Ever since Malzahar’s rework, he’s been played in quite a few positions. With his new Voidlings, Malzahar started off as a strong jungler, being able to take zero damage in the jungle, clear quickly, solo dragons, and pull off amazing ganks post-6. After a few set of nerfs, Malzahar transitioned into becoming a rather popular mid laner and even saw quite a few picks during the Season 6 World Championship. With Season 7 seeing quite a few changes interesting changes, it’s only expected that new champions make an appearance. One champion that is already seeing many picks in the first week of the competitive spring season is Malzahar as a support.

Skills

 Void Shift (Passive) acts as a Banshee’s Veil, blocking one skill or auto attack, and will make him immune to CC and take 90% reduced damage for 0.25s after it procs. Good to bait out skillshots with and can save your life in engages.

 Call of the Void (Q) summons a perpendicular line that does silences any champions caught in the area, increasing in duration with ranks. Use this to stop channels, prevent mages from casting important spells, and pushing waves. Also, you can use your Q right after you ult somebody to prevent them from flashing if they try to save it.

 Void Swarm (W) spawns Voidlings. Malzahar can store up to two charges at a time, but the recharge time is very long (20 seconds at level 1). The Voidlings will prioritize units affected by his Malefic Visions, and will spawn additional Voidlings when attacking a champion or large monster. This is where most of your damage will come from, as the Voidlings do a surprising amount of damage.

 Malefic Visions (E) deals damage over 4 seconds and causes your Voidlings to target them. Damaging a target with your Q or ult will refresh the duration, and killing a target infected with Malefic Visions will pass it onto the closest enemy. Unfortunately, you can’t make much use of the good AP ratios as a support, so it’s mostly used to redirect your Voidlings and to slow enemies once you have Rylai’s Crystal Scepter.

 Nether Grasp (R) suppresses a target for 2.5 second, dealing a percent damage of the target’s maximum health. As a support, this is your most important skill. If somebody tries to dive you, you can suppress them and catch them out of position for a very long time. Make sure you cast your W and E to deal the most damage during the duration of the suppression.

Skill Order

Malzahar can max any ability he wants first depending on his lane. ROX Tigers’ Key maxes Q against a heavy caster team matchup. Against a melee champion like Taric, KT Rolster's Mata maxes W. Finally, Afreeca Freecs’ TusiN maxes E to have more pressure and poke during the laning phase. If you’re new to Malzahar, it may not be best to max E first until you start feeling more comfortable on him. As a general rule of thumb, max Q if the enemy team has many casters and max W if the enemy has a melee support that you can punish in lane. Start putting points into E only after your other two abilities are maxed, as it'll do less damage than W and doesn't have the same utility as Q.

Weaknesses

At a quick glance, Malzahar looks like a fairly poor support. Other mid lane mages that transitioned to support, such as Brand and Zyra, have incredible base damages, have really good range, and can peel fairly effectively. Disregarding his Voidlings, Malzahar’s early game base damages are okay at best, but nothing to write home about until you get more items. Without his ultimate, Malzahar’s only CC is his silence on Call of the Void. With a one second duration at rank one, it won’t stop a charging Hecarim from killing you and your carry. Without his passive, he becomes very squishy and vulnerable to dives. Until you hit 6, it seems like Malzahar doesn’t really have much going for him. Even so, his ultimate has him standing still in place, leaving him vulnerable to getting CC’ed and dying.

Strengths

The one tool that Malzahar brings to the table that other supports lack is a long, point-and-click, hard CC in his ultimate. Stack a few Voidlings on top of a suppressed target and you can easily 100-0 somebody with somebody helping you. Malzahar becomes a safe champion who is able to severely punish a single target out of position and is able to set-up kills that no other supports can. His Malefic Visions, ranged auto attacks, and Voidlings can also help him survive during the laning phase. And, with only a handful of other champions that have a silence in the game, you’ll be the one people rely on to stop that fed Katarina from ulting.

With all of this in mind, players understand that Malzahar’s long CC is his strongest ability. It can be game changing given the right situation, so people build Quicksilver Sash (QSS) to counter it. However, sometimes that goes too far. The scoreboard above is a screenshot from the MVP vs. bbq OLIVER game. MVP had three Quicksilver Sashes on their team to counter the Malzahar. If the support was, say a Karma, then they wouldn’t have bothered to build those QSS. Malzahar is different from other supports in that he forces itemization. At 1300 gold, it’s a rather expensive item to build, slows down enemy power spikes, and forces them to use up an item slot. Above all, this is why Malzahar is seeing so much play in competitive already. His ultimate gives him so much pressure as an engage and peeler, so he forces enemy teams to itemize accordingly.

