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Malzahar Re-imagined Ability Kit

Stacona··3 votes·492 views

This should go without say, but these are both my personal thoughts and nothing being in the main post is anything official at all. Discussion also comes from multiple people, so feel free to comment below with your own thoughts and ideas on the subject matter at hand, and no this is not an excuse to mindlessly shit on my own or anyone else's ideas. Properly talk things out like the adult that you are supposed to be.

There is no official changes being presented here, to repeat this once more, so you do not need to get upset and/or butthurt if you see something you do not like. In a matter of fact, if you do not like something then help improve the post by saying exactly what you do not like and giving your own ideas to fix it, there is an edit function for a reason.

Basic Attack Range: 600 units Movement: 340 units per second

(The Voidling has zero armour and magic resistance, so any and all damage is very effective against her [except for true damage which becomes the least efficient damage type].)

The Voidling (Passive): Leash Range: 600 units; Attack Range: 125 units Malzahar has a Voidling that constantly follows him around, she cannot die, but her power is based on how much health that she currently has. She attacks the closest enemy to Malzahar.

Malzahar's ability casts heal the voidling for 20% of her maximum health and while Malzahar is out of combat The Voidling heals for 10% of her health every second. Minions and monsters cannot target The Voidling if she is below 30% health.

The Voidling deals up to 60 - 250 (+100%AP) magic damage per attack (min 6 - 25 (+10%AP) magic damage), has a base attack speed of 0.750 attacks per second, and has 300 - 800 (+150%AP) health.

After a combination of every 5th ability cast and The Voidling attack will spawn a miniature voidling for 3 seconds that has 10% of The Voidling's maximum power, every miniature voidling spawned grants The Voidling 8 - 20% bonus attack speed. Miniature voidlings always stay by The Voidling's side.

Call of the Void (Q): Cooldown: 10/9/8/7/6 seconds; Cost: 65/70/75/80/85 mana; Range: 1000 units Passive: The Voidling's attacks heal Malzahar for 10/15/20/25/30% of her damage dealt against targets inflicted by blind, silence, or darkness.

Active: Malzahar opens up two portals between the target location and The Voidling each summoning a beam towards each other after a brief delay, dealing 35/50/65/80/95(+30%AP) magic damage each and silencing for 2 seconds, enemies can be damage by both beams.

Null Zone (W): Cooldown: 14 seconds; Cost: 50 mana; Range/Radius: 1000 / 250 units Malzahar warps the target area for 5 seconds, creating an impassable barrier for enemy movement that can be destroyed after 2/3/4/5/6 basic attacks that do not miss. The Voidling deals 4/5/6/7/8%(+1% per 100AP) of target's max health as bonus magic damage against targets within this zone.

Malefic Visions (E): Cooldown: 15/13/11/9/7 seconds; Cost: 85 mana; Range: 800 units Passive: The Voidling moves 20/25/30/35/40%(+6% per 100AP) faster towards enemies inflicted by blind, silence, or darkness. Malzahar moves 10/12.5/15/17.5/20%(+3% per 100AP) faster towards The Voidling when she is more than 200 units away from Malzahar.

Active: Malzahar places a nightmare on the target enemy for 4 seconds, blinding it for 2 seconds and causing The Voidling to prioritize the target and spawn a miniature voidling with every attack against it.

Nether Grasp (R): Cooldown: 140/100/60 seconds; Cost: 100 mana; Range: 700 units Passive: The Voidling heals for 3/4/5% of her health per attack against immobilized enemies.

Active: Malzahar channels in place to stop and suppress the target enemy champion for 2.5 seconds. The Voidling can only attack this suppressed target and gains 60/80/100% increased attack speed while Malzahar is channeling.

Activate Nether Grasp again to stop Malzahar's channeling early.

UPDATE NOTES:

Null Zone: Changed from 30/40/50/60/70% slow to a barrier that prevents enemy movement that is destroyed after 2/3/4/5/6 basic attacks that do not miss.

(I like this idea more as it goes with both a silence to prevent mobile champions from dashing out of it and a blind to prevent blinded targets from destroying it. Rather than the slow idea which only works with a silence, also I liked the idea of creating a helpless torture chamber trapped inside with a big and a bunch of miniature voidlings ripping you to pieces, gaining pleasure from your screams and torment, fitting for a void champion.)

13 Comments

TeCoolMage5 votes

I'd rather they put that passive on Kindred than on malzahar who's lore doesn't have anything to do with having a single pet.

