I guess it makes sense in solo que. you have no way to effectively and quickly communicate with your team. As opposed to 5 man prebuilt who can communicate over voice
Try to play jungler, the role that requires the most cooperation from your teammates, and you'll quickly understand why. When you ping a gank, come, sit in a bush and use the sweeper assuring you're not seen, and in 10 seconds your laner does nothing but stay where he is and wait to kill 2 caster minions, to then rush the enemy under tower (who previously was extremely overextended), die, and blame you for his own stupid death... I swear my laners have a 10 seconds reaction time while the enemies always react in less than a second. That will instantly make you regret relying in any way on your "teammates".
@@dwight3555 kinda funny how in the "most teammate realiant role" the standard procedure is to ping for a gank and not to type, as if comunication is not needed for a coordinated play
If Malz was a new champ being made these days: His soul does the ult for him and he can move around freely. Also he gets a big shield when he casts it. Also you spawn 3 new abilities after casting ult, so you can just cast everything before ult and get 3 other new abilities for free.
I'm sad he can move faster cause i love moving around with him doing those skills quickly and moving around, helping to quickly move forward minions. Made me wish he was a better jungle
@@idkidc7513 i was actually an AD malz one spammer for a while, had every skin, played him all the time when i got jungle. so when he got reworked the fact that suddenly his voidlings could die in one hit frustrated the hell out of me and i could never adapt. so i basically quit the champion. Plus his new passive only exists to make his ult better and it's so brain dead, it doesn't help you get close to people and *maybe* lets you go through a knockback like tristana ult or lee sin kick, but if you're targeting them you've already ulted them... or they just ran away
@@PressRToZeus ik man. I hate his passive, people over reacted to it, but it’s so useless in the long run and just looks good cosmetically. People act like it’s a free banshee’s veil and I’m just like: it’s a freaking bubble that pops if someone sneezes on it or Nocturne decides to yell “Darkness”, how is that a banshee’s?
I never understood why people would get offended by their character being on WNOP. I see it as a good thing as a kayle main. I like playing a more rare character as people usually have less experience against her and I like feeling unique and basically never have to worry about not being able to play her. I think I've only seen 2 kayles in my 300 games
Because the worse a reputation a character has, the more people who don't understand the character will just automatically assume the character is dogshit and actively contributing to the failure of their games. This translates into more flaming at best, and games where the team assumes you've thrown the match for them at character select at worst. Can't forget, outside of just having little experience, most people assume there's little of something for a good reason.
@@MhnFive Great explanation. But it's also because in any character selection game, your main is an extension of your identity. To many, having your main criticized is the same as being criticized yourself. Even if it's true or accurate, it still hard to not take personally. That and, the internet is known for its infinite wisdom of jumping to conclusions...
Because it is basically highlighting your weaknesses to everyone. I'm trying to keep a low profile using weaker champions that probably won't get nerfed and relying on the enemy to not know enough about them to stomp my ass, so i hate every single one of these videos
I like Malzahar since he is a summoner, the end. Summoner champions make me Happy cuz i love having minions or pets that make me feel like i have either an entier army or a whole new Ally on my side!
@@thefrenchguy6300 also Azir, Zyra, Annie, etc are really interesting, too bad i don t play League, but i played plenty of Mobas to make some relatable opinions!
exactly. Like, whats a diana gonna do? towerdive me because someone fed her? no sir, i press my 3 buttons and because she built damage and not a QSS, the only place shes going is back to the fountain with noticably less color on her screen than before.
i used to main leblanc a few years back due to her insane outplay potential, but now, i main malzahar since his kit is extremely simple and fun. maybe i'm just getting older to play the high mechanic champs
@@anubis9151 i don't think so. First time i picked leblanc was right before her rework, and then i main her mostly after rework (bouncing sigil season). I heard it was her weakest point at least at that time
As a Malzahar Player, I can confirm his immobility to his biggest weakness. I feel forced every game into buying Rylai's just to make up for being unable to peel enemies, but also to keep enemies in place long enough for the voidling to deal some dmg. It's one of the best items on him besides Liandry's
Ahh....My main back when I played the game. By which I mean pre-reworked Malzahar. I still played the rework Malz but I missed the Void Pool on his W. The change to focus on his Voildlings really killed the character in my opinion.
Yeah i like it better before It was my "main" I liked to play super passive until six For a kill with the jungle And farm with E and try to infect the enemy champ with itxD
I liked the rework version and also considered the pool being integrated with the r pretty neat since it's an auto-combo. However, after all the nerfs he received it's barely any better and I think having the pool in your kit back could make his overall damage and clear timings much better.
I always found his pool to be super awkward, and now that the game is even more mobile than it was 5 years ago it would be almost useless without some way to lock enemies down in it. It never felt impactful, and was often all-but neglected in favour of abilities that the enemy couldn't ignore by just walking out of.
@@buurzai That's what Rylai was for. . . and it wasn't for laning other than pushing the wave, it was for late game team fights when they all in and it was friggin huge so you're not just walking out of that. . .
@@Delimon007 And back in those days rylai would have been serviceable at that. Now, almost every champ released in the last 2 years has a dash of some sort - which of course are not affected by slows at all. The main point of his pool was to stick under someone just as you ulted them, otherwise it really didn't feel like it actually had much impact or did any real damage. It wasn't something like Morgana's pool where standing in it too long could accidentally kill you, it did a bit of poke damage, but not enough to really care about. As an ability, it was quite underwhelming. At max ranks it could do quite a bit of damage to a tank who was stuck sitting in it for the duration, but because it was a tank they had the MR to shrug the worst of it off. It felt like something you just threw down for a bit of extra damage rather than something you planned around the uptime of. It never had much impact on the game, and really does fit much better as part of the ult.
Maybe Riot can revert him to a dps chip damage, kinda like before his rework. This summons don't have the health to survive most battles, just a litte AoE and ded (or increase the minions health idk)
he also probably needs some damage taken out of his ulti and put into his other abilities. Right now, late in the game it's kinda, do you have qss? if you do malz is pretty bad, otherwise he's decent. Also in lane, can the enemy clear voidlings easily? Well then, it's not gonna be fun. And honestly, most people can, so he kinda just feels a bit sad to play.
@@thesun5275 They make money through skins and would make a lot more if their game was balanced instead of this shit. Players wouldn't leave in mass and would play many champions more evenly, leading to more skins sold overall.
@@CombatSloth not much of one. Yorick ghouls leap onto marked targets, illaoi tentacles spawn near marked targets, zyra plants have long range and bonkers atk speed. Malzahar has one cc ability and it is his ultimate.
@@mrreemann8313 I was pointing out that they do, in fact, gain a move speed and atk speed boost. Your original statement makes it seem like they get none, and people that don't know about malzahar may take that into consideration should they look through comments. :) Edit: Also his voidlings do a massive boost to the damage of his ultimate, which is why they likely don't have as massive of a boost as one might like.
tf is a bit harder though when it comes to match ups farming and macro im in low elo people who pick this champ have no idea wtf they are doing and just int
I play a large majority of the champs covered in the "why no one plays" series ive never really thought of them as bad or even clunky all champs imo feel pretty solid to play albeit some easier than others to secure wins on
@@jorgep8032 and also sometimes you can ignore the con's with your own playstyle or some tricks that the champ may have, like for example how I ignored most of Kled points by playing him more like a tanky assasin rather than a normal tank and also using some tricks like using Q before E so you can have more range.
Ironically, two of the main points in the video, area control and burst, was something he used to be incredibly *great* at, back when Null Zone was still his W. It let you cast a fuck-off huge circle that dealt % damage and, when coupled with Rylai's, delivered a minor slow, so the standard procedure with ol' Malzy was to chip with Q, W, and E until they got low then all-in with the big W-R combo and 100% them in a second. This made him an absolute nightmare to defend turrets against because he could shove your lane in your face and then keep you away from the turret, whittling it bit by bit. The drawbacks were that he was vulnerable and slow and his mana costs were harsh, but he was rewarding to play. Even having QSS back then wasn't such a hard counter because Null Zone could still let him contribute. Those were the days...
Preach man. I took an extended break from league before the Malzahar rework. I came back and was shocked to see he had his kit changed. I do like that I can place his W for Ahri taunt or thresh hook.
@@GlowingRay i remmber actually doing this, i fucked up real good en up 0/9/3 and killed a 23/3/12 twich whit full healt, spells and everything, i just bonked him 2 times and 3 autos
I agree with most of this, but there are some caveats: - Malzahar is not considered stunned or suppressed during his ult, so you can still use summoner spells and active items to alleviate the fact that you can't move, such as Barrier. - While Quicksilver Sash does indeed end the suppression, it does not end the damage or pool. If you do not have a stun and Malz doesn't stop channelling, you will still take full damage. - The voidlings have a priority system: Nether Grasp -> Malefic Visions -> Champions Attacking Malzahar -> Any hostile target
@@excalyber4012 No. The %HP damage from the pool will continue as long as the champion stays in it, but the suppressing ray always deal 275 (+80% AP) in 2.5 seconds, even if Malzahar dies or stops channeling.
