Mordekaiser's Fate

Malicious Metal · 2015-08-31T16:44:23.726Z

2 Months ago; Mordekaiser's a niche pick with a dedicated player base and a simple kit. He's not the flashiest champion and certainly not the most popular. He's a straight forward tanky mage/bruiser who serves as a great anti assassin pick. His kit is simple and his gameplay pattern may be obnoxious to play against but people do manage to play around him , putting him at a 51% win rate. 1 Month ago; A Rioter answered to a fellow Morde main's thread, asking about upcoming changes to the Master of metal; "He'll be more of a bruiser" "He'll be less of a burst mage but more of a consistent damage threat with ramping up damage" "We'll try to stay true to his thematics and identity" Now we got the rework, which got a LOT of negative feedback but was pushed through regardless. Now we can all agree that the rework's bad on many levels, be it thematics, gameplay or general gimpyness of his kit. I was hopeful after the patch came about that with the right amount of tweaking and power shifts Morde could become better than he ever was; More healthy, less binary, smoother to play, thematically fitting for the Master of Metal. But no; no shifting in sight. What we do know is that he'll get nerfed. Right. NERFED. Morde treads the thin line of being utterly oppressive or a pile of trash with mere number nerfs and yet riot sees him standing at a 58% win ratio as an ADC and decides to nerf him instead of looking at the 43% win rate top/39% mid. The underlying problems are not his numbers but his gameplay pattern bot. Top lane he'll get kited and is gank bait due to abysmal low MS and the fact he can only use 2 skills in lane. But bot. Oh boy... He gets everything he needs to succeed; Sustain, MS, CC, Lockdown, peel. Mode's current kit is way too oppressive IF he gets a good support/team but he's utter shit when alone. There had to be a way to balance him without trashing him completely! This already sketchy rework is going to put him in Limbo; hovering between broken OP and trash only because Riot fails to acknowledge that they will never manage to balance a Melee "ADC" on the level of marksmen. He has to dominate to stand a chance, so he has to have broken numbers. It's a stalemate in which no one is going to win. veteran Morde players got their favorite champion trashed for their main roles New Mordekaiser players got a champ that's either pick or ban or completely useless and Riot, well, they might just have killed of their Lab rat named Mordekaiser since they will never, ever be able to balance him based on bot lane. They should balance him as a champion and NOT as a bot laner. //Rant//

BetaDude40Sep 1, 20159 votes

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ArcticSiriusSep 1, 201536 votes

Here's what I don't understand, and forgive me if I sound brutish due to a long day at work, but wasn't it going to be obvious that Mordekaiser would be siginifcantly weaker in the solo lane without being able to use his W? It was one of the main feedback points, and I had spoken with my friends and they all agreed that with 4/5 of a kit, he wouldn't be as viable as he was before. You say "Morde is much weaker in a solo lane than I expected", however we all knew of what was going to happen without that W. Was it overlooked that his damage output would make up for the lack of a sustain/free damage, or were you all deadset on "duo-bot" Mordekaiser?

RiotCertainlyTSep 1, 201539 votes

No, it wasn't obvious to me. Perhaps I'm just dense!

It was obvious that players would have to play differently in order to succeed, such as working more closely with their jungler. Our internal testing indicated that this was possible. I mis-estimated the ability of players to consistently do that in Live games. Again, I'm not anticipating that Morde will have a magical "50% win rate" in solo lanes in solo queue after changes unless players make efforts to make use of his kits tools. Spam pushing and rushing Gunblade before boots are probably not that though.

It's actually quite difficult to know how a champion will perform on the Live environment... you guys are collectively much better than us at this, crowdsourced optimization over tens of thousands of games is an extremely powerful tool for solving complex problems, and likely always will be no matter how many talented individuals we task with theorizing balance.

Dextix LTSep 1, 201511 votes

Its good that you admit that you are dense, because you really are.

MordepoolSep 1, 201550 votes

He's talking constructively. Let's keep it that way. Focus should be on making morde healthier. Not slinging insults. I'm defending the open conversation line. As should we all

Dextix LTSep 1, 20154 votes

Contructively? THis is what you consider contructive? He is doing the same he always did. HE says what HE thinks what HE wants.

