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Solokaiser; Why it doesnt work so well.

Stephenizgod··9 votes·1,114 views

So my opinion on Solo Mordekaiser is based on 3 games I've played where i took him into a Solo lane and the multiple games I've taken him Bot lane. Its hard to reliably judge his effectiveness as a champion in these 3 games because the circumstances and situation were pretty different. Some of the issue i had was my own lack of skill as well as my teammates. The first game was Top against Teemo, the second game was Mid against Lissandra, and the third game was mid against Nidalee.

Anyways first lets start with what i feel is his biggest issue:

  • His reliance on his teammates to survive laning phase. Mostly early to early-mid game and primarily the Jungler.

What i mean by this is, depending on the match-up, Mordekaiser is probably going to lose lane without outside help. His Q requires 3 melee attacks to deal full damage and his E does almost no damage. His W is not usable in a Solo lane unless a teammate ganks. What does this mean? It means Morde has no way to poke back when poked, no CC to get off his Q's, and no W to heal him or deal a bit more damage. So the best way to solve this is a teammate coming to gank, but this brings me to my next issue with Morde.

  • His kit itself is reliant on his teammates knowledge of it rather then the players own knowledge.

This is probably less of a problem at higher levels of play but i notice not many people know what Morde can do or how to exploit what he can do. First i notice many people assume I had some way of stopping the opponent so they would save their CC. Second they do not know how much damage i can do so when my first or second Q goes through and the opponent is still alive they do everything in their power to kill the opponent thinking they will escape. An example of this being a problem is: I ulted an enemy (i forget who) and right before my third Q landed while i was chasing an Alistar flashed and knocked the over a wall, thinking they were going to escape. Now he didnt have flash or his knockback and my third Q expired and we both died. We probably could have lived, or at the very least he would have, if he still had his knockback and flash (basically we got one kill and gave up two when we could have got one or more kills and not given up any).

Another example of this is his W, most people don't know what it does. When i put it on them, they either assume its an enemy attack or think its some kind of shield, because 70% of the time they run away from the enemies. The other issue is the range, i know somewhat what its range is, but if i cant get to an ally then it is up to them to get to me so i can use it. This creates a situation where the Teammate needs to know the range of my W so they can use it to possibly save me rather then me knowing the range of the W. This is also an issue with Lee Sin, Jax, Kat, Braum, etc. but Morde doesn't have a gap closer or escape so its a larger setback on him then on those mentioned.

The final example is when i have a Ghost, specially the Dragon's. Most people just assume that my Dragon Ghost is a fun gimmick, they dont realize the immense pushing power it brings. Its capable of tanking a fuck ton of turret shots leaving us several options: We can dive them, we can take the turret, or we can siege and poke. What ends up happening? Nothing. I ping for teammates to help with turrets or to help with pushing in general and i get no help. They waste my dragon ghost so they can farm instead of taking objectives. Im in Silver so i may have this wrong and please correct me if i am, but im pretty sure taking objectives (like 1-2 turrets) is more important then getting a few minions.

  • His Passive's shield decaying immediately.

Now this effects his Solo lane way harder then his Duo lane obviously. Against Lissandra i needed to use all my abilities just to stop her from poking me down to death. Every E was met with a Q and i lost a chunk of life, i had to E her and Q minions just to survive which led me to pushing the lane. It did not help that Kha was ganking her quite often and Yi was not ganking me at all (mostly due to me being slightly pushed all the time trying to keep my shield up so she could all in me) but honestly she didn't need ganks she was slowly but surely winning. Why is this such a problem in Solo lane? Well because despite what people think, Morde is not tanky at all. It is when he gets items that he becomes tanky. So taking damage from both enemy champions and minions means his shield goes bye bye fairly quickly unless he is constantly spamming spells, which he cant. In order to keep your shield up enough to not get 100-0 you need to use your abilities on minions, because obviously the enemy isnt going to let you hit your Q on them. Add in the fact his abilities cost life and you see that in a Solo lane Morde is squishier then an Anivia with no passive, no mana and no flash.

  • His W not working in Solo lane.

Yes i know they are planning to change this but im still going to mention it, i dont think the changes they are making to it are going to fix this. Ill get into that later though. Anyways, this is an obvious problem because he is down an ability. His E's damage was nerfed in favor of his Q's damage, and his Q is a melee attack not a good poking method. Without his W not only does he lose wave clear, but he loses sustain and survivability, not to mention damage. Basically all the enemy needs to do is wait for your E or Q to be on CD and they can jump on you without any fear. It doesn't help that his abilities cost health AND THIS IS HIS ONLY WAY TO REGAIN IT! Spellvamp has become almost worthless on him now so his reliance on W is all the greater, which is an even greater hit to his solo laning. There isnt much to say, not being able to use his W is a huge set back.

