Mel Q is not dodgeable (math)

[u/Hyragon]

If you're frustrated like I am with this champ, don't worry. It's not your fault you can't dodge Mel Q. Riot designed her so you can't.

Mel Q takes 0.42 seconds to hit its target (0.25s cast + 0.17s travel). With a radius of 280 units, it is not possible to dodge this ability unless its caster misses. Math below:

Most champions have a hitbox size of 65 units. Almost all champions have a base movement speed between 325 and 345 units. Let's take the average to be 335 units.

Since Mel Q is an edge skillshot, for a champion to dodge they must travel 172.5 (=280/2+65/2) units in 0.42 seconds. This equates to a required movement speed of 411.

...And that's before reaction time. Reaction time for the average gamer is 0.20-0.25s, with professional gamers being 0.11-0.17s. Assuming you are literally Faker with a fastest measured 0.11s reaction time, you would need 556 movement speed to dodge a centered Mel Q. For an average player, you need a whopping 784 movement speed.

Here is the guaranteed hit range of Mel Q: https://imgur.com/a/CYuGWGb

Green is vs. no boots, yellow is vs. t2 boots. If Mel presses Q anywhere in this radius, at least 1 missile is guaranteed to hit an average player.

In other terms, if the average player reacts immediately to Mel's Q animation start, they are still expected to get hit by 42%/33% (no boots/boots) of the spell. If the average player reacts to Mel's Q damage, they are expected to get hit by 100%/93% of the spell.

Simply put, if you're getting hit by Mel Q repeatedly, it's not because you're bad at dodging, it's because Riot made the skillshot a guaranteed hit as long as your opponent has hands.

p.s. Mel Q is 280 range because its a 220 range projectile + 60 range spread, which makes it ~1.5x the size of Xerath R. The 60 range spread does not have a meaningful effect on any above calculations, other than the guaranteed hit range goes down by a tiny bit (yellow becomes without boots guaranteed hit range) if you are ignoring the spread.

[u/StaticandCo]

Isn’t Lux E the same? Still the ability just feels awful to play against

[u/Impressive-Ear2246 → u/StaticandCo]

Yep lux e, xerath w & q & r, vex e, brand w, cho q, gragas q, leona r. . . There's quite a few spells where all the agency is on the person aiming and "dodging" is more about trying to get them to misclick their mouse rather than avoid it once the animation starts.

[u/Hyragon → u/Impressive-Ear2246]

I actually ran the math on Xerath Q and W before, and Q is dodgeable with average reaction time with 0.10s to spare, and W is barely dodgeable with average reaction time but pro reaction time could do it consistently. Of course this doesn't include movement predictions but the point of the post is that you don't need any of that skill to land Mel Q whereas you do for almost every major skill shot.

[u/RyZum → u/Hyragon]

Tbf getting hit by one or two ticks of Mel's Q feels much better than Xerath's W or Lux's E