thinking of getting Morde, advice plz

Right now Rumble is actually the nearest analog to bruiser Morde in the game, and is also pretty strong. He just has more AoE and less single target burst.

yea, im just trying to find champs not usually played to kind of increase my pool of choices. I figured morde is kind of an odd one thats not seen all too much so figured there might be some potential there that I havent seen tapped too often. I think what I'll do is just try him out in my PBE account and then add him to my roster in my norm account just to have him and see if his changes will increase his viability.

Depends on your top laner/support/jungler. If you already got 2 tanky champions in team go for full damage build, you'll get tanky anyway if you can sustain your shield.

Rush the 1200 spellvamp gun as first item anyway.

i don't exactly remember how the last kit changes affected his numbers; he used to be better as a glass cannon mid lane. Now, i think he's meant to be more brawly. Early game, you probably want to build , or if you're against a broken AD like Zed substitute for hextech. Since the kit changes, you can probably get away with building a defensive item like Warmogs, Randuins, or Spirit Visage, but if you're significantly ahead you should just build damage.

I've yet to try it out too much, but i imagine that since his shield scales with health now that into + would be pretty strong for him now. The weird thing is, it used to be much better to build resistances rather than health for him (complicated math, but it's true), but since the recent update i don't know :P

Morde isn't weak, he's just not up to date with the current game. He's strong against certain assassins, and people who rely on burst. He's a classic counter to LeBlanc, for example, and i have a lot of success with him against Fizz (it just takes practice to dodge his stuff; start + ). The only people who really beat him in lane are champions that out-sustain him (Chogath, Volibear, Swain), have absurdly strong early all-ins and high mobility (Riven, Zed), or punish his lack of mobility (Azir, Heimerdinger). As has been the case since the beginning, Morde's biggest counter is jungle ganks, so always keep a supply of wards with you.

To answer your question, you probably want to lean more bruiser than glass cannon now. I did try Morde with Luden's Echo during the PBE testing, and it was absurdly strong on him (basically just added 100 damage to each time i used E). If you don't need Zhonya's, Luden's would probably be a completely valid choice.

Its still cost efficient at max stacks...

But I think he meant , which actually is pretty good on him.

I hope he meant