, she has to either walk or Q back into range).

OblongOtter11/21/2014, 9:41:43 PM1 votes

TL;DR for you: People make a post complaining about how Kalista shows that Riot hates melees. Those same people then make another thread complaining about how OP Lee Sin is. They're happy about the Fiora Kha and Kat nerfs.

Seriously though, I had a Kalista go top. She got counterpicked by Irelia. Q and E seemed to really mess her up. Poor girl fed really hard, my heart goes out to that summoner who had to endure that.

The Soulforged11/21/2014, 11:30:51 PM1 votes

I'd say people don't like lee sin, because he's what a melee champion should be, and other melees r underpowered ;)

Minrog11/21/2014, 11:59:13 PM1 votes

I don't care for either Lee Sin or Kalista. They both have too much mobility and it limits the counterplay against them.

Lee Sin being melee just means that he's there as the team kicker/bubble bot, after a certain point in the game. Also you need someone with Smite.

Melee has to be able to get close to fight ranged. I wanna say it started with Vayne, where the melee guys couldn't do that anymore. So the ranged guy can build 6 damage items (knowing the melee can never get close) but in order to even survive the melee guy has to build 2 damage items and 4 defensive items. At that point all you've got is a bunch of tanks that lack tanking skills. Dead weight.

And as for that bruiser lane, I don't there is one anymore. Top is shifting to a range character, you put your tank in the jungle or as a support and same setup mid/bot. This isn't due to Kalista, but from the jungle changes.

Fury and Emperor11/22/2014, 1:10:45 AM1 votes

I want a world where bruisers can go top, or mid, or jungle, or support. Obviously not all bruisers will be able to do all of those things.

I also want a world where fighter, assassin, mage, support, tank can all go top, bring different things to their team as the top laner, and are strong and weak to different lane opposition. That's what I mean when I say "top lane isn't the bruiser lane" -- you can take a bruiser there if you want, but you can also take other things there if you want as well.

This will never happen because every lane would come down to matchup instead of skill.

Your Ashe goes mid and their Akali goes mid? GG, you lose.

Champions just aren't designed to deal with anything other than their own counterpart (this is also why champions going to other lanes tend to end up lacking counterplay in their new lane).

MrBuffington11/22/2014, 2:35:00 AM1 votes

I think it's an issue of sub-sections in the community; I'd say it's a mistake to consider a post, even with 100+ upvotes and hundreds of comments, representative of the community as a whole. Like you brought up, Lee Sin (and if I may add Yasuo, Fizz, Akali, old Kassadin) are melee champions that consistently get threads asking for nerfs; I don't think these are the same people creating threads about Riot's alleged ranged favoritism. (Indeed you get a lot of threads saying that Riot hates ranged champions since they gave Yasuo and Braum projectile shields)

If I were to assume, I'd say the reasoning is somewhat rooted in the mobility creep, which Rioters and players alike have agreed is an issue. More and more champions are gaining mobility, and more dated champions with little to no mobility are having more difficulty keeping up. With the mobility creep, however, ranged champions tend to adapt better than (or at least aren't hit as hard as) immobile melee champions. Ashe and Olaf both have little to no mobility, but Ashe has a bit of an easier time dealing with opponents because she has long range. Both have difficulties (and often receive threads or notice asking for buffs), but Ashe naturally has an easier time than Olaf since it's more difficult to kite ranged champions than less mobile melee champions (which should, imo, always be the case; ranged champions should have an advantage at range, melee champions should have an advantage in close range)

I wanted to make a minor correction and say that melee carries do exist in LoL; Yasuo, Zed, and Kha'Zix are consistently strong picks that see a lot of competitive play, outside of this are champions like Akali, Fizz, Riven, Master Yi, and Fiora, all of whom are very powerful and can single-handedly take over a game, especially when ahead (arguably as much as or moreso than many ranged carries).

I think too that this is partially a phase brought about by the current meta; ADCs are very strong right now, moreso mobile ADCs who have good ability to kite immobile melee champions (we just went through the age of Lucian and Tristana, two of the most mobile ADCs in the game, and while Tristana got nerfed pretty hard, Lucian is still very potent). Getting a super-mobile ADC like Kalista is icing on the cake, and probably triggers some bad memories of pre-nerf Tristana/Lucian where they could put out monstrous amounts of damage while staying out of melee range due to their mobility.

From my limited perspective, the meta seems to cycle like this; earlier in the year, ADCs weren't as powerful and more utility ADCs were favored like Sivir (I remember Sneaky playing Ashe as well), where they have tools to allow melee champions to engage on the enemy team (Olaf was very potent at this time since Sivir's ult gave him the ability to get onto the enemy team). I wasn't on Boards at the time but I doubt people were complaining about Olaf getting kited when he was able to run through a team with Sivir's help.

EDIT: Another contributing factor is how potent Ryze and some other ranged top laners are, which forces a lot of melee champions out of top lane (where ranged champions are brought in to deal with Ryze instead). Again this is simply a meta shift, brought on largely because a lot of ranged champions were really strong in top lane for a long time (ie. Ryze, Nidalee, Gnar). I don't think this was intentional; I can't really say about Gnar, but Nidalee was mostly played in mid lane as a poke mage, where Riot reworked her kit to force her to take more risks in melee form; this in turn (and her ridiculous AD ratio on Q) pushed her into top lane where she could again be safe while bullying the crap out of her opponent. Ryze is somewhat similar, I think.

Drunk Rummate11/21/2014, 5:34:20 PM1 votes

It's the sheep effect

Some people had a bad game against Kalista, or used theory (rather than experience and testing) to come to the conclusion that she's overpowered. They're upset and raging, so the sheep get upset and rage as a result. Monkey see, monkey do. The logic makes sense so they hop on the bandwagon. Very few of the people complaining have likely experienced in depth what they're complaining about, and I'd guess that a large majority of them have not played the new champion yet either.

LiveYiOrDieHard11/21/2014, 6:02:02 PM1 votes

Riot simply doesn't value range OR mobility high enough and they keep sticking it on every new champion they make... So they make everything else on the champion stronger than it should be because they don't think it's a big deal.

redniwediS11/21/2014, 7:05:31 PM1 votes

Funny thing is people keep mentioning Garen when talking about how Kalista is OP vs Melee, but Garen does very well against her in lane. He needs XP more than he needs gold, and Kalista can't seem to zone well enough while both farming and not leaving herself open to a flash QER. Those uncancelable auto attacks are a godsend to melees early on.