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Thoughts on the current state of Malzahar (input appreciated)

Odriew·4/22/2017, 6:17:23 PM·23 votes·2,217 views

To establish my credentials, I'm a diamond malzahar main, and I've mained him for four years now (diamond last year and this year), so I think I've got a good background for talking about what malzahar can or can't do.

The purpose of this post is to try to convey my thoughts on why Malzahar is currently bad in mid lane, and to either find out parts I'm wrong about or (ideally) highlight specific details on why he is weak to bring to Riot's attention, rather than just having another post about "Rito pls stop nerfing him he's already bad". Additionally, the specific scenarios and examples outlined in the post are usually true, but not without exception (however, they are exceptions to the general rule, not something that happens even one third of the time). The primary reason he is so good in support is that many of these weaknesses (introduced by the change to his w AFTER the rework, so that he is no longer rewarded for good play, rather than the w he initially had when the rework was released) are avoided by not having to cs, waveclear, or otherwise interact with anything, as when using e+w to win trades in botlane, which did not work with the previous version of w.

A key fact is that Riot's professed vision for Malzahar after the rework was to have the focus of his abilities be his voidlings. However, they disliked their initial versions of his w, and changed it to something that punishes mid laners but rewards supports for non-interactive play. In mid lane, the other champs will basically walk away from you and the voidlings cannot chase, because they slow down out of auto range. With the futher nerfs, anyone with aoe (so, virtually every mid laner, or any tank with a sunfire cape) kills your voidlings before they can even auto, unless you blow your entire combo. The worst part is, the voidlings usually die INCIDENTALLY to the other player's abilities; eg anivia will just ult + e you and the voidlings will die before ever making it to her, or xerath will w+q you and the voidlings will die instantly. In essence, to actually make use of the voidlings, the other player either needs to make mistakes (not uncommon in lower elo, much less so in high level) or you need to all in the other player just to do damage, beyond the paltry 250 you get from e at level 9, BEFORE resists. In practice, the damage from e is more like 140-160. That is to say, the focus of his kit (once again, directly according to Riot) is not functional due to the continued baseline nerfs, and the remainder of his kit fails to reward him for good decision making, by neutering the voidlings that make up the bulk of his damage. With either the w initially used during the rework or old Malzahar, you would at least be rewarded for good planning (eg dropping a few minions to low health, then building a swarm by killing them and THEN fighting the other mid laner) and decent positioning. This is no longer the case.

"But q resets e!" you say. Yes, until you realize it takes a quarter of your mana pool at level 9 to do it, even after buying a mana item. That is to say, you get punished for harassing, and it does minimal damage when you do, making it functionally worthless unless you use both charges of w (see above for why that's not useful unless you all in). If you DON'T all in, that's a grand total of (assuming optimal timing on the q) 300-ish damage from e and 80 (50 after resists) from q. (I'd also like to challenge you to name one other mid laner whose harass does all of 350 damage at level 9, assuming everything lands. I'm not talking about one ori q or something; if it's a thunderlords champ, then eg ori gets off q+w+auto+thunderlords proc. That's 500-600 damage right there, and it's on a much lower cooldown and much lower mana cost.)

If you do use e+q for harass, then any mid laner with waveclear (so, once again, virtually every meta midlaner) will use one or two abilities and shove you under tower, then roam and get a kill from another lane, while you're stuck autoing minions for 60 damage a pop. If you don't use e+q for harass, and use it for waveclear, it still takes so long that even a mordekaiser can just walk up and clear the wave faster than you. This isn't a hypothetical; it's a specific example that happens from time to time when I play against morde in mid lane. You can't even punish him because your voidilngs die faster inside the enemy minion wave when you have no minions, and his shield just powers through your e and e+q without the voidlings there to reinforce your damage.

Once the other mid laner gets qss, even as a first item, your kill potential drops like a rock, along with the fact that the mr directly reduces your damage, since you can no longer all-in and (as previously established) not going all in just gives you the low damage from q and e.

