Table of Contents

  • About Me
  • Pros & Cons
  • Runes
  • Abilities
  • Summoner Spells
    • Flash:
    • Teleport:
    • Ignite:
    • Ghost:
  • Items
  • Mechanics/Tips:
  • Ultimate Interactions:
  • Early Game:
  • Freezing the wave:
  • Mid Game:
  • Late Game:
  • Match-ups

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Mordekaiser Guide - Death Does Not Tire

Shumair's Mordekaiser Guide

Shumair

January 1st, 1 ⸱ 43 min read





Best Overall Runes

Spells

Skill Priority

Q

E

W

Best Overall Build



About Me

Hello! I'm Shumair and I'm a Mordekaiser main on the EUW server. Over my 2-3 years of maining Mordekaiser, I've learnt many tips and tricks and in this guide I'll be sharing them with you. Some of you may be thinking "Why do I need a guide on such an easy stat stick champion?". Well, I hope to explain to you in this guide that there's more to the Lord of Death than you think. However, whilst being centered around Mordekaiser as a champ, this guide will also explain some macro concepts and basic laning principles to help you get that crucial advantage over your enemy laner no matter what top-lane champion you're playing.

Pros & Cons

Before playing Mordekaiser, it's essential to know whether or not he is the correct pick to lock in any given game. These lists of pros & cons will allow you to quickly and easily identify Mordekaiser's key strengths and weaknesses so that you can make an informed decision on whether or not to pick him in each of your games.

Pros:

  • High damage whilst being tanky.
  • Great at carrying mid-game.
  • Many early-mid game power spikes whilst remaining relevant all game.
  • Ability to single out an enemy champion with ult.
  • Great into tanks and squishies.
  • Easy trading patterns and match ups.
  • Low skill floor (Easy to learn).
  • Fun to play!



Mordekaiser is a very reliable champion to have in your arsenal. He's unlike most AP champs as he's tanky and has no mana costs. His damage is very high for a juggernaut and due to the fact that he builds AP items, his builds can be very versatile. Another great thing about Mordekaiser's item builds is the fact that he hits his first powerspike after just one item. This allows you to play more aggressive in lane, press your lead or secure objectives with ease. Also, his ultimate ability allows you to shutdown snowballing enemies and claim the big bounties, turning the tides of a game in your favor. For a champ with so many favoured matchups, it's really hard to believe just how easy he is to pick up.



Cons:

  • Low turret damage.
  • Long cooldowns early game.
  • Weak into mobile champions due to lack of stickiness.
  • Ultimate ability can be cancelled with QSS.
  • Bad vs ranged comps.
  • Can fall off late game.
  • Struggles against some forms of bruisers.



Despite his raw power and dominance throughout the game, Mordekaiser is one of the easier champs in the game to outplay. His abilities are very linear and he has a low skill ceiling so he lacks counterplay in many matchups. Also, in a long lane like top lane, slow champs like Mordekaiser struggle when ganked unless in the postition to 1v2, which won't be the case for the early game due to his long cooldowns. His ultimate is also able to be countered by things such as Quicksilver Sash or Spell Shields. Furthermore, even if Mordekaiser does manage to ult someone, some adcs can easily kite around with their superior mobility. Finally, contrary to popular belief, his scaling is really not the best unless he's ahead by a wide margin as other champs' dps becomes too high to resist unless you build tanky and sticking onto key targets becomes harder to do.

Runes

  • Rune Page



Whilst the above rune page is, in my opinion, the most optimal set-up all around the board, runes are, like items, very adaptable. This section will not only explain the rune choices above, but also compare them with alternative options.



Conqueror



Conqueror
is the best rune to take on
Mordekaiser
overall. It provides damage amplification and healing, both of which are utilised well by
Mordekaiser
. It is also a rune that excels during longer skirmishes as it can reach its maximum number of stacks, which is ideal as
Mordekaiser
generally prefers taking longer fights/trades. Overall, this rune provides both great trading potential as well as great all-in potential, making it useful in lane and teamfights (unlike
Grasp of the Undying
or
Lethal Tempo
which are each good in one area exclusively).