As a Malzahar main I really like how you approached all of his problems in this video. At much, I'd say that you could've expanded on the point where he was relevant since it's on those nerfs where most of his kit really felt down. The voidlings used to make additional damage and run even faster against marked enemie. He even had build diversity with the off-meta AD blue build.
I miss the old Malza armor pen semi tank. In aram my team always flamed me because they thought I was trolling, but that build was legit af, no one knew the little voidlings were doing all the dmg
old urgot was way more reliable than old malz. Old urgot just needed to land a single skillshot on you and then he just had to spam his skillshot which turned into an auto target. His ult was definitely worse though but it made up for his strong kit.
Former Malzahar main here: I used to play him for his scary 1shot burst combo but Riot has literally removed 35% AP from his kit throughout a few nerfs...that's like half an ability's worth of damage. Since your Q does fairly low damage, you don't feel rewarded for hitting it and your carry potential is way lower as a result of the lower damage and thus you're more team reliant.
pretty much this. He still has some power in his ulti, but if they buy qss, you just can't do much. He really needs more damage in his normal abilities, or just a rework.
Now imagine Kassadin, which if it's not the most nerfed champion in the history of the game, he is one of the most nerfed champs. His passive was heavily nerfed and it worked in conjuction with his w, his q deals like 2/3 of the base damage, the silence was removed and the ratio to ap was lowered by 10%, from 0.8, to 0.7, his e deals basically half the damage it dealt before and the ap ratio went from 0.9 to 0.8 but the worst of all is his ult which can only stack 4 times instead of 8 and as a result it deals much less damage while consuming EXTREMELY ammounts of mana at 4 stacks. His w is a new skill which he didn't had and deals a good ammout of damage although since it's a melee skill, you most likely won't be able to land in most of champs because his survivability was the most nerfed thing they ever did. Kassadin back in the golden days was a tanky champ because he was melee and was anti-mage. Kassadin was a fighter back in the days, nowday he is a squishy assassin that can be 1 shot easily or even completely unplayable depending on the enemy composition. Not to mention that kassadin is basically one of the most useless champs at early game. If you don't go with tanky runes you literally won't be able to do anything in lane, unless the enemy is a fool or a noob.
2 simple changes that I think would greatly improve his QoL is: 1: Revamping his E from fully dps to half of the dmg dealt at the initial cast of the ability, and the other half will be dealt as dps(like Nasus's E but single-target). 2: After disconnecting with his victim of Nether Grasp, roots that target for another 1 second but lowers the duration of Nether Grasp by 1 second as well. This way it would feel so much more rewarding to cast his E on his target first then R or precisely predicting and casting his Q on a target already has his E on it. Sometimes using his E first then R will be too risky against targets like assassins with deathdance who can survive his DoT then burst him down back, since his E's total dmg takes 4s to finish while his R only lasts 2.5s.
I love Malzahar so much. He's probably my favorite champ lore and gameplay wise. He was on my first free week and I was excited but I wanted to try Karthus a little more first. Unfortunately I thought the free week refreshed on Sunday and not Tuesday.
I completely agree with everything you said. Malz was my first main in the game and you are right about all of his weaknesses. That's why I had to stop playing him to rank up any further. They need to do a minor rework on him for sure. His Q should at least slow if not root the target as well and his ult should allow him to move around while it's being channeled. These two changes alone would make him much more viable.
Yeah, the main issues imo are that the champ has no self peel abilities, and that his W, which you need to dps, gets destroyed even when people are not trying to do so on purpose, it's just ridiculous. Let's not mention that now everyone has insane tenacity so the R does like 1 second cc only and the fact that the games almost always end before Malz scales.
This was amazing , and we nearly reached 800 viewers on the live chat!!!!!!!! Vars you are doing a great job and the same did the editor! Keep up the great work!
7:00 btw, the combo can be reversed to make it more effective since Yoricks E actually makes all ghouls jump on the target who has the mist passive on them. so, trapping them in his wall just makes it easier to throw his E onto them, and then by double tapping your Q you summon your ghouls to immediatly jump the enemy laner.
I imagine making his R a toggle on a short cooldown and a huge mana per second cost, so he can choose when and how long is he going to lock himself with you
Yeah but most of the time it feels like you enable the whole enemy team instead of disabling one of them when you actually press r since it goes on cooldown
I think it would be cool if it had a dual purpose like Liss R. Malz could cast it on himself as a defensive option and the enemy just can't leave his zone.
@@tripleD2301 I'm just a hard stuck gold, so take my opinion with a grain of salt...but I don't see him as a dps Mage. Most of his damage comes from AA, and his ultimate is not a reliable source of damage. DPS mages deals sustainable damage through skills, benefitting a lot from hability haste and mana, while classical Teemo builds want attack speed and raw ap. He belongs to a much more niche class, alongside with Kayle and maybe some others, but I don't know what people call this class...is the ap version of adcs. It used to be a little more popular in the past, but now is out of fashion, there isn't even a mythic item for it.
@@Evaldo_Souza Malz has always been a DPS mage, his job has always been to delete carries, assassins, and even tanks if they underestimated him. Now? He does none of those things and one of the biggest reasons is that his passive is dog shit for doing his job and the voidlings die if you sneeze on them. Instead of riot nerfing the support build by lowering the base damage and upping the scaling, they just neutered them instead. Dumbest shit ever and Riot proves time and time again that they either don't know how to balance, don't care, or are doing this garbage intentionally. Kinda funny to think how they used to say they wouldn't touch the meta when that's all they've been doing since season 1.
One other thing that's prevalent with Malz that was brought up one previous vids (i.e. kennen) is how the slow staff fixes an issue rather than augments his strength (I think)
A control mage is more about an ongoing effect that will have immediate consequences for disrespecting it, such as heimerdinger turrets or anivia ult. Sure, Malzahar has his ult puddle, but it's really not that much of an area denial as other abilities. A battle mage is any mage who has shorter range and focuses on dps over burst, which fits Malzahar perfectly.
@@peterthepanda5191 His Q is a wall. His E prevent you approach the minion (sometime champion). It seem like a control mage to me. He doesn't stay in combat. He throws all his spell, wait, then repeat, his damage is dps but his gameplay isn't.
Great video, I still miss the "old" malzahar before he's mini rework in season 6. In summary, he use to be like a burst mage. A rotation of his basic abilities destroy 2/3 health of an adc and his r was 40% of his damage. I feel at that time he had the choice to keep his ultimate to discourage assassins or burst down an enemy. After patch 6.9, riot gutted his damage to give him more defense, so he can have this very specific identity of anticarry.
Malza was such a good champ and I wondered why nobody played him. He was like a hidden OP. Then the pros started playing him on their LCS games and he got nerfed to the ground. He can't even kill someone with half HP with his full combo.
Back when I started League- in 2013- Malz saved the game for me. I was struggling hard to find a champ that fit me, and malz was that champ. I have moved passed him lately, but will always love this champ!
As a Malzahar main, I approve this video :) But for real though, Malz is a great mid lane as for me, acts as a 2nd support with his R: Pretty much a support for jungle. He can control the waves immensely as his wave clear is superior that he doesn't have to stay in lane to wave clear. However, most of the problems listed in the video is the reason why many people do not like Malz in general, I am referring to my friends who thinks he is only good cause of his ult which is fair but for those who know how to play Malz, there is far more to Malz's kit than people think. Also, all of these problems are very accurate indeed, I found one problem in my playing in which many streamers I seen play Malz do too is not knowing how to effectively play Malz in the laning phrase. For instance, mana costs are so high on Malz that for him to hard shove a wave into a tower requires all of his abilities pre-6 and mana, even when playing against the likes of Irelia or Ryse who can match Malz wave pressure, you become stuck under your tower with no mana while the enemy minions and champ can chip away your tower. If you successfully shove the wave in, basics wave control lets you either base or roam (with the latter not being the best option with low mana) while enemy laner clears but can freeze the wave and hits you hard as you have to step up to farm, resulting a jungler like Warwick, Rammus or Yi to successful gank you due to movement speed disadvantage. So, you have to freeze your wave but with Zed and Yasuo as well as other mages who have range abilities, this too hurts you so this supports the problems in that Malz is reliant on teammates and lacking of ult results in vulnerability; to help Malz through the laning phrase. In terms of a rework, I believe he needs more movement speed and more DPS, as although his abilities alone are not that great, I think they are fine as it would become OP and require a nerf if the suggested reworks on his kit from the video and other comments come true. But if he had more movement and DPS, he would escape from possible ganks easy and no need to spend a lot of mana in the early game as one whole combo should do enough to push the wave and enemy back instead of 2/3 combos.