He wasn't unplayable before this patch, but he's pretty much dumpster tier right now. It's a little easier once you start teamfighting, and have the items to make q actually useful, but his voidlings still die instantly and you still get either cced or qssed when you ult, basically turning him into a q bot who can at best peel for his adc (once again, something a support malzahar is fine with, but a carry who can't do damage is not very useful). I'm fairly certain a champion who can only reliably use one ability is not typically considered either fun or good for game health.

Since Riot has claimed to identify the issue as one of voidlings having too much base damage, any of the following fixes should work (from least to most drastic, although only the last one is drastic in any sense of the term): a) remove base damage from his w and give it to the rest of his kit in the form of ap scaling, which is a very commonly used change by Riot, especially in the case of the tank assassins, so it is easy for them to implement in this case, b) reverting w change, c) change his passive to something less binary and more easily balanced, or d) reverting the rework entirely, which is what almost every pre-rework malzahar player wants anyway, but they probably won't do because they've only done it once across several failed reworks (kog'maw).

So that's my relatively well-qualified view on this matter, and I look forward to hearing from anyone, especially if it's a Riot employee saying something like, "We're not looking to fix this in the next patch or two, but we are definitely aware of these issues and are trying to resolve them." (better yet would be a statement that they're releasing a fix next patch, but I consider that unlikely).

Any CONSTRUCTIVE comments, either to support or refute these ideas, would be greatly appreciated.

Tl;dr Malzahar is weak in mid lane for these specific reasons and I hope someone from rito reads this.

36 Comments

TheUltimateLife4/22/2017, 9:44:11 PM5 votes

Hey, not sure why this post had 0 input but the other recent malz thread right now has a bunch of people just debating the reverting of the rework.

Anyway, I've said this on another thread, but imo if they want to keep the reworked version of malz, I think they need to change HOW the voidlings take damage (if possible, I don't see why not, but I'm no programmer/coder) and ensure that the passive shield does what it was meant to do.

I think the 2HP thing is fair if they make it so that it actually takes two hits to kill a voidling. What I mean is AoE and on-hit modifiers currently count double damage ( I don't know why ). An Ori with her passive can auto a voidling ONCE and it's dead. Of course this means it only took two hits before the recent change anyway, which is why I'm for making them last 2 hits. This won't solve ALL the problems, as you can still dispose of them quickly, but it will give another much needed second to the voidlings' survivability while still enabling a duo lane like bot to get rid of them in one shot (which is what it seems like Riot is going for... for some reason).

For his passive, I'd like for it to be refreshed when you hit R, just like Yasuo's Way of the Wanderer. I don't care too much about the damage reduction, but either the duration or the way it works needs to be changed (if there's no R reset mechanic, cause if there is I think it'll be fine as is. If you can summon the shield when you ult, you can solo lane much better as it still takes one action from an enemy jungler to break the shield). If changing the way it works, it should actually be a SPELL shield. Breaking it with an auto then then having a spell that was mid-flight with the auto still cc you feels really bad. I'm honestly not sure why it went from one second to .25 seconds. I feel like a typical nerf fashion would've been to see how it worked at .5. (I vaguely feel like I might be wrong. DID they mess with the time duration at all or just outright down .75 sec?)

This change might be a bit WORSE for bot lane, though. Another solution to make sure he's not immune down there would be to tie the shield to being a passive of his ult, so he doesn't get it until level 6 and it gets refreshed on ult activation. Not sure what they'd make his actual passive in this case, though. Maybe since he's a prophet, malz can anticipate his enemies' movements and negate tenacity? Idk how broken that'd be tbh, but suppression is already unaffected by tenacity so it'd just be the silence duration and the Rylais slows. Shouldn't be too bad.

