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Choose Champion Build:
Spells:
Ignite
Flash
Ability Order
Void Shift (PASSIVE)
Malzahar Passive Ability
Introduction
this is my first published guide for my favorite champion

I play Malzahar since I'm a level 14 summoner. I tested out several builds and items and even bought an extra set of runes for him, just for the purpose of testing. And I have to say - it was worth it! That is basically the reason why I'm creating a build in MOBAfire - I want to share everything with you. I hope you enjoy!
PS: I really like math, so don't be surprised if I justify my choices with a lot of math. But if you are not interested in that, feel free to skip those parts :)
Pros

+ High burst damage.
+ Very strong late game, due to his
Null Zone.
+ You can farm kind of well under heavy pleasure by using
Malefic Visions.
+ Awesome voice and dance!
+ Very strong late game, due to his

+ You can farm kind of well under heavy pleasure by using

+ Awesome voice and dance!
Cons

- Very squishy.
- You are very vulnerable after using your full combo.
- Stuns, etc will stop your channeled ultimate.
- His only stun kinda stuns himself, too.
- You are very vulnerable after using your full combo.
- Stuns, etc will stop your channeled ultimate.
- His only stun kinda stuns himself, too.
Your passive:
Summon Voidling
After casting 4 spells, Malzahar summons an uncontrollable Voidling to engage enemy units for 21 seconds. Your Voidling will get stronger every seven seconds.
Voidlings attack the target affected by Malzahar's most recently cast Malefic Visions.
Your passive can and will scare your enemy. You can tell him to attack a target by infecting it with
Malefic Visions. If you opponent isn't ready to encounter a Voidling and your
Malefic Visions at once, they will most likely lose about 30% of their HP (early game!).
I tend to use my
Call of the Void three times at the start of the game, s I can get a Voidling out as soon as I need one.
Your Q skill:
Call of the Void
Malzahar opens up two portals. After some time, every enemy caught between those will take damage. Additionally they will be silenced.
This skill has an awesome range and therefore can be used to harass your opponent. This skill gets deadly if you use it followed by other skills, because the silence prevents your opponent from using escaping abilities (
Flash for example).
Call of the Void can be hard to aim. Because of this, I recommend to set this ability to auto smartcast in the key bindings (you do this by unbinding Q for your first ability and adding Q as a secondary smartcast key for your first ability. Just search around in the key binding options :) ). This helps you to quickly use
Call of the Void by pressing Q once, without the need of clicking.
Your W skill:
Null Zone
Malzahar creates a zone of negative energy for 5 seconds. The zone deals magic damage to enemies that stand in it for percentage of their max health each second. (damage to monsters is capped)
This ability scales very good into lategame, because everyone will have al lot of HP. I usually try to use
Null Zone in combination of
Nether Grasp. This will enable your
Null Zone to deal maximum damage to your enemy.
The 'advantage' of this ability is the seemingly low damage against minions, because it attacks them with a percentage of their HP. Many players will see this and run into your
Null Zone, thinking they will also get hit by low damage.
As with
Call of the Void, I enable auto smartcast for this ability, too. You don't have to aim exactly at a target (unlike
Malefic Visions for example), which makes the clicking really unnecessary.
Your E Skill:
Malefic Visions
Malzahar infects his target's mind, dealing magic damage every half seconds for 4 seconds. If the target dies while afflicted by the visions, they pass the curse on to a nearby enemy unit, refreshing the duration and restoring mana to Malzahar. Malzahar's Voidlings are attracted to affected units.
Malefic Visions is a great farming tool, which will not only guarantee last hits for 90% of the time, it will also refund some mana back to you. There is not much to say about this skill, except only a few players seem to know how this skill works. This can result in free damage to them :)
Your R Skill:
Nether Grasp
Malzahar channels an enemy unit for 2,5 seconds. The target is suppressed for the duration.
Oh, how I love Nether Gasp. It enables you easy ganking with your jungler, by using
Flash and your ultimate.
It can also be used to cancel the ultimate of other people (Katarinas
Death Lotus for example).
Oh, one last note: You can use
Ignite while channeling your ultimate. I wouldn't suggest using
Zhonya's Hourglass, moving, or using
Ignite when your target is out of range. This will cancel your ultimate!

