How much has AP Malzahar's burst change? - An Analysis
I was wondering how much burst damage Malzahar would be losing in the upcoming rework.
So I made a spreadsheet. Feel free to mess with the values.
tl;dr Voidlings do a surprising amount of damage and 3+ voidlings can make up the difference in damage from pre-rework to post-rework spell damage.
It's clear that Malzahar has lost some burst in their kit with Voidlings now playing a bigger role in the total damage output. But to what extent?
In the spreadsheet, I calculate how much damage Malzahar is doing to a target given some fairly standard values for champions around the level 6, level 11, and level 18 timeframes.
Note that the spreadsheet does not calculate Voidling damage. They were excluded for practical reasons; until the patch hits live, I can't tell how much damage Voidling Swarm can deal over 2.5 or 5 seconds.
Since the spreadsheet does not account for voidling damage, we are posed the question:
#In the rework, can voidlings make up the damage Malzahar loses from their Pre-Rework spells?
Let's discuss.
#Level 6 Malzahar
The first major power spike that Malzahar acquires.
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With Malzahar at level 6 with 100 AP
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Assuming a target with 50 MR, 900 health
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Over 2.5 seconds of Null Zone damage
Pre-rework does 681 damage
Post-rework does 399 damage
A damage difference of 282
This is quite a substantial difference. Notably, this difference reduces as the seconds of Null Zone increase, since Post-rework Malzahar has a much stronger Null Zone attached to Nether Grasp.
- Same conditions, but over 5 seconds instead
Pre-rework does 766 damage
Post-rework does 526 damage
A damage difference of 240
Note that post-rework Malzahar is intended to lose some burst damage. With that clarification, with this ballpark, we can try and get an idea if Voidling Swarm can make up at least a sizable portion of that back.
#Estimating Voidling Damage
Rank 1 of Voidling Swarm will spawn Voidlings with 20 AD and 11 magic on-hit. Resistances around this time reduce damage to 75% (22.5) and this is reduced further by the Voidling's attack speed of 0.66 (15.3).
Each Voidling from Voidling Swarm will deal 15.3 damage per second.
With three Voidlings, their attack speed increases up to 1.00, meaning after three Voidlings, each Voidling will deal 22.5 damage per second.
This means that over the course of Nether Grasp, two voidlings will deal 76.5 damage over 2.5 seconds, and 153 damage over 5 seconds.
Three voidlings will deal 169 damage over 2.5 seconds and 337 damage over 5 seconds.
That heavily outclasses the 240 damage difference mentioned earlier, and it only gets higher from there if the Voidlings have been set up more in advance. But notably, this is still comparing against a Malzahar pre-rework without voidlings.
But even with that considered, it seems post-rework Malz can do fairly comparable damage to pre-rework.
#Level 11 and Beyond
Referring to the Excel Chart, the damage difference between Pre and Post rework increases.
At level 11, we're looking at a damage difference from post to pre is 353 to 189 (scaling with seconds).
At level 16, the damage difference is from post to pre is 381 to 211 (scaling with seconds).
This damage difference is quite higher compared to Level 6. Void Swarm also won't be increasing substantially in damage around Level 11 since it will likely be maximized last. However, by Level 18, the Voidlings from Void Swarm will be dealing about 70 damage per second pre-AS and 85 damage per second post-AS.
With two voidlings, that's about 410 damage over 2.5 seconds and 820 damage over 5 seconds.
With three voidlings, that's about 768 damage over 2.5 seconds and 1536 damage over 5 seconds. Yikes!
To what extent can Voidlings make up this damage? I hope I've provided enough analysis to provide some scope in the discussions going forward.
