User blog:Care Level/Let's Talk about Melee v. Ranged.

I'm going to start by positing that ranged ADCs are extremely bad for overall game health. The primary damage threat on a given team should be relatively-tanky melee, instead.

Why are ranged ADCs bad? Because they do enough facemelting, overbearing damage in their prime that everything that isn't a tank gets goddamn dissolved under a second and a half of fire (no, really: a second and a half). Because ranged ADCs are such an enormous damage threat, they *have* to be dealt with, and the game warps around them. Normal threats get dealt with via CC, but that's not really possible with marksmen: anything that could reliably tag a marksman in a teamfight and meaningfully CC them would be downright oppressive in every other use case. Instead, the tools to deal with ranged ADCs are things like, "But she has 3 dashes and a shield", or "He has unlimited gap closers and a wind wall", or "Just too tanky to kill", or "Bullshit untargetability" or "Engage from stealth into AoE knockup" or "Instantly deletes people with 3 targeted dashes and stealth". Pick a thing that reliably deals with ADCs, not your head, and say "Well that's bullshit" when they interact with anything that's not an ADC.

But they have to be bullshit, because that's the only way that ADC damage can be dealt with.

So how does making the primary damage melee address this problem? Well:


 * Incredible mobility is no longer necessary because diving the enemy backline is no longer the only way to deal with the team's biggest threat.


 * Tanks are no longer necessary because the enemy team's biggest threat doesn't, at any point, get to apply free damage: balanced melee ADCs enjoy several times the risk of being bursted down that ranged ADCs currently face, and the arsenal of CC being aimed at them at any given time is significantly larger. Damage mitigation comes down to so much more than "are they tanky enough to deal with this?"


 * Damage-oriented mages like Cassiopeia and Brand can be valuable considerations due to their Endgame Fantasy damage not being "assuredly mediocre" compared to other safe damage options. Meanwhile, utility mages like Orianna retain the valuable role of enabling their team: moreso, even, when their primary damage is melee.


 * True Tanks like Nautilus, Maokai, and Sejuani already have the tools necessary to flourish in a game dominated by melee damage: they get to enjoy those tools in a more dynamic environment. However, teams don't *need* tanks to fight through 5 people, anymore: no one gets pigeonholed into Shyvana/Mundo.  Ever.


 * Team comp diversity skyrockets. Do you want to run 3 utility mages and play the "their carry never touches anyone" game, slowly working their team down while no one insta-explodes because they toed into the range of their ranged damage?  Do you want to run 2 melee carries to split the amount of CC the enemy has between the two of them?


 * Marksmen? Well, when they're not the Center of the Game, they can apply (lowered) damage (or utility?!) to the enemy backline.  Their biggest threat, melee, remains the same: avoiding enemy melee remains paramount because, like the other squishies on their team, they'll blow up in that one-and-a-half-seconds of focus.  Alternatively, they can apply their lowered damage to the enemy frontline (who is now required to be less tanky) in order to deal damage similar to what they do, now.

Literally everyone's life gets better.

As added bonuses:


 * Game makes more sense. Getting hit with a giant axe, anchor, or robot fist no longer hurts less than getting shot with a dinky bullet (looking at you, Corki).


 * Mobility creep can stop. It doesn't have to, but it can.


 * Bot and top lanes both get to be way more dynamic.

To answer a couple of anticipated questions:


 * "Why would melee carries need to be tanky at all?" -- because they're going to get shat on. All of the CC that currently is devoted to peeling things off of carries now gets devoted to peeling carries off of people.  They'll have the attention of 5 people and they'll be in range for all 5 of them to matter.  They don't get to deal free damage, so they need to be able to take some, in exchange.


 * "How is this any better?" -- Melee damage (and melee champions in general) is several times easier to deal with than ranged damage. This allows significantly more play patterns to exist.


 * "How would you even do that?" -- Literally halve the base attack speed, or gut the base attack damage, of every Marksman. Tune as necessary.