Mel, the elegant Piltover councilor from Arcane, was released onto Summoner’s Rift in January 2025 (Patch 25.S1.2). Just a year later, she’s become one of the most polarizing champions in the game, boasting consistently sky-high ban rates despite dismal win rates.
Mel Win & Ban Rates
By late 2025, Mel was banned in nearly half of all League matches, with her ban rate climbing to around 50% in Emerald+.
Looking at pre-26.3 data, she’s still being banned in nearly a quarter of Emerald+ games.
You can view both current and historical patch data on our main tier list page.
Her win rates tell a different story however. Which leads us to ask the question, why is she being banned?
The Root of the Frustration: Her Kit
She’s too frustrating to play against. Players ban her to avoid the headache.
Mel is an AP ranged mage who excels at safe poking and turning enemy aggression against them. Her W – Rebuttal is the culprit: it grants damage immunity while reflecting incoming abilities (including ultimates) back at foes as magic damage.
Add her Passive – Searing Brilliance (long-range execute procs), vision-granting brushes via abilities, and a spammable Q – Radiant Volley for poke, and she’s untouchable. Against a skilled Mel, your options in lane are either to Flash and use an ability only to have it reflected or play safe and slowly get whittled down.
Comparing other champions with the ability to block damage highlights the issue:
Yasuo and Braum: Both can block attacks with abilities, but only from a single direction, and there are several attacks that can bypass them. Both have a high ban rate (16.4% and 23.4%), but both have a significantly higher win rate than Mel.
Pantheon: His E – Aegis Assault can block all non-tower damage from a single direction, but he’s still vulnerable to CC. He’s also an A-tier champion with over a 50%-win rate, but he’s only banned in 1.1% of games.
Fiora: Riposte parries with complete damage immunity. S-tier duelist with over a 50%-win rate, yet only 6.4% ban rate.
Mel’s ranged safety and reflection create “no counterplay” frustrations, leading to her high ban rate even though she statistically isn’t that strong of a champion.
Past Course Corrections from Riot
Riot’s been tweaking Mel since launch: early hotfixes in Jan/Feb 2025 nerfed her passive/Q/ult, followed by more adjustments.
Mel (PATCH 25.04 Changes)
See Highest Win Rate Mel BuildsMel has been very popular both to pick and to ban. We believe Mel experiences just a little too much safety for opponents to effectively punish her due to her range and ability durations. So to correct that we’re lowering her Q range and speed, W duration, and early E root duration to make her a more assailable target. At the same time, we’re returning some of her ability to scale into the mid and late game with some added damage to both E and R while lowering the damage value of W from rank up which results in some painful end game experiences.
Q – Radiant Volley
- Cast Range: 1000 ⇒ 950
- Projectile Speed: 5000 ⇒ 4500
W – Rebuttal
- Duration: 1 ⇒ 0.75 seconds
- Mana Cost: 60/45/30/15/0 ⇒ 80/60/40/20/0
- Reflected Damage: 40/47.5/55/62.5/70% ⇒ 40/45/50/55/60%
E – Solar Snare
- Root Duration: 1.75/1.88/2/2.13/2.25 ⇒ 1.25/1.5/1.75/2/2.25 seconds
- Direct Hit Damage: 60/100/140/180/220 (+50% AP) ⇒ 60/105/150/195/240 (+60% AP)
R – Golden Eclipse
- Damage per Overwhelm Stack: 4/7/10 (+2.5% AP) ⇒ 4/7/10 (+3.5% AP)
Mel (PATCH 25.23 Changes)
See Highest Win Rate Mel BuildsWe’re glad that Mel is a viable mid laner (shoutout League’s GOAT for raising awareness!). However, she’s also proven to be one of League’s most frustrating champions, which we’re looking to alleviate. Her passive buffs that required her to take on more risk were successful in our eyes, so we’re headed back to that. To continue to expose her to more risk, we’re weakening Solar Snare’s lockdown and self-peel potential. We know she’s still got such sharp interactions that she’ll still sport one of League’s highest ban rates, but we hope this adjustment will be roughly power-neutral and frustration-reducing.
Passive – Searing Brilliance
- Damage per spell: 24-99 (based on level) (+9% AP) ⇒ 24-150 (based on level) (+ 15% AP)
E – Solar Snare
- Root Duration: 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 / 2.25 ⇒ 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 / 1.5 / 1.6
Mel 26.3 Overhaul
Mel
See Highest Win Rate Mel BuildsThis changelist is intended to help lower player frustration while playing against Mel through opening up additional counterplay opportunities for opponents beyond the ban button.