After casting 4 spells, Malzahar summons an uncontrollable Voidling to engage enemy units for 21 seconds. Your Voidling will get stronger every seven seconds.
Voidlings attack the target affected by Malzahar's most recently cast Malefic Visions.
Your passive can and will scare your enemy. You can tell him to attack a target by infecting it with


I tend to use my

Your Q skill:

Malzahar opens up two portals. After some time, every enemy caught between those will take damage. Additionally they will be silenced.
This skill has an awesome range and therefore can be used to harass your opponent. This skill gets deadly if you use it followed by other skills, because the silence prevents your opponent from using escaping abilities (



Your W skill:

Malzahar creates a zone of negative energy for 5 seconds. The zone deals magic damage to enemies that stand in it for percentage of their max health each second. (damage to monsters is capped)
This ability scales very good into lategame, because everyone will have al lot of HP. I usually try to use



The 'advantage' of this ability is the seemingly low damage against minions, because it attacks them with a percentage of their HP. Many players will see this and run into your

As with


Your E Skill:

Malzahar infects his target's mind, dealing magic damage every half seconds for 4 seconds. If the target dies while afflicted by the visions, they pass the curse on to a nearby enemy unit, refreshing the duration and restoring mana to Malzahar. Malzahar's Voidlings are attracted to affected units.

Your R Skill:

Malzahar channels an enemy unit for 2,5 seconds. The target is suppressed for the duration.
Oh, how I love Nether Gasp. It enables you easy ganking with your jungler, by using

It can also be used to cancel the ultimate of other people (Katarinas

Oh, one last note: You can use



I suggest using
Call of the Void first, to disable your targets escape mechanisms. Shortly after use your
Malefic Visions. This is followed by
Null Zone and our lovely
Nether Grasp. Always try to use
Nether Grasp when your target in standing on your
Null Zone. This will maximize your damage. You can also use your
Ignite while you are channeling your ultimate, but don't use it if your target is out of range! This will immediately cancel your ultimate.
Pictures say more than 1000 words....







Pictures say more than 1000 words....
I take a 21/0/9 setup for
Malzahar. I played around with many mastery setups for
Malzahar and 21/0/9 seems to be fitting best on him. But since I want to share everything with you, I will also provide you with another setup for him :)
Those two mastery pages are very different, aren't they? Please feel free to change some mastery points. You also don't have to take what I offer you, if you disagree. Feel free to experiment, I did that too =) Eventually you will find something which fits your own play style.


Offense
everywhere you like to. 3 points in
Brute Force
will help you to last hit minions better and it can also be used to harass your opponent a little bit better.
Mental Force
will strengthen your spells a bit and
Butcher
can also help you to last hit minions a little bit easier.
Sorcery gives me some nice free CDR and enables me to take Arcane Knowlegde.
Havoc
,
Blast
,
Archmage
and
Executioner
will basically help you to ensure you a kill when using your full combo on someone.
My last 9 points go into the utility tree. I take
Summoner's Insight
and Enhanced Recall because those two masteries can save your life! The other two points go into
Good Hands
, because
Expanded Mind
is a waste on everyone except
Ryze.
Swiftness
is a very good mastery for chasing and retreating (and there isn't really that much else we could take). My last point goes into
Runic Affinity
, in case I ever get a buff.
Utility
Offense section.
Some of you might ask themselves now, why I am taking
Greed
over
Transmutation
and
Strength of Spirit
. Well, let's look at some facts:
Since
Malzahar has two AoE skills and one DoT skill,
Transmutation
will only offer 1% spell vamp (3/3=1). This results in 1 HP per 100 damage, which isn't worth those tree mastery points in my opinion.
Strength of Spirit
will add 0,4% of your maximum mana to your life regeneration. This equals to about 12 HP per 5, if you have ~3000 mana. This isn't worth either.
Greed
on the other hand offers 2 gold per 10 seconds. This equals to 12 gold per minute. This doesn't sound much to you? Well, you can buy yourself a brand new
Amplifying Tome, if the game lasts longer than ~36:30 minutes. In my opinion, those 20 AP are worth more than spell vamp, which is lover than your base HP regeneration, or 2 bonus HP per second (assuming your build is complete).
Next up is
Awareness
. It helps you to stay at the same level of your opponent, if you have a hard time to get your last hits, but it also helps to extend your advantage if you are doing well.
Intelligence
gives you some nice free CDR (= 10% in total, just because of your masteries!) and
Mastermind
helps you to use those summoner spells faster.
everywhere you like to. 3 points in








