Riot has recently revealed a much anticipated rework for veteran champion Mordekaiser.
Along with sharing his new and updated abilities being made available on the League of Legends website, developer Riot Games has published a behind-the-scenes style YouTube video detailing the process behind the redesign. With over one million views already, the video discusses how the developers go about these champion reworks.
According to game designer Justin Hanson, when it came to the Mordekaiser rework, they assembled a team to discuss how to make him feel more like a modern champion while still keeping him recognizable.
The Riot team called him iconic, and stated that the fun of playing the champion is the “fantasy of being this lord of death.”
Mordekaiser is a cutthroat warlord who uses necromantic sorcery to bind souls into an eternity of servitude. The few remaining souls who recall Mordekaiser’s brutal reign now await in terror for the champion’s return to his ruling over the living and the dead.
“From a visual standpoint and the gameplay, there’s a disconnect,” character artist Hunter Gage said.
For this reason, the rework has been about bringing further forward the gameplay elements older players have enjoyed about Mordekaiser throughout the years.
“From a visual standpoint and gameplay, disconnect. We wanted to approach how to make sure to keep the feelings and the elements old players liked about the champion, bringing them forward,” Gage said.
Mordekaiser has returned to the rift with a new set of abilities that play off of his beloved doombringer character. He is still a champion strong in 1v1 engagements that wails on enemies with a powerful mace, harvesitng their souls for his own needs. But now he has a new ultimate that helps to cement him as a demonic presence that other players should fear.
His ultimate, Realm of Death, banishes a single enemy champion to the “death realm.” With a chunk of their core stats missing, the targeted enemy must face Mordekaiser in a seven-second 1v1 battle. If Mordekaiser kills the enemy, he consumes their soul, which results in him keeping their partial stats until they respawn.
The updated champion will first appear on the PBE, where players can test out his abilities before he goes live.
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