Siphon of Destruction, why it stands in the way of the perfect Mordekaiser
TL;DR Version
Siphon of Destruction. Make it's damage scale depending on the range enemy champions are from Mordekaiser. Then we get movement speed increase, W solo sustain aoe damage, and meaningful progress on Mordekaiser in the future.
Explanation
I've put this up in a couple of threads, but I feel that one of Morde's biggest issues is his E, Siphon of Destruction.
Now a little background on this suggestion.
This comes from a Mordekaiser main, before anyone asks.
In the past, people had issues with Mordekaiser for one reason: his Siphon of Destruction acted as a +1 ability for trades. Now, what I mean by that is that the damage allowed Mordekaiser, a melee champion, to poke enemies like a ranged champion, and make safe trades even against ranged opponents. On paper, this doesn't sound so bad, and as a Morde main I enjoyed the ability in that form, but looking back I can see why it caused problems.
See, the thing about Mordekaiser was that in theory, you could avoid getting killed by him so long as you stayed out of melee range, because to combo you down he had to get into melee range to use his Q, Mace of Spades, and his W, Creeping Death, to make winning engagements, before following up with Children of the Grave for the execute. The problem was that Mordekaiser was one of the most infamous lane bullies in existence, which was the most significant issue of any meaningful buffs to him, and his E is the issue.
People were expecting Morde players - who play the champion the way he is meant to - approach the minion wave, Siphon it and possibly the enemy champion , so that he has shield and can make engagements on the enemy champion, with his shield to help make the trade more favorable. But some Morde players didn't do this, I myself am guilty of this. What we would sometimes do, was save Siphon for the enemy champion, keeping them at the very edge of our Siphon's range, hitting them to get damage and shield, and scurry back, safe behind our minion wave. So basically we were melee champions who didn't melee, but could still do effective poke.
Remember the other three Juggernauts? Garen, Darius, Skarner? Two of them have mana and have resource caps on spamming their abilities, and of them only Skarner has a ranged poke ability... which is on a lengthy cooldown and also costs mana. Of the three, only Darius was as horrible of a lane bully as Mordekaiser, but Darius was still capped by mana, whereas Mordekaiser was essentially capped by cooldowns (a first-item Doran's Shield and then Hextech Revolver solved all resource issues for Mordekaiser).
The strategy to abuse Morde's kit was to cast Creeping Death on one of the three melee minions coming up the lane right as they were about to meet the enemy wave, usually the second one since enemies focused the first one or the third one if he came around as he sometimes does. We built shield risk-free this way, then came up the lane, but we wouldn't cast Siphon on the minion wave. No, we would keep it, saving it as a deterrent from the enemy laner from even getting close to farm. If they got close, we would Siphon, hit them and as many minions as we could, run back like cowards, and huehuehue as the lane pushed itself risk-free.
Basically, the only way to play against pre-rework Mordekaiser was either to be a good farmer under tower, have the range to poke him outside of his Siphon, or have your jungler on speed dial, ready to come every odd minion wave. And Mordekaiser didn't have to relentlessly attack the enemy to make progress, his passive Iron Man ensured he would simply win through a battle of attrition. As I said, Doran's Shield and Hextech Revolver made it so he would only back when you had to back or were dead, by nature his lane was naturally pushed because he's Mordekaiser, and trading him was impossible without range or ganks because he's Mordekaiser.
If you lost the game as Mordekaiser, it was because your other lanes failed hard (and you didn't roam), you met a hard-counter that could actually push you to your own tower, or in the teamfights either the enemy had cc or you made enough mistakes that the enemy team could kill you before you could make an impact.
There is being a lane bully, and then there is being a lane bully so much that even Riot was reluctant to buff you meaningfully in any way. When people refer to Mordekaiser being unhealthy pre-rework, they were referring to his unrepentant lane bullying, and the biggest contributor was Siphon of Destruction. Between the fact that it gives him range when he is supposed to be a melee-focused champion, and gives him shield so that poking him was meaningless if trying to trade against him, he was the ultimate duelist to the point Riot couldn't give him any cc or mobility.
People complain about how Morde is gimped. They complain that he needs sustained damage on his W. They complain that he is even slower than before despite no inherent mobility or cc. They complain they can't land the full rotation of his Q, Mace of Spades.
And why should they, if in it's current iteration the only difference between pre-rework Siphon and post-rework Siphon is that it scales off AD now?
Adding more power to Mordekaiser where he needs it requires either that he be so underpowered that adding such is only making him baseline in terms of champ power, or a sacrifice of something else to compensate... essentially shifting power from one area of that champion to another.
So my proposition so that Riot can give us everything we want on Morde, and maybe more?
Change the way Siphon of Destruction works.
Make it so that Siphon of Destruction is noticeably weaker the farther out a champion is from Mordekaiser (damage against minions and monsters is consistent). Shoot that coward's style of playing Mordekaiser in the foot, encourage people to have to get into melee range if they want to make meaningful damage to a champion. Hell, if you want, you can make it so that Siphon does more damage than the baseline spell in it's current iteration if they are in melee range of Mordekaiser.
Make is so that Mordekaiser has to risk himself if he wants to build shield and meaningfully damage an enemy champion. Siphon of Destruction should be primarily for building shield, if they want to make it have damage too then it has to allow for counterplay of some kind. Then they HAVE to buff Mordekaiser's speed, and have no excuse against giving him his W's AoE sustained damage. It will weaken his duo lane and make him more dependent on his lane partner - if you are playing duo Mordekaiser, your playstyle should not be Morde+, but Morde and Leona or Thresh or whoever - which is how ADC's generally are. It will allow for healthy solo lane Mordekaiser and maybe we will finally get to see Mordekaiser consistently in the jungle.
I dream of a future where Mordekaiser is the number one champion, free to rule in whatever role he desires. But so long as Siphon of Destruction exists in it's current form, we can't have that dream.