Hope this makes sense. One of my favorite things about playing as malz is that i can stop full enemy team pushes in their tracks - sucking away all their momentum and letting my team counter attack. Basically acting as an anti siege champ. My passive shield negates at least one engage opportunity. Holding off them gaining the initiative. A decently powerful E cast on a minion pretty much garuntees wiping out their wave meaning they have nothing to soak up fire from the turrets. And if all their attention is towards taking the turret and fending off my teammates they tend not to notice my E spreading around and dont take care to avoid it and end up with me draining around 1/4th their hp for free. If any of them try to move up the dive us i can R them into submission and the pool left behind can deter them from fully moving the places they want to. My Qs unique firing angle lets me easily poke a their backline and silence them so they cant pull their tricks to support their frontlane or at least get some free damage on the squishes. And my W lets me create a new albiet temporary and weak frontline they have to wade through before they can make their plays. None of this happens immediately, but he can definitively turn a push into a drawn out grind that an enemy team might not be able to sustain themselves through.
Malz is one of my favorites, so cool vid! I wonder if this change would benefit him: His W is changed to make it so the voidlings always spawn directly in front of Malz, no matter what. The actual ability becomes a similar ability to Yorick's mist. If it lands, the voidlings (possibly also Malz himself?) a burst of movespeed. If it misses, the voidlings just attack the nearest valid target as normal.
Malzahar was one of the first champions I bought back in season 3. I rushed Chalice of Harmony and Will of the Ancients. It allowed for infinite mana sustain and also 15% spellvamp. As a total noob, I was so proud of this theory crafting. I basicly spammed E on the wave, allowing me to get last hits without auto attacking along with healing me up in lane. Basicly had infinite health and mana sustain in lane along with easy csing. I think that was the build I used to get into silver along with AP WW mid (also rushed chalice for infinite mana sustain with Q). For those who dont know Chalice used to give good mana regen along with a passive that increased your mana regen by 1% for every 1% missing mana (like Veigar's old passive). The item also gave some magic resist and only costed 800ish gold. So you could basicly never run totally out of mana since you would regen as crazy when low on mana. It also built into Athenes which was one of the most popular mage items at the time, as it gave some AP, some MR, cdr and mana regen. I mostly just built chalice first for sustain, then proceded to build other items. Edit: I realise this doesn't seem that insane by todays standards when everyone can go manaflow band and ravenous hunter to achieve similar results. But back then lane sustain was everything. Very few champions had healing and spells costed a lot more mana. People bought mana potions back then even! Damage was lower overall which meant laning mostly came down to trading resources.
As an m7 Malzahar main, I completely agree with this video! I also think that no one wants to be the villain characters of League! But that's alright . . . I'll do it. >:)
The much unneeded mage class rework left Brand and Malzahar in the dirt. Removing or delaying much of their damage it is a miracle people even play them. Malzahar ult used to do like 400 + 90% ap.
Malzahar was actually my off main after I took a long break from playing TF, I will say that popping his Ult on an unsuspecting victim was fun, as well as soloing a turret in URF with only Voidlings
Want a tip? Save every champion shard you get from level up capsules until you find some you really like in free rotation and try getting them from the shards (low levels gives you more capsules so higher chance to get the one you want) since they are much cheaper through shards.
I'm assuming you're missing quite a few champs, it took me roughly 5-6 years of playing to unlock every champ, this was also back when blue essence and hextech loot didn't exist and you had to buy all champs, at full price using IP (Influence Points, which you earned like 30 every match), if you don't mind a boomer asking, how fast can you get champs using the Blue essence system? The IP system was horrible as you can probably imagine. Also, just some advice, don't dismiss champs just because they don't interest you and be willing to revisit champs that you used to dislike. Over the past year or two, I've gone back through the entire roster and fell in love with so many old champions that I used to just ignore or hate playing. Skarner, Nocturne, Twisted Fate (I ended up maining him for like 2-3 years), Volibear, Trundle etc... are just some examples for me personally. I NEVER touched these champs and randomly I did and now they're in my main champ pool.
ive always liked masked purple champs, im an jax otp for the past 2 seasons but ive played a lot of veigar, kassadin, and my first main was malzhar, great vid vars and keep up the great work.
Malzahar is one of my most played champions in the entire game, so here's my take: - His voidlings are more fragile than a modern day teen - His ult being QSS'd is as depressing as getting ulted by him - His E does a surpsingly little amount of damage and pushing waves is almost entirely due to the fact his voidlings deal bonus damage to enemies with E on them - His passive gets procked by every ability, whereas the spellshield from banshees only procks on CC - His voidlings reset the jungle camp "attention bar", making it impossible to jungle now (He was really good, especially at getting dragons) - His W is one of the strongest abilities in the game at taking turrets - His ult does % max HP damage on the enemy, making him a Trundle level tank killer - Fighting Olaf hurts the soul If I had the option to, I would make his voidlings tankier, revert w back to passive and puddle back to W, and then change the R completely while keeping his 1v1 potential.
Thanks the video, Vars. I’m at 0:01 atm and I’ve abusing this champ lately on mid solo queue. I’m pretty sure one shining reason, for people, who haven’t even played Mal in his heyday, is “lack of direct impactful interaction outside of ultimate” I’ll double check to see if I get it
7:00 Another thing you can do with Yorick is throw E then cast Q or R. The ghouls jump if someone is affected by mourning mist, which means you can bring out the ghouls after landing a good E
something that not a lot of people consider about malz too is that on his R, its the pool underneath the suppressed person that does the damage, not the eyebeam, this is important because if you read the ability, it says it does something crazy like 75% max health damage, but that is if they stand in the pool for the full duration, which is longer than the suppress, and if the suppressed person is hooked while you are surprising them, they will still be suppressed but you will be doing 0 damage
Malzahar’s a great champion and offers so much for the team and great peel for backline. I’ve main this champion for a long time and will continue to do so. His damage is very underrated and he heavily relies on rylais kiting. Loved the content, thanks for this one 💚
I main malzahar ever since he was released, and i agree to everything you've said here. Since last season, I've been using him as support and i focus on building ability haste (or cdr last season) just so i could utilize his ult all the time especially if someone tries to dive my adc.
Can you cover Varus next? He's a champion I recently picked up but he shares a lot of the same things as Kog'maw and Vel'koz, 3 damaging abilities that don't really combo well into each other.
Before Malz was reworked, when the pool aspect of his ult was still on his W and his voidlings were his passive, there were two ways of playing him: max E first for better waveclear and easy apply point-and-click, or max Q first for better poke damage since it was longer range and the silence shut down any counter for a short time. Maxing Q was my preferred method most of the time, so I was very excited when I heard that his rework was reducing the cooldown on it to like 6 seconds, and then rather puzzled when most people ignored it. I don't play normals any more, but in ARAM he works perfectly fine, possibly even better, maxing his q and turning him more into a poke mage with some uncomfortable DOT abilities if you get close enough. I know his E has better scaling now, as well as better mana conservation, so maybe it works better in lane, but his Q is absolutely more reliable in my opinion.
I'm a diamond malz player with 2 million mastery points and a 60% wr in season 11. Please Ignore everything this either ignorant or low elo content creator says, because literally every statement is wildly wrong. The reason he has a low pick rate is just because his kit is more boring and not as flashy or appealing as nearly every other mid laner
I think it's kinda tragic, Malzahar is one of the few champs whose mini-rework was a direct nerf. Getting rid of his minions health in exchange for a 1 hit health bar killed any alternate builds (AD Malz). Making his W part of his ult took away his ability to screen people away or do AOE damage. I'll never understand why they reworked his kit when he was just fine if a little strong (AD Malz), but thanks to power creep a champion who was kinda strong 2-3 seasons ago is now shut out of most games by 200 year champs.
This is an old video, but I LOVE malzahar. He fits perfectly into the hypercarry meta league is focusing on, because if the 15/0 katarina is the only threat on the enemy team, if you play it right, it's gg because she can't do anything. Malz' e is also understated; with double burn and aery, it can 100-0 squishy targets late game. I've killed people I haven't even seen because it's spread from one body to another. So even if you can't walk up and R (because, as you stated, it suppresses you as well) you can keep throwing out e's and q's and slowly burn the entire enemy team down, like brand. Save your R for divers or cleaning up the 1000 stack nasus after everyone else is dead.
malz has somewhat of a combo with e q w r. e for dot damage, q to silence, w for minions, then r. it makes more sense if you think about it backwards, while they are suppressed your minions are attacking them, those minions didnt die because you q'd the enemy taking away their aoe abilities that could kill them, and your e damage was going all along. if you take ignite you can squeeze it in anywhere. rylais is also really good on him
I know the point of the video isn't to say the champ is bad or anything but honestly he just plays very different and if you can get used to his anti-carry play style he's great at doing exactly that.
