Good lord Malzahar is unfun to play against.

Sèx Craved Eve·Jul 20, 2016·14 votes·1,465 views

He just stalled a game out for an hour and 20 minutes with the pressure he has with his kit and rylais. What the actual fuck.

54 Comments

warpenguin555Jul 20, 20164 votes

this isnt anything new. old malz did the exact same shit

Sèx Craved EveJul 20, 20165 votes

{quoted}

this isnt anything new. old malz did the exact same shit

He didn't have a million voidlings chasing you and slowing you for 10 years either.

RalanrJul 20, 20163 votes

Yes he did. His passive kept spawning then.

Void NargacugaJul 20, 20161 votes

So much fun having 40% CDR and old item 3174 ... My god I could probably get 4 to 6 voidlings out at a time.

RalanrJul 20, 20161 votes

God I hated fighting against an AD malz. Those little guys did so much damage so quickly and his spells hurt despite not building much AP.

Just eats through towers like mice and cheese.

Void NargacugaJul 20, 20163 votes

I'm kinda glad his tower killing potential took a hit with his Voidlings becoming his new W honestly. Don't forget that AD Malz built item 3071 ... If they didn't they where nub scrubs who didn't know how it interacted with its Cleave passive.

RalanrJul 20, 20161 votes

True.

Those fucking voidlings...

SpoofghoulJul 21, 20161 votes

item 3071 is still godlike on malzahar

his voidligns still deal a good chunk of ad and scale with total ad too and the rage passive is soo sweet

the hp and cdr dont hurt either

Void NargacugaJul 21, 20161 votes

Oh yeah its still godlike on him. Hell I still use it! And I play Hybrid!

SpoofghoulJul 21, 20161 votes

i have another one for you item 3706

you can steal movespeed and your voidlings scale with your movespeed

slow your opponent speed up the voidlings and yourself

its nasty runic echo warrior or bloodrazor all work, bllodrazor does require you to also grab rylais they simplay cant stand and fight because of the voidlings so you can kite them around and deal some added % damage, its a bit worse now with the range nerf

runic echoes is probably the best as a cheaper ludens with added mana & health sustain instead of a bit of mobility and damage. Very usefull in lane just walk 3 feet into one of the jungle entrances near tower whiles W + E clear waves and regain all your spend mana + more because of the E

Drop a Q on a raptor camp for a free 100 hp regen everytime you need some

smite helps take blues and scuttles finish drake and herald and allows you to clear wards with raptor smited or smite enemy wolf for some extra free vision also deny these smite buffs from the enemy jungler simply by smiting their camps

Void NargacugaJul 21, 20161 votes

Yeah that is true. But if I where to be taking summoner 11 I would be playing him in the jungle and not as a laner. But that is me.

SpoofghoulJul 21, 20161 votes

its not that bad in lane its 60 seconds or less combat summoner

helps with objective controll unlike other summoners

And i actually make more kills with it then ignite :S mostly because my voidlings suddenly stick super easy and thus spawn faster and get more hits in.

You also become even more ungankable with speedsteal

Void NargacugaJul 21, 20161 votes

Considering what I want in my dream build though it would seriously be hard to choose what to take out.

deadlychuckJul 20, 20162 votes

Yeah, but at least AD malzahar took some degree of skill to play.

The new malzahar merged the AD and AP play styles, and removed almost all the skill from the AD mechanics, and most of the power from the AP mechanics. -_-

rework just sucks all around, not fun to play against, impossible to balance, not fun to play as, and basically a completely new minion champion.

EROTIC RAID BOSSJul 21, 20161 votes

lol ive been playing it a little and I find it fun but maybe I'm a terrible person. I like some things about the rework, like weakening the ult to focus more on damage over time effects

deadlychuckJul 21, 20161 votes

The thing is, almost all of the good things that came from the rework, could've been accomplished without all of the fucking terrible changes.

They inexplicably linked every single skill together for no real reason. Making him impossible to balance.

