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Where most disappointment with the Mordekaiser rework comes from (@Riot)

Malicious Metal··35 votes·8,483 views

Tl;Dr; Mordekaiser's skills don't cause and satisfaction in their use and his kit doesn't synergizes well with itself.

Now, for the others who would like some deeper insight as of why Morde doesn't feel satisfactory and why his skills are all over the place, you'd better stick around for some time, out some Metal music on and get a drink because we're going to take a good look where the original appeal of Mordekaiser stemmed from, making him gather some rather passionate individuals.

But I'm digressing; Let's take a look at the good ol' MurderKaiser

Iron Man! Mordekaiser always struck me as one of those champions who were based around their passive and his entire appeal came from this ability. It's unique, it's weird, it's really strong, it's what makes him Mordekaiser. Or at least it was like this pre-rework. It allowed him to invest into heavy damage and resistances rather than health, which made him play a lot more like a carry as opposed to your typical mage/fighter. You could play him full Ap, Bruiser, Tank, MPen and still utilize it to its full potential. All his skills were AoE, feeding into his shield and making him very durable when played correctly. A Mordekaiser who got out of position or who blindly casted his spells was bound to die miserably while managing his AoE and Ultimate to their full potential resulted in a very tough nut to crack. All his skills synergized well with his passive due to their hard-hitting and AoE nature. It was his form of compensating his lousy base-stats and lack off sustain/mobility/cc with great durability that allowed him to get quite a few damage items and still NEVER die!

Nowadays his abilities all either lack their AoE aspect or are too weak to fill up his shield by their own. Not to mention him building generally more tanky makes his shield STRENGTH get really high but the lack of AoE and the lousy ratio (25% damage converted instead of the former 35%, not to mention the new Morde not exactly building a lot of AP to stick it) makes it rather useless later on.

What Mordekaiser needs is more synergy in his kit by either tweaking his shield gain on champions, AoE damage or general strategy behind building up shield<

Mace of Spades What used to be his most boring ability's still one I enjoyed quite a bit. It was an AA modifier which made his next blow echo out to two nearby units, striking them for AoE damage while also helping him clear waves and build up shield. The interesting part was the increased damage when the target was isolated, resulting in some rather surprising burst on this ability. The Echo-projectile was also able to strike invisible units.

I once hit a WuKong clone with my Q as he tried to sneak away only to let my Q bounce and kill the invisible monkey<

It dealt quite a bit of damage and fed into your shield, the synergy present like on every other of his older abilities. The current iteration's way stronger but lacks this kind of synergy, which wouldn't be a problem if the rest of his kit had any semblance of playing into each other.

Creeping Death What Riot seemed to deem one of his more simple abilities was actually rather strategic tool. You could use it on approaching minions to aid you escaping ganks with the MS boost You could put it on your frontline to charge into the fight You could use it on a chasing ally to slow the enemy from a distance with a rylais You could make your shield more effective with the AoE damage AND the resistance buff

His old W was his "Bring it on!" ability, making you be tankier due to it charging your shield on its own and increasing its effectiveness with the armor/MR boost<

Siphon of Destruction This was utter annihilation for the enemy creeps! One E could vaporize entire minion waves and fill his shield to the brim while also serving as his bread and butter ability. It simply FELT powerful due to its damage, being able to fill up your shield quickly and the Metal Maces conjured by it

The spaghetti code used to be really derpy at times, making Zeds/LB's get hit by it even though the warped away, resulting in some really funny kills

Children of the Grave The range on it used to be godly at 850 and used to be one of the most satisfying abilities to use. You could pick up stragglers, contribute to the fight from range even when wounded, "Engage" with a rylais-empowered ultimate and help you get a a quick heal and shield to survive otherwise fatal encounters due to it synergising so well with spellvamp/Spirit Visage while also feeding into your shield. I LOVED to instantly execute low health enemies that were running from me with it, the sound of Morde cursing them being my all-time favorite thing to do pre-rework when you actually built AP for it to hurt.

I for once was one of the AP-Bruiser Mordekaisers, going for a perfect mix of durability and damage in order to truly become a Raidboss late-game. The mix of healing (SV,Wota), heavy AP (Zhonyas/Deathcap) and general shield generation made him truly be a juggernaut later on. Now, I don't want to dwell on the past but there is a pattern here; Mordekaiser's skills used to feel powerful on their own and fed into his passive, his entire kit having a synergy based around acquiring enough shield to survive his lack of other defensive-steroids/mobility/CC and do his job as a carry-type champion.

