Hello summoners, my name is Void Silence, i am a OTP Malzahar since the mage rework in 2016 and have about 2 million mastery points with the Void Prophet. Malzahar is an Anti-carry DPS Control Battlemage, which means that he is a low mobility, low range DPS mage focused on being annoying to the enemy team and helping your teammates with both soft and hard Crowd Control. I like to say that malzahar is basically a ranged utility AP Bruiser since his kit remembers a lot Singed. His kit benefits SO MUCH from having both AP and HP, and we have literally four items in the game that gives this stats to malz, being Liandry's Torment, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Demonic Embrace, and Morellonomicon, making the champ even easier to play.

For the runes section, Sorcery and Inspiration are the best suited for Malzahar, as you are able to reduce most parts of your weaknesses. Domination and Precision doesn't have the same impact.


Summon Aery + Scorch will help you with early game damage, Manaflow Band and Biscuit Delivery will help you with you high mana costs, Transcendence will help you with your cooldowns both in the early game (starting at lvl 5) and in the late game (the lvl 11 passive), and Magical Footwear will help you with mobility and to get your items quicker. Shield and Tenacity and Slow Resist shards are situational. if you dont know if the enemy is an ad or ap, better go for Flat Health.

Summon Aery is the standard keystone for Malzahar, Since it increases your Early game damage, and will be proc'd a lot of times in the mid-late when you have lower Cooldowns. Summon Aery can be proc'd in lane with Autoattacks, so use it whenever you can. Also, Summon Aery has a 2 second internal cd (its the timer that he remains in the enemy champion that you hitted before coming back), but as you gain levels the speed that aery comes back to you increases, making 2-3 procs of aery easier and easier as the game progresses (also remember that you can pick up aery quicker by running to him/her).

Maximizing your mana pool is essential on Malzahar to make you able to spam your abilities. There is no reason to have lots of Ability Haste and no Mana to use the skills. Try to fully stack Manaflow Band as soon as possible to get the 1% missing mana restore, it looks like little but it can be game changing in some situations.

Transcendence is the best option in this line, Since Ability Haste is one of the most valuable status for Malzahar, and is even better now that it gives you Ability Haste at levels 5 and 8 instead of only at level 10. Also at level 11 you recover 20% of the base skill CD, so getting multiple kills or assists will help you to spam a lot more without necessarily HAVING the haste.

Scorch can be procced lots of times since your kit is used for extended fights, and empowers your early-mid game by a good amount since you have low base damage on your skills and rely on your AP scalings. It falls off in the late game, but your Magic Penetration items helps to minimize this problem.

Biscuit Delivery is amazing for malzahar, it gives you health AND mana sustain in lane, while also increasing your max manapool, enabling you to use more skills. You can also sell for 30 gold each (you still gain the max mana when selling it).

Magical Footwear are very important for Malzahar, not only because its 300 gold that you can invest in offensive items, but also the 10 extra flat movespeed helps A LOT for you to gap close and get in range for your skills. Also their are a lot more stylish than the standard Boots.

Adaptive Force + Adaptive Force shard are the core for malz. It gives you early game damage and waveclear to keep lane pressure paired with Doran's Ring and it doesn't fall off because malz scales so well with raw AP. The more the better!

Malzahar itemization is very simple, because the champ has a 3-item Core build, being the Liandry's Torment mythic, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter for the AP, HP and self peel/ utility, and Void Staff for % magic penetration, amplyfing all the magic damage from your runes, items and skill, leaving two slots (and the boots slot) available to flexing between Morellonomicon, Zhonya's Hourglass, and Demonic Embrace. As you can see, Magic pen, AP and HP are all stats that Malzahar likes, to guarantee that you're able to take longer fights and abuse the DPS nature of your kit while maximizing your damage to any enemy.

