"melee can't melee anymore" - hashinshin

Linna Excel·Jul 25, 2014·7 votes·2,559 views

Well, GD and reddit are talking about that thread, we might as well too.

Do you all agree with him that melee takes skill too and that riot seems to be balancing in favor of ranged champs?

One thing I'd like to say is in a format like ARAM where it is team fights all game long, being the only melee guy on the team (or worse on the map) is a pretty huge burden and that in my casual estimations, it tends to be melee champs who rack up the most deaths on a team in that scenario.

9 Comments

Sneak DogJul 26, 20143 votes

While I don't agree with all Hashinshins points, it's a bit late for me to detail every single counterargument of mine. (For example, he goes about how Jax is really sad against a ranged champion, but I think GC took him as a good example of a melee vs melee matchup.)

I think melees have a really hard time vs ranged champions because they can either:

Try to go in with their gapcloser. hope the ranged doesn't manage to get out of range as you try to damage him and stay into melee range, because if at any point you are not in melee range and you don't have a gapcloser, the ranged has a lot of time to hurt you while you are entirely powerless.
Stay out of their range entirely.

This means the melee is required to initiate at some point or his tower will get pushed in. Melees are not safe under tower because rangeds can hit them once and swiftly walk out of tower range to avoid tower hits and repeat this (I hate this mechanic), meaning this is a horrible option. This means a melee champion is forced to go all-in on a ranged champion, because going in and then out again will generally make them lose the trade due to having to simply walk back out while under fire.

I haven't gotten much inspiration on how to solve this, but I do have some suggestions for certain elements of the matchup:

Heavier punishment for poking a melee champion under tower as ranged champion. It is just too easy and oppressive, it's supposed to be their safe haven earlygame. I think just getting a garenteed (heh) towerhit when you damage a melee while you are in tower range is appropriate (basically, a bit of lingering tower aggro instead of instant de-aggro if it doesn't have a shot ready yet but you walk out of range).
Change the jungle buffs. Red buff warps melee vs ranged lategame just as blue buff warps certain midlane matchups (it got better since they nerfed blue buff to be mostly flat manaregen a loong time ago).
Immobilizes/slows are relatively weak vs rangeds but binary strong vs melees. Against a ranged, it will make them vulnerable for damage while vs a melee it will do this but also negate their entire damage output. The way this is currently balanced is by making the melee either less vulnerable to damage (Shyvana) or deal insane damage if unchecked (Yasuo/Yi). I do not like this balance.

A little sidenote: I think ranged matchups are inherently more interesting because rangeds have a larger area they can maneouver in while still being threatening. Giving melees 0.25 attacks per second with quadruple damage would also accomplish this (and be silly).

I do follow Ghostcrawlers discussion with interest because I'm curious to see what he distills from it all and I can't be bothered to read entire na discussions I can't even post in.

Linna ExcelJul 26, 20141 votes

I think ranged matchups are inherently more interesting because rangeds have a larger area they can maneouver in while still being threatening.

This was one of hashinshin's complaints. The skill level of the melee guy goes up specifically because of his short range. He can't just stand with the caster minions and plink away at a ranged champ. Until you get PD, and most melee champs don't, moving around minions is an issue at times. Having to go balls deep all the time means you have to deal with all the little c***blockers between you and the other guy... or between you and your escape route.

Plus a lot of melee champs don't have skill shots which are part of interesting lanes. Some do, but when you don't have range to begin with, getting a ranged SS doesn't always make sense.

I think this is the crux of the point: being melee in itself really limits your options. It's not like a fighting game where you have tons of combos and options either.

Sneak DogJul 26, 20142 votes

Ranged champions still have to dance around minions, a ranged will not stand still, they'll move between every shot fired to reposition themselves and dodge skillshots, but unlike melees, they can choose where to move. They still have to maneouver around minions and those little dudes will hurt you earlygame if you don't watch out. This is not an inherent skill point of melees, this is a skill point of minions, just more important if you are melee. If you fight eachother not in the minion wave, this aspect is entirely gone. You could add a map mechanic in every part of the map for the melee to have an interesting fight, but you could also try to inherently make melees more interesting.

