What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
The mage update is finally out on the PBE, and I’m getting a chance to mess around
with each and every one of them and bring you my thoughts on the more interesting reworks,
one at a time.
In this video we’re taking a look at the new Malzahar.
He’s probably the champion who is going to have his overall playstyle of gameplay
effected the most, and he’s receiving quite a lot of changes, arguably more than any other
mage champion in this spree of reworks coming out.
He’s been developed into quite the peculiar character, and has a lot of new strengths,
but also a lot of new weaknesses.
But I’m mostly wondering, how good is reworked Malzahar?
Let’s get started.
So unlike with Vladimir, this new Malzahar does not play that similarly to the old malzahar
before the rework.
A big part of what Riot wanted to accomplish with this rework was to change his playstyle,
as the old malzahar playstyle was generally flawed in terms of design, and as a result
malzahar was always in a really weird spot, and suffered from some unhealthy gameplay
and mechanics.
It’s an interesting direction that is being taken with his kit, and I view it as by far
the most risky rework that is taking place.
Most, in fact I would say all of the other reworks are keeping the general gameplay style
intact, but malzahar plays a lot differently now and It’s a bold direction that has a
lot of potential, but it’s also one that I am not entirely confident will work out.
So first off his abilities, we have his passive, which has been changed to a new ability.
It’s now this shield esque kind of ability relatable to malphite’s passive, where if
malzahar hasn’t taken damage or been crowd controlled in the last 20 seconds or so, he
gains this thing that gives him 90% damage reduction and crowd control immunity that
effects anything from champions, and lasts for 1 full second on top of the first ability
being mitigated after taking damage or being crowd controlled.
This is definitely one of his new strengths, this passive is an incredible tool that you
can use to really just wreck people, and since it lasts for one second after being initially
hit, it is underestimated a lot by people.
It’s a super powerful tool that requires your opponents to really have to take a suboptimal
route of action to play around it, and a lot of the times you can absorb a key ability
and get easy trades, some free harass, or completely come out ahead in a 1v1 fight.
His Q has been mostly unchanged, with the only difference being that it now does a bit
less base damage, has a smaller ap ratio, and silences for a shorter duration, but it
also costs less mana and has a shorter cooldown.
His W is the big thing that is changing everything revolving malzahar.
It’s a completely new ability, kind of based off of his old passive.
It now spawns a voidling on a target location.
Voidlings scale with both attack damage and ability power, and on the first time a voidling
attacks a champion, large monster, epic monster, or assists in killing a unit, it spawns another
voidling with the same remaining duration, and voidlings will not spawn more voidlings
when there is les than 4 seconds left in their duration.
As well, once you spawn 3 voidlings, all of your voidlings gain 100% attack speed.
They deal triple damage to lane minions under 25% hp, so they are great for last hitting,
and they prioritize attacking targets that are effected by malefic visions, his E, or
nether grasp, his ultimate, and they have 100% increased movement speed when seeking
out those targets.
This is a pretty complex ability as I’m sure you can tell, as the voidlings have a
lot of really complex mechanics on them, but this W is his new bread and butter, it’s
the new defining feature of what makes malzahar malzahar.
His voidlings do mixed damage and you can often spawn out a ton at a time and just shred
through people, and they proc spell effects like rylais, but they do not proc on hit effects
like lifesteal or blade of the ruined king.
And although they scale with both AP and Ad and deal mixed damage, the attack damage scaling
of the voidlings is far superior to the ap scaling, it’s about literally twice as much.
His E is mostly unchanged, with the only difference being that the base damage and ap ratio has
been lowered, and the mana cost has been reduced, and the mana refund has changed to 2% of your
max mana instead of a flat ratio.
As well, if you land your Q or R on a target that is effected by his E, malefic visions,
it now refreshes the duration, so you can kind of surprise people with that by extending
the duration of his E to be super long.
His ultimate has received what seems like a minor change, but the impact it has on creating
his new playstyle is about as much as his W actually.
His ultimate has had the flat damage on it completely removed, and it now creates a zone
on the ground that deals percent max health damage based on opponents standing in it.
The percent max health damage is 6, 8, or 10% depending on his level, and gets 1 extra
percent per 100 ap.
So essentially, his ultimate does only a small fraction of the damage that it used to.
Because of this, malzahar’s burst mage or burst assassin style has been thrown pretty
much out the window, as his Q and E also received damage nerfs, he is without a doubt doing
a lot less damage now at will, and he can’t exactly one shot people like before.
