Mordekaiser is an AP top lane bully with great sustain, item pool, and amazing dueling/teamfight potential.

He is a fighter with relative bulk that relentlessly stomps his way through teams, picking off high value targets in large fights, and turning a fight in his favor very quickly. With heavy healing and shielding as part of his design and build, he works wonderfully as a frontline, anti-carry, or damage-focused bruiser. He is simple, concise, and a very powerful champion in Season 13 Play Video
This guide is for all players, new and experienced on Mord, it details his current build, how to play him, and some tips for any player to hone their skills on this very cool and strong champ

Mordekaiser's Abilities include:

P - Darkness Rise, when Mord lands 3 basic attacks OR abilities, he gains an AOE of constant damage along with a small amount of movement speed

Q - Obliterate, where Mord slams his mace down dealing heavy magic damage, said damage is severly increased if the abilty only hits a single target (Including Minions, Monsters, Champrions, Pets, etc)

W - Indestructible, Mordekaiser's secondary resource bar fills with damage taken and damage dealt, once you cast W, Mord gains a shield based on how much your bar is filled, the ability can then be recast to heal Mord a portion of the shield's remaining size

E - Death's Grasp, A large but slow displacement tool Mord can use to pull his opponents towards him for engage, or to push them away for escape, the distance pulled is constant and the distance in front of mord can be varied. This ability also grants Mord passive magic penetration per level

R - Realm of Death, this is Mord's defining ability and true potential, Mord selects a target to be taken to an alternate dimension, a small arena where nobody outside of Mord and his opponent can interact with or enter, During the ult, Mordekaiser is granted 10% of the opponents basic stats (like AD, AP, Attack Speed, ETC) and will keep those stats if the target is killed within the ult, the stats remain until they respawn.

Mordekaiser is very basic in design, making his kit one that can be used and enjoyed by players of any skill level. A very low skill-floor and low skill-ceiling, the only thing holding you back is your own league skill and decision-making

Mordekaiser has a very strong laning phase that can be abused, forcing winning fights, and taking favorable trades, you have great dive with your W shield, and can fight ganks with ease post 6

Level 1-3 This is the point in which you have to play with care, Mord isn't the is very strong, but not very safe without his W. Until you have all 3 of your abilites, trades are risky and high damaging on both ends, very matchup dependent.

Level 4-5 Now is your time to start taking solid trades and bullying your opponent off of wave, with your W sustain, you can pull with E and immediately Q for your simple trades. If they try to fight, proc passive and walk them down lane with it along with the W shield, remember to recast W after a trade is over to get the healing, but not to do so early since the heal is less than the shield itself

Level 6 This is the moment you've been waiting for, this is what all the level 4-5 trades have been for, Mordekaiser Ult is one of the strongest in the entire game. There aren't many matchups you can lose to, and this provides a very unfair advantage and possible lead in lane to snowball yourself down toplane Play Video
Level 7-9+ Lastly, the final phase of laning and what I consider, the most fun part. If you have won/gone even in lane, your game plan is very strong, try to keep lane near center and farm until your ult is up, once its available, push each and every wave trying to bait a gank. Mord is a very capable laner for 1v2 ganks, ulting whoever is the easier target to kill and getting the double if the other tries to help once you've claimed your stats from the kill you got. Continue to make trades as you shove the wave to keep your laner low so the 1v2 or even just a free dive is always ready.

If you're behind/losing lane, it't not the end of the world! Farm safely to 2-3 items and roam effectively to help your team. When behind, play selfishly, you're likely solo q anyway so look for free low health targets in fights or enemies that are behind like you and use your very strong ultimate to secure some gold for yourself and catch up. Mord rarely never has a target he can't kill amongst the 5 enemies, so play wise and use your ult to get back into any game until you're strong enough to move onto larger prey.

With your laning phase lead from ults, now is your time to shine as a selfish anti-carry monster, your Q is not as weak in group settings as it may seem, the solo damage is great in ult, but the aoe from q and your passive damage is nothing to ignore for any team.

Your ult is your primary tool in winning teamfights but never get too tunnel-visioned,, in a section below, I will describe your ult in greater detail and how it can be used in different scenarios and more efficiently without being a detrement to your team. Besides that, you are a frontline with mediocre engage and a lot of AOE damage to shred down tanks, and squishies alike.

Splitting is a great way to draw attention away from objectives, and getting 1, possibly even 2 to come stop you can change the course of an entire game, your ult makes mid game 1v2/3's very simple while side laning. Never dedicate your whole game to splitting however, because your teamfight and anti-carry potential may be very nessecary to win some fights in closer games.

Play with confidence, Ult and W make you quite the task to take down, so embody the dark souls boss you've always wanted to be and strike fear into any who dare find themselves in the Death Realm against you Play Video

Your ult, though straight-forward, is a very powerful tool in getting laning kills, free picks from behind to bring you back into the game, and amazing teamfight potential with the stats it can grant.

