Champion analysis : Malphite

Introduction

Welcome to my first Champion analysis post! This series talks about champions that i feel worthwhile discussing, his current state in meta, in-depth analysis on his impact of game etc..

For my first post, i decided to talk about Malphite, the rock solid. Malphite has been getting more and more attention both in Solo Queue and competitive level, he is very strong in top lane and serve as a strong counter pick to some champion, and amazing utility he brings to the team whether you are laning or jungling with Malphite. 

 Skill breakdown analysis

(Passive)Granite Shield is a passive ability that grants Malphite an absorption shield with a strength equal to 10% of his maximum health. This shield refreshes to full strength when Malphite does not take any damage for 10 seconds.

(Seismic Shard(Q)Active):

  Malphite sends a shard of the earth through the ground at his target, dealing magic damage upon impact and slowing them for 4 seconds. Additionally, Malphite will increase his own movement speed for 4 seconds by the same amount of flat movement speed that the target lost. 

• Cooldown: 8 seconds 
• Range: 625   
• Cost: 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90 mana 
• Magic Damage: 70 / 120 / 170 / 220 / 270 (+0.6 per ability power) 
• Movement Speed Stolen: 14 / 17 / 20 / 23 / 26 % 

Comment: Seismic Shard is a very strong gap-closer ability that allows you to stick to any opponent very easily. This allows him to become an excellent anti-carry. For example, an enemy with 430 movement speed will be reduced to 318MS, which is equivalent to a champion movement speed without any boots, which is a big deal, in addition to that, the amount of MS lost by target is being added to Malphite and allows him to stick to any target like a glue.

(Brutal strikes(W))

(Passive): Malphite's autoattacks will splash, dealing a percentage of his attack damage to nearby enemies.

• Splash radius from target: 200 
• Splash Damage: 30 / 38 / 46 / 54 / 62 %

(Active): Increases Malphite's armor and attack damage by a percentage for 6 seconds. 

• Cooldown: 14 seconds 
• Attack Damage & Armor Bonus: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%
• Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 mana 

Comment:Brutal Strikes is a skill which scales extremely well into late game, especially its active which increases your armor by 40%, this means if your armor is 300, it will be increased to 420, which can almost negate any AD Damage in the game. It's passive also make him a strong jungler in the game.


(Ground Slam(E)) 
(Active): Malphite slams the ground, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies and reducing their attack speed for 4 seconds.

• Cooldown: 7 seconds
• Radius of AoE: 400  
• Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 mana 
• Magic Damage: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 (+50% of total armor)
• Attack Speed Reduction: 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50 %

Comment: This is what make malphite such as strong Anti-AD-Carry,  not considering the burst damage with 400 AOE range, the attack speed reduction literally screw any AD champion, when combined with Frozen heart and active of Raduin Omen, it can reduce any champion with attack speed of 2.5 to 0.6, thats more than 70% loss of DPS at least in auto attack.

(Unstoppable force(R))
(Active): Malphite charges to the target location, dealing magic damage to all enemies in the area, knocking them into the air and stunning them for 1.5 seconds. Malphite cannot be interrupted during his charge by anything except his own death.

• Cost: 100 mana
• Range to center of AoE: 1000
• Radius of AoE: 325  
• Cooldown: 130 / 115 / 100 seconds 
• Magic Damage: 200 / 300 / 400 (+1.0 per ability power)

Comment : Malphite signature move, its one of the best initation tool in the game, the CC allows your team to unleash all their skill on them, and also serve as a gap-closer to enemy AD Carry. Honestly this skill is OP, even your team is behind in farm, a good executed malphite ulti turns everything around.


Malphite in the current meta(FOTM)
So, what makes malphite so popular now? It's not like he received any real buff in the last few patches, and in the past he was even considered as under-powered at one point, today you see malphite in competitve play, let me analyze some possible reason for that.

Look at the last 8 champion released in the league, Nautilus, Fiora, Lulu, Hecarim, Varus, Darius, Draven and the upcoming Jayce. 5 champion out of 8 scales heavily with AD, especially Fiora and Darius belonging to the top lane and both of them are heavy AD Aggressive champion, Bot lane with 2 new AD Carry which is Varus and Draven. The sudden increase of AD based champion indirectly help malphite to become more popular, since people are looking counter for those, and a strong common counter would be Malphite. If these new champion all scales on AP, the one getting popular would be Galio instead of Malphite. 

In Conclusion, Malphite is really strong in the game right now, he can carry game single-handedly and not rivaled by much champion, thought he will be nerfed next patch we will see how it goes.

 

Game analysis : Top Lane Champions

This post will talk about the top lane, the champions, why they are there and the current meta.

 Top lane

Top lane, in the standard meta game is the most isolated lane in the game, away from other teammate and is on their own to survive. Since bot lane has a dragon objective you cannot afford to put solo lane there, thus the AD Carry + Support. Mid lane is the safest lane considering its the shortest lane between turrets and harder to gank when using jungler, thus the weak and squishy AP Carry take that lane. That left the Top lane, most vulnerable to ganks due to the lane is long and out from ward coverage from your support,  and who is there? The Bruiser/Tank/AP/AD

Top lane Champion

 Lets break down the few categories of the type of champion we see in top lane

Bruiser

Basically they build tanky but also have significant amount of DPS (A.K.A Off-Tank), 90% of the top lane champion you see right now are bruisers. These includes Cho'gath, Garen, Darius, Jarvan IV, Jax, Irelia, Nasus, Renekton, riven and many others...

