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Level 7 needing advice on malphite

Halutza··4 votes·2,889 views

I've only been playing for a few days. I'm not usually a tank guy but he was fun last night. I like not dying. I've seen many full builds on him but I need advice on the best way to play him through the levels. Should I go top, mid,
bottom or jungle? Do I kill minions or champs?

I appreciate any help you can give. Also, if you don't mind, I'd like to add names to my friends list.

Thanx so much. Hal

23 Comments

CalciferHowel3 votes

This is unrelated, but damn, this is what forums are supposed to be about, this is nice, real nice.

Halutza3 votes

This is unrelated, but damn, this is what forums are supposed to be about, this is nice, real nice.

Agreed

This info is better then anything I've read online.

doubleguac2 votes

Top lane is usually best for him. As you might have noticed, his ground pound's damage scales with his armor value (as well as AP) and has a large auto attack speed debuff attached to it, so malphite tends to work well against physical champions who rely on auto attacks to deal damage.

Malphite can be built in a lot of different ways, but generally, you are going to want to go pretty tanky. A few good tank items to think about buying on him are sunfire, frozen heart, randuins, and banshees veil. If you want to mix a bit of offense into your build, iceborn gauntlet and abyssal scepter are both pretty good.

As some other people have said, always focus on last hitting as many minions as you can. Aside from the support, every laner in the game needs to be last hitting minions, regardless of how many kills they get. Don't think about it as "should I kill minions or champions," think about it as "I always need to be last hitting minions, and if I see an opportunity to pick up a kill, I will take it." Try to focus on killing minions with your auto attacks. Malphite is too mana hungry to be constantly wave clearing with his abilities in the early game. If you're last hitting with auto attacks, you're free to use those cooldowns and mana to attack your lane opponent, so you wont have to choose between creep score and kills.

ParinoidPanda2 votes

I'll leave some words regarding safe farming.


Every champion has a zone of control. Meaning there is a range for how far they can:

  • poke with an auto attack or ability
  • initiate on you, and maybe kill you.

For every champion it is different. This is important to Malphite because he is a melee champion, but he has a range on his Q and R. The way trading champion damage in lane works is a cost/benefit analysis of "is it worth it?"

  • Can you give damage that won't be healed away? good
  • Did you take more damage than you gave? bad
  • Did it cost me a lot of mana to poke him away to farm minions? Worth if you are about to go back to base. Not worth if you need that mana to keep him from killing you under tower.
  • Does it cost them more resourses to poke me out of the minions than damage I take? worth. But don't die, or extend past river without a ward in the river bush below you.

Now for a really important tool: farming under your own tower.

| To kill | Do in order | |- | Melee minion: | 2 tower shots + AA | | Caster minion: | AA + 1 tower shot + AA | | Cannon minion: | a bunch of tower shots + AA + 1 tower shot + AA|

Tips:

  • Avoid using AoE abilities unless you can nuke the wave faster than tower can shoot.
  • Adjust your damage as your minions do damage too.
  • Tower prioritizes as follows:
  • Cannon minion
  • Weakest melee minion
  • Weakest caster minion
  • Avoid using spells period to clear minions.

Hope that helps.


Edit: How could i forget about freezing lane!

So, a MASSIVELY important tool for you, once you get the hang of last hitting minions, is to be able to freeze the minion battle line anywhere in lane you want. It is possible to zone away the other champion, kill their minions faster than they kill yours, AND have THEIR minions PUSH lane at the same time! This makes it much safer for you to farm and not worry about a second champion getting at you and you dieing 2v1.

How to do it:

  1. Only last hit minions
  2. Try to keep their cannon minion alive as long as possible while getting yours to die as fast as possible.
  3. Don't kill caster minions unless they are about to be killed by your minions
  4. Don't kill any minion unless it is about to be killed by your minions/tower

What this does for you:

  • Once you have established dominance over the minions for any reason, (even if you Are "losing" lane, you can have dominance under tower. You can freeze lane just outside tower range!) you can get a farm advantage, and set the other guy up for a gank.
  • Builds up a HUGE wave of minions to either:
  • crash into their tower
  • discourage them attacking you due to the minion damage they take
    • Minions will immediately begin attacking any champion that does damage to you. If they attack you while you have a big wave, they take a TON of damage.

