@RiotRepertor I think that, gameplay-wise, one of the most important things of Malzahar...

Is that he is an anti-dive assassin counter. He is there to defeat assassins in lane and stop their diving, while at the same time being able to massively push and force assassins to stay in lane otherwise they lose tower. He also can keep pushing thanks to the mana regen that comes from Visions.

He punishes people who dive him alone, and is weak to long range, jungle ganks and disengage. That is, IMO a fair trade.

This comes from strong close range 1v1 lockout and strong AoE pushing potential at the cost of no mobility and massive mana costs.

So basically what Riot should keep is:

• Nether Grasp and its lockout suppression.
• Visions and its mana regen on jump.
• Aoe Damage in basic abilities.
• Voidlings that help to harass and push.
• No proyectiles because f*ck Yasuo.

This allows to keep Malzahar 2 big points:

• Assassin Counter.
• Voidlings.

As a Malzahar Main since S2, Gameplaywise that is what I realy want Riot to conserve.

What I could do?

• General: Keep high mana costs. Properly using Visions to regen mana is actually not as easy as people think, specially earlygame when Visions deals minimal damage and you have no AP.

Passive: Make the number of spells required for voidlings spawn scale with level. 5/4/3/2 (at levels 6/11/16) for example, but give it a voidling cap at the same time, like 3-4 voidlings. Malzahar isnt a spammy mage anyways so more that 3 voidlings is pretty hard.

Q: Change it. Keep it AoE and keep it as some kind of deterrant in lane. Q's silence is his only defense, and its powerful but hard to use. Keep this as Malzahar's skillshot.

W: Possibly change it too. The skill, while powerful, its way too reliant on making you use R too keep them inside.

E: Keep it. Make it more obvious were its going to jump if needed, but this one of the most iconic and creative. The range and mana cost on champion cast keeps it being both point-and-click and balanced. If you use it on minions, its extremely obvious when its going to jump. Its mana cost is way too high for it to be used on champions first, since it doesnt jump and no jump = no mana regen.

And thus is extremely easy to either avoid getting infected, or sustaining through it when cast directly on champions.

R: Reduce the range a bit. Keep it as a 1v1 close range lockout nuke specialized into stopping diving and melee champions. Its a big part of Malzahar's Gameplay identity as an anti-assassin. Its checked by being extremely interruptable, high mana cost, low range and QSS.

Also can we know who is primary working in the Void Cult Leader?