Also, Apparently Meddler DID say something about malz, if you scroll down in this link he admits they'll look into it.... in the future, essentially. Could be awhile from the sounds of it. http://www.surrenderat20.net/2017/04/red-post-collection-quick-gameplay.html?m=1

OH and I wanted to comment: I've played him a few times now, post-recent nerf. I have to say, even in mid lane it feels like I'm just a support. I was against an Ori, so I had to play old-school and pretend I didn't have voidlings for my damage....while having nothing else for damage either lol. We won that game, but I didn't feel like I could really impact the game. Just help. Some supports feel stronger than that tbh

Hexs Fortune4/23/2017, 1:32:40 AM2 votes

Phreak was showing numbers on his stream about malz support being really strong. Right now malz is being played in bot more often than mid so they balance around that

Erockandroll4/23/2017, 12:45:45 PM2 votes

Personally, I think the swarm mechanic (not the voidlings themselves) is what is making Malz difficult to balance.

At the moment, his swarm pretty much either swarming out of control, or getting shut down before it even begins. More so now that they needed to make the voiding even more frail.

Side note about the whole Mid lane/support argument. I'm not particularly favored in one way or the other, Simply because if I feel like Malz is playing like Malz, his lane position would be irrelevant. That being said however, The fact that his Voidlings are a core part of his spell rotation, and that his voidlings are being buried due to his support pressure, Kinda makes him to feel to good in either position.

Lady Hammerlock4/23/2017, 12:12:54 AM1 votes

Malz right now, only has 2-3 problems

  1. His passive eats up way to much of his power budget , Which actually limits the amount he can be balanced
  2. His W ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^, is a skill that is pretty unhealthy, ex: you can win a trade but then a voiding attacks once and suddenly your half health. It's even worse if your playing a melee champion because they just get swarmed by them.

One good thing came out of his rework though

  1. The E refresh mechanic, which is actually pretty interesting and sorta an expression of skill, like E tempoing and I hope they keep that of they rework him again
Mataka Tek4/23/2017, 12:21:40 PM1 votes

I agree almost 100% with the Diamond Playing Original Post. However, I will say this. I don't think you can play at diamond level anymore with "just Malzahar' Meaning, I don't think it is possible to start a new account and play Malzhar at first pick (unless banned) and actually rank up to diamond level. He is simply TOO nerfed.

In regards to Support Malz: First of all, Malzahar as a support is really a joke. He has NO QWE CC or heal. He really makes for terrible "support". He was Supposed to be a Midlaner, and could Jg too.

But assuming you want "fix" Malzahar so that he can play support:

Modify his voidlings so they only multiply when facing Jungle Monsters, Drag, Baron, and if the champ it is attacking dies. That Fixes the "support" lane issue. Allow his multiply to be very strong vs jungle monsters and drag like they used to be. And that will fix his Jg problems.

He will still need improvements to his W to counter the "loss" of power to his voidlings in LANE ... so

Change his W into a 2 part cast: On 1st Cast, it spawns ONE old style voidling with hitpoints and ability to frenzy.
On 2nd Cast, it places the old "Void Pool" like pre-rework Malz.

Additionally,

Malz shield needs more CC protection. It was originally envisioned to provide better protection and is severely nerfed, the CC protection used to last a LOT longer.

It would be good if:

  1. AutoAttacks could not "pop" it so easily.

And lastly,

At higher ELO game play Quick Silver Sash completely Nullifies the Ultimate. And this renders Malzhar useless against most midlaner, almost every top laner, and all ADC champs. (heck even most supports these days).

No other Champ loses "DAMAGE" when QSS is used against him except Malzahar. It completely ruins Malz at higher levels of play.

Mataka Tek4/23/2017, 2:31:16 PM1 votes

I main Malzahar, and I cannot stand using him as a "support" because he has No Tank, No QWE CC, No Peel, and No Heal. The only reason he is being used as support lately, is because the other Malz mains can't play him Jg anymore, or Mid at high ELO anymore.

He has no place to go except be a support because his scaling is pathetic now.

Simply return his Voidling to what it was and prevent them from "multiplying" for champs... would help a lot to make him less dangerous as a support. But it won't fix his core issues which are that he is much too squishy and does not scale.