  • His ults pitiful damage.

So we only have 2 damage abilities Q and E, his Q does an shit ton of damage but without CC or Gap Closer its sort of unreliable. This is where the Ultimate comes in, in order to get those enemies that escape with barely any life (it has more uses then that but stay with me here). So Teemo foolishly comes into melee range and thinks his Blind will save him, you hit him with E to block his damage while you wait, Blind is done and he thinks he can win still, but you have your Q and R. You ult him in order to get some life and he stays thinking he will win, boom Boom! BOOM! He now has less then 100 life and your ult isnt even done yet. You think "Yes! got him!" until you see he still has a health pot, all your joy turns to ash as you realize your 120 second cool down ULTIMATE was just stopped by 35 gold :(... His ults damage is low for a reason, because the Ghost you gain is supa strong! and this is fine in his Duo lane where you have a support and your W. In a Solo lane however you have access to only 2 spells other then you ult. Meaning if they survive you need to rely on your melee range Q and your 600 range E, god help you if they are on CD because your moving at a whopping 325 movement speed... so you definitely are not going to catch them. The damage on the ult being countered by a health pot really really hurts Solokaiser, pre-rework you had your long range Q, E, and your W so if you failed to kill them with that plus your Ult then you failed. Now you have an Auto attack buff and a crappy version of the old E, should you use those both to, you know, duel instead of as a finisher then you lost your ult for the next 2 minutes, and yet another spell is unavailable to you. Forcing him to rely on Flash and Ignite more then any other champion.

So you add all those together and you have a really unreliable damage, squishy, teammate reliant, mush of a champion. Mordekaiser is a total mess in Solo lane, now I'm not saying he is totally useless or garbage. Im not the best at this game at all but i destroyed Teemo and their Jungle Zed going 16/5 in Top lane. I got destroyed by Lissandra but luckily my team was able to cover for my lack of everything. Nidalee i could have beaten but enemy Zac was fed off idk who and kept killing me and Irelia whenever we tried to stop him, plus fuck Top Leona... she was in my lane far too often and our Darius did nothing about it. So with a little help he can turn into the OP horror he is in Bot lane, it just takes significant amount of teamwork and patience.

Now onto the changes being made to Mordekaiser, for those of you who don't know this is their plan for him for now.

Morde: Now that the dust's settled somewhat it's pretty clear Morde's significantly overpowered as a farming duo laner, and very weak as a solo laner. We'll be nerfing Morde's base Armor, W healing and W damage (no longer deals double damage when overlapping, base damage increased somewhat). For solo Morde W's going to be self castable for the healing effect (though not the damage). Expectation is that we'll need to do more to Morde in follow up patches as well, though as usual we'll see what effect those changes have first.

So here is my problem with this ^

First they are nerfing Morde's base Armor and his W healing. Thats fine and all for Duo lane but that literally fucks his Solo lane. Of course i dont know how much they are nerfing (if someone who plays the PBE could tell me that would be helpful) so its hard to say how much this fucks him but overall its a huge nerf to Solokaiser all so he can gain a very small heal. Im not quite sure how to interpret "For solo Morde W's going to be self castable for the healing effect (though not the damage)." Im not sure if this means his W does not do damage if self casted, thats what it reads like to me. If thats the case might as well not even bother... According to the Wiki the heal on the W is currently: 16.67 / 23.32 / 30 / 36.67 / 43.32 (+ 10% AP) per enemy and it hits the 3 nearest enemies and the Maximum Heal is: 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 / 130 (+ 30% AP). This is basically what you will get in a Solo lane if you could use it before they nerf its health regain. That is nothing... Considering his abilities use his health, that pitiful health gain is not enough in a Solo lane. Remove its damage and nerf the heal and the ability is still crap, only difference then before is you can use it now, the impact is still the same as not using it. It will have no effect on his viability as Solokaiser. Plus he doesnt even gain the Movement Speed! So im not sure how giving him a crappy heal on a 12 second cooldown will help him in Solo lane.

I may seem a bit aggressive on the matter but thats because it seems like a needless nerf. As fun as Morde is as an ADC, he is too OP and these nerfs barely tap at the true problem of his laning phase. They do however make Solokaiser even harder to pull off, sure you heal for very little but now you take more damage and still dont have access to better waveclear and another ability to build up shield with, which he needs now more then ever since his Armor is getting nerfed.