Wonderful video as always. Just a small info to keep in mind, traps in yugioh do a LOT to advance the game state. While regular traps are pretty outdated due to their clunky mechanic of being slow, hand traps are very popular and can definitely shut down a deck and win games. Shutting down the opponents deck is one of if not the most important mechanic in yugioh, just as it is in league, think of it as cc- the more you have it your teamcomp is probably more efficient. Even the mirror force you showed was very popular for a very long time even in the previous decade (don't know if it got powercrept in the most recent meta though). Just a small nitpick where I think you didn't make a fair point.Yes, I know I'm a moronic nerd ape xd. Keep up the good work. Cheers!
Ghost for mobility, dark harvest for burst, e Max first. Glacial if you need more cc and engage. Also he can build ad and his minions apply spell effects. Mythics: liandrys, ludens, or everfrost
I play Malze alot and i agree that he isn´t that useful in the last couple seasons but i wouldn´t say that it is just pressing keys. Of course you can´t be as creative with his abilities but his W is really helpful when one or two enemies are chasing you. And also when you skill E first, it is a really good poke and also one of the best wave clear abilities as you mentioned. I only started playing LoL recently and i wondered why i liked Malzahar so much because he plays so different in lane and in team fights. Now it makes sense that he is an anti-carry^^ Great video, keep up the series :D
As a Malzahar Main i agree with all the points in this video, but for me, his kit feels too fun to let him go, and although he lacks in many areas, he's really easy to pickup and not that hard to master. Intelligent item building can alter the course of many fights, but it is very hard to carry a downhill game. Still, i would never give him up. I love DoTs what can I say ahah
I think they could buff some of his skills while adjusting his play style to make him just a little bit harder to play. Q - Silence duration is reduced, but if it's a max range Q, Malz will also slow enemies for 50%+ E - Damage is reduced, but if it's reapplied by Q or R - reduces enemy MR R - duration is reduced to 2 seconds, but gives him MR/Armor and/or Omnivamp during suppression
As someone who mains Malza (in low levels because I don't play ranked really) I agree with most of what you said. Malz is slow as butts and, while he has nice dmg, he is too dependent on his ultimate. But I wouldn't say he is weak without it. A late game Malz's with full effect build (dot and other effects so Liandry, Demonic Embrace, Rylai, Morello) malefic vision (e) alone can sometimes deal up to half health to squishy targets without your voidlings or q or r. Also Rylai is nice for a small version of cc. Also I'd say you don't have to smash buttons with him, at least I found that Malz DOES have a good combo he can utilize. Since his damage depends on his e and w more than his q in my opinion, I always keep an eye on how many voidlings I can spawn. To maximize the damage the best course of action is e->q->w->r->q->ew. This is because you put put your dot, you refresh it instantly with q (while also silencing and proccing electro), spawning voidlings as they reached their maximum of 3 stacks with q, ulting so they are placed in one place and again refreshing your e, q BEFORE the ult finishes so it catches them slightly by surprise and silences them again AND refreshes your e again, and w or e after depending if they are close or far because your w counter is already at 3 again. Its important not to forget that your ult can also refresh your e duration. Although this looks like a lengthy combo it really isnt, e is instant, you put out your q, and by the time your q lands you can press w and r. It is faster than one would anticipate. I also think that without ult you are good to go if someone attacks you, if you can keep a bit of a distance you can deal solid damage with your e,w and q but you'll be caught in the long run sadly yes. For lane pressure his e is fantastic with his w and you can use him as a poke mage if you get your e on your target and just use your q (which has a lot bigger range than one would think) to refresh the duration. Also many players underestimate the "bounce" or spread radius of his e and will stand into it when it kills the minions. I agree with everything you said by the way, don't take this as nitpicking please, only as my opinion. He is a great champ with many flaws and one that shows the signs of the old game, can't solo carry, etc. but I think he is a very fun champ to play with. Also I'm kind of surprised you didn't talk about his passive seeing as, from what I ofthen gather, it is one of the most infuriating parts of playing against malz and a tool that lets him get away with way more than he should. Great video, I'm looking forward to the next ones :)
great video vars ;3
ppebtwlelxd
>;3
What I've learned with these videos so far is that in general people really enjoy playing singleplayer in this multiplayer game
Yyyyyep xD
I guess it makes sense in solo que. you have no way to effectively and quickly communicate with your team. As opposed to 5 man prebuilt who can communicate over voice
LoL players 🤝 Warframe players
Try to play jungler, the role that requires the most cooperation from your teammates, and you'll quickly understand why. When you ping a gank, come, sit in a bush and use the sweeper assuring you're not seen, and in 10 seconds your laner does nothing but stay where he is and wait to kill 2 caster minions, to then rush the enemy under tower (who previously was extremely overextended), die, and blame you for his own stupid death...
I swear my laners have a 10 seconds reaction time while the enemies always react in less than a second. That will instantly make you regret relying in any way on your "teammates".
@@dwight3555 kinda funny how in the "most teammate realiant role" the standard procedure is to ping for a gank and not to type, as if comunication is not needed for a coordinated play
If Malz was a new champ being made these days: His soul does the ult for him and he can move around freely. Also he gets a big shield when he casts it. Also you spawn 3 new abilities after casting ult, so you can just cast everything before ult and get 3 other new abilities for free.
Man this is so fucking true lol
and he gets 40 dashes just cause
His w would spawn infinite voidlings like with bel bitch
sounds op as fuck
2023 update, Malzahar's ult now applies stacks to his 3 hit and 5 hit passives.
I have to say, using E + W on minions an then just walking out of lane is a power move.
The most chad of moves
im gonna do something called a pro gamer move
I'm sad he can move faster cause i love moving around with him doing those skills quickly and moving around, helping to quickly move forward minions.
Made me wish he was a better jungle
Me who does it to the drakes
You can actually solo the drake without taking DMG with just e and w
Make all those Akalis, Zeds, Katarinas, and Fizzes gigacope ngl.
"making W his main damage tool" yeah, if they didn't get squashed like ants anytime someone sneezed in their direction.
Their more fragile than a zyras plants lol
Man, do you remember the good old days when the voidlings actually grew up and made considerable damage? I miss those days
@@idkidc7513 i was actually an AD malz one spammer for a while, had every skin, played him all the time when i got jungle. so when he got reworked the fact that suddenly his voidlings could die in one hit frustrated the hell out of me and i could never adapt. so i basically quit the champion.
Plus his new passive only exists to make his ult better and it's so brain dead, it doesn't help you get close to people and *maybe* lets you go through a knockback like tristana ult or lee sin kick, but if you're targeting them you've already ulted them... or they just ran away
@@PressRToZeus ik man. I hate his passive, people over reacted to it, but it’s so useless in the long run and just looks good cosmetically. People act like it’s a free banshee’s veil and I’m just like: it’s a freaking bubble that pops if someone sneezes on it or Nocturne decides to yell “Darkness”, how is that a banshee’s?
@@JRayPG Even better is that it doesn't stack with banshee's, so you're permalocked out of the item.
I never understood why people would get offended by their character being on WNOP. I see it as a good thing as a kayle main. I like playing a more rare character as people usually have less experience against her and I like feeling unique and basically never have to worry about not being able to play her. I think I've only seen 2 kayles in my 300 games
Because the worse a reputation a character has, the more people who don't understand the character will just automatically assume the character is dogshit and actively contributing to the failure of their games. This translates into more flaming at best, and games where the team assumes you've thrown the match for them at character select at worst.
Can't forget, outside of just having little experience, most people assume there's little of something for a good reason.
As an anivia main, I agree.
@@MhnFive Great explanation. But it's also because in any character selection game, your main is an extension of your identity. To many, having your main criticized is the same as being criticized yourself. Even if it's true or accurate, it still hard to not take personally. That and, the internet is known for its infinite wisdom of jumping to conclusions...
Because it is basically highlighting your weaknesses to everyone. I'm trying to keep a low profile using weaker champions that probably won't get nerfed and relying on the enemy to not know enough about them to stomp my ass, so i hate every single one of these videos
Bro I love playing singed because he is very unique and nobody plays him
I like Malzahar since he is a summoner, the end.
Summoner champions make me Happy cuz i love having minions or pets that make me feel like i have either an entier army or a whole new Ally on my side!
Same with me and yorick
@@thefrenchguy6300 also Azir, Zyra, Annie, etc are really interesting, too bad i don t play League, but i played plenty of Mobas to make some relatable opinions!
Same here with Ivern
@@TheLokoIl Ivern is kinda like Annie, but instead of burning forests he grows them.
same, i wanna play him and yorick
I love malzahar because hes THE anti-carry I love pressing R on some shitstain yi who is 8/0 off my braindead teamates and watch as they ape him
qss
whats more braindead hitting r or feeding 0_0
exactly. Like, whats a diana gonna do? towerdive me because someone fed her? no sir, i press my 3 buttons and because she built damage and not a QSS, the only place shes going is back to the fountain with noticably less color on her screen than before.
