@Riot can we have another look at malz
Quoted from the mage update patch notes. "Malzahar faces a constant dilemma: never use his abilities in lane or push constantly. This playstyle causes Malzahar to be very binary and non interactive; either he has enough AP to drop his spells on a wave and leave lane or he slowly pushes out, leaving him exposed to constant ganks. As well, the nature of his ultimate - cancelable by any CC - makes Malzahar’s power curve binary by necessity: you either stop his channel or somebody dies.
In both cases, what Malzahar needs is leeway; a brief window of protection. Adding that window allows us to dial back on Malzahar’s burst and wave clear while giving him more sustained threat in a larger fight. Malz’s actions shouldn’t feel inevitable, but at least he’ll feel less bad about trying to make plays.
He’ll still be the consistently damaging voidling master, but he should feel better about brawling near the frontlines when he brings more sustained cooldowns and a little bit of protection."
And the dev corner for the update http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/6c2r0VAc-mid-year-mage-updates-malzahar-direction?show=rundown
From early on and even now I think that the biggest tldr was
- remove the press R to win
- maintain the playstyle/feel that the mains enjoyed pre rework
- give more presence/importance of voidlings in his AP counterpart
You were successful in removing the press R=win but it came at the cost of nerfing him across the board. You nerfed the damage of his Q for both base damage and ratio but that was compensated with a slightly lower cooldown that I think mains can overall accept. You nerfed his damage and ratio on his E also and I am sure the practiced response riot will give will be that you gave his the reset on it with his Q/ult but then that means the ability cost significantly more to even match the damage from pre rework but not only did you do that you gutted the mana return from it. Mana return from a kill on malefic visions lvl 1 post rework is 6.52 vs 10 from pre rework and lvl 18 is 21.82 post rework vs 26 pre rework and you need at least 1300 mana to break even with pre and post rework or the the percent return needs to minimally be 3% max mana. He did lose the press R=win but got all of his front load threat removed.
A bit theme issue I am not sure how the whole team missed and had the audacity to say that they feel it is bad that malz can kill a squishy with a w-e-r rotation when his secondary role is an ASSASSIN. Full rotation kill should be fair for an assassin and unlike every other primary or secondary assassin in the game he has no mobility his only mobility/surprise factor was and still is flash like annie with the infamous flash tibbers combo. The ult alone no longer having kill potential there is no issue but full rotation should not be an issue. Look at another mage that was problematic as a secondary assassin ahri with her mage style being more of a kite mage thanks to her mobility from her assassin component and her assassin style is from both her famously high mobility and the front load full rotation burst of any standard APC. Malz was easily a zoning dot style mage and frankly his assassin style came from the front loading of his damage like the previously mentioned flash tibbers. He does not at all have the same feel and playstyle of his pre rework.
The voidlings are extremely unreliable after a moderate amount of damage they can be one shot any AP or AD caster upon summoning and the the shield plus the blanket damage nerf and poor voidling reliability forces a excessively passive player and since his front load damage isn't enough for his to make plays and the slow/obvious set up of a heavy portion of his kits unreliable damage forces an exceedingly passive playstyle which would be slightly okay on a zoning dot style mage but that style needs to be more reliable. The most famous and reliable zoning tool in his kit was moved onto his ult and in a weaker format and the way his kit was shuffled around it feels more like parts of his kit was taken away rather than updated or added to. The attempt to make his voidlings more important for his AP kit was much too forced and at the cost of a lot of his controllable damage and frankly nerfed the standard AD build path even though the play style was simply made easier (some would probably say dumbed-down)
Quitely frankly it would be better to do a full revert of his kit update. But assuming riot hates admitting they are wrong with the decisions they make (objectively there were good idea's put into the rework), I would suggest something like this for those on both sides of the for and against the pre vs post malz rework.
PASSIVE: Each ability cast summons a voidling for 15 seconds up to 6 voidlings total. Each new voidling after the sixth replaces the oldest one on a reset timer. At 3 or more voidlings they frenzy gaining bonus movement speed and attack speed and damage. Voidlings gain 100% malzahar's total armor/magic resit, 50% total health, 50% AD. Freanzy bonus is (%10AD)(15%AP) magic damage, 50% bonus movement and attack speed. Voidlings remain after death until despawned or killed (rough guess of viable/not over the top numbers)
Q - CALL IF THE VOID: Same as live
W - NULL ZONE: Similar to pre-rework. change damage from 4/4.5/5/5.5/6 max hp/sec to 2%/2.5%/3%/3.5%/4%(+1% per 100 AP) current hp/sec + 3/6/9/12/15(+10%AP)
E - MALEFIC VISIONS: Mostly same as live including Q/ult reset. Add 3% max mana return upon unit kill.
R - NETHER GRASP: Back to pre-rework with changes to damage. 30/45/60(+40%AP) + takes 15% increade damage from malzahar's other abilities while suppressed while
Basically take pre-rework, make the voidlings more important part of the actual kit damage for lane malz and easier to summon for AD malz. Keep ability damage nerfs from post rework since voidlings are more worthwhile like what is attempted with post rework and follow the pattern of skill damage nerfs in the kit through cutting out a lot of damage from null zones %health damage by reducing the percent, making it current health and adding a small portion of flat damage so it is capable of actually still executing. And the ult has it's effective damage cut in half in you don't build any AP and even still is weaker for AP malz unless you properly combo w-e-r combo at which it should retain it's pre rework kill potential only if you combo.
