Hello and welcome to my guide on Mordekaiser am a 2 million mastery mordekaiser one trick and today am gona teach how to play mordekaiser like a boss. We will be going over his strengths, weaknesses and item builds.

Mordekaiser is a juggernaut, a tanky melee titan who will devastate anyone who dares stand in his way, if you like tanky and big damage champions you have come to the right place. Mordekaiser has all that and a very unique ultimate which can make him take anyone he desires to his own little death realm (similar to the shadow realm from Yu-Gi-Oh!).

Note: I may sometimes use the word "Morde" to refer to Mordekaiser and say "shadow realm" instead of the official name which is the "death realm" or use both. I also wrote the guide and all the matchups from a juggernaut build point of view, but don't be afraid to try the other builds they are pretty fun too! If have any questions about Mordekaiser and need answers you can always ask me in the comment section and I will reply Asap. Now lets get on with the main show..

Darkness Rise Mordekaiser’s basic attacks deal bonus magic damage. After three spells or attacks against a champion, Darkness Rise deals damage to nearby enemies and gives movement speed until Mordekaiser is out of combat. This is the ability where most of morde's sustained damage comes from. It scales decently with level and AP making it more mid-late game focus ability. It's also useful that it gives you movespeed giving you extra sticking power on targets that comes into your melee range.

Obliterate Mordekaiser slams down his mace, dealing damage in an area or bonus damage to a single enemy. Morde's bread and butter ability, make you an excellent duelist due to its isolated damage increase. It deals allot of damage later into the game and is what you should max first.

Indestructible The evil overlord absorbs 25% of damage taken and damage dealt. Casting once generates a shield with this value. Mordekaiser can cast again to consume 50% of the shield for health. This ability will let you survive teamfights and become almost unstoppable if you build health. This ability is why you go AP with health combo on new morde.

Death’s Grasp Passive: Mordekaiser gains 15% Magic Penetration. Active: A deadly claw drags enemies towards him, dealing damage. Like darius E, pulls enemies towards you. It's an ability that will define good morde players as newer players will miss it allot since its so easy to dodge. This ability is also what makes morde useful for his team as he can peel and pull enemies towards his Allies, not to mention that no ADC will be able to kite you if you pull them towards you and proc your passive on them, that's if they don't flash.

Realm of Death Mordekaiser banishes a single enemy champion to the Death Realm for a 7 second 1v1, stealing a percent of their core stats. If he kills his target, he consumes their soul, keeping their partial stats until they respawn. A really powerful ability that can like old morde ultimate change a teamfight in a second. You can remove a champion from the game and they will come into your realm of death where they cant escape from like camille's Hextech Ultimatum. The area is not large enough so they will soon be cornered giving you a chance to kill them like a mouse who has been cornered by a cat.

Flash is a very strong spell taken on nearly all champion for its usage grants the ability to instantly dash your champion to the location your cursor is facing within 425 range. You can use it in many clever ways, like dodging the enemy's cc, escaping or flashing for a kill. You should take flash every single game as its a must on morde. You can chose a secondary spell from the spells below.

Teleport is good on morde as it can make your champion teleport to target allied minion, turret, or ward, after chanelling for a few seconds. The spell also works on stuff like zac blobs Cell Division so you can save him when hes about to die or heimerdinger's H-28G Evolution Turret so it pretty much works on champion made turrets or anything selectable that was created by an allied champion. New morde's teleport ganks are not bad as you can teleport and actually CC the enemy with E towards your allies, so look for bot lane plays if possible.

Ignite is spell that you can take if you want to be aggressive and look to potentially snowball the lane. I only recommend taking ignite against very easy matchup's so you can stomp them even harder. It has good synergy with your passive, once you have Rylai's Crystal Scepter coupled with Liandry's Anguish you can burn them for..

Exhaust is a defensive option, if you think you will be kited allot take this rune as it has good synergy with morde's E as you can exaust them and hit a guaranteed E. It's also a good option if the enemy is a hard matchup like fiora, where you can exuast her once she uses her R, Grand Challenge you will lower her damage making you potentially survive.

Ghost is a good spell if you want to go ham against an enemy ranged team, the movespeed it gives is good on morde as you can gain movespeed to run down the enemy and use your E on them as morde has a few issues getting close to E them. I would reccomed taking it against ranged stuff like Teemo or Quinn.

