Melee Carry Monday:How to succeed with a role rarely seen!
Melee carries walk around the map with no fear of any single enemy. These Champions are no strangers to dueling opponents, and will often destroy squishy targets. They will even bring Baron Nashor down alone if you do not interrupt them. Bringing damage you can hardly react to alone, Melee Carries are among the strongest duelist in the league. The problem is achieving this status in a meta that is so brutal toward Glass cannon builds.
Melee Carry Monday (MCM) is not the blog to complain about the needed buffs to cause Melee Glass DPS champions to be viable. It is also not going to focus on why Ranged AD is superior. I am dedicating this blog to show players how they can succeed and play in the current Meta using a champion/build that many players will find to be “Not Viable”. While this term Viable is both vague and specific most players can agree Melee glass cannon builds lack tools to be considered Viable by the majority of higher level players. This guide will not rant about the tools they need to be top picks in competitive play but instead will guide you on how you can play Melee Carries effectively in the current Meta.
The format of the Blog will be about 2 Discussions every monday, starting from the basics, into stats/items discussion into champion specifics/roles then into team composition specifics.
Today’s discussion: What is a Melee Carry/Glass DPS Champion? How strong is a Melee Carry?
What is a Melee Carry/Melee Glass DPS Champion?
Consider Fiora/Gangplank/Master Yi/Tryndamere as the basic outline for melee carries. These champion’s kits provide mostly Steroids to increase basic attack damage output, with limited utility. The reason people consider these champions specifically “Melee Carries” is their kit revolves around auto attacking an opponent as their primary source of damage. Currently these 4 officially have the title of a Carry. They are all the strongest late game duelist within the game.
Think of Melee Glass DPS as a fighter such as Xin Zhao/Jax/Olaf/Udyr/Trundle/Irelia/Nasus/Nocturne. These are champions who are fully capable of auto attacking and have some degree of strength/steroids based on how much they attack. Since their kits do scale well with being tanky they are often seen not opting for their glass cannon based builds. This blog will also assist those choosing to play these types of champions as the glass melee carry build. Sion is also one to mention as he generally is built ap to take advantage of his scaling, though he can be easily played as an Melee Glass cannon.
Now this probably leaves the question of Champions like Shaco/Poppy. These are 2 champions that rely on auto attacking. This blog can be very helpful to them as well. I will generally not speak about these two as they have tools in their kit that cause them to function more as burst Assassins. Everything I write may even contain some relevance to them as it will to AD Burst casters such as Pantheon/Riven/Talon. However I will not be focusing on these champions as their kits generally do not place high emphasize on auto attacking.
How strong is a Melee Carry?
Master Yi shows off his stats with 5 Items and while his steroids are not active.
Without going into specifics on champions you can expect around 300 Attack damage with a 1.5ish attack speed at a 5 item build (Including boots) assuming your steroids aren’t active. The strength in having this amount of DPS is generally assuming your build has life steal critical strike and some armor penetration, you will be able to duel almost anyone. Here is an example of a solid melee carry build of 5 items.
The idea behind a melee carry is to basically reach a late game status in which you can easily take down everyone on the enemy team including tanks. Since generally nobody can stand to 1v1 you, Glass DPS builds can be said to be the strongest build you can buy in the league.
Upon reaching a solid end game build you will be able to obliterate enemies with insane damage such as 700 damage critical strikes on enemy champions, high attack speed, and even life steal to keep your health up if an opponent even gets an opportunity to fight back. Ultimately you become impossible for almost any champion to deal with on their own. You destroy squishy champions, and can even melt tanks.
Sadly League is not a game revolved around fighting a single opponent. There are many cons to building Glass cannon that greatly outweigh the advantages to building such. However that does not mean it is impossible to go Glass DPS. Without focusing on going into extreme details about the cons and why they need to change, Melee Carry Mondays will teach you how you can carry as a Glass Cannon Melee champion.
This about wraps up the start Melee Carry Monday for today I decided to keep it basic so that we can be on the same page of understanding before we begin. From here on out we will dive much deeper into the specifics on various aspects of Melee carry gameplay. Be sure to check in next week as we discuss Items and Stats needed to get the job done, and push your team to victory. Feel free to ask any questions below.
