Hello, I'm PH45, and this is my guide to top lane Mordekaiser. My real name is Patrik, but you can call me either way. I am a long time League of Legends player (started back in late Season 1). I'm a top lane main, and I mostly play bruisers in top lane. I've been Diamond since Season 7. Check out my Twitch, I've gotten more into streaming in the past months so come and check it out while I play live!

Pros + Gives true meaning for ''1v1'' + Has built-in sustain and shield + Has AoE damage for teamfighting and clearing minion waves + Can separate a strong enemy champion from a teamfight with his ultimate + No mana, meaning you don't have to worry about running out of resources + Good all-in The reworked Mordekaiser truly is a force to be reckoned with, if you let him catch you

Cons - Predictable kit - No mobility outside summoner spells and passive, meaning he is very kiteable - Long cooldowns on W,E and R Due to his lack of mobility, he is prone to getting kited, so make sure you are prepared with proper summoner spells, runes and items to make up for it.

Flash: Best summoner spell in the game. Gives you escape potential or catch-up potential, especially for a champion like Mordekaiser who has no built-in dashes or other mobility abilities.

Ignite: Good for lanes you want to go aggressive on, but overall it's a risky pick since if you don't get a lot of use out of it early and you get forced out of lane a lot, you are going to be wishing that you took Teleport instead.

Teleport: A really important summoner spell for top lane. While maybe not necessary for every game, it has many uses. It helps you during rough lane phases, allowing you to get back to lane quick if you are getting poked down, or if you have unfortunate deaths at bad times. Also it allows you to join your team in fights if you are splitpushing, or if a fight breaks out on the other side of the map during lane phase. Just remember that once you cast it, there is no going back.

Ghost: A viable summoner spell option for Mordekaiser, since he lacks mobility, this spell gives it to him. You'll be hard to get away from due to the movement speed this grants you, and it also has a respectably low cooldown so you don't have to wait for it to be up for long.

Precision offers Mordekaiser tools that he wants to be able to dominate fights and stick onto enemies even if they possess crowd control.

Conqueror brings Mordekaiser more damage. You get 2-4 adaptive damage per every stack. You get 2 stacks for every auto and ability use, up to 12 stacks. At max stacks you'll also get 9% post-migitation healing, meaning you'll heal more vs targets with low resistances and less vs high resistance targets.

This is a pretty standard pick, some might prefer Overheal, but in teamfights there will be a lot of assists/kills, which means you can potentially live due to the healing you get from Triumph.

Legend: Tenacity is truly a godsend for champions like Mordekaiser, who has no mobility abilities outside his movement speed he gets from his passive. This will help you reduce the duration of Crowd Control effects on you, meaning you can chase enemies more effectively even if they have lockdown abilities.

Last Stand seems like a good choice for Mordekaiser, since you'll most of the time be in the middle of the fights, meaning you'll be getting focused down and taking a lot of damage. Since you have a built-in shield and sustain, you can keep dishing out extra damage with this rune while staying alive thanks to your W.

Resolve is probably the best secondary rune tree for Mordekaiser since they nerfer Ravenous Hunter by quite a bit. Resolve offers you more safety and sustained laning phase so you can scale to later parts of the game.

You choose between these runes depending on what your enemy laner does. If they have short trade pattern with a lot of burst then Bone Plating might be a good idea. However if the enemies are looking to poke you or just overall trade really often then Second Wind will most likely offer you more with the sustain it gives you.

Simply makes your W heal and shield you more which can be helpful, especially in situations where you have less than 40% HP your shields and heals will be 10% stronger.

Darkness Rise: Mordekaiser's attacks deal bonus magic damage on-hit, scaling with 40% of his AP.

After 3 basic attacks or abilities against enemy champions and epic monsters, Mordekaiser starts dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies and gains bonus movement speed for the duration.


Obliterate: Mordekaiser smashes the targeted area with his mace, dealing magic damage to all enemies hit, the damage is increased if it hits only one enemy.



Indestructible: Mordekaiser stores 35% of damage he deals and 15% of damage he takes, (reduced by 75% against non-champion sources) as a potential shield. First cast will consume this stored bar into a shield on himself for 4 seconds.

At the start the shield decays slowly, but exponentially increases towards the end, after 0.25 seconds he can re-cast the ability to consume the remaining shield into healing for the shields amount.


Death's Grasp: Passively, this ability grants Mordekaiser magic penetration.

When activated, after a small delay Mordekaiser pulls enemies in the targeted area over a fixed distance, dealing magic damage to them.


Realm of Death: Mordekaiser slows the targeted enemy champion by 75% for 0.5 seconds. If the target is still in range by the end of the duration the targed and Mordekaiser are banished into the Death Realm for 7 seconds, during swhich they cannot leave.

The death realm is only accessible to Mordekaiser, and the target that he ulted, meaning no one else or nothing else is transported with them. Everything inside the Death Realm is hidden from the rest of the players who are not included in the Death Realm.

For the duration, Mordekaiser steals 10% of the target's current size, armor, magic resist, health, attack damage, ability power and attack speed. If he kills the target, he consumes these stats until the target respawns.

