in order to be an effective melee adc you need: frequent ranged aoe damage and cc on a low cooldown, high mobility, and an ability that negates ranged abilities.
Yasuo is an example of how overloaded a champions kit has to be just to begin to make up for the fact that the champion is melee.
I think ekko has historically been a pretty good example too.
Critkeeper1 votestldr give ranged auto attacks an actual weakness
Big Lincoln1 votes3 sentences is tldr for you?
CerealBoxOfDoom1 votesdefine "viable"
Requiemsfire1 votesBecause in practice melee carries don't really work.
Big Lincoln1 votesmight be because every champ and their mother has spammable, low-cost CC so glass cannons don't get to function, because there's almost never any real window of weakness to take advantage of these days
melee carries would work fine if they actually had tools to circumvent this weakness instead of just loading them with damage and hoping for the best
Requiemsfire1 votesBecause the tools for them to stick onto opponents become borderline toxic or obnoxious to play against. Think 
where the only real counterplay is to CC him and burst him down otherwise he's unstoppable.
and 
were originally designed to be melee carries as well but of course we all know how that turned out. Upon release Irelia was weak beyond belief then buffed to be incredibly overpowered and then gutted, and of course became the champion we know today who isn't necessarily healthy but somewhat balanced.
Then we have Xin zhao who was simply too strong from the start and is now somewhat reasonable but overall not as strong as you would like.
Big Lincoln1 votesYi is that way because he offers nothing else to his team other than damage. Alpha Strike on its own is an alright ability; it's not really his defensive spell. His Meditate is meant to be that, but it fails miserably because it's easy to interrupt and the heal is almost worthless past early levels. If it were improved to actually function as a defensive steroid and his damage made more reasonable to compensate, I wager he would be much healthier as a champion.
I'm just saying that future melee carries shouldn't be like Yi is now. Giving them utility in the form of CC for their team or heals makes them much better for everyone involved.
Requiemsfire1 votesIn other words what you're saying is that Master yi would function better if he became a diver/fighter rather than remain as a melee hyper carry?
MLDzXnRRR1 votesIn other words what you're saying is that Master yi would function better if he became a diver/fighter rather than remain as a melee hyper carry?
Yi with the devourer/rageblade was someone who was tanky and with great DPS. And still he was not viable in LCS - picked once in Korea and his team almost lost the game with something like 8k gold lead for the enemy team, but they couldn't finish on time and Yi got devourer + some tanky items and rekt everyone...
Requiemsfire1 votesThat was simply because itemization choices and overturned numbers enabled his tanky builds. But this is more about the concept of the champion than whether or not they can win a game or were stronger in the past.
MLDzXnRRR1 votesThat was simply because itemization choices and overturned numbers enabled his tanky builds. But this is more about the concept of the champion than whether or not they can win a game or were stronger in the past.
Well, he was viable then. You can conclude that if we see another high damage, semi-tanky champion similar to this old Yi playstyle, he would be still hated by the community, because you can't deal with him without chaining targeted stuns/ targeting him with champions with extreme burst damage - something like the prenerfs Viktor/ Annie etc. Yasuo going tanky with just triforce + fervor was also hated and deleted from the rift.
Requiemsfire1 votesJust to clarify any melee carry can be strong with any build as the result of either the meta or overtunedness of items. However Riot has a tendency to borderline gut them whenever they find their way into relevance. Think 
Big Lincoln1 voteshyper carries still need defensive steroids so they don't explode in teamfights.
but I think lack sufficient utility to justify lowering their damage, even if it's a little too extreme when they happen to be good picks. Yi HAS to do extreme damage because he explodes the second a snare hits him. Tryndamere just gets relegated to endless splitpushing.
I think they need to be less extreme if Riot really wants to introduce diversity instead of just meta shifts; giving them means to survive so they can be more consistent in their contribution. I think 
are good examples of this; they offer something besides damage for their team, and they have the means to survive teamfights.
it could also be that they lack itemization tailored specifically for their role.
Requiemsfire1 votesHere's a diamond jungler called Stonewall008 who shares his opinion on melee carries. Personally I feel he's rather reasonably informed on the topic.
sit kid1 votesAnd again, he's fallen off for an entire season (in compeditive play)
I still think he lacks stuff for winning the game. Right now it's just R-Q in a teamfight and kill everyone or get cc'd to death. He however, has the most overloaded kit in the laning phase where he can outplay very easily and be a pain in the ass. In my opinion, Yasuo is a champion that requires help from his teams knockups in order to actually be useful.
TLDR: He is really overloaded, but most of his strengths are in lane, and can be played around out of lane. (dodge knockups, no e to dash to, cooldown on windwall ect...)
