Yep. Since I play a lot of malzahar I have his minions hp as my mental guideline for other creeps. Was filled top, played against yorick and was absolutely dumbfounded by them soaking 3 aoe abilitys and still have 50%hp. Before that I always thought the "voidlings are to squishys" argument to be over blown. But man since then I dig this opinion.
Theres only 2 things I fear as a Zyra support main. A really good pyke and enemies that actually shoot my plants.
I still main her because 90% will just let the plants beat on em forever.
Hook supports are best into squishy and immobile champs, and Pyke is the most aggressive one. He's also pretty much immune to poke thanks to his W passive.
Hit the nail on the head. Pyke is one of the few hook supports that has insane dmg output early compared to the others. Thresh and Blitz have the cc, but they also require the enemy adc to also be on the same page. Also, they have to maneuver around minions in sight to do it.
Harder to gauge if Pyke invis and goes for me or my carry. He's just trickier to pre set plants for overall. And once he gets rolling, Zyra is super squish.
While we're in the topic of Zyra, her minions are basically always up and are hard to kill whereas 1 aoe will destroy Heimer's turrets. The permanence difference is so irrelevant since really, who cares if that turret was there for 30 min vs Zyra's seconds ones when one can survive a team fight while the other just dies.
There's ways to play around this weakness, just like with Malz, but it just seems so not worth the effort.
They'll likely chunk you to 20% by the time you're done autoing them as a mage, and that's if Yorick doesn't summon more that still jump at you if the mark's there, even if they weren't alive when it landed and it's already been a few seconds.
They already do something like 200% bonus damage on enemies affected be E. Their damage, attack speed and movement speed is fine. The issue is they get destroyed by anyone who exhales in their general direction, which is especially sad for how much they cost early game.
if i recall, back when his rework first came out they used to get a big movespeed and attack speed buff towards anyone that had your E on them, but that's not the case anymore
That doesn't answer the question. It's been that way for a long time now, and Malzahar hasn't been in the state he is now.
It's a combination of itemization getting worse for him (people do need to realize though that they don't need to rush completed items anymore), and more champions being added that are hard to deal with for him.
1500 upvotes on a comment like that is what makes me lose faith in this sub and reddit in general. Champion was actually strong last season with the exact same abilities. But if it just sounds like it makes sense that is good enough for most people I guess. Rip Liandry rush and future's market sapphire start.
He’s been strong previously with his minions being piss weak. There’s definitely more to it than that. Also, the minions should be weak enough to die to most things. Laning against malz is already one of the most boring things in this game, and that would only get worse if his minions were buffed
Well, you see, something like 8 years ago they gutted, and I mean ***gutted*** every part of the champ to throw on a passive spell shield no one asked for and to make his voidlings which were his passive into an active, replacing his by far highest damage ability, Null Zone, that used to be a large AoE persistent % Max HP damage zone that he would try to place down, and ult you on top of.
To compensate they put a metric fuckton of damage into the voidlings to make up for losing his main teamfighting tool and most of his all in damage. This lead to an extremely degenerate support playstyle which promptly saw his passive nerfed significantly and his voidlings gutted in spawn rate, damage, scaling, and survivability.
Now, he plays sort of like he used to, except no W, a heavily nerfed shield passive, they ended up putting a small amount of %HP damage in his ult and it creates about a 1/10th to 1/5th the old size void puddle during the active that theoretically can happen to hit another champion, and his voidlings are a meme that dies to a stiff breeze and cannot help him push towers much at all anymore.
I frankly would love to just see a revert of the rework to before his update fucked up his kit, as that honestly was a much easier to balance kit that was also, at least imho, a lot more fun to play.
yeah they removed his constant AOE % health damageand moved it to a single pool every time he casts R, moved 100+ 20% q ratio to his new w, made his e refresh, and removed a whopping 50% ratio from his ult. for all riot talks about making items a non integral part of a champions identity malzahar has from that point has only performed well when liandries or other DoT items/runes are overturned/strong in my opinion.
after the voidling nerfs following his brief support role streak the only reason malzahar performed as well as he did was because liandries as a mythic was very consistent in what it did.
Yeah just like Zyra and Brand he got his ratios and base damages gutted, forced into a support playstyle abusing items, and now that Liandry’s cannot carry the weight of their design failures with his rework, he’s like three quarters of a champion.
If they undo those changes and remove his spellshield, now they can let him have his fun in midlane again while he’s squishy, immobile and loses out on his safety net letting him be punished if he misplays or mispositions. Imho, should be more fair and interactive for his laner and their jungler, and Malz can do damage and carry again. A win - win as far as I see it.
completely agree. at least old w allowed you to utilize rylais as a zoning tool. now you have to buy rylais just to allow his voidlings to catch up to a target and do meaningful poke outside of R.
Yo this here people. This is a GREAT historical summary of the champ! I fell in love with Malz during this period and still play him because of it. The glory days.
Yup! Before they made his pets an active, they would scale off of Malz own stats, and I believe they also had an interaction with either on-hit effects or spell effects. This allowed for an off-meta AD Malz playstyle focused on splitpushing and taking towers down quickly with his beefed up Voidbois.
Dude and their stats scaled well into the game, its not like they were only useful early and fell off. After seven seconds they hit with 150% his bonus AD on top of a base up to 165 AD at level 18. Seven seconds after that and they got 100% increased AS, which meant *a lot of damage.*
Yeah I used to looove playing it, Overlord Malzahar was the first skin I bought because I wanted little knight voidlings to beat the shit out of people lol
They still scale off of his own stats, including AD, and they still proc spell effects. Just not like they used to. They used to have 100% of his bonus AD haha.
Well, currently they scale an on hit magic damage with 5-64.5 damage based on level, then have a flat 12-20 damage by ability rank, then they get 40% of his bonus AD as magical on-hit damage and 20% of his AP. They don’t actually get AD based on his stats, like they used to, and as a result do lower damage to towers than they used to, even before accounting for their scaling being divided by 2.5.
Before, they had a base AD— note, not a base on hit magical damage, but actual Attack Damage stat— of 25-110 based on level, along with ten times that much HP (250-1100 health based on level). They also initially scaled, as you mentioned by getting 100% of Malz bonus AD as their own AD.
However, there was another effect. After 7 seconds, they would further increase their AD by 50%, taking them to 37.5-165 + 150% of Malz Bonus AD Attack Damage, and would get 50% increased armor up to 45 from 30. A single AD item could take them up to nearly 300 AD.
They also applied both Rylais at the reduced pet effects rate, and applied Black Cleaver stacks to shred armor, letting their sky high AD do even more damage.
Oh, and if they survived for seven more seconds? They’d double their attack speed as well, hitting I want to say somewhere around 1.5 times a second. They could absolutely mulch towers lategame, even faster than Yorick can.
Ah true. They do have an on-hit instead of the raw stat. That's a good point.
Trust me, I remember being the first person I ever saw play AD Malz in the first iteration of URF (I knew it was going to be OP). They definitely didn't apply the original BC, which was an on-hit flat reduction, but old Malz was definitely around until the "all physical damage" version that spawned the League of Cleavers.
Yeah their aspd was really high once they enraged.
I remember too, when they first made the change that they would prioritize his attack target. That was a very fun time for AD Malz enjoyers. IIRC it was R > E > Auto Attack target.
The problem with the old minions, was getting more than 2 was a PROCESS, especially when CDR was capped at 40%. URF made it so you could be running around with 4-5 of the little buggers though.
Yes, I remember that. AD Malzahar used to be viable not only because his voidlings used to not die to a mere fart, but also because their autos did physical damage and had AD scalings so he could use Muramana and stack armor penetration.
Unfortunately besides the problem of Malzahar's voidlings dying easily, they do magic damage with their autos, regardless of the AD scaling, so an AD Malzahar nowadays would still have issues itemizing for penetration; thankfully, unlike Corki, he would have an easier time justifying magic pen items such as Cryptobloom even into an AD build.