470k yi here. Fuck you.
Just yesterday, my team beat a master yi w/ 400k+ mastery and a rifle mouth after 52 minutes. He can't do a thing as i suck him dry with my ult 😌
Vars: Malzahar mains, don't take this personally.
Me as a Malzahar main: *And I took that personally*
he my main too
felt
*ults him aggresively*
Wait, and why no one plays malzahar? Cause he is "cringe" a lil bit
And he is my main too
Because he strong, but riot said: "no strong", so he no strong anymore
Remember the days u could build him AD and watch your voidlings destroy them ?
@@degiorgidani that and the zz’rot portal. It was nuts.
@@BerkSonmez69 damn yeah.... what do we have now? oneshot fiesta everywhere...
@@degiorgidani I’m sick of building grievous wounds every game lol
@@BerkSonmez69 true its just a must now. And just to counter runes not even items.
When you think you share something special with your opponent, but then he just buy a QSS... 💔
It doesnt stop suppress
@@yesimoz2701 it doesn’t stop the dmg but it lets you move
@@bryanhickernell7189 oh thanks for informing
i used to main leblanc a few years back due to her insane outplay potential, but now, i main malzahar since his kit is extremely simple and fun.
maybe i'm just getting older to play the high mechanic champs
Also you might be speaking of the time when she was super busted, no?
@@anubis9151 i don't think so. First time i picked leblanc was right before her rework, and then i main her mostly after rework (bouncing sigil season). I heard it was her weakest point at least at that time
Im a gangplank main and I LOVE fighting Malzahar. You would be surprised how many of them dont know that oranges cleanse suppression.
Hehe yeah
I hate that orange... SO MUCH
@@VarsVerum get good B)
Oranges > void voodoo magic
Then you are playing against noobs that just picked up the game
I like it when the snowballed carry just stopped for 2.5 seconds in a team fight and my team still not attacking it.
As a Malzahar Player, I can confirm his immobility to his biggest weakness. I feel forced every game into buying Rylai's just to make up for being unable to peel enemies, but also to keep enemies in place long enough for the voidling to deal some dmg. It's one of the best items on him besides Liandry's
choosing malzahar in champ select is like choose to be hated , you do cause you like to
Yeh, my teammate even yelled at me when I pick Malz. He typed: why the f you pick that champ? He ain't do shit, bro.
lol he do like..mega farm ppl out of lanes lol
Ahh....My main back when I played the game. By which I mean pre-reworked Malzahar. I still played the rework Malz but I missed the Void Pool on his W. The change to focus on his Voildlings really killed the character in my opinion.
Yeah i like it better before
It was my "main"
I liked to play super passive until six
For a kill with the jungle
And farm with E and try to infect the enemy champ with itxD
I liked the rework version and also considered the pool being integrated with the r pretty neat since it's an auto-combo. However, after all the nerfs he received it's barely any better and I think having the pool in your kit back could make his overall damage and clear timings much better.
I always found his pool to be super awkward, and now that the game is even more mobile than it was 5 years ago it would be almost useless without some way to lock enemies down in it. It never felt impactful, and was often all-but neglected in favour of abilities that the enemy couldn't ignore by just walking out of.
@@buurzai
That's what Rylai was for. . . and it wasn't for laning other than pushing the wave, it was for late game team fights when they all in and it was friggin huge so you're not just walking out of that. . .
@@Delimon007 And back in those days rylai would have been serviceable at that. Now, almost every champ released in the last 2 years has a dash of some sort - which of course are not affected by slows at all. The main point of his pool was to stick under someone just as you ulted them, otherwise it really didn't feel like it actually had much impact or did any real damage. It wasn't something like Morgana's pool where standing in it too long could accidentally kill you, it did a bit of poke damage, but not enough to really care about. As an ability, it was quite underwhelming.
At max ranks it could do quite a bit of damage to a tank who was stuck sitting in it for the duration, but because it was a tank they had the MR to shrug the worst of it off. It felt like something you just threw down for a bit of extra damage rather than something you planned around the uptime of. It never had much impact on the game, and really does fit much better as part of the ult.
Malzahar
Aka the champion that let's you farm a lane while moving to another lane
Maybe Riot can revert him to a dps chip damage, kinda like before his rework. This summons don't have the health to survive most battles, just a litte AoE and ded (or increase the minions health idk)
Riot doesn't want a champion that counters their broken posterboys.
he also probably needs some damage taken out of his ulti and put into his other abilities. Right now, late in the game it's kinda, do you have qss? if you do malz is pretty bad, otherwise he's decent. Also in lane, can the enemy clear voidlings easily? Well then, it's not gonna be fun. And honestly, most people can, so he kinda just feels a bit sad to play.
@@renatoramos8834 well yeah, that's how they make their money.
it's a free game after all.
@@thesun5275 They make money through skins and would make a lot more if their game was balanced instead of this shit. Players wouldn't leave in mass and would play many champions more evenly, leading to more skins sold overall.
enemy carry: ult someone else malz why are you targeting me?
me: No i dont think i will.
it's called qss and it's not available in silver, they play against thresh Jhin Malzahar, Skarner and mordekaiser and don't get qss
@@eVill420 You'd be surprised.. plat elo won't bother with it either
That question is always funny to me. "I don't know, I'm targeting you so that my team wins and your team loses?"
@@iXShadow So i should be higher than plat? No that's a joke. When i play malz at least one enemy has qss
Its almost like thats the whole reason for malz existence xD
I think it would make more sense with his lore that the voidlings spawn near the target affected with malefic visions of instead of Malz himself
Hey, that's actually a great point
Kinda like Illaoi tentacles, but without the wall condition
or got some kind of speed boost towards infected entities. You basically have to build Rylai's or have your ult to fight people with your voidlings.
@@mrreemann8313 They do get a speed boost as well as an atk spd increase tho.
@@CombatSloth not much of one. Yorick ghouls leap onto marked targets, illaoi tentacles spawn near marked targets, zyra plants have long range and bonkers atk speed.
Malzahar has one cc ability and it is his ultimate.
@@mrreemann8313 I was pointing out that they do, in fact, gain a move speed and atk speed boost. Your original statement makes it seem like they get none, and people that don't know about malzahar may take that into consideration should they look through comments. :)
Edit: Also his voidlings do a massive boost to the damage of his ultimate, which is why they likely don't have as massive of a boost as one might like.
9:09 "the enemy can just run away"
*giggles in rylais*
This. I don’t know if another champ who can use it better.
rylai liandry nerf preseason 11 :(
@@isaacshadow100 miss building rylais 2nd instead of 4th
The reason Malzahar says "Icathia beckons" is because he's trying to bait the hyper carry into turret diving him so he can R
Which is kassadin
I feel like TF is just a better Malzahar. Better roams, point and click long range cc, good wave clear.
Agreed. TF feels like malzahar but with more options.
tf is a bit harder though when it comes to match ups farming and macro im in low elo people who pick this champ have no idea wtf they are doing and just int
@@andrewchatman622 then get out of low elo lol
And both of them can remind people of their childhood games.
Malzahar being Pokemon and TF being Yu-gi-Oh.
Jk
Childhood? I still play those lol
I play a large majority of the champs covered in the "why no one plays" series ive never really thought of them as bad or even clunky all champs imo feel pretty solid to play albeit some easier than others to secure wins on
Sometimes one champ just call to you
@@jorgep8032 and also sometimes you can ignore the con's with your own playstyle or some tricks that the champ may have, like for example how I ignored most of Kled points by playing him more like a tanky assasin rather than a normal tank and also using some tricks like using Q before E so you can have more range.
Exactly. I love playing Malzahar and I even succeed here I normally couldn't.
Ironically, two of the main points in the video, area control and burst, was something he used to be incredibly *great* at, back when Null Zone was still his W. It let you cast a fuck-off huge circle that dealt % damage and, when coupled with Rylai's, delivered a minor slow, so the standard procedure with ol' Malzy was to chip with Q, W, and E until they got low then all-in with the big W-R combo and 100% them in a second.
This made him an absolute nightmare to defend turrets against because he could shove your lane in your face and then keep you away from the turret, whittling it bit by bit. The drawbacks were that he was vulnerable and slow and his mana costs were harsh, but he was rewarding to play. Even having QSS back then wasn't such a hard counter because Null Zone could still let him contribute.
Those were the days...
Preach man. I took an extended break from league before the Malzahar rework. I came back and was shocked to see he had his kit changed. I do like that I can place his W for Ahri taunt or thresh hook.
