I honestly think building Malphite as a bruiser is his best path now

All armor builds are funny, and against all- or heavy-ad teams, it’s definitely ideal. However, Malphite scales so stupidly well with attack speed now given that his W’s active is a 6 second time frame, rather than a finite number of auto attacks. He gets ridiculous armor values with just one armor item, especially while his passive shield is up. So even one armor item, such as thornmail or randuins gives him all he needs to deal with any auto-attacker - naturally, he will have ninja tabis too.

I played around with it in an ARAM the other day, and the damage is filthy. I suspect you won’t have the luxury of maxing W in most lanes, but that’s not necessary anyway. Q max + corrupting into inspiration tree gives you all the mana you need. If you really want to cheese, you can go hail of blades for an absurd post-6 all-in. But I actually think there’s several set ups on him that are quite hilarious, yet viable all the same.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

Runes: Hail of Blades, Inspiration for biscuits and time warp tonic

6th item is entirely situational, as are boots if the enemy laner is AP or the enemy ream is AP. You could go an MR item in place of thornmail if enemy team is heavy AP, and go an armor item last since your base armor with maxed W is still pretty decent.

But you can kind of see what I mean, and to boot Malphite is a monster against auto attacking top laners. And since all he really needs against them is tabi and bramble vest, you can pick those up early if you aren’t feeling safe. But it’s really not necessary.

What is everyone else’s thoughts?