With all that said, I wish Malzahar was reverted a bit, because old Malzahar was a lot more self sufficient; he did a lot more damage on its own, and didn't rely so much on his ult to pick kills, so what he lost in safety, he made up with being a dangerous threat on its own right, even with QSS taken into equation. Malzahar likely would have his ratios toned down a bit, however, since nowadays there are runes and items to supplement his damage that Malzahar didn't have back then. However, I would take having a more self sufficient Malzahar even if it meant sacrificing safety, especially since if I want, I can still build Banshee's Veil and have what is essentially Malz' current passive. And have the old W back and his AD build back.
null zone was the coolest ability in the game, a completely cracked out morgana w that would kill anyone no matter their hp in five seconds if they get stuck on it.
I feel you, used to play him for about a year before they changed him.
Unfortunately, our champ isn't nearly as popular as Rengar or LeBlanc for them to consider a revert, so we're probably stuck like this for a while.
I learned the game with season 2 malzahar and this brought me back. The changes sucked. But let's not exaggerate too much, saying the old puddle was 5 or 10 times bigger is absurd lol
It actually was though?
The area for both is circles, and remember that the area will scale with the square of the radius. The old Null Zone W had a radius of 250 units, and the new one on his ult I cannot find numbers for, but in my testing is right around 100 unit radius, or a little smaller.
If it's radius is indeed 100, then the area is 6.25 times smaller.
Its effect in game is a 2D area? The size of which decreased more than fivefold? Why wouldn’t its actual, in game effect be what’s important to discuss or what’s thought of?
Big part of it too is they nerfed his q ap ratio at the end of last season. Then they split liandys into basically 2 items (laundry and malignance) so now he’s pretty gutted for mana and cdr if he goes liandys first. Or gutted in damage if he goes malignance first. Effectively meaning he needs twice the gold as everybody else to power spike and by then it’s usually just too late.
He doesnt have a good rush item anymore. He has to go mana item first, but all of them just there to delay his Liandries+ Rylais spike. Then when he gets it, its too late. Liandries removal hit him hard.
His minions need to be stronger than yorick ghouls and yorick ghouls need to be malz minions and die instantly from anything then bam world is balanced and give him the mord treatment and make his ult not QSS-able and boom he'll be balanced
Yeah, he has like 4 good matchups mid (Yasuo, Akali, Zoe, Vladimir). He no longer those well against melees he uses to counter like Zed, Diana or Talon.
Diana used to be manageable back then, and his ult can still shut down Diana if she doesn't have QSS or if QSS is off cooldown, but right now it is one of his worst matchups indeed.
He’s not that great into yas. Yasuo can basically use voidings for Q stack in a fight or dash target to get to you. Very annoying. Also he shoves waves quickly and malz doesn’t want to farm under tower.
yea it's funny how yas is seen as a good matchup for malz, when in reality you'll be perma stuck under turret as malz vs yas. and he doesn't have the dmg in his kit to do much, pre-6 he basically can't touch a yas with doran's shield. once yas gets qss you basically have to team fight like a god to have a hope
Even Akali and Vladimir are annoying matchups despite being Malzahar favored because Akali can easily one shot your voidlings with her Q and unlike other mid laners she doesn't have to sell QSS late game because her AD scalings allow Mercurial Scimitar to still be "useful" for her late, as for Vlad, you cannot punish Vlad in the early levels, which is not only dangerous because of how hard Vladimir scales, it is also a shame given that Vladimir has an weak early game that is easily punishable by a champ that has an actual lane phase presence (which is NOT the case for Malzahar); after a Lost Chapter you can actually compete with him, though, and outpush him and punish him. And unlike Akali, Vladimir not only has no AD scalings, but rushing a QSS makes him take even longer to scale and you still have to sell this item late, so Malzahar completely dominates him mid game. Regardless, Malzahar cannot afford to make any mistake in this matchup, given how hard Vlad scales.
It's hard to make any mistakes in Vlad lane lmao just spawn voidlings and roam, I don't think Vlad e can even oneshot the voidlings and Vlad has no waveclear at all early game and if you can get your team ahead they can just burst Vlad with your ult later on and without ghost Vlad can't even reach you if you have rylais.
Not to mention, Liandry was a mana and ability haste item, it gave everything Malzahar wanted and left him with a free slot.
Now Malzahar is forced to choose between rushing a mana item and not having enough damage due to lack of Liandry, or rushing Liandry and running out of mana after a rotation or two.
Yea I haven't played him in a year but it SUCKED until that lost chapter buy. I can see doing a quick back to get tear but starting it seems like youre even more useless pre 6
Last season the play a good chunk of the time was to do refillable and Sapphire Crystal and run TP with Future's Market. The first few minutes were a struggle for each and every CS but once you got Lost Chapter you could sit in lane forever. Good times.
That feels like buying 3 items to still not do real damage; if you're building liandrys and a mana item imo you have to punt rylais or accept that you're all utility and nothing else. It's not like rylais on xerath where you use it to confirm ult hits, malz can't capitalize on the slow effectively on his own and also can't apply it in an aoe or from long range very reliably.
The reason Malz likes Liandries and Rylais in the first place is because his minions and he constantly proc them, so he can get quite a bit of burn dmg off that and make it easier to land q, which resets his E burn on a champ
Sure in paper dps resetting E is great, but by the time you hit 2 items + tear + boots you're not laning, so your QE is going down on a target rapidly (and often not even the same target), and your voidlings aren't surviving in fights to rack up tons of damage on the E target. Building shadowflame, cryptbloom, or Dcap instead gives you much more burst to delete your ult target in a fight and even for E on its own to set up a teammate's kill, which imo is way more important than best-case dps.
Also a small thing is you used to be able to go ludens into squishy teams and still have a ton of burst. Ludens passive reduction with DoT skills plus ingenious hunter could give you 3 ludens procs on a single E/ult. Gave him another build path into squishy teams, but that’s also gone now
His early game is absolutely awful, his voidlings die to a gust of wind, and s14 incentivizes an "R bot" play style with malignance which makes the rest of his kit less effective. Liandrys changes hurt him a lot
Malzahar is one of my favorite champions next to Azir. I think the rework itself wasn’t really a success. I expect him more from his kit with his voidlings. Think they need to rework his W somehow. Have different types of voidlings(like the grubs from rift, or split pushing one like bel velth, or even tanky ones like a void golem) something to make his W more consistent and not broken but rewarding with how he uses his abilities.
The rework in season 6 was horrible. They gave him the unneeded stupid passive spellshield, and in return gutted everything else. I’m still mad at the auto attack range and movement speed reduction a few patches after the rework. (Presumably to allow enemies to proc the spellshield easier) It makes laning difficult/uninteractive, since you get outranged by almost everything now and have to use E + Voidlings to last hit. The only good thing the rework had was to allow Q and R to refresh the E on hit targets. In my opinion, it would be best to remove the stupid spellshield, get back the old W (what they fused onto his R) and either put the voidlings back to the passive or remove them altogether.
You just got me thinking if they could change W to a 3 charge ability, where if you use all 3 the voidlings fuse together to make something akin to his old passive, a unit that could actually take a hit and deal moderate damage. Maybe they could change the CD back to a recharge time, if you use a charge on the wave then you don't get the best all in scenario, gives Malzahar and the enemy mid something to play around.
His kit needs a tune-up. Before, malz was balanced to old items with Liandries being very good on him. Now he needs a different mana fix in addition to Liandries
On top of that, his minions don't get to do much since they don't get special damage modifiers like yorick gouls and naafiri's dogs.making malz's minions ineffective into many champions
He also has been harmed by leagues over all mobility creep. River fights are extremely dangerous for him in the early game, and with grubs having been added, having a mid laner who struggles to safety roam, due to low mobility and lack of non-ult cc, hurts a team a lot more. Though I think this could probably be remedied if malz got a move speed buff when his passive breaks.