Triumph



Triumph
is pretty self explanatory. Extra health in the middle of teamfights is insane and 20 extra gold per takedown adds up. Also,
Mordekaiser
is a manaless champ so
Presence of Mind
is useless. Furthermore, with
Overheal
you won't get a chance to stack your shield too much before the fight as your lifesteal comes mainly from champs in the middle of fights.

Legend: Tenacity/Alacrity

Legend: Tenacity
is a bit of a weird one. Many people prefer
Legend: Alacrity
, however, I feel like tenacity is so important and underrated, especially on immobile champs such as
Mordekaiser
. It allows you to front line a bit more by negating crowd control duration and also helps vs annoying ADCs with single target crowd control abilities such as
Ashe
's
Enchanted Crystal Arrow
. One general rule that I like to follow is to not go this rune if the enemy has heavy AP damage such as an AP top and jungle. This is because I would instead build
Mercury's Treads
, which would provide more tenacity if it is the sole source of tenacity due to the way tenacity is calculated (multiplicatively).

Legend: Alacrity
is, as I mentioned, the more popular choice of the two runes due to the attack speed it grants providing so much more dps. This rune can be good situationally due to the increased dps, however, it should only be picked if the enemy has multiple melee champs as well as low amounts of crowd control. This is because attack speed won't do you much good if you can't get in melee range of the enemy.

Last Stand

Last Stand
is important on
Mordekaiser
as he is a champ that will be below 50% health for a large portion of teamfights. This is because he has a lot of survivability at low health, with his
Indestructible
ability as well as being able to use
Zhonya's Hourglass
when at low health. This is specifically useful as
Mordekaiser
's passive continues to do be active even when in stasis. Despite this,
Coup de Grace
can be the better choice of the two in close matchups, where the extra damage can make a huge difference in early trades and allow you to end up snowballing the game.

Demolish

Due to

Mordekaiser
being an AP damage champ with generally low attack speed, he has low turret damage. As a result of this,
Demolish
can be a huge help when pushing side lanes or taking early turret plates to snowball the game. Overall, this rune should be taken into easy matchups where you can get the wave to push so that you can get early tower plates.

Bone Plating



Bone Plating
is an important rune for
Mordekaiser
as it makes laning a lot easier, which is important as it can either make the difference in a matchup by winning a trade or it can just provide the ability to tank extra hits in lane and thus provide extra survivability in lane. Into matchups that are easily won in lane, a scaling rune such as
Overgrowth
or
Conditioning
would serve better.

Abilities

  • Skill Path

Mordekaiser

1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
6
6
6
6
7
7
7
7
8
8
8
8
9
9
9
9
10
10
10
10
11
11
11
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
14
14
14
14
15
15
15
15
16
16
16
16
17
17
17
17
18
18
18
18



Passive: Darkness Rise

This passive procs when you hit enemy champs/epic monsters with 3 consecutive basic attacks/abilities. This passive is where most of your damage comes from as it deals % health damage and applies effects from items such as 

Demonic Embrace
and
Rylai's Crystal Scepter
. Futhermore,
Mordekaiser
gains an extra 3% movement speed when his passive is up, allowing him to have an easier time chasing down and sticking to enemies. On top of this,
Mordekaiser
also deals 40% of his ability power as magic damage on-hit.

Q: Obliterate

This is

Mordekaiser
's most basic, yet most important ability. He slams his mace down dealing magic damage to enemies in the target area. Another thing to note is that isolated enemies take more damage from this ability. This includes minions, so try to avoid hitting minions if you want to deal extra damage with
Obliterate
.

W: Indestructible



Mordekaiser
stores a portion of the damage he takes and deals as a shield. He can cast
Indestructible
to consume that shield and re-cast it to gain 50% of the shield as health. Timing this ability in teamfights is the key to surviving and ultimately winning the fight; you should use it late enough to get a big shield but early enough so that it comes off CD sooner. You can also, if confident, use it to bait enemies into thinking you're low health before casting your shield. The ability to re-cast
Indestructible
to gain health is great for sustaining in lane, especially in tough ranged match-ups when paired with
Revitalize
for the extra shield and health. This ability scales with health so the recommended build is insanely good as it provides high amounts of health without compromising damage.

