The Master of Metal: How to fix Morde without sacrificing his weaknesses or identity.

So as I am sure we are all aware. definitely needs a rework. And while I know that something is currently in the works I don't see a reason why we can't take a look at some potential kit changes that could use some work without busting up his core identity as a champion and with the recent release of the new Pentakill Album I feel the metal surging in my bones and think this would be the best time to talk about it.

Who Is Mordekaiser? What is wrong with him?

The Master of the Metal, The Iron Revenant, The Defiler, The Decrepit Colossus, He who bonks hardest. He has many names, but his image is that of one akin to the Dark Lord Sauron and you would expect such from his kit and designation as a juggernaut.

Being the manly man that he is Mordekaiser likes to get up front and dirty with his opponents, his abilities are very reliant on his positioning and your proximity to your opponent, and while this makes for some powerful close quarters gameplay it allows anything outside of the his range to absolutely dump on him. It sucks but some champions on the rift are just too powerful in close quarters to be given easy access crowd control. Our Master of Metal with his shield, healing, damage potential and incredibly powerful ult are one of these champions because if the man was given reliable displacement he would be a wrecking ball, however this doesn't mean he can't have either A: Unreliable or gated crowd control or B: A gap closer on a long enough cooldown to not be absurd. For this I have two proposed solutions.

• Make Mace of Spades cause knock back to units near the target of the third hit. This would provide minor assistance to his ability to force waves of enemies apart as well as be sick as hell. This crowd control is minor, fits his identity, and is gated by his ability to land three auto's with Mace of Spades

https://media.tenor.com/images/c30aba83eaaedc2b0b4ab5cd0e3f0fa1/tenor.gif

• Rework Children of the Grave. Lets face it, for an ultimate ability and one of the core defining features of a champion Children of the Grave is pretty...boring. Don't get me wrong, it is a powerful ability, but a range lock on involving him simply waving his hand at someone and walking away does not seem to fit Mordekaisers aesthetic or compliment the rest of his playstyle in the least. My change would be something along the lines of.

R: Children of the Grave: Mordekaiser leaps to target enemy champion, upon arrival he instantly auto attacks them, tearing soul out their soul, gaining a full shield and cursing them for the next 10 seconds. Cursed champions take magic damage every second, with Mordekaiser healing for 100% of the damage dealt by the initial blast and the Curse. CURSE: If Mordekaiser's team scores a takedown on a Cursed enemy, he temporarily enslaves their soul as a controllable ghost.

This would function nearly the same as the ability does now, with increased risk and reward for using it. Mordekaiser is a very close quarters focused champion, and his ultimate should serve the purpose of excelling in that regard. By launching himself at enemy champions it allows him a very limited gap closer gated by a long cooldown, allowing him to enter the fight like the brutal giant he is. This of course comes with a dramatic risk, and as such I decided that giving full shield upon use would help mitigate this. This change would allow him to capitalize easier on the third bonk from Mace of Spades, the downside of this would be that any ability the deflects and blocks an auto-attack would apply to this as well, possibly resulting in a wasted ult on a champion like or .

Results: A more reliable melee focused who is still susceptible to similar counters as before, but not to such an extent that it stops him from having any hope of making a play. His ult would be more powerful up front in exchange for the risk it puts him in, and during the laning phase he would be nearly the same as before albeit with a minor displacement on Mace of Spades that could allow for a slightly safer time. In the end, Mordekaiser is actually a pretty damn cool champion. His abilities are fun, but over all it feels like he is just lacking a certain something to actually get the ball rolling as other have. This was the only remotely balanced group of changes I could think that didn't involve simply buffing his passive to high hell so he would be less squishy in lane.

My fellow metal heads? What say you?!

Edit: Changed some wording, fixed grammatical errors.