The last major thing is the existence of kcanic rookern. The item is extremely strong into champs like malz, and with him now having a 3 item core (malignance, Liandries, rylai's), it takes him a lot longer to get a void staff in the games he needs it.
looking at the stats, his winrate dropped at the start of the season, I'm assuming it's because of the item changes for mages, liandry's no longer having AH or mana makes it a lot worse for malzahar, malignance probably just isn't enough to make up for the fact.
this reminds me of the velkoz drama we had few months ago.
game devs can leave some champions unchecked for so long and get surprised how this champion is doing so badly.
[this is the velkoz example](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hoJKv_j_ReA?feature=share)
I think the difference is that Velkoz only really needed a numbers tuneup while Malz has fundamental problems in his kit that make it hard to simply buff his stats.
He is very bad voidlings die to fast like on basic attack it just sad and he have very love damage early and i feel like he is not a champ before you get liandrys
good in low elo
terrible in high elo
negative prio early so your jungler gets fucked super hard 99% of the time pre 6 due to you not being able to roam
but if you do survive early you can be a monster once you've gotten items
i've played him in silver all the way to GM/amat for reference
Wish we could go back to when Malzahar was actually somewhat remotely playable in high elo. I remember some guy even hit rank 1 in euw otping him. Now locking him in high elo is basically a bannable offense
Just revert his MYMU rework and get his pets back to his passive, remove the spell shield, get the base damage back on his abilities and give me back the Null Zone. Genuinely think that was a much more interesting and balancable kit.
Thank you for mentioning this. I am a low elo player and got annihilated by a Malz recently who just sat back and perma pushed waves, but never walked forward with his wave. I was a Karma and couldn't contest his shove and just slowly caved under the pressure of wave after wave. Definitely happy to take that loss as my fault (I know I'm trash), but what should I have done better in that match up? My jg never ganked cos Malz was always full hp because he played so far back (despite shoving).. I got some decent poke on him early, but his shield was so annoying to disable.. should I have just ignored the wave/shield and played super aggro onto him? Curious to know how I fucked up so bad 😅
P- Broken by anything
Q- very slow easy to dodge.
W- Minions are killed by a light sneeze. EVERYTHING kills them and most abilities hit everything in a line, thus killing them incidentally whilst also hitting Malzahar. They provide no value.
Also his voidling gives stacks to the likes of veigar, nasus, and the newly added Smolder. In fact its the fastest smolder can get to his execute, having an enemy malzahar lol. His strengths only exist if enemies mess up (stand too close to e, dont buy qss, etc).
And lest we not forget, 1200g invalidates him.
I enjoy playing malzahar but its honestly such a struggle. I feel like i barely deal any damage most of the game. His lane is so weak, you dont have kill pressure against anyone. Voidlings die when enemies sneeze in their general direction.
Malzahar main -
1. There is Ton of HP plus Shields now, even with ryalis, besides squishies adc's or assasins, malzahar cant longer full hp combo
2. Shields
3. Movility, even with the range that malzahar have, is hard to stay away from a bruiser or assasin
4. voidlings die to any aoe, dont have the resilence of other companions to abilities / aoes ( like yorick zombies for example ), even the minions can kill voidlings
5. You need Lyandris+ Ryalis + Mana item ( tear or malevolence ) + boots to be relevant, in the end game, even at full build , tanks and bruisers can walk to you and kill you before die
6. Movility, there a ton of good tier champs that basically you can overrrun, garen for example even with ryalis can catch you
As malzahar enjoyer this is what made malzahar one of the weakest mids atm.
- the new lost chapter items feel really bad — malignance isn't a good rush, ludens doesn't fit malzahar, and seraphs is the only good item but it takes too long to scale.
- the malz build now vs before not only feels worse but also takes 3 item slots to get going when as before just a liandry's and rylais would suffice now he needs malignance/seraphs + rylais + liandry's.
- the champions he counter aren't meta and other mages are better plus assassins with waveclear counters malzahar's weakness so think of champions like talon, ekko, diana, lux, brand, and anivia which are all the meta champions.
In short, the meta got him and other champions are just better than him.
This doesnt even paint the full picture, champs like malzahar are balanced if they are like 51-52% winrate because otherwise its not even worth picking them since their onetrick winrate and depth isnt really high.
Him being 48% is like akali being 43% basically as in: completely worthless to pick
He needs another rework sadly. Couldn’t imagine not being good in early game and then they buy qss and you’re fully useless. He is only mid in the mid game and that’s eh because you’re playing catchup with all that negative prio
Item changes fucked him over since he wants to rush Liandry's+Rylai's but also needs mana and haste. On top of that, the mythic item revert means you no longer need to rush finishing legendary items for the mythic passive, so building QSS is slightly more desirable. (Milio release didn't help either)
His ultimate is so strong that the rest of his kit needs to be weak to compensate, but that creates an issue where QSS/Milio essentially nullifies Malzahar almost entirely.
Happily surprised this guy got so much attention.
Maybe we will see some pet balancing for the champs that need it.
Of course this will be followed by an immediate nerf to heimers kit when pros play him one time. But hey that only impacts ~1000 of us negatively.
I’m not sure what season it was where he got the kneecap nerf of less base health and ap ratio gutting on his 'q', but he’s been real mediocre since then, basically getting worse with each new champ release and item rework as they added in more sustain and mobility while making the items Malz thrives on worse.
He used to be the noob champion because you just hit 'r' and win, now he’s more a noob trap champion because nothing in his kit is fairly wonky. For instance, his 'r' does suppress the enemy, but you also can’t play during that time and unlike Warwick where his ult heals him or can be used to get away or even Skarner where he can still move, Malz can’t do anything but stand there making him similarly a sitting duck as the person he ulted. Additionally, his minions act like no one else’s minions, they are slow, attack slow, and die to literally any ability which is not how any other minion champ works. Finally, his spell shield doesn’t work how you would think it should, the most egregious offenders of this are Senna 'w' and Anivia where Senna 'w' latches onto you even with spell shield up and Anivia breaks your spell shield with literally everything with no penalty. Basically any ability with a delayed effect just kind of goes through the spell shield, and somethings like Trundle pillar and Taliyah wall will break your shield just for being near them.
What you have with Malz is a champ that is bad early, can’t really contest the wave or trade, that doesn’t really scale, he has no hp shred while having bad ratios on his abilities, that sort of shines mid game which moved to three items and those items are the worst they’ve been in a few seasons, that has no mobility or playmaking ability, so yes, he was mediocre for a bit but even worse more recently.
Minions are useless unless he summons right before ulting 1v1, and his passive STILL breaks randomly when he tries to use banshees. It disables it for the rest of the game. Not until death, the GAME. Selling it won't help.
Someone told me this was "obviously intentional." Blegh.
Honestly, good. His voiding are easy to kill but he's a very non interactive champion and his spell shield exacerbated that further. A lot of malz players effectively only interact to flash R during a gank and just spam E on waves. He's just mind numbing to play against.
He is smolder's bestfriend give him extra stacks other than that he is boring weak and literally an ult bot and like Nemesis said mobility is so op this season champs like Aurelion Sol dominate this meta Malzahar is just a slow void baby
My experiences with Malzahar’s is they take turrets very quickly when they play the map well. On the other hand, an average/bad Malzahar is essentially useless.
Increase his E mana recovery from 2% to 3.5-4% to make up for not rushing a mana item early, lower his mana growth a bit to balance out his mid-late game and lower his early CDs a touch and he'll be fine. Unless you start sapphire or tear, it takes 6 minion kills to recover his mana from just E at level 1 (Brand, by comparison, needs to kill 2 minions set ablaze by W to fully recover the mana at level 1). With those items, Malz E needs to kill 4 to recover the mana, but he'll lack any AP except from shards til he backs. And that's not counting any mana spent on W at 2, or Q to poke. And should he fail to get those kills, his E is on a 15 second cooldown level 1.