E: Death's Grasp

The hardest part about

Mordekaiser
's kit is probably both knowing when to use this ability and being able to hit it every time.
Death's Grasp
can make or break a fight; if you miss it, you can be kited out very easily. If you take too long to ensure it hits, it may be too late but if you instantly use it, you may miss. Hitting this ability inside your
Realm of Death
can allow you to demolish a squishy carry and ultimately win your team the fight or even the game. R: Realm of Death



Realm of Death
allows
Mordekaiser
to isolate an enemy champion in the Death Realm for 7 seconds, stealing 10% of their core stats. If he kills them in this realm, he keep those stats until the banished enemy respawns. This ultimate allows you to snowball, carry teamights and everything in between. You can use it on fed enemies to destroy them and claim their sweet bounty or you can use it to stop a jungler from smiting an objective. The posibilities are endless (As long as you don't use it near a turret or it doesn't get cancelled).

Summoner Spells

Flash:



Flash
is, as we all know, the best summoner spell in the game. However, some things you may not know is that
Mordekaiser
, despite being immobile and seemingly needing this summoner to escape fights, should use
Flash
aggressively 80% of the time to help stick onto enemies. You can Flash-Q to hit
Obliterate
unexpectedly or even Flash-E or R. This champ is so much more fun when you throw this kind of mobility into the mix.

Teleport:



Teleport
after the rework is a lot more one-dimensional than before. Since you can't teleport on minions or wards until minute 14, you should mainly just use it to avoid missing cs after dying or to make a quick recall to spend your gold. However, once your teleport is unleashed after 14 minutes, it has a variety of uses. One thing you can do is use it to group with your team for objectives if you are on the other side of the map after clearing a wave or recalling. Another use would be teleporting to a deep ward (a ward deep behind enemy lines) in order to find a flank opportunity behind the enmies, potentially solo winning a fight. However, this can also be dangerous. Whilst there are more tips and tricks to effectively use your teleport spell outside of laning phase, I won't cover them all in this guide.

Ignite:

This is personally my favourite summoner to take on

Mordekaiser
as the kill pressure and snowball potential you gain from
Ignite
is insane. The fact that Mordekaiser is a snowball champ and that his passive goes so well with
Ignite
just solidifies this as my favourite summoner spell. Also, with
Riftmaker
and
Darkness Rise
added into the mix, it allows you to deal, in the famous words of Phreak, TONS OF DAMAGE!

Ghost:

This summoner spell is extremely situational as you're very rarely in a match-up where straight running down your opponent is the best course of action. Most of the time, you would rather freeze the wave or ult when you want to all-in. However, certain ranged match-ups like

Quinn
or
Vayne
are begging you to take
Ghost
as you need it to stick onto them and avoid their kiting, whilst already having enough damage to not need
Ignite
. However, you should only take it if you're confident you can win lane and snowball. Even if you don't, movement speed is always good in teamfights on such a slow champ such as
Mordekaiser
.





  • Item Set 1

Items

Mercury's Treads:

These boots, as you probably know, should be bought against teams with majority AP damage and/or teams with a lot of crowd control. However, I think that sometimes it's not necessary as the tenacity from the passive doesn't add much more when you already have

Legend: Tenacity
due to it stacking multiplicatively as mentioned earlier.

Plated Steelcaps:



Plated Steelcaps
are important not only when playing vs full AD full teams, but also when the enemy has both AD top and jungle. This will make laning significantly easier as ganks and trades will not hurt nearly as much. However, in teamfights I think
Mercury's Treads
would still be more effective due to extra tenacity and MR, which you often have less of. Overall the choice between these two boots will still always vary on a game-per-game basis based on who is fed on the enemy team and team compositions.



Riftmaker:



Riftmaker
is easily my favourite mythic item to build on
Mordekaiser
. All the stats are extremely useful and the item's passive synergises very well with
Darkness Rise
. As well as this, the omnivamp helps you sustain in lane, which is especially useful when paired with
Revitalize
. Overall, this item has all the stats you'd want for
Mordekaiser
and thus makes it easily the best general mythic item.



