@Meddler, Context on the Malz changes?

Sahn Uzal·Jun 27, 2016·10 votes·5,311 views

Malzahar Void Swarm (W) ! Cooldown increased to 30/28/26/24/22 from 20/19/18/17/16 Spawn changed: [NEW] " Every 4 seconds and whenever a Voidling assists in killing a unit, Malzahar spawns a new Voidling with the same remaining duration. [OLD] "The first time a Voidling attacks a champion or monster, or assists in killing a unit, Malzahar spawns a new Voidling with the same remaining duration."

Source

These might not be the final changes, but they're looking quite... weird. Mind to share some thoughts behind them?

42 Comments

RiotMeddlerJun 27, 201611 votes

From memory the intent is to both nerf Malz (he's too strong) and clean up how Voidlings function (at present good and bad uses of the spell aren't sufficiently distinguished). I haven't seen these changes in a playtest yet myself though, or had a chance to follow up on them, so not sure if they're hitting the desired mark or need further iteration.

SkyroarJun 28, 201615 votes

{quoted}

From memory the intent is to both nerf Malz (he's too strong) and clean up how Voidlings function (at present good and bad uses of the spell aren't sufficiently distinguished). I haven't seen these changes in a playtest yet myself though, or had a chance to follow up on them, so not sure if they're hitting the desired mark or need further iteration.

Hey, Meddler.

Main Malzahar player here.

Most of Malzahar's power (in lane) comes from void swarming, aka, "spawn on champion hit". You use your W, apply E if voidlings aren't targetting the opponent already (else, you can hold it for one second or two), wait a little, and then reset your E (usually with ulti first, Q after). It's all about letting voidlings spawn, and then stunning the opponent in place just enough time for them to kill him.

Healthy or not healthy, overpowered or not, that's how Malzahar wins. His new Q, E and R ratios are simply too low to be impactful without W.

If you're going to remove the void spawn on champion hit, you're pretty much disabling the entire champion in lane. That wouldn't be a bad change if you were, for example, compensating that massive (champion-breaking) change with higher EQ ratios, as that would shift his playstyle more towards combos and less towards minions. But ALAS, you're not doing that. Having minions every 4 seconds has its advantages (better tower pushing, harder for enemies to disable you entirely with a single ranged hit or smite), but Malzahar does not have enough CC to keep his opponents nearby for 8 seconds BEFORE he starts dealing serious damage. This would make Malz go from overpowered to useless because he is ENTIRELY reliant on that mechanic.

Putting a massive cooldown ON TOP OF THAT is just unneeded overkill. You could very well LOWER it instead, and Malz damage would still be non-existent.

My suggestions are:

Keep the higher cooldown, but bring back the "champion on hit mechanic";
Do not increase W cooldown at all AND give some small buffs to his QE to compensate for the moderate/ breaking nerfs to the very mechanics that makes him work in the first place.

deadlychuckJun 28, 20168 votes

This is very true. Unfortunately it's also the ONLY way malzahar wins now. If you don't play to this only strength of his, then you're going to get demolished. Not to mention this completely removes jungle malzahar in the current state of the changes. His voidlings aren't being re-adjusted on damage against monsters, yet would not longer be able to spawn off of them.

Frankly how they've gone about linking the skills together puts malzahar on a knife's edge. Either they will nerf something and it will reverberate through the rest of his kit's power, or they will buff something and it will be multiplied by the rest of the kit. It's a terrible state to be in for balancing... yet they were hoping to make them easier to balance.

They need to unlink the skills and remove the shared timers on the voidlings. To remove the shared timers means they'd have to go through with this change, but the current design of the skill can't realistically be balanced, it's far too inconsistent by nature. More voidlings is fine, but for balance, the core of any kit has to be the consistent parts, his E and to a lesser extent his Q.

Ironically moving the power away from his W would also reduce the power of his passive, as it's only real power, outside of gank avoidance, is protecting from burst to allow for voidlings to amass.

