She needs the nerf because her ice hand passes through the front line without pause. She then proceeds to pop out next to the adc and ult combo her/him to death in under a second. It is impossible to stop when team fighting in the jungle.

Edit: Am I the only one who notices that the system punishes streaks? I am on a 6 game streak and my lp gain went from 10 to 1 in in 5 games. This is annoying when i have 98 lp and I get 1 lp for one of the hardest matches of my life.

 

It's not because you're on a streak, it's because you're close to a promotion series the matchmaker doesn't think you're ready for.

 

I'm curious about this and figured someone here could give me the breakdown on why I never see anyone using Malzahar. He is my favorite champ and definitely my best. I think in the last hundred times I have used him I have maybe seen 1 other Malz. I am sure somehow he mathematically sucks and if I were to play against better people he would be destroyed but I just don't understand right now. I consistently rape with him and even if he is just a pub stomper, I would think others would use him to pub stomp as well.

 

1) Skill shots too hard for people

2) No escapes or hard CC that doesn't screw him over

3) QSS = Silence, E, and R all gone.

Main reasons I see for no Malz that people constantly cite.

 

There are times this community makes me weep. I get Tryndamere with 0 re-rolls in an ARAM against Syndra/Leona/Ashe/Caitlyn/Tristana. I get reported for dying too much (12 times) - Exactly what am I supposed to do vs that team with 0 re-rolls? Man...

Malz is, yeah, nullified by 1 item, which is unfortunate as he's still rather scary when played well and people forget QSS exists.

 

http://www.pizza.gg/
Papa Johns is getting involved in Esports. So if you live in the US you can get a pizza 50% off.

This is super cool, and I hope it continues to other companies.

 

Thanks for the quick response. Yeah, those reasons do make sense and QSS definitely pisses me off whenever I play but normally no matter how well I do it's rare that people deviate their build to account for me. And even if someone builds it, I just target others or just waste them when they are on CD. It makes sense though to pick a different AP mid that doesn't face the same challenge. I just really like him and how he plays. You do have to be super careful about using your ult because you become a sitting duck as well but luckily for me the enemies usually find a way to isolate themselves trying to kill me in the back.

Papa Johns couldn't pay me to eat their crap.

 

He's a bit one dimensional. Push push push and a single target lockdown. But lots of people can do the lockdown but better, really. Suppression makes it weaker, not stronger, because they put the conditional "you can't move" on it.

An Ahri charm is just as likely to get a kill in a team fight situation. Really, the lockdown Malz puts himself in is the center of the action. It's got decent range, but it's not like he can flash ult the carry without consequences like a ww/skarner/vi can. It forces him into the situation where his ult is only going to be useful on the squishies (in the teamfight phase) but he doesn't have the mobility, escapes, or durability to get it on the proper target with consistency. On top of that, if you ever do get to the point where you are a huge threat, a QSS (or mikael's crucible) takes care of you.

Then the rest of his kit is kind of lame. His E is his bread and butter and is pretty great. The voidlings are mostly useless outside of the laning phase, and limited use there. The silence is pretty good, but still comes down to your prediction vs theirs. His pool is just mediocre. You don't need that % burn, because Malz isn't ryze or something who can toe to toe with bruisers. Attacking high HP targets isn't your best bet, which makes this spell kind of useless, since a high damage nuke would work better in this slot. It has great baron/dragon utility, but it's a really poor zoning and damage tool. It has great damage and scaling once leveled up, but is so awful for a large portion of the game.

I'd say the best way to play him is liandrylais to make his best spell, his malefic visions, into a true nightmare, his pool into a slightly better zoning tool, and then really save his ult for a defensive tool/kill secure rather than any type of engage.

It comes down to, in the end, if you are going to play a very immobile mage in a very mobile game, why pick malz? Any of the mobile mages (ahri/gragas/kass/fizz/liss/diana/kat/ori/nidalee) are obviously more mobile and have more defensive/offensive options because of it. And then the rest of the non mobile mages just have better utility. Anivia is much safer with the best zone control and great damage, Xerath is safer and deals more consistent damage with more movement, etc.

Most of those less mobile mages have access to a defensive measure much earlier. Xerath/brand both get their stun at level 2 and are both pretty decent anti-tank mages (lyandrylai's brand passive+xerath %pen). Malz just doesn't have that strong of an early game but has no defensive tools to make up for it and doesn't become some kind of monster late game either.

Still strong enough to play and fun though.

 

While I agree with what Churchy said, it is only true because of how people play Malz in general.

Malzahar's laning is very strong. The only reason why he fell out of favor was due to the heavy jungle presence during season 2, making it difficult to playing a champion that naturally pushes. But, Malzahar beats almost all normal ap mids during laning, and if pulled ahead a little bit, will have no trouble 100-0 bruisers during mid game.