Frostfire Gauntlet:

Whilst on the topic of synergetic mythic items, this is another item that seems like it was built for

Mordekaiser
. The stats of
Iceborn Gauntlet
are all important for juggernauts and the two passives once again go hand-in-hand with
Mordekaiser
's whole kit. The item is especially good when facing enemies that are hard to stick onto, such as
Quinn
or
Teemo
, as it slows them and makes it difficult for them to get away from your grasp.



Zhonya's Hourglass:

An underrated item on

Mordekaiser
, to say the least. It provides ability haste, armor, AP and debatabley the best active in the game. On top of this, the components of this item are unbelievably good on their own, specifically
Stopwatch
, which allows you to use statis once for just 650 gold! You can also use stasis whilst Darkness Rise is up. This has saved me countless times and it has the potential to change the course of a team-fight entirely.



Rylai's Crystal Scepter:

This item is great for

Mordekaiser
due to its low price, great stats and insane passive. However, I feel as though people build this item on
Mordekaiser
too early into the game. You should, instead, build it third or fourth and only if you've already purchased
Zhonya's Hourglass
. In my opinion,
Rylai's Crystal Scepter
is the least essential item on
Mordekaiser
's base build as the slow may not be needed depending on how much CC your team has so it can be replaced with a tank item like
Thornmail
,
Randuin's Omen
or
Dead Man's Plate
.



Nashor's Tooth:

This is a strange one. If you're looking for raw power, this is the best item you could ever build on

Mordekaiser
. The damage is unmatched due to its synergy with
Mordekaiser
's passive on-hit damage. However, my issue with
Nashor's Tooth
is that is just doesn't provide any tankiness at all and you also need to be able to get in melee range for it to become effective. On an immobile bruiser/juggernaut like
Mordekaiser
, that's going to be a huge problem. Despite that, it's still a great item, but for me personally, it doesn't suit my playstyle so I rarely build it, instead opting to build more tanky.



Dead Man's Plate:

Armor is always welcome in

Mordekaiser
's kit. He utilises it very well as most of his match-ups in the top lane are AD and he likes ulting ADCs. The extra health is also great as
Indestructible
scales with health so you get a bigger shield. Also, the movement speed at maximum stacks is a great way to dive the enemy backline head-on so that you can ult their backline. Another great thing about this item is that its passive, crushing blow, makes your next auto attack counts as two procs for your passive. This means you can proc your passive with just one auto + ability, which is useful against mobile champs that can kite you out easily as you can get your passive movement speed up quickly.



Demonic Embrace:



Demonic Embrace
is essentially just raw health and AP, which is much appreciated when playing
Mordekaiser
. However, don't let that distract you from the amazing passive burn damage it provides, which is another item passive that pairs greatly with
Darkness Rise
. Overall, when building lots of items with health and AP, this item becomes very useful as it adds on more AP the more health you have.



Gargoyle Stoneplate:

As the final item I like to build to complete my build on

Mordekaiser
, this is an important one. Whilst it is very unpopular and almost unheard of on
Mordekaiser
,
Gargoyle Stoneplate
goes well with every other item on this build. Due to the fact that all the AP items built by
Mordekaiser
give significant amounts of health, finishing off the build with a tanky item that scales based on bonus health sounds like a pretty good idea. The item's active shield, when paired with
Indestructible
and
Zhonya's Hourglass
make you insanely tanky and allows you jump right into the enemy team and dish out crazy damage with
Darkness Rise
and your other abilities. To conclude, this item is a must have when teamfighting.



Mechanics/Tips:

•Mechanic #1 - You can cast

Obliterate
then
Flash
to catch your enemy off guard. Your
Obliterate
will land in front of where you flash. Make sure you do it quickly though or it may not work! •Mechanic #2 - You can use
Death's Grasp
backwards by casting it right in front of you. This allows you to drag back enemies that are chasing you. This is useful for escaping ganks. •Mechanic #3 - You can use
Death's Grasp
to pull enemies through thin walls. This can also work if you use it backwards to push them away through a wall. •Mechanic #4 - 
Indestructible
's animation can be cancelled whilst auto attacking if timed right so that you can use it mid-combo (you can't use it whilst using
Obliterate
normally). •Mechanic #5 - By using
Flash
correctly, you can use
Obliterate
in two different directions at the same time, allowing you to hit two separate enemies at once. Test this out in practice tool to get the hang of it.

