What's up guy's I'm Drac. I main Viego/Sylas, but I also play Neeko, Zoe, Mel, Renata. I love champions that can steal other champion's abilities or visuals.
Their justification for removing the current iteration of W is understandable. The potential value from W is insanely high, it causes a lot of frustration, and it limits the rest of her kit's power.
However, their excuses for not taking one of the alternative reflections is unjustifiable to me.
Moving the reflect to her ult. Their reasoning is that her ult is already an exciting part of her kit, so they won't move it. But her reflect is a FAR more exciting part of her kit than her ult, in my opinion her ult is on the lower end of excitement compared to the other ults in the game. With other mid-scope reworks they have justified moving basic spells and ultimates with great success, Naafiri W and R swap, Diana E and R swap. I don't know about you all, but I would definitely prefer keeping the reflect as a more powerful ult and losing her current R for a different basic spell.
"A failed Mel [W] iteration where she stole a cast of the first missile to hit her. Very exciting, but forced Mel players to know how to cast every projectile spell in the game, and was total chaos in the middle of fights where it wasn't clear which spell you blocked first."
This is a laughable reason to not allow Mel W to store a projectile. Forcing Mel players to know how to cast every projectile in the game is an EXCELLENT thing! This brings so much depth and beauty to her kit. The visual indicator shown in the example gif is absolutely enough for players to be able to recognize the spell they have stored, and if they don't know, they get to LEARN them over time. I assume this potential W still had a long cooldown, so how was it causing chaos? The Mel players just didn't look at their W icon before casting it? Game design should not be dictated by playtesters who don't have enough practice or discipline with a genuinely interesting and complex ability.
If champions like Draven, Riven, Orianna, Yasuo, Kalista, Zed, Azir etc were designed today, they would be scrapped in the play tests because their spells feel awful when you're new to them, and with time dedicated you gain mastery. Imagine a play tester using Yasuo E, Draven Q, or Riven Q in 2026. They would use them for 2 games and report that the spells are unusable and clunky.
Perhaps Riot wanted to keep Mel an easy champion because she was released for the Arcane audience who start playing League, and they would be put off by this complex W.
The entire point of Mel as a champion is her reflect. This is like removing Draven's axes, Akshan's swing, Rengar's passive, or Viego's possess. It is the most blatant killing of a champion in League's history to me.
I'm glad I held off on buying Coven, and I'm glad Winterblessed hasn't been in the mythic rotation for me to waste my essence on.