Thoughts on Mordekaisers current state and how to balance him from a long time Morde main.
I'm a long time Morde main, one of the few who have been playing him since release and I'd say over 90% of my games I have picked him. I'd like to share my thoughts on his current issues and how Riot could go about fixing him without ruining his identity.
About a year ago Mordekaiser was "reworked", his base stats were nerfed all over the place, move speed, base armor, health scaling, Hp regen, even attack speed and in return we saw 2 new abilities and a fun gimmick with absolute insanely broken numbers. We all know what came of that, one of the strongest if not just the most broken champ ever released to this game, nerfed over and over again, given back his spot in solo lanes and left pretty much in the exact same spot as he was before but with power shifted from his base stats into his abilities. I'm talking about his rework because I want to make it clear that Mordes rework though interesting and certainly gave his abilities some much needed power, never actually changed anything about Mordekaiser himself or fixed the inherent issues with what he is and what he does.
The first problem with Mordekaiser, what makes him impossible to balance, what makes him overpowered and somehow a garbage champion at the same time is that all of his survivability is linked to how much damage his abilities deal to champions. There are so many issues with this idea, the first and most obvious one is that being CC'd is really bad for Morde, more so than it is for any other champion in the game. Morde needs to be able to cast his abilities to survive, not just to be an effective damage dealer like other carries but to actually stay alive you need to be able to cast your shit. his base stats being nerfed was compensated well in damage but it made the problem of getting CC'd even worse since now being locked out of casting makes you even weaker than before. The best way to think about this problem is to imagine that Morde is like Mega Gnar who if every time Gnar got CC'd he went back into mini form losing all his tank stats and becoming a squishy lil bich. I think Morde as a champion who has no mobility or CC and who's only power is damage and taking damage needs to be consistently tanky and hard to kill even if he isn't doing consistent damage and currently that is just not the case.
Another problem with Mordekaisers health basically being linked directly to how much damage he deals is resistances. Not that Morde ever really has a problem with tanky targets but if you build MR vs Morde not only do you reduce the damage he deals to you but you also reduce how much shield he gets from his abilities as well as how much health he gets from W and R, this also obviously contributed to how inconsistent his tankyness is. And combined with how hard it gets for Morde to reach enemy champions later in the game this may be why his scaling seems to fall off a cliff in the late game no matter how well you did early to mid. It's also worth noting that effects like exhaust or Katarinas Shunpo and Annies Molten shield which reduce damage by a percentage are much worse for Mordekaiser than they are for other champions. Especially Exhaust, being exhausted as Mordekaiser is one of the worst feelings.
The second and most simple issue of Mordekaiser is his late game scaling. Mordekaiser, a champion whos only strength, only purpose is to deal damage, should not have to deal with the problem of other champions out scaling him in that aspect. Champions like Vayne, Kayle, Tristana, and even melee champs for god sake Master Yi and Shyvanna among MANY other champions can have so much trouble vs Morde in early to mid game and then laugh at him as soon as they hit 4-5 Items because it doesn't matter anymore. And it isn't JUST that he is immobile, or that he isn't tanky enough, champs like Master Yi and Shyv can straight up face tank his damage at full build and the fight wont even be close. There isn't much I should have to say about this, Mordes damage should scale well even into late game vs anyone and everyone, and no I am not saying Morde should be able to just straight up kill whoever he wants no matter what he builds but just that no one champion should out scale his damage, that just doesn't make sense.
I have a lot of ideas in my head about how they could go about changing his abilities but I think I'll leave this post at this and maybe make another one another day because it's obviously already too long for most people to read so..
TL;DR : Mordekaiser, too weak to CC and HP based on damage is unhealthy(heh). Also champ only does damage and nothing else so why does his damage suck compared to so many other champs late game?
