Mordekaiser Rework Suggestion
Hello League community, im not a veteran, only playing the game for about 6 months, but I have enjoyed League to the point of it supplanting all other games I used to play. Thus I recognize Im not the most experienced with the game nor with Mordekaiser, but I have enjoyed him, playing him the most alongside Pantheon and Urgot. I find his theme to be absolutely perfect for me, and I find Morde in general a fun champion and he was the champion that got me to actually play botlane and enjoy it. But I have found Morde to have some unsatisfying gameplay and realize he is old and deserving of a major rework, having spent a decent time on it, I figured I might as well share not just with friends but with the general league community. Apart from frustrations resulting from teammates not understanding my champion, I find that getting kited is just a bit too difficult to deal with, I recognize this is a weakness of Juggernauts as a class, but I have never felt quite as easily abused by enemy laners when playing Darius, Urgot, Garen etc. I realize Morde shouldnt have mobility and I like maintaining his current lack of hard CC for how to organize his power budget, I find it satisfying to be THE Juggernaut, the guy whose best solution to Illaoi and Darius is to just face them head on and throw them into the dirt, to be the best at being a close range nightmare as the class is supposed to be. I recognize he cant have that strength with CC or some kind of mobility, so it seemed obvious to me that he needed a way to deal with enemy CC so he can atleast reduce enemy ability to kite him, and stop himself from getting CC focused in team fights, yet do it in a way that seemed fair, this also seemed an opportunity to add more skill and counter play to his kit. Further more, I can see how he was intended to be a lane bully and objective pusher, yet he has a hard time capitalizing on these strengths, and this is before we even get into how some ghosts from his ult are useless, or how your passive is very poorly designed for healthy gameplay. Needless to say, here is my suggestion:
Passive: Im Not Ready to Die Mordekaiser spawns with an item called a "Phylactery" it is a trinket that may be placed down anywhere near Mordekaiser, if found by enemy champions it can be destroyed for 100 gold (Should have about the same health as a Z portal). Upon Mordekaiser's death, he may choose to respawn at fountain or at his phylactery, if he chooses his phylactery, he may purchase items from the shop within 300 range of it before walking out of range. If the Phylactery survives 6 minutes before Mordekaiser's death, his respawn timer is halved.
Q: Mace of Spades COST: 20 / 23 / 26 / 29 / 32 Health COOLDOWN: 12 / 10.5 / 8 / 6.5 / 5 ACTIVE: Mordekaiser gains two charges of Mace of Spades, which last for 4 seconds, upon expending he swings his mace in an effect radius of 500 with a range of 300. The attack has a 1 second delay, and Mordekaiser is able to move while it is being cast, the first and second swing deal damage moving from right to left and then left to right at a speed of 650. The second strike deals bonus damage based on the damage inflicted by the first, if both swings hit an enemy, Mordekaiser's mace is enchanted with an empowered auto attack that has increased damage based on damage done by both prior attacks, and has increased range up to 300.
Magic Damage: 10/20/30/40/50 (+40/50/60/70/80% AD) (+40% AP) Bonus Magic damage equal to 15% of damage dealt by the previous swing. Empowered auto attack gains bonus magic damage equal to 50% of the total damage dealt by both swings.
W: Harvester of Sorrow TARGET RANGE: 1000 EFFECT RADIUS: 250 / 125 COST: 25 / 35 / 45 / 55 / 65 Health COOLDOWN: 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 PASSIVE: Mordekaiser gains bonus experience when killing a minion near allies equal to 50% of the experience he lost due to them being there, which totals at 82.6 / 71.73 / 66.3 / 63.04 / 60.87% of the minion's experience bounty. ACTIVE - FIRST CAST: Mordekaiser targets an allied champion or minion and for the next 4 seconds they gain 75 bonus movement speed while moving towards each other, which lingers for 1.5 seconds. When near enough to each other, each deal magic damage in an area of effect around themselves every second for the duration. Mordekaiser and any allied champion linked also gain a shield equal to 20% of Mordekaiser's max health, if the shield survives the duration of Harvester of Sorrow, it begins to decay at a rate 1.5% base health per second. Harvester of Sorrow ends if Mordekaiser or his ally dies.
For the next 4 seconds, Mordekaiser can reactivate Harvester of Sorrow to end its primary effects and trigger a secondary effect, which triggers automatically at the end of the duration. If activated while no allies are nearby, Mordekaiser will highlight an area around him and can reactivate the ability as normal. The first ally to come in range will automatically gain the effect, too. ACTIVE - SECOND CAST: Mordekaiser constricts the area, dealing magic damage to all enemies near himself and his ally as well as healing himself and his ally for half of the damage done by the recast and the damage from its duration, from up to 2 enemies hit in their respective areas. Healing is reduced to 25% when harvesting minions.
MAGIC DAMAGE PER SECOND 35 / 45 / 55 / 65 / 75 (+ 22.5% AP) HARVEST DAMAGE: 50 / 85 / 120 / 155 / 190 (+ 30% AP)
E: Creeping Death EFFECT RANGE: 775 ANGLE: 50° COST: 24 / 36 / 48 / 60 / 72 Health COOLDOWN: 16/ 14 / 12 / 10/ 8 PASSIVE: Mordekaiser gains passive Tenacity of 25% ACTIVE: Mordekaiser surrounds himself in dark energies for 2 seconds, becoming immune to CC, and charging his attack off of incoming enemy attacks. After the two seconds Mordekaiser may recast Creeping Death to deal damage, empowered by damage he sustained during the prior 2 seconds. MAGIC DAMAGE: 25 / 45 / 65 / 95 / 125 (+ 50% AD) (+ 50% AP) Deals Bonus Magic damage equal to 50% of damage sustained by Mordekaiser while charging his attack.