Instead, the new malzahar has shifted to playing entirely around his W. You can kind of still
one shot people, but only if you set up the W perfectly by spawning multiple voidlings
on someone, and refreshing the duration of malefic visions on them.
His one shot isn’t completely gone, but it has become a lot more of a gameplay fantasy
because the setup required to pull it off is just a little ridiculous, which is fully
intentional, and is the way Riot wanted his rework to be.
Instead, he plays a lot more like a sustained damage bruiser now, or like a disruptor.
As a result, he can probably find success in the top lane, and in the mid lane, and
especially in the jungle for sure.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Malzahar top or jungle becomes his best role after this
rework.
Because malzahar revolves around his W now, his attack damage playstyle has incredible
potential.
Players will now have the decision to go a more utility focused ap build with like rylais
to get a slow, and other ap items like zhonyas and stuff that give a lot of really awesome
utility, or an attack damage bruiser build with stuff like death’s dance, maw of malmortius,
steraks gage etc.
Because the ad scaling of his voidlings is pretty much double of what the ap scaling
is, and all of his other abilities have taken nerfs to his ap ratios, I actually do believe
that the attack damage bruiser style of malzahar will probably become the meta build.
Although the ap build is awesome because rylais is so amazing for being able to have your
voidlings stick on a target, you just do so much more damage when building AD, it’s
insane and he can totally shred through tanks like mad, and just play with the ad carry
and melt a tank instantly, and regardless of his playstyle, his ultimate will always
be a solid tool to pick off targets when you have an ally, it’s a point and click suppress
that still lasts for a long time.
And because his attack damage bruiser style is really strong, as a result malzahar jungle
and malzahar top are probably going to be really good.
He excels versus immobile champions that are short ranged or melee, and in the mid lane
a lot of high range poke mages can be tough matchups.
So it’s not impossible that his matchups in general will be a bit better in the top
lane.
As well, his jungle clear ability is incredible, it’s honestly fantastic because of the way
voidlings work, and you can solo dragon as early as level 3 into the game.
Don’t get me wrong though his AP build still has a lot of merit, as I mention rylais is
probably one of the best items on the game on him, so what is probably going to happen
is we might see like some hilarious hybrid build become the best option with like a rylais,
hextech gunblade, death’s dance, steraks gage, and a maw or something.
He definitely has a lot of options with his build bath, and the utility of ap items is
typically a bit better than that of the Attack damage items, so there’s a lot of room for
experimentation, and although he will definitely deal more damage when built AD, that’s not
always what you want from a champion on your team.
Regardless of build though, ap or ad, he probably will get a little tanky and be able to play
like kind of a bruiser.
Although he might struggle a bit versus poke mages, because of his ultimate, and because
he builds some tank stats, he’s actually a great counterpick versus assassins.
So although he might seem to have some bad matchups in the mid lane, he has a lot of
good ones too for sure.
And he’s tanky enough to be able to succeed as a jungler, I mean he gets to be a bit more
tanky than like a nidalee might.
So honestly, jungle ad malzahar is probably the most ideal way to play him since his wave
clear, especially at level one is just crazy, you can clear every single jungle camp and
then do dragon by yourself, and still have more than half health at the end of it, and
you should be at full health if you aren’t doing dragon, he literally just never takes
damage in the jungle, unless you are using his voidlings incorrectly.
And this new playstyle of having to use his voidlings isn’t bad, and it definitely has
potential, but often times it can be a bit tricky to setup properly, or just be kind
of weird to play around the voidlings, since their mechanics are pretty clunky.
For example, if you are chasing an opponent and they walk into a bush that you don’t
have vision of, instead of continuing forward like anyone normally would, the voidlings
will return back to you until you get vision of them.
It’s just a bunch of little things that can make them annoying sometimes, and if your
malefic vision is on cooldown the voidling targeting is all over the place most of the
time, and the voidlings usually can’t get in range to hit your target anyways.
Overall though this new malzahar is very unique, and his attack damage playstyle is pretty
solid, and although he plays a lot differently now, he still has a lot of awesome strengths
for sure.
If you were a malzahar main before I’m not entirely confident that you will enjoy the
new malzahar, but he is still pretty cool so I would still be optimistic, and if you
haven’t played malzahar before, maybe give him a try when this rework hits the live servers,
which should be about two weeks or so from the day I publish this video.
And looks like that’s gonna be it, if you enjoyed the video hit that like button and
if you didn’t hit that dislike!
Thanks for watching, subscribe if you want, and I’ll see you guys next time!