"Malzahar can lock down someone for 2.5 seconds with the press of a button"
Laughs in shadow realm
Yeah but they can still fight back
Ye bro Morde r the fed yi and see what happens
Laughs in roots
Morg
@@GlowingRay i remmber actually doing this, i fucked up real good en up 0/9/3 and killed a 23/3/12 twich whit full healt, spells and everything, i just bonked him 2 times and 3 autos
I agree with most of this, but there are some caveats:
- Malzahar is not considered stunned or suppressed during his ult, so you can still use summoner spells and active items to alleviate the fact that you can't move, such as Barrier.
- While Quicksilver Sash does indeed end the suppression, it does not end the damage or pool. If you do not have a stun and Malz doesn't stop channelling, you will still take full damage.
- The voidlings have a priority system: Nether Grasp -> Malefic Visions -> Champions Attacking Malzahar -> Any hostile target
In fact even if Malzahar stops himself the channeling, the ray will always deal full damage in 2.5 seconds.
You can just walk out of the pool though...
@@archituere1460 If he stops channeling himself then the flat damage on the ray will stop, but the pool beneath them will still burn I believe.
@@excalyber4012 No. The %HP damage from the pool will continue as long as the champion stays in it, but the suppressing ray always deal 275 (+80% AP) in 2.5 seconds, even if Malzahar dies or stops channeling.
Who’s Malzahar? I only know Beezahar 🤷🏽♂️
Meowzahar when?
As a Malzahar main I really like how you approached all of his problems in this video. At much, I'd say that you could've expanded on the point where he was relevant since it's on those nerfs where most of his kit really felt down. The voidlings used to make additional damage and run even faster against marked enemie.
He even had build diversity with the off-meta AD blue build.
I miss the old Malza armor pen semi tank. In aram my team always flamed me because they thought I was trolling, but that build was legit af, no one knew the little voidlings were doing all the dmg
if they gave voidlings the love they gave ghouls mid would know terror
Honestly malz currently is like the old urgot
-slow
-ult that locks you and an enemy down
-Damage ramping up over time
kinda funny that those 2 are my 2 most played champs this season
old urgot was way more reliable than old malz. Old urgot just needed to land a single skillshot on you and then he just had to spam his skillshot which turned into an auto target. His ult was definitely worse though but it made up for his strong kit.
Former Malzahar main here: I used to play him for his scary 1shot burst combo but Riot has literally removed 35% AP from his kit throughout a few nerfs...that's like half an ability's worth of damage. Since your Q does fairly low damage, you don't feel rewarded for hitting it and your carry potential is way lower as a result of the lower damage and thus you're more team reliant.
pretty much this. He still has some power in his ulti, but if they buy qss, you just can't do much. He really needs more damage in his normal abilities, or just a rework.
I think ive been playing malz different usually a single q will half health squishies
Now imagine Kassadin, which if it's not the most nerfed champion in the history of the game, he is one of the most nerfed champs. His passive was heavily nerfed and it worked in conjuction with his w, his q deals like 2/3 of the base damage, the silence was removed and the ratio to ap was lowered by 10%, from 0.8, to 0.7, his e deals basically half the damage it dealt before and the ap ratio went from 0.9 to 0.8 but the worst of all is his ult which can only stack 4 times instead of 8 and as a result it deals much less damage while consuming EXTREMELY ammounts of mana at 4 stacks. His w is a new skill which he didn't had and deals a good ammout of damage although since it's a melee skill, you most likely won't be able to land in most of champs because his survivability was the most nerfed thing they ever did. Kassadin back in the golden days was a tanky champ because he was melee and was anti-mage. Kassadin was a fighter back in the days, nowday he is a squishy assassin that can be 1 shot easily or even completely unplayable depending on the enemy composition. Not to mention that kassadin is basically one of the most useless champs at early game. If you don't go with tanky runes you literally won't be able to do anything in lane, unless the enemy is a fool or a noob.
2 simple changes that I think would greatly improve his QoL is:
1: Revamping his E from fully dps to half of the dmg dealt at the initial cast of the ability, and the other half will be dealt as dps(like Nasus's E but single-target).
2: After disconnecting with his victim of Nether Grasp, roots that target for another 1 second but lowers the duration of Nether Grasp by 1 second as well.
This way it would feel so much more rewarding to cast his E on his target first then R or precisely predicting and casting his Q on a target already has his E on it. Sometimes using his E first then R will be too risky against targets like assassins with deathdance who can survive his DoT then burst him down back, since his E's total dmg takes 4s to finish while his R only lasts 2.5s.
I love Malzahar so much. He's probably my favorite champ lore and gameplay wise. He was on my first free week and I was excited but I wanted to try Karthus a little more first. Unfortunately I thought the free week refreshed on Sunday and not Tuesday.
Haven’t seen the video but I already gave it a like lol
It means a lot knowing I have viewers who appreciate my content no matter what
Vars : Malzahar is a support.
Me a Malzahar main : Nah I am the carry and also my own support.
The title: why no one plays malz
The video: listing off pretty much every reason I play malz
I completely agree with everything you said. Malz was my first main in the game and you are right about all of his weaknesses. That's why I had to stop playing him to rank up any further. They need to do a minor rework on him for sure. His Q should at least slow if not root the target as well and his ult should allow him to move around while it's being channeled. These two changes alone would make him much more viable.
Yeah, the main issues imo are that the champ has no self peel abilities, and that his W, which you need to dps, gets destroyed even when people are not trying to do so on purpose, it's just ridiculous. Let's not mention that now everyone has insane tenacity so the R does like 1 second cc only and the fact that the games almost always end before Malz scales.
This was amazing , and we nearly reached 800 viewers on the live chat!!!!!!!!
Vars you are doing a great job and the same did the editor!
Keep up the great work!
Ah, Vars noticed me, Yay!
He was my first ever champ i bought, and bought a skin for. Back in s3
I only liked playing him coz he can float.
7:00 btw, the combo can be reversed to make it more effective since Yoricks E actually makes all ghouls jump on the target who has the mist passive on them. so, trapping them in his wall just makes it easier to throw his E onto them, and then by double tapping your Q you summon your ghouls to immediatly jump the enemy laner.
I imagine making his R a toggle on a short cooldown and a huge mana per second cost, so he can choose when and how long is he going to lock himself with you
Malzahar can cancel Nether Grasp whenever he wants by moving actually!
Yeah but most of the time it feels like you enable the whole enemy team instead of disabling one of them when you actually press r since it goes on cooldown
It would have to be something like 50% current mana every 0.2s or something crazy like that; otherwise it's incredibly OP
I think it would be cool if it had a dual purpose like Liss R. Malz could cast it on himself as a defensive option and the enemy just can't leave his zone.
Old Malzahar's Space Aids hurt a lot more
DPS mages are a dying archetype in league...hope he gets the same treatment as Anivia this season🙏
As an anivia main, I bless that. Malz deserves that love too!
yes, and cass too
Is Teemo a dps mage?
@@tripleD2301 I'm just a hard stuck gold, so take my opinion with a grain of salt...but I don't see him as a dps Mage. Most of his damage comes from AA, and his ultimate is not a reliable source of damage. DPS mages deals sustainable damage through skills, benefitting a lot from hability haste and mana, while classical Teemo builds want attack speed and raw ap.
He belongs to a much more niche class, alongside with Kayle and maybe some others, but I don't know what people call this class...is the ap version of adcs. It used to be a little more popular in the past, but now is out of fashion, there isn't even a mythic item for it.
@@Evaldo_Souza
Malz has always been a DPS mage, his job has always been to delete carries, assassins, and even tanks if they underestimated him.
Now? He does none of those things and one of the biggest reasons is that his passive is dog shit for doing his job and the voidlings die if you sneeze on them. Instead of riot nerfing the support build by lowering the base damage and upping the scaling, they just neutered them instead. Dumbest shit ever and Riot proves time and time again that they either don't know how to balance, don't care, or are doing this garbage intentionally.
Kinda funny to think how they used to say they wouldn't touch the meta when that's all they've been doing since season 1.
One other thing that's prevalent with Malz that was brought up one previous vids (i.e. kennen) is how the slow staff fixes an issue rather than augments his strength (I think)
Why is Malz a battlemage? Hes not designed to stay in combat. Hes a control mage with his CC and silence.
A control mage is more about an ongoing effect that will have immediate consequences for disrespecting it, such as heimerdinger turrets or anivia ult. Sure, Malzahar has his ult puddle, but it's really not that much of an area denial as other abilities. A battle mage is any mage who has shorter range and focuses on dps over burst, which fits Malzahar perfectly.
@@peterthepanda5191 His Q is a wall. His E prevent you approach the minion (sometime champion). It seem like a control mage to me. He doesn't stay in combat. He throws all his spell, wait, then repeat, his damage is dps but his gameplay isn't.