They put the majority of the kit's damage in his W, which has voidlings are even less consistent than pre-rework.

They completely changed his farming pattern, so now you're forced to use W + E to wave clear.

And ironically they made the kit even MORE burst focused... hear me out. The old damage pattern was about dot damage between his W,E,R and then you could stack them on top of each other, to get a kind of bell curve shape. Where as now, because so much of your damage is from a swarm of voidlings, that you have this low-moderate damage on average, then massive spikes in damage towards the end of the duration of your W, and an INSTANT drop back down to low-moderate damage.

I mean really if you go back and look at their target goals for things they wanted to keep and things they wanted to change (the Q&A thing they did for all the major mages before the MYMU), they hit almost none of their intended goals. Rather they just released a new champion in an old skin, while removing the old champion.

EROTIC RAID BOSSJul 21, 20161 votes

Sure but I think the idea was to put in clear windows of power for malzahar and his opponents. void shield thingy up, and voidlings ready to go ham, that's when hes strong. when he doesn't have the voidlings or the shield that's when you want to fight him. that kind of thing is important.

I think with the nerfs to the CD on his shield, he shouldn't be so bad

deadlychuckJul 21, 20161 votes

Oh they wanted him to have extremely predictable and pre-defined gameplay. Fantastic. Fucking remove it.

EROTIC RAID BOSSJul 21, 20161 votes

Every champion needs windows of power and windows of weakness. particularly for those without skillshots or other forms of outplay potential, it's very important.

deadlychuckJul 21, 20161 votes

No it isn't? When does riven, lee sin, yasuo, rengar, udyr? Tons of champions don't have these "windows" that you're talking about, generally they just had mechanics that you can play around, or fail to play around. Malzahar's "window of weakness" was when he was ulting. Yeah in lane that might seem awesome, but it leaves you defenseless in a team fight.

This concept of windows being needed are bullshit, because malzahar wasn't some serious plague on the league before the update. A good player could play him up into diamond, and a bad player couldn't get into gold with him.

He was designed in a way which actually put importance on player skill, and if you're worried about him beating you in lane, you can always rush a QSS. If rushing a Zonyas is enough counter for riot to justify zed, QSS is enough to justify malz.

Now how well the game goes for you is almost completely up to the enemy, either being able to play around you or not. Yet you're given very few tools to play around them. Malzahar was always that kind of champion, if you let him control the tempo of the fight, you're going to get tossed around, but if you control the tempo, he has no answers to that. He had no defense other than trying to combo you down, assuming it's 1v1.

The current kit doesn't even let the malzahar player control the tempo of the fight, when the enemy isn't controlling it. Then tempo of the fight is forced onto you by malzahar's kit, and if the enemy can turn the tempo of the fight around on you, he can do it for quite literally any malzahar player now, because the players have no control over the pacing of the fight.

EROTIC RAID BOSSJul 21, 20161 votes

You say it like he's weak now or something but he's a powerful pick with some nice utility, across all elos and even in pro games rn.

It's totally natural to play around the cooldowns of your opponents, that's what those windows of power are that I was talking about. That goes for riven lee etc too. Just a really basic example, if lee misses his q or just used it, that's an opportunity to attack him from range without him being able to respond.

If he was totally unable to dictate the outcome of any fight, he would surely be useless at high elos and in LCS matches, but clearly that isn't the case. Basically I just think you're full of it lol

Also, no one ever rushes QSS, as the amount of power you give up just to escape his ult is too great, itll make you useless mid game. Better to play around his ult

deadlychuckJul 21, 20161 votes

item 3139

Yes, remove one line of text from his W, and his only utility of afk jungling and early objectives is gone, which for the record they apparently put onto the PBE for about 2 days, before realizing it's impossible to balance him and gave him a meaningless range nerf to his auto attack and an unnoticeable MS nerf. It's probably a single condition for an if statement on the voidling's buff code.

He's objectively worse in every way in lane than before, and less consistent despite that.