The current Mordekaiser has the POTENTIAL to become way more satisfying to play as if he gets a shred of his former synergy back while still keeping him from becoming unhealthy for the game. What he needs are some small tweaks aimed at making his iconic ability IRON MAN feel as strong as it used to be since it's what made him UNIQUE and where most of his core Identity's rooted in. He's the Man of Steel, the Master of Metal and should feel like this undying shield machine and not an over glorified Q-bot.<

That's why I'd Riot to take a look at the Avenues in which they can allow his passive to truly shine! Making it FEEL powerful since currently the only thing truly rewarding's his Q, nothing else. He shouldn't rely on ONE skill but make his other abilities, especially his iconic passive, be more satisfying to use.

Thank you for reading and have a pleasant day;

~M.M

http://apollo-pbe-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/1441969097/Thank_You_For_Reading.jpg

36 Comments

Count Zubat6 votes

Oh, Malicious Metal, how do you find so much patience to write all those posts about poor Morde while being completely ignored by Riot?

Anyways, I agree with everything, Morde rework made playing Master of Metal dull and unsatisfying. His only meaningful ability is his Q. which already is very unreliable to use. The way he was enticed into bot lane is just toxic and unfair so much, that Morde is 100% ban on LCS, and that should be one big red alert for Riot that they fcked up. They fcked up so much that pros don't even want to try and face this Frankenstein monster Morde has become. Morde's rework can be officially dubbed the worst rework in LoL history, it failed at every aspect: fixing Morde's biggest problems, preserving his identity, making him less toxic (althrough I don't know what was so toxic in old Morde's kit), making him more interesting and his skills more interactive with themselves... It didn't accomplish anything of this, moreover, it did quite the opposite. GJ Riot, GJ.

I would give so much to be able to play old Morde again. His kit maybe was simple and consisted purely of damage, but it had so much depth in it. Successfully making an ambush on enemy adc to wreck them with R-E-Q combo was pure satisfaction. Getting double kills when ganked was pure satisfaction. Playing him right gave a lot of satisfaction, and it wasn't really that easy. High risk high reward, ultimately rewarding you for your good positioning and your opponent's poor positioning. I miss all of that so much :(

JedenVojak2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord of Iwul,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QxE2mMcc,comment-id=000c,timestamp=2015-10-02T23:05:10.849+0000)

Oh, Malicious Metal, how do you find so much patience to write all those posts about poor Morde while being completely ignored by Riot?

To be fair, he's had riot posters post in a few of his threads. The responses have generally been along the lines of "he's weaker than expected" and "we'll figure something out"

Count Zubat1 votes

{quoted}

To be fair, he's had riot posters post in a few of his threads. The responses have generally been along the lines of "he's weaker than expected" and "we'll figure something out"

The last response was long time ago, since then, it seems like Riot is trying to sweep Morde under the carpet so everybody forgets. Also, those responds were like "we will do something". No insights. No suggestions. No talk like: "what do you expect from Morde rework? What is his identity for you?" None. Tbh, if not Malicious's posts, I think boards would already forget about what was done to Morde, his topic would be brought back for a while by the fact that he is banned so much at the worlds, but then, he would be again forgotten.

JedenVojak1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord of Iwul,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QxE2mMcc,comment-id=000c00000000,timestamp=2015-10-03T09:11:11.319+0000)

The last response was long time ago, since then, it seems like Riot is trying to sweep Morde under the carpet so everybody forgets. Also, those responds were like "we will do something". No insights. No suggestions. No talk like: "what do you expect from Morde rework? What is his identity for you?" None. Tbh, if not Malicious's posts, I think boards would already forget about what was done to Morde, his topic would be brought back for a while by the fact that he is banned so much at the worlds, but then, he would be again forgotten.

I don't think they cared about what people wanted from the Morde rework because no one asked for one in the first place. There weren't even a bajillion spam posts about "OMG MORDEKAISER SO OP NEEEEERRRF."

Aside from that, I don't think there's much else they can really say on the matter. CertainlyT basically explained why he felt the Mordekaiser changes were neccessary and also asserted that he was weaker than antcipated and they're going to go very slowly on trying to fix solokaiser (due to worlds). At this point, I don't know what else can be said.

Agidyne4 votes

The Old Mordekaiser abilities never had an interaction with eachother anyway.

I don't understand how you can say Mordekaisers new abilities don't synergize well with one another, when infact, they never did.

