Maria: The Voidborn Maiden (Malzahar's Right Hand Woman) (Improved Redesign)
Maria: The Voidborn Maiden (Malzahar's Right Hand Woman).
"Welcome to the League of Legends Champion Spotlight featuring Maria: The Voidborn Maiden.
Once a proud warrior of Rakkor, Maria was perverted by the twisted magic of the void and now serves Malzahar's every whim. Part human and part Voidborn, she wields the greatsword infused into her right arm to wipe out all who oppose her master's orders. It seems she's also inherited the Voidborn habit of eating human flesh, so I suggest you watch out.
In game, Maria is a CC heavy tank that specializes in keeping her team's carries safe, peeling away enemies in fights and helping them run away from potential threats. All of her attacks deal low damage and scale poorly, but proper use of her passive can allow her to become a nearly unstoppable tank in the late game, armed with a mighty arsenal of utility.
Maria's passive is "Cannibalism". By walking over the corpse of a fallen enemy champion, Maria will start to eat their corpse. If given a few seconds, the corpse will be nothing but a skeleton, and Maria will have gotten a nice, permanent buff to her maximum health. Try to get into situations where you can't get chased off the enemy's corpse, because this takes a while.
Maria's first ability is "Chaos Blade". Maria winds up her giant sword for 1 second before bringing it down in target direction, unleashing a linear skillshot that deals magic damage to all enemies who are hit and silences them. Enemies hit with the sword portion as well take additional physical damage and are also knocked back. The CC of this move scales with rank, so it will last 1.5 seconds at rank 1 and 2.5 seconds at rank 5. This move has a long wind up, but it's range is incredible.
Maria's second ability is "The Scent of Meat". Maria channels for 1 second begins sniffing the area in front of her. For the next 3 seconds, all enemies within a cone in front of Maria will be 'smelled', revealing them to her team but not alerting them. This move can be cancelled. If, upon cancelling the move, Maria had smelled one enemy, she and the nearest allied champion gain a movement speed buff that decays over the next few seconds.
Maria's third ability is "Void Ooze". Maria pukes a huge puddle of strange, bubbling liquid in target direction, creating a trail of acid. She also continues to trail this same acid for the next few seconds wherever she walks. Enemies walking on this trail take minor magic damage, are slowed, and have reduced attack speed. While this does minimal damage to champions, it does greatly amplified damage to monsters, giving her solid jungle clear.
Maria's ultimate is "Eat them Alive!". Maria leaps in target direction. If she hits an enemy, she latches on to them for the next 2.5 seconds. While latched on, she can still be targeted and hit, but she follows her enemy around wherever they go, evne if they blink or dash (there are, of course, a number of exceptions). She will always be in front of the enemy, so any skillshots they fire will hit her. While attached to them, Maria will do damage every .5 seconds and applies a slow to the enemy in addition to blinding them. She can be knocked off by being silenced, rooted, or hit by hard crowd control. If she stays on for the entire time, however, she gains bonus health as if she just ate a corpse the enemy becomes wounded, decreasing their armor and causing them to leave behind a trail of blood that is visible to enemies, even if the enemy themselves can't be seen. Maria can recast this ability to hop off the enemy at any time.
Maria is best suited to the jungle. When jungling, max her Void Ooze first. Since jungle monsters will stay in the ooze for its entire duration, her clear time is increased significantly, even though she has relatively attack speed. After that, max her Chaos blade to maximize her CC potential, and finsih off by maxing her "The Scent of Meat.
When ganking the enemy, Maria doesn't have the easiest time catching up to enemies, so make sure you look for lanes with a lot of CC or when an enemy is overextending. Enter using the speed boost of her W if possible, and then place Void Ooze in their escape path. Then, try to line up a Chaos blade to slow them and make them easier to kill. Ideally you hit with the sword, so that they are silenced and can't flash away.
Maria shines in counter ganks. Use the scent of blood to run in as fast as possible. Land Void Ooze or the silence Chaos Blade on enemies to weaken their offense and turn the fight in your favor. Addtionally, Eat them alive! can take an enemy out of the fight, and if they've already spent their hard CC on a gank, it can be nearly impossible to cancel and all of its devastating effects will take place.
In the midgame, have Maria team up with an immobile carry. Using her W they can scout ahead and run away from trouble quickly (or run to it if that's how you prefer to roll). Always remember, if push comes to shove, her ultimate can be used as an escape or a chasing tool.
In teamfights, Maria can has 2 options: jump into the enemy team and play disrupter. Generally the goal is to attack a carry with her ulti, preferably one that can't knock her off by themselves. This can have one of 2 effects: She can get the enemy champions to blow CC getting her off that could've been used on her team, or waiting till the right time to get the full ultimate off and elimanate the carry alongside her team. If they survive by running away? Track them using the blood trail they leave behind. however, throwing out the ultimate haphhazardly can get her knocked off before she can do anything and leave her in a bad position.
Alternatively, she can run guard duty, protecting her carries using her ultimate, Chaos Blade, and Void Ooze, and helping them better position using her W. Always remember, though, she is the team's tank, so make sure you always position yourself to take one for the team. ..."
What do you think? I think she'd be a pretty good match for teams using champs like Malzahar or kog'maw (whom she was designed to compliment) and I think she has some fun and unique mechanics and a lot of good flavor to her.
