Why Malzahar support is easy to beat, and thoughts on off meta support picks.

The biggest complaint I see about Malzahar support is the lane pressure. Which is really easy to counter pick or even coordinate around with a little communication. He has terrible ranges, easily kited minions, and long early cool downs on W and E, 20 and 15 sec. The only reason this works is because people do not know how to play against it, and the only time I have trouble is when I play a melee support with limited initiation tools, taric/kench/braum/ and sometimes thresh who tech is not melee.

Minions

Tell your adc to prioritize killing them in laning phase, especially if you see him W max.

If they Malzahar blind pick

So many supports do well vs him in laning, sona/vel'koz/zyra. His cooldowns are really long early and his mana costs are high. Even leona can abuse this and destroy his adc by simply AA q AA minions and wait out his mana or cooldowns. Even soraka can counter his ult easily, by laying down the silence field, slowing the minions with Q which i think works, and healing up the dot damage. If you are REALLY desperate for a Malzahar support counter, play Xerath support and easy lane.

It is nice to see more champions in the support role and I like the challenger of finding ways to beat them. I am very interested in other champions that could be viable, so if anyone has any ideas, please list them and I will try them out, for example, sion, twisted fate max cdr tank, Xerath.