•Tip #1 - After roughly 1 item, you can E-Q a minion wave to clear the caster minions at the back quickly. You can also just use

Death's Grasp
to displace a minion wave so that it pushes in a certain direction. •Tip #2 - You can use
Zhonya's Hourglass
whilst your passive is up. This allows you to deal damage whilst the enemy can't damage you and you wait for your cooldowns to come back up. Especially useful vs
Jax
. •Tip #3 -
Death's Grasp
actually counts as a brief knock-up so you can use it to give an ally
Yasuo
a knock-up for his ultimate. •Tip #4 - When fighting for objectives, you can use
Realm of Death
on the enemy jungler to deny him from smiting the objective so that your jungler can smite it instead. •Tip #5 - In lane, try to hit the enemy laner with
Obliterate
without hitting the minions as it deals extra damage when hitting a single target.



Ultimate Interactions:

Note: This section won't include champ specific matchups as those will be covered in the final version of the matchups section. More interactions will be added as I find out about them. • Targets with

Spell Shield
s can't be ulted and will put
Realm of Death
on cooldown if you cast it on them. •
Cleanse
cannot remove
Realm of Death
. •
Quicksilver Sash
can cancel
Realm of Death
and put it on cooldown. • Using
Realm of Death
on a clone of any kind will cancel the ult and put it on cooldown. • Wards that are placed inside the
Realm of Death
stay there and don't appear in the overworld and vice versa. • Epic monsters such as Baron Nashor or Drakes won't appear in the
Realm of Death
but towers will. • If a champion manages to move out of the cast range whilst being ulted,
Realm of Death
will be cancelled but won't be put on cooldown. • Most sentries or terrain altering abilities won't travel to the
Realm of Death
.



Early Game:

Early game,

Mordekaiser
is quite unpredictable in nature. If you play the lane right, you can get a kill as early as level 3. If you let your oppenent pressure you, however, you will fall behind. As
Mordekaiser
, you should never let your opponent pressure/zone you away from CS (unless you're against one of the hard matchups found in the matchups section). You should be constantly looking to poke down and space melee opponents using
Obliterate
in most match-ups. However, in certain games where you may be prone to ganks pre-6 (e.g. enemy has a
Lee Sin
,
Elise
etc), you should use
Obliterate
to secure CS and avoid walking up too much to CS. Make sure you don't waste your
Death's Grasp
as it has a very long cooldown early on. You should try to use the pressure from having the ability more than the actual ability itself. Once you get to level 6, you should be looking to trade a lot more as in most match-ups you'll almost NEVER lose at this stage. Sometimes, though, opponents can be too hard to engage at level 6 making the powerspike feel useless. In this case, you can play aggressive and use
Realm of Death
on the enemy jungle if they gank you. Alternatively, you could, however, take advantage of your huge pressure at this point in the lane by using the MOST IMPORTANT wave management strategy you could ever learn:

Freezing the wave:

Here is a nice, even, untouched wave:

An even wave in the middle of top lane.



Now, you might be thinking "Mmmm, tasty CS, I better go and secure it as fast as I can!" NO! Stop! Wait! You can freeze it and secure even more of that delicious CS and deny your opponent CS! Sounds like a big win to me. "Well how do I do this 'freeze' thing?" you may be asking. All it takes are a few simple steps: Step #1 - Getting the wave to push towards you.



A wave pushing towards Blue Side In order to freeze a wave, it must be pushing towards you. This means, the opponent has more minions of their team in the lane at a given time. Due to your minions being outnumbered, they will die quicker and the enemy minions will walk further down the lane towards you. There are a few ways to get a wave to push. The first way is by only last hitting minions whilst your opponent hard pushes the wave. This trick will always work in low elo as low elo players almost always hard push all the time. Another way that you can get the wave to push to you is by shoving your wave under the opponent's tower, it'll then push towards you. With this method, you need to make sure your opponent doesn't catch the wave you shoved before it reaches the tower, otherwise they may freeze. The key rule to remember is: as long as your opponent's wave is on their side of the map, it will eventually push towards you. Now that you know how to get the wave to push to you, you can now start freezing it.



A wave being frozen by the Blue Side.