They should just focus on his seer and prophet theme instead

SweedishGunner2 votes

Agreed. The Voidlings should just be a small part of Malzahar's kit, with his Void powers taking centre stage.

Some form of Seer ability where you can see enemy spells, cooldowns and maybe their mouse pointer would be interesting.

Stacona1 votes

I think Voidlings should be a bigger part to Malzahar's kit than it is now.

Also, I do want a painter champion where you paint an area with mouse movement set to a specific value, this makes it where everyone that has vision of the area can see the mouse pointer. So basically a line skill shot, but you have full control of how you direct it for a set duration, this means the control of your champion is very limited. This type of ability does not work for Malzahar, but Soraka could do something with it like change her Q into falling stars from the mouse cursor, for example.

Stacona1 votes

Actually I do think Wolf should be an always active passive around Lamb, but I also think Malzahar can be the more spell caster version of that, where as Kindred be a proper dual-marksman that hyper scales because you have two attackers (even with Wolf being more half an attacker, and still melee where he can only attack enemies within Lamb's base attack range closest to Lamb) where you grant benefits for attacking the same target, turning Kindred into the proper tank-killing marksman that marksmen are supposed to be. Also Wolf would still be completely invincible and untargetable, here The Voidling can be targeted by attacks, spells, and inflicted by movement impairing crowd control in forms of counter play.

And technically is not a single pet because I added a voidling swarm aspect here as well where spell casts by Malzahar and attacks from The Voidling will spawn additional mini voidlings to murder the enemy for a short duration (uncapped amount of mini voidlings) because I wanted to keep the upgrade voidling mechanic from old Malzahar and I liked ability spam days of old Malzahar as well.

Teridax682 votes

I very much like the core idea behind this change. I completely agree that the main problem with Malzahar's current kit isn't his point-and-click CC, but the fact that his point-and-click CC is also attached to a heavy amount of damage that requires no preparation to land. Establishing a clear separation between his damage and his crowd control could help make him healthier to play against, while still allowing him to both kill and disable opponents.

Differences in personal preference aside, if there's one criticism I were to make of this kit, it's that I'd personally put even more emphasis on Malz needing to prep his target in order to kill them, so that there's no possibility of him dealing significant damage if he ults his target at the very start of a fight. Instead of having his ult buff his Voidling's attack speed, for example, it might be better to give the Voidling bonus attack speed against a specific target if she's attacked them for a long enough amount of time. That aside, I think this is a solid direction to set for a potential Malz rework, and I hope this gets a lot more attention. Congratulations on the great work!

Stacona1 votes

Well, the Voidling has to walk to her target since she is a melee attacker, so if you instantly ult someone without any preparation work with QWE then you are losing out on a whole second of damage.

There are two attack speed increases for The Voidling, one is bonus attack speed with no hard limit of whenever you spawn a miniature voidling from spells casts and voidling attacks, or every voidling attack against targets inflicted by Malefic Visions, the other is from his ultimate since it needs to grant more damage somehow since it is an ultimate. But I rather have the damage and crowd control separated as this forces proper comboing of abilities and counter play by the enemy, either flashing away trying to predict the ultimate when he goes for his Null Zone OR CCing The Voidling since that is where all of his damage lies OR you can try to burst down the voidling as much as possible to reduce the incoming damage.

Maximum damage should be a lot because of how impossible it is to actually pull off in an actual game, but if Malzahar plays the situation super well then he should be rewarded with insane amount of DPS for it.

The other thing is make Malzahar's damage a lot more obvious as well, give some kind of fairness for the opponent, and make his damage more localized around Malzahar himself with a tight/short leash on the voidling and miniature voidlings.

Teridax681 votes

Sure, but considering how your Voidling damage is based off of her health, and since she's not going to lose damage if Malz ults first, and also gains a lot of movement speed towards disabled enemies, you might still end up dealing 200% AP's worth of damage with her even if she misses some initial time to attack during an instant combo. I don't think ults need to provide damage, and there are many ults in the game right now that do no such thing (e.g. Taliyah's ult, Ryze's ult, Zoe's ult, Kindred's ult, etc.). The balancing of this kit is ultimately in your hands, but I think focusing the Voidling's offensive power on how well it fights, rather than whether or not Malzahar uses certain abilities on his opponents, would guarantee that she would never be able to deal too much damage without having fought for some time first.

Mataka Tek1 votes

I think if you are going to change his W, turn it into something like Jarvan or Yorick's trick... Void Containment. Where they are stuck in a void box for a short time.

