About the Malzahar rework:

Originally, this was a post in the feedback thread for the new champion reworks as a response to a Rioter seemingly focused on Voidlings as being one of the most important parts of Malzahar's gameplay, but I felt it should receive of more viewership because I heavily disagree.

There's one single thing that is absolutely core to Malzahar, and is a huge reason I started playing him as one of my first champions and loved him so much (even if the meta has made him an unfavorable option nowadays). He fulfills this fantasy now, and if you guys fuck it up just to make him your perception of "unique" (when he already is in a helluva lotta ways), it will outright be Cassiopeia-level failure on understanding why people enjoy the champion (I think we can all agree Cass players are still outraged by what happened to her). I'm just saying. Don't fuck it up because you don't care about his fans, because I think it's a fair thing to say that most Malz fans might be unhappy about his power level as an immobile mage, but not the gameplay feel.

I'm referring to his feeling of "power" and inevitability. Considering he's a "prophet" of what might be considered an apocalypse-level event (the invasion of the void), I've always felt his kit shined for this.

The fact is, if Malzahar isn't super behind and he gets to do his whole rotation to a single person, chances are they will die, whether they're a squishy or a tank. This is something that I've always felt was an incredibly fitting theme for him and his character in particular.

The fact that he has to put himself in a vulnerable position to DO that full rotation, and the fact that he pretty much (unless super fed) is only going to decimate one person and maybe hurt some others (unlike, say, a fed annie or fed talon or something) has always kept him reasonably balanced and made his counter-play options apparent and easily understood. Not to mention the fact that almost his entire burst is restricted by time and most of it can be avoided or interrupted.

As such, I really consider it to a truly core aspect of his character, backstory, personality, and playstyle that he's an embodiment of outright inevitable doom, and he needs to stay that way. He needs to be able to just plain no-ifs-ands-or-buts KILL someone, anyone, that suffers his full rotation when executed correctly. That's who he is. "The void is coming. Oblivion awaits" paints a pretty damn clear picture.

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There are 3 things in his kit that I think already really sell this fantasy, and changing them just because you don't appreciate or understand the character would be a blatant mistake:

1. His target-agnostic damage. If he pulls off his entire combo on a tank and gets the full duration of all his abilities, he will kill the tank. That's how it should be. Again, inevitability and doom. That's who he is. Just because you put on some pretty armor doesn't mean the void isn't going to consume you.

2. His emphasis on DoTs, or DoT-like effects. Once again, inevitability and encroaching doom. This is probably the best way for his damage output to sell that feel. If he just, say, 100-0'd people instantly, sure he'd feel like "encroaching doom" when he's walking toward you, but it wouldn't be right, because he'd only deliver on his fantasy when he could instantly kill someone. With DoTs, the feeling of "they will die" is maintained even if they don't right then, because it's still a feeling of "they will die... eventually", and feels like an inevitable outcome (thus, selling the "encroaching doom" fantasy).

3. His ultimate. If there's one thing that needs to stay pretty damn close to how it is, or if anything just be made more powerful (besides space AIDS of course), it's his ultimate. He is a prophet who sees a nightmarescape and tells people it's coming. Few things can deliver on that fantasy more than him just completely crippling someone with fear just by showing them the unavoidable apocalypse that's coming. His ultimate is the most "Malzahar"-y thing about his kit. If it doesn't do something very similar to what it does right now, if it becomes a non-DoT or a non-Suppress, I'm wholly convinced it's going to not feel like Malzahar, no matter how proud of yourselves you'd be if you felt it was a success. His ultimate is who he is, and with a lack of significant lore behind him anymore, that's the thing that sells Malzahar as being Malzahar the hardest. It might need some tweaking, but a major overhaul would be failure.

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Lastly, the voidlings are super cool. They are. I love them. BUT, they are NOT as core to his theme as the three things I stated. If you detract from those 3 things in order to try to turn him into some kind of poke'mon trainer,* as cool as that theme is* (Might fit for a Yorick Rework maybe..), you will be hurting the character. You will. Period. End of story. Don't fuckin' do it. If there's a way to play up the Voidlings as a secondary aspect behind the core aspects, please do, because I think everyone loves the voidling mechanic. Just do not use them as some kind of lame-ass excuse to ruin the character, his feel, and his playstyle just because you want a poke'mon trainer. And you can't even pretend you haven't done that to characters before. Riot has, more than once, completely changed a champion into something not remotely like the original because you guys took too long to figure out "oh, this should just be a different champion, not a rework", and then insisted it was "better" while the people who loved that champion get ignored cuz you're too busy patting yourselves on the back. Please for the love of god actually mean it when you say you're here for fans input and don't fuck us over just because you're too goddamn bullheaded to admit mistakes.

I'm begging you to not do that to Malzahar. If you want a new character, make a new character. No more fuckin' up old characters because it takes too long to figure out you want a new, different one. I and many others in this thread are doing our best to help you guys deliver on the best iteration you can. You just have to get past your egos when you make mistakes with them and listen, because chances are there are going to be mistakes and Riot has a garbage track record when it comes to listening to the fans of non-Lee-Sin champions.

I'm sure there's some Malzahar players that might disagree. I'm simply stating that little skittering bugs are nowhere near as crucial to who Malzahar is as a character or as a playstyle as the other core aspects. That's not really a debatable topic to anyone whose actually bothered to learn about the character in full. If his whole kit from the start had been built around summoning bigger and bigger void creatures, maybe it'd work. But reworking him into something like that destroys who he is. Voidlings are not worth completely decimating him for. We don't need any more "re-imaginings" of beloved characters just because Riot's rework latched onto some gimmick and threw out everything else. Every rework that's been like that has been a failure, at least as far as fans of the actual original character have been concerned, with the exception of Sion I believe (he's the only one not still getting complained about by old mains).