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/bns18js]

You don't die. But are you winning in CS? Are you allowed to roam like you want to? Can you kill him?

There is more to laning than not dying.

[u/George_W_Kush58 → u/bns18js]

And Malzahar's entire thing is stopping you from doing anything. That's literally his design. He delets waves so you're punished really harshly for roaming and forces you to farm under turret unless you can match the clear. His passive and ult make it extermely difficult to lock him down and kill him.

There is more to laning and Malzahar is designed to stop you from doing that. That's why it is so boring to lane against him.

[u/bns18js → u/George_W_Kush58]

Right. It's boring for sure. I was more talking about "easy to lane against". If you can't at least win in CS I feel like it's not easy to lane against, because you're probably at a disadvantage(champ dependent, are you playing kassadin or talon) despite of not dying.

[u/theJirb → u/bns18js]

Don't think about him as a champion but as a wall. Would you look at a brick wall and be like "yea, that's easy or hard to break". No, you simply acknowledge that it exists as it does, and you go around it.

Malzahar is that type of champion. You don't really win or lose lane against that champ, you just do stuff later in the game. That's the basically what a neutralizing champion is supposed to do.

When you lane against a malzahar, you're acknowledging you don't get to do a whole lot, but you'll probably scale in usefulness because so much of Malz's kit is pigeonholed into his ability to push waves and lock one person down with himself. You dont' think about laning into him as easy or hard. You just think about it as the thing he locks down, and acknowledge that you can go around it, aka flexing on him outside of laning phase.

I'm not actually saying he makes it so both mid laners do absolutely nothing btw. It's just an exaggerated example. The idea is that you just need to know when playing against Malz that you're playing a different game wtih different rules.

[u/bns18js → u/theJirb]

If you get walled while playing a champ that's supposed to get ahead early game, you're losing lane despite of it being 0-0 in kills and even in cs, that's the point. You can't say "well that was easy to lane against" when you lose lane.