Both the mains and the players who have to play against Malzahar are frustrated. I will go over each Passive and Ability in regards to what the general opinion is based on the subreddit and then I will also write down a few ideas that they have also had for potential changes or solutions to lessen the frustration on either end.
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Passive: Void Shift
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Some agree that it is a nice touch for him since he is an immobile mage.
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The general majority agree that it doesn’t fit his character or doesn’t flow with the rest of his abilities.
Q: Call of the Void
- Overall everyone agrees that this is his most perfect ability, it’s slow but rewarding, gives vision of the area and offers a powerful AoE Silence.
W: Void Swarm
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The opinion here is rather mixed, some like that they can spam endless minions in high AH builds but others like myself agree that Voidlings shouldn’t be an ability (maybe a Passive of some sort), because this ability has a very feast or famine feeling.
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But they also agree that a lot of his damage shouldn’t be tied to Voidlings, given how unreliable they are due to being balloons that pop by anything that hits them, alongside the short duration they have, and the high mana cost.
E: Malefic Visions
- While opponents don’t like this ability the mains agree that this ability is solid for the most part but there are areas for improvement as well as potential to make it a bit less frustrating.
R: Nether Grasp
- The mains miss having the Null Zone on W, and don’t like the amount of power budget that is in this ability because often teammates only care for him to ult someone and that’s it.
- Players against Malzahar also hate this ability.
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Ideas the mains have had that are worth exploring:
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[P] Should Malzahar’s Passive stay as is, they wanted to see the Damage Reduction removed in favor of having high damage or basic attacks not to disable the shield and have it be more so a Banshee’s Veil CC Shield kind of thing.
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[P] Making his Shield CD not reset upon taking damage.
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[P] Since Malzahar has to get quite close to enemies when casting abilities they also suggested for the Shield to reappear when he casts R, so that at least Malzahar’s channeling wouldn’t be cancelled instantly by 100s of CC’s that are in the game.
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[P - Overhaul] Swapping out his current Passive for his E, so that all of his abilities apply Malefic Visions in general, so it’s not a point to click effect and Malzahar actually lands his abilities to apply it.
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[E & W] With the change above to also give him a new fresh E ability, and W being the Null Zone from R which would be a semi mix of W Voidling Spawn & current Passive where he gains the Shield in the Null Zone.
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[E] Functioning similarly to Ryze E except it starts with one target, if it dies, it jumps to one additional target and if they both die it jumps to one additional target again and so on and so forth (the number of targets it would jump to is based on level or ability rank).
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[E] Increasing the range of spreading by a tiny bit because often the targets Malzahar would want to target often just get out of the edge of the jump range.
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[E] Increasing the execute threshold on targets under E effect because the current amount is so tiny that minion attacks outdamage it and most mains agree that this execute in it’s current form is quite literally useless.
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[P] Looking into the possibility of having his W be his Passive again and his current Void Shift Passive be an ability where it’s more like a skilled, timed ability where he phases out into the Void for a few seconds becoming untargetable for a few seconds, essentially a defensive ability.
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[W] Moving his R Null Zone to W, and have Voidlings spawn from it or have Voidlings spawn out of a smaller Null Zone.
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[W] Having more different types of scaling rather than just the ability increasing their duration.
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[R] Making his Voidling Stacks be consumed during R, so when he casts it he spawns them, and it not being tied to just W.
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[R] Exchanging his R potentially for a different ultimate ability despite it being quite memorable, or reducing the CC power of that ability for more damage in exchange.
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[Q] Having Q not only refresh the Malefic Vision effect but also deal the rest of it’s damage and reapply a new Malefic Visions after.
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What do you all think about this champion?
They really should do something about his ult tbh
Even turning it into a skillshot (that has a windup, but you can flash mid-cast to make sure it always lands like Ahri charm) would be an appropriate high elo buff while not breaking him in low elo tbh
Even better if his ult actually pushed enemies away from him instead of just grounding them in place (think like a repulsor beam/Old asol ult)
That away, his kit makes more sense of being an anti-carry champ that can push back a fed assasssin/bruiser and open up creativity to look for cool insec plays etc
His passive should 100% refresh when he casts R and that’s higher skill expression (baiting spells etc)
“How are you gonna keep him balanced for low elo?” Just hit his flat numbers
“Arghh, I hate playing vs Malz!! He should never be strong afhachaahsif”
And I hate playing vs windshitters and Sylas, but they’re in like 90% of my games. It’s not wrong to want a champion to have a higher skill cap/more outplay tools