Can someone actually explain how Mordekaizer's rework was bad/OP? I can't find a straight answer.

Tuss·10/7/2015, 6:22:17 PM·8 votes·761 views

There's so many threads complaining about it, but no one actually says what the problems are. All I keep seeing is how he should be reverted, or he's going to be gutted, or how CertainlyT sucks or something about Cass or Karma. I think I saw somewhere the dragon pet is too swingy? And people don't like the teammate requirement of his W, but not saying if it's actually OP or not or what? Every discussion I see on the topic just accepts that every part of his kit is broken without explaining why.

I'm not trying to argue anything to the contrary, but this stuff is worse when a buff/nerf pokes its head on the PBE and nobody links to it or says what it is yet makes a ton of hullabaloo about it expecting everyone else to read S@20 every day. (Sorry, just really annoyed by that too.)

21 Comments

Helmight10/7/2015, 6:43:18 PM16 votes

The problems with Morde's rework are thus:

Overly dependent on Q for his damage output. Since he doesn't build AP anymore, his ultimate hits like a gentle spring breeze and his E does fuck-all after being nerfed into the ground.
His ULTIMATE feels awful to use. Kind of piggybacks on the last point, but bears repeating again. Champions are frequently defined by their ults, and Mordekaiser's is largely forgettable now.
The free XP passive on his W makes no sense thematically or from a gameplay standpoint. They literally could have slapped it on any melee champion and made them viable in the bottom lane. It's also a LOT of invisible power, which is something that Riot professes to dislike.
Morde's passive is almost nonexistent now. Beforehand, his AoE abilities allowed him to build and maintain the shield - now, I almost never notice it.
W is an appalling nightmare of an ability that has so many strange, random, hard-to-parse effects that I feel it should have been three separate abilities.

In summary, Mordekaiser is only a rough approximation of what he once was. His rework got a few things right, but then proceeded to bog itself down with needless changes.

Maximum Morde10/7/2015, 6:34:19 PM4 votes

The reason it is a bad rework is it turned him into a very binary champion. Basic structure like this:

Land third Q? If yes you win. If no, then you probably lost unless you ulted someone important and your team cleans up giving you a nice ghost.

The other things people don't like are his W passive that ensures you will be higher level than your lane opponent. It's active requires you to be near a team member to use effectively which many old morde players dislike because it used to be an armor/MR buff plus blender when morde was a solo laner. Now you basically are missing a skill in solo lane. New W does savage damage though.

His E is largely similar to what it was before. Decent cone damage, plus if it hits enemy champions in generates a percentage of your shield for each one hit.

His R got range nerfed hard. It also now has a passive that gives you the ghost of the dragon when you damage dragon and it dies. The dragon ghost is pretty beast mode and is great for pushing objectives.

New Morde is very strong, but not in a way that is healthy for game play, and additionally at the cost of his old mains.

Teridax6810/7/2015, 8:09:09 PM2 votes

I personally like his Dragon pet effect, though the way it's currently implemented adds to the overall clunkiness of his ult (it kills his ghost, for example). I think the main complaints surrounding Mordekaiser are a) that he got pulled out of the solo lanes and got pushed into duo bot lane with a set of changes that still feels very artificial (his W passive especially is neither thematic nor as appreciable as it should be, imo), and b) that, in a similar vein, his core build is now a weird mix of AD, health and item 3116 , with the resulting lack of AP making his ultimate feel even weaker than it felt before.

While I think the Morde rework was a lot more successful than I thought it would be, my main issue with it is that it didn't really address many of the issues that were holding him down before, and added a few more problems on top. Morde suffered, and still suffers now, from an E that's lacking in real counterplay and a power budget that's heavily skewed by his ultimate, and for the wrong reasons imo: the most iconic part of it is the ability to enslave a fallen enemy, but a lot of its power is placed onto its point-and-click nuke/heal with a weak overall DoT, and even the ghost can end up feeling fairly crappy when it's an AP or tanky champion, with Morde instead just gaining bonus stats. By all rights, the ghost should gain a portion of its own bonus health and AP as bonus damage to replace the current AD bonus, and the active should either deal no damage at all or be used only to raise already fallen enemies, which would allow his basic abilities to be a lot better. As a slow, tanky DPS champion with no CC, Morde is the perfect Juggernaut, and so an ideal candidate for an update, but the changes he received made him even more binary than before, made his already weak health cost/sustain paradigm even less meaningful and completely changed Morde's gameplay in ways that weren't really necessary, while ignoring a lot of the issues that held him back. It's impressive that he became a legitimately strong bot lane carry, but in doing so his update alienated his fans and frustrated just as many people who've had to deal with him post-update.

