@A-A Ron
Actually, your W damage is physical. It's his only physical damage ability but it is your main damage ability as dev Malphite so you end up doing about half and half (if you don't count the damage from Thornmail). Also the damage from basic attacks is also physical. In which case you'd be better off going hybrid pen runes, but I still think AS runes are the way to go because they scale into late game where you will really be doing damage where as anything flat doesn't scale well.

Another thing you need to remember is that the phantom hit from sated devourer only procs on the second hit. If you are constantly interrupting your AA with abilities you will never get the sated double proc. I.e. W > auto > E > auto > Q > auto will get you zero double procs from sated devourer. Which is why I said that sheen doesn't synergize well with this build. Also, don't underestimate the power of red smite early game. It is strong AF.

Don't be afraid to try new things though, that's how I stumbled onto this build.
Good luck and have fun.

@SadMadmartigan damn dude, you really thought all of this out. Thanks SO much for all of the feedback. I haven't been spamming him as much anymore, but I still play him often.

I don't have the best knowledge of runes or the math behind them, so you're probably right on that. The only reason I'd argue that AP and pen runes are still good, is because once you hit sated, your autoattacks are getting close to 200 damage per. You're probably at 90-100 base AD, 60 on hit from devourer, another 40 or so from your W and then your iceborn proc for another 120 or so. If you use the animation cancel of the E, you can get off an obscene amount of burst and get very very ahead at this point in the game just by diving towers and blowing people up.

Ult > W > Auto > E > Auto > Q

300 + a bit from runes from ulti
100 + (around another 100 from on hit sated and W)
45/60 flat from W's base
130 from sheen
220 + 30 or so from base armor and runes
another 200+ auto
and usually you can auto a third time after your Q for another auto sheen proc.

thats like 1200 Damage coming out from your ulti combo at a 2-3 item spike. Despite his dueling capabilities, if you can take advantage of that point in the game where you nuke people instantly, you can carry games very very easily.

I spammed Devourer Malphite for literally hundreds of games. I've tested many different builds, against many different champions. I've even done custom games for testing and used spreadsheets to calculate most effective build paths. Here is what I've learned:

- This is a duelist build, not a burst build.

- Red smite is the best because it gives you much more damage and helps you trade early on. It means you can be safe in the jungle against most champs from level 3-4, and gives you kill pressure later on.

- This build is based on the facts that W gives +30% armor and that Malphite's damage scales with armor. You are basically getting a 2-for-1 because buying armor gives you both defense and offense.

- This build is most effective against AD comps and AA-based champs. If you are fighting bursty AP champs with CC this build is not so good. It's built for sustained duels and scales with armor. No point in stacking armor against AP.

- Your core should be Devourer and Frozen Heart. Everything else is situational. Frozen heart gives all the stats you need most (armor, cdr, mana) not to mention the AS slow which is very useful. You could argue Iceborn gauntlets do a lot of the same things, but I think FH synergizes better with this build because in order to take advantage of the sheen you would have to interrupt your auto-attacks to spam abilities and that's not very efficient with an on-hit build. Also the extra armor and AS slow are more useful.

- Your runes I don't agree with at all. You are building an AA-based build, where is the AS? As someone has pointed out you don't need MPen. Go AS reds, armor yellows (flat for healthier early clears, or scaling for a little more late game armor), and any mix of CDR/MR blues. For quints, either go AS or MS, they benefit you much more than extra armor.

- As far as additional items go, I've experimented with so many and while some items seem perfect at first (Nashor's for example) they end up being inefficient because they don't play to the strengths of this build. Basically, after Dev and FH, go tanky unless very fed. Rand's and Thornmail are great. If they have magic damage build SV/Banshee's. If you are ahead by a lot, you can consider another offensive item, with Rageblade, BotRK, Wits End giving you the biggest power spike, in that order. I generally wouldn't build WE as it is the weakest of the three options, and for MR you are better of with SV/BV. In most cases though, going full tank after devourer still gives you enough damage to 1v1 almost anyone.

- You can 1v1 almost any AD champ and a lot of AP champs. You can go up against any devourer champ except for Trundle and Olaf. Just remember you power spikes. You are vulnerable in the jungle for the first few levels until you get red smite. Once you have FH you can duel any AD champ that can't kite you into oblivion.

All in all, a very fun build, especially when people aren't expecting it.

@bluenala, I've actually tried that a few times, and you're definitely right. His E is way more effective at clearing jg camps than his E until you start to get some attack speed to take advantage of that damage bonus on his W. Thanks for the response man!

Snoboy, the reason I have the marks of magic pen are because all four of malphites abilities deal magic damage, devourer's passive deals magic damage, and a large portion of your burst comes from that initial explosion of magic damage, but the difference between the devour build, and a traditional malhpite build is the fact that this one can sustain that damage after he's blown up a squishy target. Wits end + Devour + his W stacks up into a very significant amount of magic damage that he can sustain throughout the duration of a fight. Given, the build is kind of a pocket build, intended to counter teams with heavy AD, but I've found the attack speed + magic pen to work very effectively.

Also, Malphites W is time based, not # of auto attacks, so the attack speed maximizes the amount of damage he can get out of it.

Oh, and his W scales on his total armor, not just his bonus armor. So by the time late game comes around you have 215 bonus armor (plus 6% from masteries) More armor if your homies are around you from masteries, and almost 100 base armor from malphite as well as a couple of AP from masteries again. That can all stack up to add 35+ damage to every autoattack for 4 seconds.

I personal like the idea of devour mal, I have tried it a few times now and I have some recommendations.

The leveling path I found most effective for jg clear would be
E>W>E>Q>Max W>Max E>Then max Q last. Of course with the exception of your ult. max when ever possible.

The item build is fine, but like most times the game is all about the situation. All tho I would buy items with a little more hp or slows.

Nice use of the new masteries.
But other then that I have had the funnest times playing this build and trying to find out what works best. Every body questions it in game then later is surprised what happens. Its fun and good counter to the new meta of auto/ad/reworked champs.

I think it is great that you are trying a new way of playing Malphite in the jungle. Here are my thoughts on your build from what I observed. You recommend having the marks of magic penetration, which because he does magic damage does make sense, but for your build it doesn't really. You have only one item that give him AP in your build. Next, it is not very effective because with this build you have very few tanky stats, and not much damage as well. There is some attack speed, and on hit effects from the Devourer and Wit's End, but that is about it. It just doesn't make since to build attack speed on Malphite. I would recommend restructuring this build to have some AP items to replace those, or to just go tankier. You only have one health item in this build. Health helps a lot with Malphite's passive shield, and with that Strength of the Apes mastery you chose. Another thing, you listed "Fast Jungle Clear" as a pro, when in reality Malphite has really slow clear times. I just think with no damage the attack speed doesn't make much sense, and even though with the 215 bonus armor you are building, that only equates to a 21 damage increase per hit bonus with your w. I think it would be far more effective to build AP items instead of the attack speed, and to go with more health items. However, I do like that you are thinking outside the box here for the build =) Best of luck with it man. These are just some of my thoughts and ideas!

should learn play.