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Bluestone Brooch
Shield of the Phoenix
Gladiator's Shield
Phoenix Feather
Glorious Pridwen
Magi's Cloak
Mantle of Discord
Tap each threat level to view Mordred’s threats
Tap each synergy level to view Mordred’s synergies
Mordred is a character designed around the concept of being a half warrior half assasin that deals physical damage and scales of both Strenght and Inteligence, and whose kit is designed to work best in the sololane, but it can also find some viability in the jungle.
As a sololaner, Mordred is a character that is all about high pressure, both in laning phase and in teamfight, having a very strong pressence as an iniciator and backline disruptor, excelling at chasing targets while dealing a very significant ammount of damage. Mordred will generally benefit the most from building tanky but with some elements that increase his ability damage, which is his main damage source in most situations.
Mordred is currently a very strong sololaner, especially when it comes to playing ranked, he a jack of all trades who doesn't have any particular game circumstances where he will suffer too much, also, even tho he is a relatively complex character, he does not require a particularly high skill floor to be played and get some work done, nontheless, he has a particularly high skill ceiling, which means there are plenty of small mechanics and interactions on his kit that will make a great diference between a begginer and a very experienced Mordred player, makes learning him very rewarding and fun.
Given this little introduction, let's head to Mordred's abilities.
MORDRED BASIC ATTACKS
Mordred's basic attacks have a unique mechanic that makes them different from every other god's autoattacks. He has a chain of 4 bassic attacks, and as he uses 2 swords, Mourning and Clarence, he hits 2 basics with each one of them on his chain in the following order:
Mourning-Clarence-Clarence-Mourning and the chain restarts
Mourning attacks deal x1 basic attack, scaling with 100% STR + 20% INT
Clarence attacks deal x0,75 basic attack damage, scaling with 60% STR + 100% INT
Additionally, your basic attack chain will interact with your first ability which we will describe later, giving it additional effects depending of which sword would be used next on your basic attack chain.
PASSIVE: WRATH OF THE FORSAKEN
This passive has two essential features, one of which is heavily affected by using Mordred's aspect.
First feature of Mordred's passive is the Wrath Meter
Your wrath meter determines how much wrath Mordred has stored at that exact moment, this wrath value can go from 0 to 100. You gain wrath when hitting enemies, following the next rules:
-Hitting an enemy god with a basic attack generates 1 wrath, hitting an enemy god with an ability generates 2 wrath
-Hitting a minion, jungle monster, objective or structure with a basic attack or ability generates 1 wrath
-Wrath can only be gained once per ability per enemy hit.
-You generate 1 wrath every 4 seconds passively
When you generate certain ammount of wrath, you can waste it in order to access to both Mordred's ultimate abilities:
-Heart Slash (Costs 40 Wrath)
-Pursue the weak (Costs 80 Wrath)
Note: If you are over 80 Wrath, you can't use Heart Slash, if you press your ultimate you will always cast pursue the weak.
Second feature of Mordred's passive is Shoulder Charge.
After using a basic attack or an ability, you can use the interact key to Dash forward, this dash will deal physical damage and knock up the first enemy hit. If you are using Mordred's aspect, your dash no longer knocks up enemies and instead passes through them, and it deals reduced damage, but every time you hit an enemy god with an ability, Shoulder Charge´s cooldown will reset.
IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT SHOULDER CHARGE:
-This ability deals physical damage equal to 30 + 8 per character level.
-This ability has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds, which can be reduced by
CDR.
-This ability can proc item effects like bluestone, gladiator shield, phoenix shield etc.
-ALWAYS USE THE ASPECT ON MORDRED. IT IS WHAT MAKES THIS CHARACTER VIABLE
Ability 1: Cruel Strikes
Strike twice with your swords. First Slash, dealing Physical Damage to enemies in front of you in a little cone. Then Slam, dealing Physical Damage to enemies in a line and either dealing Bonus Damage or Healing, based on your Basic Attack Chain. If your next basic attack would be with Mourning, the slam deals bonus damage, if your next basic attack would be with Clarence, you heal yourself for each enemy hit.
