Every Mordekaiser Main, Please Come and Share Your Story with Me

I want to tell you of my story as a Mordekaiser Main.

I first joined in Season 3, around the time when Lucian was released, because I recall the login screen having him on there. I joined for the reason many of us did: a few friends played and they wanted to drag me into this game. I recall first playing as Taric support because my friend, a husband and wife, wanted to play Skarner Jungle and Miss Fortune, and as nobody wanted to support even then I got lumped into the role of Taric. It was funny looking back, I had no idea what I was doing because the tutorial featured Ashe, and I was rushed by friends to do it quickly and join them in a game, rather than let me learn at my own pace. I didn't know how to auto-attack, I barely managed to learn my abilities in the game, and all the items were confusing as shit.

Eventually I moved onto Dr. Mundo, because my friend - the husband of that couple I mentioned - said that Mundo was insane with how he just could take towers shots and not give a damn, and I did top and jungle Mundo, god those were crazy times. I experimented a bit but grew dissatisfied with Dr. Mundo, nothing against him personally, but I wanted a champion who could be tank and do damage. I recall that, that thing I told myself when I tried to figure what I wanted and made a mental checklist of champions who could do that, and I didn't play enough of a varied pool to do it. Eventually, one day when I had a shit-ton of IP saved up, I was looking to buy a champ, and came across one that I had seen in passing, but never took the time to look into.

That champion, my friends, was Mordekaiser, and I thought he looked badass and I didn't know a thing about what he could do. I quickly looked into him, being a nooblet and having no idea what he really could do, but I was surprised that he didn't use mana and used health like Dr. Mundo, a pet peeve of mine was being gated by things like mana and energy. So I thought, I'd pick him up, see how he does, never knowing he was exactly what I was looking for, but for a first-time tryout, he was as badass as his portrait portrayed him as, enough that I decided to spend more time playing him than I would another champ that I would switch out later for. And I was blown away by his concept: I can defend by attacking? I can turn my enemies against themselves? Man, I can push the creep waves to the towers so fcking easily! Of course I always got ganked like a retard because I didn't understand the concept of Mordekaiser being an immobile son of a bitch who would naturally be targeted for pushing the lane.

The fact was, I sort of knew that Mordekaiser could just push the lane and sit back, but back then I was more about having fun that being efficient, so I didn't engage in that toxic playstyle where I sat back and pushed the lane then rinse and repeat. Nope, I just pushed as hard as I could, waited for the guy to go back to base, then hammered at their tower without wards and hoped like hell the jungler wasn't around, I often died because of that but it was fun for me and I imagine fun for my opponents when they caught me out. It was simpler back then, when playing was just for shits and giggled and for me a fed Nasus was the single most OP thing in the fucking world because I didn't understand the concept of magic penetration and just built whatever AP item I could. I got really into playing Mordekaiser, but it didn't become my main then, I did a lot of different roles and champions and I was still enjoying the newness of it all.

Eventually I began to improve, start to learn the ins and outs of the game, and I found Mordekaiser fit my style: defense through offense, no gating of resources, fight till I died, etc. THEN I began to do more than just play the game, I looked into media outside of the champion, and I fell in love with the concept and slowly became a Mordekaiser main. Because there were so many champions who had been embraced by the internet as Mordekaiser. Remember this? I was late to the party, but better late than never. Things I had ignored about Mordekaiser I suddenly began to pay attention to, I began to get into heavy metal because I did more reading on Mordekaiser and only then just learned he was a walking, talking, heavy metal reference, because I never learned to do the taunt/joke things and never heard the 'weapon' joke.' I discovered that Mordekaiser had his own band, and that a good portion of the community had thing for him and Sona being together.

I liked that idea, at the time I was dating a girl and enjoyed any sort of romantic stuff, and the idea of the strong, powerful knight together with the fair, delicate maiden was enchanting to me. More and more, I began to enjoy every moment of playing Mordekaiser, win or lose, and I began to truly 'get' him, you know? Eventually I reached the plateau, the one every Mordekaiser player reaches, the point where your abilities are on point, because for lack of cc and mobility, Mordekaiser was very straightforward: what you saw was what you got, there weren't any 'cool tricks' to leaning him, eventually you 'synched' with him, and it just became a matter of you, the player yourself, improving overall, warding, watching enemy movement, timing, small things that gradually improved you, and with a champion that you had reached pure efficiency with, it was all a matter of improving yourself. Mordekaiser was the Evangelion, and you were the pilot, and eventually you reached the sync ratio of 100%.