TotalJerkSep 1, 201519 votes

He's the fucking designer. Of course he's going to say all that because in order to have this discussion, we need to understand where he was coming from when he made the decisions he did.

HellioningSep 1, 201529 votes

We are not pro play. We do not get to have the jungler on mumble every game. He's probably a random person I have never played with before and never will again. He might also play a champion that doesn't do well with Morde, because again, solo queue.

Of course Morde wasn't going to be able to rely on 'working closely with his jungler' when his jungler is Shyv and isn't even going to be able to walk into lane pre-six.

MordepoolSep 1, 201512 votes

Teamwork is a key component to the game (excluding ranked 5s) you are essentially taking 5 selfish players putting them on a team each with a champion that can stand on their own And bring something unique to the map.

Mordekaiser cannot stand on his own as he is now. And the other 4 people will not take the time or effort to coddle a champion who cannot function as such because it would take time away from them winning the game.

Mordekaiser warps other players play styles or should at least but is generally ignored by his team. Hence the terrible solo lane winrates.

Its as much a design problem as it is people's ignorant selfish nature. That's why junglers never help solokaiser

I suggested morde storing 1 charge self cast of w ability after being near an allied champion for 35sec. Seems closer to what riot team wants. My personal opinions on his direction I'll keep to myself for another 3 -5 years until full rework.

PQUNDCAKESep 1, 20156 votes

Maybe listen to the players that actually do the testing next time, if you think that the world-wide population of LoL is better at finding loopholes and issues with champions then. I can look back at the PBE forum topic and see PLENTY of posts going on about his solo-lane being almost as bad as solo-lane Soraka.

Big FrodoSep 1, 20156 votes

"No, it wasn't obvious to me. Perhaps I'm just dense!" - I'm the shark, you're the fish. Yeah, YOU ARE. Apparently for YEARS you've been. I was one of the FIRST to post about how suckish his solo will be, but nope. You just ignored it, and replied to ONLY positive feedback. I don't see how you can sit there, and lie to people.

Adrian UmbraSep 1, 201526 votes

CT admitting that he was wrong? GASP! What... what is this? It's almost like... if he had listened to the players on the PBE... they might have actually been able to get a jump start on these changes and have had them ready for 5.17 or something...

But seriously, since when do you see champions like Amumu or Jinx having their potential locked down simply because there's no ally to "activate" them? Sure, Jinx requires peeling, Amummy requires followup, Janna requires someone to provide damage, etc, but those champions are always able to bring the full power of their kit to bear even when solo. Janna is generally regarded as one of the most difficult non-tank supports to catch due to her movement speed and CC. Jinx still has absolutely massive lategame damage and range with some ability to self peel even when alone. I've taken down enemy junglers as Amumu because they don't respect my damage potential. Alone.

Very few other champs are as reliant on another to unlock their power as Morde and by locking his power away when he's alone, you lose much of your ability to split push, you lose your ability to solo lane, and you lose a lot of ability to clean up after a fight. And while I respect that you're seeing how badly this decision turned out in the long run, I'm also a little insulted that you not only didn't see this earlier, but you ignored all of the very informed testers who told you this exact thing. New Morde is showing himself to be LESS healthy than the old, just in a new role, and the fact that this hasn't been mentioned at all terrifies me. For one of my favorite champions and the health of the game as a whole.

Sure, he's not that armor wall immovable object in lane, but he's become so much more of a bully, complete with snowballing into an enormously bulky damage dealer that I'm not sure he's going to be allowed to become viable again. If he gets ahead, he gets level advantage, he gets dragons, he gets an enormously powerful Q, and he steamrolls with very little chance to resist. If he gets behind... absolutely nothing. He has trouble farming and pushing back into the game, he ends up with too little utility to save himself from his flaws, and he consequently falls flat. Was this an intended part of his design?

DesideriumSep 1, 20155 votes

Not anticipating a champion's weakness on release isn't the same as admitting that you were wrong.

