Morgana: the fallen angel

DISCLAIMER: this post contains content which is joking-for-fun but in... sensitive, shocking, doubtful, and even completely wrong ways. The target audience is supposed to be the summoners on the Rift, who are full of heroism, confidence, and powerful spirit of fighting on the Field(s) of Justice. So, innocents and the people with heart diseases and/or mental illness should be careful and better to prepare themselves before reading and/or trying to understand what this content really conveys.

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Morgana is an AP champion, and with more than two CCs, Morgana is a CC-holder as well (the duration of her CCs is quite long, and the ult can be seen as a more-than-one CC ability). While she is often played as a support, Morgana is also a very good mid mage.

Core items

In my view, Zhonya's Hourglass and Liandry's Torment are the two key items for Morgana. As a defensive item against AD champions (including ADCs) with the armor index, an offensive item with the AP index, as well as a utility item with the active-Stasis, Zhonya's Hourglass is very important for Morgana especially when it is used in harmony with her ult for better survivability. For Liandry's Torment, the bonus damage scales with CC duration (double), along with the offensive indexes of AP and magic penetration, this item is very effective for Morgana; this item also provides a significant amount of health for better defense.

These two items provide both powerful offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as important utility for Morgana; and should be built no matter which role she is played as: support or mid, mage or even tanky.

For Morgana support, after the core support items (Nomad's Medallion and Sightstone), it should be best for us to save gold for Zhonya rush before completing the final support item (Eye of the Oasis).

For Morgana mid: in case the opponent is an AD champion, we should rush Zhonya as the first item in lane phase for the best[1]; in case the opponent is an AP champion, we should build Liandry's Torment as the first item in lane phase and Zhonya as the second one later. Remember that the armor index of Zhonya cannot reduce magic damage.

Sometimes, especially when she is played as support, we can also build tanky Morgana, although this is not recommended, obviously. Spirit Visage would be one of the key tanky items since it improves Morgana's Spell Vamp of the passive-SoulSiphon. Zhonya and Liandry's Torment are still very powerful items in this build.

How to Morgana?

Obviously, there are two key factors to succeed in playing Morgana: (1) how to successfully land Q-DarkBinding and (2) how to effectively deploy R-SoulShackles. While landing Q-DarkBinding needs very much of prediction and precision on the movement of the opponents, and kinda like landing Lux' LightBinding[2]; the usage of R-SoulShackles is much more complicated, especially in team fight. At the most effective usage, Morgana may damage and slow and bind all the five opponents in a quite long period.

How to effectively use the R-SoulShackles in team fight should be the most important key to succeed on playing Morgana, especially at support. This is also one of the main reasons why Zhonya's Hourglass is so critical and so powerful for the fallen angel: it provides an important short period of stasis for Morgana to (control the opponents while still) survive team fight.

+) In supporting, Morgana uses Q-DarkBinding (and R-SouldShackles from leve 6) to bind and slow the opponents, E-BlackShield to protect team mates from enemies' CCs. For more damage and better sustainability from the passive-SoulSiphon, we can max W-TormentedSoil before maxing E-BlackShield.

+) For mid laner, due to the natural benefit from Zhonya and Liandry's Torment (especially the harmony of her ult with Zhonya active-Stasis), Morgana is  very powerful to counter-play AD assassins (Zed, Yasuo,..) at mid.

Morgana W-TormentedSoil is a very powerful ability in clearing minions, so it should be maxed first.

+) At mid lane, duo to her passive-SoulSiphon, the minion-clearing power of W-TormentedSoil also improves Morgana sustainability very much. Consequentially, it should be hard for the opponent to put pressure on Morgana by pushing minion waves – hard for them to roam and gank other lanes. In other words, Morgana is also an excellent mid laner to counter-play other champions of strong minion-clearing power like Malzahar and/or of strong sustainability like Ahri.

+) Sometimes, team may need Morgana to be just a CC-holder, and not to put a strong focus on damage, in this case, we can build tanky Morgana with Zhonya and Liandry's Torment as the two offensive-leaning items. Remember that Spirit Visage is better than Banshee's Veil for Morgana since it improves the Spell Vamp of her passive-SoulSiphon, let alone the CDR.

The rune and mastery pages are not so different from those of a standard support[3] and mid mage[4]:

Suggested rune pages for Morgana support (top) and mid (bottom) are the two left images; with the runes for Morgna mid, if the opponent is an  excellent AP opponent and we need some MR, Spirit Visage is a good idea for Morgana rather than Athene's Unholy Grail since the fallen angel may not need so much mana. The right image is suggested mastery page for Morgana sup: the remaining 12 points can be taken for Ferocity's entries for more damage or Resolve's ones for more utility and sustainability; in the mastery page for Morgana mid, the entries in the green circles and Ferocity should be picked for the best.

Morgana is not an angel, that is a fallen angel or an... archangel: how can an angel understand what the evils think if she doesn't stand on their side some ways?! How she can still be an angel if she ever stands on the evils' side?! To be an angel of the highest rank – an archangel – is to be able to control the pivot while still maintaining the favor of righteousness. Just like no matter how enthusiastically sir Winston S. Churchill did favor:

“Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel, so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows as the occasion might demand”[5],

the big bird still looks at the olive branches (full of doubt with a big question mark in the bald head(s), maybe).

--- I would remind the DISCLAIMER at the beginning, again ---

This post was completed
There would be just minor adjustments if any on this post

The Silencekeeper

References

[1] [2] [4] Look at the following post for more discussion on playing AP mage mid against an AD-assassin: Luxing: how to Lux? Be the lady of Luminosity! (section Core item, For laning against AD champions and The pros and corns, solutions and key factors)
[3] Look at the post dedicated support for more details: P4 Support: master of the river
[5] Accroding to Wikipedia
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_President_of_the_United_States
     For more morals from League, check the following post: Morals from League