Edit2: One last thing

#If the other champion can kill you, even uder your own tower, don't be there.

So...

  • Go heal up at base and come back if that's all you need
  • Leave lane and go help mid or bottom if your opponent is too much
  • If you do this option, make sure you can help take mid tower quick, then have you and someone else go take down top tower. *You should try to drop mid tower by 20 minutes if possible. Top tower is helpful for late game (@ 24+ minutes), not mid game (@ 15+ minutes)
  • Roam and gank like you're the jungler, but afterwards, bring back help to push your lane asap.
MorikTheMad2 votes

A couple additions to freezing the lane mechanics:

You can think of the minion wave as having both a force, and a resistance. The waves each apply their force to each other, and it is offset by resistance. y = your wave, e = enemy wave F = force, R = resistance.

if (Fy - Re) > (Fe - Ry) The wave will push to the enemy tower (how quickly depends on how much the left side is bigger than the right side).

If (Fy - Re) < (Fe - Ry) The wave will push to the your tower (how quickly depends on how much the left side is smaller than the right side).

And most importantly: If (Fy - Re) = (Fe - Ry) The wave won't move.

The 'force' is the damage the minions can do. Cannon minion has a lot of damage. Caster minions have a decent amount. Melee minions have very little. The 'resistance' is how much HP the minions have. A cannon minion has a lot, melee minions have a decent amount, and caster minions don't have very much.

To manipulate the wave, you need to adjust those variables. How?

  1. You can reduce the resistance of the enemy side by attacking or using abilities on the enemy minions. Note that even last hitting will do this (lets say enemy has 50 health left and you last hit it... that 50 health would have soaked up a few more minion attacks, you just pushed the wave a little by reducing the enemy wave's resistance by a bit.)

  2. You can artificially act as resistance by tanking the enemy minions if you have no minions left. Running sideways can save a bit of your health while still leading them around. This is a good thing to do if you need to stop them from going into range of your tower.

Alternatively, you can do this by autoattacking your opponent while near their minions; their minions will attack you instead of hitting your own minions.

So, a couple tactics then:

  1. If the enemy wave is bigger than yours, and you want it to stay just outside your tower range: a) If the wave is MUCH bigger than yours, kill off some casters (to reduce the force of their wave). b) Once it isn't TOO much bigger (you'll have to practice to get a sense of the right size), only last hit, and try to do so as close to 0 HP as you can. (E.g., hit it when it has 10 hp left, not 70, if you can help it) c) Due to being bigger, their wave will destroy your wave eventually. When this happens, you RUN INTO THE MIDDLE of the enemy wave to keep it from walking into your tower. d) When your minions arrive, the enemy will engage them instead.

This costs you health, but if you have decent armor & lifesteal, you'll get it back. You can freeze indefinitely by doing this, so long as you try to ensure that the enemy wave keeps a lot of casters around.

Note that if the enemy wave isn't reasonably bigger than yours, this will not be able to last indefinitely--you'll slowly widdle their wave down in size until your wave is bigger, at which point you'll slowly push.

You want to find equilibrium where the enemy wave kills yours pretty darn fast, but not so fast that you can't tank them in between waves. If they don't kill your wave fast enough, they'll get widdled down and you can't keep it up. If they kill it too fast, you'll take too much damage tanking them.

Note that in situations where the enemy wave is slowly widdled away, your side will build up a massive minion wave that will push forward very quickly.

  1. Resetting. If you push a wave into a tower (or the enemy wave hits your tower), a few different things can happen. a) If there are no other minions around, the waves will RESET. This means the force & resistance will be completely equal in the next wave. (In which case minor bits of luck will determine who pushes--if on one side all 3 casters target a different melee minion, but on the other all 3 casters target the same minion, the side with the focus fire will push forward.) b) If there are minions around (on the same team as the tower), they will get a bit damaged (they get focused over the tower). This will cause the wave to slowly push into the tower again.
ParinoidPanda1 votes

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Skia Asteri2 votes

For the first so many minutes of the game (forgot the number) kills give reduced gold. So unless you get first blood really early kills do not help much. And at that point people respawn very quickly and turrets take reduced damage for the first seven minutes. Especially at level one you want to clear minions quickly to get XP, because hitting level two gives a large stat boost. Minions are OP very early in the game and can kill most champions early if there are enough of them.

