idk who's comin in here downvoting everything, probably an AP malphite main who doesn't wanna see their one-trick booped with the nerf stick.
But yeah -- I mean, AP malphite isn't gonna straight up win you the game all by itself, right? So he gets to insta-nuke basically anyone who isn't paying attention. That's fine. But then he's literally worthless for a whole minute.
So yeah if you only have one person on your team that has all of your money, and only one person on your entire team is capable of carrying the game -- sure, AP malphite is pretty devastating.
But that's not usually the case. Usually he blows up the one person, or maybe he's lucky and gets his ult off on 2-3 people (your fault for bunching up)
He's dead. He's INSTANTLY dead. AP malphite is squishy as hell.
So he's not making it a 5v4. he's making it a 4v4. If he hits more than one person with his ult, you're just stupid for bunching together and letting him do it. You have bad vision control, you didn't position properly, you're not playing around fog of war properly.... any number of reasons, but its YOUR fault. Malphite isn't a new champion, we know what he does.
So there's plenty of counterplay around him. Split the map. Buy stopwatch. Buy Zhonyas. Buy GA. GOD FORBID a carry buy a defensive item -- blasphemy!
1-3-1 him, 4-1 him. He can't be everywhere and if you're TRULY a better player, and you don't just THINK you're a better player, you can out-macro him or just outplay him with a champ that has a gap closer. (or stopwatch, or GA)
Or even better yet - set up picks to kill him. He dies to a stiff breeze. Kill him, then fight. Kill him, then push.
But all this isn't to say I disagree. He is absolute cancer to play against because there's really nothing you can do to stop him if you happen to make a mistake -- which we all do, even if we like to believe we don't.
And for the ease of execution in his kit, he's far, FAR too powerful with AP items. Like OP said, its literally "Press R to kill something instantly"
We hated Cho'Gath with Stoneplate for the same reason. It just feels bad to play against. You can do everything I said in this post, but the ONE time you step out of place, you're instantly dead and that just isn't fun.
And i'm not even sure if this is symptomatic of Malphite. I think this is a symptom of the game as a whole just being ridiculously overloaded with damage in general.
to blow up a squishy.
etc, as he can go in and likely secure a kill (or more if you misplay and group up near him) at the cost of him then being exposed in the middle of a fight, likely dying right after.