hello,welcome to my first guide on Mobafire,and today im writing about Malzahar

This build is NOT yet finished,but it does cover the main parts of the build

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-6/04/11 Added Void Staff and placed Deathfire Grasp in the 'Really up to you' section

Pros:
Powerful DoT Damage
Powerful Nuke Combo
Voidling Helps Farm
Good Range On Abilities
Low Cooldowns
Very Good Farmer


Cons:
Vulnerable While Using Ultimate
Some Abilities Are Hard To Land On Target
No Escape Mechanism

Passive: Summon Voidling

After casting 5 spells, Malzahar summons an uncontrollable Voidling to engage enemy units for 21 seconds. Voidlings have 200 + 50 x lvl Health and 20 + 5 x lvl Damage.
Voidlings Grow after 7 seconds (+50% Damag/Armor), and Frenzy after 14 seconds (+100% Attack Speed).

There are both positives and negatives about Malzahar's passive, I'll try and go over those here.

Positives

The pet is completely expendable. Very often this pet will absorb tower attacks, creep damage, and enemy skillshots. Due to the fairly unpredictable nature of its aggro and pathing, very often I've found that my pet stands inbetween likely fatal skillshots, like Blitzcrank's Rocket Grab.

The pet also does a fair amount of basic attack damage. This can be a great assist in killing towers, damaging enemies caught in your nether grasp and last hitting minions or farming buffs.

Negatives

Unfortunately the negatives to the pet about equal the positives.

Due to the pet's fairly uncontrollable nature, and short aggro and disengage range.. its very difficult to use this pet to harass enemy champions while there are minion creeps nearby.

When the pet is last hit, it gives gold. While it has enough health, that enemy champions would be silly to focus on killing it... when the pet has next to no health, it can provide an extra source of gold to your lane opponents.

Also,AD champions with lifesteal could use your pet as their source of lifesteal,since should mostly be on minions.




Q: Call Of The Void

Malzahar opens two portals to the void. After a short delay, they fire projectiles dealing 80/135/190/245/300 (+.8 per ability power) magic damage and silencing champions for 1.4/1.8/2.2/2.6/3 seconds.

This ability works in the same way that other wall-type spells do. However, there are some peculiarities about Call of the Void. Let me give you a brief rundown about how it works.
Upon casting this ability, two portals open parallel to each other, and perpendicular from your champion. After a short delay, two bolts fire from either side. Now this is where it gets kinda funky.

Each bolt does half of the total spell damage (base damage + ability power / 2 each) and each bolt travels across the approximate length between the two voids. (slightly further I've found). Now because these bolts have a travel time, its entirely possible to have both bolts connect at the same time, doing the full ability damage.

Now against moving targets, the benefit of having both bolts connect over having a single bolt connect seems pretty obvious. Full damage vs Half damage. Pretty simple. And against moving targets, when trying to have both bolts connect at different times.. the chance of only a single bolt connecting becomes increasingly more likely.

However. This is the reasoning why I think you should practice, and master the double hit;

The double hit increases the duration of both the silence, AND any on-hit spell effects such as slows by approx .5 seconds. The double hit will ALSO remove a banshee's veil and silence your target (as well as apply on-hit spell effects, such as slows) at the cost of half the spells total damage.




W: Null Zone

Malzahar creates a zone for 5 seconds. The zone deals 4/5/6/7/8% (+.01 per ability power) of the traget's max health as magic damage each second, with a minimum of 25/35/45/55/65 (damage to Monsters is capped).

This ability functions much like Morgana's Tormented Soil.Any champion silly enough to stand in it for its full duration will suffer from a grievous amount of damage, as unlike Morgana's Tormented Soil.. Malzahar's Null Zone works off a percentage.

The damage cap to both minions and jungle bosses is *very* low. Maxing this ability first with the intent to farm quickly will only result in much failure.

Due to Malzahar's general lack of CC(with the exception of his ult), using this ability to harass is very difficult. Enemy champions will simply not stand in it for any longer than they have to, with good reason.

If you notice, the damage increase between ranks 1 and 5 for Nullzone is 200%. From 4% to 8%. The damage increase between ranks 1 and 5 for Malzaguy's other abilities is about 400%. This makes Null Zone the least efficient ability to rank up past level 1 that Malzaguy has.

This ability possesses unique synergy with abilities from champions such as Morgana, Warwick and Amumu.