Stacona1 votes

The slow kind of does that, it is like the old W, but damage attached to the voidling against those in the zone instead. The combination of having a powerful slow at later ranks and silence kind of traps them inside, not to mention place down the zone and suppress them in place does exactly that and allows the voidling(s) to go ham on the target and rip it to pieces.

Something I wanted from Malzahar was allow for abilities to work together that did not rely on his ultimate all the time, because I loved the old P+W+R combo, but I wanted stuff like that on his base kit and not have to rely on a long cooldown ultimate to repeat that process. Here I allowed for the abilities to combo and work together while giving back the old P+W+R combo as well (and by removing damage on his suppression directly forces Malzahar to have to combo the ability, rather than be a both an instant suppression and massive nuke over time, that is another thing needed to be fixed is not make the ultimate strong on its own but give a point-and-click some type of thought process and skill to it).\

I just wonder if the trap would be too strong however, but with a slow you can have the duration of the zone much long, where as a trap abilities has to be around 2 seconds for a basic ability trap or break some how, but how do you create a breaking effect for a void ability? Personally I think it is best where the ability needs to be combined with either his silence or suppression makes the best sense, allows for better skill expression that way and offers some kind of counter play even with an instant suppression since you can have a brief window to flash away (unless he lands his silence) since the creation of the null zone gives that split second to react with trying to stun the voidling or flash away (The Voidling breaks the leash range under specific conditions while the target is suppressed from Nether Grasp).

Mataka Tek1 votes

I just wonder if the trap would be too strong however, but with a slow you can have the duration of the zone much long, where as a trap abilities has to be around 2 seconds for a basic ability trap or break some how, but how do you create a breaking effect for a void ability? Malz has no escapes... a trap would give him one.

Stacona1 votes

A slow and silence does the same, but I find a way for the trap to work out which actually increases the base ability combo by a lot making him even less ultimate reliant, but the ultimate is still there for a much more potent element for his death combo... which an ultimate should do that and not be the champion entirely, just a huge moment of power of what the champion already does (unless you are going for another ability like with Kassadin or Anivia with low cooldown ultimates, aka glorified basic abilities).

warpenguin5551 votes

What I like: The W is a cool idea and sells the idea of being trapped in the void Permanent pet should be a thing on a champion in the future

What I don't like: The lack of damage outside the voidling. That was the main focus for Malzahar's midseason update, it didn't really feel too great. There is no ability that feels good to max first. Q does such little damage that you wouldn't want to max it, but because W and E don't do damage you almost have to.

Stacona1 votes

Malzahar and Kindred should both have it now, Kindred allows for Lamb and Wolf to both play significant roles instead of all being about Lamb and then Wolf has no relevance to the kit whatsoever.

E - Actually does do damage because it spawns mini-voidlings a lot more easily which is the minimum damage of the big voidling. But what failed beforehand was that Malzahar did not have a proper kit to support the voidlings, where as if you build a kit around the voidlings then it works out. Where you can protect the voidling from taking damage and CC, also can lock enemies in place or trapped inside an area until they break out of it, during these moments you can deal damage - almost like a horror film and Malzahar is the monster, but more puppet-master genius style (fitting for a void prophet, eh).

I combined the old, more significant voidlings and void swarm together and really go all in on sustain damage, void swarm rather than damage over time makes for a lot more clear damage from Malzahar rather than point, click, space aids of death.

Not level reliant? Plenty of sustain damage and tank busting in the kit? Main source of damage requires being in attack range and does not cost mana? Sounds almost like a marksman, but still is a full on mage... hmm...

I think it would be cool to see mages being able to play in the duo-lane, cut out the marksman entirely and open up brand new team compositions / metas because of it. Being level, mana, and cooldown reliant stops a lot of them from doing this, but if we can some how find a way for this can be implemented unto a "traditional" mage... just saying...

Not obvious max is good: Q - if you want more silence, poke, and sustain. W - If you want a more durable barrier to avoid enemies from escaping easily. E - If you want more voidling swarms more often, want your blind up more often, and want faster voidling to avoid her getting kited / chase potential with the movement speed.

Allows for options for the player to choose HOW they want to play rather than "do what the best thing is" which makes every game feel samey. Allowing for player personality to shine through is a pretty cool thing! Personally I feel W will always be a max last and maxing either Q or E will be the way to go depending on the situation that you are looking for. But Malzahar in the bottom lane to replace the marksman, that could be a pretty cool thing and we need more of that in League of Legends of shaking things up.

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