The problem comes when the Malzahar isn't ahead, and cannot kill front liners/bad team protection. Then you end up with somebody that isn't a very good assassin (in teamfights) trying to fill that role.

 

I think the problem also comes in that it's much harder to get Malzahar ahead than it is to put him behind. With no escapes or CCs pre 6, he's a bit more susceptible to ganks than other mids.

Part of the reason I dislike him is because I always view mid as a 2v1 lane and start with the assumption that I will be camped and my jungler will be a useless cunt. The matchup will often come to whose jungler gives the lane more attention. It's a situation where Malz is more susceptible to ganks and will therefore draw more ganks to him.

 

Actually I rarely play solo, usually I have shezza or Juede with me. If I log on and no one is on, I'll just sit there afk and play pokemon until someone invites me. But I still just assume that my jungler is a piece of shit, especially if they are queued with me. :awesome

Also, Doublelift and Xpecial just won their first all-star match at like 1:42.

 

Spoiler

Well, there's the expected result for the NA - China match. NA showed great signs of life, some great plays but also some equally daft ones - and still unable to close a game out despite being up 10k gold. Not their fault, their comp was out-scaled hard and that engage under a tower against Vayne/Ryze/Nasus/Sona/Zac just... Bad call, whoever made it.

Crossing my fingers and toes for Europe to beat Korea but, I think it's gonna be close.

 

Spoiler

While yes, their comp was outscaled lategame, that loss was NA's fault. They threw that game so hard. They had something close to a 10k gold lead at one point, but the smite steal on baron messed them up so hard. And then the engage you mentioned when China still had baron was the final throw, they might have been able to wait out the Baron buff and still have a gold lead.

They also could definitely have won that first game. They had pretty much the same super late game comp that China had in game 2 and were coming back into it but Saint and Dyrus got caught out recalling in a bad position and they got aced to end the game.

That Rumble in game one though...

 

Spoiler

Honestly I didn't understand the bans in game 1, considering China's well known ot have a top 3 champions, all of which they got. Still, obviously NA had a strategy, it just didn't work out all that well.

Definitely worded my sentence wrong there, it was certainly NA's fault, definitely that of the shot-caller making some of those ridiculous calls. They spent far too long in Game 2 hanging around Baron (did nobody honestly time it?) waiting for nothing to happen.

The other main problem of game 2 was Saint getting 7 of the kills - Voli can't do anything with all that gold, doubly so against a BotRK/LW Vayne and a Ryze of all people. Without flash, Saint basically did nothing in a straight up fight.

I can see what NA wanted to do but, their comp just felt like it was missing... well, damage. They had plenty of knock-ups and peel for DLift, except in game 2 he did next to no damage from what I could see. Not pinning the blame on him though, he backed up his ego somewhat, albeit it seemed more because of team plays rather than the same old 'protect DLift to victory' strategy CLG uses every game.

I just feel sorry for Saint, dude can't catch a break. He steals Baron? The starts have aligned and Saint reveals his true form. Saint doesn't even smite Baron? Ridiculed to hell and back - probably rightfully so but still... Way to be patriotic people.

 

Spoiler

They were trying to do what a lot of teams do against Dignitas and ban out the midlane. Misaya played almost nothing but TF, Orianna and Diana for the last two months, but then he turned up with a fairly epic Zed in his pocket.

 

The spoilers are getting ridiculous. We all saw the matches, and those that didn't don't much care about being spoiled. Jesus.

Fingers crossed for the EU team, but after that Game 1, eh.

 

Better safe than sorry with spoilers, considering the epic dick rage some people have over simple things being talked about, but if that's the case...

EU getting dumpstered too, good start in game 1 that floundered into nothing due to superior teamfights from Korea, game 2 is just... I honestly don't understand the Udyr/Tryndamere picks from Diamond/Alex, again, InseC has Lee for Disengage, PraY got Caitlyn and thus is a mile from Udyr/Tryn, two of the easiest champions to kite in League.

Just feels like they said 'fuck it' and picked what they wanted and it really isn't working out currently. There's just no synchronisation between ults or anything at all in a teamfight come to think of it short of Thresh ult into Ez ult & Phoenix/

 

I think that after they got stomped so bad in the game one teamfights they wanted to avoid the same thing in this game, so they went for a split push comp. They wanted Alex Ich to become that super strong duellist that happens when a trynd gets farmed, so he could solo push while the other four stay safe and kite away from the Koreans with the blue Ezreal.

The problem was the Ryze and Diana were both capable of out duelling Trynd and they had a much inferior 5v5 composition.

 

Can someone pretty please summarize what happened during the EU vs whoever matches? I fell asleep