Since League of Legend’s release, Riot has placed a great deal of work into creating new and interesting champions. Historically, Riot’s design philosophy has revolved around the idea that a champion should feel impactful and fun while not possessing any attributes that are ‘anti-fun’, also known as a game or champion mechanic that is frustrating for others to play against.

In regards to their champion reworks, Riot has largely tried to retain the champions classic identity during the rework process. Such examples of this include Ryze, Jax, and Sivir. Ryze retained his identity as a rapid fire mage, Jax remained a scaling hybrid damage bruiser, and Sivir is still a team-fight oriented marksman dealing tons of damage in team-fights.

Melee carries in particular occupy a very complex area in the game. Melee carries can often feel oppressively strong and at other times completely useless. With that said, what makes a melee carry good? A melee carry is a champion that heavily relies on auto attacking at a short range and while this is not their only form of damage it is their main source of damage such as Tryndamere, Master Yi, and Yasuo.

Tryndamere

Tryndamere is one of the older melee carries in the game. Tryndamere even enjoyed a brief time in the competitive scene but has seen less play in recent years, both competitive and casually, as tanks dominate the top lane meta. Much like Yasuo, Tryndamere carries a critical strike variable in his kit which makes him deadlier than your average auto attacker at close range, although the only other similarity Tryndamere possesses is his ability to dash. It is arguable that Tryndamere’s best functioning abilities stem from his passive (Battle Fury), his Q (Bloodlust) and his ultimate (Undying Rage). Battle Fury gives Tryndamere immense trading power during the early levels as one critical strike can win him the lane. Later in the game the 35% critical strike chance with maximum fury still benefits Tryndamere greatly when stacked with other items that provide critical chance.

The nature of Tryndamere’s ultimate means that he needs to activate it as he comes close to death, meaning the sooner he needs to activate Undying Rage the shorter the amount of time he has to slap the enemy to death. Imagine a scenario in which Tryndamere is taken down to 10% HP almost immediately. Because Undying Rage is able to be cast during CC, Tryndamere will remain alive even after receiving more damage past the his remaining HP. The other scenario is a long duel in which Tryndamere and his enemy exchange blows. In the first scenario, Tryndamere is immediately forced to use his ultimate which means that reasonably only has the remaining duration of his ultimate to win the fight. In a longer fight, Tryndamere can afford to hold onto his ultimate until he reaches closer to death meaning he has more time to deal damage. This appears to be a fairly obvious fact but Tryndamere’s high base HP allows for him to have a longer period of time for him to attack his enemies before he is forced to use Undying Rage. Tryndamere has the highest base HP at level one and has the second highest HP at level 18. This large health pool provides more time for him to deal damage before he starts running out of time (and is forced to use Undying Rage).





Master Yi

Master Yi may be the epitome of a melee carry if there ever was one. Since Master Yi’s early gameplay he has been about a few things; chasing people down and cutting people down, and much of Master Yi’s kit lends to this. Like many melee carries Master Yi needs to scale well into the game similarly to how an ADC must scale as they accumulate gold and levels. With this in mind Master Yi’s Double Strike (P), Wuju Style (E) and Highlander (R) all contribute to his ability to kill his enemies quickly. All three abilities work well together by including on-hit, attack speed, and an auto attack modifier to amplify the effects of on-hit effects and the AD or attack speed items Master Yi will purchase.

What makes Master Yi stand out as a melee carry is his elusiveness and speed. Using Alpha Strike (Q), Master Yi can avoid many abilities, similar to how Fizz or Vladamir might use their abilities to make them untargetable. Master Yi can also use Meditate (W) both defensively, as a method of tanking abilities with the high damage reduction, or offensively as an autoattack reset.

While quite old, this montage of Cowsep’s Master Yi perfectly displays the outplay potential inherent in his kit.

Irelia

Unlike some of the other melee carries previously mentioned, Irelia does not have a directly defensive ability. Her passive, Ionian Fervor, grants her additional tenacity for the enemies within sight range, which helps to extend the duration in which she is auto attacking for. Whenever Irelia activates Hiten Style (W) her damage output spikes, thus the logical counter play would be to prevent her from auto attacking you during Hiten Style’s duration with CC or to put distance between the two of you. However, Irelia is well known for being able to stick to her targets with her dash (Q) and her slow (E). In addition to having high base damages on her abilities and relatively low cooldowns, Irelia can become a true menace as a melee carry able to shrug off CC and the ability to keep moving toward her targets.

Jax

Jax was a notoriously difficult champion to balance and was once even removed from the game. His current state is much healthier in terms of design that his previous iterations but are still worth mentioning. In particular, Jax’s old passive, Equipment Mastery, which gave him more HP based on AD and AP from items. In addition to Equipment Mastery one iteration of his ultimate gave Jax more magic resist meanwhile items gave him dodge percentage. This made Jax incredibly hard to kill in addition to scaling extremely well with items.

Jax would retain this design for some time until his rework which saw changes to his passive, his Counter Strike (E), and, most notably his ultimate, Grandmaster’s Might which gave offensive stats rather than defensive stats similar to Jax’s ultimate prior to the rework. It wasn’t until several patches later that Grandmaster’s Might would receive changes making it similar to the older version of the ability, granting bonus armor (as opposed to dodge) and MR based on AD and AP respectively.

Jax’s rework taught designers an important lesson about Jax and melee carries; they needed something that would allow them to continue attacking their targets whether that be in the form of defensive stats or defensive abilities. The version of Grandmaster’s Might which gave offensive stats didn’t fit into the playstyle of Jax that players were familiar with, turning Jax from a beefy melee carry into something of a glass cannon.