He needs his old W Pool back.

I have suggested that his W be a 2 cast: 1st cast: spawns 1 Voidling 2nd cast: spawns the void pool.

SirLapse4/23/2017, 5:24:57 PM1 votes

A major issue I have with Malzahar is that the reason he's so strong in bot lane is that he can take advantage of the enemy if they want to CS. His passive lets him do this without getting punished. In solo queue, not every person is geared to handle Voidlings like they handle a fork. You need to actually coordinate and kill the things before they do damage, rather than run away. In lower elo, it's very common that I see people fail to do that.

Still though, 3 factors currently exist for why Malzahar is better at support than he would ever be in mid lane:

  1. Liandry's and Rylai's (which are his core items) are now preferred more as support items. Rylai's in particular got much, much worse for mid lane as a whole.

  2. Like Zilean, going all-in on a Malzahar is pretty difficult. The support has to save harass abilities for when Malz is going to use his Voidlings, otherwise a low attack speed ADC at the start of the game is not exactly going to be handling Voidlings all that well. AoE mages don't need to be as careful because they do not have another aggressor.

  3. Ignite/Exhaust being taken in the bot lane works to Malzahar's favor. Ghost, which is his typical mid lane summoner spell, is not as effective as the aforementioned summoner spells when involving bot lane.

I think there's just a miscommunication between the balance team speaking amongst themselves, with some people just micromanaging things like overpowered champs and others actually talking about what could possibly be overpowered. They've stated already that they use about 3 days to determine a change and begin to put it through, so I would imagine something like Malzahar being more difficult to suggest anything in terms of "buffing for mid lane" which is a simpler workaround than "force him off bot lane."

If we're being real here though, mid lane Malzahar would easily come back if the actual focus of his kit was really Voidlings. Support Malz's kit is about Voidlings, mid lane is actually more about his E in tandem with the rest of his kit.

3 changes imo would be beneficial to test out and see how they affect him:

-Nerf base damage and increase AP scaling so that a Malzahar needs 30 AP to do the same damage at lv1. A mid lane Malzahar can easily get a Doran's Ring, a support Malzahar needs to set up more aggressive runes in order to be able to do the same thing.

-Voidling HP should scale based on cast number. If a Malzahar is casting while at full stacks, his first set of Voidlings will have 3 bars of health. If Malzahar is casting below that, they will only have 2 bars.

-Voidling speed decay will scale based off of AP (the more AP you have, the less they will decay).

warmcorntortilla4/28/2017, 5:14:13 PM1 votes

I played Malzahar a lot pre-rework, and I played him quite a bit post-rework, too. Even now, when I hardly play him at all, he is my highest-mastery champion.

At first, I enjoyed him, because he was broken, and playing broken things are fun. Now that his QoL has been dumpstered, playing him feels Bad. Capital-B-Bad.

First of all, my ideal solution would be to revert all his basic abilities, and give his ult the Warwick treatment. Seeing how they changed Warwick's ult to something that can be messed up, and then playing him, made me realize how much better they could do for Malz. New Warwick is amazing, imo (though I did not main him or play him before, only when I rolled him in ARAM) and there's so much potential to give Malzahar's ult skill-expression, which would make playing into him feel more fair. (And playing as him feel more fun and satisfying!)

However, if they're not going to do that, then there are a few things that I think MUST be done, and some that might be interesting.

