User blog comment:Dragonzzilla/Mordekaiser Rework/@comment-7186381-20140104174450/@comment-7186381-20140104183446

That was fast...

Mordekaiser carried me to silver 1; I reached gold from there by playing nothing but tanks top lane. I tried Mordekaiser top, and though I realized I could outtrade, outharass, and outfarm the vast majority of tanks due to Iron Man, I became accutely aware of Mordekaiser's weaknesses (as of his live iteration):

- Because all of his skills save Children of the Graves are inherently AoE, you CANNOT avoid pushing the lane. You can attempt to Siphon only the enemy champion, but you won't build much shield and you're hurting yourself too much for that to be a worthy trade-off, even with a Revolver purchased.

- Because of the above, you are going to get ganked. Mordekaiser becomes unviable when faced with gank-heavy junglers........ Like Rammus, Amumu, Lee, and Elise. As in, the vast majority of half-decent solo queue junglers. Hell, Shyv and Mundo jungles are more than enough to kill Morde because of zero mobility in his kit, and that's saying something when you remember that all they have are slows. Only slows.

- The changes to Spectral Wraith means that Morde can no longer start with a Rejuv Bead with pots and a ward or two. So beginning laning phase is pretty horrible, since all you have are pots, and with an Amp Tome you have no space for a ward and only one pot, and with boots one pot and one ward is in no way a safe start. Even with Trinkets, a smart jungler knowing all gank paths of a lane- or even if he or she is walking through a ward, because Morde is always pushed pretty much as a rule unless he decides to farm/steal wraiths (the second option is desirable but obviously a ton more dangerous) and Flash might not save him.

What I see in this rework is that you haven't really solved any of these problems. You gave him more damage in his W, but you also made it extremely toxic by making it unavoidable and having way too much damage for a point-click with 750 range. You made the pushing problem worse by making Morde push a wave just by standing next to it. You gave Siphon inherent sustain, but the tradeoffs for using it and what I now see as the ability to simply sidestep the cone- you push harder with this version of Siphon and actually have a worse time last-hitting because of its DoT nature- makes it worse.

Again, I appreciate your prompt response time.