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5.4 Mordekaiser: A Champion Without a Niche

Grant the Ant·2/22/2015, 11:26:41 PM·4 votes·1,122 views

I believe that 5.4 Mordekaiser Rework will be a huge change that I feel will negatively impact him. I have been struggling to define how over the past few days. I've finally come to a point where i can write on it.

Mordekaiser list of Strengths & Weaknesses in 5.3: Strengths Huge Burst Tanky if not CCed Weaknesses NO CC NO Mobility Complete Vulnerability to CC

This is a fairly unique set of Strengths and Weaknesses I can honestly say there isn't another champion that fits this mold. It gave him a niche versus 1 type champion.

When an enemy team pick one of about a dozen champions they gain these strengths: Short Range High Mobility Instant Burst damage that can kill anyone in 1/4 of a second (Think Katarina, Akali, Leblanc, Kassadin, etc.)

Prior to 5.4 Mordekaiser made his living fighting these guys. When the enemy picked KatarinaKatarina. They basically said, "I'm going to use my mobility get right into your face, kill your ADC in 1/4 of a second before you can even react, Get resets and ace your team within the first second of the fight." A Mordekaiser with proper farm in 5.3 has essentially 1 strength. If Morde ever got in a fight toe-to-toe with this type of enemy his burst coupled with his passive shield made him tanky enough win the fight. If he was ahead he could even win the trade, and potentially get a kill.

Could he lose matchups? Absolutely, 5.3 Morde was extremely gankable in lane cause he has zero mobility. He has no way to correct a positional mistake. If he steps out of position even for a second he is dead, or his team dies to the Katarina burst since he is not close enough to stop her. He also can't deal with kiting, or range. I've died on Mordekaiser dozens and dozens of times where i simply made the slightest positional mistake that is impossible to correct because of his kit.

Understanding now that Mordekaiser makes his living fighting these high mobillity ultra burst champions lets see at how the 5.4 changes effect him. The 5.4 Mordekaiser Strengths & Weaknesses: Strengths Tanky if not CCed Weaknesses Low Burst NO CC NO Mobility Complete Vulnerability to CC

The burst was what made him strong against 100 to zero insta kill champions that could do their work in 1/4 a second. That was his niche. He could fight leblanc 5.3. Will he be in this Niche in 5.4? No. Sure he can win an extended fight versus Leblanc, but Leblanc damage is front loaded so hard, and she is so crazy mobile she only needs to be exposed for 1/4 second. You are never in a position to trade with her in an extended manner. You will not make LB fear going in for a kill. You won't force her to position better so she can get a kill on Your ADC without exposing herself to you.

Mordekaiser's new niche is not clear. It's Certain he will no longer be able to trade with the likes of leblanc like he has been. Riot States the want him to be a bruisy fighter, but He simply doesn't have the tools to be that type of a champion. He can't catch targets and has no CC. All great short range fighters in the current meta have this (Think Jax, Irellia, etc.).

If the shield compensation is enough he might essentially become an Uber tank damage spunge swinging a wet noodle. I see major problems with this as well. He has no CC to keep the likes of Katarina or Leblanc concerned with where he goes our what he does. He's not a threat to their ADC's since he is easily kited. His shield is small enough that it won't even stop a single ability from Carry in the late game.

It seems Like to me he doesn't have the tools to fit in anywhere. It makes me wonder if Riot had any idea what kind of champion he was before the rework. IMO he actually helped balanced the game in 5.3 since he kept the likes of Katarina from ending a game in 20 minutes with 40 kills. He kept leblanc from blowing up your ADC. As a result of his change I predict the win rates of these type of champions will increase. It also makes me wonder why they did it. Katarina already has the highest win rate in the game. Now we begin gutting one of the only champions that can deal with her.

It seems Silly, and misguided. It seems like when they changed him they didn't look at the services he provided to keep the game healthy.

7 Comments

Kitten of Evil2/22/2015, 11:59:28 PM3 votes

I think they had a certain view of him (tanky sustained AP bruiser who is rewarded with survivability when he hits enemies)... and that's not really how he's used by many players. Like you said, he's known now for having high burst, something his W and R don't fit into (though at least R does a chunk of damage initially). But when Riot has an idea of what a champion should be, they make them be that. See, for example, jungle Nidalee. I guess it makes sense from a thematic standpoint, but she wasn't known as a jungler -- I remember the days of mid Nid and support Nid. But Riot says "she shall be jungle", gives her a free root-on-jungle-mobs aspect of her passive, and voila, she is now jungle. The same can be said of assassin Ahri. Riot decided to refocus her as a kite-mage, so that's what she is now.

So it shall be with Morde. Riot views him as a sustained-damage AP bruiser, more along the lines of Swain, so that's what he shall be.

qetzel2/23/2015, 1:44:41 AM2 votes

http://www.surrenderat20.net/2015/02/217-pbe-update.html

Keep up with the changes. The only nerf to damage might be for his ghost, although I can't be botherered to work it out.

Salt Miner 49 Er2/23/2015, 2:41:38 AM2 votes

Ever since his inception, Mordekaiser has had kind of strange existence in the League of Legends. First he came out in the era of Cleanse+Ghost/Flash where his ultimate and Ignite were made a moot point just by somebody pressing a button. His ratios weren't spectacular and due to the lack of CC he generally built items like Rylai's Crystal Scepter along with tank items in order to not get blasted into the last millennium by the enemy team.

Then, Hextech Gunblade came out and the Mordekaiser game changed entirely. He could stack two of them, buy Lich Bane and a Sunfire's Cape and all of sudden you saw him just beating the living tar out of anybody who dared try to 1v1 him that wasn't a complete bruiser. After Hextech Gunblade's change to be non-stackable, he bought Deathfire's Grasp and Rabadon's to complement the amazing burst he could put out. Playing Tank-Kaiser became a near extinct playstyle because you could play him as a beefy burst mage without actually having to build tank items similar to how Riven can build nothing but AD and still be durable with her shield.

Alas, Guinsoo struck Mordekaiser down and he's been where he's at for a while now after some buffs. He just kind of... exists. Not complete garbage but not really competitively viable due to mobility creep and the fact that you can almost always gank and kill him with the more popular junglers, as well as just flat out kill him with any of the more popular mid or top laners. He does have some favorable matchups, mostly against champions who need to get in close and cannot match burst for burst with him, but overall he's in a mediocre to bad spot. His only unique saving grace thus far for a team is the ghost he can get from Children of the Grave, and that can be negated by buying Mercurial Scimitar or using various abilities like Lulu's ulti, Zhonya's Hourglass, etc so that Morde dies before the ghost can spawn.

As a person who played almost nothing but Mordekaiser for two years on an older disabled account than this one, I can safely say that i'm kind of treading with trepidation when it comes to the Mordekaiser changes. Yes, it's going to make the old Warmog's Armor and Rylai's Crystal Scepter combo make a comeback, but at the same time it doesn't really give him a clear identity in the game. I mean, throwing a half-assed Nunu Blood Boil onto his Creeping Death isn't going to make him suddenly viable or fix his mobility issues, especially when mobility has become such a staple necessity in League of Legends for the past year or so now.