Malzahar Build Guide by kilgta

Hello guys,

I am a North American player that used to play Counter-Strike but recently turned into League of Legends. I have been maining jungle for my first season and now I turned into the middle lane/top lane.

I hope you guys enjoy this guide. It is mostly all of my knowledge that I have gained through experience from gameplay to guides to videos.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them here or join the reddit subreddit at /r/Malzaharmains

My name is Kilgta. I have played Malzahar from season 7 to season 8 and still enjoy playing it once in a while. I am currently Plat 1 with 65% winrate in the North America server.

As of right now, Malzahar is the mid laner with the best winrate. It was also under the spotlight at the last Worlds in 2017 where it was picked three times in a row by SSG Crown to beat SKT in finals. Because of that, it gave Malzahar a lot of publicity making it a meta champion at the moment.

Malzahar is an utility mage. His best place is at the middle lane. He is a very simple champion with very little skills to be able to be good with it. He is also pretty decent at top lane but this will not be the focus for this guide.

He is a very good pick as a main for your second class or just for free elo as a middle lane main. He is also a good pick if you want to learn playing middle lane and understand other champions as he has very little hard counters.

So enjoy your free elo!

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Teleport really is the best way to go for me. I used to only play with ghost as it would help me get out of ganks and roam but I think teleport is the best because it allows you to farm a lot more. It allows you to shove your lane into their tower, go back and buy lost chapter or roam which is existential for me.

Some people love to go ignite into high mobility champions to get the final blow when you ult them but I think it is not as good since these fights will usually imply a lot of your health and you will have to back anyways. Teleport will allow you to fight him, back and then teleport in lane and push wave and deny him a lot of experience and money.

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Your Passive: Your passive is called Void shift. It is a shield that surrounds your champion until you are hit by another champion or dragon or baron. It goes on a 30/24/18/12 seconds cooldown when you are hit by one of those and is not affected by minions. The timer will reset if you are hit by a crowdcontrol.



Your Q: Your Q is called Call of the void. It is a skillshot that does damage to the ennemies and minions between the two orbs perpendicular to where you are facing. Also, if you have put your E on a minion or an ennemy and you hit a Q on them, the timer of the E will reset. Another important thing about your Q is that it silences the people between the Q for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds. You usually max this attack in second as it does damage but not as much as your E.



Your W: Your W is called Void swam. It has an active and a passive. Its active is that it summons a voidling next to Malzahar and it will attack the nearest target or it will attack the target that has your E on them. It does more damage if they are affected by your E. Its passive is that everytimes you use an ability you gain stacks of voidlings up to 2 stacks. When you use your W after you have the maximum of stacks, you will summon more voidlings. In the past your voidlings use to have a lot of health but with the recent nerfs and reworks to Malzahar, they are one shot by any abilities of a champions but will last longer against minions. Because of that, you no longer max your W in second instead you finish with this ability.



Your E: Your E is called Malefic visions. It is a point and click ability and it does damage over time (DoT). It does damage every .5 seconds on the target you choose. When you kill the target and your E is still on them, the ability will spread to the nearest target. If you use Q or R on a target with your E on them, the timer of 4 seconds will reset and it will keep doing DoT. You usually max this attack in first since it is your bread and butter. It does a huge amount of damage is used as a poke early.



Your R: Your R is called Nether grasp. It is a point and click ability and it supresses the target for 2.5 seconds dealing a certain amount of damage. A supress means that the ennemy champion will not be able to move for the whole duration of the ability.
It also means that Cleanse will not stop the supress but Quicksilver sash will. When you use your R, you also refresh the duration of your E.

Your R is usually hated amongst the community so this is the main reason why you should use it on haters and collect all the tears. Jokes aside, your R is an insanely good ability and since it is a point and click, it is very difficult to miss. You should usually use it on high priority target. As a Malzahar, when you use your ultimate on a champion it has a lot of power and will usually mean that your whole team will engage on you so choose wisely.

Your R can also be used to peel your carries. In lower elos, Malzahar mains will use their ultimate to save themselves when it is usually too late or will use it to flash ult. If you want to become a better player, you have to choose the best opportunity to use your ultimate as you become insanely vulnerable when you use it as you supress an ennemy but it also means that you are not moving for this period of time. For example, if the blitzcrank on your team hooks an ashe player, using your ultimate at this point is usually a waste of ult since you know that ashe has basically no escape and she is dead.
Another important use for your ultimate is that you can use it to peel your carries. As a Malzahar main you have to understand that you will not always be the carry and that at some point in the game, past the 30 minutes mark, the AD carries will take over the game. Even if you are fed as hell before that, there is a point where the AD carries deal a lot of damage and peeling them from the tanks or the ennemies high priority targets is a really good idea.

