Malzahar Nerfs Done Wrong (And a Question about Zyra Changes)

After reading the 7.3 patch notes, I am pretty happy with how Riot decided to balance many current OP or strong champions. The only questionable one in my opinion is Malzahar. (And yes, I am a support main)

The nerf is as follows:

W - Void Swarm VOIDLING SPAWN TIME On-cast ⇒ 0.35 seconds after cast (matching the animation) COOLDOWN BETWEEN CASTS 1 second WAIT FOR ME: Past 600 distance, Voidlings move 10% more slowly for every 100 additional distance farther they are from Malzahar

I do agree with the movement speed decrease based on distance, because now Malzahar is forced to stay in the fight if he wants full poke. However, the nerf to voidling spawn time takes away the most skillful part of his kit, using it to block skillshots. This mechanic was brought to my attention when I saw LemonNation block two Nautilus hooks in one fight by trading his damage and poke for a high skillcap safety maneuver. It takes prediction, precision, and reaction time to use this ability to it's highest potential, and seeing a pro use it this way inspired me to start trying it.

You might be thinking, .35 seconds isn't that bad. Maybe you're right, on LAN that is. To most people who play with over 40-50 ping constantly (and more to many others), this change makes it extremely hard if not impossible to block many instant cast skillshots like Blitz hook or Ezreal Q.

The issue with Malzahar support was his ability to do tons of damage with only getting close enough to press E. This was made even more oppressive by the fact that his Q refreshed the E, giving the voidlings more movement speed. I don't understand why you wouldn't just nerf the base damage to nerf Malzahar support and buff the AP scaling to keep Malzahar mid viable, or maybe removing the refresh on his Q (in addition to the voiding speed over distance nerf). I feel like this just makes an incredibly linear support/champion even more linear by giving him less options for high skillcap play.

Also, a question about Zyra changes: The ability for plants to autotarget champions by default being removed is a very healthy change in my opinion, but will plants still auto target champions if the ability hits? Because I can think of many a bullshit scenario involving Zyra landing a full combo, ulti and all, on a champion, but there is one minion 5 or so units closer to the seed so the plants waste their burst on the minion.

Thank you for reading.