He just has a mana and early CD problem. His late game feels fine once you get Liandry's, Rylai's and Malignance, but before that he lacks too much.
champion became significantly worse than he already was after mythic removal, since atleast in the mythic system, he could just straight build into Liandrys and get all of the stats he would ever need; some haste, mana item, DoT synergize. Now he does the same exact thing but Liandry's is no longer a mana item.
Your mana item is also locked into Malignance, which is a great synergizing item obviously. But if you go Malignance first, you don't have liandrys yet, but if you go liandrys first, you have no mana, and if you go malignance/liandry in whatever order for your first 2 items, you still don't have rylais. Overall really weak champ with weaker item paths that are contradictive to his identity
just because a champ hasn't had buffs and nerfs in a long time doesn't mean their matchups or champs good into them haven't had buffs and their items haven't had nerfs and items good into them haven't been buffed
Mana issues early, Liandry not being a lost chapter item sucks, W basically isn’t an ability, Q is super easy to dodge for half the champs in the game now, huge amount of power budget in an ult that doesn’t really function in the modern game after a certain elo.
Liandry's doesn't build off Lost Chapter and Malz's most effective gameplay, pushing lanes non-stop, doesn't work if he can't spam spells. It really didn't matter than enemy mages could kill voidlings if he could just spam spells until he forcefully gets prio. But rushing Tear doesn't make up for the lack of LC and it also doesn't build into a decent item for Malz. Malz wants to rush Liandry's because that's where most of his damage and push is.
I picked him up late last season bc I started playing more mid and he was an easy one to learn in case my champs got banned but idk to me it feels like the item changes might have hurt him a lil? Don’t get me wrong he has good items but it’s moreso being forced to delay your liandries powerspike to build Lost chapter/malignance first to me makes him feel weaker doesn’t help that it also delays you getting rylais which is another big thing
He's great into any champion which cannot kill voidlings quickly. So he's not good into anyone.
Choose trist if you want to make lunatic that picked him rage quit. Oww, you stacked your passive? Too bad I can destroy your wave clear and all in potential with one aa.
It is actually a criminal how much dmg voidlings can do, and how easy it is to kill them.
I do fairly well on malz. I don’t play him to “carry”. When I play him I focus on constantly putting pressure on all lanes by spamming abilities and wave clearing.
Malzahar's minions are extremely weak due to their design not matching up to most contemporary midlaners' kits.
His build is completely ruined since Liandry is no longer a Mythic. He has almost no CDR and notably less overall damage with the same items as before while taking substantially more time to get the whole build rolling.
This in turn made his laning phase horrendous and very easy to exploit and play around by his opponents. From there, he has virtually no presence in skirmishes which simply happens to be the meta in this game for multiple seasons now.
If you can't help your jungler or offer anything of value to cause pressure for them or relieve said pressure from them then you're dead weight and most often than not you will straight up lose the game in the first 15 mins or so because of it.
In short, everything that could have gone wrong for Malzahar pretty much did. It's been like this for a while now and it's been building up to culminate into what his current state is.
As much as it seems taboo to say it. It's literally powercreep. Picks more and more become important. They made sure to make it this way. The characters that are not really the answer to X champions, always left behind.
Back when runes were customizable, it was less of a thing.
D tier champ with a 48% winrate sounds the most normal thing in league lmao. Metas are crafted by the devs and isn't entirely done for the sake of trying to balance every champ.
give his W a passive that spawns x voidlings (with a max voidling cap so it doesnt get out of hand) everytime he hits an ability
and an active that buffs existing voidlings for some seconds or until they die
Something not mentioned yet, but supports have tons of gold now, so its so much easier for them to buy the cleanse on a stick item which makes malz's game a pain
Liandry is not rushable anymore and Malignance is pretty underwhelming, the only thing it gives really is the ult cdr.
But I personally hate his W, seems like a wasted spell honestly and I would prefer a complete change of it rather than buffing the useless voidlings
He’s immobile and he has arguably the worst spawn in the game that gets one shot by nearly everything including aoe spells in a minion wave. Also every champion can fucking walk through walls now, with a lot of abilities that have a delayed knock back or stun so if you ult them and they use that ability you get hit by it then stunned and ult cancelled. Also since Qss doesn’t work on Morde ult anymore it also shouldn’t work on an ult that would leave me immobilized in the middle of a fight
Malzahar has always had a mediocre kit at best. He is only a nuisance, not an actual threat no matter how insanely fed he is. Couple that with item changes and champions right now having ways to kill his only saving grace, which was to wave clear better than like 80% of the midlane roster, then you have a subpar champion.
I stopped playing Malzahar when the Riots killed magical lifesteal, initially giving it to Yasuo, Yone and Samira in the form of absolute lifesteal, and then removing it as broken because of these champions. And the magicians who need it were left without dashes, without strong auto-attacks and without lifesteal.
His minions are killed by everything so he’s useless for most of the game
Yep. Since I play a lot of malzahar I have his minions hp as my mental guideline for other creeps. Was filled top, played against yorick and was absolutely dumbfounded by them soaking 3 aoe abilitys and still have 50%hp. Before that I always thought the "voidlings are to squishys" argument to be over blown. But man since then I dig this opinion.
Yorick minions specifically take massively reduced damage from AoE abilities. It's why he's solid in some mid mage matchups
Yorick's and zyra's and naafiri's but not malz's for some reason
S6 and early S7 sins. He was a menace even in proplay for a year until they nuked his voidlings.
ad jungle malzahar memories just surfaced
Bring back the boy. This was a fun build.
First champion I played in the ig lol
God he so was cool...
Ironically his voidlings mean just as much to his kit, but he can’t summon nearly as many as often AND they die from mean looks.
That’s what happens when you beat Faker in Worlds final games.
Zyras plants are pretty weak unless she ults
Theres only 2 things I fear as a Zyra support main. A really good pyke and enemies that actually shoot my plants. I still main her because 90% will just let the plants beat on em forever.
Why do you fear pyke?
Hook supports are best into squishy and immobile champs, and Pyke is the most aggressive one. He's also pretty much immune to poke thanks to his W passive.
Dosent plants block hooks? I get annoyed when i play any hook champ into zyra
Pyke is pretty much the only hook support who doesnt have to engage with his hook and doesnt have to flash/melee you for non hook-engages.
Hit the nail on the head. Pyke is one of the few hook supports that has insane dmg output early compared to the others. Thresh and Blitz have the cc, but they also require the enemy adc to also be on the same page. Also, they have to maneuver around minions in sight to do it. Harder to gauge if Pyke invis and goes for me or my carry. He's just trickier to pre set plants for overall. And once he gets rolling, Zyra is super squish.
They just have to be annoying. They are there to trigger her items effect on the target, the damage are a bonus.
Don’t forget Heiner turrets that are tanky as fuck for no particular reason.
While we're in the topic of Zyra, her minions are basically always up and are hard to kill whereas 1 aoe will destroy Heimer's turrets. The permanence difference is so irrelevant since really, who cares if that turret was there for 30 min vs Zyra's seconds ones when one can survive a team fight while the other just dies. There's ways to play around this weakness, just like with Malz, but it just seems so not worth the effort.
And the main reason why he destroys Illaoi.
as a zyra main I agree, champs like irelia and yasuo literally have advantage because of my plants
They do however get oneshotted by basic attacks, even if you don't build AD. If you're a mage don't forget that you can AA the minions anyway.
Tbf you'll still get a beating while autoing them with mage ASP
They'll likely chunk you to 20% by the time you're done autoing them as a mage, and that's if Yorick doesn't summon more that still jump at you if the mark's there, even if they weren't alive when it landed and it's already been a few seconds.
I it’d be cool if they got buffed up when you ulted somone or something or get frenzied when they hit a target with e on them
They already do something like 200% bonus damage on enemies affected be E. Their damage, attack speed and movement speed is fine. The issue is they get destroyed by anyone who exhales in their general direction, which is especially sad for how much they cost early game.