STARTING ITEMS

Doran's Ring + Health Potion is the most popular start item for Malzahar, because it has the 3 status that Malzahar likes the most: HP, AP and mana regeneration when you kill a minion. Your Malefic Visions also restore mana when killing a target affected by it, so you will recover a amazing amount of mana while pushing waves and keeping lane priority. But be aware of your mana when fighting enemies since you have very big mana costs and a low mana pool. I like to keep Doran's Ring on my inventory as long as i can, because the stats that it gives are gold efficient in all stages of the game (almost every game i finish with 3-4 items + Doran's Ring + Sorcerer's Shoes).

Dark Seal + Refillable Potion is not a very good start since it gets easily outshined by Doran's Ring + Health Potion, BUT it a very good first buy during lane phase because it also gives AP and HP. If you manage to snowball and keep Dark Seal at 10 stacks very safely, you can keep it in the inventory instead of Doran's Ring.

Corrupting Potion is the most damage starting item you can use on Early game. You will sacrifice a bit of health, waveclear and long-time mana sustain for +7 damage on your E and quicker mana regeneration. You can use it if you are in a lane that you can poke and pressure a lot. Buy a Dark Seal + a Lost Chapter component on your first base to get some AP to help with the waveclear and damage.

CORE ITEMS

Liandry's Torment is the most popular mythic for Malzahar, since its the one that synergyzes the best with his DPS kit, but it thrives against high hp targets and in longer fights. The burn is very effective in low hp targets to help finishing some kills, and the Ability Haste mythic passive helps rotating more your spells, specially Malefic Visions and Nether Grasp. Liandry's Torment + Void Staff does more damage and its cheaper than Liandry's Torment + Demonic Embrace, but if you have the three of them, there will be no survivors. You will become a lot more dependent of your Rylai's Crystal Scepter for the self peel. So basically its a 2-item power spike oriented build, since you need some defensive stats to help you stay alive longer and extend the fight, being either Zhonya's Hourglass, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Demonic Embrace or Morellonomicon.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter is core item on Malzahar, since it gives very high AP, HP and it gives soft Crowd Control to your kit, making your Malefic Visions slow enemies for 5 seconds and your Call of the Void and Nether Grasp pool having AOE slows. The utility and self peel that this item provides can be game changing. The slow can be used both offensively to chase targets or defensively to kite enemies so always try to always get it as a second or at max third item.

Even though Malzahar has very high AP scalings, Void Staff is amore reliable item than Rabadon's Deathcap, because % magic pen is very underrated. Void Staff + Sorcerer's Shoes against squishies with 0 bonus MR makes you do TRUE DAMAGE to your enemies, and the more MR they buy, more effective this item becomes, so its a win-win situation always. Also, since effects like Liandry's Torment burn, Demonic Embrace burn, Summon Aery poke and Scorch burn scales little to nothing with AP, the penetration will increase their damage as well, making you less susceptible to fall off in the late game by the lack of raw AP (AKA Gathering storm).

SITUATIONAL ITEMS

Grievous Wounds are a very important status for a DPS mage,since heals can block a LOT of your damage, beside the fact that the item is very cheap and provides a lot of AP and HP, as well as extended duration because of the nature of your kit. Your Malefic Visions makes the Grievous Wounds tick for 7 seconds, increased to 11 seconds when paired with Liandry's Torment/ Demonic Embrace. It will be very important in this season 13, since things like Jak'Sho, The Protean, Rod of Ages, Ravenous Hydra, Abyssal Mask, Divine Sunderer, etc will be present in 99% of your games.

Zhonya's Hourglass will be your situational item 99% of the games, since it gives you a 2.5 second window to be invulnerable while enemies are slowly taking damage from your skills. Also the Stasis is amazing against champions that have channeled abilities, like Death Mark, Chum the Waters, Requiem, Final Spark, Life Form Disintegration Ray, etc.

