Ever since her release in League of Legends, Arcane’s Mel Medarda has been a point of major frustration for the players of every Elo, and a major headache for the balance team.
Mel in League is a control mage that’s bordering on artillery, and her most defining feature is just how uninteractive she is during the laning phase. Her abilities have a decent range, come out very quickly, yet the enemy has no options to retaliate, as her W grants her temporary immunity and the ability to reflect the projectiles back to the sender.
Myles ‘Emizery’ Salholm, Mel’s designer, shared on Reddit some of the changes that are coming her way in the patch 26.03, and by the looks of it, Riot is tired of her being a major point of frustration, so the balance team decided to temporarily kneecap her with heavy nerfs to rebuild her to a playable state later.
What are Mel’s changes in the patch 26.03?
Base Stats
- [BUFF] Attack Speed Ratio :: 0.4 >>> 0.625
Mel always had a very low Attack Speed growth ratio to make her weaker at harassing her opponent when her spells are down, and to make her last hits just a bit more difficult. With her overall power going drastically down, she needs this outlier fixed.
P – Overwhelm
- [NERF] Overwhelm Projectile Damage :: 8-50 + 5% AP >>> 8-25 + 3% AP
- Total per Cast :: 24-150 + 15% AP >>> 24-75 + 9% AP
- [CHANGE] Reduced visual clutter by no longer displaying passive mark on non-champions for enemies
- [BUGFIX] Fixed certain champion spawned units dying to Overwhelm from an unempowered basic attack
Considering that Mel’s biggest points of frustration were her basic abilities, nerfing her passive seems a bit excessive, as it removes her remaining reliable damage source.
Q – Radiant Volley
- [CHANGE] Stronger area telegraph visual
- [NERF] Cast Time :: 0.25s >>> 0.4s
- [NERF] Projectile Speed :: 4500 >>> 3800
- [NERF] Explosion Radius :: 230 >>> 200
- [NERF] Area Spread :: 30 >>> 25
- [NERF] Damage type is now DoT AoE (reduced effectiveness in resetting Arcane Comet)
- [BUFF] Channel Time :: 0.75s >>> 0.5s
- [BUFF] Mana Cost :: 70/80/90/100/110 >>> 70/75/80/85/90
- [BUFF] Minion Damage :: 75% >>> 100%
- [CHANGE] Now deals additional damage the first time an explosion hits; reduced subsequent hit damage
- Initial Hit :: 55/80/105/130/155 + 50% AP
- Subsequent Hits :: 5/6/7/8/9 + 5% AP
- Total Damage :: 85/122/161/202/245 + 75-95% AP
Mel’s Q was basically gutted. Balance team increased her cast time while also nerfing the projectile speed, as this was the main point of frustration for every opponent: Radiant Volley was too reliable, came out too fast, and without much telegraph.
Along with speed, Riot also nerfed both the radius and the spread of Q, further reducing the spell’s reliability.
As a nail in the coffin, the damage type of the spell was changed to damage-over-time area-of-effect, reducing the effectiveness of several tools in her arsenal, mainly the Arcane Comet keystone.
As compensation, her minion damage was brought up to the spell’s live values and is no longer reduced by 25%. This change goes against the supplemental goal of increasing her interactivity in lane, as with all the nerfs, one of the reliable ways to earn gold for Mel will be to constantly push the minion waves.
W – Rebuttal
- [NERF] No longer provides damage immunity
- Now provides 80/110/140/170/200 + 60% AP Shields
- [NERF] Physical damage reflected is reduced by 30% before magic damage conversion
- [CHANGE] Now destroys projectiles that target each unit in an area instead of reflecting them when those projectiles aren’t targeting Mel; affected abilities:
- Ryze E
- Brand E
- Katarina R
- Samira R
- Yunara Q
- [BUFF] Decaying Move Speed :: 30% >>> 40%
- [BUFF] Decaying Move Speed now lasts 1.5s (up from 0.75s)
Rubuttal is Mel’s “don’t touch me” spell that was way too powerful, and its nerf is more than justified. Contrary to popular belief, though, it’s not as completely gutted as it initially seems.
The main thing that happened with these changes is that it became much more focused on what it’s supposed to do: serve as a reflect for the projectiles aimed at her, not the “get out of the jail” free card.
Instead of complete invulnerability that countered even the assassins like Talon and Rengar, she now gains a shield that scales with her AP. The shielding she gets is still quite substantial, but there is counterplay to this: Blitzcrank and Renekton can outright destroy her shield, enemies can build Serpent’s Fang to decrease the value Mel gets out of it, or just outright burst through it when fed. Her W is now also worse against attack damage champions, which should further help assassins and ADCs.
Her ability to reflect projectiles was nerfed in quite a sensible way: in League, there are some abilities that target every unit in the vicinity, be it an enemy champion, a neutral monster, or a mere caster minion. Those skills will no longer be reflected back into the caster when they’re not aimed directly at Mel. This way, Brands and Ryzes won’t get randomly punished for simply minding their own business and farming the wave. To reiterate, these abilities will still get reflected back at them if Mel is the main target for them.
E – Solar Snare
- [NERF] Root Missile Radius :: 80 >>> 70
- [NERF] End of Travel Linger Duration :: 0.5s >>> 0.25s
- [NERF] DoT Radius :: 260 >>> 230
- [NERF] Cast Range :: 1050 >>> 1000
- [BUFF] Projectile Speed :: 1000 >>> 1100
- [BUFF] Root Duration :: 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5s >>> 1.5s
- [BUFF] Damage :: 60/100/140/180/220 >>> 60/105/150/195/240
- [BUFF] DoT Damage Per Second :: 16/26/36/46/56 >>> 16/28/40/52/64
- [BUGFIX] No longer visually pops at the end when descending terrain
Solar Snare also received a substantial nerf to its frustration factor: now the initial projectile have narrower radius, and the DoT that forms at the end will be smaller too. Said AoE will also stay on the ground for a shorter duration.
Balance team also decreased the ability’s cast range, though they increased the projectile’s travel speed as compensation.
Additionally, they increased the spell’s base damage at the higher ranks, which is a small respite considering she doesn’t get rank 5 E until level 13.
What do these changes accomplish?
Overall, this entire set of nerfs will definitely reduce the frustration of laning against Mel, but it will also completely destroy her viability as a laner. The main thing is, she was already kept in a weakened state due to complaints, hovering around 44% win ratio. People still hated to play against her, even if their chances of winning were higher.
The issue here is that she didn’t receive nearly enough compensation for all the nerfs she suffered. She will lack damage to go toe-to-toe with some of the meta picks, while several champions will now outright destroy her.
It’s very likely that this was the goal of Riot’s balance team in the first place. Since her ban rate is so high, if she received a substantial compensatory buff, there’s a chance it wouldn’t drop. This is essentially Riot forcing everyone to drop playing and banning her so that they can assess her overall state after the dust settles.
Let’s just hope that the balance team won’t take long to bring her back up to a reasonable state.
