The Little Rework for Malphite on the way to League of Legends

For the first time in a long time, Malphite is going to get some major changes. He’s one of the game’s most boring tanks, and although this week’s PBE changes aren’t a total redesign of his kit, they’re at least something.

Most of the changes revolve around his Q, Seismic Shard. The cooldown of eight seconds at all ranks is being raised to start at 11 seconds and land at seven seconds at max rank. Oh, and it’s going to deal a lot less damage. A lot less. At the first rank, it’ll only be 10 less damage, but at max rank, it’s going to deal 90 less base damage. This is essentially a nerf, but that’s not all it’s getting.

In the game right now, the movement speed steal on the ability starts at 14 percent and scales up to 26 percent movement speed. After these changes, it will stay at 25 percent at all ranks, which is a huge buff to his early game. It essentially turns the purpose of the ability from harassing lane opponents to slowing them down to set up Ganks.

Speaking of W, Brutal Strikes, that ability is getting a rather large buff. Right now, it gives Malphite 15 percent bonus armor. After this buff, that bonus will triple to 45 percent while his passive Granite Shield is active. Let’s put that into perspective. If he hits 200 armor, which would be around mid game, then this passive would give him 90 more armor while his shield is up. That’s more than a full armor item, and it only goes up as the game goes on. Combine that with his armor scaling W and E, and you have one of the highest late-game scaling tanks in League.

These changes are set to arrive with the next patch 7.17, which should be next week.