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so um....

Xilixer··5 votes·411 views

i feel like malzahar has been completely ruined. his rework was a fail, his midlane was nerfed to crap, his jungling was nerfed to crap and now he sits as a support. his entire niche before is completely gone as is his playstyle. we can all agree that most of the blame is on the rework. that being said when it was first released it was catered towards jungler malz mains who mostly focused on ad rather than ap. very quickly people found that this was pretty overpowered due to him soloing dragons and barons quite easily. the only problem is that once he was nerfed to the point to where he couldn't jungle anymore he actually never recieved any compensation buffs. in fact ever since malzahars rework has gone downhill the only rioter that has talked about malzahar is sotare which was 2 months ago in support of malzahar support. tf?

before rework malzahar whole identity and niche was an anti-assassin mage. if you played fizz, yasuo, katarina, kha, rengar and nocturne he was your worst nightmare to 1v1 against. ironically enough back then his w was one of the most balanced things about him. after rework his identity was that of a jungler. you lost alot of your ability to 1v1 due to you having to actually set-up voidlings before a fight otherwise you would get facerolled cuz all your damage was placed on w, except that when your voidlings were set-up you were basically guaranteed a free kill if you landed your r. you wouldn't even need your e or q, but then that was nerfed severely so now the survivability of your voidlings is alot lower, the damage they do is lower, the spawn time of them is lower and the chances of you having a proper set-up for a fight is alot lower. given for the fact they can only build up if attacking a champion. due to all of this his 1v1 potential is piss poor. the only thing that is malzahar's saving grace in the "meta" is his r. thats the only thing that makes him somewhat viable at this point. its upsetting becuase this champ that looks so cool to play as has one of the worst playstyle in the game now.

5 Comments

Beacon Academy3 votes

imo old Malz was mostly about QWE with R and Voidlings as additional bonus. Pretty much like Katarina where you also used QWE with R only being used if you needed a reset for the passive.

Now he is all about that Voidling and R management. Q and E damage are nothing like they were before and passive is pretty much barely noticeable due to R only being 700 range. (You'd be touched by something before ulting in a team fight, making it so you'd easily die or be stunned, which screws over the whole point of the shield when they first implemented it)

Whats also irritating is that not only can his Voidlings NOT tank dragons or baron or towers due to dying in one hit, but that you also can't direct them via auto attack anymore. You used to be able to have them move towards a target before casting E prior to this whole mess of a rework.

I just want to ask Riot: "What is Malzahar?"

Cause clearly they either didn't intend for support Malz to happen or they didn't see it coming when they put a SUPPORT MAIN in charge of his rework team.

TheUltimateLife2 votes

I still tend to do some of the most damage (if not always the most) to champs on my team when I play Malzahar. It's kind of similar to Teemo in that you do tons of damage over time, but there's no one-shot burst potential. This is intended, however, as Malz (nor Teemo) is not an assassin.

All that being said, I agree he has been nerfed too much. He's already a champion who's not intended to necessarily even see pro play, but he's in a bad spot in regular play too. I have gotten killed once or twice due to the delay on the minion spawn, but that could've been avoided with better planning. The biggest issue I really have right now (after all the continuous nerfs) is the one-second delay on the W, even when you have 2 charges. With only 3 seconds to spawn more minions on champion hit, you're losing a third of the first voidling's potential if you actually wait the full second for the 2nd charge. Even with the Q and R resetting the E, I've lost way too many kills from not having that extra voidling able to attack my target. It's a real shame because the recharge system was put in place as compensation for the recent W changes where they stopped multiplying off minion kills.

Other than that, I think it's kind of sad that he'll never really be that viable, but I feel Malz still does good damage and it has been brought to my attention recently that perhaps my build is to blame for lack of early game damage. For the most part, though, assassins have the ability to stomp him pretty hard after all the tools most were given in the update and they are just too mobile for him. Hence his ult. But without the extra voidling, along with all the other nerfs he's seen to his damage, you usually need to be ahead or have jungle help to finish someone off. Then, with your ult on cooldown, the enemy can just pop right back in and dance around you. Voidling speed is pretty pathetic now and falls off way too fast and too soon.

P.S. You should rename this thread or something, no one will give it any attention with that title. It just so happened to be the most recent post when I checked just now.

Xilixer1 votes

can't edit a title. sadly.

i can mostly agree with what you said. he does good damage. except his ability to actually confirm the kill on his target is terrible.

TheUltimateLife1 votes

Yeah. And I get that they want him to set up kills by whittling people down, but he just requires too much setup at the moment. People have too much time to back off, or just kill Malz instead. When all of your damage is based on that pathetic thing chasing your opponents at 2mph, it's not going to work lol. His damage would be nearly unrivaled if people would sit still and take it, which is why he was given a silence and suppression in the first place. But his ability to lock down his targets seems to dissipate more with each patch. It's the same problem adc's are facing. Being in range is too dangerous. Everyone is too mobile. Get more range or get out, that's the current game.

Side rant: the passive shield is also kind of meaningless lately due to all the range and mobility. The full second linger was a bit much, but the nerf down to .25 was also a bit much. I wouldn't mind as much if it actually BLOCKED anything, but ALL marks, etc, go right through it. Lee can Q your shield and still Q to you later. Thresh can connect his hook. You still take Talon's passive stacks. Fizz can ult you and the Fish alone (before it actually even applied damage with his W passive) takes away your shield before the popup occurs. You can even be airborne for Yasuo's ult for more than .25 sec. It doesn't protect you from anything. When someone can throw a shot and an auto at the same time, and still attack you, it seems kinda pointless. The auto breaks the shield and by the time the skill shot hits, your shield is already down and you take it.

Idk how you can really think this shield is broken still. I've had higher level friends tell me "yeah but a free banshees will always be overpowered." I don't know what I'm missing. If it really blocked anything like a bv does, then maybe. But as it is now it seems too nerfed to function as it should.

lightdragoon882 votes

It wasn't the rework that ruined him...it was the changed in 6.23 where they changed how his Voilding works that ruined him.

By making it an ammo system 3HP Voilding with very short window of multiplying absolutely destroyed his wave-clear and damage as a mage, but made it work as a support so he was forced into that role.

Then because support Malz was actually working they nerfed him AGAIN so that it wouldn't be so overpower as a support...which also destroyed him AGAIN as a mid-laner/jungler.

So now he..can't mid, can't jungle, can't top, and can be good only as a support.

That 6.23 changed ruined Malzahar's roles and most of all...his identity as a mage.

.....I miss playing him Mid so much. [zombie-nunu-tears]

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