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Hey there bros and ladybros, its CarlTheLlama, the serial post-maker and doge nibbler.
https://www.hotslogs.com/PlayerSearch?Name=CarlTheLlama
Malf is a support that clashes intensely with my aggressive nature. He was long my least favorite, least played, and weakest support, but after several hundred games he is now on relatively equal footing (for me) with the others.
Things you should know about working with a Malf
* If Malf is not the weakest hero in most early game scenarios, he’s not far behind whoever is. The payoff is that as the game goes on he picks up value, and is one of the strongest late game heroes. Be patient and measure your aggression accordingly.
* Malf reigns supreme in non-engages. The longer you can drag out the waveclear & poke stage, the more value Malf will pick up. Along similar lines, the longer you drag out a fight, the more value Malf will gain- just like the longer you drag out a game the more value he will gain.
* Mule is a great pickup for Malf, so he’s a little more worth picking on maps where Mule is more usable, and there’s less need for you to pick a champion that gets mule. If you do, make sure to check before choosing your L7 talent to avoid getting 2 mules.
When to Pick
* The support meta currently favors using supports as counterpicks, and Malf counters champions like Zagara, Raynor, and Hammer who deal sustained damage over time. He works well both with and against double and triple warrior comps, because warriors are less vulnerable to burst, and deal it less, which means the full value of his heals can be soaked up easily. If you like him, he’s not a bad go-to pick, but if you pick Malf into Kerrigan + double mage, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Talents
(1) Harmony (4) Elune’s Grace->Rampant Growth (7) Mule->Cleanse (10) Tranquility (13) Full Moonfire->Shrink Ray->Ice Block (16) Hardened Focus->Tenacious Roots (20) Tranquility->Storm Shield
Optimal use of your skills
* Malf is an old man that doesn’t care for excitement or action. His mindset is to stay safe, stall, and punish any kids that try to cross his lawn. Moonfire lets you clear waves with decent speed from a safe distance, Regrowth lets you sustain up and stay at full HP most of the time, Entangling Roots gives you a defensive barrier that enemies can’t cross. Remember that going even is winning, and getting slightly ahead is winning hard, because you’re going to scale even harder as time goes by- the opposite of Kerrigan who can rarely recover once she’s fallen behind.
* Positioning for Malf is your most impactful skill, and it consists largely of staying behind everyone, except when you need to step forward into the middle of everyone, almost never should you be even one step in front. Malf has no mobility, a squishy health pool, and no guaranteed CC to help him in emergencies- your defense is your range, and with that gone you have nothing.
* Malf’s not there to make good things happen, he’s there to keep bad things from happening. Your focus should be on watching your teammates and anticipating when they need a root at their feet to kite around. Anticipating when they’re going to want to move forward, and Moonfiring the bush to get vision to avoid an ambush. Anticipating where the next damage will be, not where the last damage was, and getting the heals where they need to go. You are their insurance policy, make sure they are covered and they feel it.
* While Malf can help others with their mana problems, his own are one of his defining limitations. I can’t count the number of times (llamas don’t have fingers or toes so it really is hard :/) I’ve won a fight but didn’t have the mana to follow up afterwards with any sort of push/merc steal, or the times I’ve had to recall and not contest the push on my own base because I was oom. To help with this, (1) tap pre-emptively when you get to 70% mana so that the well cooldown is up sooner (relative to you ooming), (2) recall whenever there is a spare 15 seconds where you’re not needed, if you are at 60% mana or lower, (3) only use roots in the most important situations (4) try to spam Moonfires to clear the wave, get easier trades, and control regen globes. Even if you are getting pushed in, the mana refunding it gives you makes it efficient once you get the feel for it.
Optimal use of Malf’s skills
* Regrowth is a mild base heal, and it’s the only one you have (outside of using tranq in the heat of an almighty battle, not the little routine stuff), and one of the worst things you’ll be tempted to let yourself get away with is using it to top off a target as both teams are posturing, and having a fight break out before the cooldown comes back up. If that happens, you won’t have it for the target that needs it, and that will cascade into disaster quickly. If it’s looking like a fight is about to break out, wait for your team to decide they don’t want to posture aggressively before giving them the heal. If they decide to fight anyways, at least you’ll be able to guarantee it goes on the right target, instead of having a 20% chance of that happening.
