Morderant

Alright Riot, something’s gotta give with my main man Mordekaiser. I honestly don’t see how you expect this guy to compete in the current state he’s in. “But Allegretto! He destroyed lanes!”, yeah and that was basically all he did, and not even that if you’re under the assumption that he’s fighting any ranged champion ever. But I digress, let’s look at his kit.

Passive: Iron Man

Alright, so he gains 30% of the damage he deals as a temporary shield, decaying at 3% per second, with a max strength of 90 + (30 x Level), for a max of 630. Only half as effective generating vs minions. Ugh. I used to really like this ability, but the half vs minions thing, combined with the fact that he is one of the few remaining health casters is a killer. It’s extra effective health, which scales with Armor and MR, which is nice, but early on it really only mitigates the cost of your abilities in the first place.

Mace of Spades

Auto-Attack reset on-hit ability. Decent 600 range AoE of 4 targets, and bonus damage vs a single. This is an ability I actually find kind of ok. Scales off both AD and AP, though there’s little incentive beyond a gunblade, but we’ll get into that later.

Creeping Death

6 Second AoE/Buff of 30 Armor/MR, with a kind of sunfire effect. Good, because his passive scales better with Armor and MR. A 1.2 AP Ratio, but only if the target stays within range the whole time. Probably has the best shield generation/cost effectiveness of his abilities; With full Magic Pen on a group of minions at max level, you’re getting back about 72 Shield per minion with a 50 health cost. Ok I guess. Useful in that it’s actually castable on your buddies.

Siphon of Destruction

His old bread and butter which kind of sucks now. With a range of 700 it’s useful for harassing without getting in too close, but the shield return for the damage dealt is lackluster; At level one it’s 9.75 per minion for 24 health, and at level 5 it’s 33.75 per minion at 72 health. Castable twice as often as the shield.

Ultimate: Children of the Grave

Now this, this is good. At max rank you’re doing a burst of 17% (reduced by MR) of the target’s health, which heals yourself, followed by another 17% over 10 seconds (further reduced by MR), and if you kill them, you gain a pet and 20% AP/AD steroid. Yeah, that’s pretty nice.

So, over 4 abilities, and 10 seconds, we’ve got 1365 (Creeping, Two Maces, and a Siphon) +34% of the target’s max health in damage, plus a total 2.16 AP, 3.2 Bonus AD Ratio. That very well might kill someone! Now, the problem you’ll notice here is that of all these abilities, they still really only do one thing. Damage. Damage is nice! Damage kills people, and everyone knows that death is the ultimate form of CC. But getting there is the problem, especially in a game where Morde as a Fighter (as termed by Riot), is expected to compete with other champions of the same paradigm. In fact, let’s go ahead and compare him to the last 10 champions released under that same monicker. Gonna start with the older and work my way forward:

Trundle: T-dog is an interesting fellow, notably the only champion to have no changes aside from bugfixes since his release. His kit includes some passive healing based on enemy deaths, TotalAD scaling Auto-Attack Reset/Enhancer that grants more AD, AoE Movement and Attack Speed Steroid, an AoE Slow/Pathing Block/Interrupt (if you place it properly), aaaand an ult that steals health and Armor/MR from the target. Being much more dependent on Autoattacks, Trundle Clocks in with 720 Damage (Two Bites, Ult), with a 2.2 Total AD, 1.2 AP Ratio just from abilities over 10 seconds.

Renekton: The gator will kill you. He’s got an AoE Bonus AD scaling attack that heals him, a Multi-Hit Auto-Attack Reset/Enhancer that stuns and scales off total AD, a short range dash that deals Bonus AD scaling damage, attacks again if you hit a second time, and lowers armor by a percentage, and finally an HP/Rage steroid that also deals AoE damage. Renekton’s damage is a little harder to calculate during Fury, so I’ll assume he uses up his initial 100 on his two most damaging abilities; 1735 Damage (One of each, Slice and Dice and Cull first), with 3.45 Bonus AD, 1.5 Total AD, .9 AP ratios over 10 seconds.