Malicious Metal20 votes

They were ALL AoE, all did heavy damage and fed into his shield. There's your synergy. His basic abilities had the task of keeping him healthy due to them charging up his shield effectively while his ultimate did so as well, especially the Clone's AA.

It wasn't like "Q makes W stronger while giving E additional effects" synergy but they fed nicely into each other by making his arguably strongest ability and CORE of the champion show its true potential

Agidyne4 votes

So, the interaction between them is that they all dealt a fuckton of damage?

How is that even an interaction?

They don't interact with eachother, they all interacted with his passive. That's it.

And the passive didn't make his abilities stronger, after all.

Even then, those same abilities still feed up the shield, do they not?

So the interaction is still there.

Goodnight Nunu15 votes

To be fair, he lost quite a bit of AoE damage, having only Two, or only ONE if he plays solo as well as having far lower shield generation.

It's still there, yes, but it just looks to be way weaker than before.

I'd take an Iron Man centered Morde over a Mace of Spades Morde any day o_O

Agidyne2 votes

Aye, perhaps he lost some AoE, but he got the single most broken passive in the freaking game out of it.

He doesn't share experience, which is like Zileans passive on steroids in the duo lane.

Aswell as having a pet dragon.

Malicious Metal9 votes

It's a well-known fact that the current Mordekaiser's bloody gimped by the W passive and Dragon. They eat up SOOOO much of his power budget and are unhealthy and unfair up to boot. A lot of people agree that they should simply remove those aspects and tweak him in other avenues that aren't as broken :9

I'd gladly trade these gimped abilities for power than can be allocated elsewhere. He simply can't be fair and healthy as long as his entire success is based on these two gimps

Agidyne2 votes

But the Rework finally made him what he was meant to be.

#Mordekaiser is finally the absolute #1

(ban in the competitive scene).

BattleBalladeer3 votes

This is it. He's a walking, Huehue'ing gimmick of an experiment.

I think he would be better in solo and still good in duo if they would just replace this W with his original one and remove the damn dragon. (Maybe get rid of the old W's armor bonus when used on a Champ and not a minion but that is IT)

I like the new Q. It fits Morde's thematic well unlike the new W. It actually has a bit of interaction as well which is more fun IMO for either side in a battle. The nerf to E harass is justifiable I guess with its shield, but maybe turn the HP cost down when used on an enemy champ and up when on minion waves? That way it can harass without being downright toxic in early levels because of its dmg nerf while giving him the tradeoff of worse waveclear. Keep the hybrid scaling. I always maxed E before just to harass more than waveclear. The waveclear in my experience did not really come in until itemization, and this will encourage combining Champion with minion wave as it already does. The W is just where it all went wrong. The dragon was too random for me right from the start.

TLDR; revert the W rework and remove Dragon Ghost.

Ultîma2 votes

In what way is his Q, W, R or passive gimped?

The E lost a lot of its damage and wave-clearing potential in favor of making his other abilities far, far stronger.

Malicious Metal4 votes

His W and R are gimped. His XP passive is an unfair advantage and the only thing making him even go toe to toe with ADC's due to not having to share experience. It would be broken on ANY champion. His R's passive, Dragonforce is a Win-More mechanic, making dragon even more important and rewarding him for an epic monster clone that can easily siege and kicks every champion's ass early game and even being able to solo baron.

These are gimped and eat up so much of his power-budget.

JedenVojak1 votes

{quoted}

In what way is his Q, W, R or passive gimped?

His passive generates less shield on damage than it used to has less total shield base, his W no longer provides armor/mr and cannot be self cast, his R range has been nerfed, his Q lost its aoe. All of his abilities are hurt by his current required build path since it provides less total AP than what he needed, meaning his abilities overall do much less damage. Effectively, he is slower, squishier, and does less damage than pre-rework Mordekaiser.

Malicious Metal2 votes

Well, he IS Iron Man after all :9

But yeah, he's got the tools to do the job but they're way too weak.

It's like trying to dig a grave with a spoon, you could do it but it's highly inefficient.

JedenVojak1 votes

{quoted}

So, the interaction between them is that they all dealt a fuckton of damage?

How is that even an interaction?

They don't interact with eachother, they all interacted with his passive. That's it.

And the passive didn't make his abilities stronger, after all.

Even then, those same abilities still feed up the shield, do they not?

So the interaction is still there.

No, his new abilities don't charge his shield. I'm not even sure he has a shield anymore, it might be a bug.

Ultîma2 votes

I read your post and fail to understand a few things.