Conqueror Damaging an enemy champion gets you 2 stacks of adaptive force (you gain AP or AD depending on your build) and at 10 stacks, heal for 15% of all damage dealt. Damaging an enemy champion refreshes the stacks. Mordekaiser makes use of this rune pretty well as it gives him extra sustain on all his abilities and auto attacks. Coupled with his E's magic penetration and passive's %max health damage you will melt through tanks with ease and sustain through all their damage. Conqueror was made for bruisers like mordekaiser who can proc and keep up the Conqueror stack constantly and easily, making it a good choice on morde.

Fleet Footwork Moving generates stacks, at 100 stacks your next basic attack will heal you. Definitely take this into hard ranged matchups, it gives you sustain and it should be good on melee AP champs like morde. It also scales well the longer the game goes on, healing for a 100+ late game is not surprising with this rune.

Phase Rush After hitting an enemy champion with 3 abilities or basic attacks, gain a large burst of movespeed. This is really good against champion that will cast an ability with a slow or champions that are really fast and mobile so you can run them down.

Ninja Tabi This item is very good against champions that tend to auto attack frequently like Jayce or Quinn.

Mercury's Treads You should be buying this against AP matchups with CC, like swain or ryze. It can also be bought if the enemy has high CC champions like leona since it has some CC time reduction.

Liandry's Torment This is a core on morde, it has a burn which has great synergy with your passive and this item and Rylai's Crystal Scepter will make you shred anyone without magic resist as both your passive circle and liandrys do % max health damage. This item and rylai's (and conqueror) is honestly all you need for damage to kill most champions in league be it tanks or squishies, you can of course go more damage if you want (zhonyas, morello, nashors).

Rylai's Crystal Scepter If you get liandrys you must also get this item. It doubles liandrys burn damage and will make you do good damage when mid game comes, it also helps with sticking to enemies since it has a slow which is always nice for a champion like morde who has a few issues with being kited.

Morellonomicon Great item for extra damage as it has magic pen thats good against squishies without magic resist making your Q hit like a truck on them. It also has grievious wounds which reduces healing meaning no one will be able to lifesteal off you.

Dead man's Plate Pretty good item if you need extra armor, you can replace spirit visage with this item if they are full ad or if some enemy ad champ is really fed. It's passive also has great synergy with you so you can run to enemies to pull/ult them and also its bugged on morde and make you proc your passive faster. If you want to go for a more damage build you can go zhonyas instead of deadmans.

Spirit Visage This item is good against general AP heavy team as it gives you more healing and cooldown reduction for more ability casts. Its passive increases conq's healing, triumph and your W healing.

Nashors Nashors is viable, it has great synergy with your passive on hit to make you bonk enemies like a truck. It also gives good AP and the cooldown reduction is always nice for more ability casts.

Zhonyas is a good item (has AP, Armor and CDR not to mention the active stasis) but the problem is, zhonyas does not increase your shielding/healing since it gives no health so you may aswell build morello last item if you are already going for this path.

Warmogs You can go zhonyas + morello for more damage but if you want more tankiness, you can go deadmans + warmogs if you want to frontline for your team and don't want that much damage. It's also a core for all juggernaut focused builds as its like your Infinity Edge for your W since it gives you so much extra shielding/healing and also morde's W is literraly the highest health scaling shield in the game, but of course its all your preference once you get rylai liandry, you can go any of the items I included as last options.

Jungle morde is a viable option as his clear are shyvana level of speed and he has good ganking potential with his E pull. You should look to buy Hunter's Talisman as you will start raptors and it also makes your clears even better due to its synergy with your passive and buy Enchantment: Runic Echoes as your first item, after that get morello and full ap build which is included. For clearing, start red > raptors wolves > blue > gromp after that look to back if you are very low or do scuttle and gank if you are not low. Then buy blue smite and clear krugs and then look to gank again. Try to gank allot as your early game is pretty respectable with morde, so you should look to be useful to your team and look to snowball you or your team.

In Team fights you should look to look ult a carry and remove him/her the fight. Quickly kill the carry may it be their mid laner or adc, your team will have a good time fighting them since they lost a valuable carry, extra effective when its a fed carry since its pretty much all their team's power. You can also ult the jungler when they are doing baron and they will not have smite making your team securing baron way easier if your jungler is present there with smite. You can also peel with ultimate so if someone like Kha'Zix or Rengar is about to one shot your ADC ult them so you can remove them from your ADC. Also before a teamfight starts, keep an eye on who will engage on the enemy team.. most of the time its a tank like Sejuani or sometimes its someone whos backline like Ashe so watchout for their cc, of course since you are tanky as morde you should frontline so you'd rather get hit by cc like sejuanis stun than your adc or mid laner because you have 50% tenacity from Mercury's Treads and Legend: Tenacity so you will easily get out of their cc. Not only that, you also have W to block large amounts of damage (its literrally the highest health scaling shield in the game) and lastly ult so you can force a 1v1, you pretty much get my message.. don't stay backline and be the teams frontliner.