When to ult is the key part of it all, The stronger you are, the more options you have when it comes to ulting an enemy. Take fights you know you can catch and kill, find targets that your team has problems avoiding/killing to take them out of a fight, and single out low-mobility carries to deny them that teamfight rampage.

Things to consider when choosing who to ult:

1. Who is the biggest team-wide threat in-terms of damage?, Champs like Katarina, Diana, Darius, Samira all have huge group presence but don't show their full potential in 1v1's, use that.

2. Whos the biggest threats to catching your carries?, assassins that specialize in diving your ADC's and mages can be selected to shutdown so said teammates can carry the rest of the fight

3. Who is their frontline/protector of their backline?, you can ult their engage CC or tank in order to get your assassins into their backline with ease

5. The killablity of the chosen target, if the enemy you choose has too much mobility, too much CC or is too tanky to kill, your wasting the potential of your bonus stats from getting the kill, they are very helpful post-ult in any fight

Optimizing Ult Usage/Tips for Ult:

1. Positioning the Realm, Death Realm will spawn an arena centering you and your opponent but grants them slightly more space in their direction to run, use your E before ult or a slow with Rylais to position the enemy behind you to grant them as little room in the direction of safety as possible. This is especially important in lane as to deny them access to their tower.

2. Making sure your abilities are up when you ult, Using E to get an ult is great but Death Realm doesn't last forever and you aren't invincible in it, make sure you have Q and W near to or at the ready to clean up your target as fast as possible with minimum retaliation. Play Video
3. Don't ult instantly!, In teamfights, and even in 1v1's especially post Rylais, you can get some damage on opponents with your large abilities to help your team and weaken any possible ult targets to make killing them in ult much easier and faster. This also can have you help as a frontline for your team and not vanishin the second a fight starts leaving your team to fend for themselves 4v4 until you're done.

Mord's Top lane matchups are mostly fantastic with a few major exceptions, we will cover what makes a matchup bad and also give some examples, along with some free matchups I think you should always pick Mordekaiser into.

Things that make a bad matchup, are high mobility, High single target CC/stalling tools, and champs that can deny your ultimate:
Champs like Fiora, Olaf, Gangplank, Warwick, Zac, Poppy, etc

Along with champs that just specialize in dueling and can combat you even in ult:
Jax, Udyr, Fiora (again), Kled, Gwen, Darius

These matchups are ones you adopt a 'play-from-behind' mindset with and just farm as much as possible in lane, ignoring confrontation, and using ganks to ult their jungler to gain as much gold as possible, 2v2's work in your favor in counter-ganks if your jungler can survive the 1v1 with Fiora as you take on the enemy jungler

I know it sounds like a lot, but besides those matchups, Mordekaiser can win just about any lane with ease as long as you play well and with confidence
Some matchups you win for free (or at least in my opinion) include tanks like Malphite, Cho'Gath, Shen, Sion, and Kench, and also champs with short trade patterns or a reliance on outside forces like Minions or pets, Yorick, Yasuo, Pantheon, Illaoi, Irelia. Some final uniquely great matchups are Urgot, Aatrox, and Garen, these champs all like long sustained fights like you do, but they often have to put themselves in unfavorble situations with long cooldowns or you just raw out duel them long-term.

Mordekaiser is a relentless, unkillable raid boss of a champion with a unmatched ult, great damage, and very simple kit.

He can be picked-up by any Top player reguardless of skill level with ease. In current meta, he is a frequent and uncomfortably strong pick with any team comp as a great anti-carry, teamfighter, frontline, splitpusher, and 1v9 machine. Mord is a champ that can play from behind very safely, and absolute invalidate entire teams when ahead, only countered by QSS items (which are all rather weak), high mobility (which not everyone has), and a lack of confidence. Playing bruisers is always such a power trip for me and I'm sure many other players, and Mord fullfills his role as a slow, large, heavy hitting Dark Souls-esque boss character. Play Video

As for the person making this guide, howdy, I'm Paccu, a simple casual top lane main that despite not playing too much ranked, always plays to win, I know im not the most credible player, but I've played my fair share of Mordekaiser 257k Mastery, and the champ himself being very simple and easy for anyone to play.

This build has net me a 65% winrate in ranked in prior seasons with the champion, and I believe it to be a great starting point, or even experienced reference for how to pick-up or build on Mord in current meta. Built for snowballing early leads, and smashing your way to the enemy nexus. I'm very passionate about this champion and will continue to update this build as patches go on, so I hope you found this guide useful, and best of luck in Season 23!

Thank you for reading through this build and I hope you enjoy it/find success with it. Go check out my other serious and not-so serious other guides I have on champs like Sett, Garen, Volibear, Malphite, Jhin and more soon to come!

~Paccu