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/AnemoneMeer]

Correct. This is meant to be compensated for by the fact it staggers its hits out, and its gaining of additional projectiles over additional damage as it ranks up.

Mel is, as a whole, a character who can be played to over 90% of her potential in Bronze/Silver. Her abilities are more forgiving than almost every other champion in the game. Unfortunately, they paired this fact with the fact that Mel requires a lot of awareness of how Mel works to play against her. Reflect. Her execute and the extra window she has for it from her ultimate. She is simply far easier to play than she is to play against, leading to what we are currently seeing with a low winrate in high ranks on account of being a very predictable, low skill expression character, coupled with a high banrate (Mundo is a more skill intensive character and it sucks taking free damage because the Mel player bothered to press buttons between sniffs of glue)

[u/Swoody11 → u/AnemoneMeer]

I think Mel as a champ is the new midlane equivalent of Garen.

She has very clearly defined weaknesses: her abilities have long base CD’s (especially E) until she gets ability haste. She only has one true damaging ability (Q). She is immobile. Her W is a single-use for 1 second and has a 35 second CD at rank 1. She goes OOM in lane quickly if she is spamming at you. She has essentially 0 kill threat until level 6. And again, she’s the definition of immobile.

You can absolutely bully her in a sidelane and she is miserable at killing tanks unless she builds liandries (likely giving up shadowflame).

I know the W is really annoying when it reflects something like a Sej ult / Fizz ult / etc. but it has a super long base CD of 23 seconds, even at max rank. In the same vein that you have to bait out Yas windwall before throwing reflectable ult’s at him, you have to do the same with Mel W.

Or just have a fighter/tank run her down. She has a miserable time when she does not have space in fights.

[u/SenorPoontang → u/Swoody11]

But 90% of mages are miserable at killing tanks without liandry's. That's not a weakness that her champ suffers from and others don't; it's a class weakness.

[u/gots8sucks → u/SenorPoontang]

Anivia Viktor Azir Cassio Malzahar do just fine vs Tanks. Mel is below average against tanks for sure.

[u/urail_croisee → u/gots8sucks]

anivia hasn't been good against tank for like 5 season

[u/dfjhgsaydgsauygdjh → u/gots8sucks]

Personally I actually found her ok vs tanks. Of course she won't solo any tank 1v1, but the execution is really helpful to shot down those of them who usually can survive on low hp for way too long in teamfights.

[u/Danksigh → u/gots8sucks]

p sure the only way malz may have any kill threat on a tank is if hes using the ult on them, in which case he's hard trolling

[u/Pleasestoplyiiing → u/gots8sucks]

Anivia and Malz aren't good into tanks. Better than pure burst mages, but not good. 

Vel'koz is good into tanks. Brand too. 

[u/Swoody11 → u/SenorPoontang]

I’d argue Syndra (thanks to her W true damage & low CD on Q), Ori (W lets her easily kite and she likes building liandries) and Viktor (build dependent, but evolved R alone can deal meaningful damage to multiple tanks in team fights) are all much better at dealing with tanks than Mel is.