Let's Move Forwards, Not Backwards (Yes, ANOTHER Mordekaiser Thread)

Note: If you don't want to read the whole thing, skip to the bullet/number points and the self-quoted text.

Well, after the recent changes to Mordekaiser, it's safe to say he is now playable in solo lanes as well as in the duo lane that he is supposed to play in, which has made many players - not the least of which is Malicious Metal, the poster-child of an Ironhead (my colloquial term for diehard Mordekaiser fans) - very happy. Still, that isn't to say that Mordekaiser couldn't use some love, but at the same time the last thing we want to do is to make Mordekaiser anything resembling the broken mess he was at 5.16. And in the defense of CertainlyT, it wasn't the entire kit itself that was broken, but the issues mostly revolved around a numbers issue revolving his bonus experience passive that made him ban/win at the LCS so that could be attributed more towards the balance team (in THEIR defense though, I doubt anyone expected 5.16 Mordekaiser to be SO powerful he could probably defeat Jax even if he had a real weapon).

Love them or hate them, Riot have made the changes we need to enjoy our champion, and proved without a doubt we DO have a voice in our community (I think everyone remembers 'Lord Death the Lord of Death,' I imagine?), and that they listen and make changes. I can also respect their decision to stick by their guns and not revert the rework, Mordekaiser is in a much more healthy state than he was before the rework, where he existed in a state where he could not receive buffs because he became that much more oppressive.

However, Mordekaiser still has problems, and a portion of this stems from the fact that he is still being balanced as a duo laner, which creates a problem that exists for ADC's in general: when they start appearing consistently in solo lanes, balancing them becomes a nightmare because adjustments or nerfs can either primarily affect their solo lane (or jungling, like with Graves or Quinn), or it can hurt them acting in any capacity to the point that people outright call you out for playing them.

Mordekaiser is neither a white sheep nor a black sheep, but what I like to call the purple ram of League of Legends following 5.16; Mordekaiser is balanced as a melee bot carry, something unique that has never been in the meta since Riot accepted the existence of the ranged ADC/support bot meta. As League's purple ram, he is also one of few champions who now can be expected to be seen in any lane (he can even jungle, where he serves the role of 'anti-counter-jungle champion,' where it would require at least 2 champions to kill him jungling post level 2... yeah, he is THAT dangerous while inside the jungle, and only his complete inability to gank a lane besides a slow walk of doom inhibits him from being the next FOTM jungler).

So how do you balance a purple ram against white sheeps and black sheeps, without other purple rams to compare?

Simple answer: unless you get enough purple rams to have a pool to balance around, you don't balance them against white sheeps or black sheeps. You give the purple ram what they need, and adjust things if the purple ram becomes a problem for the white sheeps and black sheeps, but otherwise you treat that ram like it's a completely different animal.

...like Cho'Gall in Heroes of the Storm.

So, what does Mordekaiser need, especially with the incoming nerf to Sterak's Gage, the item he can probably use better than any other champion?

Here is a short list:

• Mordekaiser needs higher base stats, OR a means to temporarily get higher defensive stats to compensate for his horrible defensive base stats (the bare minimum movement speed I can understand balance-wise and thematically, but having less maximum health or armor - base or maximum - than TEEMO?)
• With pushes to lower his AP ratios/dependence on AP overall, Mordekaiser needs improved OR additional AD ratios to compensate
• In relation to the push to make him more hybrid in terms of AD vs AP stat itemization, Mordekaiser needs to have means of inflicting physical damage in his abilities tied to his AD ratios
• Mordekaiser's bonus experience passive is inherently flawed: it either is too powerful to allow him anything else meaningfully powerful, or it just sits there and isn't enough to make an argument to form a team around him
• Mordekaiser has problems with his ultimate: the dependency of an opposing champion to die to get a ghost contributes to the 'feast or famine' playstyle
• On the other hand, Mordekaiser getting the dragon ghost is problematic in a different sense: he could literally attack it once within ten seconds and get it without any further input, and it doesn't even consume his ultimate (only disable it from being activated)

So yeah, some things he needs, and here were my suggestions to compensate for these problems.

