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Mordekaiser Improvement

Creator: red9For LEON February 16, 2014 5:35pm
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red9For LEON
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So, on my latest account I started off maining Mordekaiser, as I am a metal head and therefore love his ability names along with the abilities themselves. The problem is I hear "Mordekaiser isnt viable" far to often. And while I do well with him, I can understand their point. The current meta is focused heavily on movement. Therefore theres 3 super important aspects to the top tier champions.

1) Movement speed/Buffs such as Jinx's passive or sivir's ult, as well as faster champions in general.
2) Gap closers/mini-flashes seen in champs like Ez, Vi, Gragas, etc.
3) CC of any kind. The more movement becomes important, the more valuable diminishing the enemy team's control is

Unfortunately, Mord has none of these 3 things which really hurts his kit. Speaking of which, his q is completely out of sync with the rest of his abilities. My proposal would be to modify his q: "Mordekaiser rams foreward a shord distance, knocking minions aside. At the end of the charge or when Mordekaiser collides with an enemy champion, he swings his mace dealing damage and (insert cc here) for (insert time here).

I think this could really bring him into the competitive scene by making him not so prone to ganks early as well as providing him some much needed CC. It can easily be balanced with a longer cooldown time (say 12-14 secs or so) because it will force him to choose to initiate with it, or save it for an escape. The damage can scale with AP and AD, but since it is a singe target spell it won't be more powerful than his q already was.

The real balancing factor would be the cc and duration. I think a direct stun would be a bit much for his kit, so I think a knock-up or level scaling fear would make more sense (as well as fitting in with his character better). At the same time, I think a slow wouldn't give enough cc to sacrifice the multi-damage low cooldown his q already was.

So let me know what you think? Do these changes help his kit, or will it make him overpowered? Do you have suggestions on what Riot should change or perhaps you think he's fine just the way he is? Thanks!
utopus
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Adding a slow to Morde's kit would surely help him out, without really breaking his kit in any way. I'm not quite sure how you think a knock-up is any worse than a stun. If anything, i think the latter would make more sense for balancing. But as you said, a stun for his kit might still be a lot to ask for.

How does something along these lines sound?
Morde's Siphon of Destruction gives a stackable debuff in addition to the damage it does, that lasts for 10/9/8/7/6 seconds. The debuff duration is reduced by CDR. Units hit get slowed for 1.25 seconds. The slow duration is reduced by 50% per stack
Additionally, mordekaiser's Mace of Spades snares the targets hits for 1 second. The duration of the snare is reduced by 33% per stack of debuff.

This Fix would make morde have the CC to set up ganks during the early game, and have CC to follow up team fights, but not so much CC that it would be abusable in extended fights - due to the low base CDs of morde's abilities.
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I get the feeling putting a band-aid fix on Morde's kit simply by giving him a gapcloser/CC is just asking for more of the problem we have currently, in which we get different variations on the same type of champion and only one is desired while others are left in the dust.

If Morde suddenly gets hard CC and a gap closer at the same time he'll either become insanely overpowered because he does what everyone else does on top of his own kit or remain trash because the rest of his kit will have to be nerfed as a result and thus he'll have nothing to put him above champions who do the same thing he does/would do.

Morde is the way he is because his single target power is simply insane and he is a great farmer/pusher who scales exponentially with items because his ghost scales with his stats for whatever reason. If he could stick to people with the aid of added mobility he'd be flat out unlaneable against. I mean hell just look at when ROCCAT picked Morde and he erased the enemy mid without even being fed, simply by having 400 farm. Now imagine if he could do that whenever he wished.

If Morde is to be balanced he needs a kit rework, and his ridiculous ghost scaling has to go. He needs some reason to give up mobility and CC for what he brings to the table instead if he is to remain an interesting champion. I'd like it if he got some kind of situational benefit from ulting different targets too rather than just ulting the same target in every fight because it's the best choice.
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All you have to do to play Mordekaiser is enter the middle of a teamfight and go W-Q-E-R for enormous damage. I mean you're taking away the only weaknesses Mordekaiser actually has, to make him viable for a meta nobody cares about at most elos. And if you turn him into a CC bot thats probably pretty generic tbh.
Other than that:
a) ROCCAT destroyed with him at high elo, so its probably just noone likes Mordekaiser.
b) 90% of people who play Morde get Rylais for his abilties anyway, so no slows pls.

Basically MOBAFire.
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If you would give Morde CC, oh boy, dat jungler...
red9For LEON
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All you have to do to play Mordekaiser is enter the middle of a teamfight and go W-Q-E-R for enormous damage. I mean you're taking away the only weaknesses Mordekaiser actually has, to make him viable for a meta nobody cares about at most elos. And if you turn him into a CC bot thats probably pretty generic tbh.
Other than that:
a) ROCCAT destroyed with him at high elo, so its probably just noone likes Mordekaiser.
b) 90% of people who play Morde get Rylais for his abilties anyway, so no slows pls.
red9For LEON
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All you have to do to play Mordekaiser is enter the middle of a teamfight and go W-Q-E-R for enormous damage. I mean you're taking away the only weaknesses Mordekaiser actually has, to make him viable for a meta nobody cares about at most elos. And if you turn him into a CC bot thats probably pretty generic tbh.
Other than that:
a) ROCCAT destroyed with him at high elo, so its probably just noone likes Mordekaiser.
b) 90% of people who play Morde get Rylais for his abilties anyway, so no slows pls.


