Malzahar: Death from beyond the void!

This guide is to help people who know Malzahar and want to improve with him or just want to learn him. Now I understand that my skill order and some mastery choices are not exactly typical for Malzahar but if you read on I will explain myself and why I believe that these are the best choices as Malzahar.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you communicate with your team and make sure they let you mid lane solo. Remember gold is everything.

For my rune choice you will notice that I have chosen Magic Penetration Marks, Mana Regeneration Seals, Cool-down Reduction Glyphs, and Flat Ability Power Quintessences.

The Magic Penetration helps out against early magic resistance items.

The Mana Regeneration helps you stay in lane longer without wasting gold on potions(which in my opinion are useless).

The Cooldown Reduction Glyphs make you much more effective as you don't need to wait as long to use your ultimate to help focus the dangerous opponents making you a much better team player late game.

The Ability Power Quintessences help you to take down the opposing carry early in the game. As soon as you hit level 6 you should be able to kill or at least send the opposing carry back with no problem with a simple skill chain.

I have a standard 9/0/21 masteries set up with just enough offence to get the spell penetration, again to help out against early game magic resist like Mercury Treads. The 21 utility makes sure you level quickly, can ignite often, and that ghost helps you out as much as possible. The reason I have ghost over flash is that I personally find it more useful on a caster. But again, this is to help you not to tell you how to do things so if you find flash more useful then by all means use it and put a point in the flash mastery instead of the ghost mastery.

Items are by far the most crucial part of playing a Malzahar. Always grab a Doran's Ring first to help you stay in lane with higher health and more AP for minion farming and champion harassment. You should stay lane until you can flat out buy your Mejai's Soulstealer. You want to make sure you last hit as many minions as possible with Malefic Visions and your Voidling so you can get the Soulstealer early. The sooner you have it, the faster you can stack it and the more powerful you get. Now after you get your Soulstealer try to get Boots of Speed to help you avoid ganks and get around better for ganks. Keep in mind that the more kills you help with or get yourself the more powerful you become so at this point with Boots of Speed and a Soulstealer you want to become an active ganker. Push your opposing mid back to the tower and then sneak off and try to help get as many early game kills and assists as you can, while being sure you don't loose your mid turret. Now once you have been ganking and get gold from kills, assists, and minnion farming you want to get your Tear of the Goddess to start maxing out your mana for late game when you get your Archangel's Staff. Once you have your Tear of the Goddess and Sorcerer's Shoes you want to get Rabadon's Deathcap and then straight to your Archangel's staff for the increased ability power. After that if the game is still going you want to get Rylai's Crystal Scepter to be a less focusable and squishy target in team fights and then sell your Doran's Ring and get a Void Staff to help with the late game built up Magic Resist Items such as Force Of Nature. Late game with this build you will have well over 700 ability power but no armor items so you have to be mindful of where to position yourself and when it is okay to come into team fights so you wont get focused and killed. If you aren't so amazing at map awareness and are worried about being so squishy then get a Zhonya's Hourglass. However a 750 Ability Power Malzahar is the most effective weapon in a late game team fight.

Skill sequencing is also a very vital part of playing a good Malzahar. Now again, I know that my skill sequence is not typical but Malefic Visions is the best early game minion farming skill, and again GOLD IS EVERYTHING! Last hitting minions is the biggest part of this game. More last hits = more gold = better items = winning. With Malefic Visions cast it and auto attack whatever minion it jumps to. This is also a great way to harass enemy champions because eventually it will jump to them or they will move back to avoid it robbing them of either experience or health. Either helps you, and regardless you will gain much more gold than them. With Malefic Visions upgraded fully first you should have no problem at all last hitting every minion in your lane giving you a significant advantage. Now as I said earlier at level 6 you should have no problem killing an enemy champion just play back and wait for them to get ambitious. Once in range throw down Null Zone and Nether Grasp them. If that doesn't kill them, which it should, Ignite + Malefic Visions as soon as Nether Grasp ends and Call of the Void behind them as they run for insurance. Now this should grab you an early kill but on the off chance that they juke out of it or Flash away too quickly for you to Ignite and Malefic Visions then at the least it will send them running back to their base to heal allowing you to solo lane unopposed, out-leveling them so that once Nether Grasp is recharged you should be able to snag the kill. If they are too dumb to go back and stay in lane against you with low health, again I come back to Malefic Visions harassment. Just keep killing the minions it is attached to so it jumps and eventually it will jump to the enemy champ picking up the kill.

Summoner Spells are completely your choice as the summoner and by all means use what works for you but for myself I find that Ghost + Ignite are the best combo. Ghost works better for me than Flash for the fact that it last a while and its not just an instant point A to point B. With Malzahar you want to be able to rush in and then rush out after picking up a kill or two so you don't die and loose stacks on your Soulstealer. But again remember to use what you think works best because chances are if you love Flash you will have more awareness on when to use it that when to use Ghost and you will make less mistakes.

Now you have seen and read what I believe to be the best way to use Malzahar and what works for me. Now again these are just tips and in no way do I believe this is the only way to play Malzahar well. If you find something that works better for you use it, but in my experience this is what works best for me.

Some reminders:
-Last hitting minions is the most important part of this build, as it is expensive.
-Don't forger to start ganking a bit once you have you Soulstealer
-Know your limits and when to get out so that you can keep your Soulstealer stacks up
-Have fun!!!! This is just a game and don't forget to have fun! Never take things too seriously.