Morde feels like a fighter who is overly constrained by mana and perhaps should not be. -Ghostcrawler. EDIT: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/FdABL6sE-the-fighter-problem?show=flat&comment=0009
RiotGhostcrawler13 votes-sigh- They mean he plays like a fighter who is constrained by mana, because he can't spam his abilities.
Exactly. The key word is "feels," which maybe I didn't emphasize enough. I was talking about his role identity. Is Morde a fighter or is he a mage? The answer is a little bit of both right now. Should his gameplay be more about getting into position and then using abilities or should it be more about managing resources? Should he emphasize range or melee? We are even okay with tanky mages, so long as they still have some weaknesses the other team can leverage -- it's not okay to just be a champ who doesn't have weaknesses.
Our suspicion is he'd play better as a fighter, but we're certainly open to feedback on the issue.
P.S. I'm not on the balance team. Riot uses multidisciplinary teams, so while there are game designers on balance, there are non game-designers too, and not every game designer is a balance designer. When I'm talking about a champion, or almost anything in the game, I'm usually talking about a design direction or long-term intent, not a specific patch note. I'm just offering that because sometimes it's more helpful if we say something confusing to ask for clarification rather than play Reddit gotcha.
YoungFarmer1 votesExactly. The key word is "feels," which maybe I didn't emphasize enough. I was talking about his role identity. Is Morde a fighter or is he a mage? The answer is a little bit of both right now. Should his gameplay be more about getting into position and then using abilities or should it be more about managing resources? Should he emphasize range or melee? We are even okay with tanky mages, so long as they still have some weaknesses the other team can leverage -- it's not okay to just be a champ who doesn't have weaknesses.
Our suspicion is he'd play better as a fighter, but we're certainly open to feedback on the issue.
P.S. I'm not on the balance team. Riot uses multidisciplinary teams, so while there are game designers on balance, there are non game-designers too, and not every game designer is a balance designer. When I'm talking about a champion, or almost anything in the game, I'm usually talking about a design direction or long-term intent, not a specific patch note. I'm just offering that because sometimes it's more helpful if we say something confusing to ask for clarification rather than play Reddit gotcha.
I thought mordekaiser was fine where he is? I personally find him better than Urgot and Elise, I honestly thought urgot would have a rework by now
Chromatic Eagle1 votesUrgot requires a lot of work and they're doing other things. Morde is an immobile fighter who doesn't have a clear identity. Personally I like the idea of a bursty tank without mobility.
lojician4 votesFeedback: Immobile "fighters" are not balanceable across elos. Sion only works because he's pseudo ranged, he's basically still a caster and will never be sitting around autoing anyone. This is the only way morde will not suck unless you give him more mobility.
Also, giving morde gapclosing ability solely if he has a dive partner to go in before him seems lame if you want him to be a fighter imo. Fighters are individual go in and mess someone up people. If I wanted to be completely team dependent to accomplish anything I'd be playing a tank instead of a "fighter".
And this is unrelated but I really wish you guys would look at teleport again already. Making plays around the map is cool and all but it should come with an actual tradeoff of being weaker in lane compared to pure 1v1 summoner skills. Instead it was basically always taken in the korean pro 1v1 tournament. In mid lane meaning it didn't even save as much time as in top. It's really lame how it's killing lane bullies and incentivizing "sit top and scale while teleport prevents you from being punished for getting forced out of lane".
McAllister1 votesHoly unrelated, Batman. Do you just read Red Tracker and reply to whoever you want to talk to?
Speaking of summoner spells, the point is that if you play Ignite right, it should give you roughly as much power in kills/grievous wounds as Teleport should in safety/mobility. I'm glad the Koreans like it, but I think it's fine.
lojician1 votesHoly unrelated, Batman. Do you just read Red Tracker and reply to whoever you want to talk to?
Speaking of summoner spells, the point is that if you play Ignite right, it should give you roughly as much power in kills/grievous wounds as Teleport should in safety/mobility. I'm glad the Koreans like it, but I think it's fine.
The first half of the post was completely related. I just also wanted to mention a balance problem I think is pretty ridiculous atm and never gets talked about.
First off it should give you more lane power, not just 'as much' since teleport has added utility and play making potential and ignite is there solely to help you 1v1 people. But it doesn't even do that. A person with tp should beat a person with ignite in a balanced lane and that's just stupid.
I'm glad the Koreans like it, but I think it's fine.
