Malzahars only real damaging ability is his w now. the ability has a pretty decent cooldown timer and if you kill the voidling after he casts it. he is very vulnerable as he has no way of dealing significant damage unless he is ahead.
forresto5 voteshas anyone else seen the slew of horrible malz players who think its a good idea to try to ult you from full hp 1v1 without casting any other spells first?
CarbRundum1 votesBut that's the most effective strategy.
forresto1 votesbut it doesnt burst shit. I've had people do it to me as teemo, and I just walk away with 1/2 - 2/3 of my hp depending on the strength of the malz. This is despite teemo being super squishy, and most of malz spells being point and click undodgeable.
Kenywi4 votesI just played Malzahar's remake and I'm extremely disappointed. Malzahar has been my goto mid laner since I started over 3 years ago. He's been pretty consistent with a few minor changes here and there due to items mostly. One of the biggest problems through the years is in others KS'ing on his ult. Seems everyone loves to KS on Malz. So our primary death dealer is usually Visions. I used to use Will of the ancients as my sustain. Malz IS squishy so Will used to keep me in my lane longer <the early ap boost from hextech revolver didn't hurt either> Now you've taken Will away and all other spell vamp items so there goes my sustain. Visions does squat for damage, the ult is a complete joke now, other's don't even have to worry about ks'ing during the ult <they still do> but they can move uplane a bit and just wait cause the ult doesn't do squat unless they are already mostly dead. I used to hit them with Visions, toss void under them and then ult them, boom dead either by me or someone jumping in. Now none of them hardly do anything. Its all in the voidlings as long as they are alive and one hit takes care of them. Please rethink what you've done, I'm not interested in playing Malz jung I like him as my mid.
AshranReaver4 votesIt's really amazing that people think malz is more powerful now. Free Spellshield ok I get it it's annoying, and being able to kill barron solo is unexpected and yeah being alarmed about that particular aspect is understandable but everything about him is weaker. He's just about 1/3rd of what he was capable of prior to thie rework if built ad and 1/2 as deadly as old AP. That's not even taking into account the AP item changes.
Riots stance on what to play is pretty clear. AD assassin juggernaut or carry
Astôlfo1 votes"being able to kill barron solo is unexpected" More like, a huge problem?
Big Lincoln1 votesyou could do it with literally any ADC with enough lifesteal
or if you're Kindred
why is it problematic when a mage does it
Astôlfo1 votesUh, no. Because Baron isn't supposed to be solo-able?
Big Lincoln1 votesuh, yeah
because with enough AD and lifesteal any champion could take it
it's not an issue for Malzahar when he does it with CDR
soloing baron means you're fucked if you get caught. malz is no different.
it's not a problem.
Astôlfo1 votesUh, apparently you don't get it, so I'm done trying to reason with something like you.
deadlychuck3 votesYeah, they really are. As a previous malzahar main, it's really fucking stupid.
Xilixer2 votessame for me man. i am NOT interested in playing malz jungle. every since ive picked him up it was because he was the terror of assassins everywhere. he was the guy you DID NOT want to 1v1. now he is a joke to lane against/with.
from what ive seen of him the only way to fix this problem for laning malzahar is to nerf his passive and w; (Even i agree that the whole 90% shield is a little too much) then put back damage/scaling/both into q and e.
get rid of the aoe on his ult. whoever's idea was that was extremely lazy and uncreative. instead move that percent damage directly to the channel increase the damage by a bit because they are nerfing it already when it already does crap damage. now your golden.
impliment all these changes and everyone is happy. malzahar's jungling gets nerfed and his laning/dueling is buffed.
forresto1 votesas a teemo main, my problem isnt with the 90% on his passive, it's the free spellshield. I think if they took that off, and nerfed his w so that he didnt end up with 50,000 voidlings, he would be in a decent place.
very frustrating to see him wandering around popping shrooms with consequence.
Manqs2 votesAlso a 
-main albeit not since season 1. I'm kinda bummed that they changed from a burst mage with a gimmick pet into a gimmick pet mage with no burst. I loved being able to punish gready assassins. But that's all subjective.
Although the jungle- is way to powerful right now. W will be nerfed for sure though. Soloing dragon as low as lvl 1 and rift herald in lvl 5 have been shown to work on several Youtube-channels. As a main I don't mind being OP. But this is silly.
s passive is strong. But the cooldown is also insanely long. I belive the power of his passive diminishes the higher rank you get to. The better people understand the passive, the weaker it gets. A decent 
shuriken or a 
with 
should be able to keep the shield down for most of the time in lane.
Basicly the only way to play right now is by maxing W. And the voidlings have so many possible counters that Malzahar will never ever make it to LCS as anything else then a pocket pick jungler. You can lose them in bushes, or by breaking line of sight. If you kill the first voidling the rest won't spawn. They can't do damage under enemy turret since turrets one-shots them. They break of if you use hourglass or for instance pool as Vlad. There are so many ways for a good enemy player to abuse the voidlings.
Also the old style of is quite destroyed. Maxing E isn't viable and the Q + E + R combo is so weak. Without voidlings the damage is so low.
All of these concerns, with the exception of the passive, can be remedied with a simple fix. Move some of the power from W back to E and maybe even a little back to R. This fixes s insane jungle clears, soloing dragon and rift herald early whilst making the old style playable again. It also makes him more viable Mid or Top again while still letting him be a good jungler.
EcchiOtakuTM1 votesThey need to change malz's Q so it EXTENDS e duration instead of reset, Winions need to scale per level to stop jungle malz and the first winion summoned should take 75% reduced damage from turrets AD malz's entire niche was turret taking but now he can't even harm a turret ffs., his E is great as it is, and his ulti is a nerf to burst malz(muahahaha) and a buff to utility malz players <3 love it a lot and I guess buff to AD malz.
Sure people will say W is his main source of damage and I feel it is too but his E+Q are not to be underestimated.