Then I came across something, which would cement Morderkaiser as my main more than anything else: Steel Revolution. As a fanfic reader, I enjoyed different interpretations of characters, and coming across this, I could say I enjoyed Mordekaiser in every aspect, as 'you only need to click once, fool' took a whole different level of meta for me. I began to enjoy other champions after reading this story, and getting to know champions that I would have likely never cared for to begin with. Thresh? I would have never really gotten around to him were it not for that story making him out to be a giant insane nutjob who is wackier than my best friend on his most illogical days. Vi? I now enjoy the thrill of smashing people in the face with my oversized fists as the Enforcer. Kha'Zix? Yasuo? Diana? My desire to play those champs could be mainly sourced from reading that story alone.

I decided at some point, Mordekaiser was my main, and he would always be, and that day his Creeping Death got the 'magnet' utility buff, I sung because it meant I could be a better team player and not always feel like a dead weight to my team, even when I did good. I remember a lot of good I did with Mordekaiser, I recall a time when I was much less experienced that I faced a Miss Fortune mid smurf, and she was good, really good, and I thought I was going to feed her massively, but I stuck to my strengths, I was tested beyond all measure in that match, and we won, and I never felt prouder of myself because I managed to keep her in check long enough for my team to get to the mid game and push ahead. Another time against a Diana who was carrying the enemy team, and nobody else on my team could do a damn thing against her, but between being her hard counter and me playing on point, I kept us in the game for far longer than we could, and I learned the greatest feeling in the world: to carry a game and have the team lean upon your shoulders, and turn to you when death itself came for you.

And then, the rework came, and I will be honest, while others were horrified by not being able to go mid or top, I was excited, I have to admit my sin. See, a bit of context: while I mained Morde, I usually went mid Morde, usually not going top because I built brusier-y Morde, not tank Morde, and I felt I wouldn't do the proper role of a tank with Mordekaiser at top. But of course, mid is highly contested in pvp, and I often ended up going support for the sake of the team winning since nobody wanted to support and were often not good at it, so I learned about the bot lane and its matchups. Then, there was a period where a lot of people didn't want to ADC, I didn't recall how or why, but it happened, and I ended up going a lot in the bot lane again with Jinx or Caitlyn or Ashe or sometimes but rarely Lucian (I also secretly enjoy Urgot, and feel he could be viable if he had a minor rework as well.)

So ironically enough, the move of Mordekaiser to bot lane was a very strange action of absolute convenience, giving me my main and favorite champion in my most experienced lane, and it showed as I quickly adapted to having Morde face up against all my familiar foes, but with a new kit that would let me punish them if I got close. I honestly lost myself in how good it felt to simply melt the faces of my enemies, provided I had the right support, so I am not as vehement against CertainlyT for the rework, I think it might have been received more well if they had done more to address Mordekaiser's toxicity while keeping his kit in relatively the same form. If they had done that and not indirectly forced Mordekaiser only to bot lane and perhaps reduced the strange shift of his power budget to his Q and W passive. The dragon ghost? I love it, and would prefer to keep it, even if it gets nerfed to the ground, more for the aesthetic feeling of having my own god-damned dragon to fight by my side than anything else, since champion ghosts can get boring after a while, and I can't always expect to get a Shyvana dragon form ghost, right?

So honestly, I have been fine, happy and content, am I annoyed that I can't take my main to ranked because he gets banned? Yeah, but I would happily have a power budget shift like I have suggested in my thread that I spent weeks trying to imagine, doing my best to find an answer to solving his toxicity through number changes and mechanical changes and everything that I lost sleep and relaxation time over, because I CARED that much about Mordekaiser. That is why, I express disappointment in Riot's decision to shift perhaps League's greatest champion from what is his identity, because him being this strange combination between a heavy metal reference and a death knight is what makes Mordekaiser unique.

You say that he is confused on whether he wants to be a necromancer who controls souls, or a ferromancer who controls metal, but he isn't a necromancer, he isn't a ferromancer.

HE IS MORDEKAISER, THE MASTER OF METAL.

He is a champion who is meta, not in the sense of being the popular and powerful one that everyone plays, but the abstract concept that references itself, Mordekaiser is about being this fleshed out conceptual chimera of metal and death and pain that simply... fits. Drifting between a musician and a warlord, this strange champion who has very little known about him in particular, but still has so much personality despite spouting similar things about delivering death and suffering to his enemies. That is the most unique concept I have seen in quite some time.

You embraced this uniqueness one time, Riot, remember the Pentakill event? Remember the hype surrounding that? Instead of trying to turn Mordekaiser into a simple musician, you made him into something that made music as much a weapon as a pastime, and brought literal carnage with something as simple as a axe guitar that didn't descend to a black comedy horror film.

Please, as a dedicated main of Mordekaiser, consider what you are going to do to your number one champion, because to change his title, to change him from the fusion of metal, death, and pain that he has been for years, is to murder the murder emperor.

And if you do, you will murder a part of us all.

Please, my fellow Kaisers and Mordes, won't you share your story as well?

Let us all hue hue hue together. For Brazil.