Please stop suggesting Malzahar as a general counterpick to Assasins.

Big topic on these boards recently has been the rise of assasins and people asking how to deal with them.

One of the things suggested most often is to pick Malzahar into them.

Get it through your brain. Malzahar doesn't counter assasins. Not all and not the most popular. The notion he does is just a cliche people repeat without any regard to actual data.

Yes, Malzahar **used to ** counter Assasins, when his damage was a) actually strong, before nerfs and b) 50% of his damage output in lane wasn't tied to voidlings that die to literally every single AoE ability.

Here are his win rates against assasins as of now (champion.gg, plat+):

Talon: 45.45 % win rate (!) ... yes, Talon shits on Malzahar Ahri: 46.74% win rate (!) ... Ahri too shits on Malzahar Katarina 49.02% ... Katarina favoured matchup, and I believe a good Kat against a good Malzahar is even worse for Malz Zed 49.03%

Malzahar has positive win rates against four assasins:

Akali 57.3% ..._ but we know she is up for an VGU_ LeBlanc 55.13% ... this one holds true, Malz has always been good against her.

Fizz... 50.96% Ekko... 50.96%

So of the lane assasins listed here, Malzahar counters exactly two of them - Akali and Leblanc. He has favourable matchup against Fizz and Ekko, has disadvantage against Zed and Katarina and gets bodied by Talon and Ahri.

Please stop suggesting Malzahar as a general Assasin counterpick. He used to be that. Six months ago.