If you want to talk about windows of power, then he has the most unfair ones to ever be implemented. About 7-8/12 seconds for his W he can't engage, else his damage isn't going to be high enough, or it's going to drop to basically nothing when his voidlings all die simultaneously.

Then to top of the 7-8 seconds of his W, he also has what ever time his W is just on CD longer than the 12 seconds. Say rank 1, without CDR, you are looking at about 15-16 seconds of inability to fight, where he has about 4-5 to start a fight, after having made it blatantly clear he is going to be able to 3-4 seconds prior.

No other champion is subjected to this kind of gating and forced pacing. Even the old AD malzahar had more consistent DPS than this new one. He is an extremely telegraphed burst champion, with one cheesy function which makes him even decently viable.

EROTIC RAID BOSSJul 21, 20161 votes

First of all a lot of his utility comes from the now more powerful low cd silence he has. Second it isn't that weird that he has a long cd on w. Your ability to poke or follow up to kill someone as zed is a lot lower if your shadow is on cd for example. I don't think it's that bad once you have 30% cdr on malz

deadlychuckJul 21, 20161 votes

This is almost the equivalent of making annie's ult do no damage unless the target is stunned with her passive, except for all of the skills.

Honestly i'd prefer if they just swap the passive and the W, basically give him a fiora W that he can use while ulting to avoid interruption (if timed well), and give him back his old passive, with voidlings being a less focal point of his kit. Distribute the lost damage to his E, and maybe a minimum damage on his ult, similar to mundo cleavers.

LordGeovanniJul 20, 20161 votes

it was at most 2 at the same time in his old kit

RalanrJul 20, 20161 votes

It never felt like 2.

ReikkenJul 20, 20161 votes

{quoted}

It never felt like 2.

it was always 3 if he had a target to use E on

Void NargacugaJul 20, 20161 votes

You never built 40% cdr did you?

LordGeovanniJul 20, 20161 votes

thats what i was counting unless malzahar cuts off his ultimate just to rotate his spells for more voidlings

Void NargacugaJul 20, 20161 votes

That is exactly what you did to maintan the 4 to 6 Voidlings. When you did Ult (for AD Malzahar) you only used it so your Voidlings had an easy target.

SpoofghoulJul 21, 20161 votes

2-4 depending on wheter you could E reliably

usually just 3 but those things hurt

Lady HammerlockJul 20, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Yes he did. His passive kept spawning then.

Every 4 spells,dude thats like a full rotation Q E W + one of those spells again and they NEVER and I MEAN never did that much damage with an AP build

Void NargacugaJul 20, 20161 votes

With mana and CDR in his old gimmicky AD build that becomes a nonexistent problem. Spam Q W and E and you could keep 4 to 6 Voidlings out. Trust me I've done before. It was hilarious.

The Black Cleaver was a core item for his AD build due to how the Cleave passive worked.

deadlychuckJul 20, 20161 votes

You literally couldn't get out more than 3 at a time, and that's with 40% CD, well more like ~35% but i digress, the old malzahar relied more on his E to farm than his W, so more often than not, his voidlings were busy with the minions, and say that he did cast E on you, they didn't charge you with an insane speed boost.

Cloud273Jul 20, 20161 votes

{quoted}

this isnt anything new. old malz did the exact same shit

And old Malz was just as broken. People complain about Vayne's %health damage. It doesn't even scale. She gets a flat amount for every rank, and that's it. And she needs to hit you 3 times in a row to get that damage. Malzahar just points and clicks you and you take %health damage. And he gets more of it with all the AP he builds. And this is only one aspect of his kit. His voidlings are nearly impossible to outspeed if he gets his malefic visions on you (or whatever it's called now). And of course, let's not forget his suppress, the best CC in the game. And let's not forget about the free spell shield he gets. Every single part of his kit is cancer.

warpenguin555Jul 20, 20165 votes

umm vaynes is true damage, malzahars is magic damage. also a surpress "stuns" yourself too

Cloud273Jul 20, 20161 votes

{quoted}

umm vaynes is true damage, malzahars is magic damage. also a surpress "stuns" yourself too

Again she needs to hit you three times to get that damage. If you let her auto you that much you deserve to take true damage. Malz just clicks on you once and he gets the damage.