This next step is the most important- the actual freezing of the wave. In order to freeze a wave, your opponent's wave needs to have at least 3 more minions than yours. You should wait until your minions are all dead, making sure to only last hit the enemy minions the whole time. After your wave is dead, draw minion aggro and take the few remaining enemy minions just outside of your tower range. After that keep their aggro on to you until your minion wave arrives. Once the enemy wave arrives, there should be, in total, a few more enemy minions than yours. Make sure to only last hit and just like that... the wave is now frozen! Just make sure the enemy cannot crash their wave into your tower or the freeze will be broken.

Below is an image of where the wave should be once frozen. Bear in mind that in this image, your minion waves are equally sized but in reality your minion wave should be slightly smaller at all times.



A wave frozen near the Blue Side turret.



Now you know how to freeze the wave. So what? Well, a frozen wave offers many, many advantages in lane. These advantages include:

•You don't have to overextend to farm. Making you a lot less vunerable to ganks from the enemy jungler.

•You can't be zoned off farm and xp from the enemy laner.

•The enemy laner will have to overextend to farm, so that they're more vunerable to ganks.

•The enemy laner can't trade with you effectively.

•The enemies will have to dive you to kill you, giving you a huge advantage in all-ins (unless you're vs

Tryndamere
. He'll ignore the turret, run you down and live with full HP). Freezing isn't, however, all sunshine and rainbows. You can't just freeze all game and never move. Sometimes, in lower elo, your team will take fights in the river for no reason. As much as I'd love to say just keep farming, it won't work. In low elo, you should see if you can roam and catch these fights in order to snowball and get your team ahead. This, obviously, will break your freeze though so be careful. You may also need to break your freeze when there's a major objective that you need to
Teleport
or walk to.

Recall Timing:

Recalling is a significant part of the top lane, seeing as it impacts the laning phase so much, which is the bread & butter of the top lane. Recalling may be easy, however, doing it effectively isn't. A good recall early on in the game can win you the entire laning phase. So, after hearing that, who wouldn't want to learn how to time their recalls? As I mentioned before, recalls aren't as simple as they seem at face-value. There's a lot more to it than just pressing the B button. If you were to recall, for example, after solo killing a

Teemo
, you should check for a few things first to convert your lead: • Is my jungler top side to help me take a Rift Herald? • Is my health high enough to solo a Rift Herald? • Is the enemy jungler top side? • Is the enemy jungler going to kill me if I stay to try to shove the wave? • Is my wave clear fast enough to shove out a wave (that may or may not have a cannon minion in it)? • Do I have enough gold to make recalling worth it? • Is my wave big enough to push the tower for some plates and will I die if I stay too long? Naturally, some players will want to recall straight after getting a solo kill if they're low on health. If you ask yourself questions like these first, I guarantee you that you'll have more overall impact on the game. Recalls can also be done more passively, in which you simply slow push or hard shove a wave under tower. In some cases you may get a cheater recall off after the third wave, allowing you to get a huge advantage over your laner. Also bear in mind that you should avoid recalling when your jungler is dead or the enemy jungler is top.



Warding:

Warding is a neccessity for every role in the game. As a top laner, your job is to ward your top side and work in tandem with your mid laner and jungler to keep the top river, your jungle and the enemy jungle warded at all times. That's a lot of wards. The reason you should be warding in the early game is mostly to see if the enemy jungler is preparing for a gank or sometimes even to see their pathing. Control wards should be used near your lane or anywheere that's in your territory so that you can defend them and so that the enemy can't ward your area. Regualar wards should be used in areas where enemies will often walk by or in bushes where they may hide. They're just useful in general for keeping an eye on the opposition.

Whilst I could talk about warding in the late game, it's something you adapt game-by-game rather than a set in stone method. I'll just say this- Keep objectives warded and keep your own jungle warded.