I prefer arcane comet over Aery/Electrocute/Predator as my main mastery.

Arcane comet allows me a good bunch of damage using my Q and a really good shove.

Predator is for roamers and makes you a second support player which I do not like.

Aery lacks damage in my view with ludens.

Electrocute is for people who use ignite and want to all-in and their build is completely different than this one.

The rest if pretty typical in the primary tree as you only Manaband is good in the second row for your mana, only Transcendence is good for the CDR in the third row and apparently scorch got nerfed so gathering storm is the meta.




For the secondary tree, you have many choices but with comet I prefer either biscuit delivery + stopwatch or Minion dematerializer + stopwatch. Recently I have been using dematerializer because it allows me to delete the siege minion and shove.

YOU SHOULD get used to using because if you get used to using it properly, you can shove lanes by dematerializing the cannons and shoving lanes harder. You can also use it to refresh your E when its about to expire and save a lot of mana in lane.
In lower elo you will get through laning phase by just farming and not getting poked and being chill. Once you start playing versus plats+, you will get to see what people that know how to play their champions properly have to do against you. Dematerializing will really help you counter their poke and shove.



You can chose to use that as it will give you some good substain. I still would tell you to learn to lane and last until dematerializer.




As of Season 9, some players take presence of mind and coup de grace as a second tree which is a decent build. You can do this if you are feeling good about your laning phase and want more damage/mana.

Other items that can be built:



A. Swap Rilays for Void Staff when they have heavy tanks



B. Banshees if you need the MR for your AP matchup like Syndra, Annie, etc.



C. You have to build morello early into champions like Swain, Vladimir and other heavy healing champions.



D. You can swap your sorcerers for ionians if you lost lane too hard, it will allow you to have decent tools in teamfights at the cost of damage. At this point you are in reconstruction and are only building to peel and engage.



E. You can swap sorcerers for mercurys or tabis if they have heavy AP or heavy AD.



F. You can build rabadon as last item if you feel like you are not treaten by anybody in teamfights and only want to deal straight up good damage.

Arcangels is for people who use Malzahar as a second support. You are not a support and you do not use Predator either so you build Ludens like a man.



Spellbinder is just not worth it, you wont need it at the time you build it anyways. There are far superior items to build. People will recomend it at a late stage where a Morello, Zhonya, Rilays, Void staff are going to be far more important.



Ionian boots. If you use this guide, you build Zhonya second or third, you wont need the 10% CDR from the Ionian boots, build sorcerers. UNLESS you are behind your laner and you need to catchup in money. If you buy those you will lack damage but will have ult more often.



Twin Shadows, I do not see any reasons to build this if you have Rilays and Liandrys.



Rod of ages will just make you deal less damage in the longrun.



Seraphs is just not worth it, you do not lack mana as a Malzahar because of your E nor do you need a shield. If you get caught on Malzahar, chances are you are dead anyways. Work your champion placement do not gut your damage to build some mana shield item.



Lich Bane, if someone tells you to build Lich bane on Malzahar, do not read further into that guide. You spam E W and Q on Malzahar in teamfights. You do not AA a lot so Lich Bane is just useless. Why? Because you stop moving for a moment to ult and you do not AA during that time.



Eye of frost, why would you go support when you can get farm in the midlane and carry your games.

In conclusion, Malzahar is a strong mid laner for the current season and patch. It has barely any hard counters and it has a lot of pressure over the map but also a strong ultimate that allows you to supress the hard carries of the other team without any problems.

I hope you liked my guide and leave me any feedbacks or ask questions if something was not clear enough or not metionned.

Thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy playing Malzahar as much as I do.

Here are the videos that I have used when I was learning to play the champion that really helped me become better at the champion.

First of all, this coaching video by Neace really helped me to understand what mistakes Malzahar mains usually do. I became really aware of the importance of my first tower being up at all time and also the importance of never losing any farm.
Play Video
Second of all, this video by Evul games really helped me understand the basics of Malzahar when I was beginning. It pointed out some things that I was not aware and helped me grow. The majority of the things he said should be present in this guide in more details but it is a really good summary.
Play Video
Finally, this video highlighting the strength of the best Malzahar in the world as he recently won the Worlds. It is a good review by Midbeast who also plays quite a lot of Malzahar in the middle lane.
Play Video