Ok? You're not as good at laning as korean or western high elo all of whom apparently think teleport is blatantly superior. Ignite might get you a kill if your opponent is stupid and stays in lane after getting chunked instead of using teleport for an hp and item advantage but it's not as good if the person with teleport is using it correctly.
the Anarchit3cht1 votesI think he's a bit beyond a tanky mage. Granted this anecdotal and he was doing well, but he walked into the fight with like half his shield charged up. We focused him(because he did the most damage) and to finish him off(as I was playing Darius) I used my ultimate, and between me raising my axe and bringing it down on his face he was at like full health again O_e
Which in and of itself wouldn't be a problem if he didn't hit like a truck also. We consistently had to catch him out or when his shield was down!
Hellioning3 votes{quoted} P.S. I'm not on the balance team. Riot uses multidisciplinary teams, so while there are game designers on balance, there are non game-designers too, and not every game designer is a balance designer. When I'm talking about a champion, or almost anything in the game, I'm usually talking about a design direction or long-term intent, not a specific patch note. I'm just offering that because sometimes it's more helpful if we say something confusing to ask for clarification rather than play Reddit gotcha.
By long-term, we're talking 'soon' or 'SoonTM'? Because I think everyone is getting tired of you saying things that are contracted by Riot's actions; for example, your talking of mobility creep and how some classes should have less of it than others is contracted by the in game actions (for example, you saying 'hey, we hear you on mobility creep, we're gonna see how we can solve that' followed immediately by the release of Kalista.)
Shíny1 votesI'm just offering that because sometimes it's more helpful if we say something confusing to ask for clarification rather than play Reddit gotcha.
There were multiple people that were confused and asking for clarification in that original post. If you see that people are confused, how about clarifying yourself instead of waiting until it blows up on reddit?
CCmi8bSMkW1 votesOur suspicion is he'd play better as a fighter, but we're certainly open to feedback on the issue.
You would need to change him a lot. Fighters seem to need cc and initiation ability to be viable. Without cc or movement it is extremely hard to kill people solo, and that is already an issue with him now, let alone after itemization changes.
Other than not knowing the champion, one thing that probably caused the disappointed reaction is that he's currently mainly played in mid lane as he is better there.
Also I hope you know the health based shield was never in pbe. (afaik)
McAllister1 votesIf it makes you feel any better, you're getting upvoted and OP's getting downvoted.
My feedback is that his ult needs to go. "The champ that can turn 5v5 into 6v4" just consumes way too much power budget. When I play Morde, I want to feel like a train, and my opponents are either scrambling out of the way or standing in front of me to try and stop me. I want to feel like towers are my opponents, minions are wheat waiting to be threshed, and the enemy champions are dogs nipping at my heels. I'm not saying I want Morde to be OP, but rather, describing the fantasy: I want to keep my sick waveclear, keep my ability to fight multiple opponents by gaining health/shield from hitting them, and use them to be a split-pushing juggernaut.
The ult, however, doesn't fit into the fantasy: it seems like it wants to be used as a target selector a in a 5v5 teamfight, which isn't where I think Morde shines. I'd prefer any ult that let him have a speed boost that's helpful while split pushing, whether it's on the ult, or the ult has a power budget low enough allow it on another skill.
EvilMerodach1 votesI'm just offering that because sometimes it's more helpful if we say something confusing to ask for clarification rather than play Reddit gotcha.
That part bothers me a bit, because the very next post in the original thread was:
'quote Morde feels like a fighter who is overly constrained by mana and perhaps should not be.'
Help me I'm very confused.
How is that not asking for clarification?
I am very glad you did clarify though, cause that has been bothering me for 2 weeks.
To me morde doesn't feel like that at all, he feels closer to how non-sustain junglers feel atm: The 1st clear is rough as f#@k, but after you B once and buy the right item(s) and know how to manage your clears (or not over-pushing in morde's case) it feels decent.
To me it feels more like, if you can catch and outdamage someone/anyone on the enemy team, you're immortal. (as long as you're doing slightly more damage than them, you will kill them, and they won't even break your shield) If you can't, you won't, and since you won't, you're not going to catch up, and you'll be one giant heavy hunk of metal your team is gonna have to carry to victory.
I feel like the changes aren't going to have any affect on that at all. It might change his lane match ups a little, he'll do better vs some now, worse vs others. But still, if you can't single-handedly nuke the hell out of someone, you're gonna be a weight for your team.