Doran's Shield A good starting item against poke lanes (ranged matchups mostly) or just in general even. Allows you to be a bit more safe during laning phase.

Riftmaker Really strong item on Mordekaiser. Grants you HP, AP, Ability Haste and also Omnivamp, which helps you sustain during lane and fights. The big part is the passive though, which makes you deal some bonus damage for each second in champion combat. At max stacks the bonus damage is dealt as true damage, which makes this item really strong. Other than that it grants your other legendary items 5% magic penetration.

Hextech Rocketbelt In most games Riftmaker is probably the stronger choice, however if enemies are really mobile, Hextech Rocketbelt might be the more optimal choice for Mordekaiser. You get some HP, AP and haste, and the active gives you a small dash and some extra movement speed towards champions after that.

Plated Steelcaps Get this vs auto-attack reliant champions, or in general if the enemy team has a fed ADC as an example and you aren't that worried about getting CC'd.

Mercury's Treads Solid choice vs high-CC comps or if the enemy team just has more magic damage than auto-attack reliant champions. Overall the more optimal choice for Mordekaiser due to his lack of mobility, you really can't afford being CC'd for long.

Morellonomicon Great item to pick up against healers, since it cuts down their healing a bit. If the target is below 50% hp then the healing reduction is increased to 60%. Also it gives a good amount of HP and AP so it fits well for Mordekaiser.

Nashor's Tooth Great choice if you plan on dueling. The attack speed makes you proc your passive faster since you'll be attacking faster, and your autos between abilities will also be dealing extra damage. The 100 AP is also really nice.

Zhonya's Hourglass Really strong and important item for any AP champion really. Seeker's Armguard is already really strong item by itself, and when this item is completed you get good amount of armor, AP, some haste, but the most important part is the active where you are placed in stasis for 2.5 seconds. While in the middle of fights, pop this when you need to buy time. Your passive will still keep running so you can keep dealing damage while in stasis.

During lane phase, try to always keep vision up since you are very prone to getting ganked due to your lack of mobility. Control Wards cost only 75g so if you have free space and left-over gold try to remember to pick at least 1 up every time.

While laning, utilize your Shield Bash for trades, since it'll make them stronger. Your main trading tools are your passive Darkness Rise and your Q Obliterate. After you have used those and your enemy is running away, pull them back with your Death's Grasp to extend the trade. While this isn't the usual trading combo it still can be effective during laning, as you generally don't want to spam your Death's Grasp due to it's long cooldown. More combos in the combos section.

Neat thing to remember is that Mordekaiser can actually be difficult to dive. Once you hit 6, you can make any fight a 1v1, even if the whole enemy team is after you.

In teamfights, you should always look to be both dealing damage, and taking damage since your Indestructible revolves around both of those factors. Also during teamfights, you can often turn the tide by ulting the enemies strongest champion, leaving your and the enemy team in a 4v4, while the enemies strongest champion is bound in the Death Realm with you for 7 seconds. Just remember that your team is WITHOUT you as well, so if you are the bedrock of your team, think twice before ulting.

Mordekaisers kit is pretty basic, and doesn't have too many combo choices or ability sequences, but here are a couple trading patterns that work rather well during lane phase, and overall over the course of the game.


For lane phase, this is probably the one I would use most of the time: You start with an auto attack, followed by Obliterate right after your auto damage has landed, after that use Death's Grasp to keep them in fighting range.

Another good trading combo starts with Death's Grasp, lead into Obliterate as they are just about to be pulled, finishing with an autoattack to proc your passive Darkness Rise. If you pull them behind you make sure to use Obliterate behind you as well.

In PBE at least, using Death's Grasp and following up immediately with Obliterate kind of cancelled the Death's Grasp cast animation, saving you some time between casts.


You can also cancel your Indestructible animation with your Obliterate and Death's Grasp casts. Indestructible has relatively long animations, so this will cut down some of that time.


You can also cast your Obliterate, and use Flash right before the damage lands to surprise your enemies, but I would practice it before trying it out in a game so that you don't look like a fool when you fail it.

- Take the fed enemies out of the fights using your Realm of Death, to turn the fight around.

- You can pull enemies over walls with your Death's Grasp

- You can also pull enemies away from you with Death's Grasp by aiming it correctly, since the pull is a fixed distance ability.

- Kind of like the last tip, but if you are running away from someone, cast your Death's Grasp in front of you, thus throwing them backwards.

Mordekaiser brings out the true meaning of 1v1 to the Rift, and with him, you can take people into other dimension to truly show them that he indeed is the lord of death. Have fun transporting people into the Death Realm as Mordekaiser! If you enjoyed the guide upvote it and maybe check out my other guides, like my guide on Jax! Link to the Jax guide And of course if you enjoyed the guide and you are interested on seeing some live gameplay toss a follow on Twitch.tv, I don't have a proper schedule atm but I stream every week a couple times! Also some of the code used in the making of this guide is from http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/making-a-guide-101506#chapter11 @jhoijhoi - PH45