Here are some common ward spots for the Early/Mid game:





Mid Game:

In the Mid game, your primary objectives are either roaming or splitpushing to secure a lead. Depending on the matchup and how you're faring in lane, you should play accordingly. Assuming you're even, against a strong roaming champ like

Camille
,
Pantheon
etc, you should focus on clearing the wave and pushing the turret. If you see them roam at a bad time recall with a bad wave state, you should punish them even more by going for tower plates or potentially help your jungler with the rift herald. If you know that their jungler is bot too, you can look for an opportunity to steal their topside camps. Due to 
Mordekaiser
being so slow and having such bad roaming in comparison, you're almost always better off securing a lead top side rather than matching roams. When playing vs other slow moving bruisers/tanks or champions that are good in lane, such as
Illaoi
,
Darius
etc, you should use
Realm of Death
and the pressure from having it to roam and make plays around mid/sometimes drakes. They'll often stay in lane and splitpush in the mid-late game. To counter this you could force objectives and give up a tower or trade a tower top for a tower mid. However, if the enemy splitpusher has bad vision of your jungle, you and your jungler can walk through jungle, catch them off guard and eliminate them. If no enemies are present in your lane and you need to walk to an important objective or reset for one, you should set the wave to slow push so that an enemy must go top to clear the wave and you'll have a 5v4 or the they'll lose a turret. This also applies for late game.



Late Game:

This, in my opinion, is the hardest part of the game for Mordekaiser although it's also the most rewarding if you get it right.

Realm of Death
is one of the biggest game changers at this point in the game. I would even go so far as to say sometimes, it may be the win condition. Without further ado, welcome to o̶b̶l̶i̶v̶i̶o̶n̶ the late game. In the late game as
Mordekaiser
, your positioning is crucial. Due to the immense impact of
Realm of Death
, you need to be there for your team. Other than that, you should focus on CSing a lot as many
Mordekaiser
players (myself included) don't CS enough due to his snowballing nature. Based on your team and how fed you are, you should either sidelane to soak up pressure before objectives or stay perma-mid and rotate to every objective first; I'd recommend the former if you took 
Teleport
. One thing you should be careful of is facechecking. Everyone makes this mistake and on such a slow, CC-vunerable champ you can't afford to be walking around with your eyes closed. To avoid this, make sure to ALWAYS ward and when walking through fog-of-war, stick with your team to avoid your carries getting picked off. This brings me onto the next section:

Team Fighting:

When you hear

Mordekaiser
and teamfight in the same sentence, you immediately think of ulting carries. There is, however, a lot more to teamfighting than just pressing R. You need to be as useful as possible before using
Realm of Death
; this could mean hitting a massive E-Q on multiple enemies for just zoning enemies away. Either way, there are a few main ways to execute teamfights. One style that I like to play (which will only work vs short-range) is I dive into them head first and hit a single
Death's Grasp
followed by
Obliterate
to fully proc my passive. After that, they have to engage back or
Darkness Rise
will shred them, so I ult straight after dealing my initial burst of damage and before they can counter engage me. I normally ult the tank/engage (e.g.
Leona
,
Nautilus
,
Ornn
) so that they can't counter-engage my team and also there's no one to soak up damage as well as the fact that they can't kite well and if you kill them, you get a bunch of tank stats. You might be ready to ask "Why don't you ult the carry so they can't deal much damage to your team?" The problem with that is that sometimes the carry does so much damage and has so much mobility that late game, they can contest you in the Death Realm. Also, their stats aren't as useful if you kill them. However, if there are any fed carries, you should ult them for sure, purely because they're fed.

Then there's also the boring

Mordekaiser
the one that peels for his ADCs like a good boy. With this playstyle you should get your passive up as fast as possible and save your ultimate. The moment anyone becomes a threat for them, you ult. This playstyle doesn't require too tanky of a build as you don't frontline much. You should also only play like this if your ADC is fed and lacks support/peel. In conclusion, you should really just adapt to the situation and, most importantly, play according to your item build. If you've gone full tank, don't sit in the back line and peel for one player. If you've built full damage, don't run head-first into the enemy team.



Objectives:

Objective control is vital at all stages of the game but even more so in the late game. One objective can change the game. That being said, it's important to secure every objective you can to have the best chances of winning. There are two major late game objectives- Dragons/Drakes and Baron Nashor. Taking them effectively requires team coordination and some macro management. It's also important to know what to do when you take the objectives in order to maximize their usefulness.