My last 9 points go into the utility tree. I take






Utility
Offense section.
Some of you might ask themselves now, why I am taking



Since





Next up is



Those two mastery pages are very different, aren't they? Please feel free to change some mastery points. You also don't have to take what I offer you, if you disagree. Feel free to experiment, I did that too =) Eventually you will find something which fits your own play style.
Let's have a look on my rune setup, shall we? =)
I use
Greater Mark of Magic Penetration to give me some early game advantage. Together with your boots you will have 28,5 flag magic penetration.
Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration are better than Greater Seal of Replenishment at around level 5-6. I take there, because I literally never had mana problems before level 5.
I take
Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power for my glyphs on
Malzahar.
I take
Greater Quintessence of Ability Power, to get a nice early game advantage. It's as simple as that :)
In this section, I will show you some alternative runes for
Malzahar. Those runes are not awful on him, but if you happen to not have the ones I showed above, but you have some of the below, feel free to take them instead :D
Marks:
No, there aren't any 'good' marks for casters except
Greater Mark of Magic Penetration, sorry =(
Seals:
9
Greater Seal of Scaling Ability Power will give you ~16 AP at level 18. Decide for yourself if it is worth for you. You can take these if you have no mana problems at all.
Greater Seal of Armor provide you with some armor. They can help you if your mid opponent is a
Miss Fortune or if you get ganked.
Glyphs:
I used to go all out with CDR on
Malzahar: I used take
Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction on him along with my utility setup. But after some time I managed to get used to longer cooldowns on
Malzahar, so I don't use them anymore.
But from what I can tell, 9
Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction will shorten your cooldowns for your Q, W and E for roughly 1 second each, and your ultimates cooldown by 6 seconds.
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist /
Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist lower the damage of other casters, which means you will be able to stay in lane longer.
Quintessences:
Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed gives you more movement speed. I hope I don't have to explain that much for those runes :D
I use


I take


I take

Alternative runes
In this section, I will show you some alternative runes for

Marks:
No, there aren't any 'good' marks for casters except

Seals:
9



Glyphs:
I used to go all out with CDR on



But from what I can tell, 9



Quintessences:

Both builds should provide you with some survivability and a lot of AP.


Please remember, there is no straight up perfect build which will work in every game. Always buy for the situation!
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you choose to use

Other Viable Items
The items listed below are not bad. I just prefer other items over them.







NOT Viable Items
I don't recommend taking any of the items shown below.





Those three items are very similar to each other. I felt like I should explain those items a little bit more in detail:
Archangel's Staff provides you with: 350 to 1350 mana, 25 mana regeneration/5 and ~75 to ~130+ AP. It costs 2855 gold.
Rod of Ages provides you with 725 mana, 630 HP and 80 AP. Additionally it keeps the passive of Catalyst the protector. It costs 3035 gold.
Rylai's Crystal Scepter provides you with 500 HP and 80 AP. The passive slows your enemy by 15% (your Q and W are AoE abilities and your E is a DoT ability) for 1,5 seconds. It costs 3105 gold.
As you can see,
Rylai's Crystal Scepter and
Rod of Ages have the same amount of AP. Note that a
Needlessly Large Rod provides you with 80 AP, too, and it only costs about the half.
But let me explain why
Rylai's Crystal Scepter isn't even in the viable item section. The 500 HP sound nice, together with it's passive and the 80 AP. But let's be realistic, how long do you need to activate your full combo? Two seconds maybe? A 15% slow for 1,5 seconds won't help, and the effect doesn't stack. To get the full potential out of the item, you would have to stop casting after every ability for 1,5 seconds. But we don't have the time to ;-) In short words:
Rylai's Crystal Scepter is bad on
Malzahar.
Well, now there are only
Archangel's Staff and
Rod of Ages left. Let's compare those items! Let's say you would take a
Rod of Ages instead of an
Archangel's Staff. You would have 625 less mana, 630 extra HP and about ~45 AP less.
In general you won't need extra 625 HP, because you should stay at a distance to your opponents and you will still have your
Banshee's Veil. But sometimes you need those HP badly: You might have a stealth enemy, who can kill you really fast (
Shaco,
Talon,...). There could also be a burst / anti AP champion who can kill you in a matter of seconds (hi
Veigar).



