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Has Malzahar ever been healthy?

cardomajig24·3/19/2017, 2:34:05 AM·1 votes·696 views

I'm genuinely curious, Riot reworks him because he's anti-fun bully, into an anti-fun bully that can't destroy tanks late.

I mean what were you thinking giving him a point and click suppression and the ability to shove lane constantly early with no repercussions due to a built-in spellsheild, and his suppression can't even be summoner 1 ....c'mon guys, can't you do better than this? Is this not the reason many champs have been reworked? Because they had too much power in one ability and they were simply anti-fun?

You made Warwick a skillshot and a lot more counterplay with a lot more power in his kit to boot. I think malz honestly needs a rework sometime in the future because nothing in his kit is fun to play against, he gets boring pretty quickly (yes this is a legitimate factor Riot takes into consideration), and he brings little to the table if the enemy has a good team comp and adcs know how to build QSS.

I know everyone is gonna downvote me and call me boosted or whatever but spare me and tell me, legitimately, that Malzahar is a champion that is NOT unhealthy with some reason behind it.

6 Comments

Nilok3/19/2017, 7:26:39 AM3 votes

The original design for Malzahar was subtly smart, such that the designers of the rework completely missed the most important part of it.

The best and smartest thing about classic Malzahar was his voidling passive. Malzahar was probably the healthiest of all minion champions due to his voidlings requiring him to cast spells to be summoned. This, combined with his high mana costs and relatively short range forced Malzahar to get into medium to close range in order to get make the most of his spells to actually summon his voidlings effectively. This was specifically designed to prevent Malzahar from sitting back and summoning voidlings and being too passive in his interactions with his opponent, like with classic Yorick or how he is now.

The rest of Malzahar's kit was designed either around this, or his intended role as an assassin without mobility.

Malzahar's Malefic Visions was meant as a wave clearing tool with a high mana cost and cooldown to prevent spamming, but also as a way to recover mana to help him make use of his passive.

Nether Grasp was designed to allow him to act as an assassin and pick out an intended target after setting up the rest of his attack and stunning himself. Without the mobility of other assassins, Malzahar had to be an ambush assassin to be truly effective. If Malzahar couldn't lock down a target, he would almost always fail at his intended role and they would be able to simply escape by using cleanse.

Call of the Void and Null Zone both factor into Malzahar's role as ambush assassin or anti-assassin, both keying off of Nether Grasp as they are only truly effective when a target is immobile. Call of the Void only deals full damage when both sides of the attack hit, and Null Zone is simple a damage over time pool. While they could be effective, especially Call of the Void when in skilled hands, their true strength was in lockdown.

In closing, classic Malzahar was the best designed minion Champion in the game for years while also being an ambush assassin/anti-assassin the relied on lock down in order to have maximum effect.

Beacon Academy3/26/2017, 7:03:12 AM1 votes

Prior to the rework, he had one small nerf to his pool due to Deathfire Touch.

One nerf in five or so years

If that means anything...

Big Lincoln3/27/2017, 11:19:52 PM1 votes

no

he wasn't.