Adrian UmbraSep 1, 201514 votes

When that champion's weaknesses on release were repeatedly pointed out in a testing environment for a couple weeks, you'll have to forgive me if I take him admitting he was wrong two weeks after Morde was released pretty badly. Oh, him being wrong is something I'll forgive all day, too err is human, after all. But to watch him clam up after testers pointed out this exact set of problems, proceed to do nothing about them, and then reappear a couple weeks later and say he should have listened to the advice he got is pretty grating. Love to see that he's back in the swing of responding to threads, but I'm also looking for a little acknowledgement of what's been done to Morde and some explanation as to why these things were done. Was he intended to become more snowbally? Was he seriously balanced around having someone hold his hand ALL THE TIME? Is his Q, with its binary nature of "I reach you and stick to you you die, if not, then I can't do anything" a healthy thing to put in the game?

RiotCertainlyTSep 1, 201518 votes

Hey Adrian,

Yes, if Morde reaches and sticks to you without being CC'd, you will die. This is intended. Virtually every champion has some tools to avoid Mordekaiser sticking to them. He puts players to tough decisions, since often being out of his zone of threat compromises his opponent's ability to do exactly what they want to do in a team fight, but tough decisions are the nature of play.

No, Morde shouldn't need to be "hand held" all game. He should be much more threatening when he has an ally present, such that he is looking for opportunities to make plays with his teammates (such as pushing and roaming). Sometimes it will be worth being alone. Sometimes it won't be. In exchange, allies, particularly those with CC, have strong incentives to come to Mordekaiser since he makes them much more effective.

Yes, Morde is intended to be able to snowball. Allowable snowball is a function of the amount of counterplay that exists to a snowballed champion. Morde has strong fundamental level counterplay -- his damage takes place over time, and his zone of threat is constrained and does not move rapidly. I've seen 10-0 Morde's do zero damage in a fight when his opponents played better than him and his teammates. Conversely, a Mordekaiser that is behind has a lot of threat simply by existing. If you stand next to him autoattacking for an extended period of time, you'll probably die. So for example, if you are playing Master Yi, you might need to Meditate his Q3 if you plan on all in'ing a Morde, even if you are ahead of him.

Stars ShaperSep 1, 20157 votes

Isn't there a way then to make this still true without making Morde a one-trick-pony binding all his damage to the 3rd Q? A thing that I really liked about old Morde was that all of his abilities had impact during the fight, right now W and E are simply shield builders and Q is the only real way to deal damage while Ghost has become just a tower tank (unless you are lucky and get that juicy ranged AD ghost and the fight isn't already over).

It just feels wrong that all that Morde has to be a treath is his 3d empowered AA.

TaigongwangSep 1, 20158 votes

Great ideas, but with the combination of his W and ZERO way to get his damage off without a team mate, Morde has to be hand held the entire game by a support with decent CC. He cant close the gap himself with his PITIFUL base movespeed. People are building more movespeed items than anything else on him just so that he can get some damage off in a fight.

With almost all of his damage loaded into his Q, which isnt reliable without a teammate, he will not be successful in anything but a duo lane or jungle. In fact, in your post you alluded to this. "I've seen 10-0 Morde's do zero damage in a fight when his opponents played better than him and his teammates." A 10-0 Morde SHOULD have some damage threat aside from his Q late game, but he doesnt. Why is this fine? From a game design stand point, this is HORRIBLE. If everything he does outside of his ult, which he doesnt remotely build for anymore, aside from his Q doesnt allow him to do his job as a melee ADC bruiser, why is everything in that ability? It speaks that you want him to be in a duo lane with a support, but your words do not match what is in his kit and the numbers.

On that note, Dragon Force. This thing EATS towers, and it is how he functions as an ADC replacement late game. Problem is, if he gets it early, you cant do anything about it aside from five manning his lane. Which means his team is free to push the other lanes. It creates a situation in which if you lose dragon, not only do you not get the bonus from dragon, you can expect one or two towers to just vanish. Its a snowball mechanic. With a counter, but it further punishes you with a MASSIVE push for losing an already important objective. Its also another gimmicky mechanic that pushes him down bot, which is generally a duo lane. Once again, words do not match what is actually in the game.

Another thing is, at least the person in charge of the Skarner rework listened. Yes, he came out overpowered, but that is because people gave feedback that he felt INCREDIBLY weak outside of the zones and he didnt lose power anywhere to compensate. We got nothing from you. Just posted the feedback thread and vanished like a forum bot. The feedback was solid, and you got the same when he hit live. Just on a MUCH larger scale.