And making him pure tank seems awful. I mean, if he's low enough damage to justify being tanky enough, why would anyone even attack him? He'd be very easy to just completely ignore till everyone else is dead, then loop back around and wipe him out. I mean other tanks can be disruptive, maok can root and knockup/slow people, malp can aoe knockup your whole team, then spam slows, Galio, Rammus and Shen can literally force people to attack them, etc. What's morde going to do as pure tank? Walk into the middle of the enemy team and shout: HUEHUEHUE MORDE NUMERO UNO 1V1 ME SCRUBS till they get annoyed enough to waste skills on him? And even more on the 'fighter' end, he's going to be either unbalanced levels of stronk, or still less damage and therefor not priority target for a smart team till they bypass him and killed everyone else. The tanky part is rarely going to matter unless it's in a 1v1.
Or (I like this one better)
Once he's build up a massive amount of shield, he gets the option to release that shield for f@#$tons of damage. (maybe in the form of something like 
/
system? Like over XX amount of shield, it changes his basic abilities to stronger abilities and burns the shield in exchange for a lot of damage)
In that way, there's still a reason to damage him enough so he doesn't get over XX amount of shield built up, and allowing him to be a 0 cc tanky/bruiser still.
Retillin1 votesWith the amount of mobility you are allowing into the game, how would it be better if he were a fighter? How could he survive in the Age of Mobility without increasing the mobility creep even more?
Raptamei6 votesMorde feels like a fighter who is overly constrained by mana and perhaps should not be. -Ghostcrawler. EDIT: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/FdABL6sE-the-fighter-problem?show=flat&comment=0009
-sigh- They mean he plays like a fighter who is constrained by mana, because he can't spam his abilities.
Leti the Yeti4 votesmorde uses mana now? lolwat?
SlackerboyTC2 votesmorde uses mana now? lolwat?
I wasnt aware he was getting reworked that hard.
Done253 votesI'm pretty sure he meant health given that they just about halved his HP costs, but it's still pretty face -> palm worthy.
Irelia Bot2 votespost links to this comment
redniwediS2 votesWho needs links when you can make a random comment that gets people needlessly angry? -Batman
ForgiveColour2 votespic or it didnt happen
EvilMerodach1 votesIt was after a fairly long debate about where fighters need to go, and pretty sure it was just a typo or brain fart (most likely thinking of a different top laner and said morde)
It was pretty funny though. :p
Also this thread is sorta half necro'ing? The Ghostcrawler comment was from 2 weeks ago.
Edit: Though looking back at the thread, I'm a little sad Ghostcrawler didn't correct the mistake... Also, yeh, Done25's probably right:
I'm pretty sure he meant health given that they just about halved his HP costs
He probably meant to say something closer to "Morde feels like a fighter who is overly constrained by skill costs and perhaps should not be.
Really if you know how to poke at morde at the proper timing (when his shield is not charged) in laning, before he gets any form of sustain. And knowing the exact range on his E cone (it's slightly deceptively longer than it looks..even from morde's GUI.) You should almost always be able to poke him back under tower and either force him to B and outlevel him, or flat out kill him. Morde has almost nothing he can do to catch up when he's behind, and with no cc or movement based skills, if he can't get a pet out of his ulti, he has like 1% utility to add to his team for mid game. (a whopping 10-30 armor/mr, 6 second long buff on his W, WOOO)
But you have no idea how many times I've facerolled morde top by spamming E and enemy champ always being -juuust- barely inside the max range of it, having them reply with a poke with my shield charged to full (meaning doing 0 damage) forcing them to recall, staying in lane till 6 while they're 4-5, immediately ignite/ulti'ing them before they can hit 6, get kill, recall, buy sustain, faceroll till their tower dies, Wonder mid, enemy jungle, w/e I feel like and E/R the 1st enemy I see Win.
It's not that morde's good, just SOO many people are bad at countering him.
Is morde's shield up? Yes: DON'T WASTE SKILLS/MANA poking him till it decays (unless you can burst more than shield amount) No: POKE THAT GIANT SLOW SUMBITCH
Evil Jester1 votesIt was after a fairly long debate about where fighters need to go, and pretty sure it was just a typo or brain fart (most likely thinking of a different top laner and said morde)
It was pretty funny though. :p
Also this thread is sorta half necro'ing? The Ghostcrawler comment was from 2 weeks ago.
WOW! They don't even play lmao. you should re link this in the original post.
Tin Tarantino1 votesYes, obviously.