Dragons:

Killing the Dragons is something that you must normally do as a team. There are a few prime times to try to take a Dragon. For example, if your team has 5 players at the dragon pit and the enemy team has someone top lane with no

Teleport
this would be a great time to take the Dragon as the enemy team are outnumbered if they try to fight you for it. If the enemy jungler's
Smite
is on cooldown, your jungler can try to
Smite
the dragon to steal it. Also, in the late game, if at any point you have more players alive and well than the other team then you should all take the Dragon together. Vision is also very important when taking objectives such as Dragons so make sure you have the area warded before the dragon spawns and have the enemy team's vision cleared out. A good way to get vision of the Dragon pit is by killing the Rift Scuttler.



Six different types of dragons exist in the game: Ocean Dragon, Mountain Dragon, Cloud Dragon, Infernal Dragon and Hextech Dragon. The first five are known as Elemental Dragons. The third elemental drake taken in a game will determine which Dragon Soul will be in that game and will change the terrain based on the element of the dragon.



The best Dragon Soul for

Mordekaiser
is the Ocean soul as it greatly benefits his healing/lifesteal, which synergises very well with the healing from 
Conqueror
and
Riftmaker
. The Mountain Soul is the next best soul for
Mordekaiser
as he's a bruiser/juggernaut so any defensive stats are always welcome. Cloud Soul is relatively good as it enables you to catch up to the fast carries you'll be sending to the
Realm of Death
. the same goes for the Hextech Soul, except it slows enemies and allows you to stick onto them that way. Infernal Soul is probably the least beneficial as
Mordekaiser
doesn't really stack AP but the soul is still pretty decent on him. Then there's the Elder Dragon. This dragon is the next dragon to spawn after a team aquires the soul for that game. It temporarily grants the team that slays it the Aspect of the Dragon buff, which makes attacks apply a true damage burn and executes enemies below 20% health. As with the baron buff, this buff is lost when the holder is slain or when the timer runs out.



Baron Nashor:

Baron Nashor is debatably the most important objective in the game. Taking it once can change the course of the entire game. However, it's also the hardest objective to take down due to its high health and various debuffs it inflicts on its attacker. When a team slays Baron Nashor, they're granted the Hand of the Baron buff, which empowers nearby minions and grants extra AD/AP. Only those alive when the objective is slain are granted the buff and when slain, the holder loses the buff. Securing Baron Nashor is a task like no other. Most champions cannot solo kill it due to the Baron's gaze debuff, which makes the champion that Baron is attacking deal 50% less damage. Due to its difficulty to kill with few people and its importance in the game, a team would normally only take this objective if they outnumber their opponents or if they kill it quickly, catching their opponent unaware. Some other conditions for killing Baron Nashor might include:

• The enemy jungler has no

Smite
to secure the objective. • The enemy jungler is dead. • Someone in the enemy team is on the other side of the map with no
Teleport
. • If you have a lot of vision over the Baron Pit and the enemy team has none. When securing this objective, along with others, as mentioned in the last point, you should always make sure to clear enemy vision and get lots of vision yourself. This should be done preemptively, minutes before even taking the objective. In some cases, a team who has great vision control of the Baron pit might start Baron Nashor despite enemy vision being present so that enemies split pushing on the lower half of the map must
Teleport
to the pit to contest the objective. The team who is on the objective will then leave it and let it reset, thus having wasted enemy time and
Teleport
as well as stopping their split push in the bottom lane. When this buff is obtained, the team who wields it should, based on their team comp, normally try to push two or three different lanes at once in order to empower as many minion waves as possible and thus maximise the buff's potential.



Match-ups

(Every match-up I've played a lot is listed, inlcuding mid-lane)(Few matchup sections incomplete, WIP)

  • Worst Matchups
  • Bad Matchups
  • Even Matchups
  • Good Matchups
  • Best Matchups



If you've made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read my guide (or skipping through it). All in all though, I hope you can now see

Mordekaiser
from a different angle. He may be a very straightforward champion but there are still many dimensions to him and he's a great addition to any top laners champ pool. Despite falling off in the recent meta, I still see him always being a dominant pick if not just a good counter pick.



MordekaiserTopLeague-Of-Legends
AUTHOR
Shumair
ABOUT

Hello I am Shumair and I am a Mordekaiser main on the EUW server. I have mained Morde since season 9 and have accumulated vast knowledge about the champ since.

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