The State of Malzahar and how to make him more fair.

To be blunt the currently Malzahar is in an awful spot. When I say that I do not mean in terms balance, but in terms of player satisfaction. Playing as or against Malzahar during the laning phase is a very uninteractive experience. A typical Malzahar hugs his tower and tries farming minions as best he can alts while the enemy laner either tries to poke him down trough his spell shield or decides such an attempt to be fruitless and a farm lane proceeds. Why this is the case is that there's little incentive for Malzahar to actually try to damage his opponent, with long CDs, high mana costs and delayed damage it's hard for Malz to actually kill his opponent. Well at least it's hard until he reaches level 6 and his jungler comes around for some very oppressive and low counter play kills. After laning phase the current Malz takes a role similar to that of Blitzcrank, catching out enemies who find themselves in the wrong place whilst his teammates makes short work of them. This is the aspect I believe frustrates the most people about Malz, that he's being played as a catcher rather than the DOT/Minionmancer/Anti-Assassin/Objective Control - Battlemage that he used to be. Therefor I'll purpose a smaller pass to his kit, that aims to keep whats already there but shuffle things around a bit to make him less oppressive.

1. Nether Grasp , I'll start with Malz R since it's his most iconic ability but it's also the cause of most of his problems. With an instant suppression and decent range this ability probably raises the chance of Quicksilver Stash being bought in the game to 95% or so. It's just a to strong catching tool and many posts I've read suggest removing but I digress. Point and click abilities needs to still exist in the game as a counter to mobility and that it's well suited in a kit for a supposed Anti-Assassin. Though 2.5 seconds is a very long time in League of Legends, and any assassin caught likely dies within half of that if they are in the middle of the enemy team. All that extra second does is let Malz team catch up in case he uses it offensively, so my suggestion would be to cut it and give Malz some strength elsewhere.

2. Maleficent Visions, the Swiss Army knife of the kit. Malz uses his E for farming, controlling his voidlings as well as dealing out the majority of his damage. Since it's used for so much that Malz does it could be dangerous place to compensate the R nerf but I believe there is good way to do it without breaking things. Namely I'd want the reset mechanic to be more rewarding than it already is. Hitting Call of the Void right as Maleficent Visions is about to end feels great and I think that capitalizing on that feeling is the right way to make Malz more fun for everyone.

3. Nullification Zone, (Null Zone + Void shift). Malzahars Voidlings have seen many, many iterations by now but none have really seemed to work as Roit wants them to, which is why I suggest moving them back to his Passive to leave this slot open for a more active ability. Null Zone were originally remove because it wasn't a very interesting ability, it was mostly used in a combination with Nether Grasp for some extra damage, other than that it were used to push the wave I guess. Now the idea I present here is an attempt to make a more interesting version of Null Zone that let's Malzahar make a lot more choices. Malzahar gains Voidshift when entering the zone. Tying Malzahars main defensive tool to an offensive ability will let Malz sacrifice his safety for more aggressive plays in the early game, using the Null Zone to reset Maleficent Visions. Now with the abilities extra power it's CD should mirror those of other offensive/defensive tools like Zed's Living Shadow 22/20/18/16/14 or something similar. An additional benefit to change like this is that the point were the ability performs at it's greatest potential is in close range to the enemy which further enforces Malzahars Anti-Assassin capabilities.

4. Call of the Void, the most solid ability in Malz current kit. An impactfull skill shot with a unique AoE. Nothing that really needs changing with it but it would be nice if it could grant vision around the edges like it did before the first rework. A seer likes his vision game you know.

5. Summon Voidlings, well it's back to the original voidbros then. Of all iterations of voidlings I claim that it was the best one, none intrusive but helpful as well as the source of a cult the AD Malzahars, who are extinct nowadays. As RiotRepertoir wrote in this comment the Voidlings shouldn't take up a big portion of Malz PvP budget, which I believe the old ones did pretty damn well. The only change I would do to the old passive would be to lower the amount of spell-casts necessary to summon a Voidling by one to compensate for W longer CD.

This rework were made in the mind that no new art should be necessary, so it should be easy to try out in comparison to more ambitious ideas.

TLDR: Malzahar is frustrating to play against and boring to play as when when used as a catcher. Nerf Malz Rs Duration by a second. Make E deal more damage after being reset. Combine Current Passive and Old W into a New W. Leave Q alone or give it back it's vision utility. Return the Old Voidling Passive.

Now that should about sum up my ideas for now but mine are far from the only ones, every other day I see a post talking about the state of Malzahar and seeing so many people upset about a champion that were changed 2 years ago it must mean that something isn't as it should. I know that you at Riot are busy the games always changing and Worlds is just around the corner but please, look in our way.