The arrival of great changes in League of Legends usually results in chaotic and unforeseen situations. The 2023 pre-season is not the exception that will prove the rule. After patch 12.22, the game has evolved at a breakneck pace, and the most effective new way to win ranked matches is to play Mordecai jungle . The Iron Revenant’s presence rate at this position has increased 4x in the last five days. It is chosen in 6% of the total games played taking into account all ranks and servers whose data is available.
An unexpected conversion
In addition to a constant and sustained increase in popularity which increased his presence in matches by 300 %, the champion has proven to be extremely effective. Contrary to popular belief that increasing pick rate leads to decreasing ‘winrate’, its win stats have steadily increased as the community has learned to use it. The situation has reached such a point that it seems inevitable that Riot Games will decide to reduce its power whether it is via an emergency patch, or for the 12.23 scheduled for early December.
The character was popularized by some professional players, who took advantage of the changes in the jungle to show off the champion’s latent power. To play it optimally, the best strategy seems to be to focus more on jungle camps, taking advantage of its clearing speed. This way it is quite simple to get the advantage at the gold and in terms of experience collected, as well as a fast charge of new pets . With this new addition, the most effective tactic in the jungle right now seems to be to focus on getting stacks, which has even led to a return of double jungle.
Mordekaiser’s situation appears to be a major setback for Riot Games , which sees some aberrations appear during this 2023 preseason. Even if many changes will probably be made in the next patches, the current situation is bad for the game according to Riot Games’ own criteria. A champ with 56.9% winrate at all levels should not exist, especially at a position that is not supposed to be his preferred lane. The League of Legends developer considers a champion to become OP when their win rate exceeds 52%, and even though the 2022 season saw some champions dominating soloQ (Volibear, Janna, etc.) their win rate was lower (more like around 55% in the worst case).
See Mordekaiser in the jungle is not a revolution either, and he was sometimes played in this position. However, his results were much less good, especially since given his popularity rate, he did not it’s not about a few OTPs that benefit from a favorable meta. Luckily the nerfs seem pretty easy to do, as it would just reduce the damage he does to jungle monsters, without impacting his lane performance.
One of the most awaited features by League of Legends players was omitted from the content added to the game during the 2023 preseason launch. However, it is almost ready and everything indicates that it will arrive in the MOBA just in time. for the start of season 13.