Void NargacugaJul 20, 20164 votes

That's when you build MR to reduce the damage. If you can fit it in build a Mercurial Scimitar. Activate it and there goes his ultimate because you just nullified it.

warpenguin555Jul 20, 20163 votes

meet item 3140 item 3139 , your lord and savior against all things Malzahar. AP champs try item 3001 . not as good as the other 2 items in terms of beating malzahar but it never hurt to build MR against him.

Also vayne's passive makes it alot harder to move away from her cuz she gets that move speed boost

ReikkenJul 20, 20164 votes

yeah I always ban him before you could just kill him if you caught him by surprise, but now that's not an option. He is never caught by surprise with that passive.

Feed DaddyJul 20, 20163 votes

I played against a malzahar as akali with tp one time and afk farmed until level 9 and then proceeded to dunk him and he was like omfg most boring lane life.

Its like what did you expect scrub lmao

LordGeovanniJul 20, 20162 votes

I like Yorick but they call his kit unfun because of his weak ghouls with bad hp bad damage and bad AI targeting so they make a ranged mage with more damage than all of Yoricks ghouls on one ability the ability to spawn past any thing Yorick can do while being safe in the back with a 90% damge reduction (i think it was lowered) and cc nullification shield. go to items item 3027 500 hp 400 mana and 100 ap with a powerful passive relitively cheap for its stats item 3071 300 hp 20% cdr a medium amount of usable ad 50 and what i have to admit is a pretty bs passive considering how shit defensive items are for a significantly higher cost

deadlychuckJul 20, 20162 votes

Or as... seriously, the kit just plays itself. You press a couple of buttons, but when you press them really doesn't matter all that much, or even landing Q doesn't really matter too much.

It's a terrible rework from all angles. Totally new play pattern, all but removed AD, unfun to play as or against, and impossible to balance.

The Great DivideJul 21, 20162 votes

Sigh, Malzahar use to be one of my favorite go-to champions. I've played him like 2x since the rework. I'm glad that repertoir listens to community feedback (or at least acts like it), but his rework resume is not so hot (Kogmaw was just another case of a champion made more unhealthy that never needed a rework in the first place).

It just makes me sad knowing that old malzahar will never be a thing again.... I loved old malz

Sèx Craved EveJul 22, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Great Divide,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=s7WME3H3,comment-id=000b,timestamp=2016-07-21T15:53:35.721+0000)

Sigh, Malzahar use to be one of my favorite go-to champions. I've played him like 2x since the rework. I'm glad that repertoir listens to community feedback (or at least acts like it), but his rework resume is not so hot (Kogmaw was just another case of a champion made more unhealthy that never needed a rework in the first place).

It just makes me sad knowing that old malzahar will never be a thing again.... I loved old malz

Me too.

RocketRelmJul 21, 20161 votes

So what team were you running that allowed for this? That sounds very difficult for a single champion to do once everyone hits full build.

Void NargacugaJul 21, 20161 votes

This is what the teams looked like. https://i.gyazo.com/5082acf454cf188a3eb8ea37c380a2e9.png

I can't check build order with op.gg on normal games.

Sèx Craved EveJul 22, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Bow hunter 16,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=s7WME3H3,comment-id=00080000,timestamp=2016-07-21T10:01:37.812+0000)

This is what the teams looked like. https://i.gyazo.com/5082acf454cf188a3eb8ea37c380a2e9.png

I can't check build order with op.gg on normal games.

yup, at first I went damage for an hour, then realized we needed a tank because he kept one shotting me. "Fun" game.

Handin Out NapsJul 21, 20161 votes

Malz has always been the most unfun champion to lane against. Playing against his kit is a game of standing under your turret and letting him shove every wave instantly. Luckily riot is finally nerfing him because pro players decided to abuse him.