Reverting Malzahar and Balancing His Original Kit

Stephenizgod·Aug 16, 2018·2 votes·954 views

Open discussion on first, reverting Malzahar because no one likes his current one or probably any iteration of it, and second how do we balance his old kit.

There are a lot of issues with Old Malzahar that need to be addressed, what are they to you and how would you fix it?

Please be civil, we want this to be seen by Riot and I don't want them to be afraid to come in and give their opinions. I will add to this post as people comment so you don't need to fish through them to find what has been said.

5 Comments

JobriqAug 16, 20181 votes

Bring back AD Malzahar plz

StephenizgodAug 16, 20181 votes

Not my favorite build on him personally, but I did enjoy playing it. Plus it was a viable option, he had 2 separate playstyles that were both really fun.

It gave him depth too, different ways to look at his kit, different strengths and weaknesses. Also it was fun to watch Voidlings destroy Baron.

RebonackAug 18, 20181 votes

I was one of the guys that pioneered AD Malz over in Dominion before it migrated to SR Jungle, so suffice to say I was pretty upset when Riot ruined Malz.

I feel like Riot's best bet would be a complete revert to the pre-Mage Update and then start over from there. It's painfully obvious New Malz is a dumpster fire.

ParoeAug 18, 20181 votes

{quoted}

There are a lot of issues with Old Malzahar that need to be addressed, what are they to you and how would you fix it?

Im gonna stop you right there - Old malzahar didnt have a lot of issues. He was one of the more balanced champions in the game, alongside velkoz and swain who were ruined and turned into balance nightmares with the infamous mage rework.
Anyway, According to riot their goals with the rework were to make malzahar more interactable in lane and less passive. This is at odds with his core design of an immobile mage who relies on ambush assassinations to function, which they tried to get rid of by making him...

An objective focused jungler (In an objective focused jungle).
A low lethality support (In a close range ADC meta).
An anti-snowball mage and auxiliary support (his current form). Riot failed on all accounts to balance or otherwise fix the iterations of malzahar they created, and have settled with the current "sort of reverted" version that is so full of gimps you might as well use a black chroma on all his skins.

How do you fix Malzahar? Revert his base stats, revert his E, revert his ultimate, and revert his voidlings. With that done you replace his passive with a spell blade that applies a DoT or refreshes his E and makes allied pets and minions attack that target.

The main problem with riots whole stance on malzahar not interacting is that he doesnt HAVE the tools to interact in the first place, and its always been like that. Riot never gave him any, and when he found success focusing on harass in the bot lane they broke his knees, ankles, and wrists because it.
Giving malzahar the tools to interact would go a long way towards a "less boring lane phase" but... Riots definition of less boring has always been skewed. Hes actually as interactive as any assassin except kassadin, who suffers from the same problems malzahar does; The only difference is other assassins interactions are one sided unless youre another assassin.

StephenizgodAug 18, 20181 votes

Old Malzahar did have a lot of issues. He had mana issues unless you hard pushed with E (which is counter-productive to a low mobility Mage with no hard CC) plus he was balanced around his E's mana return, he had lack of interactivity when against him, he had low counter-play on his abilities (his E and R being point click DoT damage with only QSS/Cleanse as their counter), his auto-attacks were terrible and slow, his W was basically only used to check bushes except when you were ulting, Voidlings AI was often unreliable, even though I don't mind his Ult it does have balance issues, he was completely reliant on Rylias and Liandry combo.

I mean I can keep going but you get the picture, there is a reason he was considered "unviable" for a long time, his usefulness was based on who his opponent was and whether they were capable of dealing with his push or just being able to jump on him. When he was strong, he was ridiculously oppressive because of the low amount of counterplay to his kit. I want Old Malzahar back just as much as the next guy, but I want them to balance him at the same time. He had issues that needed addressing, some buffs, nerfs, tweaks... whatever he didn't need a rework though.