How To Carry With Malzahar Top

Introduction

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Table of Contents

Did you know that Malzahar counters most Top lane bruisers?

My articles are comprehensive and very specific with information that lasts across versions of the game. My goal is to help you climb in League of Legends and win more games.

I have been playing League of Legends Summoners rift since season 7. During that time I have played all roles of the game with particular focus mid and top. I have been able to easily reach high gold elo since the beginning of playing the game and have peaked to Platinum in several seasons. I have played in NA, EUW and EUNE servers. My main account is in EUW.

You can find more information on Malzahar and his abilities here.

Malzahar has been one of my favorite picks for years. He’s one of the few champions in the game that combines several characteristics that make him very good:

He scales well
He doesn’t really have any counters
His can sit back and do well at all stages of the game
He is a ranged champion so he can be played in different lanes successfully

In this particular guide I will focus on how I play Malzahar in the top lane and why I think it’s currently (Season 12 2022) a very strong pick to help you climb elo.

I’m going to talk about items and runes and their importance as the game progresses on and I will not outline everything from the beginning. So each item and rune that comes into play will be explained in the section of the game phase.

Is Malzahar Good Top Lane

With all the assassins sitting in mid, he has a very weak early lane so this makes him vulnerable to them. Since Riot is buffing more the one shot builds we live in the assassin meta. Since top lane is full of bruisers Malzahar can cope better and stay safe at a distance. Season 12 has made the assassin meta as a goto and left very little for mages to do so for me it’s now safer to play in top lane. If you exclude some items like shadowflame which counter assassins there isn’t much more to do there. Some may argue the nerf to teleport is good for Malzahar too and I agree as it cuts down the potential of a Katarina teleporting bot lane and killing everything like we had seen in Season 11.

So the change in Season 12 with the teleport is a welcoming addition but still not enough to justify playing him in mid as I used too.

Malzahar Top Runes

For Malzahar the best runes to use come with two main reasons:

Sustainability: For this we leverage mana flow band and future market. The reason for mana flow band is obvious it will just give you more mana and you can stay in lane longer. For the Future market you can go back early and get a pot if needed.
Late Game Scaling: Malzahar is a champion that tends to fall off a bit late game compared to other top laners such as Kayle, Jax, Camille, Teemo. So we need to somehow balance this and for that we take the combination of absoloute focus and gathering storm.

The rest is pretty standard for Malzahar for example perfect timing is very common as it builds into an early Zhonya’s and can allow you to survive an early game dive especially if you are against something like Tryndemere or Camille.

Having said that try to focus more on farming early and take advantage of your late game rune setup you will do well.

Malzahar Top Summoner Spells

I think by far the best option here is Teleport in some matchups which I will discuss later you can take ignite but this may not be ideal for you especially if you are facing a difficult champion. If you would like to learn more about this you can read my Malzahar counters article here.

How To Build Malzahar Top

Early Game

The early game build is very similar to what I have described in the past in the following article:

How to carry as Malzahar

Basically you need to sit back farm and take it easy until you start hitting your kill potential at level 6. This offcourse changes if you have your jungler supporting you where you need to build and be more aggressive in lane.

Mid Game

Your MID game is where things get spicy for you in top lane. You have the early Liandry’s item to push the lane but also do a lot of damage to your enemy. If you are against a melee opponent make cure you build towards Liandry’s burn synergizes very well with Malzahars e ability. Since you can literally sit back and spam your e the burn duration of it extends the damage it does and amplifies your ability in a great way. Furthermore in late game it just keeps getting better as your E scales up with your other items.

Once you have that built make sure you get some tier-1 boots and continue down the damage path. You basically want to amplify your damage output as much as you can to get that kill.

If you are against a ranged champion like Kayle or Teemo then you need to rush into a full Sorcerer boot build otherwise they can run you down and since most top laners are generally bruiser/damage category they will straight up kill you.

Late Game

For late game you want to do what you always do with Malzahar. You are a high damage mage that can lock down a carry and take him out from the fight. So build all those high damage, magic penetration items.

Always start with your magic penetration item and anti-healing capabilities such as Morellonomicon:

Once you have what I call the three core items of Malzahar then you need to start thinking what you have to face against you. If there’s for example a team with a lot of healing like Soraka, Yummi, Nami or even life steal champions like Aatrox, Vladimir etc you will most likely want to build as your next item Morellonomicon. This will offer you some anti-healing capabilities which your kit is lacking and will allow you to kill easier the high killing champions. While this isn’t a golden bullet it will greatly help overall making progress in the game.

Another great situation item you may want to consider in this phase of the game is void staff. If your enemy is tanky and they are building a lot of magic resist which is very common these days due to the buff of a lot of AP assassins in the game ie Diana, Katarina, Sylas you will need this item. This will allow you to neutralize some of the resistances of the enemies and increase your actual damage potential output.

No matter what you need to end your build with a Deathcap to amplify all the damage you do. It goes without saying that if you are behind you still need to do it despite the high cost.

Conclusion

If you found How To Carry With Malzahar Top useful and you think it may have helped you please drop me a cheer below I would appreciate it.

If you have any questions, comments please post them below I check periodically and try to answer them in the priority they come in.
Also if you have any corrections please do let me know and I’ll update the article with new updates or mistakes I did.

Which role do you like to play Malzahar in Season 12?

I enjoy playing him best in top lane for reasons discussed earlier.