Mordekaiser was completely revamped in June, receiving a huge visual and gameplay update. But now, a League of Legends player has discovered multiple unused prototype abilities for the champion in the League PBE’s “fontconfig” file that would’ve made the Iron Revenant play a lot differently.
The “fontconfig” file contains most of the text you see in-game. Within this file on the PBE, multiple spells were found for Mordekaiser that didn’t make it into his final build for the live servers. Mordekaiser’s prototype passive, for example, could’ve changed the way everyone played with and against him.
“Master of the Realm of the Dead” was the title of his prototype passive and it would’ve been absolutely game-changing. This passive made Mordekaiser immune to slows and also allowed him to move around freely while dead in a ghost form. When his revive timer expired, the player would respawn wherever the ghost was placed. Enemies also couldn’t see his ghost and his ghost doesn’t provide vision until the last five seconds of his death timer.
A fan pointed out that this passive was copied from a Heroes of the Storm character named Leoric who, upon death, becomes a spirit with a timer and revives in place when the timer completes.
Mordekaiser’s other abilities were also pretty different, according to the file notes. His E, for example, would actually rip out an enemy player’s soul and slow them. If Mordekaiser got to the soul, the slow would be refreshed and increased. If the opposing player got to their soul, however, the slowing effect would be cleansed away.
This gave plenty of insight into the many steps Riots needed to take to rework Mordekaiser and his iconic kit. It’s good that most of these abilities didn’t make it to the live servers, but some of these prototypes do seem interesting from a mechanical standpoint and could’ve been fun to use in today’s League.