Range: 4 metres
Cone damage: 75/100/125/150/175 +
45% STR
Slam damage: 85/120/155/190/225 + 65% STR
Slam bonus damage: 40% of your protections
Slam self heal: 45% of your protections
Slam self heal when hitting minions: 10/15/20/25/30
Mana cost: 45/50/55/60/65
Ability 2: Bloodrage
Deal Physical Damage to enemies around you, then gain a buff which grants increased Attack Speed and Movement Speed. While buffed, basic attack hits on enemies applies a debuff that reduces their Physical and Magical Protections and increases your own.
Range: 3.2 metres
Damage: 50/90/130/170/210 +
50% STR + 40% INT
Movement speed: 12/14/16/18/20%
Protections steal: 4/5/6/7/8 per stack (4 stacks max, each basic attack applies 1 stack)
Buff duration: 4/4.5/5/5.5/6 seconds
Debuff duration: 4/4.5/5/5.5/6 seconds
Mana cost: 50/55/60/65/70
Notes: The protection steal duration refreshes with each basic attack, which means that it is possible to apply the debuff for a total of 12 seconds at max level.
Ability 3: Severing Slice
Fire a projectile that deals Physical Damage and Slows enemies. Direct hits with the center of the projectile cause targets to Bleed, taking Bonus Damage as they move.
Range: 9.6 metres
Damage: 55/85/115/145/175 +
50% INT
Bleed damage: 20/25/30/35/40 + 10% STR for every 1.25 metres they move
Slow: 30%
Debuff duration: 2.5 seconds
Note: Minions and jungle monsters take damage over time that does not depend on movement
Minion bleed damage: 15/20/25/30/35 + 5% STR
Ultimate Ability 1: Heart Slash
If you have between 40 and 79 wrath and you press 4 you will use Heart Slash
Deal Physical Damage to enemies in an area in front of you. If you hit an enemy god, they are Rooted. You then Channel to siphon their lifeforce, gaining a Health Shield and Healing over time for the duration, while dealing Physical Damage repeatedly to that enemy. If Mordred takes any hard CC during the channel, the channel will end.
Range: 6 metres
Damage: 80/130/180/230/280 +
70% STR
Tick damage: 30/40/50/60/70 + 25% STR per tick (4 ticks in total)
Heal: 20/30/40/50/60 + 20% INT per tick
Shield Health: 160/200/240/280/320
Root duration: 1.5 seconds
Mana cost: 40
Note: You can freely move during the channel
Ultimate ability 2: Pursue the Weak
If you press 4 while you have between 80 and 100 Wrath you will use Pursue the Weak.
Become CC Immune and charge forward, traveling through walls, stopping on the first enemy god hit. Nearby enemies take Physical Damage and are Stunned. After a short delay, you launch yourself and Stunned enemies into the sky, repeatedly dealing Physical Damage.
Radius: 3.2 metres
Initial hit damage: 150/200/250/300/350 +
75% STR + 75% INT
Tick damage: 70/90/110/130/150 + 15% STR + 15% INT per tick (4 ticks in total)
Stun duration: 0.5 seconds
Mana cost: 80
Notes:
-The charge lasts up to 4 seconds, if the charge ends while you are inside a wall the charge will keep going until you leave the wall.
-While you are charging, you get vision of all enemies around you, unless they are on stealth or inside a bush.
-The charge also deals damage to minions and jungle monsters
-If you charge into a CC immune character, you will deal the initial damage but you will not deal any tick damage.
-Some active items can be activates while charging, such as helm of darkness or sundering arc.
Now that we have reviewed all of Mordred's kit, in the next chapter we will go over the most efficient ways to use his abilities and all the tricks and interactions within his kit.
As we said on the introduction, Mordred is a character with sort of a low skill ceiling which makes him playable for most players, but he has a lot of little tricks and interactions that will make the difference between a decent Mordred player and a very experienced one, here I will explain all the tricks and combos I've learned by myself on my 300+ Mordred games.