Jarvan IV: Good lord. An Auto-Attack-enhancing passive that deals percentile current health, a 770 range Bonus-AD-scaling attack that lowers armor and has the potential to cause knockup, a champion-based shield that slows in an AoE, a passive attack speed and armor ability that can be deployed for damage and buff teammates, and finally a massive bonus AD scaling nuke that potentially entraps them. Potentially. In any case, Jarvan clocks in at 940 Damage (Standard, Dragon Strike, Ult) with a 2.6 Bonus AD, .8 AP Ratio, and 8% of your current health if he whacks you once.

Rumble: It’s like Morde but not terrible! An AoE cone ability that does 86% the damage of what Morde’s does in half a second (and keeps going), a flat damage shield that boosts movement speed, a skillshot nuke that also stacks a slow if hits twice, and an AoE skillshot slow, nuke, and DoT. And a useful, damage increasing passive. Assuming he’s in the danger zone (very likely) when he starts to fight you, Rumble deals 2825 Damage (Flamespitter hits 6 times over 3 seconds, Harpoon twice, and everything barring his ult is at +30% damage) with a 5.2 AP Ratio, more if they get multiplied on the basic abilities by Danger Zone. Guh.

Yorick: It’s like Morde’s best buddy! Auto-Attack Reset/Enhancer scaling off Total AD that grants movespeed. Ranged AoE damaging slow, Ranged single target Bonus AD scaling ability that heals, and a self/team steroid. Yorick is a little harder to pin because of his ghouls AI, but let’s assume they all hit you once. Over 10 seconds, Yorick manages 755 Damage (two Wars, one of the rest), with 2.15 (35% per Ghoul 75% for the ult) Total AD, 1.0 bonus AD, 1.0 AP ratios. The lowest we’ve seen base, but it adds up per hit.

Alright, at this point I’ve done the 5 closer to his release, but there’s still those like Wukong, Skarner, Riven, Shyvana, and Fizz, who will simply illustrate the same point. Morde’s severely lacking compared to similar champion roles for a number of reasons. Which I will now illustrate!

1) Health Retention: Basically every champion that casts with health, which at this point are simply Mundo, Morde, Vlad, and Olaf (on a single ability), have some form of retaining health. Mundo has his passive, in addition to his ultimate. Vlad has his Q, which has no cost and heals, his W which heals based off damage, and his E which increases his regeneration. Olaf has an active that grants lifesteal and spellvamp. Even Tryndamere had bloodlust stacks when he was still a health caster, allowing him to maintain himself. Morde, in theory has his shield (which decays too quickly, and requires him to spend health to maintain it) and his ult (which works fairly well, but yeah, an ult). If you intend to continue to have him cast from his health, he needs a better healing ability, or maybe a better shield, considering you pass those out all willy nilly now.

2) Lack of Mobility: Seriously. Pretty much every listed champion above other than Morde has some sort of gap closer ability. Trundle, Shyvana, Skarner and Rumble have movespeed enhancers or CC reduction, the rest have a dash or leap of some sort to help them close distance with their targets. It’s kind of a necessity for melee champions. When everyone and their mother have some kind of built-in flash or ghost, 315 movespeed ain’t squat, especially when he can be kited to death. Which brings us to…

3) Lack of CC: One of the biggest offenders here. Not even so much as a slow. The only thing he brings to a team is damage, but why when others bring the damage and then other utility? Fizz, Rumble, Yorick and Trundle bring AoE Slows, Jarvan, Fizz and Wukong knockups, Riven and Shyvana have knockbacks, with Riven also packing an AoE stun. He has no method of getting to his target, nor any method of sticking to them or keeping them there. That's unreasonable.

4) Itemization: Hybrid itemization is wacky as all crap, I know. He has an amazingly good single target bonus AD ratio, but the only thing worth building for it is the Gunblade really (which recently got nerfed to 40 AD), and then a bunch of mediocre AP ratios. It's possible to build him straight AP + Defensive items, but it's still somewhat... lacking. Arguably, this is the least of my worries compared to the other concerns.

So yeah. Can we expect any changes at all? I kinda miss one of my favorite champions being viable.