League of Legends officially parted the curtain on the reworked version of Mordekaiser. This is the result of months of work by the development team to rework the champion, but continue to make him still recognizable.
According to the development team, one of the problems with the old version of Mordekaiser was the disconnect in the splash and playstyle. Players often asked if he was a mage, and if so, what was the use of having a mace?
Thus all Mordekaiser's skills have been reworked. When he hits an opponent three times, he gains the passive Darkness Rise for five seconds. Once this is triggered, he deals damage to nearby enemies while gaining a certain amount of bonus speed.
His first skill is Obliterate, wherein he slams his mace in a target direction and deals magic damage to all enemies hit. The damage dealt is increased if there is only one enemy.
The second skill, Indestructible, has two components. The passive part allows Mordekaiser to convert some of the damage dealt and some of the damage received as a Potential Shield. During the first cast, the active component of Indestructible consumes all of the Potential Shield in order to prevent damage equal to the amount of the shield for four seconds. On the second cast, if any of the shield is left, he consumes it and gets healed by a certain percentage.
The third skill is known as Death's Grasp. The passive effect gives Mordekaiser magic penetration. Once activated, he is able to pull enemies in the target area over a fixed distance and at the same time deal magic damage.
The Ultimate Skill, meanwhile, has an interesting story to it. In the original version, Mordekaiser would put a debuff on a target and once the target died, it became a ghost, resulting in Mordekaiser being a two-man army. There were two problems with that. First, it didn't fit the ability of someone that carried a mace. Second, the goal for Mordekaiser was to dominate heroes.
So to find a good skill that would fit the champion, the development team went back to the lore. According to his background, Mordekaiser wanted to seize the souls of the living in order to build an afterlife that was denied from him. This meant that the champion was making his own Death Realm.
So that's was the dev team did. The Realm of Death skill allows Mordekaiser to bring another hero to the Death Realm for seven seconds. They cannot see the other champions, nor can the other champions see them. All that's left is for Mordekaiser and the other champion to fight one-on-one.
The dev team also took into consideration the opponent's side. They didn't want other players to feel that once they get caught in the skill, they can do nothing and just die. Thus they made it so that the other champion can still do something and not give up easily.
Ultimately, the dev team took the players interest in mind and hope that this new version of Mordekaiser can deliver what is expected of him. The new Mordekaiser releases with patch 9.12.
