Nontraditional Mids: Heavy Metal

Introduction

Mordekaiser is a powerful melee mage whose core concept revolves around his passive, allowing most of the magic damage he deals to be added back to health pool as a shield. He is one of my favorite champions and I feel that he is often discarded due to his very evident flaws. Although he is an often overlooked champion, he can easily become a powerhouse if used correctly. If Morde snowballs, he becomes one of the hardest champions to deal with, he becomes a monster in damage, and he becomes nearly unkillable.

 

Items

This is a basic build and the most common one that I like to use, although there are other builds you can use this is the most common. 

He is very flexible with items because you can build him tanky, but lacking in damage, or build him much more offensive, but he then becomes much more squishy in turn. Both of these options are good and both have their merits. It once again comes down to how you want to play him, and how the team’s composition affects Mordekaiser.

If you need to kill their AD carry you would want to shift towards a bursty build allowing yourself to decimate their squishy AD carry so you can easily turn the fight in your favor with his clone. Now, if the enemy team is brawler heavy, you would want to be more tanky as you will not outlast them with a bursty build, but you can brawl much easier with a tankier build. This will allow you to fight them without getting popped like you probably would with a bursty build. You could in both situations do either one. For example, if you are going a more bursty build against brawlers you would want to try to flank their backline and try to burst their AD carry.

If you would want to go for a tankier build against a very strong backline you would need to get a Rylais or something that will help you stick on them. Lastly, I put down Guardian Angel into most of the builds, but this can be substituted out for many other options. You could either build a Banshee’s Veil if you are afraid of their magic damage, or if they have small amounts of big CC spells, or if they have a lot of CC spells and you want to try to dodge at least one of them. Banshee’s Veil is useful in virtually any situation in which the enemy team has CC.

 

Mace of Spades (Q)

ACTIVE: Mordekaiser enhances his next attack, converting it to deal magic damage and replacing the base attack damage component with a base amount of damage. He swings his mace with such force that it echoes out, striking up to 3 additional nearby targets.

If the target is alone, the ability deals 65% more damage.

This is honestly his worst spell because of the lack of flexibility it offers compared to the rest of his kit, but that doesn’t make it bad. He doesn’t have any gap closers, so something that augments his auto attack is not very appealing for someone like him. It does give him insane single target burst if you can hit it, but like I’ve said, it’s not very often you will hit it. What you can do is use it to hit anything to gain some shield.

If you’re really trying to throw everything into killing a target, using flash isn’t that much of a stretch. Basically, it’s a fine spell. It helps you farm jungle camps and minions, and rack up your shield in the process.

 

Creeping Death (W)

ACTIVE: Mordekaiser creates a protective cloud of metal shards to surround an ally unit or himself for 6 seconds, increasing the target's armor and magic resistance and dealing magic damage each second to enemies within 250-range.

This is his best non-ultimate spell in my opinion. It is very good for clearing waves and making you very tanky. It gives you a lot of defensive stats, and it helps a lot because it gets you out of laning. It will discourage most brawlers like Yasuo or Zed from brawling with you.

If you want to fight these brawlers, what you have to do is stand in the minion wave as it will aggro your minions onto them and it will allow you to gain shield from their minions making it inevitable for them to lose the fight. It will give you the stats necessary to shove the lane without taking too much damage from champions like Ziggs or Xerath that want to poke you out of lane. It allows you to be really tanky and do enough damage to take Wraiths beginning at level 3 or 4. It’s just a great spell for what Morde wants to do.

People will underestimate the amount of stats you have and it allows you to escape sticky situations you wouldn’t otherwise escape without the amount of power it gives you. Max this first if you’re trying to turn the lane into a farm lane, or if you’re laning against someone who would want to brawl with you, or if you are laning against someone who would like to poke you. In any of those three situations, you would max your Creepin Death. The downside to maxing this spell is that you lose a lot of your ability to kill someone, but once again the pros of just winning the lane outweigh the cons.

 

Siphon of Destruction (E)

ACTIVE: Mordekaiser afflicts all enemies in a cone in front of him, dealing magic damage.

