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How to fix Melee DPS?

Thats My Brand·10/18/2013, 10:01:25 PM·7 votes·1,709 views

Why does every single team have to consist of a ranged carry ("marksman")? Isn't this the biggest problem with meta? Wouldn't it be much more diverse if we could have an alternative of true melee carries?

Of course one of the sources of the problem is lack of the turn rates, but there is no way such a core mechanic would get implemented without turing the whole game upside down. But is there nothing we could do? How about adding some new "melee only" items dedicated for melee dps - AD carries and AS-scaling champions such as Mundo, Shyvana and Udyr?

How to fix melee DPS? Do we even want it to be relevant?

Skip the section below if you're not interested in my suggestions.

Melee carries could become relevant with some tweaks to existing/planned items. Note: this is only my own example of a design direction. The subject of this thread is "melee carries", not "look at my item suggestions"

So, the idea is that melee carries would get BotRK or Hydra for lifesteal, and one of the following items for crit and utility.

Youmuu's Ghostblade (Melee Only)

Recipe: Avarice Blade + The Brutalizer

30 attack damage, 20 armor penetration, 25% crit chance, 10% cooldown reduction

UNIQUE Active: Gain +25% movement speed, 35% crowd control reduction and 40% AoE damage reduction for 6 seconds - 45 second cooldown.

Why this change: Youmuu as it is makes a damn good pubstomp item, and that's about it. This concept gives it a bit survivability amongst the chaos of teamfights. CC reduction can stack with Tenacity - numbers are straight out of a hat.

Spellbreaker (Melee Only)

Recipe: Avarice Blade + Hexdrinker + Cloak of Agility

30 attack damage, 30 magic resistance, 30% critical strike chance

UNIQUE Passive - Lifeline: Upon taking damage that would reduce health below 30%, grants a shield that absorbs 400 magic damage for 5 seconds (90 second cooldown). While the shield lasts, grants immunity to crowd control.

Morgana's shield in an item. Old, unreleased iteration of Spellbreaker granted 40 AD and Tenacity, and overall was too good for bruisers. Crit chance is a much more DPS-oriented statistic, so i moved the power there.

About Mundo, Shyvana and Udyr: I think they could use an early accessible AS item that, unlike Zeal or Stinger, grants some survivability. I would also like to take their magic damage output into account. One of the problems with those 3 champions is their lack of CC. Since easily accessible CC from items would be too strong on other champions, I thought of a mechanic that would use their magic damage output.

Malady (placeholder name)

Recipe: Dagger + Ruby Crystal

15% attack speed, 200 health

Unique Passive - Snap: Dealing magic damage builds Ionic Charges. At 100 charges, your next attack slows the target's Movement Speed by 40% for 1.5 seconds (30% for ranged champions). You lose charges if you exit combat.

Forementioned item would be in a tweaked recipe for Frozen Mallet (re-appliable slow) and new Ionic Spark (CC for magic DPS)

Ionic Spark

Recipe: Recurve Bow + Malady

50% attack speed, 300 health

UNIQUE Passive - Snap: Dealing magic damage builds Ionic Charges. At 100 charges, your next attack stuns the target for 1 second (.5 if ranged). You lose charges if you exit combat.

The idea is to grant melee champions such as Mundo or Shyvana a little bit better best-case scenario. Escape moves are still an option, since the CC will apply only in prolonged fights. Requiring magic damage to trigger it excludes all typical bruisers and carries.

Frostfire Mallet

Recipe: Phage + Ruby Crystal + Malady

20 attack damage, 20% attack speed, 600 health

Toggle: Swap the item's passive.

UNIQUE Passive – Icy: Your basic attacks slow your target's Movement Speed by 40% for 1.5 seconds (30% slow for ranged attacks).

UNIQUE Passive - Rage: Basic attacks grant 20 movement speed for 2 seconds on hit. Minion, monster, and champion kills grant 60 movement speed for 2 seconds. The movement speed bonus is halved for ranged champions.

This change is meant to buff Frozen Mallet's item path and bring back Phage into its recipe. Since Rage is opposite to Icy, it's intuitive to make those passives a toggle.

10 Comments

MarcosLuis9710/18/2013, 11:25:40 PM1 votes

The only problem i see with this is bruisers who abuse their tankyness and start being melee carrier.

Jax is a prime example of this.

ploki12210/18/2013, 11:35:22 PM1 votes

Jax, Darius, Renekton, Poppy... They're all already played even at higher level and to quite great success... Buffing their items won't make them any less pubstomping

Vsin10/19/2013, 12:33:03 AM1 votes

Defensive. Steroids.

Giving them more damage will just make them Assassins, and giving them more mobility will just perpetrate the mobility creep even harder.

What we need are melee champions who have high survival capabilities and high scaling, but little to no base damage output or utility. These survival mechanics can have steep level curves with awful values at Rank/Level 1, but be extremely powerful at max Rank/Level.

The only problem though is that we then invite the "no counterplay" argument. Possible solutions include defensive steroids similar to Templar Assassin's Refraction or Visage's Gravekeeper's Cloak (reduced defense per hit taken), or maybe even limited-arc barriers.

vasheenomed10/19/2013, 10:30:22 AM1 votes

imo give them an item to build early game that is melee open that builds into other melee only items and make it absorb the full damage of one autoattack every 6 seconds of taking no damage from champions... that would let melee adc's farm much more effeciently against ranged champions

Zielmann10/19/2013, 2:58:32 PM1 votes

I think you're addressing a non-existent issue, here. Melee champions still thrive in the top lane and jungle. And sometimes even in mid (Gragas saw quite a bit of play during Worlds).

Range in general is just a very strong and desirable stat. Having that one champion who you know will be able to put out reliable, consistent damage from a distance is extremely important.

If you buff melee champions in an effort to make range 'optional', they would have to become strong enough to the point where the raw advantage of having range isn't enough. And at that point, the melee would probably be so strong that you'd be back to where the game was a long time ago with tanky dps, er... 'bruisers' now, ruling the game.

Kraftybear10/19/2013, 4:44:33 PM1 votes

With a couple people refrencing Dota 2, I wanted to make a point about the balance of this game as opposed to the balance of Dota 2. In Dota, there are both ranged and melee carries that can farm in the safe lane. This is balanced in Dota by the fact that lane lengths are not equal, and lane compositions being for the most part more dynamic and varied than here in league. This is also dictated by the prevelance and type of CC in the heroes in Dota. There is more reliance on stuns to successfully gank in Dota, where as in here if you are just caught out of position, champion damage alone has a good chance of killing you.

Most of the posts about "melee carries" in the forums seem to be the fact that someone wants to put a Yi or Tryndamere on the bot lane with a support to farm. This can't really happen against a ranged ADC due to the poke/harass that the melee carry would have to contend with. In my opinion this game is just fine with the way lane comps work. If you would like to play a melee carry, you have to play one where you can farm levels and items. This means top lane, jungle, or doing some funky comp where your support and jungle keep your lane clear to farm if your on bottom lane. Though chances are you are just going to have to go top or jungle to get the farm/exp needed to carry.

I don't think we need to tweak or introduce new items to enable melees to carry on the bot lane, I just think that I have seen plenty of top Tryndamere's, Yi's, and Jax's hard carry there team to victory to complain that melee carries have no place in the current meta. A bottom kill lane without an ADC and a top melee AD carry should still be able to do well if played with skill/correctly.