SpoofghoulJun 28, 20162 votes

Amen

my entire trading with malzahar is reliant on dumping voidling on opponents face applying some space aids and yelling out loud go forth and multiply

it just wont work without the multiply part

i mean i can use the q on my opponent and he just shrughs and laughs. his solo kill pressure is already low

destroying his swarming just leaves him useless untill his other abilities are buffed and then were pretty much back to prerework malzahar

come to think of it isnt this what happened to velkoz?

whos next viktor? brand? vlad?

ParoeJun 28, 20165 votes

{quoted}

From memory the intent is to both nerf Malz (he's too strong) and clean up how Voidlings function (at present good and bad uses of the spell aren't sufficiently distinguished). I haven't seen these changes in a playtest yet myself though, or had a chance to follow up on them, so not sure if they're hitting the desired mark or need further iteration.

So if youre nerfing jungle malzahar so heavily, can we have 100% damage in the jungle instead of 50%?

Zok72Jun 28, 20162 votes

This nerf seems like it's targeted in the wrong place. Since the rework malzahar has been significantly pushed into the "battle mage" design space with a particular emphasis on neutral objective control. This means he must have a strong and reliable sustained damage pattern against champions and monsters to succeed at his function. Removing his ability to reliably deal significant sustained damage to these targets eliminates his unique strengths (making him either generically good or bad depending on numbers) rather than preserving his unique strength and weakening extraneous power (which would keep him strong at his intended role while weakening him when he is outside of his niche). I would suggest that targeting his Q or R (which are less integral to his gameplay function) would be better than targeting his primary damage source.

deadlychuckJun 29, 20162 votes

In what world are his voidlings the "reliable sustained damage" of his kit? That'd be his E. The part of his kit that use to be the primary focus. Not only are they unreliable, they are inconsistent. The first 3 are slow to get out, the subsequent are much faster, and then because they share timers, your DPS abruptly drops back down to almost nothing when they die.

Everyone of his abilities are linked together, so nerfing or buffing one of them reverberates throughout this new kit. Passive shares power with W & R. Q shares power with W & E. W Shares power with everything. E shares power with Q, W, R. R shares power with P,W,E.

Or more legibly... P > W,R Q > W,E W > P,Q,E,R E > Q,W,R R > P, W, E

If you touch any of his abilities you're going to affect the power of the rest of his kit.

Sahn UzalJun 28, 20161 votes

I don't know, making them spawn every X seconds doesn't even seem that bad... Currently, one can burst the first Voidling, and Malz's entire W is gone. Making them spawn over time makes them more reliable which would allow them to deal less raw damage. But making him rely on killing units... That just eats a decent chunck of his power budget while being completely unreliable outside of laningphase... I don't know, I'll guess we'll see how it'll play out.

Have a Nice GameJun 28, 20161 votes

They still share timers, so wouldn't the following voidlings from the 4s timer not spawn if the first got smited?

Sahn UzalJun 28, 20161 votes

Well that would really suck.

SkyroarJun 28, 20161 votes

{quoted}

From memory the intent is to both nerf Malz (he's too strong) and clean up how Voidlings function (at present good and bad uses of the spell aren't sufficiently distinguished). I haven't seen these changes in a playtest yet myself though, or had a chance to follow up on them, so not sure if they're hitting the desired mark or need further iteration.

To make an analogy, taking away the voidling spawn on champion hit from Malzahar kit is like taking away the teleport from Kassadin ulti. The entire champion is balanced around those mechanics, and removing them would make them completely unfunctional. And then you're still adding a higher cooldown on top of that, which is just beating a dead horse at this point.

Again, I like the idea behind the new W you guys are testing out. You just have to change his remaining kit to make up for that.

Problems with old W:

It can be entirely disabled in cheesy ways (one ranged hit or two, one smite, accidental AoE), which skilled Malzahar players can't do much about it. New W fixes that.
It can give some cheesy, free wins to Malzahar players (void swarming chasing target until their death, even when Malz is no longer around them). Not quite an expression of skill, right? New W tones that down greatly, which is good.