This is the most reliable spell he has for dealing damage. The range of the spell is ok and the AoE is fine. it scales well so you can start to do pretty nice damage once you get enough Ability Power. You want to use this spell to poke the enemy mid that just wants to farm. If you are laning against someone who just wants to farm against you, you want to max this spell as it will allow you to constantly poke them down and keep them injured. You can easily kill people if you poke them down with it. It’s not a lot of burst, but it is certainly off of cooldown often so you can win wars of attrition if you get a revolver. You should use this spell as often as you can because the only downside of it is the health you lose on cast. Once you get a revolver, it’s no longer a problem, and is barely one to begin with without a revolver.

 

Children of the Grave (R)

ACTIVE: Mordekaiser deals magic damage to a target enemy champion and curses it for 10 seconds, dealing additional magic damage over time and healing himself for the damage done.

If the target dies while under the effect of the curse, their soul is enslaved as a controllable ghost and will follow Mordekaiser for 30 seconds. The Ghost cannot use any active skills or items and deals magic damage with its basic attacks.

This spell is vital to Mordekaiser’s late game. It very much allows him to carry games if you become strong enough. This skill is what will separate the good Mordekaisers from the great. Step one on learning how to use this spell is knowing that getting any clone is just fine. The stat boost you get from having a clone is very high making you an unkillable monster. Secondly, it allows you to constantly gain shield even when you are in a Zhonya’s active. Getting a support is fine, although it’s really the least attractive clone available.

Remember that Clones will keep their passives, so if they have a really strong passive you would want to get them. I will usually take a Ziggs clone over most ADC clones just because of his passive and the amount of Ability power you get from an AP Carry clone. Being able to control the ghost is very important too. You need to know that targeting the right things with it is very important. If you can control the clone properly, you can easily become a great Mordekaiser and climb quickly with him. If the ghost is too far away, you will need to send him farther away to break the tether between the ghost and Morde. It has very low movement speed and it will never catch up to you by walking, so the other way for you to get it back is having it break the tether so it will magically appear next to you.

A Quicksilver sash will cleanse your ult debuff, so if you really want the person who has one you must save your ultimate for the last hit. They will not be able to QSS it if you do this. His Ultimate is a very complex spell, but I believe that you can use it correctly if you heed my advice.

(Credit to the artist xNmD http://xnmd.deviantart.com/art/Mordekaiser-281758921)

Laning Phase

First off, you want to address who you are laning against. For example, if you are against Yasuo, max Creeping Death. If you are against Ziggs max Creeping Death, and if you are against Orianna max Siphon of Destruction or Creeping Death depending on how you want to play the lane. If you want to punish her for playing passive, max Siphon of Destruction. If you want to take advantage of her passive play and farm, max Creeping Death. You will be able to out farm her by maxing Creeping Death.

Take Wraiths when you can and try to bully your lane with your E. The most important thing to learn is that you need to ward. Most of the time the only way you will lose the lane is if you get ganked and fall behind.

Warding and vigilance will prevent this from happening. Secondly, regarding ganks, if the jungler or the mid laner is lower than half health, you should be able to kill them in a fight. If you get ganked, what you need to do is throw all your spells on the unit with the lowest health and try to get a clone. If you get a clone then you will be able to turn around the gank and get a double kill with proper execution. Just know what you need to do when you get ganked, because that is really the hardest part about laning with Morde.

 

Post Laning

You will want to try to kill a backline target, either with your team or with a flank where you burst them. It depends on how you built Morde. If you went for a more tanky route you will want to try to barge through their front door with your divers and try to quickly assassinate the squishy targets so you can get a clone. If you built more burst you will need to flank or use your flash to quickly close the distance so you can kill their squishy backline. Once the late game comes, you just need to know your job and if you follow through with what you are supposed to do, you will easily win team fights.

(Credit to El씨 from inven.co.kr)

Closing Statements

Morde is an insanely strong champion that people underestimate and overlook due to his very evident flaws, and while it is very hard if you get camped and the jungler won’t give up, you need to understand that it’s not the end. If you are getting camped you can easily farm by taking wraiths and minions when you can, and you can get out of these bad situations. Getting out of these bad situations yields a potentially great champion. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I will try to answer them to the best of my abilities.