One very important concept to clarify before heading in with Mordred tricks is the autoattack cancel (aa cancel). An aa cancel is a tech that can be applied to pretty much every god in the game, and it consists on throwing one basic attack and as soon as you get the damage off, instantly interrupt the animation by using an ability, this is an interaction that is commonly used to maximice damage output on a single ability combo. Mordred is by far the character that relies on this concept the most, as we will show now.
Dash cancels
This tech is used to get a quick burst of mobility at a certain moment, this is specially useful at dodging skillshots, closing the gap between you and the enemy or trying to escape from a fight. To do this trick, you simply have to use one auto and instantly press your interact key, this will interrupt the auto animation, and since the game will recognice that you just used an attack, it will allow you to dash.
Gap closing
We call gap closing to the action of getting in mele range with a character that is currently far away from us, and Mordred really excells at doing this with this simple combo, even tho he can also close the gap with his big ultimate.
His basic gap closing combo consists on: Dash cancel + Ability 3 + Normal Dash
Fully optimiced combo
Now that you know how to aa cancel and how to maximice your mobility, lets get to how to perform the most optimiced combo possible.
Most of the times you will not be able to pull off this entire combo since it's a very long one and most of the times you will get CCd, your target will try to escape or you will just need to land a damage burst to confirm a kill of an enemy that is about to get away.
That said, we have to take this optimiced combo as our reference to try to execute whenever the conditions are optimal, since its the highest DPS you can apply on Mordred, but also with some experience you will learn to adapt the way you combo your abilities, basic attacks and dashes in order to match the conditions of the fight. The fully optimiced combo is the following.
Combo breakdown: Auto-Dash-Auto-A2-Auto-Dash-Auto-A3-Auto-Dash-Auto-A1-Auto-Dash-Auto
You can implement your small ultimate at any point of the combo as a chase and lockdown tool, but that will depend on the situation and how charged your ultimate is. Keep in mind that hitting your ultimate also resets the cooldown of your dash, which allows you to extend the combo even further, and with some cooldown reduction effects, you could potentially have an infinite combo loop given the ideal conditions.
Keep in mind that your dash also procs item effects like bluestone, gladiator shield or phoenix shield, so landing all this fancy long combos end up rewarding the player quite a lot.
Mordred is a character that when played well, turns out to be very opressive in the lanning phase, having quite a decent wave clear, a very high boxing potential, and a lot of early-midgame solokill potential due to his high base damage output.
Here I'm going to give some tips about how to get the maximum value out of his lanning phase.
-Normally you want to start in your buff, since your level 1 clear is overall better than most solos, and if the enemy solo starts in lane, you will catch the wave under tower and get level 2 while he is still level 1, which means you will always win the pressure in the second wave, which allows you to go and steal the 2 small minions on the enemy blue, which is very valuable.
-For lane clear, most of the time you will try to hit the enemy laner with your 3 and then run to the enemy archers, so you can group the wave and clear it with your 1 and your dash.
-Your boxing potential on the first levels can be quite surprising, so do not be afraid to get agressive and box the enemy laner in order to get pressure, you can also sustain the damage you take from trades with your 1.
-As soon as you get level 5, any time you don't think there is a thread of an enemy rotation towards your lane, you should be using your big ultimate on cooldown to move faster on your lane and greed as much farm as possible.
-As soon as the enemy laner gets 1 defense item you should focus heavily on farming instead of boxing, that will overall put you more ahead than trying to greed solokills.
-When you get to midgame and already deal a significant ammount of damage with abilities you should be looking to proxy waves between tier 1 and tier 2 in order to invade enemy jungle or look for rotations to either mid or duo using the lateral TP.
(NOTE 1: Proxy means farming waves between enemy structures)
(NOTE 2: Rotating to duo with lateral TP is great to put your adc ahead and try to get gold furies, but it is highly recomended to make them when you have your big ultimate ready and you have your base TP cooldown ready, since most of the times when you rotate this way, you will use your big ultimate to dive and kill the enemy adc, potentially get a gold fury and then back, and if you do so with no TP, you will lose a significant ammount of farm, which is still worth if you put your team ahead, but not ideal for you)
As we have talked earlier, Mordred is a half assassin half warrior character, and the way his set of abilities is designed allows you to play teamfights in 2 different ways.