All his kit has a synergy with his passive. They all generate shield based on enemies hit/damage dealt by his abilities. So to say that now Mordekaiser suddenly doesn't have this synergy strikes me as a little weird. Not to mention, you say that one of the aspects of Mordekaiser you preferred was that he could stay in a fight forever at very low health because of his passive - well now Mordekaiser has legitimate sustain with his W on top of his passive, which only helped his survivability in lane and in teamfights. Again, I fail to see the reasoning here since this is an aspect of Mordekaiser that was improved with his rework, not gutted.

He lost precisely one AoE ability with the rework, and that's his Q and it's now more powerful than ever before because of it. I find it strange that you'd complain about it because this tool allows Mordekaiser to utterly delete someone from the fight with the help of one well-placed CC ability. W is - again - far more threatening as an ability since his rework, feeding into his sustain, damage, and signature lane pressure.

Throughout your text, you kind of go off and even acknowledge that some abilities were bugged due to spaghetti code or simply uninteresting, yet you praise them on account of kit "synergy" with his passive that is largely unchanged. Simply put, you put down the old iteration of Mordekaiser only to complain about how the new (and improved) version of him is inferior (which it isn't). The new Mordekaiser has a solidified identity as an AP Juggernaut who can compete with ADCs - a role that previously monopolized bot lane. Furthermore, he can put an insane amount of pressure on the map if he ever secures Dragon, making him into an objective-securing GOD. No one else has power like that in the game, and saying that it takes up too much of his power budget is a bit strange because Mordekaiser still has an utterly crushing presence in lane with or without the dragon.

Mordekaiser (at the present) has a 100% ban-rate in worlds. If he's this feared at the pro-scene I cannot fathom why you would want the old Mordekaiser back since he was never seen at that level of play until his rework.

Mordepool2 votes

{quoted}

(He lost precisely one AoE ability with the rework, and that's his Q and it's now more powerful than ever before ). The dmg is roughly the same just single target over 3 swings instead of aoe

( account of kit "synergy" with his passive that is largely unchanged. ) Wow LARGELY unchanged. Well you just lost credibility altogether.

Scales per lvl and can charge it with a couple well placed abilities.

Scales off health and drains so fast (3times faster)they had to put a minimum amount as. A plug otherwise you wouldn't have a shield at all

Rendarkan1 votes

Actually with old Mordekaiser and even New Morde his W and R work quite well together. Obtain the soul then cast W on said soul and you have a duo lane. For extra dickery use item 3152.

Sicksadpanda3 votes

I think what I miss the most about the old mordekaiser is his badassness.

His old Q makes him hit something and the metal flies to the nearest enemies, and I find that badass because that's like he swung a metallic mace so hard that it shattered into many sharp pieces. His new Q? He just hits weak twice then hard on the 3rd, nothing impressive.

And his E was pretty awesome. Making random spiky maces come out of the floor and hit someone's crotch. The idea of having metal spikes coming from the ground is badass enough. As of now, he just makes...blue waves? Pretty boring already.

Atleast he can tame a dragon now, so that's the only plus to his badassness. But we already sacrificed two badass abilities, so it's a loss overall.

Rinky Dinky2 votes

tbh the only disappointing thing about morde right now is his banrate

like fuck let me play my champ lol

ltmetal2 votes

The current Mordekaiser is so close and yet so far from having his abilities synergize with his passive, too. I really like the suggested change of adjusting his power budget back from ghost dragon and back into Iron Man.

His passive was what made him a juggernaut in the first place.

just a memory2 votes

Well written Op.

Mad King Hades2 votes

I know it is an ancient topic. I know that I am late. And I know that I am a newbie, but as you described Mordekaiser. [zombie-nunu-tears] I wish I had gottten to know him then.

Ternt1 votes

Mordekaiser is a shit champ, pick a new main and move on. These posts are getting old.

Mordepool1 votes

Listening to some master of puppets as I read this. Seems appropriate

Earthlord Jazz1 votes

[(http://www.memecreator.com/static/images/memes/269236.jpg)]

Krigjer1 votes

As a support player, I don't like having a melee in my lane, even though I'm well aware of how hard he can hit.

LOL Spammer1 votes

Idk hitting that 3rd Q is very satisfying to me.

Dextix LT1 votes

If you can ever hit it.......

sreggad1 votes

I'm unable to find the numbers for the old morde anywhere. So I'll only stick to current numbers.

