Let's talk about Mordekaiser

In Mordekaiser, we have a low damage, low range, low mobility, relatively squishy champion (unless you build tons of tanking items on him) with no CC who hurts himself to use abilities. His pushing power and his ult are his saving graces. With the recent nerf to DFG, he got even worse. Now, it would be easy to say "Mordekaiser needs a buff" but it's been made clear that he's not liked in his current state, as in they don't like him at all. They think he's toxic. So, what he needs is a rework, and I've been thinking about it quite a bit. First of all, let's list what we want Mordekaiser to be, what we want him to have:

1. He's a fighter. A melee fighter. He can be an AP champion, but we don't want him hanging back, we want him to be in the fray like any good fighter. This means he needs to be relatively tanky.

2. He's the master of pain, so we want him to remain a manaless champion who has to hurt himself to use abilities and we want to reward him for hurting opponents. His shield mechanic does that perfectly, so I'd keep that.

3. He's a pusher. He mows down minion waves and when he reaches the enemy tower, he's usually backed up by a lot of minions too. We want to keep that.

So, here is my personal opinion of what his abilities would look like to achieve such a result while not making him toxic.

Passive: Iron Man

I would keep his passive, buff it and merge Creeping Death into it. Change it to only decay when "out of combat", double the maximum amount of shield he has, make auto-attacks generate shield and add damage to it. Basically, when he has shield, he would gain a damage aura. The more shield he has, the higher the damage it does. I do think the damage should scale with stats, but which? Either AP or max health IMHO. Of course, the damage aura would not generate shield. Not sure whether he should gain armor and MR as his shield builds up however, it might make him too tanky. Anyway, this change would force opponents to either target him first in a team fight to prevent him from getting his shield up or take damage over time from it.

Q: Mace of Spades

This is the one ability I would keep as is. The only change I would bring to it is I would allow Mordekaiser to use it against towers, and add bonus damage when used against structures. I would lower its cooldown, make Morde more reliant on it.

W: Spread Misery

Replacing Creeping Death, this ability would be quite simple: Mordekaiser detonates his shield to instantly do damage around him and heals himself for a portion of the damage dealt. This would give him some burst, and would discourage people from thinking "Well his shield is maxed so it can't get worse, target someone else". This of course would not generate shield.

E: Siphon of Destruction

I would keep the ability's mechanic as is, as in it's a cone of damage. However, I would change it in several ways: It would deal greatly reduced damage to champions but still generate as much shield against them. This is because we want Morde to be relying more on his shield than his other abilities to do damage to champions. I would also merge the ghost mechanic of Children of the Grave into it: Any target killed by Siphon of Destruction is returned as a ghost for the next 30 seconds. I would make it so lane minions can be returned as ghost minions, allowing Morde to overwhelm a lane if left alone. It could also return enemy champions as ghosts, though uncontrollable ones, like Malzahar's voidlings. Either way, with the greatly reduced damage, the odds of this happening would be low enough to not make it overpowered. Morde would not get bonus stats from ghosts either. Basically, the role of siphon of destruction would be to help Morde build his shield and to spawn ghost minions to push lanes.

R: Empathic Agony

I would change his ultimate entirely. His ultimate would be a debuff he places on an enemy which causes said enemy to take a portion of the damage Mordekaiser takes as true damage. Basically, "Feel my pain". And yes, it would include the damage to his shield, not just to his health.

If you have any other suggestions, post them. And yes, Morde seems to be overwhelming with such a kit, but remember that he has no mobility, no range and no CC. He has to be straightforward.