I've been away for a while. Why did they give Mordekaiser the Power of Friendship as his new ability

http://i.imgur.com/JgeC4q3.png

I haven't played LoL in months. And I remember hearing something about Mordekaiser now being a duo bot Champion. So I didn't realize (until a moment ago) that the way Riot accomplished this was quite this…hamfisted. This is basically an ability that says, "YOU MUST PLAY THIS CHAMPION IN A DUO LANE".

Maybe duo bot Mordekaiser is fun, but does anyone else feel that this solution rather lacks elegance? It's such a brute force way of accomplishing this objective. If Riot wants to make mages more viable in bot lane, why not just alter the XP-sharing mechanics globally? If they want to make it easier for Mordekaiser in particular to thrive in bot lane, why not make him less dependent on XP and more dependent on gold?

It's sort of like…let's say there's a problem with too much weight being placed on early game kills.

• Elegant solutions: Reduce the gold bonus for First Blood. Or increase Champions' starting Health. Or make potions cheaper.
• Inelegant solution: Make it so that all attacks do half damage to Champions in the first five minutes of the game. (An artificial new rule that has the feeling of the Voice of God telling people "hey stop doing this".)

Similarly, here, rather than altering Mordekaiser so that he's "naturally" better in bot lane, they just carved out a piece of his power budget to create an ability that's utterly useless in solo lanes. It's like slapping a sticker on him that says "this Champion is for duo lanes, because we said so."

Isn't it also a bit odd thematically? When I think about Mordekaiser, "he knows the power of true friendship" isn't really on my list of initial thoughts.