Yasuo and Fiora

Before we go into our last champion I want to take a detour into the design of two other champions that are somewhat melee carries themselves. Yasuo and Fiora are two very different champions but both have a common design in their ability to defend against abilities based on the user’s reaction. Yasuo’s Wind Wall (W) and Fiora’s Riposte (W) are both responses to incoming abilities that pose a threat to how they function, and their primary function being to kill champions.

The uses of Yasuo’s Windwall are largely for dealing with ranged threats as well as crowd control. Windwall and Way of the Wanderer are both integral parts of Yasuo’s ability to focus on building offensive items while also providing Yasuo with defensive aspects to survive and continuing to deal damage.

Yasuo’s design is one of the best in the game as his kit feels impactful and engaging while truly capturing the style of a samurai themed character with the core themes of striking, parrying, and dashing.

YouTuber Jeremy “Gaming Curios” provides a history of Yasuo’s development.

Fiora on the other hand has had quite a rocky history. Since her release Fiora was mostly underwhelming and placed into the background of obscure champions that few played. Fiora’s design theme was meant to feel like a swift duelist but her abilities contradicted that theme as her abilities left her out to dry once she engaged on a target. This design lead Fiora feeling more like an assassin than a melee carry due to the popular full damage build which made use of her Lunge (Q) which could be cast twice and her ultimate which dealt large amounts of damage while remaining untargetable.

Fiora’s old design had a few problems, one of which was her lack of a meaningful way of defending against CC. The most important change to Fiora during her rework was the changes made to her Riposte. As opposed to only negating an auto-attack and dealing magic damage to its originator, Fiora could now negate all incoming damage for a short period of time and if she negated any CC during this time she would stun anyone hit by Riposte instead of slowing them. Riposte gave Fiora a way to play against CC as well as an added benefit when it is used correctly.

While heavily exaggerated, this video of KOO PraY on Fiora playing URF displays the importance of Riposte.

Aatrox

Aatrox is by no means unplayable. Aatrox can win games and Aatrox can even be strong. From a design standpoint, Aatrox is somewhat of a disjointed champion. Like many champions, Aatrox has a character theme and most champions' abilities and gameplay revolve around this character theme. Aatrox’s theme is that of a war god as given from his lore and as a war god some may imagine him as a champion that dives into the fray cutting down scores of enemies while being unkillable himself. Aatrox’s design somewhat alludes to that fantasy of a war god. He has an ability which damages an area and increases his Blood Well (P), consequently increasing his attack speed based on the number of champions hit. Aatrox remains on the edge of death due to the tripled healing he receives when he uses Blood Thirst (W) in addition to his revive passive.

The issues with Aatrox lies with the lack of any mechanics to assist him in remaining within the area of HP to receive increased healing. As a result, if Aatrox is CC’d while under 50% HP, he may never get to live and become that lifesteal tank. Due to Aatrox’s HP cost tied to his abilities, it is discouraging to follow a more tanky build as it only increases the cost of the abilities. Meanwhile Blood Thirst/Blood Price, being Aatrox’s primary ability for damage, scales with AD and encourages a build with higher AD. Aatrox’s passive brings him back to life and heals him based on his Blood Well and while this seems like a fitting ability for Aatrox it is quite the contrary.

A champion with a similar revive passive is Zac who primarily fills the role of a tank. Zac’s Elastic Slingshot (E) is somewhat like Aatrox’s Dark Flight (Q) and thus we can draw similarities in the way the designers intended the two champions to be played; dive into the enemy, deal as much damage as possible, soak as much damage as possible, die, revive, and rejoin the fight. The issue that arises in Aatrox’s case is that he tends to be a champion more players build damage on, and thus when he dies he isn’t dealing damage in addition to likely having already used Massacre (R) and losing whatever Blood Well he accumulated. Dying sets Aatrox back quite a bit as he loses some very important resources whereas Zac simply loses his passive and can easily rejoin a team fight at relatively the same efficiency he had before. Aatrox has to accumulate his Blood Well once again to maximize his attack speed passive, making dying quite the setback if your team isn’t winning the fight.

Summary

Dying as Aatrox can be an incredible setback if Aatrox or his team are not winning the fight, so one way to tackle Aatrox’s design problems is to make dying less detrimental to his combat capabilities. In addition, Aatrox’s passive can be made to synergize with Blood Thirst. If Blood Well was changed into a shield passive instead of a revive passive, it would allow Aatrox to receive increased healing once he is low enough while keeping him alive to make use of the damage items purchased. This is a hybrid of Tryndamere’s Undying Rage and Yasuo’s Way of the Wanderer as it assists Aatrox in remaining alive to deal damage while also compensating for his preference to be less tanky and more of a glass cannon. The attack speed gained from Blood Well can also be adjusted to kick in when Aatrox has triggered the shield, while his base attack speed can be increased to adjust for the fact that he no longer gains attack speed from Blood Well unless it procs.

Aatrox is from an older design generation and some of his ability functions allude to that fact. Many melee carries have abilities that assist them in staying alive to auto attack more while Aatrox’s abilities discourage him from building too tanky while lacking any defensive aspect. Losing Blood Well during a fight is a huge loss and could be made to feel less punishing. Through looking at many other high-functioning melee carries, we can see a common trend in what helps them succeed at their intended roles. Melee carries need a meaningful way to answer CC while, most importantly, retaining some kind of counterplay as to not easily run rampant.

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