However, some match ups require you to be more aggressive because the opponent's champion gets stronger faster than the one you are playing. In others playing safe is better because they start stronger but will be weaker later on. Other than learning from playing the various match ups, good guides usually list which opponents you should try to fight early.

As far as Malphite goes, his main strength comes from his ability to start fights well with Unstoppable Force, so the main measure of if you got enough gold/xp is whether or not you can survive jumping into the enemy team to give your team an opening.

Kuroi862 votes

Top is best, though he can jungle as well. If the enemy brings a lot of physical damage to the table, well they just handed you a fun little game. Armor is one of the best stats on Malphite (Though some Magic resist is needed as well, I'd say Merc treads and Banshee's would be plenty in most situations), stacking Frozen Heart, Iceborn Gauntlet, Sunfire cape and Randuins are pretty well going to make you hit like a truck.

Toothless Lion1 votes

Top lane is generally the best lane for malphite, but he can mid, jungle and support. For every game you should focus on minions as they are a more reliable source of gold than kills, but of course kills never hurt.

Halutza1 votes

What's a good number for minions killed vs champs?

MorikTheMad2 votes

This is really hard to answer for a bunch of reasons.

A better question is: What is a good number of minions by 10 minutes? (And then you can adjust for kills)

The answer to that is ~90 (for pro-level players). ~60 is gold level. I'd aim for at least 40 even though you are new.

You can adjust this for kills: if you have 3 kills by 10 minutes, it is likely that affected your ability to get minions. (You have to go back to base more often because getting the kill meant you were fighting, which means you may be low on HP and/or mana) Each kill is worth roughly 15 minions in gold, but I'd still aim for 40 minions even with kills.

A couple general tips:

  • The game isn't about kills--the game is about destroying your opponents Nexus. Kills are nice, but focusing too hard on them can be detrimental. Example: Lets say your team wins a 5v5 teamfight and there are 2 survivors on the enemy team. Both of them are really low HP. Several simplified options: Go kill dragon, go destroy an enemy tower, or chase those 2 survivors around for 40 seconds trying to get a kill on them. Hint: The correct answer isn't to waste 40 seconds chasing them around :). (If you can get them within a few seconds, fine. If they are getting away, just stop chasing them & go get an objective. Dragon is worth more to your team than the 2 kills (~100-600 more global gold depending on if anyone gets assists on those kills, and how late in the game it is). AND then dragon is gone so enemy team can't get it. The tower is worth a bit less in global gold, but is a permanent disadvantage for the enemy team, and one step closer to destroying their nexus.

Second example: During laning you get an enemy down to 100 hp, and they are recalling by their tower. IF you can dive them and get out without dying, that is one thing. But if you know you will die if you dive, it isn't worth it. (even if you definitely get the kill, it isn't worth it). Why? Because you can swing a bigger advantage by:

  • Staying in lane & shoving the minion wave into their tower. (This will have their tower kill a bunch of minions while they are gone, denying them some XP & gold.) Then YOU go back and heal, and you get back to lane before they can shove anything into your turret.

  • During laning, if you focus on farming instead of fighting, you'll come out better.

    • Fighting is chancy. It is better if you can ZONE your opponent. This means being enough of a threat that they cannot last hit minions for gold when you are nearby. In this case you wanna keep the minion wave AWAY from their tower, and stand near it and keep them from hitting anything. (You still last hit for gold.)
  • Learn to control a minion wave is good. (Learning to just glance at it and know which way it will push, learning how to manipulate where it will push or how quickly, etc)

Halutza1 votes

Btw, great answers so far. Can't wait for more.

OnanThaMan1 votes

Top is best, in my opinion at least. Starting you should go either cloth armor or full magic mantle depending on your match up, after that a negatron cloak/chain vest with a chalice of harmony(again depending on your match up). Mal if played right is very hard to bully thanks to his passive, build to counter and you'll be that unbreakable rock in top lane. Exceptions to this build apply but this is what i normally build.

