Opinion: Morde rework, and Rylais
So I've been thinking awhile on the whole topic of how Morde could be rebalanced, and while this may not be an idea for a full rework, the point of this thread is to give Riot some ideas about how to change Morde, in a meaningful manner.
As a S1 Morde main, I've been with morde from the beginning. The rule of thumb was always that you didn't fight him in minion waves, or in melee range, and this is still true. The real issue is that since Morde doesn't have any mobility, or anything very flashy, he falls under the category of an item dependent (or as I call it a numbers) champion. So why is this an issue?
Well for beginners flashy skills to me are a game mechanic that, if used properly, represent your skill on a champion. How many times have we seen a Riven, Lee Sin, or Yasuo win a fight because of a flashy play? I know from personal experience that I've lost fights to Yasuo, simply because I could not click on him fast enough, before he would be in a new location. However, with Morde, his flashiest skill is his passive, or possibly even a third Q with flash. One might wonder how his shield counts as flashy, and in my argument its because it is what makes the difference between life, and death. It's the skill that when he gets ganked, poked, initiated on, and ect... determines if he lives or dies.
At this point, everyone is probably asking why I am just spewing out thoughts and opinions about playstyle, and this thing I like to call flashiness. To be honest, I wanted to set up the preface of what I call a numbers champion. A numbers champion, to me, is the exact opposite of a flashy champion. To me, this is a champion like Kayle, Twitch, Morde, Sion, Rammus, Veigar. As a champion (to me), they have minimal things that are flashy, or can be used to make flashy plays. This is either because they have minimal mobility, or simply because they have simple mechanics that are either slow and obvious (sion), or when used properly allow them to win the fight through pure numbers (kayle damage+ invulnerability ulti). Most often, champions that fall under this category win only because they have better numbers than the enemy.
Obviously, more champions could be added to both lists, but the list (to me) relies heavily on mobility, crowd control, cool down timers, and cast time of spells. The list can often time, also be correlated with popularity of a champion. Often times popular champions are more flashy. Just take a look at Lee Sin, Thresh, Ezreal, Lucian, and Caitlyn. They all have skillsets, that if they play better than the enemy, are allowed to win through mechanical skill. However, champions again like rammus, can either survive the fight, or not. His strongest, and to me flashiest ability is to have better numbers than the enemy.
Anyways, onto balancing a numbers champion, and a discussion of why morde mains are angry about a rylais nerf dumpstering morde.
For this particular champion, I think that he actually has a pretty loaded kit. As far as numbers goes, He has increased durability, increased damage, and he even has a heal. His kit actually has a fairly well balanced design (in theory). He has everything that he would need to survive and deal damage in a fight, except one thing, Mobility. Now, as a numbers champion, all he cares about is having better numbers than the enemy, so how does he compensate for the lack of mobility? (hint rylais) The way he does this is to purchase anti-mobility. This makes him reliant on building anything and everything that can get him in and out of a fight.
The question is as follows, how do you balance a champion that relies on mobility, without making him over powered? Well the simple answer is that you don't, you just let him rot, in whatever state he is in, and if he sees gameplay, you nerf him. The other option is to shift his dependency on items, to focus on something else, or to even readjust power within his kit.
There are some easy readjustments, and some more difficult ones that could be made.
Just for an example of a few things they could do:
Remove bonus experience on W in a duo lane Remove bonus movement speed when walking towards an ally Remove healing on minions Remove health costs
All of the aforementioned take up balance budget. My proposal is instead of reworking the champion as a whole, we just shift his balance budget. Instead of having bonus exp, he could get a little bit of base stats. Instead of having a passive that converts a % of magic damage from abilities into a shield, he instead gets to use all damage from all sources, but at a lower conversion ratio. We could also lower the ap/ad scaling on his abilities, but increase his base skill numbers to compensate. The whole idea here, is to reduce the benefits he gets from niche scenario's and instead move it into all around power.
How would shifting power from niche scenarios help? Well, it would honestly make him easier to be balanced. Instead of being able to look at his niche abuse cases, he would be more consistent regardless of what items he purchased. The only real issue with this type of balancing is that his skill cap, and floor become much closer in proximity to each other. However, as we see with some champions like Garen, this isn't completely a bad thing.
TLDR: I could keep writing on this topic, but if we were to move Morde, away from item dependancy, and in the case of his W bonus movement speed, and damage, allied dependancy, he would be more easily balanced. My proposal is to remove unnecessary kit components such as bonus experience in a duo lane, and high ap/ad/hp scaling and instead move it into base stats, and base damage. By removing item dependency on morde it minimizes the extremes that he has between games, allowing him to be more consistent and easier to balance.