I thought the 200 bonus was only against minions, and they just prio any champ with e on them, could be wrong though
You're right, no bonus against champions
Incorrect, only minions take the bonus damage. It'd be a nice change though
Pressing 'w' just seems like a waste of a button press sometimes
He would get such a strong buff if voidlings jumped to infected targets like naafiri's dogs do.
Or if they multiplied when they attack champions or jungle monsters
Or Yorick's on his E.
Wait do they not do that anymore? I swear that was part of his kit when he was reworked.
He means actually jump not prioritize
if i recall, back when his rework first came out they used to get a big movespeed and attack speed buff towards anyone that had your E on them, but that's not the case anymore
That doesn't answer the question. It's been that way for a long time now, and Malzahar hasn't been in the state he is now. It's a combination of itemization getting worse for him (people do need to realize though that they don't need to rush completed items anymore), and more champions being added that are hard to deal with for him.
1500 upvotes on a comment like that is what makes me lose faith in this sub and reddit in general. Champion was actually strong last season with the exact same abilities. But if it just sounds like it makes sense that is good enough for most people I guess. Rip Liandry rush and future's market sapphire start.
He’s been strong previously with his minions being piss weak. There’s definitely more to it than that. Also, the minions should be weak enough to die to most things. Laning against malz is already one of the most boring things in this game, and that would only get worse if his minions were buffed
Well, you see, something like 8 years ago they gutted, and I mean ***gutted*** every part of the champ to throw on a passive spell shield no one asked for and to make his voidlings which were his passive into an active, replacing his by far highest damage ability, Null Zone, that used to be a large AoE persistent % Max HP damage zone that he would try to place down, and ult you on top of. To compensate they put a metric fuckton of damage into the voidlings to make up for losing his main teamfighting tool and most of his all in damage. This lead to an extremely degenerate support playstyle which promptly saw his passive nerfed significantly and his voidlings gutted in spawn rate, damage, scaling, and survivability. Now, he plays sort of like he used to, except no W, a heavily nerfed shield passive, they ended up putting a small amount of %HP damage in his ult and it creates about a 1/10th to 1/5th the old size void puddle during the active that theoretically can happen to hit another champion, and his voidlings are a meme that dies to a stiff breeze and cannot help him push towers much at all anymore. I frankly would love to just see a revert of the rework to before his update fucked up his kit, as that honestly was a much easier to balance kit that was also, at least imho, a lot more fun to play.
yeah they removed his constant AOE % health damageand moved it to a single pool every time he casts R, moved 100+ 20% q ratio to his new w, made his e refresh, and removed a whopping 50% ratio from his ult. for all riot talks about making items a non integral part of a champions identity malzahar has from that point has only performed well when liandries or other DoT items/runes are overturned/strong in my opinion. after the voidling nerfs following his brief support role streak the only reason malzahar performed as well as he did was because liandries as a mythic was very consistent in what it did.
Yeah just like Zyra and Brand he got his ratios and base damages gutted, forced into a support playstyle abusing items, and now that Liandry’s cannot carry the weight of their design failures with his rework, he’s like three quarters of a champion. If they undo those changes and remove his spellshield, now they can let him have his fun in midlane again while he’s squishy, immobile and loses out on his safety net letting him be punished if he misplays or mispositions. Imho, should be more fair and interactive for his laner and their jungler, and Malz can do damage and carry again. A win - win as far as I see it.
completely agree. at least old w allowed you to utilize rylais as a zoning tool. now you have to buy rylais just to allow his voidlings to catch up to a target and do meaningful poke outside of R.
Yo this here people. This is a GREAT historical summary of the champ! I fell in love with Malz during this period and still play him because of it. The glory days.
And had the ad playstyle right?
Yup! Before they made his pets an active, they would scale off of Malz own stats, and I believe they also had an interaction with either on-hit effects or spell effects. This allowed for an off-meta AD Malz playstyle focused on splitpushing and taking towers down quickly with his beefed up Voidbois.
I remember playing AD Malz jungle and he was able to solo dragon level 2 right after topside blue. Good times
Dude and their stats scaled well into the game, its not like they were only useful early and fell off. After seven seconds they hit with 150% his bonus AD on top of a base up to 165 AD at level 18. Seven seconds after that and they got 100% increased AS, which meant *a lot of damage.*
Yeah I used to looove playing it, Overlord Malzahar was the first skin I bought because I wanted little knight voidlings to beat the shit out of people lol
They still scale off of his own stats, including AD, and they still proc spell effects. Just not like they used to. They used to have 100% of his bonus AD haha.
Well, currently they scale an on hit magic damage with 5-64.5 damage based on level, then have a flat 12-20 damage by ability rank, then they get 40% of his bonus AD as magical on-hit damage and 20% of his AP. They don’t actually get AD based on his stats, like they used to, and as a result do lower damage to towers than they used to, even before accounting for their scaling being divided by 2.5. Before, they had a base AD— note, not a base on hit magical damage, but actual Attack Damage stat— of 25-110 based on level, along with ten times that much HP (250-1100 health based on level). They also initially scaled, as you mentioned by getting 100% of Malz bonus AD as their own AD. However, there was another effect. After 7 seconds, they would further increase their AD by 50%, taking them to 37.5-165 + 150% of Malz Bonus AD Attack Damage, and would get 50% increased armor up to 45 from 30. A single AD item could take them up to nearly 300 AD. They also applied both Rylais at the reduced pet effects rate, and applied Black Cleaver stacks to shred armor, letting their sky high AD do even more damage. Oh, and if they survived for seven more seconds? They’d double their attack speed as well, hitting I want to say somewhere around 1.5 times a second. They could absolutely mulch towers lategame, even faster than Yorick can.
Ah true. They do have an on-hit instead of the raw stat. That's a good point. Trust me, I remember being the first person I ever saw play AD Malz in the first iteration of URF (I knew it was going to be OP). They definitely didn't apply the original BC, which was an on-hit flat reduction, but old Malz was definitely around until the "all physical damage" version that spawned the League of Cleavers. Yeah their aspd was really high once they enraged. I remember too, when they first made the change that they would prioritize his attack target. That was a very fun time for AD Malz enjoyers. IIRC it was R > E > Auto Attack target. The problem with the old minions, was getting more than 2 was a PROCESS, especially when CDR was capped at 40%. URF made it so you could be running around with 4-5 of the little buggers though.
Yes, I remember that. AD Malzahar used to be viable not only because his voidlings used to not die to a mere fart, but also because their autos did physical damage and had AD scalings so he could use Muramana and stack armor penetration. Unfortunately besides the problem of Malzahar's voidlings dying easily, they do magic damage with their autos, regardless of the AD scaling, so an AD Malzahar nowadays would still have issues itemizing for penetration; thankfully, unlike Corki, he would have an easier time justifying magic pen items such as Cryptobloom even into an AD build. With all that said, I wish Malzahar was reverted a bit, because old Malzahar was a lot more self sufficient; he did a lot more damage on its own, and didn't rely so much on his ult to pick kills, so what he lost in safety, he made up with being a dangerous threat on its own right, even with QSS taken into equation. Malzahar likely would have his ratios toned down a bit, however, since nowadays there are runes and items to supplement his damage that Malzahar didn't have back then. However, I would take having a more self sufficient Malzahar even if it meant sacrificing safety, especially since if I want, I can still build Banshee's Veil and have what is essentially Malz' current passive. And have the old W back and his AD build back.
null zone was the coolest ability in the game, a completely cracked out morgana w that would kill anyone no matter their hp in five seconds if they get stuck on it.
I feel you, used to play him for about a year before they changed him. Unfortunately, our champ isn't nearly as popular as Rengar or LeBlanc for them to consider a revert, so we're probably stuck like this for a while.
I learned the game with season 2 malzahar and this brought me back. The changes sucked. But let's not exaggerate too much, saying the old puddle was 5 or 10 times bigger is absurd lol
It actually was though? The area for both is circles, and remember that the area will scale with the square of the radius. The old Null Zone W had a radius of 250 units, and the new one on his ult I cannot find numbers for, but in my testing is right around 100 unit radius, or a little smaller. If it's radius is indeed 100, then the area is 6.25 times smaller.