* Moonfire is a simple & straightforward ability, but the key to optimizing it is remembering that it is AOE. With AOE abilities, the rule of thumb is that you want to hit 3+ targets with it. That’s easy with the way minions stack on top of each other, getting 4+ minions every time, and against the right opponents if you’re patient enough you can get free damage on heroes as well. It’s much better to prioritize hitting minions that will die sooner, which are the melee minions unless you have someone like Jaina that’s going to dump a lot of AOE on the squishier back line.
* The mechanics of Malfurion’s root (cast time, etc) result being an ability you look to straight up hit people with about 1 time out of 20. The other 95% of the time, you’re holding it and expecting to use it (1) as follow up to someone else’s CC (2) to control a choke forcing them to walk through it or be zoned for the same amount of time (3) target an ally with it so that melees on them will get rooted, or zone themselves away.
* Maximizing tranquility means hitting it as early in a fight as you can. Knowing when “As early you can” is, is where the difficulty lies, and what makes tranq an easy ability to use well, but one of the hardest to master. If you do it too early they can kite away and you are on one of the longest cooldowns in the game, and very vulnerable until it comes back. If you do it too late, you don’t get the exponential returns that make Malf a force to be reckoned with, and instead are just sitting through lukewarm mediocrity, letting the other 9 players have your share of the say in the game. It’s something you have to get your own feel for, but if you avoid the mistake of basing when that point is off of HP bars, and more off of when key abilities are used to recognize immediately that a fight has been committed to, you’ll make your SoloQ team perform to the level they think they’re at 
Thanks for your time, I know you could have been pwning noobs with it instead For ways to keep up with any/all of my content, as well as a list that I maintain of relevant pieces, see this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xMVWGzmv-bAEJYf6noFfmZfioIAnO3pRkRfAJzpTbwM/edit?usp=sharing
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Thanks for the post. I've been struggling with my support plays (usually rhegar and uther), so will have to give malf another chance.
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If you like playmaking, I suggest Brightwing, she's actually very good right now. There's a guide for her in the doc at the end of the post. Malf is good if you like being more passive.
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Mexico2170 Posts
Even though Malf is a great hero I find him really boring to play :/
* The support meta currently favors using supports as counterpicks, and Malf counters champions like Zagara, Raynor, and Hammer who deal sustained damage over time. He works well both with and against double and triple warrior comps, because warriors are less vulnerable to burst, and deal it less, which means the full value of his heals can be soaked up easily. If you like him, he’s not a bad go-to pick, but if you pick Malf into Kerrigan + double mage, you’re gonna have a bad time.
I think this is the most important thing to playing Malf. He is a sustain healer, excellent agaisnt susatined damage dealers and bad agaisnt burst. I've seen way to many people pick malf agaisnt Kael'tas Jaina and Zeratul and he is just bad in that scenario.
I've been meaning to ask, do you write one of these per day?
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I've been writing one something (hero guide, general guide, other stuff) per day this week, although I don't see that pace lasting. My goal is 4 pieces per week. Next week has some other stuff so maybe 2 + a piece for non-HotS people to introduce them to the game. I schedule/plan things a week at a time, but take them one day at a time and see how it plays out.
edit: actually my memory is a bit wiped due to the whirlwind of replying to comments, making new (and often long) pieces, etc. I actually only got 3 new pieces made this week: one I finished Saturday of last week but was released Monday, one was an old piece that I brushed up a bit and republished, one was taken down by a reddit mod on a crusade (grrrr) that I put back up the next day only to have it go nowhere the second time, streamed more than usual, and spent a stupid amount of time making a video that wasn't very good, and so hopefully I'll be able to make a piece tonight that I can release tomorrow to meet my 4/week goal (end /rant).
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Germany25657 Posts
Malfurion is the most boringest hero ever.
I respect people that can play him :D
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Malfurion is the most boringest hero ever.
I respect people that can play him :D
lol it wasn't easy, took like 300 games
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On September 20 2015 12:48 KadaverBB wrote:
Malfurion is the most boringest hero ever.