Other advantages of new W:

It adds some much needed nuance to Malzahar's playstyle. Players can now use voidlings to break towers, further strenghting one of the champion's main strengths (lane-pushing). It doesn't seems too strong, neither, considering that voidlings will still get instant-gibbed by turrets.

New problems that the new W brings:

Massive cooldown leads to boring play. Seriously, who enjoys playing a champion whose key, non-ultimate skill is on a 30 second cooldown? Malzahar isn't yasuo, who can spam and make excellent plays with the only two remaining skills. EQ combo is cool, but if that's the only thing you're going to do most of the time, it's not.
The biggest one, as I've mentioned in my previous post: the entire champion kit is balanced around voidling swarming. E barely deals any damage anymore. Same for Q. Comboing them leads to decent damage, but not enough for the amount of time it takes. The main reason why EQ works so well is because your opponent has an ARMY of voidlings chasing them during that time. That's it. Your opponent is going to run toward their turret and out of your range, and your only tool to stop them is a 2.5 second surpress on your ulti. That's it. After you apply E for a few seconds, you have 2.5 seconds to kill your opponent. And how do you kill your opponent in 2.5 seconds? With 3+ voidlings eating them away PLUS E PLUS R going simultaneously (and a Q to finish them sometimes). If voidlings are going to spawn every 4 seconds now, then you'll need 8 seconds to get 3, and that's only so they can get their attack speed boost. You'll then need at least 2-3+ more seconds so these 3 voidlings can deal enough damage in the first place. That's insane(ly underpowered). Malz does not have the AP ratios to kill an opponent fast enough nor the CC to hold an opponent for 12 seconds nearby him. Voidlings do not have the health nor the armor to survive that long neither. The entire champion would simply disappear with this mechanical change.

Make voidlings spawn every 3 or every 2 seconds instead. Make their attack speed stronger so that, when you finally get 3 of them, you can deal enough damage in time (whatever time you may have left) to kill your opponent. Subtly buff his EQ ratios. And no boring 30 second cooldown on W, please. Perhaps with those adjustements, Malz will become healthier to the game, while still being fun to play, if not potentially more fun than he currently is (more reliance on EQ combos and more nuanced gameplay is something that he currently needs, else he is sometimes too easy and mindless to play at its current state).

RouwhorstJul 1, 20161 votes

Great analysis. I think I can add something to the problems with the old W namely that the damage is too unreliable:

First I refer to DEADLYCHUCK's comment above.

Secondly his W pretty much needs his E, especially in the laning phase. When you use your E on a minion(wave), you indirectly throw away your W. This often creates an easy opportunity for the opponent to engage, and because you do not want that to happen you have to keep his E off cooldown, resulting in a laning phase where Malzahar does not really use his E that much. This is not that big of a problem, and now Malzahar has to think when and where he wants to apply his E, which I quite like. I am just stating this here to make people aware of this.

Thirdly his W gets shut down pretty easily. You mentioned killing the voidlings, but there are other ways to disable it: Preventing vision, e.g. walking into a brush causes the voidlings to lose aggro and walk back to the minion wave. Crowd control, e.g. Volibear's E, Jax's W can quite reliably shut down the voidlings for 3 seconds.

The problem I personally have is that Malzahar relies on an unreliable damage source and on the mistakes of the opponent(s). A smart opponent will just make sure to shut down his W and only then engage.

PrometheSJun 30, 20162 votes

{quoted}

From memory the intent is to both nerf Malz (he's too strong) and clean up how Voidlings function (at present good and bad uses of the spell aren't sufficiently distinguished). I haven't seen these changes in a playtest yet myself though, or had a chance to follow up on them, so not sure if they're hitting the desired mark or need further iteration.

If Malz is so strong, can you explain why he's getting so little play in competitive? It seems really stange, just like for Volibear - who was nerfed without being played in competitive a single time this year. Doesn't that suggest these champions aren't objectively that strong?