As you can see,



But let me explain why



Well, now there are only




In general you won't need extra 625 HP, because you should stay at a distance to your opponents and you will still have your




Here are some tipps for the early game:
- Your
Malefic Visions refunds some mana, but this doesn't mean you can just spam your abilities. You will bite your own a** if an enemy gets away with low health, because you didn't have enough mana for another ability.
-
Malzahar is a weak early game champion. A
Lux can easily deny your last hit on minions. In such cases, you might want to ask your jungler for a gank before you end up with 13 minion kills at minute 12 ;-)
- Place a ward in one of the two bushes around your mid lane. This bush will now be your 'save' bush. This means you should stay in the direction of that bush. You will see when you are going to be ganked and you will have enough time to retreat if you get ganked from the other bush.
- Don't take your
Sorcerer's Shoes too early. Take them in the mid game instead.
- There is nothing wrong with stacking up to three
Doran's Ring if you have problems in your lane.
- Only push your lane if you want to be ganked and killed.
- Your

-


- Place a ward in one of the two bushes around your mid lane. This bush will now be your 'save' bush. This means you should stay in the direction of that bush. You will see when you are going to be ganked and you will have enough time to retreat if you get ganked from the other bush.
- Don't take your

- There is nothing wrong with stacking up to three

- Only push your lane if you want to be ganked and killed.













Your role in a team fight is pretty easy: Kill the opponent with the highest damage output and try to survive. Remember that you are very vulnerable when all your skills are on cooldown. When you survive long enough after your 'nuke', focus the next guy who is making your team trouble.
You can either to top or bottom. Start off with a
Prospector's Ring,
Boots and two potions of your preferred kind.
If you go top, take your
Sorcerer's Shoes earlier, but if you go bot, you can deny them for a bit.
Sometimes it's also worth taking a catalyst the protector. Since you will level up very fast, you will have a nice advantage all game long.
Please note that I don't get a
Tear of the Goddess in dominion. You will have enough mana regeneration and you will most likely die before your mana gets low. If you really need that mana, take a catalyst the protector instead.
NOTE: The
Prospector's Ring is not shown in the build above, because it will somehow convert my whole guide into a Dominion-only guide. I'm really sorry for that!
>
>
>
I think it is better to maximize
Null Zone kind of fast, because everyone will get stronger very fast and the extra levels help me more than
Malefic Visions.


If you go top, take your

Sometimes it's also worth taking a catalyst the protector. Since you will level up very fast, you will have a nice advantage all game long.
Please note that I don't get a

NOTE: The

Skill Order




I think it is better to maximize


Thank you for reading my guide! :)
It took me about 15 hours in total (viewed 126+ times), because I wasn't satisfied with some things I wrote and I recreated them from scratch. If you find a grammatical mistake, feel free to write it down in the comments. My native language is not English (as you might have noticed by my poor English) and I appreciate any help I can get =D
Oh and please, don't troll downvote without even reading and trying the whole guide, thanks.
Hey, this guide works!

One big "Thank you!" goes to jhoijhoi, who made a guide to create a guide. It really helped me with that confusing BBcode.
Another "Thank you!" goes to the forgotten Malzahar player who crushed me so hard when I was playing as Kassadin. I wouldn't have bought Malzahar without you =)
And my final "Thank you!" goes to my friends, who encouraged me to reinstall League of Legends =)
Well, that's it from my side, I hope you enjoyed reading!
Greetings,
~ Darkness4910
It took me about 15 hours in total (viewed 126+ times), because I wasn't satisfied with some things I wrote and I recreated them from scratch. If you find a grammatical mistake, feel free to write it down in the comments. My native language is not English (as you might have noticed by my poor English) and I appreciate any help I can get =D
Oh and please, don't troll downvote without even reading and trying the whole guide, thanks.
Hey, this guide works!

Special Thanks:
One big "Thank you!" goes to jhoijhoi, who made a guide to create a guide. It really helped me with that confusing BBcode.
Another "Thank you!" goes to the forgotten Malzahar player who crushed me so hard when I was playing as Kassadin. I wouldn't have bought Malzahar without you =)
And my final "Thank you!" goes to my friends, who encouraged me to reinstall League of Legends =)
Well, that's it from my side, I hope you enjoyed reading!
Greetings,
~ Darkness4910
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