I respect people that can play him :D
Not if you go moonfire build and twilight dream.
Its fun, but at what cost.
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On September 21 2015 03:01 Superbanana wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2015 12:48 KadaverBB wrote:
Malfurion is the most boringest hero ever.
I respect people that can play him :D Not if you go moonfire build and twilight dream. Its fun, but at what cost.
all your doges :^)
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Overall you are right on malf's job and his place in team compositions however I disagree on your talent choice. Cleanse is pretty weak atm, I would only take it if your opponents strategy is to chain stuns to get kills. Mule is not really a good choice on malf, have someone else take it if it's needed. Pick it only if you really really really need it in your overall team strategy and noone else can take it. Otherwise pick the healing talent as it is what makes malf such a healing beast in the mid late game.
At 13 you should ask yourself the following questions : did I die in a teamfight yet ? can they take me down easily if they focus me ? If yes then go for iceblock as it is the safest choice (you can tranquility-> iceblock and it will continue casting). If you don't need iceblock and took the lvl 7 healing talent, go for lifeseed. What is amazing about this talent is it casts itself for free, it will allow you to have 2 regrowth rolling at the same time in a teamfight and can be used for these long drawn out fights where you can find yourself out of mana.
At 20 you should take storm shield, the upgraded tranq is not worth it. Storm shield basically makes you the beast healer in the game as it prevents your team from getting bursted (which really is malfs only weakness). I can't think of a scenario right now where I wouldn't take storm shield.
PS : this is all about support malf of course. I have no idea about boomkin malf (moonfire talents, lvl 10 silence ult).
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Here's what I said about popular talent choices that differ from mine on the reddit thread.
A lot of people, even at the highest levels of play, like horribly bad talents for Malf. Perhaps another time I'll comment on why it is that high level supports are so wrong so often, but for now I'll just focus on the specific choices.
(1) A lot of people like moonburn because it helps them clear waves faster and feel more like a class that isn't support. However, waveclear has never been a major characteristic of the class as a whole, and your team should not be relying on you for it. That shapes how moonburn should be looked at fundamentally. Moonburn and harmony both make the ability get double efficiency, but Moonburn invests that return into clearing waves faster, while Harmony invests it into mana. Over time if you need more Moonfires on the wave you can still do so, but you also get more mana to PvP with, and as the game scales on, moonburn loses all relevance, and clearing quickly to push with is not something that's going to help Malf since he doesn't want to make plays early, and this PvE skill will get him into trouble, but not get him out.
(7) Enduring Regrowth is a talent that if I hadn't been suckered into picking for so long, I would have 0 understanding for why anyone picks it at all. Essentially, it's a talent that gives you a visible bar that looks like it's doing something, and it stat pads when you're ahead, whereas when you're behind you can just blame your team. In actuality however, it does next to nothing. Q targets already get 10 seconds of regen, and Enduring adds on 6 seconds to the back end that means targets that would get bursted will get bursted anyways, targets will need another heal you should be healing again anyways (and regens do not overlap, you just lose whatver was there before, which results in inefficiency) targets that are getting bursted through your heals don't get anything, etc. In short, it will not have a tangible effect on scenarios you would not already win, it's a feel-good be-bad talent.
(13) A lot of people like iceblock on Malf so that they don't have to position. If you want to get good with him, don't give yourself that crutch, except against champions like Kerrigan, and other niche scenerios where you have a specific ability/combo you want to counter that you have good reason to believe will be aimed at you.
Mule IS good, it stalls out the game for Malf to scale up, so it actually synergies with him quite a bit. I agree with you on only getting cleanse for chain stuns, but that does make it worth listing.
I pick storm shield more often than serenity, because that's how comps realistically play out most of the time, but Serenity is the better option if you can get away with it. The mana restoration in particular is a big thing that people overlook, but there's also the fact that when shield get's popped, damage is likely going to be focused much more so you're not getting max value from it, whereas the tranq over time portion is able to distribute those numbers better. Also important is the psychological effect of them thinking "oh I can keep going I need to stop this regen from happening" without actually having the ability to do so vs "oh they have a shield maybe I should walk away." Again, I get storm shield more often, but looking for serenity opportunities will pay out big.
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EPT