1. Higher stats, simple. They can either be base, as in level 1 stats, or they can be overall stats as the game progresses.
2. In relation to 1, a massive boost to base stats could be forgone with a change to his Harvester of Sorrow: removing the experience boost, and basically adding Creeping Death INTO Harvester of Sorrow. I'll explain in a bit.
3. Mordekaiser could have the bonus damage of Mace of Spades split into physical and magic damage, with physical damage scaling off AD and magic damage scaling off AP. In the same vein, Siphon of Destruction could have the AD and AP ratios split into physical and magic damage, or having Siphon of Destruction deal bonus physical damage scaling off AD.
4. Mordekaiser gains a portion of the stats he would inherit of his Children of the Grave ghost while a champion is cursed, maybe 10-15% of the bonus health and AP of his target; also, like how his ultimate operates currently, he may get 25% of that value instantly, and the remaining 75% over the next ten seconds. In addition, Mordekaiser maybe should get a portion of the target's bonus AD from now on if the desire to get hybridization on Mordekaiser is that important, with adjustments to the values of other inherited stats to compensate.
5. To promote choice and balance Mordekaiser power-wise, Mordekaiser must now cast Children of the Grave on the Dragon Ghost to curse it. He can still refresh the curse with Dragonforce, but Dragonforce alone will not allow him to get the Dragon Ghost.

Regarding my mention of Creeping Death, I wanted Mordekaiser to have something akin to the shards of metal surrounding him, ala Creeping Death. This isn't meant to replace the current animation, but instead be added to it. How it would go is this: when Mordekaiser activates Harvester of Sorrow, he has shards of metal surrounding him, buffering his armor and magic resist and dealing physical damage in a small area around him within the Harvester of Sorrow area of effect (say, 100-150 range?) If Harvester of Sorrow passes onto an allied champion, they gain the physical damage aoe and scaling armor and magic resist buffs based on Mordekaiser's own resistances (the shard AoE is static and doesn't change like the Harvester of Sorrow does when the two 'circles' cross).

The Harvester of Sorrow change would serve multiple purposes: it would answer the shift of pushing Mordekaiser towards hybridizing/AD, it would mean that Mordekaiser doesn't need much, if any base stat improvements in getting a defensive stat boost, and it becomes a more natural and fluid means to encourage a Mordekaiser bot lane. The physical damage scaling from AD is separate from the magic damage scaling from AP, meaning that balancing both is simple (the same reasoning behind splitting the AD and AP ratios of his other abilities into physical and magical, to make balance much easier and his hybridization more fluid). With defensive steroids, he could have the inherent heal in his W removed, or perhaps made to not work against minions to balance things out.

With the suggestion to balance the ultimate, it causes the issue of sometimes making it where Mordekaiser can't rely on a champion ghost or a dragon to compensate for the ability to take towers mid to late game as a traditional ranged or melee ADC can. My suggestions to the Mace of Spades in part would solve this problem, allowing him to deal more damage against turrets (potentially adjusted if needed) and allow him to push as an ADC without having to build as a full ADC.

AP ratios could be reduced as Riot desires with the AD optimization, or might not even need to be adjusted with cementing the separation of AD and AP in Mordekaiser's damage output, meaning that there won't be situations where countering Mordekaiser is as simple as just building magic resist, but neither is it impossible to build resistances against him.

The changes to Harvester would also allow duo-lane Mordekaiser to be a primary focus, and allow for more optimal options in choosing a support if Mordekaiser can cover the squishiness of supports like Sona and get compensated with the adjustment or removal of his own in-lane sustain via W healing.

The stat inheritance would solve the dependence of the 'feast or famine' nature of Mordekaiser needing to ult AND kill an opponent to get ahead, simply being able to potentially just ult something other than the ADC and secure a kill to win in the late game, perhaps ulting a tank and benefiting from the combination of healing and incoming bonus health to survive a disadvantaged teamfight, or perhaps just ulting a mage or assassin to get some bonus AP or AD and just win through sheer damage.

These are just my suggestions, but please take them into consideration.