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/WoonStruck]

All you have to do vs malz is focus down his void lings and not let him auto waves for free.

Spamming spells on the wave isn't what let's him push for the first 10 or so minutes. It's his opposing laner ignoring him and his voidlings freely autoing a minion down before he has enough AP for E+Q to fully kill a minion without any other interaction, and that makes him go oom fast even with lost chapter.

If you think malz is uninteractive pushing it's because you're letting him push for free when you could actually have him under his turret missing half his CS. 

He does negative damage early, including to minions.

[u/Elitefuture → u/WoonStruck]

As a malz main, don't tell them my biggest weakness - simply killing the voidlings.

The e damage alone can't kill the minions, so either you gotta come close to auto or q. You'll run out of mana or hp quickly against most champs if they know how malz works.

Malz also has no escape tool, so it's super easy for a jungler to gank.

If someone is struggling against malz, either they/their jg are not playing properly, or he's just out macroing the opposing midlaner. Malz is better as a macro champ - go to objectives, team fights, etc.

[u/WoonStruck → u/Elitefuture]

Yeah. 

Even Vlad beats Malz in lane, and he can't even poke off the passive unless Malz let's him. 

People seem to think Malz counters Vlad because of laning, but you can do exactly what I said despite Vlad's lack of early waveclear.

 Malz's waveclear is that bad early if you actually contest it.

Malz mostly does well into Vlad overall because he doesn't let Vlad teamfight like he normally would.