This rework, bluntly, is a flop. This isnt Mordekaiser, and he isnt going to be balanced with how his kit works. Dragon Force is a MASSIVE snowball mechanic, and he is forced to be supported. He NEEDS to snowball to achieve carry replacement status because of the items required. This is even further shown by his passive W, which can give him a massive level advantage in bot, which he once again needs to function. He is just a pile of mechanics with old Mordes nerfed E that wants to be an ADC replacement, but needs all of those mechanics to even have a chance. If he takes that chance, he is a wrecking ball that cant be stopped. Even if you guys dont see it now, the players do. He wont be in a balanced state until another rework, which Morde players will have to wait years for at the current pace. It also killed the identity of Mordekaiser. I know you guys wont revert this, but consider actually sitting down with Morde players and actually listening to what they have to say.

RiotCertainlyTSep 1, 201532 votes

It's tough. We also listened to the "very informed" testers who told us Skarner was weak. Feedback is always contingent upon the choices made by the playtester. In Mordekaiser's case, I felt the playtesters were not making the right choices but that over time they would begin to make them. I was incorrect.

In the end, players will still have to adapt to a play pattern that opens more windows of meaningful response for the lane opponent. My task is to give players the ability to be able to judge whether they are making progress toward figuring the play pattern out. When a champ is underpowered in a role, that's often difficult because even if you do everything right, you might still end up failing.

YormaughmSep 1, 201515 votes

Look, I'm glad you posted and I'm sure lot of other people are too. I just wanted to ask though, why would you feel the playtesters were not making the right choices?

Aren't the players on the PBE there because they care that extra degree that makes them want to be a playtester? Aren't they in effect a more reliable source of information than the "general population" (both are valuable and will give you different sets of data, I definitely understand that, but valuable for different reasons. The PBE player's reasons are allegedly that they care about the balance of the game a bit more than the gen pop and want to go that extra mile to get that channel of communication directly to you because they believe you will make informed decisions once you have it.)

I downvoted the other guy responding, coming in here being toxic to you because that's no way to act. But honestly we can't ignore him. People want answers from you and you're giving them, but I do have to say he's at least sorta-kinda right. You got the feedback from the dedicated Morde players on the PBE, and other smart PBE players and then just "pulled rank" because you didn't trust what they were telling you for some reason. A lot of us players find that to be...baffling at the least...infuriating at the worst, and frankly, brutal truth ahead, it causes some of us to lose trust in you.

I don't even play Morde, but I am always looking for communication from Riot about changes that you guys make, especially when the overall feedback on the change is negative. Honestly it's amazing that you would come in here and face that, lots wouldn't in your shoes, and I respect it, even if I do question why it happened. You have a golden opportunity to at least clear your own name here in the eyes of some of us, please don't waste it.

RiotCertainlyTSep 1, 201530 votes

My job is to balance the competing interests of all 10 players in the game. It's also to keep the game dynamic. This means I have to balance feedback from multiple sources. In this case, I had a lot of feedback from people saying Mordekaiser was a nagging problem on the game as a whole to balance against feedback from the fewer but more passionate people saying they wanted their champion unchanged. Based upon the totality of the circumstances, I made the decision I felt was better for the overall health of the game. I don't regret it, though obviously it is difficult as a designer to change something that many of your players enjoy.

HellioningSep 1, 201519 votes

Complaint threads I've seen since I started about Morde being OP or otherwise annoying to play against: like, five, maybe.

Complaints threads I've seen since I started about Fizz being OP or otherwise annoying to play against: A lot more than five.

So can we get a Fizz rework? Is that how it works?

MordepoolSep 1, 201518 votes

And what of the health of the champion. These changes while innovative haven't addressed any of the original characters flaws. (Not weaknesses mind you every champion needs those)

Defeated at champ select more so than before ( enemy support counter, or your own support pick doesn't cater to your needs)

Feast and famine. More pronounced due to prework morde late game being better. If you fell behind you could farm. New morde can't farm mid-late game unless he leaves his team in a 3v5.

Oppressive lane bully.

These were what we wanted fixed/toned down or eliminated.

