Rant: Malzahar is the poster child of failed reworks
Yes I am still very mad. I have over 500K mastery points on him and haven't played him in ages. Malzahar's rework: The story of a champ who hardly got touched in 5 years with buffs or nerfs got his identity absolutely destroyed by an arrogant, know it all better devteam who went their own way ignoring every bit of common sense.
Of all the reworks during all the years League exists Malzahar is the worst rework ever. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I still remember very well how during the first rework Repertoir catered towards the few people who played him as a gimmick as ad-jungler. He only listened and engaged in conversations with them and pretty much ignored every other post or comment from every main. Ironically he can't even jungle now. Then he got nerfed, minireworked, more nerfs, more nerfs to a point he was pidgeonholed as a stunbot support because literaly everything else got taken away from his kit. In the meantime in full denial Meddler stated several times how happy they were with Malz rework and how much of a more healhty, balanced and interacive champ he had become. Eventually they had to recognize there were some problems because of PROPLAY otherwise we would still be stuck with support Malz. Another rework to his abilities followed which cemented him even more as a press R bot and farmbot in lane. After several more nerfs he is now in a unacceptable unplayble state. He is unfun to play and unfun to play against.
How much longer are you going to stay in denial? How much resources have you already wasted on Malzahar? How much resources are you gonna keep wasting on him before accepting failure? How much longer are you going to ignore that his reworks have been an utter failure?
From a diverse champ with several viable builds and playstyles and enough counterplay you turned him into:
- Added obnoxious passive that removed the counterplay
- Added RNG: Put all his damage in frustrating unreliable AI controlled voidlings
- Removed the minigame that involved keeping track of your spells to trigger his passive
- Removed his ability to jungle and build AD
- Removed his dualer/assasin playstyle
- Removed his level 6 kill potential so he has no reason to fight or try to invade enemy jungle
- Removed his teamfight presence with his Pool
- Removed his anti-tank mage identity
- Removed his ability to poke with his abilities. High mana, low damage.
- Removed his ability to harass: Lowered AA range and lowered MS
- Removed the voidlings going berserk
- Removed voidlings to be able to block skillshots when spawning
- Removed everything that differentiated a good Malz from a bad Malz player. You just farm and scale up to become a secondary stunbot support for your adc.
- Last you ruined every skin with his passive because of the purple glow. Also I liked the cape with runes a lot more than the atrocity he is now.
He lost everything and gained nothing but a toxic passive. Malzahar is now the most uninteractive unfun midlaner to play and play against. All he can do is try to farm the lane by pressing E+W and sit back and watch and you can't blame him for it. When he hits 6 he waits until the jungler shows up because on his own he gets nothing done. If the jungler comes he flashes+R, if not he keeps pressing E+W. It is super boring, repetetive and predictable.
Malzahar was never a skirmisher sustained damage mage. He doesn't have the low cooldowns, the reliable damage, the mobility and kiting to fight off attackers, he doesn't heal, he doesn't have the range. He is not Cassio nor Vladimir nor Viktor.
Stop being in denial. First of all nobody wants the passive. Reall nobody. Not the mains, not the opponents. Nobody wants to be relegated to a stunbot. The most fun of picking Malzahar was his kill potential at lv 6. Trying to trade with your opponent for a lv 6 all-in. Sequencing your spells correctly to trigger voidlings and controlling the wave or preparing an all-in or for taking drake or tanking a turret. Same for waiting for a voidling to turn berserk for that extra damage early game. You could build him as a glasscannon to neutralize 1 opponent or build him as a anti-tank champ. You could play him jungle as AD or AP champ. After 3 years of failure and alienating everyone who used to love Malzahar the time has come for a complete revert.
TLDR: Sorry for the rant. Nothing new everything about Malz has already been said in multiple good and ignored posts from many (used to be) mains and frustrated opponents. Riot stop being in denial. His rework is a failure and will always be a failure so stop wasting resources on him. It is time to revert Malzahar.