INITIATOR PLAYSTILE
-You can play as an initiator, being the first one to get in and initiate the fights, setting up for your team to deal damage and push into the enemy team. You will look to start the fight by engaging one or multiple backline characters with your big ultimate, making them use valuable resources to defend themselves (such as beads, aegis, mobility abilites etc), which will allow your jungler to finish off the kills and will create great disruption for the rest of your teammates to step in more comfortably. When you play as the initiator, you are not really forced to chase backliners until you kill them on your own, when you play this stile most of the enemy team will be looking at you and wasting resources to peel from you, so you may also consider the option o back off a bit after the first engage to get back up from your team.
-You always need to keep a good track of where your teammates are and if they are on a position to follow up your engage, since if you don't, you may end up in 1v5 situations way more often than you'd like.
Here in this fight, I get into the enemy backline and force them to pay attention to me and waste some valuable resources on me (aladdin's 2 and beads), so my Ra can simply walk in and snipe 2 people who were totally unaware of him, which wins us the teamfight against a team that had fire giant.
ASSASSIN PLAYSTILE
-Mordred can also be played as an assassin, since his ultimate has such a great potential to chase low HP targets that are trying to retreat from the fight, or either pick off isolated characters and kill them on your own. In order for you to be able to play this way confortably, you need someone else on your team to be the one initiating fights and creating disruption, which will usually be a bruiser jungler like Fenrir, Odin, Chaac etc, or a support with engage capabilities like Sobek or Geb.
-Here I recognice that my sobek is already dragging the attention of most of the enemy team, so I spot that ra who is sort of isolated from his team and decide to hunt him down, it is also to be remarked that in some situations you may not have the damage to 100 to 0 an enemy, but in this case I knew I had fire giant so I knew it should be enough to kill him.
-In this clip it is also shown how you can big ult on a backliner, and if you full combo him propperly, you can charge a small ultimate, which can keep you relevant in the fight for longer.
Objectives tips
-When your are making an objective with your team as mordred, you normally should be using your 2 and some autos to shred the protections of the objective so your team can take it down a bit quicker, and when the objective drops to around 50/40% of it's HP, you should get away from it and use your big ult to get vision of any enemy around it, and given the case, you can crash on that enemy to avoid him stealing the objective.
-You can also talk with your team and fake pull the objective, and when the enemy steps in to defend it, you big ult and engage on the enemy.
-If the enemy is the one pulling an objective, you can ult from a relatively safe position and get vision of the enemy and the objective's HP, and then if it looks right to do so, you can crash on the enemy which you consider the most relevant for the other team to take that objective, either it is their adc to stop their dps, their mage to prevent him from securing it with a high burst ultimate or even the enemy support with sunder to prevent him from securing.
STRENGHTS
ABILITY MAXING ORDER
-You always get your 1 at level 1, your 3 at level 2, and your 2 at level 3
-Aftet thatm you max your 1
-When you have maxed your 1, you will max either the 2 or the 3, depending on the kind of character you are playing against in lane
-If you are playing against a melee chatacter that tries to box you very frequently like bellona or hercules, you will max your 2, since that will allow you to steal more protections and win the trades
-If you are playing against a ranged character that doesn't allow you to trade as often, like anubis, nu wa etc, you will max your 3 since it deals a better base damage than the 2, clears better and you do not need to be on mele range to land it.
-You always put point on your ult when you are able to
HOW TO BUILD MORDRED
-Now I am going to desplay some builds that you would go in diferent match situations, depending on your lane match up and what you are facing against in the enemy team
-This builds are updated up to OB4, they may change in the future.