Morde has a 2.6 max AP ratio on his Q. He has a 1.2 ap max ratio on his W and a .6 AP ratio on his E. That's some pretty high AP ratios. Not to mention the ults ratio. that's a total of 4.4 AP ratio. Most champions don't even have that.

Let's look at his passive. It's a 25% max hp pool instead of the old flat pool It decays at a rate of 1.5% of BASE health instead of the flat rate it used to decay. So now he can have a much larger shield instead of being in this forever loop of trying to max it and not dying in the process.

His Q Before hit I believe it was up to 3 other targets for the extra damage or double if target was alone. While yes it's much easier to pump it into his shield before because it was a one time hit and quit type of thing. The new Q has the potential to fill the shield up much more. Even at the reduced amount. 12.5% of "my god was that a planet" is still a lot of shielding. It just requires you too stick to a target instead of just going off on him once.

His W Now this ability is almost identical to it's old iteration. Here are the differences. Old W gave resistances new W gives health back. They both do AoE damage. They both allow increased movement speed while walking towards the affected ally champion. The ONLY two reason this ability was screamed at by the masses is it used to only be casted on allies granting both the ability and it's new passive of full xp on minion kills. Passive doesn't matter in a solo lane. Now that he is able to cast it on himself doesn't affect solo lanes in a wasted ability.

On to his E.... This ability. Seriously people. This is the same dang ability he has always had. The numbers might have changed but it's the same god dang ability it's always been. Heck in my opinion it's better. it scales off of AD just the same as it scales off of AP and lets not forget that it's auto fills 15% of your passive for each champion hit. If you hit the whole team you get 75% of your shield. You build straight health and you just got a 1k shield. People complained that streak's gage gives that big of a shield and that decays quickly.

Now the R... the good old "you'r joining us arrrr" Sorry got a little gangplank there. Anyways. This thing hasn't changed aside from numbers for the most part. yeah it might not have the range it used to. You can't just tell their adc "join us" from your back row. But hey you're Mordekaiser you're a juggernaut. You walk up to that ADC and you make them join you. It still deals max health damage. It still gives you health. It still gives you a ghost that can tank or kick ass.... unless you get the sona support and then your just kind of sad but then you remember you got a sona which is kind of cool. But here is where the R got better. You can take dragon. Your ult isn't worthless for half a fight now. Your ult does more than just let you win harder.

I think everyone is complaining about morde because he isn't the "I push minion wave all day every day" like he was before the rework. I think people are so tied to their ways that they don't want to change to work around his new scaling and his new abilities. They don't want to take him into bot lane. They feel he is "broken". Now I'm not gonna argue that his quicker leveling isn't problematic and it's IMO why he is being banned at worlds. seeing as pros can take that level 2 advantage and shove it down the enemy's throat faster than a pornstar could take something. That doesn't mean he is broken just needs some adjustments. His main source of damage is that third Q. Yeah but it's not all his damage. The reason people complain about it is they don't see it and don't avoid it. It will eventually drop off him and he won't be able to use it. You're ranged champion vs a melee champion. Use it to your advantage.

Tl:dr Morde is only slightly changed from what he used to be. His Q is focused on a single target then weakly hitting a ton of targets and his W heals instead of gives resistance. He has just as much synergy in his kit as he used to. He can just be a bigger threat in a teamfight now than he used to be.

Baron of Bread1 votes

Making it FEEL powerful since currently the only thing truly rewarding's his Q, nothing else.

While I agree that hitting that third Q is rewarding, it still doesn't feel satisfying to me. Sure, they lose most of their HP but it just feels like an auto attack. It doesn't feel like I hit them hard, just that I hit them and they happened to lose a ton of health. If you compare it to Trundle's Q you can tell a real difference. Trundle takes a serious bite out of some chump, Morde just hits you with his mace and it doesn't feel like he swings harder or anything. Why is Trundle's Q more satisfying than Mordekaiser's, considering the amount of their power budgets that each takes? Maybe Morde should at least swing with two hands or something.

Also, drinking tea and listening to some Iced Earth was definitely a good way to experience this post.

Sir Fuzzi1 votes

the biggest thing that disappointed me was that the w became a small essay but functionally just didn't do a whole bunch

like I get that new ideas are important but seriously with the essay stuff. it's a moba, if the skill description occupies a small messenger window you should probably consider your angle more thoroughly

Kaeblen1 votes

the W used to be an incredibly powerful strategic tool, and the one ability Morde had to think hardest about how to use most effectively.

Currently, it's got lots of parts to it, but none of them seem to work very well together.

Lord Morde1 votes

You have my Mace.

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