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The way Morde was adapted into duo lane is flawed and broken designwise.

Count Zubat·9/13/2015, 2:15:17 PM·56 votes·2,910 views

Very long post. If you don't want to read, skip to tl;dr.

Full experience for last hitting minions.

Riot... WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Was that the best you can think of? Giving free experience to a champ when duo laning? Giving level advantage to champion for just farming correctly? And it's not a little advantage, like with Zilean's passive, no no no, it's an advantage of AT LEAST 2 levels. If Morde farms correctly, he can get level 6 while his laning opponents have level 4! Having ultimate and one of your abilities on rank 3 vs having one of your abilities on rank 2. You know what that means? Basically, laning against Morde in duo lane means waiting for unavoidable death. You can't do anything to stop Morde from getting that advantage. Poking doesn't work, because Morde has built in sustain in form of W heal and passive shield + it gets worse if he has relic shield support. Trying to kill him is suicide, especially when he has Leona or Nautilus supp, so he can easily smack you with 3rd Q while you are CC'd. Pushing lane so he looses some of the minions under turret? With that W damage that makes his minion clear insane, it's impossible. If Morde player is competent, you can't do anything, he will get that huge level advantage. This is the cheapest and one of the most unfair mechanics League has ever seen and it makes Morde impossible to balance: no matter what Riot does, he will be either OP or trash tier. This means that it is impossible to make solo lane Morde viable, because trying to buff solo lane Morde will result in buffing duo lane, making him broken again. Morde was made a duo laner because he was deemed as "unhealthy and toxic" as a solo champ. There's only one problem: his duo lane is more unhealthy and toxic than his solo lane ever was.

So, what is Riot's answer to such a state? Huge nerf to W damage. Basically, Morde lost 300 base damage from his W, because the overlapping mechanic was removed, as well as his heal was weakened. And while I don't think this is a bad nerf (the numbers on W are completely overtuned right now on live), this won't remove the cause, which is free exp. The mechanic that is supposed to make Morde a viable duo laner is the cause of him being completely broken and impossible to properly balance champion.

The W passive should be removed. Completely. It's the only way to balance duo Morde, and it's the only way to open possibilities to improve solo Morde. Riot, you want to make melee champion viable as a duo laner? Sure, why not, but it shouldn't be done by implementing such cheap and flawed mechanic like that.

Tl;dr: Morde's W passive is broken designwise and gives completely unfair advantage. The opponent cannot do anything to stop competent Morde player from getting level advantage over him. Because of that, Morde is impossible to balance: he will be either broken or trash. This also means that trying to make solo Morde viable is impossible, because duo Morde can automatically become broken again. The only way to balance duo Morde is to remove W passive, that way, he can be easily balanced both as a solo and duo laner.

41 Comments

Stars Shaper9/13/2015, 2:38:38 PM18 votes

I said it since day 1 of its presentation that:

  1. forcing teamplay in some1's kit is bad design, performance of an all around kit that shine in duo/team are what makes good design.

  2. binding his damage to a single skill makes a character either UP or OP, no gray zone.

I have to quote a Blizzard employee of which I don't remember the name (it wasn't GC, that I can assure): "A really long cast time spell, lets say 20 seconds, that can obliterate any1 in a large zone is balanced on papaer because it's really difficult to end this cast considering all the CCs around and the reward for ending it it's good enough. But then it would either end that it's never used and so considered terribly underpowered and a waste of budget in a character or extremely OP because once you end the cast, victory is certain"

Vhalthoria9/13/2015, 2:50:16 PM13 votes

What they **should do ** is retire this whole idea they want to force us with Morde and instead redefine him to be close to what he was pre-rework but with the new rework changes.

Solo Morde would probably be less troublesome for both the playerbase and the designers alike. Why over complicate things with what obviously seems to be flawed design which probably will result in a balance nightmare? I'm not surprised this re-work resulted this way. I'm just surprised the designer behind it didn't see beyond the picture.

Give the community what they wanted in the first place, with the correct balance and tweaks so that you can keep your rework changes. That's all we want. Make a new champion for this concept, don't ruin established and loved champions with such experiments.

Imo Morde isn't really a juggernaut. Sure he has the damage but so do all the APC and ADC and they aren't even tanky for the most part.

I mean these are Morde stats:

Movement Speed: 325 (Without mentioning he is melee, lacks CC, lacks escapes, and lacks gapclosers. Also slower than most ADC's) Base Health: 525 (Probably design decision due to his passive. He has less health than most ADC's) Handicapped to only 3 abilities when solo. All his damage shifted to his close combat spell (Q)

I'm not against making him a threat more than ever in close proximity. But at least give him the tools he needs in order to be proficient by himself. This Morde can't do anything by his own outside sneaky flash 3rd Q's on dumb/inexperienced players. This doesn't necessarily scream juggernaut to me. More like a wuss that needs a babysitter in order to not cry. If you are gonna make him as kitable as ever then at least make him more tanky. I don't see problems with that. But when you make a squishy immobile champion with no means of closing in or escape then you really kill the fun and devotion to him from his fans.

When you think about juggernauts, then hypercarry champions such as Nasus and the traditional lategame Jax make the click. I don't see this Morde close to that caliber.

Old Morde as indeed closer to be a juggernaut and is not even that close to begin with, but this Morde is rather pitiful.

Matezoide9/13/2015, 8:24:48 PM7 votes

Mordekaiser Bot's entire gimmick relies on becoming an over leveled ball of stats by doing nothing outside of last hitting.

