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@Riot - Malzahar is down to 48% win rate.

Jovius·3/1/2018, 9:11:56 AM·8 votes·1,228 views

After the long series of nerfs to Malzahar and the current change in itemization, Malzahar is now down to 48.8% win rate as per champion.gg

This is bad. Malzahar is not the same case as Ryze, where his win rate is negatively influenced by the sheer amount of people who can't pilot him properly. Malzahar is reliable champion with straightforward kit. Having his win rate plummet so hard is a testament the recent nerfs were just unfair to him.

Malzahar was dominating pick in pro play through 8.1 and 8.2 patches, however note, that he was as strong OR STRONGER before that (he was slightly nerfed in his R ratio past his last rework some time in 7.21 i believe) and wasn't picked in pro play at all, just because pros are usually very slow to adapt and continued to play champs like Syndra or Cass even if the champions were objectively much weaker.

The nerfs were an overreaction to his sudden pro play presence and he was hit incredibly hard, both to his cooldowns and to his scaling. Meanwhile, Zoe was allowed to run rampart across the rift for all her existence, Ryze is arguably the best mid laner now and the only thing he is getting is a sligh nerf to his E, which is really not the thing that makes him strong, Taliyah remains untouched, Azir is getting nerfed after being THE mid laner for four patches but none of these nerfs are as severe as the nerfs to Malz.

Everybody will complain about Malz, because people are just bad at playing around his ultimate, but he has clear weaknesses in his laning phase and can be shut down and played around by people with brain. People who claim he has OP are the same who will say Darius is OP.

What do you guys at Riot going to do about this? You clearly can't balance the champion properly, due to his design and his reliability. Are you going to rework him? Are you going to at least partly compensate his recent nerfs?

For the people, who are going to comment on this saying that it's good he sucks, because he ulted your Zed once, when you didn't buy MR or QSS the whole game, and you couldn't do what LL Stylish does in his YT videos... keep it to yourself. The champion clearly has counterplay, otherwise he wouldn't lose 52% of his games on average.

12 Comments

Beacon Academy3/1/2018, 10:31:34 AM4 votes

As much as I would like Old Malzahar back, the community has been stuck with this current version for too long.

As soon as he is reverted, there will be mass bitching about his ratios and base damage (Never mind the longer cooldowns) and he'll just get nerfed to oblivion again.

Will he get played in pro play without his shield to keep him safe? Probably not. (Which would be a good thing)

But people will still bitch about things they hate.

Cause if you start hating something for life, you're gonna hate it for life. The rework was the start of the hate.

Glory973/1/2018, 12:15:52 PM2 votes

{quoted} but he has clear weaknesses in his laning phase and can be shut down and played around by people with brain. People who claim he has OP are the same who will say Darius is OP.

Any further explanation on what particular weakness malz might have in his laning phase? From my perspective he is just a permapush bot, that repeatedly uses e and w onto minions, completly shutting down the enemy midlaner. There is no midlaner that is even close to match his waveclear and if you try you'll run out of mana within 1 minute. I don't think that darius is op, and I can somewhat play arround malz ulti but I have no idea what I should do against his oppresive waveclear.

And this is also why malz being op is very problematic for midlane. Anyone can just perma-push midlane and completly shut-down the enemy midlaner. It doesn't need skill at all. I don't mind syndra or cassio being strong, but malz being string is a very serious issue. And aside from all that, 48,8% is far, VERY FAR away from unplayable.

Mataka Tek3/4/2018, 4:17:05 AM1 votes

Malzahar's scaling is so bad now, I am losing almost every game I play. Seriously... But instead of looking at me, look at the other top 20 Malzahar players who played him more than anyone else in the world, and look at how many wins and losses they have "just for Malzahar" and you will see... they stopped playing Malz more often then not. They have switched to Swain or something else because Malzahar is no longer even close to Diamond/Plat/challenger material.

He needs better late game scaling. Period. His voidlings are useless late game. They give him no protection what so ever. The item changes and "runes" and enemy mechanics and mobility allow champs to avoid the voidlings almost all the time unless they are not familiar with them.

My suggestion would be to give the voidlings a scaling HP, and an inherent bit of slow to their bite.

warpenguin5553/4/2018, 4:21:05 AM1 votes

He just needs a VGU. New Passive and W, Keep Q and E, keep R but make it require set up to get some extra damage. Just what I would like to see happen to my favorite champion

DW Diana3/11/2018, 9:35:41 AM1 votes

As a malz main I both agree and disagree with this post. Have riot nerfed Malz to the ground? Yes. Is he now hard to win with? Yes. Can you still scale with him? Yes! He is by no means useless, he just requires being played a different way. The changes to AP items on any competent malz player will be seen as a massive buff, with his standard build of liandy's and rylais giving his e some serious % hp damage. Yes his early game suffers, and yes having your voidlings killed REALLY screws up your laning phase and needs a fix, but I disagree that you can't level with him, you just need a reliable jg to gank, and more importantly learn to roam with ghost, get other lanes ahead, and scale into mid/late game where he can still be viable