Great video, I still miss the "old" malzahar before he's mini rework in season 6. In summary, he use to be like a burst mage. A rotation of his basic abilities destroy 2/3 health of an adc and his r was 40% of his damage. I feel at that time he had the choice to keep his ultimate to discourage assassins or burst down an enemy. After patch 6.9, riot gutted his damage to give him more defense, so he can have this very specific identity of anticarry.
Malza was such a good champ and I wondered why nobody played him. He was like a hidden OP. Then the pros started playing him on their LCS games and he got nerfed to the ground. He can't even kill someone with half HP with his full combo.
Back when I started League- in 2013- Malz saved the game for me. I was struggling hard to find a champ that fit me, and malz was that champ. I have moved passed him lately, but will always love this champ!
*Hearing the Nier Automata OST playing in the background*
Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well 😌
Finally someone who recognizes the BGM! I was getting disappointed that no one was noticing :(
@@VarsVerum I'm a big fan of that OST, it's one of the best I've heard ❤️
As a Malzahar main, I approve this video :)
But for real though, Malz is a great mid lane as for me, acts as a 2nd support with his R: Pretty much a support for jungle. He can control the waves immensely as his wave clear is superior that he doesn't have to stay in lane to wave clear.
However, most of the problems listed in the video is the reason why many people do not like Malz in general, I am referring to my friends who thinks he is only good cause of his ult which is fair but for those who know how to play Malz, there is far more to Malz's kit than people think.
Also, all of these problems are very accurate indeed, I found one problem in my playing in which many streamers I seen play Malz do too is not knowing how to effectively play Malz in the laning phrase. For instance, mana costs are so high on Malz that for him to hard shove a wave into a tower requires all of his abilities pre-6 and mana, even when playing against the likes of Irelia or Ryse who can match Malz wave pressure, you become stuck under your tower with no mana while the enemy minions and champ can chip away your tower.
If you successfully shove the wave in, basics wave control lets you either base or roam (with the latter not being the best option with low mana) while enemy laner clears but can freeze the wave and hits you hard as you have to step up to farm, resulting a jungler like Warwick, Rammus or Yi to successful gank you due to movement speed disadvantage. So, you have to freeze your wave but with Zed and Yasuo as well as other mages who have range abilities, this too hurts you so this supports the problems in that Malz is reliant on teammates and lacking of ult results in vulnerability; to help Malz through the laning phrase.
In terms of a rework, I believe he needs more movement speed and more DPS, as although his abilities alone are not that great, I think they are fine as it would become OP and require a nerf if the suggested reworks on his kit from the video and other comments come true. But if he had more movement and DPS, he would escape from possible ganks easy and no need to spend a lot of mana in the early game as one whole combo should do enough to push the wave and enemy back instead of 2/3 combos.
My second main... I simply enjoy drinking the tears of assasin players
until they buy qss, then malz is the one crying...
I drink the tears of assassins with both my mains Diana/Malzahar
Hope this makes sense.
One of my favorite things about playing as malz is that i can stop full enemy team pushes in their tracks - sucking away all their momentum and letting my team counter attack.
Basically acting as an anti siege champ.
My passive shield negates at least one engage opportunity. Holding off them gaining the initiative.
A decently powerful E cast on a minion pretty much garuntees wiping out their wave meaning they have nothing to soak up fire from the turrets. And if all their attention is towards taking the turret and fending off my teammates they tend not to notice my E spreading around and dont take care to avoid it and end up with me draining around 1/4th their hp for free.
If any of them try to move up the dive us i can R them into submission and the pool left behind can deter them from fully moving the places they want to.
My Qs unique firing angle lets me easily poke a their backline and silence them so they cant pull their tricks to support their frontlane or at least get some free damage on the squishes.
And my W lets me create a new albiet temporary and weak frontline they have to wade through before they can make their plays.
None of this happens immediately, but he can definitively turn a push into a drawn out grind that an enemy team might not be able to sustain themselves through.
Everytime you post a video, I can feel my boy Xerath getting closer
Malz is one of my favorites, so cool vid!
I wonder if this change would benefit him:
His W is changed to make it so the voidlings always spawn directly in front of Malz, no matter what. The actual ability becomes a similar ability to Yorick's mist. If it lands, the voidlings (possibly also Malz himself?) a burst of movespeed. If it misses, the voidlings just attack the nearest valid target as normal.
oh his Q being root on cced targets would be great
Malzahar was one of the first champions I bought back in season 3. I rushed Chalice of Harmony and Will of the Ancients. It allowed for infinite mana sustain and also 15% spellvamp. As a total noob, I was so proud of this theory crafting. I basicly spammed E on the wave, allowing me to get last hits without auto attacking along with healing me up in lane. Basicly had infinite health and mana sustain in lane along with easy csing. I think that was the build I used to get into silver along with AP WW mid (also rushed chalice for infinite mana sustain with Q).
For those who dont know Chalice used to give good mana regen along with a passive that increased your mana regen by 1% for every 1% missing mana (like Veigar's old passive). The item also gave some magic resist and only costed 800ish gold. So you could basicly never run totally out of mana since you would regen as crazy when low on mana. It also built into Athenes which was one of the most popular mage items at the time, as it gave some AP, some MR, cdr and mana regen. I mostly just built chalice first for sustain, then proceded to build other items.
Edit: I realise this doesn't seem that insane by todays standards when everyone can go manaflow band and ravenous hunter to achieve similar results. But back then lane sustain was everything. Very few champions had healing and spells costed a lot more mana. People bought mana potions back then even! Damage was lower overall which meant laning mostly came down to trading resources.
As an m7 Malzahar main, I completely agree with this video! I also think that no one wants to be the villain characters of League! But that's alright . . . I'll do it. >:)
Laughs in Syndra, Malzahar, Cassio, Nocturne, Vel Koz
Malz is the hero of his own story. So not really a villain ;)
The much unneeded mage class rework left Brand and Malzahar in the dirt. Removing or delaying much of their damage it is a miracle people even play them. Malzahar ult used to do like 400 + 90% ap.
Lol I played him and he's my second to my lovely illoui ♡♡♡♡
Lol my bf taught me so much in minus 2 weeks heheh
illoui hurts
Malzahar was actually my off main after I took a long break from playing TF, I will say that popping his Ult on an unsuspecting victim was fun, as well as soloing a turret in URF with only Voidlings
God he looks so fun. I wish getting champions in league were easier, every time you make a new video I wamna play this character so bad.
Want a tip? Save every champion shard you get from level up capsules until you find some you really like in free rotation and try getting them from the shards (low levels gives you more capsules so higher chance to get the one you want) since they are much cheaper through shards.
I'm assuming you're missing quite a few champs, it took me roughly 5-6 years of playing to unlock every champ, this was also back when blue essence and hextech loot didn't exist and you had to buy all champs, at full price using IP (Influence Points, which you earned like 30 every match), if you don't mind a boomer asking, how fast can you get champs using the Blue essence system? The IP system was horrible as you can probably imagine.
Also, just some advice, don't dismiss champs just because they don't interest you and be willing to revisit champs that you used to dislike. Over the past year or two, I've gone back through the entire roster and fell in love with so many old champions that I used to just ignore or hate playing. Skarner, Nocturne, Twisted Fate (I ended up maining him for like 2-3 years), Volibear, Trundle etc... are just some examples for me personally. I NEVER touched these champs and randomly I did and now they're in my main champ pool.
ive always liked masked purple champs, im an jax otp for the past 2 seasons but ive played a lot of veigar, kassadin, and my first main was malzhar, great vid vars and keep up the great work.
You activated my malzacard !
I play him loads. He’s great. But what they should do is make his wall spell also cause a slow or stun
great?
can't do anything
Malzahar is one of my most played champions in the entire game, so here's my take:
- His voidlings are more fragile than a modern day teen
- His ult being QSS'd is as depressing as getting ulted by him
- His E does a surpsingly little amount of damage and pushing waves is almost entirely due to the fact his voidlings deal bonus damage to enemies with E on them
- His passive gets procked by every ability, whereas the spellshield from banshees only procks on CC
- His voidlings reset the jungle camp "attention bar", making it impossible to jungle now (He was really good, especially at getting dragons)
- His W is one of the strongest abilities in the game at taking turrets
- His ult does % max HP damage on the enemy, making him a Trundle level tank killer
- Fighting Olaf hurts the soul
If I had the option to, I would make his voidlings tankier, revert w back to passive and puddle back to W, and then change the R completely while keeping his 1v1 potential.
Thanks the video, Vars. I’m at 0:01 atm and I’ve abusing this champ lately on mid solo queue. I’m pretty sure one shining reason, for people, who haven’t even played Mal in his heyday, is “lack of direct impactful interaction outside of ultimate”
I’ll double check to see if I get it
Mal before his rework can actually carry, his E use to be able to burst someone down.
7:00 Another thing you can do with Yorick is throw E then cast Q or R. The ghouls jump if someone is affected by mourning mist, which means you can bring out the ghouls after landing a good E
I would still be playing him, had they not put his damn w on his ult.
