Edit: On a very helpful suggestion I've decided to add a Tl:DR since the post itself is pretty long. If your interested on a more expounded version feel free to read on.

Morde doesn't have sustain to beat his healthcosts, and no recourse to solve this besides Gunblade. Gunblade is 3400 gold and doesn't give sustain until completely built.

Morde has a 325 movement speed despite Graves having a dash, Lux and Vel'koz having sniper long range CC abilities, and having no mobility or cc on his own kit to speak of.

Morde's base damage is too low to build tank, so he has to build bruiser or be worthless.

Morde's attack speed is so low that he can't proc his q in a reasonable time period, especially give his low MS.

Take dragon and w xp passive away to at least give him back some Base Movespeed, health cost reductions, attack speed, and his old W functionality.

Hello, I'm here today to air some grievances and share some insights on my favorite champion: Mordekaiser. I understand others may have differing opinions, feel free to voice them so long as they're not idiotic statements of 'git gud lul scrublord'.

Starting off a negative note, I think we can all agree that Mordekaiser's rework was a complete failure. Every single part of his kit has been changed to alter it into a less oppressive gameplay state, and his ability to succeed in the botlane is so statistically negligible, that not even champion data gathering tools have information on it being done. That said, I understand you have a hell of a pipeline to work through before you even thinking about touching Morde again. To that end I'd like to humbly ask for a few concessions to make him into a much more favorable champion to play as until such a time as proper handling of him can be made.

To preface this I obviously have to state that I don't think the follow-up on Morde's rework was adequate. In most cases, it was all but nonexistant. There was a time immediately following the rework in which Morde's presence was so oppressive that he was given nerfs across the entirety of his abilities. With the sweeping changes to marksman, Morde simply isn't even remotely competitive in that class of champions. Graves damage output is better in both burst and sustained damage, yet has a 340 movement speed and a dash. In fact, all other 325 movement speed champions have a form of innate cc, slow, or other gapecloser/escape tool at their disposal. I don't think it's necessary for Mordekaiser to be tied down to a 325 base movement speed. It's perhaps one of the single most infuriating things about the current Mordekaiser, and a large part of what makes him much less fun to play.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I understand that data metrics and champion analysis might show that Mordekaiser isn't doing "that" badly. That people have adapted to his new playstyles and found solace in the ability to take him top, or mid, or even jungle and do okay with him. His efficacy isn't necessarily the focal point of this however. Morde has a smorgasbord of quality of life issues or outright contradictions in his kit that just leaves him very very unsatisfying in a number of ways. He's perhaps the single biggest example of feast or famine gameplay in league of legends. A Mordekaiser that's behind has almost nothing he can do to bridge the gap due to his slow movement, innately self-harming abilities, ridiculously low attack speed, and lackluster base damage.

And those are the main focuses of this post. His movement speed is atrociously low. 325 base movement speed puts him below Graves, as I said earlier, who has a dash. It puts him behind both Vel'Koz and Lux, who arguably SHOULD have 325 base movement speed considering their long ranged multi-targeting slows and cc. In essence it puts him in the worst possible situation where his biggest damage output is his Q, but he can't proc it because he physically cannot keep pace with any other champion long enough to proc it. His base attack speed is SO SLOW that you literally stutter step into the person you are attempting to hit as you wait for the attack to finally be ready. Both of those things would be fine if they were the sorts of things you could simply itemize to fix, however Morde has more pressing problems in his buildpath. The death of spellvamp left him in a REALLY awkward spot. A few of my compatriots seem to think his sustain is "Fantastic!" with just his w, but having experienced the more damaging end of his build, pre-rework mordekaiser, and reworked Morde with spellvamp I can't say that the problem is negligible. It's not an issue of sustain as much as it is an issue of not being able to lane due to your abilities costing far too much of your health. Even then it'd be fine if you could just build HP regen and tank out, however you base damages are so low, and none of your abilities are impactful enough to warrant that being a good idea. All of Morde's abilities are just pure damage. They're not useful in the role of a tank, so going bruiser is your only option. So right from the start morde's faced with 3 different very difficult problems to solve. He can try to solve his health costs, but he'll either be so squishy he can't survive a gank, or so slow he can't leave. He can try to solve his movement speed problems, but he'll be running himself dry with the costs of his abilities, or he'll deal no damage anyways. He can solve his attackspeed, but he'll be unable to stick to anyone in order to do anything with it since he can't keep pace without summoner spells up.

I know that the attack speed and movement speed paradigms were given to Morde to make it more attractive for him to be a botlaner. Can we call it a day and give up on that idea? No one wants to play him bot. Even when he was brokenly powerful no one really wanted him bot, we just wanted solo lane Morde.

Riot, I'm begging you.

I'll give you back the dragon and the xp share passive on my w. I'll even give back the second cast heal on my w. Just give Morde back some movement speed. Give him back his old w functionality so he can utilize some of the newer items more effectively. Give him back some base attack speed so he can finish his damn q's some time before next preseason. Give him some better way of soaking his health costs, because right now Gunblade is a 3400 gold solution to a problem that happens a long long time before that, and it doesn't give you what you need until you finish the entire item.

I'm not asking for a 355 movement speed, .69 base attack speed, infinite W duration, health costless champion with innate spellvamp; but I honestly think getting rid of his dragon and xp passives is enough of a power budget lift to get him some if not all of the things I've mentioned.