The damage from Null Zone is applied immediately. If your other abilities are on cooldown, you can use Null Zone to last hit a low health enemy champion.




E: Malefic Visions

Malzahar infects his target's mind, dealing 80/140/200/260/320 (+.8 per ability power) magic damage over 4 seconds.
If the target dies during this time, the visions pass to a nearby enemy and Malzahar gains 10/14/18/22/26 mana.

Malefic Visions is possibly my favorite ability of Malzahar's. It does a fairly considerable amount of damage at a very significant .8:1 Ability Power coefficient.

Things to note about Malefic Visions

At rank one, it takes 6 creep kills to repay the cost of Malefic Visions. This ratio decreases as the skill ranks higher. Here is a short table with the number of creep kills for efficiency.

RANK - COST - MANA PER KILL - 100% EFFICIENCY
Rank 1 - 60 Mana - 10 Mana per - 6 Kills
Rank 2 - 75 Mana - 14 Mana per - 5.3 Kills
Rank 3 - 90 Mana - 18 Mana per - 5 Kills
Rank 4 - 105 Mana - 22 Mana per - 4.7 Kills
Rank 5 - 120 Mana - 26 Mana per - 4.6 Kills




R: Nether Grasp

Malzahar channels to incapacitate his target; dealing 250/400/550 (+1.5 per ability power) magic damage over 2.5 seconds.

Nether Grasp gives Malzahar both survivability, and assassinability (totally not a word.) Nether Grasp very simply does an insane amount of damage, over a very short period of time. I really shouldnt have to explain the basics of it, so instead I'll point out some of the more interesting things of note.

Any ability used during Nether Grasp will interrupt it. Because of this, Nether Grasp should be the follow up to your other damaging abilities. It possesses unique synergy with Null Zone, being the only stand-alone ability Malzahar has, that forces an enemy champion to stay in the damaging hottub.

Using any ability, getting silenced, stunned or any other form of interrupt will halt the damage over time. It will *not* however remove the 2.5 second stun.

You can cast summoner spells while using Nether Grasp. Not only will spells like Ignite add to the damage during Nether Grasp's duration, but summoner spells will also add to your x/5 count for Summon Voidling, your passive.

While Nether Grasp can be used offensively to gank, it leaves him completely vulnerable for the 2.5 second duration. Because of this, I prefer to use this ability selectively and very often defensively.

I begin the game by purchasing;

Doran's Ring

I continue laning and farming creeps until I reach 1110 gold. Enough to purchase;

Giant's Belt to build towards a Rylai's Scepter.

The 430 health early on gives Malzahar that un-gankability he needs to survive, farm and get kills/assists.

After the Giant's Belt, I generally purchase my rank 1 Boots of Speed. Combined with the health from the belt, this gives me all of the survivability I need until late mid/end game.

After Rylai's Scepter and Sorcerer Shoes Sorcerer Shoes, you have a choice.
What you need at this point is more ability power, and generally I build according to how well I interpret the game is going. These are your basic options at this point.

Mejai's Soulstealer - If the game is going well, you dont have many deaths and you feel like you will be able to tally up some quick kills and assists.If not,just skip.

Catalyst The Protector Catalyst The Protector - If you plan on getting Banshee's Veil,take this after mejai or if you skipped mejai.This will greatly help you in laning,and provide you more survability.

Rabadons Deathcap - Rabadons is *always* a good idea on any Ability Power based caster.

Void Staff - Whats beter than a whole load of AP and Magic Penetration?

What item you build beyond this point is really up to you.But i will recommend some items;


Deathfire Grasp - Use of Deathfire Grasp will NOT interrupt your ult. Meaning, you can use the active for even more damage to a single target while they're immobilized by the stun of your ultimate.


Banshee's Veil - Great item for survivability.Your Rylais and Flash just may not be enough!

Mercury's Treads - Still not enough survivability?stick on these boots instead of Sorcerer Shoes

Malzahar overall has the highest total AP Coefficient of any champion in the game. (meaning, if you add up the coefficients from all of his abilities.. its greater than the coefficients added up from any other champion).

Simply put, Malzahar can pump out more pure damage than any other champion. Unfortunately this also means he has to survive long enough to do it.

While I cannot really teach you play-style in a text guide, I can try and give you the basic building blocks, and foundation to be a very successful DPS caster.