You should get yourself a Control Ward on your first back in every game, its the best item in the game for only 75 gold. Even if you have placed a control ward, it always good to have one in your inventory at all times as a backup, You should be looking to ward both of the red marked bushes in the picture below if you are playing top.

For blue side, put a Control Ward in the bush to your side, in this case the normal bush and a Warding Totem in the tribush to the enemy side. If your on the red side, you should again, put the Control Ward in the bush to your side, in this case the tribush and put a Warding Totem in the normal bush to the enemy side.

In the mid lane you should look to ward any of the two red marked bushes and a control ward in the number 4 or 3 bush.

My second tip is freezing; in short only damaging the minion wave when going for last hits and not using abilities on it. The wave will freeze and will take allot of time to push into you or the enemy giving you a lead as you can zone the enemy. You should freeze when you have an advantage vs an easy matchup like yasuo or nasus for example freeze the wave and if he steps up to cs you do massive damage or even kill him. You can also freeze if you are getting ganked all the time, freeze the wave and let is push to you so you can farm next to your tower then the enemy jungler wont bother ganking you.

-You can pull enemies away from you using E if you aim it infront of you but closer to your champion.

-You can ult someone and they will be slowed by a huge amount for 0.5 giving you a chance to get a guaranteed pull with E if you cast it instantly after ulting (pressing R).

-Mordekaiser's Q resets his auto attack animation after casting it.

-After auto-ing, cast w instantly and your auto attack will be reset. This happens with both w1 and w2.

-Mordekaiser can cancel all channels in the game with his pull from E.

-If someone is running away from you, you can press Q first and then flash after, while pointing your mouse at the enemy champion and the Q will be casted on where your mouse is pointing.

-Mordekaiser ult removes EVERYTHING that is not the enemy champion when you cast it, so if an enemy like Veigar casts his cage, Event Horizon you can ult him and his cage will be removed from the map. Use this cleverly, if an enemy uses their only peeling ability like veigar cage or they place their dps like pets or turrets in the summoners rift dimension, ult them instantly as they will be most of the time a free kill as they lost a tons of DPS.

-Sometimes ulting the tank is better, if before a teamfight an enemy Malphite or enemy Maokai wants to engage on your team, ult them and the enemy will have no frontline. Also they will give you extra tankiness since your ult steals health, armor and magic resist.

-Sometimes when ulting a fed carry, its better to not fight them in the shadow realm and its better to just buy time and run away from them. You can also use Zhonya's Hourglass to buy extra time.

-Before we conclude the guide, lets go over what your gameplan should be.. Your early game (1-20 mins) plan should generally be to poke in lane with Q Obliterate in early levels (1-5) don't look for extended trades/all ins as you are pretty weak till you get your first backs and some AP. I would say once you have Haunting Guise + lv6 then you can beat many matchups who beat you in early levels like Riven, Akali and Rumble as haunting guise gives you good damage and a little tankiness. You can also deny their dps at lv6 like rumble ult or irelia not getting stacks from minions etc.. thats how your early game should go. For mid game (20-30 mins) this is when your macro knowledge starts to kick in. Look for picks with your pull, ult and make sure to always group with your team as you are a very useful teamfighter, you also do great damage to objectives. Apply the tips I gave you earlier in teamfights and you are good in the mid game. Late game (30+ mins) is when everything is decided, Look to flash ult carries before teamfights or even ult the tank whos about to engage as I said before and it will be good for you, also if your carries are under attack and someone on your team already engage then just look to peel for your carries who are under attack.

Overall, Mordekaiser is strong in the right hands, especially in lowers elos and his winrate spikes at just 20 games making him easy to pick up. He's tanky, has good damage and he also punishes enemies who step on the wrong direction or get into his melee range like a true juggernaut.


If this guide helped you can leave an upvote and join my discord where I host giveaways sometimes and you can ask me gameplay related questions: (https://discord.gg/kV7qTYm) also check out my other guide to Lillia who is also an AP bruiser just like morde. Make sure to have fun playing morde and good luck banishing enemies to your shadow realm!