Christ SuperstarJun 28, 201611 votes

Just fucking revert the kit already - this rework of him has been an unmitigated disaster, since he plays nowhere near as he used to. Old Malzahar was a beast, you could even time your cast to spawn voidlings to intercept skillshots for you, you needed better posititioning (enemy also did though...).

Anyways, to try being constructive: Put some more power back into E (280+0,8 AP) , as it's now just tickling opponents. Hey, it's still 40 lower base compared to before... Add old delay to Q, so it's not autohit. Make voidlings blink to ulted target if the target is within 350 units of Malz - to keep his anti assassin/tank kit.

Revert W voidlings back to spawning at malz in direction of enemy, pre-rework HP (maybe even more), duration, dmg and enrage, with some AP scaling to make up for the total butchering of his ult (shame on you Rito). Have the CD at rank 1 be the average time it took old malz to get four rank 1 spells off, and rank 5 be the average time it took old malz to get four fully levelled spells off.

This will enable Malz to mass a little voidlings, give the enemy an indicator of when he's dangerous, incline enemies to keep their numbers down, and he can't just max W, as it will result in him not being a true threat - at best, he would max it 2nd. Also, if he goes full max W mode in the jungle, the offset is he's very easy to kill - And if it's still a problem, have voidlings take extra damage from jungle creeps.

There, I somewhat fixed him!

[slayer-jinx-catface]

RalanrJun 27, 20167 votes

They look like a massive nerf I'll tell you what.

Sahn UzalJun 27, 20167 votes

They do.

Every 4 seconds

I like that part, shooting the first Voidling twice won't completely stop Voidlings from spawning.

and whenever a Voidling assists in killing a unit

So we're giving him more laningpower, but reduce his power in mid/lategame? So... We have a Prerework Malzahar, but he's just a lot worse at 100-0 ing now?

Cooldown increased to 30/28/26/24/22 from 20/19/18/17/16

0_0

abadhaikuJun 27, 20169 votes

I have not been a fan of the Malz changes, and these nerfs do not sit well with me. They took power from his q, e, and r for more power into the w and passive, now the w is being nerfed. What is Malzahar supposed to do? It seems like they are pushing him into a passive farm lane style that does not build up to any lategame power.

Glebk0Jun 28, 20161 votes

New q is way stronger with so small cd and passive to e. Im happy, they trying to kil malzahar jungle.

Jungle Lux GodJun 27, 20166 votes

This completely destroys jungling Malzahar while barely touching lane Malzahar despite lane Malzahar being what would need to be nerfed, if he needs nerfs at all.

Malzahar is super reliant on having Voidlings multiply almost instantly on the target for his jungling capabilities. He no longer gets that, causing him to lose a lot of his speed and sustain. His speed isn't great and his sustain is pretty good, but both go down the drain with this change because he has no voidlings. Lane Malzahar relies on his voidlings the most, and gets hit hardest by this change.

However, lane Malzahar is more reliant on his E and Q for damage. Lane Malzahar maxes E first, and his highest winrate level orders for both solo lanes max REQW. While lane Malzahar would definitely still like his voidling damage, he doesn't need it nearly as much as jungle Malzahar does.

If you look at his winrates right now this seems extremely off from what needs to be done with Malzahar. According to champion.gg, both of Malzahar's solo lanes boast the highest winrates in the entire game for their respective roles at approximately 55% each, while his jungle sits at around a 50% win rate. Jungle Malzahar will be completely unplayable after this change, while his lanes would get rather small hits.

YumaS2AstralJun 28, 20163 votes

{quoted}

This completely destroys jungling Malzahar while barely touching lane Malzahar despite lane Malzahar being what would need to be nerfed, if he needs nerfs at all.

Malzahar is super reliant on having Voidlings multiply almost instantly on the target for his jungling capabilities. He no longer gets that, causing him to lose a lot of his speed and sustain. His speed isn't great and his sustain is pretty good, but both go down the drain with this change because he has no voidlings. Lane Malzahar relies on his voidlings the most, and gets hit hardest by this change.