The problem here is that we're basing Mord's abilities off of one player at high elo. I play Mord all the time and I'm capable of doing well with him, but the problem is that the circumstances have to be just perfect for me to carry as a mid should. First off, Mord can definetly do damage...but so can every mid out there. The difference is that most other mids do more burst damage, better range, or have awesome cc's in their kit. Mord can easily be countered the way he is built now. I didn't see the ROCCAT game, but I guarantee you any competent jungler with basic cc can shut down mord, especially before his first back.

The fact is that for Mord, pushing is a curse. Yes he gets lots of cs from it, but it also puts him in very vulnerable positions for ganking when he doesn't have a gap closer. That means he's completely reliant on his flash and when that's on cooldown, he's a free kill. I mean, look at vi who has 2 forms of cc. Even WITH flash up, Mord is still screwed. So the obvious thing to do would be to play more conservatively right? Well that doesn't work either. Mord is a short range fighter and therefore NEEDS to be up close and personal. But how does he do that? With his passive. But how does he keep his passive up? By attacking minions. Essentially, the only reason Mord's kit works now is because he pushes, however pushing is his greatest weakness. Its a catch 22.

Mord is also useless in teamfights. This isn't to say he can't do damage against an underskilled team, but any decent team is going to be able to kite him. Easily. Also, as I mentioned previously, needs to push to maintain his passive. But in the initial pokes of a teamfight his passive is going to be low/down meaning the enemy can easily do damage straight to his health before the fight even starts. And the only way he's going to get his shield to full during the fight is if the enemy team groups up. So Mord can be played...so long as everyone on the team is built around him not having any cc. By that logic, every lol champ is just as viable as everyone else. But that just isn't the case. For Mord to really become viable he needs some sort of cc.

My last point is against your concept that he would be overpowered. First off, he's underpowered now so buff/tweaking him is what we want. So your argument can't be that he would be more powerful, but instead must be he can't be TOO powerful. To that I respond as such: Cho Gath. Cho is similarish to mord in role, though not so much in abilities. He does AP and does a good amount too. He has a cone AP damage that ALSO silences, builds tanky as well as naturally tanks it up with his ult. His passive provides sustain. He has a ranged pop-up that also slows. Finally he has a skill that gives him straight melee damage and pushability. However, nobody says Cho is overpowered. Just because an AP champion is both tanky and has cc doesn't mean they're OP. Cho gath's ult does insane damage. Yours doesn't. Yet he still isn't OP. Cho Gath has more range and cc than you. Yet still, he's not OP. The main difference is that Cho is great in teamfights...Mord is not.

Overall, I think the second commenter's idea of a stacking slow is a bit much, but Mord DOES need some cc to make him viable. If he was viable now, more people would be playing him.
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Mord can easily be countered the way he is built now. I didn't see the ROCCAT game, but I guarantee you any competent jungler with basic cc can shut down mord, especially before his first back.

Not if these are in your core build - which they should be!
sight ward

Quoted:

The fact is that for Mord, pushing is a curse. Yes he gets lots of cs from it, but it also puts him in very vulnerable positions for ganking when he doesn't have a gap closer.


Some champions get totally countered by pushing. For instance, take my home boy leblanc. She's good at 100-0 ing the opposing mid champion and whatnot, but she can't do anything if she's always pushed under tower. Leblanc has really nice roam potential, and she can't even take advantage of that, because of some heavy pushers like Mordekaiser and Heimerdinger

Quoted:

Mord is also useless in teamfights. This isn't to say he can't do damage against an underskilled team, but any decent team is going to be able to kite him. Easily. Also, as I mentioned previously, needs to push to maintain his passive. But in the initial pokes of a teamfight his passive is going to be low/down meaning the enemy can easily do damage straight to his health before the fight even starts.


Morde isn't an initiator, or a front line tank, or a poke champion. He should not be directly in the front lines during a team fight, or before a team fight. If the way you play morde is by walking up and trying ti directly ult the adc, you should seriously rethink your playstyle for morde. He isn't an assassin. He is a semi tanky AP with good AoE damage, with the potential to really turn team fights, if he gets a successful ult off an an important character.

Quoted:

Overall, I think the second commenter's idea of a stacking slow is a bit much, but Mord DOES need some cc to make him viable. If he was viable now, more people would be playing him.


My idea isn't for the slow to stack, but for the stacks to diminish the slow :)
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Instead of giving him a slow, you could also give him more movement speed the stronger his shield is or something like that. I don't think a slow would fit the theme of mordekaiser at all. Like CC on Master Yi, that also wouldn't fit.
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How about a speed buff if he hits Q/E? Maybe specifically if he hits a champion?
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