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Dear Riot: I am taking a break from League because Mordekaiser

kcStranger·9/14/2015, 12:54:17 AM·4 votes·925 views

So, I've posted a lot about Mordekaiser lately. This will be the last one. I'm not uninstalling League, and I'm not calling for people's heads at Riot. I haven't played League for a couple weeks because I travelled to visit family and then started a new job. I'm merely writing to let Riot know (should anyone happen to read this) that the design nightmare that is the Mordekaiser rework has, for the time being, caused me to lose interest in playing League. I'll likely come back eventually, but I'm going to try waiting until at least some aspects of this rework are changed. Specifically, these ones:

  1. Q damage. 9x is not a multiplier that should be seen on a non-ultimate ability unless the base damage is extraordinarily low. The strategy of "auto a minion twice then flash/one-shot their squishy" is not fun perhaps outside the first couple times you pull it off as Morde. This strategy was recognized on the PBE. A scaling like 100%/300%/500% (rather than 100%/300%/900%) would be a minimal change to make things a bit more fair.

  2. W experience gain. Apparently Mordekaiser's statistics by position aren't being accurately recorded on most sites, but ADC Mordekaiser is clearly better than his other roles, with a winrate higher by around 10% at least. It is not hard to trace the main cause of this to the W passive. The most reliable-seeming information I could find indicated that when an ADC shares experience with a support, he gets 65% of the experience he normally would (since there is a 30% bonus when champions share experience). This means that the W passive is essentially offering a 1.5 multiplier to Mordekaiser's experience when laning with a support (taking it from 65% to 100%). The power level is similar to Zilean's old passive, which gave a 1.08 multiplier to the whole team. (That passive was not only considered OP, but was also his actual passive rather than tacked onto an ability.) The result is that Mordekaiser can pretty easily hit level 6 when the opposing ADC is still level 4. Accordingly, I think that balancing Mordekaiser as a solo laner and a duo laner is simply impossible without very weird changes elsewhere in his kit. As a minimal change, the multiplier on Mordekaiser's experience gain could be lowered, maybe 1.2 instead of 1.5.

  3. Ghost dragon. The ability to get a ghost dragon is probably the coolest part of the rework. However, it's also extremely strong, especially with the increased ghost duration in 5.16. My minimal change here would be to force Mordekaiser to use R on the dragon in order to get a ghost (give R a reduced cooldown when used on Dragon if you think it's necessary), and to give it a leash range, which it currently lacks. I watched Imaqtpie play on stream, and it felt like watching Starcraft because he kept moving his screen to micro the dragon 3 screen lengths away.

In summary, Riot: It saddens me that it is very unlikely that any of these issues will be addressed in the Worlds patch. As far as my play time, whatever, I can do other things with my time, and you have a track record of making things right eventually. But until that time comes, I'm gonna take a little break.

5 Comments

Bijorn9/14/2015, 1:18:39 PM1 votes

I agree and disagree with you on a few things.

  1. His 3rd Q hits like a truck and should be toned down for sure. You say this is ok for an ability that has low base damages. Well, it does have low base damage. The 1st and 2nd Q's do nothing. His E does nothing (damage wise). All of his power is in his 3rd Q, that's it.

  2. Partially agree and disagree as well. His winrate in ADC is better than any other position because: a. His support offers CC to allow him to hit the 3rd Q, whereas it is very difficult to in other lanes. b. His W helps him get a slight edge but the level discrepancy you stated is too much unless the enemy ADC left lane. c. W passive is not a percentage or multiplier. It is just simply "full experience when getting last hit on a minion".

  3. Dragon is very good early but shit mid-late game. Yes a leash range would be good and I believe it should have one. If you gut early game dragon then it needs power put into it late game.

My thoughts:

  1. Take power out of 3rd Q (like you said).
  2. Give E some more power to make it a damage oriented skill (base damage was cut in half) instead of a utility skill (shield generation).
  3. Take XP gain off of W, allow it to be self cast, let it do damage at all times (like old Mord) and lower healing if self cast.
  4. Bring his MS back to pre-rework.
  5. Do something about Dragon ghost and give his range back on the Ult for enemy champs.
Maximum Morde9/14/2015, 1:33:47 PM1 votes

No leash on Dragon plz. My favorite thing to do with it is push one lane with Morde and push another with the Dragon. If it has a leash, I'd rather not have it cause it already takes away my R, which is a very large portion of Mordekaiser's famage. It seems to me like the dragon is there to force a turret down just like a ranged adc will when they are ahead. For that purpose, it probably almost needs to exist for bot Morde to work.

His Q is straight unhealthy design lol.

The W experience passive is pretty good, maybe too strong, but unless Riot plans to revert some of the spell range, movement speed, and durability nerfs Morde took, he kinda needs to be higher level to survive early.

I don't know what to even say other than if Riot thought he was a bad design before, wtf did they smoke before coming up with his new design. Whatever it was I need some of it. Hook me up plz rito.