One big change we have is changing her reflect damage immunity to a shield which will ensure when Fizz successfully lands his ultimate she no longer completely negates the damage with a late W. We also want to make sure when you’re laning against her that you can see her Q coming and dodge out of the way at long ranges like many spammable projectile spells. Both her Q and E should now be more visually clear (thus easier to dodge) and we’ve reduced some of the power from her reflect in some situations where her reflections resulted in unexpectedly high damage.
While we believe that champion agency can yield frustrating interactions, we also believe there should be avenues for counterplay to balance that out. Frankly, we underestimated how frustrating the play-against experience for Mel would be and are aiming to improve that with this change list. And for players looking to play Mel we want her to be playable more consistently after the ban phase while making sure her core gameplay that her players have come to love isn’t lost.
Our goals with these changes are that more players feel they can outplay Mel in ways that match their expectations, and that Mel players can feel more skillful and that their success is a result of that skill. We expect that there will continue to be players whose main champions are highly impacted by Mel’s reflection that may continue to prioritize her as a ban, but we’re targeting to get her out of must-ban territory for many players.
- Attack Speed Ratio: 0.4 ⇒ 0.625
Passive – Searing Brilliance
- Projectile Damage: 8-50 (based on level) (+ 5% AP) ⇒ 8-25 (based on level) (+ 3% AP)
- Total Projectile Damage: 24-150 (based on level) (+ 15% AP) ⇒ 24-75 (based on level) (+ 9% AP)
- Reduced the visual clutter by no longer displaying the passive mark on non-champions for enemies.
- Fixed certain champion spawned units dying to Overwhelm from an unempowered basic attack.
Q – Radiant Volley
- Now deals additional damage the first time an explosion hits with reduced effectiveness from subsequent hits.
- Initial Hit: 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+ 60% AP)
- Subsequent Hits: 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 (+ 5% AP)
- Total Damage: 78 / 109 / 144 / 185 / 230 (+51-85% AP) ⇒ 85 / 126 / 169 / 214 / 261 (+ 85-105% AP)
- Mana Cost: 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 ⇒ 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90
- Minion Damage: 75% ⇒ 100%
- Cast Time: 0.25s ⇒ 0.35s
- Projectile Speed: 4500 ⇒ 3800
- Explosion Radius: 230 ⇒ 200
- Area Spread: 30 ⇒ 25
- Channel Time: 0.75s ⇒ 0.5s
- Damage type is now DoT AoE (reduced effectiveness in resetting Arcane Comet).
- Stronger area telegraph visual.
W – Rebuttal
- No longer provides Damage Immunity.
- Shield: 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 / 200 (+ 60% AP)
- Physical damage reflected is reduced by 30% before magic damage conversion.
- Now destroys projectiles that target each unit in an area instead of reflecting them when those projectiles aren’t targeting Mel. (ex. Ryze E, Brand E, Katarina R, Samira R, Yunara Q)
- Decaying Move Speed: 30% over 0.75s⇒ 40% over 1.5s
E – Solar Snare
- Root Missile Radius: 80 ⇒ 70
- End of Travel Linger Duration: 0.5s ⇒ 0.25s
- DoT Radius: 260 ⇒ 230
- Cast Range: 1050 ⇒ 1000
- Projectile Speed: 1000 ⇒ 1100
- Cooldown: 12 / 11.5 / 11 / 10.5 / 10 ⇒ 11 / 10.5 / 10 / 9.5 / 9
- Root Duration: 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 / 1.5 ⇒ 1.5
- Damage: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 ⇒ 60 / 105 / 150 / 195 / 240
- Damage per Second: 16 / 26 / 36 / 46 / 56 ⇒ 16 / 28 / 40 / 52 / 64
- No longer visually pops at the end when descending terrain.
R – Golden Eclipse
- Damage per Stack: 4 / 7 / 10 (+ 3.5% AP) ⇒ 4 / 7 / 10 (+ 4% AP)
Will this finally solve her insane ban rates? Without complete damage immunity, players will probably become less frustrated with Mel, and her ban rate will gradually decline over time. Shields aren’t anything new on mages, but Mel mains may be frustrated because it was a unique aspect that made the champion stand out amongst other mages.
26.3 Aftermath
After analyzing the 26.3 data, we’ve found that Mel’s new ban rate is now under 20% in Emerald+. Some players may still be instinctively banning her and might not know about the changes this patch.
Unfortunately, the changes seem to have brought down her win rate even further, as Mel players now need to adjust to a regular shield instead of the full damage immunity they had before. This could improve over time as players develop strategies that work with the new shield, and hopefully Riot will step in to buff Mel if necessary.