Ya its never going to be perfect but I want what's best for Mordekaiser he is after all. Numero Uno

MrWasjigSep 1, 201514 votes

Given your track record of champions cough Yasuo cough Kalista cough as two of the biggest offenders that are cited as unhealthy by a LOT of people (myself included), what makes you think you have the right idea of what's healthy for he game? Ask anyone and they'll tell you that Yasuo and Kalista are not healthy. Very cool designs no less but not fun to play against in the slightest. Because infinite dashes are nonsense. This isn't just me taking a salty jab but a genuine (but still salty) question.

KelgSep 1, 20159 votes

{quoted}

I don't know if my opinion matters, but here goes... As someone who has played a lot of Mordekaiser pre-rework and post rework, this is what I think:

Missing his best ability, he is useless in a solo lane.(You can't expect the jungler to baby sit you all game... Your jungler will hate you.) It just feels terrible to have an ally present just to use one of your abilities.
His mobility is even worse than before. This is not fun for the Mordekaiser player.
The Dragon ghost was a great idea. It gave Mordekaiser more potential, without giving him too much power.(I would like to see this expanded potentially to jungle monsters, and possibly available from the start so that jungle Morde could be a thing)
His wave clear is pretty bad when he is alone. Part of his old identity is that he could push lanes down fast.
His E is near useless. He usually doesn't even need to use this to get a kill. It could use a power shift(Going by it's name, maybe give it the heal from W?).
His Q becoming single target gave him more power than you might think. He now gets the full slow from .
His Q damage is pretty extreme, but maybe it should stay this way considering he is immobile, and cannot CC naturally.
His 3Q is impossible to avoid if you have the right support(Leona, Blitz, etc.).
He is way overpowered in duo lanes with the right setup, and extremely unhealthy for the game(imo of course). His 2 person healing is way over the top.
On the flip side, with the wrong support, he is extremely frustrating to try to play against ranged champions.
He is no fun to play against in bot lane.
If you nerf him too hard with his current kit, he will be completely useless and will be harassed out of lane by any competent player.
People think you're trolling when you try to go duo lane Morde in ranked.
This new Mordekaiser will be extremely difficult to balance, without just making him weak so he isn't a problem.

Personally, I think his kit can't really be salvaged. He will either be overpowered, or weak. He needs a full rework.

Adrian UmbraSep 1, 20155 votes

I don't at all blame you guys for listening to those testers and I've had absolutely no problems with Skarner needing to be hotfix nerfed because of it. You guys did something there that we've been asking for for the last several reworks, which was listening to us and keeping the flow of communication open. Skarner ended up being too strong because of that, but is in a situation where both players and the company are comfortable with where the character has gone and how he'll turn out in the long term. He ended up overtuned, he was quickly fixed, and I'm pretty happy with how Riot has handled this whole issue. However, your coworkers were also pulling out an amazing amount of cooperation and communication with which to help the champions out with and both Skarner and Garen ended up better off because of it, not just more powerful.

In Mordekaiser's case, I'm not sure that happened. The "right choices" in this case appear to have been a Steracks (may get changed due to the power of the item) or Triforce/Rylai's based utility rush coupled with leveling Q first due to its insane scaling increase. Just like Riot's internal testers seem to have been doing. So with Mordekaiser being more easily counterpicked in other positions than ever, his "core" build being more expensive than ever and his weaknesses that were pointed out being replied to with "Get yourself a support with CC" combined with most ganking junglers nowadays being higher on damage than CC, I'm a little sad that you didn't foresee this being an issue.

Am I being unfair? Probably, you've been a designer at Riot for years now and have an insight into the company's workings that I can't imagine. But you also reworked Mordekaiser in such as way as to totally alienate his old playerbase, have spent most of the period between Morde's release onto the PBE and the most recent patch MIA, and are now coming back to say that you couldn't have seen any of these problems coming. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little frustrated by that. We could have gotten these issues worked out on the PBE, but instead we'll need to spend the patch OF World's to try to make sure that the upcoming tournament is neither dominated by Mordekaiser ADC or noticeably lacking any sign of the latest meta breaking experiment.

SaltyToplaneGoatSep 1, 201516 votes

People don't need "adjusting", for that it's been way too much time. And while you made him absolute trash tier in solo lanes, you turned him into a nightmare on botlane.