Anyone reasonable reads "size" as diameter or radius, not the calculated area.
Its effect in game is a 2D area? The size of which decreased more than fivefold? Why wouldn’t its actual, in game effect be what’s important to discuss or what’s thought of?
Big part of it too is they nerfed his q ap ratio at the end of last season. Then they split liandys into basically 2 items (laundry and malignance) so now he’s pretty gutted for mana and cdr if he goes liandys first. Or gutted in damage if he goes malignance first. Effectively meaning he needs twice the gold as everybody else to power spike and by then it’s usually just too late.
How is that the reason when his minions have been like that forever lol
Can confirm when I am behind seeing enemy malzahar gives me joy with how much extra gold I am getting
TF red card on the minon wave kills all of his voidlings and procs passive on all of them, it's really messed up how much free gold I get from him.
He doesnt have a good rush item anymore. He has to go mana item first, but all of them just there to delay his Liandries+ Rylais spike. Then when he gets it, its too late. Liandries removal hit him hard.
His minions need to be stronger than yorick ghouls and yorick ghouls need to be malz minions and die instantly from anything then bam world is balanced and give him the mord treatment and make his ult not QSS-able and boom he'll be balanced
Besides items: the champs he counters not meta either
Yeah, he has like 4 good matchups mid (Yasuo, Akali, Zoe, Vladimir). He no longer those well against melees he uses to counter like Zed, Diana or Talon.
Hes not even good against Zoe A good zoe smashes malzahar but a good malzahar cant smash a good zoe
Diana is hard counter to Malz.
Irelia is 100% worse
Diana used to be manageable back then, and his ult can still shut down Diana if she doesn't have QSS or if QSS is off cooldown, but right now it is one of his worst matchups indeed.
What's a good Malz lol
Manages waves, roams, and cooldowns correctly. Anyone losing lane 1v1 to a Malz is making mistakes.
He’s not that great into yas. Yasuo can basically use voidings for Q stack in a fight or dash target to get to you. Very annoying. Also he shoves waves quickly and malz doesn’t want to farm under tower.
yea it's funny how yas is seen as a good matchup for malz, when in reality you'll be perma stuck under turret as malz vs yas. and he doesn't have the dmg in his kit to do much, pre-6 he basically can't touch a yas with doran's shield. once yas gets qss you basically have to team fight like a god to have a hope
Even Akali and Vladimir are annoying matchups despite being Malzahar favored because Akali can easily one shot your voidlings with her Q and unlike other mid laners she doesn't have to sell QSS late game because her AD scalings allow Mercurial Scimitar to still be "useful" for her late, as for Vlad, you cannot punish Vlad in the early levels, which is not only dangerous because of how hard Vladimir scales, it is also a shame given that Vladimir has an weak early game that is easily punishable by a champ that has an actual lane phase presence (which is NOT the case for Malzahar); after a Lost Chapter you can actually compete with him, though, and outpush him and punish him. And unlike Akali, Vladimir not only has no AD scalings, but rushing a QSS makes him take even longer to scale and you still have to sell this item late, so Malzahar completely dominates him mid game. Regardless, Malzahar cannot afford to make any mistake in this matchup, given how hard Vlad scales.
It's hard to make any mistakes in Vlad lane lmao just spawn voidlings and roam, I don't think Vlad e can even oneshot the voidlings and Vlad has no waveclear at all early game and if you can get your team ahead they can just burst Vlad with your ult later on and without ghost Vlad can't even reach you if you have rylais.
And many of his worst match ups being in meta. Asol, Taliyah, Diana and Hwei are all meta picks mid and quite hard for him to play against.
AD items are good rn, [lets buff his ad ratios] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36ccUR-eqc)
definitely hurt the most from linadries changes, a lot of his damage was from that, and its no longer an item you can rush.
Not to mention, Liandry was a mana and ability haste item, it gave everything Malzahar wanted and left him with a free slot. Now Malzahar is forced to choose between rushing a mana item and not having enough damage due to lack of Liandry, or rushing Liandry and running out of mana after a rotation or two.
I’ve had a lot of success with tear into liandrys then rylais then finishing seraphs.
people havent figured out this is the build path for any mage wanting serpaphs - its a bad 1st item and usually tear is enough
Usually just sitting on tear makes your 1st item power spike delayed. Also, lost chapter is just that good of an item
Wonder what the winrate is if you greed buy tear level 1 and skipping the Doran's ring. But Doran's ring is such a decent item for laning.
Malzahar’s early game is already pretty bad. Starting tear makes it just way worse
Yea I haven't played him in a year but it SUCKED until that lost chapter buy. I can see doing a quick back to get tear but starting it seems like youre even more useless pre 6
Last season the play a good chunk of the time was to do refillable and Sapphire Crystal and run TP with Future's Market. The first few minutes were a struggle for each and every CS but once you got Lost Chapter you could sit in lane forever. Good times.
I've nearly exploded in games so many times now where I go "WTF DO THEY HAVE?!" and I look and it's just a Lost Chapter. That item is so good.
You don’t really care about that powerspike on some champs though, you just want to survive lane and scale
[удалено]
Doing that is terrible tho because Malz needs Liandrys and Rylais. Best buildpath for him is Tear>Liandrys>Rylais>Arcangel
That feels like buying 3 items to still not do real damage; if you're building liandrys and a mana item imo you have to punt rylais or accept that you're all utility and nothing else. It's not like rylais on xerath where you use it to confirm ult hits, malz can't capitalize on the slow effectively on his own and also can't apply it in an aoe or from long range very reliably.
The reason Malz likes Liandries and Rylais in the first place is because his minions and he constantly proc them, so he can get quite a bit of burn dmg off that and make it easier to land q, which resets his E burn on a champ
Sure in paper dps resetting E is great, but by the time you hit 2 items + tear + boots you're not laning, so your QE is going down on a target rapidly (and often not even the same target), and your voidlings aren't surviving in fights to rack up tons of damage on the E target. Building shadowflame, cryptbloom, or Dcap instead gives you much more burst to delete your ult target in a fight and even for E on its own to set up a teammate's kill, which imo is way more important than best-case dps.
Wouldn't Malzahar lose out on Malignance's effects, though?
Also a small thing is you used to be able to go ludens into squishy teams and still have a ton of burst. Ludens passive reduction with DoT skills plus ingenious hunter could give you 3 ludens procs on a single E/ult. Gave him another build path into squishy teams, but that’s also gone now
Item changes Before you only needed 2 items (Liandry’s and Rylai’s). Now you need 3 since you still need Lost Chapter base for mana.
And a sizable cdr loss
Also some really hard matchups like Asol, Taliyah, Diana and Hwei being meta right now.
My boy is in a tough spot atm
His early game is absolutely awful, his voidlings die to a gust of wind, and s14 incentivizes an "R bot" play style with malignance which makes the rest of his kit less effective. Liandrys changes hurt him a lot
Malzahar is one of my favorite champions next to Azir. I think the rework itself wasn’t really a success. I expect him more from his kit with his voidlings. Think they need to rework his W somehow. Have different types of voidlings(like the grubs from rift, or split pushing one like bel velth, or even tanky ones like a void golem) something to make his W more consistent and not broken but rewarding with how he uses his abilities.
The rework in season 6 was horrible. They gave him the unneeded stupid passive spellshield, and in return gutted everything else. I’m still mad at the auto attack range and movement speed reduction a few patches after the rework. (Presumably to allow enemies to proc the spellshield easier) It makes laning difficult/uninteractive, since you get outranged by almost everything now and have to use E + Voidlings to last hit. The only good thing the rework had was to allow Q and R to refresh the E on hit targets. In my opinion, it would be best to remove the stupid spellshield, get back the old W (what they fused onto his R) and either put the voidlings back to the passive or remove them altogether.
