is Malzahar still viable?

Yes.

Malzahar is pretty average in his strength. He's playable, but not considered the best, and out-perfromed by a few others at doing largely the same thing. Good if you want to be fairly niche and never get banned out, bad if you're trying to pick top-of-the-meta picks.

Biggest weakness and reason he isn't picked in Worlds/LCS is Quicksilver Sash though. Completely removing the R (along with the silence, malefic visions, and ignite) with a BFSword priced investment is downright brutal. For only 350 gold more than Merc Treads, Malzahar goes directly to jail - he doesn't pass go, he doesn't collect $200.

That said - Malzahar fares unusually well in 1v1 situations, especially for a mage, and can out do assassins in single-target damage and dueling (provided his opponent doesn't remove his debuffs with QSS, Maekails, or Mercurial Scimitar).

If you're opposition doesn't know what counter-building is, or you just crush them so hard they can't - he's pretty solid. If they do, there are better picks.

Malz is a very strong pick in solo q if you know how to play him (and he's not very hard to get used to, either). He does massive damage at all points of the game, can reliably chunk a whole team (including tanks!) in teamfights late game and he can win almost any lane too.

His greatest strength in the current meta (i think) is that he's excellent against assassins - stay back and just spam e on your opponent as they go to last hit early game, and at 6 you've already won - even if they have a gap closer his ult makes him 100% anti-dive and post-6 you can and will kill any assassin who jumps on you 1v1 so long as you learn to drop your combo fast enough. I think he gets a special mention as a counter to Akali and Yas - his AOE Q and W let you VERY RELIABLY hit Akali under her shroud, and none of your spells are blocked by Yasuo's wall, and once again neither can stick to you in melee range without taking a full combo and blowing up (the same goes for any assassin, really). With the exception of Zed who may be able to stay out of harass range if he's good, you can easily destroy them all pre-6 w/ your harass anyway, and thanks to your insane pushing power they CAN'T roam for kills to catch up without losing their tower very very fast. So in all I think he's possibly the BEST mage pick vs an assassin.

People say his greatest weakness is that he 'inevitably pushes the lane' leaving him vulnerable to ganks but if you use your abilities to just (heavily harass) your lane opponent (max e first) and last hit with AAs this isn't even a problem (e doubles as a waveclear AND a single target harass so you can easily switch between the two depending on how fast your opponent is pushing). I'd say his only weakness mid is mages with longer ranges than him + CC (Xerath, Lux, Syndra) but otherwise he's very solid - even if you lose lane, your e (once you get a few points into it) essentially functions as an afk farm tool so you can catch up really easily. Overall he's good in most team comps thanks to his amazing scaling and would really only struggle against a peel heavy CC comp, but that shouldn't be a problem so long as you have decent peel of your own (your Q which does the majority of your damage late game can be cast from a pretty big range, and it's not a hard skillshot to hit in a teamfight).

All in all I think he's a good champ to have and you should go for it.

He's perfectly viable. In fact he can be rather dominant if played right. QSS is the only reason he is not considered top tier.

QSS only removes the suppression, not the damage, so that helps.

I love Malz, and he is great as an anti-dive. I like to pick Malz when we have an ADC like Kog or Vayne and the enemy has a Vi, Zed, Irelia or another bruiser who goes balls deep.

His Q is long range and can poke nicely while having a long silence attached. Sit back and drop Qs, E when you can, and wait for the dive. Drop W at your ADC's feet and R the diver. You don't need to full combo them if the ADC damage them while suppressed on your W.

QSS is a problem, but the tanky guys won't buy it. Assassins and ADCs are the only ones likely to buy it, tanks prefer Banshees or Visage.

He has decent build variety. You can go standard Mage with Dcap/Void/Zhonya and rek people with your damage. You can Rylais + Liandry's for the kiting and awesome DoT damage. You can DFG and destroy a single target. You can even go tanky/CDR and be a suppression/silence machine.

His weakness is long range mages like Xerath and Lux, and 100->-0 burst mages like Veigar and Annie, although the latter are easier to get a lead on before 6 and snowball.

He's an extremely powerful pick in soloq. Probably a good first mage in general, too. Go for it.

He's horrifying in ARAM. I think I got something like 24 kills with him last time and died twice.

In SR, he has a much harder time during the laning phase, but once teamfights break out, you'll probably decimate their team. He just usually isn't picked because of his risky laning phase. It's hard to capitalize on his strengths and he has no escapes. It's incredibly difficult for him to handle.

Malp is very scary when he gets feed. Malp ult and slience is powerful.

Pros.

• He is the only mid champion that has a silence now.
• His % damage can kill a tank champion very easy.
• His magma won't be too low if you use his E very well during the line
• His Q has a pretiy high range ****With his ult,He can gank bot line very easy.

Cons

• Don't have a moving skill.
• Easy to be targeted during team fight. Need to fight a good place to do damage.

PS: I play malp but i don't main him if anything is wrong sorry :/ in my opinion his a good champion

If you can manage your mana well, then he is a good buy. Otherwise, don't get him.

He is currently one of the most mana-intensive mid laners at the moment, the most mana-intensive mid laner apart from champions with mana drains like Anivia and Swain's ult.

However, if you can manage your mana properly or your jungler is willing to give you blue, then he is really good. His E is really good for clearing waves in a mana-efficient manner, although that is basically the only thing you can do before 6 if you don't want to risk going out of mana. His Q and W are too strong for their own good, with his Q being one of the best crowd control abilities in the game and his W providing tons of AoE % health damage.

His ult, on the other hand, is absolutely brutal. It's a single target suppression, allowing his team to do whatever they want to his target for as long as the duration holds and buys him time for his DoT's to take effect. And since it's targetted, there is a large lack of counterplay, so unless your opponent gets QSS, then your ultimate is going to be impactful, and there aren't a whole lot of champions that can get QSS. However, he relies on it for any sort of defensive capabilities against auto attackers without his ultimate, while casters get punished super hard by his Q silence.

Don't fall into the trap of using his passive. Malzahar doesn't have the mana costs to sustain voidling production, especially in the early game, nor do his voidlings provide enough damage in the mid to late game for them to be useful.

Malzahar's biggest weakness is his mobility. He has next to no mobility, and his ultimate is the only form of movement-related hard CC that he has, leaving him very open to getting killed against more mobile targets when his ult is down. Also, be careful when using your ult against a champion with a delayed CC ability, as they can potentially force you to waste your ult in a 1v1 situation, and then kill you afterwords.

Malzahar is great for easy farming and harassing the enemy with your E.....unless your against a mid laner with a dash or gap closer (pretty much everyone nowadays fizz, yasuo, akali) because they can jump on you or past your q and w and kill you before E can wear them down.

However I would advise buying him, he;s great against traditional mages and as long as you ward and watch your positioning in team fights you can stay relatively safe.