So... how do we define "being ahead" in league? Having significantly more gold and exp than the enemy - now Morde and his suport both by a relic shield at the start of the game and win both in gold and in exp by default. Not to mention the sustain they have in addition to the heal on W (which does matter a lot early) - while also having all advantages of having a hard cc support that usually has the weakness of barely any sustain.

Mordekaiser is only viable on bot because no matter what you do, he will not lose lane (unless he's a downright horrible player, in that case he will be stomped and so useless he will NEVER get back into the game). He will just farm farm farm and there is nothing you can do to stop him, not even poke, apart from begging your jungler on your knees to come down and kill a champ that has good cards on surviving anyways thx to the support they have with them while also being quite tanky early. The dragon passive is just the icing on the cake for this, giving him the potential to become even MORE ahead.

But that's not what bothers me the most. The real problem is this absolute waste of thematic potential. We could have undead-minions for pushing, enslaved souls of jungle monsters, Q becoming a mix of Riven/Yasuo Q + Sion Q skill, etc etc. You have as theme "Dark Overlord of Metal that rules over the souls of the dead" and all you can deliver is THIS? A kit that is not only unbalanceable which is a mistake in it's own, but also so bland and unengaging that it is only viable due to broken numbers.

Ya know, I never really complained about your designs. Tresh is ok with me, Yasuo is too (I just hate crit in general but his kit is cool - there should be a Q-W interaction tho), heck even Kalista could be fine with a single tweak that ties her jump-range to her movement speed (then you can revert that AD nerf and slows actually matter to her).

But THIS is just the biggest failure to have ever been published in terms of design.

iTamsSep 1, 20157 votes

As a question, what made you decide to literally shift all of his damage to his Q while not addressing his mobility issues?

You merely solved his "issues" by giving him a insanely strong nuke while changing his kit, nerfing everything else, making his kit revolve around single target damage, rather than the AoE clearing champion he was prior to the rework. This, to me, makes no sense. The main thing keeping Morde behind was his mobility, and it was not addressed by the slightest, instead we glorified his immobility, while changing/killing his whole kit.

Voluug13Sep 1, 20158 votes

That being said, Morde is not likely to return to the "immovable object" capable of permanently keeping a shield large enough to slough off entire trades.

There is a gigantical generalization and downright satanization of Mordekaiser's previous playstyle here. First, you speak of Mordekaiser as this indestructible champion that cancels out trades, completly forgetting that Morde cant keep his shield and be safely unpushed at the same time, and that his shield wont save him from ganks.

Can Morde cancel trades? Yes. And that was his point. He was supposed to be this champion that nullifies plays and doesnt give a flying fruck about mobility when trading. At that cost, he is immobile, CC-less and becomes gank bait of the highest quality when he is any agressive.

And therein lies the why this rework is not working. You are trying to basically delete a champion identity because you dont like it. A champion identity that is simple yet powerful but not without glaring weaknesses. A champion identity made to counter some champion like Zed and Yasuo. And by deleting that champion identity you are also deleting his main strength which is this very useful thing named anti-mobility anti-plays power, strength for what Morde had to pay with having a mediocre kit utility wise and having to be concious of his posicionement.

Was previous Morde's kit a divisive topic? Not so much anymore. It was several seasons ago, but by now Morde was old news and most people knew how to counter him - which isnt the same as defeating him in line - and simply baited him or roamed - or defeated him in lane if their champion was able. The only people who ever complained about Morde are the same that refuse to do anything but try to go for the kill lane at every point of the game, instead of adapting their gamestyle into more defensive lanes, or roaming, which most champions that Morde gives problems to can do extremely well. Overall people who care more about winning lane that winning the game.

PQUNDCAKESep 1, 20155 votes

"Mordekaiser definitely isn't performing in solo lanes to the level we expected."

You had an unending stream of feedback on the PBE forums that his solo lane was trashed, you ignored it because all you like is positive feedback, you never respond to negative feedback even if its constructive. Your job needs to be labelled out for you by your superiors, you're to make new champions, not re-create old ones. You f**ked up, acknowledge it, fix him, and move on.

Mordekaiser's Fate

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