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Mordekaiser and Rylai's

Choten·8/15/2016, 6:28:27 PM·1 votes·365 views

I've been trying alternative builds, ad, ap, and tank, with Morde and it feels that no matter what, he needs Rylai's or he has an incredibly hard time. This is a huge problem. I understand characters having items that synergize with their kits like Yasuo and item 3087 , Kayle and item 3124 , Akali and item 3146 , but Morde doesn't synergize with Rylai's, he just needs it or else he gets kited till death. It feels like he's purposely handicapped.

There's also barely any replacements for it. Gunblade can work but the cooldown on the slow is long and it's only single target. Frozen Mallet doesn't work if Morde can't get in melee range in the first place. The same applies to Trinity Force and Black Cleaver and their respective speed buffs.

A character can't be linked to an item so hard like this. It limits build variety because there's always one slot dedicated to Rylai's. I don't know if the plan is to never give Mordekaiser mobility or crowd control and to have him be completly item dependant. I honestly can't think of any champions that need to build a specific item like Mordekaiser does. Have any other Mordekaiser players found themselves needing to build Rylai's on him all the time? Is there a change in playstyle if you play without a Rylais?

5 Comments

Astôlfo8/15/2016, 6:30:35 PM1 votes

Well yeah he has no CC or way of sticking to his enemies so that he can actually get all 3 hits off or such otherwise. Because no one in their right mind would stick around to get hit 3 times by Mordekaiser.

DunkinNoobs8/15/2016, 7:35:44 PM1 votes

Those examples hurt my eyes. It's quite rare to see a Yasuo build item 3087 nowadays and Kayles core item is item 3115, not rageblade.

But to answer your question, no, not really. Riot made Morde the way he is for a very specific reason: complete lack of CC and mobility in his kit to give him counterplay during laning phase, but with the assumption that he will build Rylai's for some CC once teams start grouping. It's not uncommon for Riot to balance a champ around the laning phase and grouping phase by forcing a mandatory item on the champion to regulate their progression. Jayce comes to mind; his playstyle in lane and in group situations is very different, but his E-Q poke spam requires a heavily stacked item 3070 and thus is only usable once grouping has begun, which is a very good thing considering how oppressive that playstyle would be in a 1v1 scenario.