So, can we talk about malzahars new problems yet?
specifically a gameplay issue. A massive gameplay issue.
Malzahar is incredibly passive due to a lack of kill potential. In a single lane malzahar very rarely does much damage due to his abilities lacking threat; His EQ doesnt do much damage, his voidlings do quiet damage, and his ult does next to no damage. It creates a passive, boring playstyle that his previous iteration didnt have; you MUST passively farm, there is no aggression in this version of malzahar and he is rewarded for BEING passive. A majority of a malzahars kills will come from allies or people not understanding how dangerous voidlings are (which wont happen in a ranked enviornment. especially high ELO.). This isnt to say malzahar doesnt do damage, no, he does do damage. Im constantly in the top two for damage on my team following the successful assassin or very successful ham ADC; the problem is i just dont get kills without allies who do BURST damage, because i have next to no burst i simply dont have situations in which i can do much but pick off low HP enemies at the end of a team fight.
Now for a good question... malzahar has two relatively powerful abilities; his passive, and his fully stacked W. How do you alleviate the lack of killing power without breaking him entirely?
The answer, i feel, is voidling time extensions.
People stay away from more than two voidlings, attacking them with AoEs and such or just flat running away because the timer is so low. The voidling timer is only just enough time to clear a wave, not to amass an army and flash engage (the only way to get a full group of 4+ on an enemy champion if theyre decent). By adding an additional 0.2 seconds to the timer whenever a new voidling spawns and adding an additional 0.2 whenever a voidling hits an enemy champion you create a situation in which malzahar can amass and successfully kill enemy champions with his flash ult engage.
By adding timer extensions, you change malzahars passive farm back into an active push which behooves aggressiveness, but also puts his voidlings into an active damage role that isnt quiet.
Another potential change is removing the multiple voidlings in general and giving malzahar one large, permanent voidling (a voidling queen perhaps?) which consumes mana per attack. This large voidling would be similar to 3 voidlings mixed together in basic stats. With this change, malzahar gains a much less frustrating companion that gives him higher kill potential, while being more balanced in the jungle. As for his ult, with the proposed change, it should summon the smaller voidlings that spawn other voidlings AROUND the ulted target, up to 3 (one per rank) to give his ult a mucher higher lethality than it currently does.