Please Remove Malzahar's Spell Shield

The Great Divide·Jun 2, 2017·4 votes·725 views

Look, I was an old malzahar player. I loved old malz. Bursting people was fun, and his old kit had counterplay to it. They've made malzahar back into a very similar playstyle except one thing:

That spell shield.

You cannot give a champ with that point click combo a spell shield that prevents the one counterplay to it: cc'ing him. Before (as in post rework) it was more okay, because he didn't have godly damage, or at least scale as well. But now he does, so that spell shield is feeling all the more oppressive.

It was easily always oppressive, but now that he can function as a mid laner again, and has lots more damage to boot, it's even more so, and will probably need to go if they want malz to be a healthier champ.

10 Comments

ChaddyFantomeJun 2, 20173 votes

Bursting people was fun, and his old kit had counterplay to it.

Im an old malzahar player and no it didn't, lmao

deadlychuckJun 2, 20173 votes

It had more than the current design.

ChaddyFantomeJun 2, 20172 votes

{quoted}

It had more than the current design.

You gonna bother explaining or are u just gonna make the empty claim and leave it at that?

Prerework malzahar pressed E on you and you lose half your HP. Rework Malzahar has to Time his Q and or Ultimate to maximize his DPS. and thus denying him that significantly lowers his dps, giving the enemy a window of opportunity.

Prerework Malz has no such thing.

Craft ZeppelinJun 2, 20172 votes

{quoted}

You gonna bother explaining or are u just gonna make the empty claim and leave it at that?

Prerework malzahar pressed E on you and you lose half your HP. Rework Malzahar has to Time his Q and or Ultimate to maximize his DPS. and thus denying him that significantly lowers his dps, giving the enemy a window of opportunity.

Prerework Malz has no such thing.

Yes, we always secretly knew he had a bit of lack of counterplay and thats why we picked him. ...he was significantly weaker to ganks though

ChaddyFantomeJun 2, 20171 votes

No i played him because i found his gameplay of bouncing his E around fun. I then started playing him less when i got bored due to lack of depth in his old kit. I then started playing him again after rework due to it giving him more skill expression ,

ParoeJun 2, 20172 votes

{quoted}

No i played him because i found his gameplay of bouncing his E around fun. I then started playing him less when i got bored due to lack of depth in his old kit. I then stared playing him again after rework due to it giving him more skill expression ,

Pre-rework malzahar was an immobile assassin. He had above average base damage and scaling for a mage of his era and his gameplay was very reactionary. His great pushing ability was the impetus for people to attack him - he was, quite often, vulnerable. When malzahar was pushed up you were supposed to gank him, avoid his Qs, and play a little safer when your casters were going down to his E.

I think thats the problem. Malzahar was an anti-assassin; His entire kit revolved around split pushing (Why he had such strong pushing power to begin with) and assassinating enemies who tried to all in him. He had VERY little differences from other assassins except for the main thing; He was immobile.
People couldnt wrap their brains around the concept of an "immobile assassin" so they didnt do what they needed to against him, they didnt play as if they were playing against an assassin, and they didnt give him the respect he required AS an assassin. So they cried "OP", they cried "unfun", "toxic", "binary", "no counterplay", etc. They treated him as a SIMPLE MAGE and not an ASSASSIN.

The current iteration of malzahar needs the spell shield. He was "forced" to be much more interactive due to shorter cast ranges, lower movement speed, and lower attack range. The nerfs have compounded and the passive that took up 40% of his power budget is now what needed to keep him afloat. On a related note, malzahar is a terrible mid laner against most meta mids. He is, however, a fantastic top laner.

deadlychuckJun 2, 20172 votes

Here's the problem.

First, the Q nerf this patch was a revert. They never officially added it to patch notes, but his Q animation was significantly accelerated in the MYMU. Second, his E does more of your HP than it did pre-rework, but only if you try to punish him for lazily using it to deal damage, this is mainly due to the Q refresh of the ability and the voidling power shift. If you are afflicted by E, then you are in an even worse spot than previously. Last, having to time your abilities doesn't increase the window of opportunity, it only restricts the malzahar to a pre-designed window of kill potential, while increasing the breadth of his damage. It's no more difficult to play around than a yasuo's 3rd Q. You stack up your W, then go, W, E, Q, W, R. If they back off by Q (and it misses), then your W is stacked again for the next fight. If they get hit by Q then they can't flash/dash, leaving them open until you press R.

Seriously, the only difference between the two kits (from an AP prospective) is that his base and flat damage which was lost on his Q,E, & R, were put onto his W. The rework attempted to "fix" the champion, somehow, by changing the number of mechanically useful abilities from 3 to 5 for AP malzahar (they added the AP voidlings and the general purpose spell shield). A good malzahar player could make some mechanical use of his passive and W before the rework, but they were extremely situational and player dependent. His W could be used as a zoning tool, because despite not doing a dangerous amount of damage to moving enemies, people stick to the "don't stand in the fire" mentality. His passive worked as an impromptu spell shield against single target skill shots, like blitzhook, thresh hook, ahri charm, karma Q... well the list of useful blocks is actually pretty small.

AD malzahar utilized his passive as the primary damage tool, and then treated the rest of his kit as utility. No need to elaborate much on this point.

The only difference in "counter play" really was the shift of his damage to his voidlings, which really don't have any kind of "counter play" they have "mechanical counters". A list of champions who by design of the champion, not the player's usage of them, can easily remove the flat damage provided by the voidlings.

Call me crazy, but i wouldn't consider riot tailoring counters to be "counter play", on the basis that it's not dependent on the player to counter the action, it's dependent on the champion having a tool to deal with the action.

Warhammer TitanJun 2, 20172 votes

You auto attack him or throw your non cc ability at him to break the shield, then you use your cc.

Craft ZeppelinJun 2, 20172 votes

Actually, he needs it. Mostly because the game environment changed so drastically. The game as of now will NOT alllow a mage to use a short range spell to stand still for 2 seconds anymore. And for malz to actually be constant of doing his job this is actually the best solution.

deadlychuckJun 2, 20171 votes

It's ironic, how riot thinks they will somehow "fix" a champion by adding more into his repertoire (Pun intended).

His W now provides the flat damage that his Q,E,&R don't have anymore, and his R provides the % damage that his previous W had.

The only difference is that he has a spell shield...