-There are some items that are absolutely core on Mordred which means you should be building them every game unless there is a very good reason not to build them (like playing against 5 physical or magical team or that kind of extreme cases). These items are:
-Bluestone: You proc it way too often with your abilities, allowing you to deal a huge ammount of damage off a full combo with it.
-Pheonix shield: Same as bluestone, you get so much sustain out of this item by getting a very high ammount of procs.
-Gladiator shield: Same as bluestone, so many procs so much damage.
-Phoenix feather: This one is a personal favourite, but using this item's active when the enemy doesn't have enough antiheal yet can completely turn fights.
-Pridwen: This item is generally very strong, with great base stats and quite s useful passive to give you an extra damage spike.
-Magis cloak: Very good base stats and it mitigates Mordred's main weakness which is getting CC locked and bursted when he dives the enemy team.
-When I say adaptable slot on a build, it means you can build whatever fits better on that specific game, and can vary a lot, most of the times this item is gonna be one of the following
-Cursed anhk: If the enemy has a lot of healing
-Mantle of discord: If you feel enemies are escaping from you way too easily due to your lack of hard CC
-Spirit robe: If you feel you are getting locked down and killed way too easily
-Tritons conch: If you are ahead and feel like you need to deal more damage to expand your lead
-Void shield: If every damage dealer on your team is physical
-Sphere of negation: If a magical damage dealer is getting out of control on the lategame
-Spectral armour: If there are 2 or more physical adcs on the enemy team
-Hide of the nemean lion: If you feel like an adc is dealing way too much damage to you
In lategame, always buy the Strenght elixir instead of the inteligence one
Build against physical in lane
-Bluestone
-Phoenix shield
-Gladiator shield
-Phoenix feather
-Pridwen
-Magis cloak
-Adaptable slot
Build against magical in lane
-Bluestone
-Phoenix feather
-Phoenix shield
-Pridwen
-Gladiator shield
-Magis cloak
-Adaptable slot
2+ physical adcs on the enemy team
-Bluestone
-Phoenix shield
-Gladiator shield
-Phoenix feather
-Pridwen
-Hide of the nemean lion
-Spectral
Here I will show some of the gods I think Mordred is weaker against in lane, and which gods he is actually very good to combo with in your team.
Mordred's bad matchups in lane
-Sobek: Overall sobek is a very annoying character to play against in lane, he plucks you, he interrupts your 1 with his 2 and antiheals you, making it a bit of a nightmare to play into. Still he is weak in the earlygame and you can get sort of ahead there, but as soon as he gets 1 item, the best thing you can do is trying to avoid him.
-Ares: He has a hard time clearing waves, but he can chain you and prevent you from dashing, and with his insane damage over time he can win every single trade against you as long as he hits his chain, which he should never miss since he now has a stun on his 2 due to his aspect.
-Fenrir: Probably the worst case scenario to play against as Mordred, his boxing can be stronger than yours, and you don't have any way outside of your ultimate of stopping his 3, so unless you are under tower you are going to tank the entire ability every time, in this matchup just play safe under tower, secure as much farm as possible and ask for potential rotations on him
Mordred's synergies
The best kind of character I can think about with Mordred are mages with high range and high burst abilities that can easily be confirmed by Mordred big ultimate's initiation from a safe distance such as Ra, Kukulkan, Agni or Hecate
Also another type of character that has a very good synergy with Mordred are high CC junglers that can follow off your big ultimate engage with more CC, or than can simply compensate your lack of CC outside of your ult, characters like Thor or Hun Batz are nice options.
Overall, Mordred is a character that I personally enjoy so much (which is shown on my 400+ games on him lol), and I think everyone who enjoys sololane should give him a try, even when if it's complicated to fully master, his pure sololane playstile is really fun for everyone who plays that role, and also since they introduced Mordred's aspect, I consider him to be quite strong in the meta, which is another reason to play him on top of the fun factor.
Said that, I hope you found this guide useful and learnt something new about how to play this character, thank you so much for taking the time to read it.
I do streams on twitch sometimes and update montages to youtube ocassionally, I'll drop my socials here in case you want to check them out ^^.
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