Mel
View on Wiki
Excellent (8/10)
High Investment Required
Epic Relics
Mel is widely regarded as a powerful and highly engaging spellslinger, though her heavy reliance on mana generation and specific Epic relics makes her feel incomplete at lower investment levels.
Chase Gun Spam
Ensures multiple copies of Mel are drawn, allowing you to repeatedly play her after she is removed from the board.
Generates 0-cost Warning Shots upon summoning, providing immediate burst damage and level-up progression.- Doubles the Warning Shot generation, maximizing direct Nexus damage.
Strategy
This is the most optimal and fastest build for fully upgraded accounts, particularly with the 6-star upgrade. It circumvents her inherent mana issues by relying entirely on 0-cost Warning Shots.
The strategy involves playing Mel, casting the Warning Shots, and actively allowing her to die in combat. Echoing Spirit ensures multiple copies of Mel are in hand to replay her, resetting the Warning Shot generation for rapid early-game victories.
Monthly Challenges Control
Copies spells when 6+ mana gems are available, doubling Mel's damage and control output.
Refills spell mana upon Mel's play, ensuring she has resources to immediately cast her powerful spells.
Provides a Fleeting copy of Mel in hand each round, ensuring consistent access to her champion spell.
Strategy
This build focuses on overwhelming the opponent with duplicated spells and consistent mana generation, providing potent board control and direct damage.
Lost Chapter ensures mana for continuous spell usage, Chemtech Duplicator copies powerful spells once 6 mana gems are reached, and The Grand General's Counterplan guarantees Mel's presence and access to Rebuttal.
Infinite Zoe Combo
Zoe Specialized
Crucial for the infinite combo by allowing Mel to steal keywords like Deathless and Lifesteal from enemies.
Provides multiple revives, which is essential for surviving the challenging early game until the infinite combo is fully established.- Adds a secondary layer of revive protection to guarantee the combo loop.
Strategy
This build is specifically designed to achieve an infinite Radiant Volley combo in the 10-star Zoe adventure. The core strategy involves granting Mel the Deathless keyword by stealing it from enemies using Voidborne Carapace.
Once Mel has Deathless and Radiant Volley's cost is reduced to zero (via adventure powers like Wild Inspiration), she can repeatedly die and revive to stack infinite damage and board clears. Guardian Angel provides the necessary revives to survive the challenging early game until the combo is established.
Signature Spellcaster
Mel's signature relic reduces the cost of a spell, draws a card, and creates multiple copies, fueling her spell-heavy engine.
Excellent for consistently drawing and discounting 3-cost or 4-cost spells, especially when combined with her constellation cost reductions.
Provides crucial early-game mana acceleration to cast her expensive spells.
Strategy
This build leverages Mel's signature relic to consistently generate and reduce the cost of spells. Found Fortune enhances the drafting process, allowing for the consistent generation of valuable 3-cost or 4-cost spells that are then cost-reduced by Searing Brilliance.
Hidden Tome provides the necessary early-game mana acceleration to cast these spells. To maximize this build's effectiveness, cut other spells from the deck during the adventure to guarantee Searing Brilliance targets the desired spell.
Other Relic Options
Provides the consistent spell mana required to fuel her abilities each round, serving as a strong alternative to Hidden Tome.
A highly aggressive option that synergizes with her spell Overwhelm to deal massive direct Nexus damage with Pow-Pows.
Provides much-needed survivability, allowing Mel to attack safely and generate her spells without risking her low base health.
Constellation
Mel is a powerful but highly mana-dependent spellslinger. Her performance scales dramatically with investment, often feeling sluggish or incomplete before reaching her 5-star mana upgrade. Her dual-region status (Noxus and Piltover & Zaun) is a significant hidden strength, allowing her to benefit from a wider variety of regional adventure nodes.
Sacrifice for Progress
When you kill a unit with a spell, deal 1 to all enemies and the enemy Nexus.
Strength & Strategy
+1 Starting Mana. When you play a damaging spell, increase the damage dealt by other copies of it Everywhere by 1.
Sacrifice for Progress II
When you kill a unit with a spell, deal 2 to all enemies and the enemy Nexus.
Gemcrafting
When you play a spell, grant a random ally in hand +1|+1.Review
Gemcrafting is considered a low-impact upgrade. Mel's gameplan revolves around spell damage rather than unit combat, making hand buffs largely irrelevant to her core strategy.
Manaflow
Game Start: Get a mana gem.Review
This upgrade provides a crucial power spike. The additional starting mana resolves Mel's inherent mana hunger, allowing her to be played on turn 1 and significantly smoothing out her early-game curve.
Soul's Reflection
When you play a spell, create a Fleeting copy of it in hand, once per spell each round.Review
Soul's Reflection creates a fleeting copy of the first spell of each different kind played each round. Players disagree about this upgrade's value. Some consider it a powerful tool for doubling spell output, while others find it underwhelming because the copied spells do not receive cost reductions, making them difficult to cast without specific 0-cost spell generators like Dreadway Chase Gun.
Gameplay Tips
- Maximize Rebuttal
Mel's champion spell, Rebuttal, is her most reliable tool for removing high-stat threats. Its damage scales based on the enemy's attack, making it highly effective even against massive units in Nightmare Adventures.
- The Lest Sacrifice
You can use the spell 'Solar Snare' to target and kill your own 'Lest' follower. This refunds 2 spell mana and triggers Mel's 3-star power, dealing 2 damage to all enemies and the enemy Nexus simultaneously.
- Avoid Gloom Powers
Never draft the 'Your spells deal damage in the form of Gloom' power. Gloom prevents Mel's 3-star power from triggering on enemy deaths and completely negates her spell Overwhelm mechanic, effectively disabling her kit.
- Manage Hand Space
When using builds that generate many spells (like Dreadway Chase Gun or Searing Brilliance), be careful not to over-draft card draw powers. Your hand will quickly overfill, causing you to obliterate key drawn cards.
- Beware Formidable Enemies
Mel's damage output relies heavily on enemy attack stats for Rebuttal to be effective. She struggles significantly against Formidable units (which have high health but 0 attack) and encounters like the Baron Nashor adventure.
- Exploit Ghost Blocks with Overwhelm
If a targeted unit is removed before a spell resolves, Mel's spell Overwhelm allows the full damage of the spell to strike the enemy Nexus directly.