Counter Guide

How to Beat Malzahar

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Malzahar doesn't have to aim anything. Nether Grasp [R] is a button he presses while looking at you.

Most frustrating champions ask you to dodge something. Malzahar doesn't. His ultimate is a point and click suppression that no amount of reaction speed gets you out of, and his passive means the poke you were going to use to keep him honest bounces off. That's a legitimate complaint, and it's worth reading alongside the solo queue tier list, because the answer here isn't a mechanical one. It's an item, a piece of crowd control, and a decision about where you spend the next ten minutes.

Matchup Snapshot Malzahar, the Prophet of the Void

Where You Meet HimMid Lane

Damage TypeMagic

Why He Is FrustratingHis ultimate can't be dodged

MobilityNone at all

Biggest ThreatNether Grasp [R]

Hardest CounterAurelion Sol

What a Counter Needs

Quicksilver Sash or Mercurial Scimitar, or a kit that can become untargetable on demand
Chip damage available whenever you want it, because Void Shift [Passive] only ends when he takes damage
A reason to be somewhere else, since he can't follow you anywhere

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Malzahar on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Malzahar

Aurelion Sol1,338 games53.7%
Ekko2,082 games52.6%
Fizz3,216 games52.3%
Xerath2,510 games52.0%
Diana1,550 games51.9%

Picks Malzahar Beats

Ryze1,318 games42.4%
Zoe1,175 games42.7%
Mel1,916 games42.9%
Akali2,706 games43.0%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Malzahar. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 89,876 Malzahar games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Malzahar Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

Walking at him with one ability and a plan doesn't work. Until something actually hits him he carries heavy damage reduction and crowd control immunity, so the opener you rehearsed just bounces.
Nether Grasp [R] is point and click suppression from 700 range. There's no skill shot to sidestep and no window to react in, only the question of what you bought.
His waveclear pays for itself. Malefic Visions [E] refreshes whenever he casts anything else on the target, jumps to a neighbor when its host dies, and hands him mana back for the trouble.
He shoves the lane standing still. The voidlings do the pushing, and they chip anyone who walks in while he isn't looking.
Call of the Void [Q] is a 900 range silence on a six second cooldown, cheap enough to throw constantly and long enough to turn off whatever you were going to escape with.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He has no dash, no blink and no movement speed anywhere in the kit. Every gank in the game works on him, and he knows it.
Void Shift [Passive] breaks on damage. A single basic attack, a minion bounce or a stray point of poke removes it, and it doesn't come back mid-fight.
Nether Grasp [R] is a channel. Hard crowd control on him ends it, so a jungler arriving cancels it outright.
One ultimate, one target. Whatever he spends it on, the rest of your team is fighting a stationary mage with no escape.
He can't roam and he can't punish yours. The lane is the only place he exists, which makes the rest of the map free real estate.

Countering Malzahar

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Malzahar comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Buy a cleanse before you need it. Quicksilver Sash and Mercurial Scimitar remove crowd control debuffs outright, and suppression is one of them.
Break Void Shift [Passive] before you commit. Anything counts. Hit him with a basic attack, let a voidling bounce off you, throw the cheapest ability you have, then start the fight.
Bring hard crowd control for the channel. The suppression lasts as long as he keeps channeling and not one moment longer.
Play the map instead of the lane. He can't leave, can't follow, and can't punish you for going anywhere.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Malzahar Matchup

Stand away from your own minions when Malefic Visions [E] is on you. It spreads to a nearby enemy unit when its host dies, and standing in the wave is how a single cast covers your whole lane.

Treat the cleanse as a real item slot rather than a luxury. Quicksilver Sash is cheap and it's the difference between losing three seconds and losing the game.

Don't fight inside the voidlings. They add up quietly and they're the reason trades that looked even weren't.

Ward for your jungler and ask for the dive rather than the gank. He has no escape at all, so the only thing standing between him and a death is whether someone walked at him.

Best Malzahar Counters

The three answers here are range he can't match, an untargetable window, and a beam that never lets his damage reduction come back.

Xerath Fights From Past His Range

Malzahar's lane happens inside 900 units: Call of the Void [Q] reaches 900, Malefic Visions [E] 650 and Nether Grasp [R] 700. Arcanopulse [Q] charges out to 1450 and Eye of Destruction [W] reaches 1000, so Xerath spends the lane poking from somewhere Malzahar can't touch.

Each poke knocks off Void Shift [Passive] as well, and it only comes back once he goes a while without taking damage. Xerath has no dash of his own, though. Step inside 700 units while the ultimate is up and it's Xerath who gets caught, so the range isn't optional.

Fizz Dodges the Ultimate

Playful / Trickster [E] lifts Fizz onto his spear and makes him untargetable, which beats a targeted channel the same way Sanguine Pool [W] does. Used on reaction it turns Nether Grasp [R] into a cooldown Malzahar has to wait out, and the wait is well over a minute early on.

Urchin Strike [Q] gives him a 550 range dash that applies on-hit damage, so he can break Void Shift [Passive] on the way in rather than needing a separate ability for it, and Chum the Waters [R] attaches to a champion with no dash and no escape. The catch is real though. Holding E for the ultimate means not using it for anything else, and that's the skill this matchup is actually testing.

Aurelion Sol Keeps the Shield Down

Void Shift [Passive] refreshes every time Malzahar takes damage from a champion, and Breath of Light [Q] is a beam Aurelion Sol can hold on him for seconds at a time. Every tick restarts the clock, so the damage reduction that makes Malzahar so awkward to trade into barely gets a chance to exist.

Then there's the scaling. Every full second the beam stays on a champion feeds him Stardust for Cosmic Creator [Passive], and a lane Malzahar wants to sit in and shove for twenty minutes is a lane that makes Aurelion Sol huge. Nether Grasp [R] still can't be escaped once it's cast, so the only real defense is staying outside 700 units while it's up.

Itemizing Against Malzahar

One item decides this matchup and the rest are support for it:

Quicksilver Sash removes all crowd control debuffs, suppression included, and it's the single most important purchase anyone makes against Malzahar. Mercurial Scimitar is the same active on a full item for a carry who wants the stats too. Banshee's Veil grants a spell shield that blocks the next enemy ability, so it can eat the ultimate outright or the silence that was meant to set it up. Mercury's Treads are worth buying for the magic resist and for the tenacity against Call of the Void [Q], but be clear about what they don't do: tenacity doesn't shorten a suppression, so the boots aren't a substitute for the sash.