How to Play Against Mel (A Beginners Guide)
Mel is the first champion to be released in League of Legends in the brand new Season of League of Legends. Mel’s kit provides a fresh new set of abilities with 1 spell being something that is completely new to the LoL ecosystem. This unique spell is her W, which we will be discussing later on in this guide.
With Mel coming out on the 2nd patch of this Season, it is really important that you understand how to play against her in case you face her in the next few games. If you don’t know how to counter her, then she can ultimately make your life hell if you’re to face her. Here at Mobalytics, we’ve created a lot of articles for the new Season, which you can find over on the Mobalytics Blog.
1. Bait Out Her W
One of Mel’s best spells is her W, which makes her invulnerable to projectiles and damage (apart from turret shots). This means that spells usually used to finish off targets, like Jinx’s Ultimate or Syndra’s Ultimate, or any spells that deal a lot of damage, can be blocked.
All projectiles that would hit this shield are instantly destroyed and fired back in the target direction of the original projectile. So let us say that Caitlyn Ults the Mel, and Mel activates her W in time. The Caitlyn Ultimate would fire back and hit the Caitlyn instead.
As you can see, this ability could be OP against the right team comps and teams. So you must bait out her W as much as possible and abuse the cooldown. Poke her with abilities and get her to use her W. While it is down, which is over 30 seconds at ranks 1 and 2, you should look to play aggressively while it is down to potentially get a kill.
2. Don’t Overstay Your Welcome
Due to Mel’s Passive, she is able to execute enemies when they go below a certain amount of HP. I would advise always remaining as healthy as possible in lane and do not overstay your welcome.
Against some champions, you can usually stay in the lane when you’re low, as they cannot kill you- this is especially true against tanks. But when you’re against Mel, you basically have less HP (not actually, but if you act like you do, then you’ll be fine laning against her).
You should never stay in the lane when you’re low on health just in case she can execute you. One combo can deal a surprising amount of damage, and if she gets the execution off,-she’s up 300 gold, which could cost you the lane.
3. Don’t Let Her Attack You For Free
So there’s a good reason you shouldn’t let Mel attack you for free. After using her abilities, she gets stacks that can damage you more. This is amplified by the higher level she is, the more items she has, and the overall game state.
I suggest not letting her attack you for free, especially after a trade, as her auto-attack will deal additional damage, which could bring you into execute range. Stand back after she uses her Q or E so she doesn’t deal 3 or 6 stacks of damage on you early. This is especially true for those weak melee champions early, as the damage does stack up if you take a few auto-attacks.
4. Lock Her Down
Mel is quite vulnerable and immobile if her E is on cooldown. She doesn’t have any built-in spells that are either dashes or blinks, which makes her quite vulnerable to CC and spells that can immobilse a champion.
This is why it is a brilliant idea to try to lock her down and CC her. Keeping her locked down will result in a kill, but also make her deal less damage in fights as she needs time to dish out tons of damage.
5. How to Team Fight Against Her
Mel’s kit is packed with goodies, which makes her a strong team-fighting champion. She has good AOE damage thanks to her Q and her E, which makes team fighting against her quite challenging. Furthermore, she has a lot of AOE CC and can lock enemies down, so grouping against her can be tricky.
You cannot avoid team fighting her, but it is a good idea to fight in areas of the map that are quite open and where your team can split up slightly. You do not want to be grouped closely together as this works in her favour due to her AOE damage and CC. Avoid fighting in the jungle or around objectives as teams are usually grouped here. Opt for fights in a lane or in the open.
Try to play around her W ability as it can be quite hard to play against. Poke and harass her with ranged abilities, and then if she activates her W, you should try to engage while it is on cooldown.
Try not to let her poke your team down though, as obviously she can execute you and kill you if you’re low, which is possible thanks to her poke abilities.
6. Recommended Counterpicks
To counter Mel, you should pick a champion who matches her poke and isn’t squishy. If you can, picking someone with range is ideal so it’s harder for her to auto-attack and bully you. A dash could also be good as it will help dodge her E and Q poke.
With that in mind, here are 3 champions that may be good to pick against her. However, they may not be statistically the best counters to Mel.
Anivia
Her Passive is a direct counter to her Passive. She has long-range abilities with her Ultimate and Q, making it impossible to land her E or Q. The only problem on this matchup is that Anivia doesn’t have a dash or movement speed ability, and she is pretty immobile.
Xerath
Xerath is one of the longest-ranged champions in the game with his long-ranged kit. As we have suggested, having range is really important at nullifying her ability to poke and get kills. All you need to do is stay as far back as possible so she cannot hit you with her abilities.
Ziggs
Finally, Ziggs could be another good option as he also has good poke and farming tools to keep pushing her in lane. He can poke from afar, meaning he will be ot of range of her abilities at all times.
In Conclusion
And that about sums up our basic guide on how to counter the newest League of Legends champion. What do you think of Mel? Personally, I think she is pretty cool and her W is such a unique ability.
As you can see, there are lots of things you can do to counter Mel. If you do everything we have suggested in this article, then you will counter her and prevent her from taking over the game.
For more articles to help you climb in Season 25 S1, head over to the Mobalytics Blog.
