Dr. Mundo Reimagined
An old grave unturned… Or maybe that’s just old Sion coming to break balls.
Was it pure dumb luck for this Doctor? Or simply the mechanical mastermind known as Mundo, scoffed at by most, with no retribution given from their asylum, but poor misunderstood Dr. Mundo. He is given an ultimate defined as unkillable and a killing greed described as whatever he damn well pleases.
Ultimate — Sadism:
Mundo is immune to grievous wounds. Mundo will immediately be able to convert 100% of damage from abilities and auto attacks into only healing him for 100% of the damage. On cast resets W’s cooldown and gives it a toggle. Mundo can choose to either heal from his abilities or deal their original damage. If Mundo has not damaged an enemy champion for 5 seconds while Sadism is active, his next ability will either deal double damage or stun enemies depending on Mundo’s preference. Sadism has a decaying movement speed buff on cast.
E— Masochism:
If champions are around when Mundo hurts himself, they will start Sweating and slowly lose health over time. Mundo gains magic resist depending on how many champions are Sweating.
Mundo basic attacks himself then cracks his skull against an enemy, displacing them from the impact.
W— Burning Agony:
Mundo ignites himself, when the effect ends Mundo unleashes a fire nova around him. Similar effects heal him when ultimate is being used, and W is toggled green. Ignites can stack from outside sources, and when W cooldown refreshes.
Q — Infected Cleaver:
Mundo cleaves himself then throws the Infected Cleaver in a target direction, slowing an enemy and dealing % current hp.
Passive — Adrenaline Rush:
Every time Dr. Mundo attacks himself he gains a short burst of health regen, giving slightly more HP than what was used from his abilities, and bonus attack damage depending on his missing health.
Old
The worth in his old kit.
- Sometimes you just want to walk without the need to look in what direction that Nautilus hook is coming from.
- Or is it just the misunderstood genius, not only in his abilities but his capability that attracts you to this monster.
- Whatever the case, we define Dr. Mundo as unkillable during his ultimate, unpredictable burst always being forgotten until it’s too late, freedom to roam the map and switch his targets on a whim of short term memory, and most importantly, nothing makes sense. Why is he auto attacking himself? Why does he ignite himself? Is anyone else worried about that infection?
Reimagined
The not-worth from his old kit.
- Mundo’s presence in teamfights have always been a bit lackluster in both player’s skill and only existing as a damage sponge. I wanted to control Mundo’s crowd control, and allow him to manipulate the way teamfights are playing a bit more in his favor.
- Nothing comes without a cost. Mundo players were rewarded both for healing and dealing tons of damage. I hope to address the two different variants, not only making both sides stronger, but players can quickly toggle between the two and see what hanging on deaths door really feels like if you feel like risking it.
- Lack of skill required due to not having much of a choice either.
- Keeping as close intact with every interaction familiar to Mundo players, and filling the empty gaps in his niche of supertank that shows any enemy team if they aren’t willing to do the hurt, he’ll do it himself. Each breadth of movement can only be described as “Mundo”.
Balancing
A common problem in Mundo’s conundrum. How do you balance an unkillable supertank that has been given an early game lead? The simple proposition to this is to only allow Mundo to be unkillable if he’s incapable of threatening early game damage from a gold lead and difference in items. Only if Dr. Mundo is ahead and wants to threaten kill potential, he has to switch off his Sadism from healing and stunning, to being a glass cannon that has in inbuilt ways to lower his HP to increase his bonus attack damage. This leaves Mundo vulnerable to counter attacks with worse outcomes from crowd control effects.
Further issues in a castless immediate switch from dealing tons of damage and healing any damage taken too quickly. Wouldn’t Mundo being able to quickly switch from damage and healing defeat the purpose of the first proposition? Mundo is given a reward for staying tanky and healing all the damages by threatening an AOE stun, whether Mundo lacks the patience to hold off until his stun basically you are taking his old damage potential with the care free ultimate and separating the two to tell the Mundo player to choose.
Certain play making skits.
The 2v1
In a standard gank scenario, assume everyone in the game is level 6 and the enemy jungler does not exist, and all lanes are in a normal state. Mundo will first preemptively ultimate 5 seconds early in the river as he charges up his first stun and takes advantage of the early movement speed boost. Mundo has three options to stun an enemy (or deal double damage), first his Q will have a longer stun but be easier to miss as a skillshot, his W will be a ranged AOE stun thats harder to miss but shorter range than his Q, or his E which is a stun that can only be used in melee. Afterwords he will be required to chase any uncleaned kills and has to choose between dealing no damage to a gank for 5 seconds to secure a second stun or a whopping second execute, or further chase with only the slows from his cleaver. Keep in mind I would keep Mundo’s ultimate as a 12 second duration and Mundo only has 2 slim chances to guarantee himself a double damage or stunned ability onto any enemy.