Here is the thing though, I always tend to judge nerfs a bit harsher then they actually are, so idk if im just being over-dramatic about it or not. You guys tell me what you think about it. Personally, although ive had fun with being OP in bot lane id prefer him to be returned to Solokaiser.

16 Comments

Jotunheimr7 votes

What?? W won't do damage OR give movespeed??????? Ahh man I'm freaking out. O_O That movespeed on w has helped me in ganks to escape! That really sounds unfair that one of the slowest champs loses about the only way to escape a gank early game, and the armor nerfs sound bad for your pal in duo lane.. No protecting a teammate in need it seems. The movepeed on w is nice for the same reason, to speed up an almost dead ally to help them find saftey.

At first, I was okay with the armor nerfs, but no damage?? I also think this to harsh for Morde. Totally unfair. Even currently, all you need to do to kill Morde is cc and attack. Or gank and do that. Without that w damage, getting kills and even playing morde for objective taking will turn to poop. :( I began learning Morde because he takes objectives. I'm dissapointed that they are taking so much from him. As it is, you can hardly land q, and e is insignifigant.

Jotunheimr3 votes

Also, wasn't mordes movespeed nerfed because w's movespeed increase in the first place? If they take way w's speed they should at least boost his base movespeed. :(

Malicious Metal7 votes

The core reasoning behind forcing him bot seemed to be Riot deeming him too "unhealthy" for solo lanes. Yet instead of pissing off one player he sucks the fun out of the game for TWO. Which only scratches the surface of the problem here; In order for DuoKaiser to succeed he needs broken base stats and he relies on the unfair leveling mechanic on his W to artificially get ahead simply by farming. And to make matters even worse in order to "balance" him in duo lanes they're nerfing his solo lane even more, resulting in a situation where he'll end up having the lowest win rate of all champions when playing solo. Not to mention the sheer reliance on his third Q and being near allies which makes him binary and a pain to deal with when in a duo lane.

Riot won't be able to effectively balance him if they decide to focus on his duo lane since they'll break the champion and shoehorn him into a role where he'll be unfun to play against and OP or utter trash.<<

Stephenizgod4 votes

I believe i read one of your posts a few days ago and it inspired me to make Solokaiser work thank you for reading my post :)

So here is the deal with Solokaiser, beyond the nerfs and reliance on his third Q, his main problem is that he is forced into relying entirely on his teammates. Now this is a team-based game so it would make sense for you to need your teammates, but Solokaiser relies entirely on them. He also relies on Flash and Ignite more then most champions, Ignite is almost a must for his Ultimate to actually kill because its crap damage is worse then a health pot until max level, Flash is obvious... he has 325 movespeed (WHY?!?!? WHY WHY WHY?!!??) and is a melee champion with no escapes or gap closers who is reliant on a melee mechanic with his Q for damage. The biggest hit to his effectiveness as a Solo Laner is his Passive Shield which decays immediately, if the shield only decayed outside of battle he could be sooo much better! Honestly that shouldnt even effect his Duokaiser because there is so much poke and damage goin on down bot lane his shield decaying immediately or not wont change anything.

Still, if you do get teamwork rollin and you Mid or Jung comes top to help you a bit, Mordekaiser can turn into his OP Duo Lane form fairly quickly.

Malicious Metal5 votes

Well, to make SoloKaiser work we gotta look at what made him work Pre-rework: -He perma pushed his lane, generating enough shield to shrug off any poke while forcing his opponents to farm under tower. -He poked his opposing laner heavily, making ganks usually one sided since he'll usually kill the enemy laner and get a double if he played smart. -His W speed buff helped him escape ganks if he used it on approaching minions to aid his escape -His W could be cast on minions, providing him with ways to farm from range and generate shield as well as keeping his enemies from stepping too close to them -His Wave clear made him one of the best farmers in the game meaning that if he didn't get fed due to kills he gained enough gold from farming to buy his really expensive build and snowball -His ultimate actually had RANGE. It helped him catch stragglers with the rylais slow, nuke the enemy carries from afar and use it to contribute to fights even when severely wounded.

The thing making him unbearable in lane, namely his poke pattern and shield generation were the things making him viable. They could have been tuned accordingly since the shield IS what makes Mordekaiser the Master of Metal but Riot took the "Easy" way out and made his most iconic ability very weak since it decays faster and he doesn't gain as much shield as before. Heck, the new Morde only seems tankier due to the items he builds and NOT due to his passive mitigation.