Halutza1 votes

Top is best, in my opinion at least. Starting you should go either cloth armor or full magic mantle depending on your match up, after that a negatron cloak/chain vest with a chalice of harmony(again depending on your match up). Mal if played right is very hard to bully thanks to his passive, build to counter and you'll be that unbreakable rock in top lane. Exceptions to this build apply but this is what i normally build.

Are those items I can buy during the game?

Halutza1 votes

My head is ready to explode with all this great info.

Acidic Puddle1 votes

Top or jungle, however there are much better choices over Malph at the moment, although he is a good cheep option.

Halutza1 votes

Top or jungle, however there are much better choices over Malph at the moment, although he is a good cheep option.

Who?

vortical421 votes

Your primary counters as Malphite are ranged AP ( Ryze, Lulu, Teemo) and AD fighters with strong burst damage (Riven, Fiora, YI). Some of those champions are almost 'hard' counters; they will completely dominate you in lane. Maokai Maokai , has similar capabilities to Malphite with fewer serious weaknesses. There are champions who are strong against him, but no one who can just totally shut him out.

Something else you need to consider is what role Malphite fills in a team. 'Tank' just describes your favored build. Your actual role with Malph is 'initiator'. Your job is to kick off a teamfight by using your ultimate to dive in and create an opening for the rest of your team to engage. The catch is, you have no escape tools. if your team fails to follow up ( and that will happen a LOT in solo-queue) you are probably going to die. All of this means that you do best with teams that want to go all-in (lots of assassins or bursty fighters like Yasuo, Fizz, or LeBlanc).

If you see that your team depends more on fragile ranged characters like marksman or mages for damage, you are better off with a 'peel' tank. Rathern than start fights, you job in this role is to be a bodyguard for the rest of your team. You need to be able to knockback or stun an enemy before they can poke your poor carry full of holes. Braum and Thresh are good examples, though they tend to be played as supports. For top laners, think Cho Gath, Rammus, or Maokai.

tldr; better top lane initiators - Pantheon , Vi , Sion , Aatrox . Better 'peel' tanks - Maokai , Alistar , Rammus , Shen .

Merxamers1 votes

If you don't know what items to buy, the recommended items are usually pretty good. It may take a while for you to become familiar with all the item names and when to buy them (it did for me, at least)

Dryditch1 votes

Hey Halutza!

Malphite main here :) It makes me really happy to see people playing someone who is arguably my favorite champ in the game right now.

I tend to take Mal a different route than most players, but he works for me. Mana is going to be your biggest challenge early on, so you'll have to be conscious of what you're using, and how much Mana you have left.

Mal's Q is his best early level skill, and honestly my favorite for both starting and ending fights. Depending on the enemy team composition, he can put enough pressure on the top laner (and draw the Jungler up there) to actually cripple the game entirely.

I wrote up a guide on how I play him a little wihle ago, which I'll link HERE if you want to check it out. Results may vary, and a skilled opponent can outduel you early if you make the mistake of engaging for an all-in before level 3.

Best advice I can give is to always farm--kill the minions for gold, take care of your turret, and see if you can get someone who can capitalize on your ult's knock-up to back you up later in the game.

(Somehow managed to get a Yasuo 38 kills with our Ults working together).

Feel free to add me in game if you want to play or talk a little more about the champ.

Darthmesa1 votes

Full AP malphite is like a sneaky 18 wheeler ready to run you over... With some HP and a good amount of AP its almost unstoppable.

Champion Skin1 votes

Malphite is usually a niche pick against AD heavy teams especially ones reliant on attack speed as he has a % armor increase and does more damage on his "Ground Slam" (E) when he gets more armor Malphite "Ground Slam" (E) is crippling against champions who rely on attack speed (attack speed reductions is applied last, so the more attack speed they have from items/abilities the more attack speed will be removed)

You can go for CDR and tanky items like item 3110 item 3190 and pretty much just be a durable utility machine

Or you can go for AP and try to burst and kill whoever you target if you get enough damage... i am not quite sure what would be best to get if you are building AP Malphite

Halutza1 votes

I'm reading this post for the third time. It feels like I'm taking a course on physics. Each time I play a few games I go back to reread this. Each time it makes a little bit more sense.

Thanx to eveyone that replied to this post along with everyone that is helping me in game.

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