You literally can not balance this shit lmao

Gigahappytown9/13/2015, 7:10:11 PM5 votes

for melee carrys to go bot marksman need to be reworked to not be so poorly designed in general

Xeynid9/14/2015, 12:22:25 AM4 votes

The whole "Extra Experience!" thing is just incredibly stupid on riot's part.

We want mordekaiser to play a role he doesn't normally fit in.

Why doesn't he fit that role? He has low range, which makes farming in a range-centric lane difficult. How do we encourage him to play through that disadvantage, or how do we reduce that disadvantage?

Riot's answer to question #2 is "Let's let him get a free kill at 5 minutes in that's fair" Which is kinda silly.

If Riot could somehow manage to create a healthy way to encourage mordekaiser to go to the bottom lane, I'd applaud them, but really, there's no good way to make a melee mage take over the role of an attack damage-centric ranged character without just making them insanely broken in that slot.

Sire Hippington9/13/2015, 5:36:24 PM4 votes

This, and his Dragon. Duo-mordes power mostly comes from getting that level lead, then forcing a drake and push down 1-2 towers with it. Once he looses that level advantage and needs to win on even ground, he suddenly crumbles. He starts off at ~74%winrate for 0-25min games, and drops down to 47% at 40+min. It's pretty obvious that such a extereme povercurve isn't healthy...

sp4419/14/2015, 5:06:12 AM3 votes

Funny how CertainlyT, the vanguard of toxic champions criticized Old Morde by saying that he was toxic before then making his kit 10 times more toxic by exacerbating the problems that his kit already had and putting him in a position where he'll either be OP or UP and likely never find a sweet spot.

Well, this was the guy who saw nothing wrong with making a champion that dashes with every auto-attack.

Dayblazer9/13/2015, 4:41:09 PM3 votes

I find it hilarious that your using the term "force" as if they are holding a gun to your head to even play morde. You want to have an impact dont play him at all. the less play he gets the more likely riot is to actually pay attention.

kcStranger9/13/2015, 8:57:36 PM2 votes

Totally agree, Mordekaiser has multiple problems (absurd Q scaling also comes to mind), but the W passive is the sort of thing that simply should not exist in the game. If you want to make duo Morde a thing, just make casting W a little stronger if you put in on a champion (i.e. your support).

Dengeden9/14/2015, 8:16:45 AM1 votes

Was that the best you can think of?

I'm all ears, so far, their idea is still better than your nothing.

The W passive should be removed.

In other words: remove Morde from the duo lane. There's a reason you rarely see Pantheon, Zed, Yasuo, Gnar etc as "ADCs".

The way to play against Morde is simple: lane swap. Move the duo lane top, you don't even have to deep ward. If the Morde lane moves top as well, he can't ult dragon. If he stays bot, his W passive is more or less. There's no reason not to do it.

Saianna9/14/2015, 11:57:49 AM1 votes

Unfortunately I believe it's too late now..

Morde will most likely stay they way he is for at least few months..

Boomer Blitz9/14/2015, 2:12:45 PM1 votes

I'm not saying that his passive is a good idea, but at the same time why is no one commenting on the fact that he is a melee champ that is being forced into a lane with typically 1-2 range champs?

IMO he's pretty easy to abuse for most of laning phase and if you don't do that then that's your fault. Unless he is laning with a pick support you can usually AA him all day for free shove him to turret deny him farm etc

MealReadytoEat9/14/2015, 5:58:47 PM1 votes

He'd fall so far behind in levels so many games if he didn't have this - He's melee with no gapclosers against one or two pokey ranged champs. Its real easy to zone him, and I think this passive stresses the importants of it even more. Its no different than Nasus's q, if you can't zone him from minions, you are gonna suffer.

CoolKnightST9/14/2015, 6:07:17 PM1 votes

I find it's intressting they give botlane more optiosn. Now the official names are "duolane - carry" & "duolane - support" rather than adc & support. I honnestly think they should make more like morde. I'm not even sure it's worth to bring his solo lane power back.

Treeofwar9/13/2015, 2:31:40 PM1 votes

they are moving him to a solo lane

hgjkdlsaf jeldvb9/14/2015, 11:18:37 PM1 votes

CertainlyT: taking mechanics no one wants and turning the dial up to 11. (Seriously, deny plank got removed because of the same level discrepancies duo lane morde brings.)

thepay39/13/2015, 2:36:18 PM1 votes

yeah

Treeofwar9/13/2015, 6:19:09 PM1 votes

riot said they are trying to move him back into a solo lane

Treeofwar9/13/2015, 6:33:09 PM1 votes

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/e8tTzj2W-speculation-518-is-the-last-chance-for-balancing-for-worlds-whos-on-the-hitlist?show=flat&comment=000a000100000000000000000000

Treeofwar9/13/2015, 6:33:30 PM1 votes

one of the rioters commented on it so...

Downfall9/13/2015, 7:08:44 PM1 votes

was too lazy to read the tl;dr

Chumpydog9/13/2015, 11:05:05 PM1 votes

If u follow the pbe u would know his w is receiving buffs as well as nerfs this patch including self cast on w happy :)

Saphixia9/13/2015, 11:41:45 PM1 votes

Just like to point out ive seen more mordekaisers mid-lane than adc so far, and he is op af midlane

Alleo9/14/2015, 1:31:18 AM1 votes

What did you expect when riot released the rework and said it was "balanced" anyone reading any of the patch noted would have seen that they gave him disgusting amounts of damage and that his duo lane was broken.