R: Children of the Grave TARGET RANGE: 650 EFFECT RADIUS: 1125 / Global COOLDOWN: 120 / 105 / 90 Dragon Force PASSIVE - DRAGON FORCE: Mordekaiser's basic attacks and abilities Curse the Dragon Dragon for 10 seconds. Children of the Grave ACTIVE: Mordekaiser blasts the target enemy champion, dealing magic damage as well as Cursing them for the next 10 seconds. Cursed champions take magic damage every second, with Mordekaiser healing for 100% of the damage dealt by the initial blast and the Curse. INITIAL MAGIC DAMAGE: 6.25 / 7.5 / 8.75% (+ 1% per 100 AP) of target's maximum health MAGIC DAMAGE PER SECOND 1.875 / 2.25 / 2.625% (+ 0.3% per 100 AP) of target's maximum health CURSE: If Mordekaiser's team scores a takedown on a Cursed enemy, he temporarily enslaves their soul as a controllable ghost. Enslaving the Dragon Dragon will kill Mordekaiser's current ghost and prevent him from summoning a new one while it survives. GHOST DURATION: 45 / 60 / 75 SECOND ACTIVE: While a ghost is active, Children of the Grave can be used to move them to the target location. Champion ghosts gain 60% of Mordekaiser's AP as bonus AD and 15% of Mordekaiser's maximum health as bonus health, and while Mordekaiser has a champion enslaved he gains 25% of their bonus health as bonus health and 30% of their AP or AD (Adaptive to ghost in question) as bonus AP. Dragon ghosts gain bonus range and modified movement speed. While controlling a ghost, Mordekaiser gains 400% Health Regeneration out of combat. BONUS ATTACK RANGE: 0 / 75 / 150 BONUS MOVEMENT SPEED: -50 / 0 / +50
Oh and he should probably have a bit more armour and health base.
Explanation:
New Q keeps the potential for a really high damage clonk but only if you managed to land prior hits which are now skill shots which extend your damage range slightly and give you more ability to damage more then a single target. Has the thematic of dealing increasing damage based on prior damage to feel like you are being empowered by their suffering.
New W gives you more control of when you have your shield but forces you to manage when you have it up. Giving you a more guaranteed shield if you are behind so you arent too squishy and giving opponents a window of when they know you wont have a shield and forcing Mordekaiser to balance when to use his shield and heal (When not all inning atleast). Giving you more healing from sustained engages to reward you for continuing to be in the thick of battle, and allowing you to shield an ally to give you some utility as a champion. Still maintains the current wave dominating ability that it has in game.
New E reduces Mord's poke damage to make up for his heavy all in's, being on a longer cooldown, having a lower base damage, and having a two second casting delay that has a visual indicator before then being able to be used. Yet, it has a longer range for potential snipes of people just barely getting away from you, the potential to be an absolute nuke of damage if enemies are focusing you when they see you are charging the attack to punish them for their mistake and give you the potential for serious damage even at decent range if people dont pay proper attention to you. Most importantly it gives you a self utility ability to make you temporally CC immune to be used skillfully when you know you will be struck with a cc ability that will be your doom (Somewhat like Sivir using her Spell shield) and to just help you not be able to be stopped in your already not great engage without atleast forcing your enemies to abandon their ground if not in a position to deal with you. Yet it should be an obvious enough ability being used that an opponent most of the time would simply be unattentive to use their CC on him.
New R is mostly the same because I felt it was solid, however I allowed Morde to gain AP off of AD aswell if he has an AD Ghost so that he doesnt wind up benefiting more personally from mages, gave AD boosts to Ghosts based on his AP so that it doesnt feel like Ghosts of non ADC's are useless. And I often felt his ult is great especially earlier for split pushing if only I wasnt often low health with a ghost, unable to push without feeling too risky. So I gave him health regen out of combat if he has a ghost, so that he can comfortably push with a ghost, to make him a general tower threat, and make it more risky to just send a single person to deal with him.
New Passive is meant to express the thematic idea of how Morde lorewise was a Warlord that would eternally haunt Valoran, like wise he should eternally haunt the Rift. If he can get to lane quicker, he can press the advantage of his oppressive nature more, especially since Mordekaiser isnt a champion to typically ever take teleport as a summoner. It gives him a little minigame-ish kind of thing to make him more interesting, and overall, allows you to pull off interesting things, like helping secure Dragon, Backdooring, and potential (I know this is stretching it) weird ganks. Ofcourse this is all based on you dying, thus rather odd and not completely practical, but I dont feel the champ is bad without the passive, I think its just a thing to help bounce back which is weakness of Morde, and admittedly is the part of this redesign I am the least confident in, incase you have better ideas.
Visual Update: Mordekaiser should be made to look much larger and imposing, on the size of Sion. Obviously his model needs to look better, but im not sure what to say for details, I dont feel the fundamental armour design should change. Im excited on the potential for a new Voice Over, but I dont know what to say other then he needs atleast a couple of Metal references. The only other note I feel I should add, is that it would be awesome if upon respawning, Mordekaiser let out a global laugh. Also during his Q, Morde should for the first two swing in wide arcs, while the empowered auto should be an overhead swing.
