Melee carry class update suggestions

In the last couple days there has been some discussion on melee champions and their state in the current meta-game. Melee carries have not seen much play in seasons and bruisers are struggling. After playing League for 6 years I would like to give you my take on balance philosophy of melee champions and game pace/scaling.

What I would like to see more in competitive matches is creativity and diversity. A given meta has always been either fun or quickly addressed. It's just that there's not much champions outside the meta can do: they lack the counterplay or tools to make an impact. This is especially so for many melee champions, mostly because they are outdated. We can't have a xin, yi or trynda be able to teamfight because they either blow up or blow you up. This needs to be changed.

Melee carry is a melee champion(duh) that scales off of items and levels relatively well. This definition includes the likes of kayn, talon, zed, kassadin, morde, maokai, chogath, jax, hecarim, shyvana, aatrox, trundle. For many of these melee carry is more of an attribute, they are primarily bruisers tanks or assassins. What I consider the class of melee carries includes the likes of yasuo, gp, fiora, xin, yi, trynda, nocturne, wukong. Their primary goal is to deal damage through autoattacks and pseudo autoattacks (for lack of a better word, this means yasuo Q, gp combo, wukong Q and so on). Many of these classifications are stretching it a bit because of the problems of the champions, for example wukong actually doesn't scale that well.

Champions should have their weaknesses and tools. Apart from the clearly outdated many of these champions have the same problem. When assassins are meta you pick all the assassin. Why? It's not the tools the assassin gives you why you pick him. It's the items that make assassins op. This is why tank meta is a thing. Items make champions of the same class too good not the tools the specific champion offers for the particular game. As you notice this is not completely true and fortunately so. Riot has been giving champions fair weaknesses and tools lately making this problem diminish.

Another problem is that when hecarim or any jungle carry (jungler that farms) are good there seems to be a carry champion in every role. Then marksman players cry because that's not what they signed up for: they are not the main carry. In league 4 roles get good farm so why not pick 4 champions that scale well off of gold, that is 4 carries. I think the meta of 4 roles farming for 15 mins straight is boring. This should not be the optimal way of playing. There should be more incentive to fight, roam and deny enemy farm early game. Who wouldn't want to see more fighting early game in competitive? Less carries per team would also mean that the carries are left with bigger chunk of the resources on the map if they have the tools to farm quickly (benefitting melee carries more).

So, what I suggest to make melee lives matter more is two things. First is itemisation and stats in general. I think most people agree that ranged champions are too good at bullying melees in laning. This could be fixed by giving champions more regen armor or health and buffing regen items. There should also be early game items for carries, in the budget range 1300-2000 that don't build into anything bigger. For example and item that gives some offence some defence and good regen that costs ~1700 would give a place for melee carries to farm more safely and give them a chance to join fights early on without making them too good. This would delay their powerspike in trade of actually getting there safely.(pls make D shield worse for ranged)

After surviving early game melee carries face the problem of surviving in teamfights. I think this needs a complete overhaul in how melee carries are built. There should be big items for melee carries that give good defence and good offence. You can't have melee carries (except for maybe gp that still keeps his range) build crit, damage and attack speed and still expect them to survive. For example items that give one of armor, health or magic resist and one of damage or attack speed, and then some unique passive. This would lower their damage to squishy targets and let them survive better in teamfights. Items like maw, titanic hydra and black cleaver need not much tweaking for this. It's just lacking good choices for attack speed. And choices in general as that would still be only a couple items. Then melee carries could build situationally pure defence or pure damage items. Then there is the over-abundance of critical strike. And not many choices of attack speed without it. This is a big problem as it forces melee carries (because they want at least some attack speed) to often go down the road of critical strike making them way too squishy. These items also lack real passive and actives.

There should not be a BKB in League but there's too little one can do vs cc. I propose there be added passives in the game, along with items as pointed above, that give tenacity against specific types of cc. As an example an item that gives attack speed armor and tenacity against knockbacks would allow melee carries to navigate through enemy frontline nicely. Or an item that removes silences on you. Overall more counterplay but not total counters. There's also a lack of passives and actives to deal damage, block damage and stick to enemies in items that give both defence and offence(as there are not many of them).

Stats and items are not enough alone. For the actual update of the champions themselves I suggest that some of their crazy stat-steroids be nerfed or even removed and instead give melee carries better stats/lvl and more interesting passives and gameplay. Let me give some examples:

Tryndamere: maybe make the max crit chance or crit dmg from his passive scale with lvl. Give his W a nice big cleave (of which dmg scales with W lvl) like the sword he has. Then make leveling his E significantly lower cd, so that trynda has (which is what league needs more).

Yi: through itemisation and nerfs to his ult make him deal less dmg at the start of a fight. Maybe give him a passive to deal increasing dmg to the same target or something. Give him some small counterplay to cc or an escape to his Q.

Nocturne: make his W a delayed removal of cc. Put his Q and E into one skill that lets him stick somewhat to enemy and deal some dmg. Then make his E an active or a passive that has either a bash or dmg reflection/negation of some sort.

Shyvana: she has no way to stick to her targets. This is a weakness she has to itemize for by buying frozen mallet or so. Give her bigger (in dmg and area) aoe burn, she's a half dragon afterall.

Trundle: give trundle's W a passive with a 10-20% chance knockback and/or dmg enemy for some dmall amount depending on lvl.

There iare so many ideas for passives that are underutilised, on-hit effects (cleave, cc, dmg, armor reduction and so on) and dmg blocks and reflection, auras, unique cc and so on. These would make melees situationally better, overall better and healthier so they won't need to be stat-steroided handicapped champions for the rest of eternity.

Overall I think League lacks auras (no aura gives ad, as, lifesteal, armor...) or they are too small, like in Frozen Heart. There's also too little difference in base stats between the tankiest mfers and the squishiest, this could be tweaked in preseason along with removal of runes. Many of these suggestions are along the lines Riot has been going for already so I don't think they are too out there. Many of the other classes have been (more or less) succesfully updated so if Riot ever wants to update melee carries into healthy state without disrupting the whole game I think something along these suggestions is at least an intermediary step.