@Ghostcrawler An acutal suggestion to improve the interaction between melee and rage:

Do you have any?

I might have a few. Anyone else who has one post it in this thread. Lets actually try to find a solution to the problem instead of pointing fingers.

If any of the suggestions seem good, but for some reason wouldn't work, we would appreciate feedback (from ghostcrawler or xypherous some other designer) as to why they wouldn't work in league of legends.

Here is my suggestion:

First lets think about what range really becomes as the game progresses in league of legends. It is essentially no different than having an ability on a melee champion that has a half second cooldown, no cost at all, has nearly no animation, can do upwards of a thousand damage, can heal you for a hundred or more health, may apply a powerful slow, and in some cases can have more range than any other single target ability in the game. You could not design an ability with less counterplay. Imagine a melee champion with that, and then one extra ability tacked on to the side. What would the melee champion have to give up to have such a distorting ability?

Maybe his weakness is he gives up copious amounts of health and scaling magic resist?

That doesn't solve anything. It might or might not be fair, but it isn't GOOD. Fair isn't the SAME as GOOD.

The reason it isn't good is because it creates a situation where the only interaction that can exist between this champion and the enemy is the one where the enemy either kills him instantly (aided by the fact that the health and magic resist is so much lower than average), or that weaknesss is completely irrelevant to the way the champion actually fights and doesn't create actual gameplay. A tristana that you managed to burst down to 100 health can still fight just as well as she can at full health, and unless you finish her off she will do the same damage she is always able to do.

In fact, the "weakness" that the prototypical ranged champion endures for being ranged is only artificial-- the shield from bloodthirster very much diminishes the difference in health for example, and the lifesteal from their auto attacks provides a deceptively large amount of effective health over the course of a fight.

First off, you don't want a game where the interaction between melee and ranged isn't REAL. You don't want a game where the only REAL interaction is to burst the marksmen instantly or be killed one at a time. You don't want all your hopes in having a "fair fight" where the marksmen's weakness is an actual weakness revolves around killing him before he can contribute to the fight. This would not be a problem if marksmen's damage weren't so high, or at the very least if it ramped up and required successive auto attacks to reach critical mass. The damage IS high though, far more on a single auto attack in the late game than what a burst mage can produce in a non-ultimate single target spell (which has a mana cost, and probably has less range, won't heal for as much even with spellvamp, and won't slow for free without an item purchase). The impetus is so high to prevent the marksmen from EVEN CONTRIBUTING, because they just do too much ****ing damage.

Why? Why can't a marksmen do damage with their auto attacks without being "all about" their auto attacks? Why can't their abilities be REALLY powerful. Why can't they scale with their abilities in addition to their auto attacks? Why can't a marksmen be "a ability caster that sacrifices either utility or damage on their abilities for nice consistent damage with their auto attacks". Why does marksmen have to be "walking nexus laser" at 30 minutes?

And its not that marksmen NEED a support because their laning is trash. Anybody who has tried to lane with sivir mid or vayne or even graves top knows that they aren't bad in a solo lane. The reason they have to have a support is to protect them from jungle ganks, because the jungler WILL target them if possible in order to DELAY what they eventually become. Because what they become is just plain not fair.

We nerfed vladimir's q a long time ago, and it was because it was a resourceless single target low cooldown nuke that also healed him and could apply a powerful slow with an item purchase. The reason gave was "It is pretty much the least interactive design you could produce for an ability aside from instagib". But never was the heal or damage as high, or the cooldown as low, and it could never damage towers as it is for a marksmen auto attack.

Of course melee champions that want to compete with that "non-interactivity" that marksmen exhibit past 30 minutes are going to have to have instagib or be so tanky they just can't be killed in a reasonable amount of time. Of course they are going to have to have less counterplay in order to beat them, because they have no other options. For a melee champion that wants to take risks and make at least one important choice in a team fight, it is either kill or die, and either of them will take about 1.2 seconds. For a melee champion that wants to contribute over the course of a fight while being with the ranged envelope of "you automatically take over a thousand damage per second, and I heal from it and slow you because I'm ranged and you are melee" of marksmen he has to have 3500 hp and 350 armor, and basically build in such a way that makes it so that he can almost completely ignore one damage type.

And what of the complaint of marksmen?

Playing against a champion that might as well be immune to one damage type is no fun-- its basically no more interactive than marksmen auto attacks. Playing against a champion that can instagib you before you can contribute isn't fun either. And playing a game where the impetus is so strong to kill one specific champion because of how overpowered they become / are, to the point where you can't even take advantage of the opportunity to interact with other players because the opportunity cost for not striking at the enemy marksmen is too high.

The damage that marksmen do past 30 minutes is far too high. Penalizing marksmen with lower base stats so as to instagib the marksmen doesn't actually produce interesting gameplay when it works and is meaningless when it doesn't work. Tanks are far too tanky against physical damage.

Everything is too extreme. Tone it the **** down.

Make it so that marksmen auto attacks targeted on an enemy champion can be intercepted midair by an enemy champion or minion, remove the penalties to their health and magic resist and movement speed, and just make auto attacks balanced as they stand, rather than theoretically balanced in the context of their kit. You will never be able to make it balanced in the context of their kit with penalties to their base stats WHILE ALSO producing the gameplay you desire which as you have said, IS NOT "either the marksmen dies instantly to the melee or the melee dies without any hope of interacting in a healthy way".

If ranged auto attacks are really going to be capable of doing more than a thousand damage per second, make it so that auto attacks aren't something that a marksmen can put on ANY target they choose within their range without condition. Make it so that I can alter the conditions in which the enemy marksmen plays, without threatening to kill her in 0.8 seconds through imba burst damage. Make it so that I can protect the other people on my team with body blocking.

Reduce the overall amount of durability tanks have and give them high moments of durability with item steroids. Make it so that they can actually execute their fantasy in a team fight the way they want without being REQUIRED to have primary CC or dumb amounts of base damages.

You look to melee champions overall as if the ones that work are the least interactive class in the game, but have you ever considered what impetus there is for them to be that way? Why do I feel like I need Seventeen Thousand effective physical health or 5000 on demand burst damage in order to feel good for contributing to a fight?