Marthian10/7/2015, 8:46:21 PM2 votes

ridiculous early game - He's extremely hard to impossible to poke out of lane. Also applies to trying to all-in him: With the right runes, he's impossible to interact with (meanwhile if he gets third Q off, he just nukes your face. With a competent aggro support like Leona, it is pretty easy to do so.)
Did he get dragon? He just wins lane because he sicks dragon on you, which is tanky, does high damage, has no leash range AT ALL, and can tank turret like no tomorrow.
Ult is still as much bs as ever: Turn a 5v5 into a 4v6. Not to mention Rylai's+Morde Ult interaction is insanely toxic.
Juggernaut issues: Insanely tanky, very high damage, supposedly immobile, but isn't much of a weakness against other equally immobile champions (Rylai's is core on him, so basically can't escape him as an immobile champion.)

Yaskamasandwich10/7/2015, 10:27:31 PM2 votes

Yayy finally I was confused up until now what all the fuss was about.

Kitten of Evil10/7/2015, 8:56:51 PM1 votes

Random stuff shoehorned into his kit -- the W passive and the Dragon on ult (which almost always means a free tower). Also the Q's insane third hit damage holds way too much of his power budget.

Stephenizgod10/7/2015, 6:49:48 PM1 votes

Ok well there is a common misconception that New Morde is too tanky, this is wrong. He only seems tanky because in a Duo lane he is able to generate a constant shield with his Passive. Plus him with targons and with a support (possibly also with Targons) he has sustain that way, and his W which works better with a teammate heals him. His Q is extremely simple, LAND 3 AA's!!!! That is all he has going for him... landing that 3rd Q... the E is a garbage trash version of his old E, it does have its use such as Shield generation though, but its damage is nothing compared to before. His Ult was nerfed for this Ghost Dragon mechanic, its cool but it is too gimmicky for me and it is still countered by a single health pot.

So you have this champion that only focuses on landing Q's with no actual way to do so, you might imagine with him being squishy (make no mistake he is squishy if you dont have a support and a lot of items) that getting into AA range against an ADC is hard right? he will get poked down right? Well he is goin to be 2-3 levels higher then his opponent so his stats will be a lot better then his opponents PLUS if you have someone like Leona or Blitz, he doesn't need to do anything but hit Q when they land their CC. Then you most likely have a ghost and therefore you automatically get a turret, possibly another kill or two... Meanwhile his Solo lane is terribly unfun despite the fact he use to be a Solo laner, you are lacking in any sort of damage other then your Q which is painfully hard to hit with your whopping 325 MS. You are squishy because without a support and 2 targets for your E its hard to get your shield up and keep it up because it DECAYS IMMEDIATELY. Then again if the opponent is dumb and lets you hit your Q's then the lane is a cake walk and he is once again OP and Toxic to play against.

Basically they took Old Morde, who was toxic but not really OP, and put him bot lane. The issue is as a slow melee he would have trouble so they gave him broken level stats and made him level up faster then his opponent in a duo lane. They gave him a heal and if that wasnt enough they allowed him to have a dragon ghost to make his ridiculous push even better. So now New Morde is toxic AND he is OP, which is not very fun for the 2 people bot lane he is fighting.

Its not that he is bad or whatever, he is kind of fun too, but we just liked Old Mordekaiser better. He was the wrong person to shove into bot lane because it erases his identity as Master of Metal. Now he is just that OP guy with a mace.

Jamaree10/7/2015, 6:36:26 PM1 votes

Depending on who you talk to, you will get a multitude of different answers, just like with all things. Before his rework, Mordekaiser players were upset about the shift and the changing of his solo lane to bot laner and like always, everyone assumed he would be weaker, because that happens with every rework, people assume that change will outright be bad and they will be worst (even if there is a track record of the exact opposite.)

While his power shifted about in his kit, his weakness remained of being incredibly easy to camp however now he had the advantage of having a support to ward for him to keep him away from ganks as well as changes in his shield making it harder to remove him from lane. His long range damage has gone down and in turn got damage added to his close range kit with his Q and combat tricks thanks to being able to acquire dragon as a pet but the core of Mordekaiser hasn't changed. Tanky Bruiser with the ability to live far longer then he should because of his shield but because of the lane he got pushed to, bot, he no longer has to worry about heavy amounts of burst shredding through his shield, especially early making him a pretty strong threat.

Jacknife10/7/2015, 6:38:42 PM1 votes

Well some people have different reasons why they hate it, but the main things that make it horrible from a gameplay perspective are the passive on W and a giant chunk of his power budget going into his Q. The W passive make it so if he just farms, even better than his lane opponent, he'll come back to lane with more levels and possibly more items, and obliterate anything his support catches, he basically wins by default. All the damage on his Q makes him a one trick pwnYi where if he gets the third hit (later on he might not even need to get that far) you're basically dead, due to the huge numbers on it. The smaller issues are that ghost dragon is gimmicky and allows him to take any objective he wants, and he needs an ally with him at all times to make full use of his W, which is annoying and doesn't fit him at all. Hope I answered your inquiry :)

Brascus10/7/2015, 6:26:01 PM1 votes

I'd like a bullet list of the facts too, was thinking of picking up Morde

Yordle Xayah10/7/2015, 7:46:51 PM1 votes

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