/dev: Mel Midscope

Mel Update

Hi, it's time to talk about Mel. 

When we make new champions, one of the core questions we ask during the design process is, "What is this champion adding to the game, and why is that exciting for players?" Usually, this necessitates designing new mechanics for the game, and new mechanics tend to be inherently risky or they would be tame and boring. Think Yasuo's Windwall and Ultimate CC combo with ally knockups, or Sylas' Ultimate - new mechanics at the time they were introduced that helped create new gameplay not just for players of the champion, but also their teammates and the enemy team. In Mel's case, her Rebuttal [W] reflect was expected to be one such mechanic. However these bets don't always pay off. 

For most of her first year, it looked good. There were complaints yes, but nothing beyond the normal noise we'd expect for a mechanic that asks opponents to change their play. It was looking like Mel was successfully skirting the line between challenging opponents to adapt their play against her versus just frustrating them. This was evident in where we were able to land her resting win rate, ban rate, and pick rate. She was slightly weaker than par, but not so weak that Mel players didn't feel like they could personally find success and overcome.

However, that status quo proved to be temporary over the next year, as elite and pro players began adapting her into their playstyles and it became impossible to balance her existing kit into a place that still had a compelling amount of power without opponent frustration boiling over. It was clear that other players no longer felt she was a challenge they could overcome at any reasonable win rate.

So where does that leave us now?

We’re coming out with a rework to her kit aimed at addressing this frustration, particularly around her [W] reflect effect. 

A failed shorter range Mel, in order to make her live [W]'s powerful defensive output more palatable to opponents. Mel players felt this was too large of a departure from her existing gameplay.

A failed Mel [W] iteration where she stole a cast of the first missile to hit her. Very exciting, but forced Mel players to know how to cast every projectile spell in the game, and was total chaos in the middle of fights where it wasn't clear which spell you blocked first.

We know her reflect is a significant part of what some Mel players love about her kit, and we tested many variations to try to preserve the reflection mechanic. What we ultimately found though was that any version that was not taking up her Ultimate slot was going to either remain unacceptably high frustration for opponents or be undesirable for most Mel players. However Mel's current Ultimate is already serving well as an exciting high moment and is core to her combat pattern as a mage - reducing the power of Golden Eclipse down to a basic ability was an unacceptable trade. Would she max it first and have no waveclear or would it just be a weak ability kept at level 1 until she finishes maxing [Q]? How much of its clear and satisfying visuals and sound would we need to sacrifice as it drops in priority from an Ultimate to a Basic Ability? And how much power would we need to push into the live [W] if it became an ultimate? A reflect as a 90s cooldown ultimate would need to be way stronger than the current one - and that was surely going to be even more frustrating for opponents.

So where did we land for the new version of her [W]? 

Instead we are removing the reflect from Mel [W]. Mel's new Rebuttal [W] will still destroy enemy projectiles and retaliate against them - in fact it will be even better at protecting Mel and her allies. However it will no longer allow her to reflect the actual abilities being fired at her so she will no longer be able to do things like reflect a Seraphine Ultimate to charm the entire enemy team or nuke Jhin with his own Fourth Shot.

Mel's new [W] releases a projectile destroying nova that also shields and grants move speed to her team. It then retaliates against attacks for a small amount of damage.

We expect this to make for a far less frustrating experience for opponents, while still making for a satisfying ability for Mel. And because this will often be less impactful than the live Mel [W], it also opens up some power budget for the rest of her kit.

What else is changing?

Taking into account the [W] change, we are making some moderate adjustments to how Mel's kit plays out. One thing we feel was a miss on her current experience is how hard it is for her to get more than a single rotation of [P] Searing Brilliance stacks on opponents. This often leads to her being able to kill one opponent - and only one opponent. In addition to that, she also has a lot of power pushed into her early game with high base health and damage on her Passive empowered attacks and [Q]'s frontloaded damage and reliability. These factors, along with her live [W] reflect, have contributed to a champion whose power level rests in her ability to sharply counter certain champions, especially in lane, and then plummets in strength over the course of the game where she struggles to do more than kill a single target in team fights.

For her rework, we are pulling some of her early game power and pushing it towards scaling. First, she is losing some early game durability and damage on her passive in favor of scaling health and armor. Second, we are making [Q] moderately more fair to play against in lane, slowing it down a hair and shifting more of its damage into subsequent hits rather than the first initial explosion. Third, we are adjusting the root on her [E] to be shorter against nearby enemies (and longer against farther ones), so she is simultaneously more vulnerable in many matchups and more rewarded when she lands her long-range skill shot. And most significantly, we are empowering her ability to get multiple stacks of [P] Searing Brilliance and use her Ultimate as a pay off for those stacks by giving her [Q] a flat cooldown refund if it hits at least one enemy champion, and giving her ultimate more cooldown reduction scaling with ability level.

Mel's rework is planned to come to live in Patch 26.22. We look forward to seeing you get your hands on it!

- Gameplay Designer, Kevin "Captain Gameplay" Huang