Boards›Gameplay

Can we get any QoL changes to Malzahar?

Slice Typhoon··1 votes·994 views

Hello, Malzahar main here. I know that he was basically the poster-boy for the Mage update a couple seasons back, but I feel the magic of his playability has gone down significantly.

His early game is very rough even with stuff like "minion dematerializer," mostly because the duration and damage of his** E "Malefic Visions"** short and weak. This also makes him significantly mana hungry due to the rotation of minions sometimes not connecting with its "bounce" effect. I do like that it can be refreshed with Malzahar's** Q "Call of the Void,**" but farming with this is not ideal in the slightest because it exhausts so much mana.

Pairing that with the fact that his** W "Void Swarm"** spawns a variable amount of voidlings that can all be killed with 1 AoE ability that he constantly has to recast in order to farm. His voidlings have lower survivability than Zyra's plants. ( It almost makes me miss his old "Null Zone," because it could slow and was at least more useful in his ability to farm. Back in Season 1, I used to believe all Void champions had a slow and silence anyway. RIP Kassadin. )

You can't 1v1 anyone at level 2 like most champions today, I get that he's a control champ but he doesn't control much with his arsenal until mid-game. (OR LATE, if you're behind - but it might be too late! ) So even if you'd like to do something about LeeSin and Talon invading your jungler, you can't do anything but watch and harass or ignore it by continuing to farm.

His Q is great in stopping most caster-type champions, but not champions with abilities that persist like Kayn "Reaping Slash/Blade's Reach" or Sylas ' "Abscond / Abduct" mid-cast. (Why do they persist anyway instead of being stopped immediately with Silence or Malzahar's ultimate on them? )

For whatever reason, I see people wiggling out of Malzahar's R "Nether Grasp" and I don't understand why. There's no QSS on them, they aren't Gangplank or Rengar, they just manage to force click out or something. I think this is a bug with certain champs with "ghosting" abilities.

Void shift is neat in that it sort of gives you a body condom to lane with, but laning against a gap-closer champ early game rends it pointless because he's so slow. (Speaking of which and maybe I've been the only one to have thought this, but why does Malzahar have unit collision anyway? You can literally see him flying over minions in lane - same as Syndra . There is nothing more immersion breaking than watching him fly to lane only to later have a seizure sandwiched between minions! WHY DO THE FLYING CHAMPIONS OF THIS GAME HAVE UNIT COLLISON? IT'S CAUSED ME MORE DEATHS THAN CLEARING WARDS!!! Kassadin and Fizz ignore unit collision for some reason. Fizz I can understand because he's a slimy fish person but Kass... )

Sorry, thoughts from a frustrated Malzahar main. He just feels very clunky to me now.

9 Comments

Slice Typhoon1 votes

BUMPUS MAXIMUS. [sg-shisa]

Slice Typhoon1 votes

BUMP.

Slice Typhoon1 votes

BUMP.

Slice Typhoon1 votes

BUMP.

Slice Typhoon1 votes

BUMP.

Galiö1 votes

You didn't mention anything about quality of life. You just want a buff for a champion that is fine/strong atm.

Some abilities have animations that will not be stopped by CC such as silence/root/knock ups/etc...

It's not just a malzahar thing.

Posui Gart1 votes
  1. Malz is probably the worst midlaner in terms of being extremely oppressive when strong. You can't do shit to him on lane once he is ahead: cant 1v1, cant roam(unless you are ok with giving up plating/first tower gold), if you aren't ranged you can't even farm safely. Buffing him is dangerous
  2. His E is weak but with a pack of bugs it clears the whole wave at lvl5 if bugs aren't killed fast. Try using it on ranged minions first: they are usually grouped so more chances for E to reach melees when ranged are finished. Also try using E after enemy waveclear spells. Sure, some champions have low enough cds and manacosts to clear them anyway(Orianna for example), but in other matchups they can still deal enough damage before they are dead
  3. Silences don't stop dashes mid-dash. Nothing stops dashes mid-dash except displacements and some special CC(Veigar E, Jinx E), and, iirc, supressions like Malz ult. At least I saw a video of Malz ulting Tristana mid jump, she stood still in the air for the duration of the ult, then fell down. And some dashes(Amumu's Q, Jarvan's EQ, Sylas' E2) are not really dashes but more of a forced pulls and will work even if CCed.
  4. Void shift is really strong. It makes you basically immune to being caught from fog/bush by champions like Lux, Blitz, Thresh and such. It also makes it harder for some assassins/burst mages(the once who start with a huge damage burst/CC, like Rengar, Nidalee, Zoe) and overall makes dealing with him slightly harder.
  5. There is no rule about "flying" champions being immune to minion block. Kass and Fizz passives are specifically made like this, I believe its because of how Fizz E and Kass R work, getting teleported to a different place because of a minion block and, as a result, not dealing expected damage to an enemy would feel shitty
Slice Typhoon1 votes

  1. I'm not talking JUST about mid lane or level 5, just the first 3 levels. You can destroy him once you pop his void shift because he can't trade with you unless he has a bigger minion wave early on. Mid is easier for him because it's generally a shorter lane but top is a different endeavor all together. His kit is designed to push which is effective against certain match ups, but when dueling comes around it ends up being less than desirable. His jungling has been severely gutted too due to the fact that Riot dislikes multi-role champions. If he gets caught in river he's an easier target than Karthus, lol.

  2. You still have to expunge mana into summoning voidlings because sometimes 1 spawns out of 3 for some reason.

3 & 4) That's good to know. Though I'm pretty sure Thresh and a few other champions can act on the removal of. Void shift.

  1. There's no rule to a lot of things in the game that don't inherently make sense. Teemos blind affecting Lee Sin, Darius bleed and poison affecting Oriana and Blitzcrank. But do you ever wonder how different the game would be if it didn't come to that?
Posui Gart1 votes

You can destroy him once you pop his void shift because he can't trade with you unless he has a bigger minion wave early on

Good thing its not that hard to avoid trades at levels 1-3.

Mid is easier for him because it's generally a shorter lane but top is a different endeavor all together

Top is hard for a lot of immobile mages, its not just Malzahar's problem

His jungling has been severely gutted too due to the fact that Riot dislikes multi-role champions

And thats a good thing. I would prefer not to lose another midlaner mage like we already lost Taliyah and Karthus. Im grateful to Riot support Malzahar died fast enough

You still have to expunge mana into summoning voidlings because sometimes 1 spawns out of 3 for some reason.

Their number depends on your stacks. If you got 1 bug even when casting with 2 stacks, its a bug and I never had one

I'm pretty sure Thresh and a few other champions can act on the removal of. Void shift.

There is a huge difference between being chain-CCed to death or get a Thresh dashing at you

There's no rule to a lot of things in the game that don't inherently make sense. Teemos blind affecting Lee Sin, Darius bleed and poison affecting Oriana and Blitzcrank.

And thats fine. We have simple rules "Teemo's blind affects blind people", "Darius bleed works on everyone" and "Champions have minion collision unless they have a special effect that prevents it". If you try to use real-world logic, game would become much more imbalanced and complicated, and no real game works like this.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Slice Typhoon

Ideas for the new Sion relaunch.
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous2 comments
2
votes
I got very cocky and now my MMR is terrible.
Gameplay2 comments
1
votes
Change Talon's E to a point and drag dash?
Gameplay2 comments
1
votes