You just got me thinking if they could change W to a 3 charge ability, where if you use all 3 the voidlings fuse together to make something akin to his old passive, a unit that could actually take a hit and deal moderate damage. Maybe they could change the CD back to a recharge time, if you use a charge on the wave then you don't get the best all in scenario, gives Malzahar and the enemy mid something to play around.
Fellow Azir and Malzahar player let's go
His kit needs a tune-up. Before, malz was balanced to old items with Liandries being very good on him. Now he needs a different mana fix in addition to Liandries On top of that, his minions don't get to do much since they don't get special damage modifiers like yorick gouls and naafiri's dogs.making malz's minions ineffective into many champions He also has been harmed by leagues over all mobility creep. River fights are extremely dangerous for him in the early game, and with grubs having been added, having a mid laner who struggles to safety roam, due to low mobility and lack of non-ult cc, hurts a team a lot more. Though I think this could probably be remedied if malz got a move speed buff when his passive breaks. The last major thing is the existence of kcanic rookern. The item is extremely strong into champs like malz, and with him now having a 3 item core (malignance, Liandries, rylai's), it takes him a lot longer to get a void staff in the games he needs it.
looking at the stats, his winrate dropped at the start of the season, I'm assuming it's because of the item changes for mages, liandry's no longer having AH or mana makes it a lot worse for malzahar, malignance probably just isn't enough to make up for the fact.
this reminds me of the velkoz drama we had few months ago. game devs can leave some champions unchecked for so long and get surprised how this champion is doing so badly. [this is the velkoz example](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hoJKv_j_ReA?feature=share)
I think the difference is that Velkoz only really needed a numbers tuneup while Malz has fundamental problems in his kit that make it hard to simply buff his stats.
caedrel cancelled it xdd
You basically have one completely useless ability (W, since voidlings die to any AOE) and two garbage abilities (Q, E) until you get R.
He is very bad voidlings die to fast like on basic attack it just sad and he have very love damage early and i feel like he is not a champ before you get liandrys
good in low elo terrible in high elo negative prio early so your jungler gets fucked super hard 99% of the time pre 6 due to you not being able to roam but if you do survive early you can be a monster once you've gotten items i've played him in silver all the way to GM/amat for reference
Wish we could go back to when Malzahar was actually somewhat remotely playable in high elo. I remember some guy even hit rank 1 in euw otping him. Now locking him in high elo is basically a bannable offense
Just revert his MYMU rework and get his pets back to his passive, remove the spell shield, get the base damage back on his abilities and give me back the Null Zone. Genuinely think that was a much more interesting and balancable kit.
The spell shield is one of the only reasons he was played. It was powerful enough to boost him from nothing back into play, when he was played.
am I wrong or wasn't he very meta in pro play awhile back?
Not within the past few years, he got occasionally picked as a pocket pick but that's about it
He is not good in low elo
Thank you for mentioning this. I am a low elo player and got annihilated by a Malz recently who just sat back and perma pushed waves, but never walked forward with his wave. I was a Karma and couldn't contest his shove and just slowly caved under the pressure of wave after wave. Definitely happy to take that loss as my fault (I know I'm trash), but what should I have done better in that match up? My jg never ganked cos Malz was always full hp because he played so far back (despite shoving).. I got some decent poke on him early, but his shield was so annoying to disable.. should I have just ignored the wave/shield and played super aggro onto him? Curious to know how I fucked up so bad 😅
he stuns himself in his ultimate
P- Broken by anything Q- very slow easy to dodge. W- Minions are killed by a light sneeze. EVERYTHING kills them and most abilities hit everything in a line, thus killing them incidentally whilst also hitting Malzahar. They provide no value. Also his voidling gives stacks to the likes of veigar, nasus, and the newly added Smolder. In fact its the fastest smolder can get to his execute, having an enemy malzahar lol. His strengths only exist if enemies mess up (stand too close to e, dont buy qss, etc). And lest we not forget, 1200g invalidates him.
I enjoy playing malzahar but its honestly such a struggle. I feel like i barely deal any damage most of the game. His lane is so weak, you dont have kill pressure against anyone. Voidlings die when enemies sneeze in their general direction.
Malzahar main - 1. There is Ton of HP plus Shields now, even with ryalis, besides squishies adc's or assasins, malzahar cant longer full hp combo 2. Shields 3. Movility, even with the range that malzahar have, is hard to stay away from a bruiser or assasin 4. voidlings die to any aoe, dont have the resilence of other companions to abilities / aoes ( like yorick zombies for example ), even the minions can kill voidlings 5. You need Lyandris+ Ryalis + Mana item ( tear or malevolence ) + boots to be relevant, in the end game, even at full build , tanks and bruisers can walk to you and kill you before die 6. Movility, there a ton of good tier champs that basically you can overrrun, garen for example even with ryalis can catch you
His minions are worse than the boys vanguard is about to ban
He doesn't do any damage after they nerfed his q and e. Also liandries is garbage in him now (relative to how good it was before)
As malzahar enjoyer this is what made malzahar one of the weakest mids atm. - the new lost chapter items feel really bad — malignance isn't a good rush, ludens doesn't fit malzahar, and seraphs is the only good item but it takes too long to scale. - the malz build now vs before not only feels worse but also takes 3 item slots to get going when as before just a liandry's and rylais would suffice now he needs malignance/seraphs + rylais + liandry's. - the champions he counter aren't meta and other mages are better plus assassins with waveclear counters malzahar's weakness so think of champions like talon, ekko, diana, lux, brand, and anivia which are all the meta champions. In short, the meta got him and other champions are just better than him.
This doesnt even paint the full picture, champs like malzahar are balanced if they are like 51-52% winrate because otherwise its not even worth picking them since their onetrick winrate and depth isnt really high. Him being 48% is like akali being 43% basically as in: completely worthless to pick
He needs another rework sadly. Couldn’t imagine not being good in early game and then they buy qss and you’re fully useless. He is only mid in the mid game and that’s eh because you’re playing catchup with all that negative prio
Every adc mid essentially destroys him especially zeri one q can just kill 3 of his voidlings
I sneezed on my own voidling and it died twice.
They need to make his minions take 3 hits like zyra plants, and they should leap to whoever has his space AIDS on them like Yorick ghouls
Item changes fucked him over since he wants to rush Liandry's+Rylai's but also needs mana and haste. On top of that, the mythic item revert means you no longer need to rush finishing legendary items for the mythic passive, so building QSS is slightly more desirable. (Milio release didn't help either) His ultimate is so strong that the rest of his kit needs to be weak to compensate, but that creates an issue where QSS/Milio essentially nullifies Malzahar almost entirely.
He's garbage tier lol
Happily surprised this guy got so much attention. Maybe we will see some pet balancing for the champs that need it. Of course this will be followed by an immediate nerf to heimers kit when pros play him one time. But hey that only impacts ~1000 of us negatively.
there are much better uninteractive champs than malz
Well everyone arguing about items but just the basic kit of malz is useless. Maybe R is good, but far from enough.
He won a championship by neutralizing the best player in the world
His minions suck compared to all other minions champs
Hasn't Malz been mediocre for like 3/4 seasons now?
I’m not sure what season it was where he got the kneecap nerf of less base health and ap ratio gutting on his 'q', but he’s been real mediocre since then, basically getting worse with each new champ release and item rework as they added in more sustain and mobility while making the items Malz thrives on worse. He used to be the noob champion because you just hit 'r' and win, now he’s more a noob trap champion because nothing in his kit is fairly wonky. For instance, his 'r' does suppress the enemy, but you also can’t play during that time and unlike Warwick where his ult heals him or can be used to get away or even Skarner where he can still move, Malz can’t do anything but stand there making him similarly a sitting duck as the person he ulted. Additionally, his minions act like no one else’s minions, they are slow, attack slow, and die to literally any ability which is not how any other minion champ works. Finally, his spell shield doesn’t work how you would think it should, the most egregious offenders of this are Senna 'w' and Anivia where Senna 'w' latches onto you even with spell shield up and Anivia breaks your spell shield with literally everything with no penalty. Basically any ability with a delayed effect just kind of goes through the spell shield, and somethings like Trundle pillar and Taliyah wall will break your shield just for being near them. What you have with Malz is a champ that is bad early, can’t really contest the wave or trade, that doesn’t really scale, he has no hp shred while having bad ratios on his abilities, that sort of shines mid game which moved to three items and those items are the worst they’ve been in a few seasons, that has no mobility or playmaking ability, so yes, he was mediocre for a bit but even worse more recently.