Melee matchups without any skillshots are the worst Imo. If a melee has no fallback pattern for when he is behind in lane, they just stop being able to farm. Skillshots are an excellent fallback pattern because they generally have some range. I really dislike this part about toplane, the moment you are just a tad behind, the enemy can capitalize so hard on this that you might just have lost the lane already. This is because in order to deal with rangeds, most melees got a gapcloser and cc. If you are behind, they'll just jump you and win the trade that ensues.

This is ridiculously the case with Riven. If Riven gets ahead, she can hurt you because she builds damage. She has silly amounts of dashes meaning that if you get too close when behind, you can't get out again and either die, manage to disengage with one of your abilities not using it to hurt her and thus lose the trade, or reach your tower.

I think melees inherently need something skillfull, some avoidable or significantly optimizable damage, for their laning phase trades, but preferably the entire game. Something more than just being garenteed to be in danger when they go in.

I like this discussion, my apologies if I sound harsh in my arguing.

Linna ExcelJul 26, 20142 votes

I really dislike this part about toplane, the moment you are just a tad behind, the enemy can capitalize so hard on this that you might just have lost the lane already. This is because in order to deal with rangeds, most melees got a gapcloser and cc. If you are behind, they'll just jump you and win the trade that ensues.

Yes, this is a big issue with top. In order to have the kit you need to take part in a team fight, much less survive, kind of means if you get ahead you can own top.

As for minions, when I'm playing ranged champs, they tend to be a bigger issue when I'm trying to hit my skill shots. So when I'm trying to line up a skill shot the first thing I'll do is try to move to a point where I can hit it. But I can still threaten the other guy with my AAs. In a ranged vs melee lane I can just plink him down while he's moving through the minion wave (assuming no gapclosers).

ProfDrDeathJul 26, 20142 votes

Change the jungle buffs. Red buff warps melee vs ranged lategame just as blue buff warps certain midlane matchups (it got better since they nerfed blue buff to be mostly flat manaregen a loong time ago).

I am all for this, especially light of the recent item 3143 nerfs.

Sire HippingtonJul 26, 20143 votes

I don't agree on ALL points with hashinshin, but his core arguments are valid. Melees ARE interesting to play, i honestly enjoy those longterm fights of shy vs renekton or similar realy alot. I also agree that their solutions for melee vs ranged are a bit lackluster, finally leading to the mobillity-creep of today. Imo the most important thing to do for melees is to scale their efficiency with the number of nearby enemy champions, especially in terms of tankiness. For that reason i think J4, Wukong and Xin are great designed melees(not flawless though), as they have defense scaling with the number of enemys, and i also think the nerf to Legendary Guardian were bad, as that mastery does exactly the thing we need for melees: tankiness scaling with the number of enemys. Without that dcaling, melees will always be either overhelming 1v1 or bad 5v5, as they need insane amounts of tankiness and still fearsome damage output to work in 5v5.

Another point i totally agree with are slows, they are everywhere, they counter melees hard, and they have usually a insane uptime. I also don't realy like redbuff, it's so much power to one champion, especially on an ranged adc...the slow for ranged should get lowered even more on it, and also the early slow for melees, if u ever eat an AA from the enemy jungle ur already forced to flash in most cases.

And another one: saying laneingphase doesn't matter at top means one never realy played top. It has a massive impact on the ame and is the main reason why the top-picks are as they are. If laneing wouldn'T matter, everone would spam Malph, Nauti and Amumu as they are massive in teamfights

I also think it would help alot if the block and unyilding masteries would block miniondamage for melees, as melees have to get in minion-range if they want to trade, rangeds don't unless they chase the enemy into deep into their minons

I'd also like to see a buff to wowers early, makeing them more of a save-zone to prevent heav snowballing A huge problem on top is that u ususally fall very far behind once ur enemy got a lead, as they easily can freeze the long lane and zone u away from exp and cs, and often even bully u out of ur tower(especially if it'S ranged vs melee) So i think towers should have an aura that grants flat dmagereductio for allied champs, wich is higher for melees, makeing it possible to farm under tower without getting punished to hard...and something should be done vs lanefreeze, even though i don't know what. I managed to freeze top for ~15 minutes with lucian vs irelia after i were 2/0 ahead, that poor girl has 60cs at 25 minutes, and there was nothing she could do about it.(besides evt getting jungler+mid top to break the frezze, but teamwork in soloQ is pretty rar)