Must List:

  • Give his voidlings the ability to survive/kill stuff. Somehow. I don't care how, but right now, I cannot count on them for damage most of the time, no matter what, and none of time into about 50% of the mid lane roster. So many champions just decimate them before you can do anything with them at all. In team fights they are a joke. Where is my damage? I say as Yasuo kills me again. I do not know. It is gone.
  • Let me direct them with auto attacks. Jesus. Why did they ever take this away? A mystery to me.
  • Trash that horrible spell shield passive. So many mid laners have basically "Free damage" as their passive. Brand, Lux, Ori come to mind. Why does Malzahar get this awful-feeling mini game? Also, why can people break it with an auto attack? It feels great when I pick up a Zilean bomb, any other time, it is just another thing I have to carefully horde and protect, encouraging me to NOT interact with my mid laner, rather than interact with them.
  • Give him the ability to do stuff in lane. He is so boring to play because of the intense mana management you have to have all lane. It gets to the point where the best decision is always to just NEVER interact with your laner, so you can get your farm. Pathetic. Why can Lux/Ahri/Viktor/Anivia/Ori/Karma/Zed/Yasuo/ Cass/Brand/Ziggs/Morg hit me AND the minions? Why does only Malzahar have to choose between harassing the enemy laner or getting farm?
  • Why did they gut his ranges and ms? He is so slow! I wouldn't care about this if they gave him some sort of compensation but he is so clunky to play now. Feelsbadman. (I've always thought he should ignore unit collision anyway, this would fix so many of these problems)
  • Get rid of that stupid e-q interaction. I'm ASSUMING they did it so that to get full Malefic Visions damage, you would have to hit a skillshot, but his E is entirely Q-reliant now, which means all MY decision making with regards to it is gone. Want to use Q to silence an important skill? Well, too bad, because if you do that you do not have it to refresh malefic visions, so you automatically lose out on the trade. (And let's not get started on those toxic bastards with shields. Lux, Ori, Karma: I'm looking at you.) I am forced to use another skill to get the most out of pretty much any of my other skills. Like OP said, I am FORCED to all-in every time, which means Malzahar has no potential for free harass, he can only trade, and since pretty much every other mid out-damages him, and has more resources to spend in lane, it means he loses every trade. So, what do you do? Nothing! Literally, do nothing. Do not interact with your laner at all. Use your passive to block whatever damage you can't dodge. Wait desperately for ganks/mid game.

Maybe List:

  • It'd be neat, perhaps, if his voidlings interacted with life steal, attack speed, and crit. It would make AD Malzahar viable, at the very least.
  • It would be nice if his voidlings could interact better with jungle camps, to make jungle Malz a thing again!
  • Just straight up get rid of voidlings. I hate them, anyway. The pool was awesome. Zoning, late-game damage, worked amazing with other teammates crowd control, melted tanks off the face of the planet. I miss this spell so much. It was one of the things that made Malzahar truly unique, and dependable.
  • Rework ult into a skill shot of some kind.

Also uhhhh please re-buff Rylai's or something because his late-game damage is a joke. One of my favorite things about him was that super dependable damage, and now he feels like shit every single minute of the game. The only way he's any fun is as a support, but his support style of buy-qss-or-die-to-my-adc is super toxic and feels bad. (For them. Feels great for me.)

Also that ugly splash could go, too, if Riot's in the mood for granting wishes.

k wìx4/22/2017, 11:34:42 PM1 votes

I don't really play Malzie, and i generally go support, and I play between gold/plat/diamond levels. so uh.. full disclosure - take it with a grain of salt!

I generally agree with you on most points. He just hasn't really recovered from his little love affair with bot lane. He needs something. I don't think he's quite 'dumpster tier' right now, that's a harsh way to put it - I think his ult alone can keep him fairly viable in certain comps and such, but he's definitely not S or A tier right now, and it feels like you need to play ... safer then a lot of the core mids because of his nerfs.

Lugg4/22/2017, 11:48:18 PM1 votes

Malz was my first main in the game almost 5 years ago and I have played him on and off since then. I initially liked the rework, but the nerfs since then have made him basically unplayable now. I like that the rework made it where you couldn't 100-0 zero someone unless you were ahead, so you would have to harass some before your all in. This was a fair change. Now you can't hardly do decent harass to pretty much anyone who understands the matchup.

I also love how Riot changed gameplay to not have Zed's ult be worthless with an item, but Malz has the exact same problem now and they aren't doing anything about it.