One aspect that they share is they dominate in lane. They are the strongest laner in the game and nothing else stand against them. Try putting Irelia against any AP Carry, or Garen/Jax against AD Carry, they are so tanky and dish out tons of damage early game and squishy champion won't stand a chance against them.

AP Top Lane

 Over the these few month AP Top lane starts to get popular, not many fall into this category because they must have the ability to stand against standard bruiser who are extremely strong in lane. As of now we mainly see either Vladimir, Kennen,Akali and sometime Swain top lane. They are typically weak in lane until mid lane when they get their core item but as you can see, any team running AP Top lane is playing Double AP Comp, the advantage of this is extremely strong teamfights. Win teamfight, win game.

Tank

 

Compared to Bruiser, typically tanks go full Hp/Armor/Magic Resist to soak up all the damages in teamfights, normally they have a great initiation tool also, for this case, i couldn't find a better example than Malphite. He is rock solid and a solid initiation tool with unstoppable force, making him a great champion at teamfight.

Winning lane VS Teamfight

 If you pay attention to the description above,  Bruisers win lane, AP/Tank wins teamfight. Why is that so? Lets look at bruiser, in the standard meta game, top lane bruiser are the easiest to counter in the game, because they have different mechanics that helps them to win lane but at the same time having weaknesses also. That's why if you ever seen a tournament game, top lane champion are the last to pick because they don't want to get counter-picked by opponent. Let's see a few example below.

Pantheon VS Gangplank

Pantheon is probably the worst nightmare for Gangplank, because he can out-sustain gangplank easily and zone him out from farming easily. This is because of Pantheon shield which blocks a single physical attack, Gangplank(Q) Parley is physical damage and thus harassing pantheon is hard because he will just block every shot on him. On top of that, Pantheon also have a spear throw which allow him to win trade very easily and shut down Gangplank in lane. Yes, Gangplank can farm with Q but he will go out of mana very soon.

Shen VS Yorick

Top lane is all about out-sustaining your opponent, Shen and Yorick are both strong sustain fighter but Yorick stands much stronger than Shen. If you ever played against a Yorick you know how annoying it is, strong sustain and harass while he sits behind and laugh at you as you run away from his minions. He pushs the lane like a boss and deny your farm as much as possible. Furthermore, once Yorick gets his core item ,there is no way Shen can kill Yorick even with a jungle gank.

So, counter-pick lane does help you to win the lane if you are playing properly, what about teamfight? As i said before, Bruiser sucks in Teamfight, 3/0 Irelia? Goes in teamfight to find herself getting kited and melted by their Carry, same goes for other bruiser. Yorick dominates most top lane but pretty much useless in teamfight as his minion does little damage and only his ultimate is useful for his team carry.

"But hey! I always heard of Win lane Win game!"

It is correct to only a certain extent, bruiser sucks so much in teamfight unless you are 15/0 or something, and this type of score doesn't come every game. Normally when you had the advantage you have to snowball your opponent, since as the game drags on, the more useless bruiser will be. Lets look at another example, everyone's awww soo cute or I HATE U! Teemo.

Teemo, by far is the most annoying champion ever created by Riot, his skill kit is made to win lanes. When you play Teemo top, you immediately counter 90% of Top bruiser and sometime stand even against AP Top lane. His constant ranged harass is annoying, his blind counters all AD bruiser such as tryn. Gank teemo? I run away before you catch me or after level 6 plants tons of shroom around and you see their team jungler give up on ganking him.

While it is easy to win lane as Teemo, he almost useless in teamfight, he doesn't tank, he doesn't deal enough damage to kill opponent, Shroom kiting sometimes depend on luck and can only be of slight use if you build on-hit teemo.

  

Teamfight is the main deciding factor of a game

The reason champions like Vlad,Kennen and malphite are getting much popular because they win teamfights, i lost count of how many game where Vladimir or Kennen got killed 0/3 or 0/5 then getting double-kill, triple-kill in teamfights, because their skillset affect the whole opponent team, you just have to play so differently in teamfight to avoid getting burst down by them, without mentioning the mid AP Carry and AD Carry. Malphite is built tank and dish out considerable amount of damage as he build more tanky, a single malphite counters 60% of the meta (Considering Top, Jungler are also AD-based), one smash from malphite (E) will significantly decrease your DPS. Oh wait, i haven't mention his ultimate, wreck faces in teamfights, nuff said.

Conclusion

Top lane bruiser are "Out-dated", note here, i didn't say they are useless, just that there are alternative out there and works better especially in a coordinated team. Winning your lane and winning teamfight is two entirely different thing. Thanks for reading!

Introduction

Hi everybody, this blog is all about League of Legends, one of the most popular MOBA game around right now.
What can you expect from this blog?
-Game analysis, includes overall game play,  specific champion/item analysis that broadens your knowledge and improve your game accordingly.
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