Major Details from Jythri

It’d probably do about that much damage if Melka ever managed to hit you with all of them. That’s a pretty big if though.

Big difference is AOE. Also a pretty big difference.

This is my one pet peeve about Thorn - everybody says she’s OP, but she has one huge weakness - getting stunned. Ghalt’s Scraptrap, Galilea’s shield throw, Toby’s arc mine. Because she has so little health she just goes down in less than a second when stunned.

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But Mellka has even less health, and arguably less mobility. Thorn gets passive higher jumps, and burst propulsion at a whooping 2 second cooldown. Mellka needs to wait for her longer cooldown to achieve the mobility, and then has to decide if she wants the abilities for the mobility, or the damage.

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Yeah, admittedly. But if Volley/Wrath of the Wild is on cooldown, and a wild Rath or Phoebe appears, she’s pretty much doomed whereas Mellka has two great escape skills. That’s the thing with Mellka - her skills are the same even when she’s slowed, whereas Thorn’s jump height gets completely reduced when slowed. Pesonally, I reckon they’re both pretty well balanced currently.

I don’t think it really counts as Thorns weakness when it applies to everyone.

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Eh, good point, but if you have loads of health you’re much more likely to survive it.

Not rly… with her quick meele propulsion, she can push away every meele battleborn and run away.

None can catch a good thorn player!!

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Eh, touche. But I’ve caught plenty of bad ones. =P

Right (although Slow does affect Mellka, just not enough to stop her getting away), but consider this - Mellka having more escape skills than Thorn is her drawcard, one of the reasons you might choose her instead. It’s what she has in her kit in place of, say, two monstrous AE moves and a lethal volley.

If you give Mellka much less health than Thorn, you’re effectively allowing Thorn to have her cake and furiously eat it too - Mellka no longer has escapes as her advantage but as a bare necessity. We can’t really say that Mellka’s great Lunge escape is her strength now: she has to be evasive because she splatters in a heartbeat.

I’m never arguing in discussions like this that she’s weak. But I don’t think singling her out for a health nerf ever made sense. She’s now at Orendi health levels… without a shield. She’s slower than Thorn. She’s less slippery than a good Caldarius. GBX justified the nerf by saying that, purely on the data, she was surviving in lane longer than they wanted her to. It’s almost as if Mellka players were simply punished for, on average, playing her quite well :wink:

And I think many would concur that the nerf was entirely PVP focused and had the unfortunate side effect of making a dubious PVE pick even worse.

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And I bet they’re in the data. :grimacing:

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Yeesh. They probably are.

That’s what I hate about the data thing. People that are top tier like thorn are starters so level 2-3 newbies will pick her just spam horrifically inaccurate arrows and die 11+ times. But in reality thorn is an op beast who can wave clear obliterate enemy bb and then escape with little to no trouble.

That’s the thing though. Past level 7 she’s really difficult to hit, especially with Air Stall. Only a scarptrap can get her really, and only if the Thorn is stupid

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Not really, Blight for enemy slow and self haste. Run as they can’t catch up. Air Stall to seperate

You try kiting blight when Phoebe’s on your ass with the 6 second slow on Phasegate. But I take your point.

I would jump and quick meele and run blight my way out. Unless phoebe is lvl 6 mutation and her shield broke im quite sure she cant catch/slow me again

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I’m pretty sure most people here don’t even understand where the “Ice is a bot” joke came from. Oh well, let’s keep it that way :stuck_out_tongue:

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I personally have no idea at all so probably

I mastered Thorn second and absolutely loved every second of playing her! I soon learned that Melka was similar and made sure to save her for last/next to last.

Saw where she had her health lowered and wondered how bad it was until, poof, no Melka’s in PvP anymore! I see one or two out of roughly fifteen matches and they usually stay positive k/d by, at most, 5. I won’t lie that I usually HVT them due to previous Melka’a wrecking the team, though.

My fiancé has played her a few times, post patch, in PvE (regular and advanced) and I must say she is super squishy. She bounces the entire time and still dies too often.

Hopefully they revert/balance her. I always thought she was very strong, but never OP. El Dragón on the other hand… Nah, he’s just a kit dump and run guy. No biggie there. :wink:

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PVE is especially rough because Mellka just has no good range to play at: her poor accuracy and steep fall-off discourage long range, but get anywhere near melee range and she’s dead. In PVE, mid-range just isn’t really a thing: too many spawns coming from different directions, grenades flying, Scavens and exploding Thralls… all Mellka does in PVE is focus on not getting killed, while your allies are happily blowing up everything. Plus, Blade Launcher is worse in PVE than many other BB’s non-ults!

That all said…

Every time I come here to grumble about Mellka, it’s with the caveat that she’s still a great character. My Mellka KD has continued increasing even after the nerf (it’s about ~3.0, with PVE deaths taken into account, and I have more kills than assists; that’s after 300 matches and 101 hours.) I’ve had a Worthy of Song-level match (28-0-14) and have broken 20 kills multiple times. (And as a rule I don’t stomp low-level teams: I sit in the base or farm shards whenever it looks like a stomp is going down.) And that’s forced into playing Incursion, my least favourite game-mode. So I can’t really argue for a buff on the basis that she’s not performing. She’s performing…

Yet any time I play pretty much any other comparable character, I’m gritting my teeth the entire time at how much easier it is. I know Mellka inside-and-out, yet even as an inexperienced Caldy player, I can jump onto him and perform comparably without working nearly so hard to stay alive.

Of course, imho, Mell’s worth it :wink:

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