I main Malzahar and I can quite safely say that he is my most favorite champion. His lore, his style, his abilities, how he can go AP or AD. Just everything.
I can carry myself and my team through a game pretty well most of the time, but sometimes there are those match ups that are just a total pain. How can I better protect myself and make Malz an even deadlier threat?
TL;DR : I love Malz, help me love him more.
By roaming
Wait wut? how?
Because, say botlane has a leona, or braum, and they're having a hard time in lane. You come in and help them get a kill or two and they start to snowball; midgame braum is tanky as af. When teamfight starts he can successfully start fights, tank it up, and cc enemies to oblivion. While thats happening the adc is off pew pewing and you're standing in the back ready to combo whoever's sorry as is brave and stupid enough to walk towards the adc.
Or in another story, you flash combo an enemy, the braum jumps to you and ults the enemies who comes to try and save them, thus netting you an easy pick and starting a winning teamfight.
Malz is a beast when it comes to single target lockdowns BUT it's only single target, unless you're in an elo where people constantly (even though they've died multiple times doing so) wanders off by themselves to farm and pick magic mushrooms, you're not gonna do well if the team isn;t doing well.
Either that or give malz the ryze treatment and give him AoE ult and E
I like to have this general rule of if you have 800+ on your first back, get triple Dorans. If you have 1200+ on your first back, get Catalyst. If you have 1600+ on your first back, get Large Rod. I do close to the same thing on Annie, but with an option to go Sorc Boots first because she is harder to go OOM with.
If you have to back at 800 because you were bullied, 3 Dorans will turn the matchup around fast and you can usually kill them on 6. If you have to go back at 800 because you got first blood, then 3 Dorans will generally guarantee you massive kill or zone potential to snowball HARD.
If they are playing pretty passively with some poke on you and you have to go back at 1200, Catalyst into ROA is pretty core. You become an immovable bruiser in lane, moreso than if you go Revolver imo but I don't have much experience with Revolver.
If your lane is so ridiculously easy and/or boring that you can buy half of a deathcap on your first back, then do it. Deathcap may not be the most "optimal" first buy, but there still is no way to get more DPS/burst in one item since the DFG got removed.
I do like building 
on him. With proper timing, you get two voidlings out, E-W-R and you got a dead champ. Give me the wibblies just thinking about it. *wibble *
To sum everything up (and to possibly print out later):
-Build 
first
-Consider 
second
-Build 
but don't finish 
until late game.
-On first back, depending on earned gold get either : Triple 
, 
, or 
- lead to really fun mixed damage output.
Guys, thanks to you all for the outstanding advice. If you or anyone else wants to throw more interesting nuggets out there, go for it. :)
SEE YOU ON THE FIELDS OF JUSTICE!
Remove QSS from the game.
As a final(?) post here, just wanted to say I played a game using what I've learned here and absolutely wrecked. Once again, thanks to all. :)
work on timing the e on minions with low health to cause it to jump to enemy champions, a lot of times if an enemy champ is turret hugging, by quickly killing off minions, it can cause a really sudden jump
Ok, got me there. I guess I just like being able to deny like that.
I suppose it goes without saying that my second favorite role is top tank? :P
But yes, that makes sense and I most certainly will try it.
While we're here, my other favorite item to build on Malz is .
I've noticed that there are a lot of people that don't bother with it (lots of guides on SoloMid or MobaFire).
Am I making a mistake by making it a priority item?