I love this series. It's like an encyclopaedia of all of my favourite characters.
same
I have mained malz since he came out, thats my guy
something that not a lot of people consider about malz too is that on his R, its the pool underneath the suppressed person that does the damage, not the eyebeam, this is important because if you read the ability, it says it does something crazy like 75% max health damage, but that is if they stand in the pool for the full duration, which is longer than the suppress, and if the suppressed person is hooked while you are surprising them, they will still be suppressed but you will be doing 0 damage
Isn't lissandra also a anti-carry battlemage? Great video btw
She has lower damage and high amounts of cc so not a battlemage
Liss IS an anti carry but not a battlemage. She’s more of a catcher or burst :)
Malzahar’s a great champion and offers so much for the team and great peel for backline. I’ve main this champion for a long time and will continue to do so. His damage is very underrated and he heavily relies on rylais kiting. Loved the content, thanks for this one 💚
I would try him out if he wasn’t a 4800 champion, for that price i could play cooler champs.
I main malzahar ever since he was released, and i agree to everything you've said here. Since last season, I've been using him as support and i focus on building ability haste (or cdr last season) just so i could utilize his ult all the time especially if someone tries to dive my adc.
Can you cover Varus next? He's a champion I recently picked up but he shares a lot of the same things as Kog'maw and Vel'koz, 3 damaging abilities that don't really combo well into each other.
Before Malz was reworked, when the pool aspect of his ult was still on his W and his voidlings were his passive, there were two ways of playing him: max E first for better waveclear and easy apply point-and-click, or max Q first for better poke damage since it was longer range and the silence shut down any counter for a short time.
Maxing Q was my preferred method most of the time, so I was very excited when I heard that his rework was reducing the cooldown on it to like 6 seconds, and then rather puzzled when most people ignored it. I don't play normals any more, but in ARAM he works perfectly fine, possibly even better, maxing his q and turning him more into a poke mage with some uncomfortable DOT abilities if you get close enough. I know his E has better scaling now, as well as better mana conservation, so maybe it works better in lane, but his Q is absolutely more reliable in my opinion.
Revert the nerfs ro his minions .. all of them
Then remove his ult
I really appreciate you not putting those huge text blocks in this video. That was awesome editing, really feels like a huge level up. Keep at it :)
he's pretty basic and boring and has no mobility or much outplay/flashy potential. that's why not many people play him.
I'm unironically a malz one trick and I love your suggestions to change his E and Q. His power is weighted too heavily on his R and Passive.
I always come back to this and it reminds me how far I’ve come in my malzahar skills just from this video, thank you so much for this video
I'm a diamond malz player with 2 million mastery points and a 60% wr in season 11. Please Ignore everything this either ignorant or low elo content creator says, because literally every statement is wildly wrong. The reason he has a low pick rate is just because his kit is more boring and not as flashy or appealing as nearly every other mid laner
I think it's kinda tragic, Malzahar is one of the few champs whose mini-rework was a direct nerf. Getting rid of his minions health in exchange for a 1 hit health bar killed any alternate builds (AD Malz). Making his W part of his ult took away his ability to screen people away or do AOE damage. I'll never understand why they reworked his kit when he was just fine if a little strong (AD Malz), but thanks to power creep a champion who was kinda strong 2-3 seasons ago is now shut out of most games by 200 year champs.
This is an old video, but I LOVE malzahar. He fits perfectly into the hypercarry meta league is focusing on, because if the 15/0 katarina is the only threat on the enemy team, if you play it right, it's gg because she can't do anything. Malz' e is also understated; with double burn and aery, it can 100-0 squishy targets late game. I've killed people I haven't even seen because it's spread from one body to another. So even if you can't walk up and R (because, as you stated, it suppresses you as well) you can keep throwing out e's and q's and slowly burn the entire enemy team down, like brand. Save your R for divers or cleaning up the 1000 stack nasus after everyone else is dead.
Just played my first game of Malzahar. Went looking for some quick basic guide. Came across this video and found it more helpful than any guide.
malz has somewhat of a combo with e q w r. e for dot damage, q to silence, w for minions, then r. it makes more sense if you think about it backwards, while they are suppressed your minions are attacking them, those minions didnt die because you q'd the enemy taking away their aoe abilities that could kill them, and your e damage was going all along. if you take ignite you can squeeze it in anywhere. rylais is also really good on him
I know the point of the video isn't to say the champ is bad or anything but honestly he just plays very different and if you can get used to his anti-carry play style he's great at doing exactly that.
Wonderful video as always. Just a small info to keep in mind, traps in yugioh do a LOT to advance the game state. While regular traps are pretty outdated due to their clunky mechanic of being slow, hand traps are very popular and can definitely shut down a deck and win games. Shutting down the opponents deck is one of if not the most important mechanic in yugioh, just as it is in league, think of it as cc- the more you have it your teamcomp is probably more efficient. Even the mirror force you showed was very popular for a very long time even in the previous decade (don't know if it got powercrept in the most recent meta though). Just a small nitpick where I think you didn't make a fair point.Yes, I know I'm a moronic nerd ape xd. Keep up the good work. Cheers!
Ghost for mobility, dark harvest for burst, e Max first. Glacial if you need more cc and engage. Also he can build ad and his minions apply spell effects. Mythics: liandrys, ludens, or everfrost
Malz is one of those champs where he’s rarely played... for a reason, that damn ult
I play Malze alot and i agree that he isn´t that useful in the last couple seasons but i wouldn´t say that it is just pressing keys. Of course you can´t be as creative with his abilities but his W is really helpful when one or two enemies are chasing you. And also when you skill E first, it is a really good poke and also one of the best wave clear abilities as you mentioned.
I only started playing LoL recently and i wondered why i liked Malzahar so much because he plays so different in lane and in team fights. Now it makes sense that he is an anti-carry^^
Great video, keep up the series :D
As a Malzahar Main i agree with all the points in this video, but for me, his kit feels too fun to let him go, and although he lacks in many areas, he's really easy to pickup and not that hard to master. Intelligent item building can alter the course of many fights, but it is very hard to carry a downhill game. Still, i would never give him up. I love DoTs what can I say ahah
What people tend to forget is his R refreshes the duration of his E when it hits. So if you flash r on the tail end of his E they get another dose.
That *Yu-Gi-Oh* explanation really helped thanks :D
I think they could buff some of his skills while adjusting his play style to make him just a little bit harder to play.
Q - Silence duration is reduced, but if it's a max range Q, Malz will also slow enemies for 50%+
E - Damage is reduced, but if it's reapplied by Q or R - reduces enemy MR
R - duration is reduced to 2 seconds, but gives him MR/Armor and/or Omnivamp during suppression
As someone who mains Malza (in low levels because I don't play ranked really) I agree with most of what you said. Malz is slow as butts and, while he has nice dmg, he is too dependent on his ultimate. But I wouldn't say he is weak without it. A late game Malz's with full effect build (dot and other effects so Liandry, Demonic Embrace, Rylai, Morello) malefic vision (e) alone can sometimes deal up to half health to squishy targets without your voidlings or q or r. Also Rylai is nice for a small version of cc.
Also I'd say you don't have to smash buttons with him, at least I found that Malz DOES have a good combo he can utilize. Since his damage depends on his e and w more than his q in my opinion, I always keep an eye on how many voidlings I can spawn. To maximize the damage the best course of action is e->q->w->r->q->ew. This is because you put put your dot, you refresh it instantly with q (while also silencing and proccing electro), spawning voidlings as they reached their maximum of 3 stacks with q, ulting so they are placed in one place and again refreshing your e, q BEFORE the ult finishes so it catches them slightly by surprise and silences them again AND refreshes your e again, and w or e after depending if they are close or far because your w counter is already at 3 again. Its important not to forget that your ult can also refresh your e duration. Although this looks like a lengthy combo it really isnt, e is instant, you put out your q, and by the time your q lands you can press w and r. It is faster than one would anticipate.
I also think that without ult you are good to go if someone attacks you, if you can keep a bit of a distance you can deal solid damage with your e,w and q but you'll be caught in the long run sadly yes.
For lane pressure his e is fantastic with his w and you can use him as a poke mage if you get your e on your target and just use your q (which has a lot bigger range than one would think) to refresh the duration. Also many players underestimate the "bounce" or spread radius of his e and will stand into it when it kills the minions.
I agree with everything you said by the way, don't take this as nitpicking please, only as my opinion. He is a great champ with many flaws and one that shows the signs of the old game, can't solo carry, etc. but I think he is a very fun champ to play with.
Also I'm kind of surprised you didn't talk about his passive seeing as, from what I ofthen gather, it is one of the most infuriating parts of playing against malz and a tool that lets him get away with way more than he should.
Great video, I'm looking forward to the next ones :)