However, lane Malzahar is more reliant on his E and Q for damage. Lane Malzahar maxes E first, and his highest winrate level orders for both solo lanes max REQW. While lane Malzahar would definitely still like his voidling damage, he doesn't need it nearly as much as jungle Malzahar does.

If you look at his winrates right now this seems extremely off from what needs to be done with Malzahar. According to champion.gg, both of Malzahar's solo lanes boast the highest winrates in the entire game for their respective roles at approximately 55% each, while his jungle sits at around a 50% win rate. Jungle Malzahar will be completely unplayable after this change, while his lanes would get rather small hits.

Malzahar has the highest winrate at top lane in the game, but has only a 0,73% playrate. I doubt that he is broken, he is probably just having the same situation as Karthus before when he had a 58% winrate but less than 1% playrate, nobody considered him broken.

At mid lane he still has 3% playrate. This may be skewed because he still has a 20% banrate, but I still think that this playrate is too low to consider him unbalanced.

Jungle Lux GodJun 28, 20161 votes

I mean he's got the highest winrate in two different positions. Having the highest winrate in two different positions doesn't always mean that a champion is overpowered, but it usually does correlate with being overpowered, even if their playrate doesn't reflect it.

AsheGetsGankedJun 28, 20165 votes

man can they stop fucking with my champ???? this is getting annoying now. fucking learn how to balance.

tXQbsPrjN5Jun 27, 20164 votes

"I'm retarded" - meddler

"I actually took a dump on a plate and called it my malzahar rework and meddler bought it" - repertoir

Sahn UzalJun 27, 201616 votes

Straight up Shit talking Riot and Rioters for changes that might not even go live is not going to do jack shit mate. You've already made atleast 2 threads about it. Calm down buddy..

tXQbsPrjN5Jun 27, 20164 votes

I've been around since before meddler began destroying this game. If he's going to put less effort into his job than I am into making posts about turds than he deserves what he gets.

RalanrJun 27, 20166 votes

I don't think he gives a shit about your thoughts towards him. It just makes you look immature.

tXQbsPrjN5Jun 27, 20161 votes

[deleted]

RalanrJun 27, 20166 votes

Fair point. We're done here.

RogueWillJun 27, 20164 votes

Is to prevent early dragons and Heralds. Since he coudl swarm them with voidlings quite easily

tXQbsPrjN5Jun 27, 20162 votes

Yea god forbid we have some diversity in strategy in this game. Why not just have everyone lane for 5 mins then tp them to dragon to they can fight it out then go right back to laning rinse repeat till one side wins.

Raid Boss MordeJun 28, 20165 votes

You know Fiddlesticks, Warwick, Shaco(maybe?), and Old Malzahar could solo dragons and heralds when they wanted, right? There are probably other champions who can do this as well.

Glebk0Jun 28, 20161 votes

Almost any bloodrazor or warrior jungler can take solo drake with finished(sometimes not) item. Fiddle and ww are to slow. Malz could take it with no items at all on lvl3 (it got harder if i remember correctly). New herald is impossible/hard for soloing, just not worth it. Do you have like any experience in jungling at all?

Raid Boss MordeJun 28, 20161 votes

I do have experience in jungling, and I know that old Malz could beat dragon at level 3 without losing as much health as new Malz.

Glebk0Jun 28, 20161 votes

Old you mean right after rework?

Raid Boss MordeJun 28, 20161 votes

I mean pre-rework

ArkaleJun 28, 20161 votes

I can vouch for this. I jungled malz pre-rework and it was much easier to get a quick level 3 drag.

RogueWillJun 28, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Raid Boss Morde,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=pdYETmMr,comment-id=00020001,timestamp=2016-06-28T01:46:58.283+0000)

You know Fiddlesticks, Warwick, Shaco(maybe?), and Old Malzahar could solo dragons and heralds when they wanted, right? There are probably other champions who can do this as well.

Level 3? Most of them can from level 5 onwards or whenever they finish the bloodrazor.

Raid Boss MordeJun 28, 20163 votes

Old Malz could solo it at level 3, so eh