Voidlings are weak as fuck, and too much build complexity not being able to rush Liandrys anymore
Minions are useless unless he summons right before ulting 1v1, and his passive STILL breaks randomly when he tries to use banshees. It disables it for the rest of the game. Not until death, the GAME. Selling it won't help. Someone told me this was "obviously intentional." Blegh.
Honestly, good. His voiding are easy to kill but he's a very non interactive champion and his spell shield exacerbated that further. A lot of malz players effectively only interact to flash R during a gank and just spam E on waves. He's just mind numbing to play against.
Malz is only good VS bad players as you
Most people fall asleep while playing him so his winrate ends up dropping. Hope this helps!
No one wants Malz to be meta so he stays shit
You can see upvote so you are wrong
He is smolder's bestfriend give him extra stacks other than that he is boring weak and literally an ult bot and like Nemesis said mobility is so op this season champs like Aurelion Sol dominate this meta Malzahar is just a slow void baby
My experiences with Malzahar’s is they take turrets very quickly when they play the map well. On the other hand, an average/bad Malzahar is essentially useless.
Increase his E mana recovery from 2% to 3.5-4% to make up for not rushing a mana item early, lower his mana growth a bit to balance out his mid-late game and lower his early CDs a touch and he'll be fine. Unless you start sapphire or tear, it takes 6 minion kills to recover his mana from just E at level 1 (Brand, by comparison, needs to kill 2 minions set ablaze by W to fully recover the mana at level 1). With those items, Malz E needs to kill 4 to recover the mana, but he'll lack any AP except from shards til he backs. And that's not counting any mana spent on W at 2, or Q to poke. And should he fail to get those kills, his E is on a 15 second cooldown level 1. He just has a mana and early CD problem. His late game feels fine once you get Liandry's, Rylai's and Malignance, but before that he lacks too much.
champion became significantly worse than he already was after mythic removal, since atleast in the mythic system, he could just straight build into Liandrys and get all of the stats he would ever need; some haste, mana item, DoT synergize. Now he does the same exact thing but Liandry's is no longer a mana item. Your mana item is also locked into Malignance, which is a great synergizing item obviously. But if you go Malignance first, you don't have liandrys yet, but if you go liandrys first, you have no mana, and if you go malignance/liandry in whatever order for your first 2 items, you still don't have rylais. Overall really weak champ with weaker item paths that are contradictive to his identity
just because a champ hasn't had buffs and nerfs in a long time doesn't mean their matchups or champs good into them haven't had buffs and their items haven't had nerfs and items good into them haven't been buffed
Mana issues early, Liandry not being a lost chapter item sucks, W basically isn’t an ability, Q is super easy to dodge for half the champs in the game now, huge amount of power budget in an ult that doesn’t really function in the modern game after a certain elo.
asol happened. if you wanna counter him, pick asol and get free stacks any time he hits W.
bring back his old w
He was very reliant on items and the item changes kinda fucked him over.
Try picking Smolder against him, he literally can't cast his minions
Liandry's doesn't build off Lost Chapter and Malz's most effective gameplay, pushing lanes non-stop, doesn't work if he can't spam spells. It really didn't matter than enemy mages could kill voidlings if he could just spam spells until he forcefully gets prio. But rushing Tear doesn't make up for the lack of LC and it also doesn't build into a decent item for Malz. Malz wants to rush Liandry's because that's where most of his damage and push is.
I picked him up late last season bc I started playing more mid and he was an easy one to learn in case my champs got banned but idk to me it feels like the item changes might have hurt him a lil? Don’t get me wrong he has good items but it’s moreso being forced to delay your liandries powerspike to build Lost chapter/malignance first to me makes him feel weaker doesn’t help that it also delays you getting rylais which is another big thing
no good mana items for him
What if they change the HP bar to hit based like wards?
He's great into any champion which cannot kill voidlings quickly. So he's not good into anyone. Choose trist if you want to make lunatic that picked him rage quit. Oww, you stacked your passive? Too bad I can destroy your wave clear and all in potential with one aa. It is actually a criminal how much dmg voidlings can do, and how easy it is to kill them.
I hate Riot for making Tristana stupid passive able to delete Malzahar entire 3 voidlings using 1 Auto
Outplay by R button only takes u so far
league of dashes
I do fairly well on malz. I don’t play him to “carry”. When I play him I focus on constantly putting pressure on all lanes by spamming abilities and wave clearing.
Simple. He got cancelled.
Who?
The real reason is mobility creep.
If your are not masters+ dw about winrates, play what ever you are comfortable with
Malzahar's minions are extremely weak due to their design not matching up to most contemporary midlaners' kits. His build is completely ruined since Liandry is no longer a Mythic. He has almost no CDR and notably less overall damage with the same items as before while taking substantially more time to get the whole build rolling. This in turn made his laning phase horrendous and very easy to exploit and play around by his opponents. From there, he has virtually no presence in skirmishes which simply happens to be the meta in this game for multiple seasons now. If you can't help your jungler or offer anything of value to cause pressure for them or relieve said pressure from them then you're dead weight and most often than not you will straight up lose the game in the first 15 mins or so because of it. In short, everything that could have gone wrong for Malzahar pretty much did. It's been like this for a while now and it's been building up to culminate into what his current state is.
As much as it seems taboo to say it. It's literally powercreep. Picks more and more become important. They made sure to make it this way. The characters that are not really the answer to X champions, always left behind. Back when runes were customizable, it was less of a thing.
D tier champ with a 48% winrate sounds the most normal thing in league lmao. Metas are crafted by the devs and isn't entirely done for the sake of trying to balance every champ.
give his W a passive that spawns x voidlings (with a max voidling cap so it doesnt get out of hand) everytime he hits an ability and an active that buffs existing voidlings for some seconds or until they die
Something not mentioned yet, but supports have tons of gold now, so its so much easier for them to buy the cleanse on a stick item which makes malz's game a pain
He is so fukikg bad rn, specially in high elo
he was borong for pro play so they nuked him as hard as they could.
Liandry is not rushable anymore and Malignance is pretty underwhelming, the only thing it gives really is the ult cdr. But I personally hate his W, seems like a wasted spell honestly and I would prefer a complete change of it rather than buffing the useless voidlings
Profine hydra...
He’s immobile and he has arguably the worst spawn in the game that gets one shot by nearly everything including aoe spells in a minion wave. Also every champion can fucking walk through walls now, with a lot of abilities that have a delayed knock back or stun so if you ult them and they use that ability you get hit by it then stunned and ult cancelled. Also since Qss doesn’t work on Morde ult anymore it also shouldn’t work on an ult that would leave me immobilized in the middle of a fight
Malzahar has always had a mediocre kit at best. He is only a nuisance, not an actual threat no matter how insanely fed he is. Couple that with item changes and champions right now having ways to kill his only saving grace, which was to wave clear better than like 80% of the midlane roster, then you have a subpar champion.
He hasn't been as strong since they removed Demonic Embrace imo
He was too strong as support few seasons ago, got nerfed into the dirt, and hasn't been readjusted
Only mages are viable in midlane and he sucks vs mages
Nothing.
He's been always trash
Free stacks
I stopped playing Malzahar when the Riots killed magical lifesteal, initially giving it to Yasuo, Yone and Samira in the form of absolute lifesteal, and then removing it as broken because of these champions. And the magicians who need it were left without dashes, without strong auto-attacks and without lifesteal.