The 5v5
For a regular teamfight, assume Mundo’s team is losing the teamfight but all 10 players are currently active. Mundo will have a choice to either peel for his team, mindlessly run at the enemy carries, or engage with the intent of a 5 man stun. We buffed both Mundo’s chances for engage/disengage, and nerfed his ability to mindlessly run down at the opponents. Mundo can manipulate a teamfight a lot more in his favor with the added threat of an AOE stun, but can no longer both deal damage and heal at the same time. Although his healing outside of ultimate is very minor.
The 1v1
In a duel Mundo will be given the most free range and creativity to how he wants to combo his abilities. In a standard scenario imagine both players assume they will either kill or be killed. Mundo will either have to assess whether he wants to open with ultimate and finish the kill quickly or bait out his opponents greed. Mundo will presumably have no patience to kite anything and will stick to his opponent auto attacking and procing all his abilities off cooldown. The thing Mundo has to look out for is getting dangerously low by his own abilities. If Mundo finds himself at deaths knocking, he can use ultimate while W is currently active to seamlessly switch to healing back to full. He can then activate W again to start a new duration and heal for double. He either has the choice to do nothing for 5 seconds to his opponent while he heals to full, or must decide he values the ability to switch on and off again between damage and healing. Keep in mind Mundo has two stacks of ignite on himself if he does switch to DPS.
- Further balancing notes, Mundo’s abilities are good, but there certain things holding him back from being broken.
The fire nova on his W is predictable and has a major delay. Think of a Sion shield that can not be recast until it explodes. However it can’t be interrupted either.
Mundo still has the negative of feeding off his own HP pool to use abilities.
Mundo no longer has inbuilt tenacity in this kit.
His W is a damage over time debuff similar to ignite without grievous wounds, it works well with his passive but it’s a risky skill with a lot of pay off.
Q’s Infected Cleaver animation will be slightly more annoyingly delayed as there is an added cast time for Mundo to cleave himself.
In case you caught it, it might seem like Mundo can have a chance to stun an enemy with his W twice if he immediately activates it, ults and then activates it again, but depending on how League servers react, the 0.1 second the player loses from activating it before his ultimate should not stun before activating in 4.9 seconds. Or rather there will simply be a tooltip which does not allow you to use W to stun twice or deal double damage in such a small timeframe.
It will appear Mundo no longer has the effect of going wherever he wants, doing whatever he wants, but what is heavily encouraged and balanced for this playstyle is to stick to enemies as usual and bait as much skills as you can for you will heal anything that comes in, or if no one is focusing you, you are given a free opening to flip to the DPS side of Mundo until you ask for the enemies attention.
Mundo is still inherently designed to be a champion with no abusable gap closer other than movement speed and slowing your opponent. The latter has been tuned in Mundo’s favor with stuns with the proper balancing, and the former is designed to stay that way to compensate by adding more damage front loaded into Mundo’s abilities.
A Mundo’s heal potential will be entirely left into the players hands and any crowd control effects. Other than the free ignite which becomes inverse and starts healing Mundo depending whether he has ultimate off cooldown, he has the possibility but no guarantee to heal more than how his ultimate used to give players a freebee no matter what. Otherwise a player will heal less than the original ultimate, but otherwise still have the freebee of being healed by auto attacking and cleaving himself, with the additional added healing from landing his abilities to be given a chance at becoming an unkillable masochist.
Remember, Q is % damage to enemy or % healed to you. W is a damage over time debuff or HP regen over a 5 seconds ignite duration, stacking up twice. E is an empowered auto attack that heals more from your passive and bonus AD from items. Its less health over-time, more health in bursts.
Overall by giving Dr. Mundo a final balanced* kit, he will require the necessary fine tuning in his numbers that can allow him to be competitively viable by, well, just being Dr. CC. Mundo. So long to the days of dash-less, crowd-control-less Mundo. Instead he will still be dash-less, but can still go wherever he damn pleases.
balanced* Ultimate more movepseed on initial cast, less movement speed over time. Healing more relevant on players skill, less skill is less healing than old ultimate, more skill will be more healing but only in quick bursts. Immune to grievous wounds after level 6. E attack damage moved to passive, magic resist still intact but only if you’re around more champions, weaker dueling versus AP champs 1 on 1, E will still crack the heads of both Mundo and Enemies for a ton of damage. W slow burning AOE moved to E, still costs you HP over time to use, Mundo given extra AOE damage from a burst of fire after duration ends. Q is the exact same with an additional cast time, passive heals for more only if you use abilities. Should counteract the balance of igniting yourself too much, inevitably would become neutral health gained if you have 1 ignite stack, and Q and E simultaneously, increasing in more HP as cooldowns become shorter over the course of the game.
Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed all the nerdy little bits at the bottom look out for my next League of Legends champion reimagined!