Sneak DogJul 26, 20141 votes

I also think it would help alot if the block and unyilding masteries would block miniondamage for melees, as melees have to get in minion-range if they want to trade, rangeds don't unless they chase the enemy into deep into their minons

This will make minion waves matter too little I think. It's good that minions deal significant damage, currently it just evens out if the lane is even and actually is a counter-snowballing mechanic: If you chase too far, minions will keep hitting you but not him. your change actually makes the melee vs melee matchup toplane less interesting as it lowers the significance of the minionwave.

I'd also like to see a buff to wowers early, makeing them more of a save-zone to prevent heav snowballing A huge problem on top is that u ususally fall very far behind once ur enemy got a lead, as they easily can freeze the long lane and zone u away from exp and cs, and often even bully u out of ur tower(especially if it'S ranged vs melee) So i think towers should have an aura that grants flat dmagereductio for allied champs, wich is higher for melees, makeing it possible to farm under tower without getting punished to hard...and something should be done vs lanefreeze, even though i don't know what. I managed to freeze top for ~15 minutes with lucian vs irelia after i were 2/0 ahead, that poor girl has 60cs at 25 minutes, and there was nothing she could do about it.(besides evt getting jungler+mid top to break the frezze, but teamwork in soloQ is pretty rar)

I do agree towers could use a laning phase buff. Poking as a ranged under tower is too easy due to your attacks not aggroing the tower instantly (only once the projectile arrives). Damage reduction would indeed solve this issue very elegantly and also lower early diving viability (2v1 laneswaps with a 3v1 towerdive, anyone). Might want to reduce the reduction after getting a hit (first hit reduced significantly, later ones not so much, resets 10s?, else dives are too hard).

I'm not sure how to solve the freezing lane issue, perhaps make minions barge onwards ignoring champions that aren't threatening directly (hitting them or an alllied champion in range)?

Sire HippingtonJul 26, 20142 votes

This will make minion waves matter too little I think. It's good that minions deal significant damage, currently it just evens out if the lane is even and actually is a counter-snowballing mechanic: If you chase too far, minions will keep hitting you but not him. your change actually makes the melee vs melee matchup toplane less interesting as it lowers the significance of the minionwave.

maybe just the unyielding mastery would be enough(reducing damage by 2 instead of 6 from block+unyilding), but i don't think it would impact melee vs melee to hard, minions still would be an big factor, and it would help champs with lesser waveclear to stand their ground, or less bursty patterns. 1 of reasons why rene is so strong in lane is that he needs~1-2sec to unload his combo and then can get away from minion agro again, while also having strong waveclear, meaning he usually got a bigger wave by his side than the enemy. it's also one of the reasons why nocturn doesn't work to well top, as he needs to stick to his target a longer time to make use of his kit, exposing him to minions.

And the main point of that change would be helping melees vs rangeds in lane, as it's pretty easy to bully around a melee as ranged aslong as u have a good disengage skill(wich alot ranged have...)

I'm not sure how to solve the freezing lane issue, perhaps make minions barge onwards ignoring champions that aren't threatening directly (hitting them or an alllied champion in range)?

i really like the idea of minons ignoring champions if they don't attack for some time(maybe 5sec?)

Old Man TeetoJul 27, 20142 votes

Damage is so high currently, that closing the gap and being forced to fight in the "thick of things" instead of being able to skirt around the edges, kiting and dodging spells is suicidal in a team fight.

This leads to three things being problems.

A) Mobility - Champions which lack it are killed by being kited, even if they have huge potential damage outputs, it doesn't matter since kits with less damage output but more mobility still put out more than enough damage to kill you nearly instantly.

B) Counterplay - If you die in 3 seconds, you have 3 seconds to react. If you die in .5 seconds, you have .5 seconds to react. Which time frame has more Counterplay?

C) Itemization - AD Bruisers have the worst itemization in the game for team fighting. This is because they have to build a Glass damage item that costs a ton to be a threat, and tank items to not instantly die. The best Bruisers are pure tank bruisers that have the option to build offensive if advantageous (Shyvanna, Renekton, Lee Sin).