Let's Actually Talk Malz's W: A Rant About The Evolution of AD Malz and Some Proposals for Change

Ok, so, I'm a Silver pleb who does a ton of math and posts it over on the Wiki for random builds/items on champions (like this.) And I don't have a PBE account to actually test this out myself ;-;. Let's talk about the evolution of what used to be my second favorite thing in League: AD Malz.

In the before times, Malz's Boberts (voidlings) would require four abilities to summon a single Bobert. However, that Bobert was powerful for AD Malz and practically useless for AP Malz. It was capable of dealing 83.1% bonus AD per second for 7 seconds, then 124.65% for another 7 seconds, and finally 224.4% until it died. You could permanently have a second and third tier Bobert out at once, occasionally being able to have a third, stage 1 Bobert out if you spammed all your abilities at hyper speed with 40% CDR. You could easilly take a tower faster than two Tristanas would be able to take a single one now. Though, a Ziggs with Lich Bane is still faster, since he kills a tower in an AA>Q>E>W>AA>activate W come late game. It was fun. You couldn't even heal for the damage Boberts did like you can now. Here is a fun video of old AD Malz.

Then, he got reworked. He was a little insane, with Boberts being able to deal insane amounts of DPS. But, it was more controllable, and couldn't melt towers at all. Blah blah, nerfs, stuff, he's in the state he is in now, being able to deal 139.6% bonus AD per second. That's if you use both Ws. And they both get out the 2 extra Boberts they can get out. Which only ever happens when you have R. And takes a second to do thanks to the delay they added to the casts between W. Literally 62.210338680926916221033...% of a single old tier three Bobert's. And you can only do it once every 17.6 seconds with 45% CDR. This is nowhere near the power of effectively permanent tier 3 and tier 2 Boberts.

With the changes to W, it nerfs a ton of things. But, it buffs the CD and the damage. The one thing I can't find is if they still spawn other Boberts for the first 3 seconds, or if this was nerfed, or, even worse, removed. This is a straight damage buff if they let Boberts stay fertile for 2-3 seconds, a slight nerf if they only stay fertile for 1 second, and an insane nerf if they are never fertile. Because now, he can summon 2 boberts every 4.4 seconds if he has 45% CDR. Unless I'm reading it wrong. Which I don't think I am. Let's have a list of fertile time vs. DPS. We will assume he casts Q before every cast of W to make him spawn 2 Boberts. And we'll include current just to put it near everything else.

• Current: 139.6% bonus AD (6 Boberts over 12 seconds)
• After changes:
• 0 seconds: 71.28% total AD (2 Boberts over 10 seconds)
• 1 second: 134.56% total AD (4 Boberts over 10 seconds)
• 2 seconds: 197.84% total AD (6 Boberts over 10 seconds)
• 3 seconds: 217.6% total AD (8 Boberts over 10 seconds)

In terms of damage output vs. downtime, it's a change from an effective DPS of 24.92857142857142...% bonus AD to 16.2/30.58181.../44.96363.../49.4545...% total AD. Meanwhile, old Malz had a nearly permanent 349.05% bonus AD per second without counting his AAs. But, baby steps. The 217.6% total AD isn't that bad. Plus, they won't instantly die to Renekton, Nasus, Amumu, etc. thanks to their AoE DoTs. Sure, they die in a single basic attack from a champ, but they should be suppressed for at least 90-100% of their health bar, anyway, so who cares?

I remember walking up to a full HP sion with 5k+ HP and 210+ armor and blowing him up in seconds with old AD Malz. Meanwhile, with new Malz, you can't even kill an enemy in lane at level 6 with just a W-E-W-R------Q anymore. With the damage changes, that might be possible again. At least for AD Malz. Unless they made Bobert infertile. Then RIP AD Malz. It's already 7.141833...% effective (39.994270...% effective for 12 seconds), what's another hit to its effectiveness, right? Really feels good to have both of my favorite things about the game completely run into the ground with no signs of Rito ever planning to actually make them good again.

Oh yeah, and because I thought of it thanks to the next section, moving AD Malz's damage from the physical part to the magic part is just dumb, but is an interesting idea. It makes BC and lethality practically useless (though, you only ever got BC and Youmuu's, though those were, IMO, his core items, because kiting and making tanks not insane to kill) and makes building MR against him the actual correct way to go, which makes his AAs hit a little harder. Still dislike that change quite a bit, but whatever. It's more interesting than bad. But still not good.

Anyway, let's talk about where Malz, or at least his AD version, should head, in my opinion:

The current changes on the PBE are meh. If they actually buff the damage by an insane amount (a 55.8739...% damage increase if they leave the fertile time at 3 seconds), then the changes aren't the worst thing that could happen to AD Malz. That would be removing the voidlings entirely, or removing their AD scaling. I get that they are trying to make support Malz not the best thing ever, so I will keep that in mind. But, an increase in damage is practically required to make AD Malz anywhere near as good as it was pre-rework. There's a few ways they could accomplish this:

• Increase the AD scaling to either 60% bonus or 50% total. (This would just be a straight buff.)
• Allow Boberts to apply on-hit effects. Damaging on-hit effects deal 30% damage. (This would incentivize things like Muramana for squishies and BotRK for tanks and is my favorite of these ideas. Lifesteal would just heal the Boberts, not Malz, though Omni- and Physical-vamp would still heal him like it currently does.)
• Make it so every attack a Bobert does against the same target deals an extra 5% AD (and some % AP, probably. Who cares about AP?) per AA, stacking up to 4 times, for a total of 60% AD per AA if that Bobert attacks the same target 5 times.

Additionally, Boberts used to be the best thing ever at taking towers. My record for taking an inhib is 12:43 on old AD Malz. Now, you can't even get close to doing that thanks to Boberts being useless against towers. Would be nice if:

• They were prioritized below at least canon minions. Melee minions would be even better.
• They still spawned other Boberts when attacking towers.

Of course, there's always the choice to make AD Malz great again and revert him to his pre-rework state. Though, Rito will never do this, right? Oh, wait, Kog happened. Kappa.