Summoners

As a support, you typically want Exhaust and Flash as your summoners. With assassins and high damage threats everywhere in the game, Exhaust can be used to shut down a single person for the majority of a teamfight. Ignite can be an option if you’re playing to win the lane, but does not scale as well as Exhaust does.

Runes & Masteries

Your masteries are fairly standard for a support going for Thunderlord’s Decree. Deathfire Touch is a fairly poor choice, considering how slow you’ll get AP as a support. Runes are customizable to your own preference. During the first week of the competitive season, supports across the four major reasons usually have their own specialised Malzahar runes, based on their own play style. If you want, you can try out hybrid penetration marks, mana regeneration glyphs, or even ability power quints, it’s all up to you. Team Solomid’s Biofrost uses the above rune page, which is standard for an AP support and is the most common one that you’ll see.

Item Build

Early game, your main goal is to pick up your Spellthief's Fang, Sightstone, and upgraded boots. Although Sorcerer’s Shoes and Boots of Mobility are fine options, you want Ionian Boots of Lucidity to lower the cooldown on your Nether Grasp. From there, work towards completing an Eye of the Watcher’s and a Liandry’s Torment. This will greatly boost up your damage, making you a considerable threat. Add a Rylai’s Crystal Scepter to slow people who’ve been infected by Malefic Visions. From here, you have two remaining inventory slots, one for pink wards and one for your last item. You could go for a Redemption, Locket of the Iron Solari, Banner of Command, or even go for more damage with something like an Abyssal Scepter or Void Staff.

Early Game

Malzahar’s greatest strength early game is through the proper use of his Voidlings. If you manage to place your E on an enemy champion and land both Voidling charges in a good spot, you can easily kill somebody as early as level two. If Taric didn’t Exhaust so early and Varus landed his arrow, then Ashe would’ve probably been too low to continue laning. His Voidlings can easily solo an enemy carry if they underestimate your damage. In long engages where enemy melee champions get close, pop Malefic Visions on them and summon a Voidling. If they continue to chase, they’ll be severely chunked and body blocked when they try to retreat.

Mid Game

Once you have your ultimate, try to make your way around the map. If you can catch the enemy mid laner, you can easily force objectives and allow your teammates to get free damage with your ult. In the clip above, Taliyah gets a free combo, and the two are able to kill a full HP Ekko, even through his ultimate. Your role on the team is to play like a Blitzcrank or a Thresh would, roaming around and making some safe picks because of how reliable his ultimate is. By this point, finish your Ionian Boots of Lucidity and Eye of the Watchers, working your way towards a Liandry’s Torment as your first major item.

Late Game

Unlike many supports, Malzahar can still deal a lot of damage with Liandry’s Torment and his ultimate, which is based on the enemy’s maximum health. If the enemy team doesn’t build a Quicksilver Sash, they’ll be unable to escape from your suppression. You can force a lot of picks on players that overextend that other supports are unable to do. If a Blitzcrank were to pull the Ryze in the situation above, Ryze would be able to turn it around given how tanky he is. Malzahar becomes such a threat late in the game because of his insanely safe, hard hitting ultimate. Just make sure that you’re in a safe spot and can’t be hit by any CC so that you can get the full channel off.

Bad Matchups

If you find yourself facing a Malzahar and are unsure what to pick, make sure you choose something with sustain, good poke, or ranged CC. Champions like Zyra and Sona can poke Malzahar down and easily break his passive, while champions like Soraka and Janna can silence or knock up Malzahar during his ultimate. For marksman, champions such as Miss Fortune and Ziggs work very well, as they are both champions that have good ranged poke for his passive and can burst him down.

Good Matchups

Malzahar has really good lane matchups against melee champions, or champions that heavily rely on a single skillshot. All the champions above rely on their Q’s to try to make a catch, and if you have your passive up, you can prevent yourself from getting caught. Also, the above champions cannot deal with Malzahar’s minions very well, so they’ll either get chased down the lane by the Voidlings or take ages to kill them.

Conclusion

Malzahar has very obvious strengths and weaknesses, but his ultimate is definitely the strongest tool he has. Being able to force enemy champions to waste gold on a QSS, having the ability to peel off divers with your silence or your suppression, and being able to engage with Flash up are reasons as to why Malzahar’s become so popular. His damage is nothing to laugh at, and he can become a very strong late game threat, even with only two or three items. If you’re a very aggressive player who knows how to roam around the map, Malzahar is a champion that you can find yourself playing to control the flow of the game. As long as you can find the opportunities to make catches, you can find yourself easily carrying the game.

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