Also, since he doesn't build any spell vamp anymore he basically pokes himself in lane and he can't use his ultimate defensively anymore for the massive heal he got from it coupled with a WotA and a SV.

He needs some more work, that's for sure, since he'll either be insanely broken duo and utter trash solo or simply gets nerfed so hard that he gets completely dumpstered.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Honestly the main problem with Pre-Rework Mordekaiser was his E. It did too much damage, had too long range for the amount of damage it did in a cone, generated a ton of shield, and coupled with his Q+W made pushing against him damn near impossible. The issue with how they nerfed it? They also removed his range on his Q and put all his damage into a situational 3 hit requirement ability. So they put all the OP and annoyance of laning against Morde into 1/3rd of an ability and nerfed everything else as compensation. If you read that right, which im sure you did, i never said they buffed him or gave him more damage because they didnt - they put ALL of his old damage into the latter half of his Q and nerfed him for it... Which makes no sense, that is not a compensation nerf for a buff, that is a nerf for a mitigation of his damage... This is why Solokaiser is so crap, he was unjustly nerfed because of an illusory buff to his damage, if you think about it all they did was put his old Q+W+E damage into one ability.

Personally Riot really wanted him to be a threat Bot Lane, its the same thing with Brand. He needed small buffs to make him more viable but instead they pushed Support Brand on us and said that he was totally viable down there. Bot lane is my least favorite lane, it never changes and while the FotM ADC's do change from time to time its always the same top dogs (vayne being one of them; no im not jumping on the band wagon, ive always hated her and always wanted her nerfed) in the end. To introduce something new to that lane you need new champions, not gutting and old one and then shoving him down there and raising his stats to absolute broken levels. You also need to introduce more then just 1 or 2 champs, there needs to be at least 4 to 6 viable options, otherwise they are still going to take the same old ADCs.

Stephenizgod5 votes

Please do not comment "Then take him Bot lane instead of Solo! DUH!" because almost every ADC can go to any other lane and perform just fine, some perform better then the roles intended for those lane........ So its not fair to nerf a Solo laner and force him into Bot lane when most Bot laners can go into a Solo lane and outperform with no significant nerfs (lookin at you Vayne, you bitch)....

Jotunheimr3 votes

As it is, current Morde cant farm too well even mid game because he literally kills himself too quickly+incoming minion damage. I can barely get to 1000 gold if I farm before I have to back. Taking away AoE waveclear, nerfing healing, and doing EVEN MORE damage sounds like definite destruction of a champion. Morde won't stand a chamce from what it sounds like.

Nerfed into the Depths of EloHell

Jotunheimr3 votes

</3

Matezoide2 votes

#RevertRework

Stephenizgod1 votes

No do not Revert it!!!! NEVER TAKE A STEP BACKWARDS!!! They took a step, not everyone agrees with the direction, but he finally got attention and still has it. They need to take a step in a similar direction now, improve on what they have done.

7ball1 votes

worst thing is he will still be shit solo with the changes announced for next patch. guess will happen what everybody knew since the beginning, they'll nerf adc morde until noone plays it (nobody wants to play morde bot anyways, i am sure ppl only play it nowadays since they read in forums that hes op bot, but as soon hes not op anymore nobody will play him bot again); and will not buff solo morde back, so he will be shit both duo bot and solo. that retard certainlyt should just acknowledge his rework is a failure and revert the changes.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Ok well i disagree with you on the CertainlyT part because while i hate Yasuo and Kalista, his other champions are really cool. I also dont hate him as a person just because i don't agree with some of his choices, thats asinine ... I do agree on what your think will happen to Morde though. They will realize their nerfs ONLY hurt Solokaiser and just slightly slowed down his OP DuoKaiser. They will nerf ADC Morde but these nerfs will also hit Solo Morde, he will now be useless in both roles. No one will play him. BUT! that is not the worst part of it... I, and people like me who enjoy him as a champion, will not be able to play him and honestly thats the saddest part :( at least i still have fun with Morde ADC even though he is OP, i just really enjoy playing Mordekaiser and this rework somewhat limited that and these nerfs are going to limit it further. These nerfs are hurting not only him as a champion but those who genuinely love to play Morde.

Mordepool1 votes

Hi your a little late on the Mordekaiser debate but welcome Misery loves company

#reworktherework

Stephenizgod1 votes

I'm actually not late, I'm going off my experiences with Solokaiser which takes time and games. Idc what everyone elses experiences i needed to see for myself.

Stephenizgod1 votes

Who voted i was being over-dramatic? >:P suck it

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