The saddest thing about the whole Malz support fiasco

Is that if there were more supports like him, people wouldn't mind playing support as much.

Now I'm not saying he's balanced (or not, for all that matters), I'll leave that to Riot to decide. But It's interesting to look at what you can do with him, especially when compared to other support champions.

• You can actually go Eye of the Watchers into full AP and be a threat. And not just any threat, assuming you did a really good job, you can actually 1v1 people on the enemy team. The only other supports who can do that is Zyra (who's in a similar boat) and potentially Tahm Kench, though he received a lot of nerfs.

• You can also build support. Watch LCS and you'll see some Malz players going the typical Redemption route, sacrificing their damage potential in order to further help their team. And both builds work fine, which is something you won't hear me say for any other support champion.

• You can mix both builds depending on the state of the game and your and/or your team's needs. Get an AP item then quickly opt into Redemption or vice-versa.

All-in-all, as someone who's been playing with him a lot recently, I can't describe how freeing it feels to play him, and how I wish I had more supports that could do this. Is my adc bad? No prob, I'll get the kills, get 6 early, gank mid, gank top. I can ping Dragon and my jungler will be happy to come down as my minions make it safer to take (and I can just ult the enemy jungle should he show up). If I gank mid, I can make it a successful gank without needing my adc to follow along to do the damage.

Playing Malzahar makes me feel like the actual 5th member of the team, rather than the other half of the bot lane. I can choose my own build, make my own calls, have actual pressure on other lanes on my own. I can put on my carry pants and proudly say that we are going to win this game.