Demonic Embrace burn effects synergyzes very well with malzahar kit, but unlike Liandry's Torment, the item doesn't have a flat damage, it only does % max hp damage,meaning that it will be more helpful if you don't do enough damage to a beefy frontliner yet. Once you have the Double Burn Double Pen core ( Liandry's Torment + Demonic Embrace + Void Staff + Sorcerer's Shoes) you will absolutely melt both squishies and tanks, outshining any other build. 99% of the time you will have to choose between Demonic Embrace or Zhonya's Hourglass in the last slot item.

Magic Penetration is the most broken status for anyone that deals magic damage,since it boosts all the magic damage you do, including runes and items. Flat penetration also gives you a great early game powerspike, which is something you really like to have on Malzahar to snowball better.

Mercury's Treads is a very niche item, you will be trading offense for MR and CC reduction, very good to buy against some poke heavy long range ap champions like Lux, Syndra, Velkoz and Xerath.

Malzahar E, Malefic Visions, can be reseted by either your Q, Call of the Void or your R, Nether Grasp.

If Nether Grasp gets interrupted by any means ( Quicksilver Sash, Zhonya's Hourglass, Tempered Fate, any displacement crowd control) Malzahar will continue to channel so long as the tether is not broken, even if the suppression is removed, meaning that the damage will still go off while the tether is intact.. Also, your Nether Grasp counts as 2 separate abilities so you are able to proc Electrocute and Phase Rush by using any skill + Nether Grasp.

your w, Void Swarm, stacks up to 2 extra voidlings when you use your skills, and they have target priority by towers, so always use Malefic Visions+ Call of the Void before using your Void Swarm, and when sieging a turret, wait for a cannon minion to tank the tower, that will leave your voidlings free to melt the turret

Your passive Void Shift does not mitigate true damage but gets consumed.

Shields will take priority over Void Shift, but the buff will still be consumed (does not reduce damage inflicted). Void Shift triggers even if the shield negated the damage entirely.
However, if Malzahar has a spell shield and the shield fully mitigates the damage, Void Shift does not trigger.(note) The damage taken must be from an effect that cannot be negated by spell shields.

Spell shields take priority over Void Shift. If the triggering hostile ability does not contain a crowd control effect, both Void Shift and the spell shield break simultaneously.


Since spell shields are precedent over Void Shift, crowd control from effects that cannot be blocked by spell shields (i.e. Wall of Pain) will also ignore Void Shift despite its crowd control immunity. The effect must not damage Malzahar for this event to take place.


Void Shift will specifically not deactivate if Malzahar eats Honeyfruit or is within a hostile Frozen Heart passive aura.

Nether Grasp adds a revealed marker to the target, including stealthed targets.

Early game is you weakest point in the game, you don't do much damage to champions yet, have to deal with long cooldowns and a very small mana pool. Your main focus early game is to farm until you first power spike, the Lost Chapter, while poking whenever possible, to proc your Manaflow Band and put use to your Summon Aery+ Scorch combo. After Lost Chapter you will have an OK amount of AP, Mana and AH to start put pressure on the rest of the map, specially with Teleport (use your first TP to go back to lane if needed, after that use it to gank or to group and fight)

Mid game starts when the turret plating falls (@14 minutes). At that point you already have your Liandry's Torment finished and has your Magical Footwear equipped. This is the time where you decide to either go to a side lane to put pressure or to group with your team and start fights for objectives ( towers, Rift Herald, Dragon). Remember to use your Ultimate Nether Grasp on the enemy Jungler when fighting for objectives, since the supression makes the enemy unable to use Smite.

Late game is where Malzahar hard spikes the most but also is the most dangerous part of the game, because any missplay can lead to defeat. At this point of the game you should have 3 or more items finished. Keep together with your team, Zoning the enemies with your Call of the Void and pressing Nether Grasp against any champ that tries to get inside your team. Be aware of Quicksilver Sash always and keep a good positioning so the enemy doesn't focus you for free. Your waveclear and damage to objectives ( Tower, Dragon and Baron nashor) are very high so always try to focus objectives and to save your carry with your Ultimate Nether Grasp.

And thats it. whew that was long. Thank you for reading until here, i hope my guide is useful to all of you! Hurray!