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@Riot The real cause of Malzahar's ban rate and where be should be nerfed

Nilok·7/1/2016, 8:03:21 PM·8 votes·617 views

So new balance changes for Malzahar have dropped on the PBE, this time hitting his movement speed and AA range.

The problem is that these changes will not affect Malzahar's ban rate and the core part of his problem. In order to fix Malzahar, you need to address the elephant in the room, his passive. I would personally like to see Malzahar return to his previous passive as his Voidings felt like more of a reward for playing well, but doubt that will happen.

Instead, I recommend removing the damage reduction from his passive, for the very least in the 1 second window after his passive is triggered. This will allow Malzahar to get poked down when his shield gets triggered instead of being able to laugh it off. He will lose the safety that you intend by reducing his AA range, and it will reduce his survivability, which you intend by reducing his movement speed. Hit the core of the problem, not the side effects.

TL,DR Don't hit Malz's base stats, remove the 90% damage reduction from his passive in the 1 second grace time after it triggers, or entirely.

15 Comments

Critkeeper7/1/2016, 9:17:33 PM2 votes

They aren't going to touch his passive unfortunately.

If it were up to me, I'd remove the suppression from his ultimate and increase its range by about 30% to compensate a little.

5050BS7/2/2016, 12:18:58 AM2 votes

lower it to a 50% DR also it needs a longer CD at lvl 18 12s at the lowest.

SouL1ess7/2/2016, 6:31:32 AM2 votes

I'm rather intrigued at why does Riot think Malzahar's updated passive is coherent to his kit.

Nothing in his kit relies upon his passive, nor does his active gameplay. And now, his core stats are being changed in order to fit his passive, which really doesn't make sense.

Guy Fox Teemo7/2/2016, 1:51:34 AM1 votes

Malzahar doesn't have a super High ban rate what? That has been gone for like a full patch

TheGrot7/2/2016, 7:05:45 AM1 votes

As a high diamond Malzahar player (pretty much Malzahar main on secondary role), the new nerfs are fine. The previous nerfs were going to over nerf him, but thankfully, Riot has reverted those changes. If your 5 movespeed means so much to you, take a singular movespeed quint and sac 5 bonus ap. He's really good if you know how to use voidlings and do voidling tricks. Voidlings have infinite range, so it makes sense that they'd want to make him MARGINALLY more vulnerable to early ganks, which is all that these nerfs are really going to do.

deadlychuck7/2/2016, 4:48:22 PM1 votes

Naw, the real problem with malzahar's post-rework kit is that his voidlings are too strong when they work correctly. However they're completely useless when they don't, and they are only so strong because the rest of his kit is so weak.

You can complain about the passive all you want, but it's honestly one of the most singularly balanced parts of his kit, given his damage pattern. If you engage when he's about to spike in damage, then it will screw you. If you engage as his damage is falling off, the passive doesn't do anything.

As far as ganks go, if you're no 100% melee, then you can use your ranged capabilities to disable his passive before the gank comes in. If he plays back, then he has to use his E+W to farm. If he does that then when his W goes down, you've got a good 10 second window before he could hope to have a couple of voidlings.