Talk:Mordekaiser/@comment-24951773-20160602225213/@comment-24496127-20160609000255

I disagree with a lot of what's being said here, but to start I'll adress the whole three strength philosophy. To put it simply, you stated that there's a problem with defense being combined, or tied to, offense. I d argue against that, and say that it actually creates the most interesting kind of defense. Any ability that has some sort of defensive reward for good offense is usually much more impactful, balanced, and interesting, than an ability that's just straight up defense. Some examples of rewarding offense with defense can be found in Leona's W, which gives longer time on her resistances, Xin's ultimate, which heavily rewards being in the middle of a team, and basically all of Vlad's kit, which will reward agression with sustain at the cost of him using up his hp.

I also kind of think it's weird to have utility completely seperate from offense and defense, as utility itself is perhaps the strongest form of offense or defense depending on a champion's kit. Blitzcranks Q, for example, is perhaps one of the strongest offensive-utility abilities in the game. Most champions have some utility either way, so I don't know if it should really be something that defines a role, just something that can be said to be either low or high.

I disagree heavily with kiting not mattering until later. No matter what phase of the game, or who your champion is(Disregarding the few Xin-like champions who have 0 range), almost every champion benefits from kiting and spacing. Mid lane mages like Cass and Ahri, and even bruisers with the tiniest of range like Darius, all need to be able to control spacing, and thus kiting is an essential part of their mechanics in quite a few scenarios. It's very rare that you get the most benefit from just right clicking on people and role playing turrets, in almost every engage, one person wants to try and kite the other.

Anyway, Morde's passive is good because it rewards him heavily for doing damage, but punishes him if he just tries to run up and gets kited forever, it gives an optimal scenario defense rather than just straight power, which lets it be strong without being overbearing. The issue is, he's just too squishy, and has bad support for going tanky. If any ability is a problem, it's his ultimate, which is so damn game warping when you get it off, that it doesn't let him be a whole champion himself.

I don't know how to possibly change him, but I'd start by getting rid of the Ap scalings/adding new scalings on top of them, scrapping the ultimate for something else, and adding percentage damage to his kit so that his shield is useful, and can be built up, even if you don't go damage. Maybe turn his E into a cripple of some sort, that slows movespeed by like 30% but prevents movement abilites, because that's a mechanic now, and it's pretty damn cool.