Use Call of the Void and Nether Grasp to renew the duration of Malefic Visions on enemies.
Wait to cast Void Swarm until there are nearby enemies for the Voidling to attack or kill.
Avoiding damage in lane maximizes the uptime on Void Shift, increasing Malzahar's safety dramatically.
Parrrley deals a high amount of physical damage. Items that grant Armor can help if an enemy Gangplank is doing well.
Once Gangplank reaches level 6, watch out for his global-range ultimate, Cannon Barrage!
The stats provided here show several strategic Malzahar versus Gangplank matchup stats that may help us explain the differences between the pair. Malzahar’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Gangplank’s KDA ratio of NaN, demonstrating that Malzahar may be more central to his team's team fighting capacity than Gangplank..
Malzahar typically has a slightly smaller longest killing spree than his counter does. Commonly, he receives less damage than Gangplank. This typically indicates different amounts of tankyness; however, it can also hint that the one champion has less mobility and thus is not able to escape additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both League of Legends champions are great. Both have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In League's current meta, Malzahar usually wins when trying to fight Gangplank, with a 51.2% win rate. As a result, Malzahar makes a good counter to Gangplank.
While Malzahar does have a higher win rate compared to Gangplank, when on opposite teams, Malzahar also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less challenging champ to pick up and master. You should be careful when picking Malzahar into Gangplank.
Additionally, Malzahar has a good amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Gangplank. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when trying to counter champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Malzahar vs Gangplank matchups, Malzahar is the better champion with a higher win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allies during late stage team fights.
Malzahar is a decent counter for Gangplank. Focus your tactics on maximizing your CS and taking out objectives. If you can do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Malzahar against Gangplank.
To learn all of the intricacies of Malzahar in order to counter Gangplank during both the laning and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to gather a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and suggestions displayed here, you should increase your win rate by a lot and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Malzahar typically accumulates a similar amount of CS relative to Gangplank. Champions who on average don't get many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as sup champs. They are able to scale well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often require many items to be effective. In either case, try to do better than the values displayed here to do well.
The top items to prioritize in your Malzahar versus Gangplank build include Seraph's Embrace, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, and Liandry's Torment. When Malzahar bought at least these three pieces in his build, he performed significantly better vs Gangplank than with many other commonly used counter builds. In fact, Malzahar boasted an average win rate of 51.2% when countering Gangplank with these items in his kit.
To have the best likelihood of coming out on top against Gangplank as Malzahar, Malzahar players should take the Summon Aery, Manaflow Band, Transcendence, Scorch, Magical Footwear, and Cosmic Insight runes from the Sorcery and Inspiration rune sets. Out of all the rune builds players chose for Malzahar vs Gangplank counters, this order of runes resulted in the best win rate. Moreover, these runes gave a 51.2% win rate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Gangplank as Malzahar are displayed for all skill levels combined. If you want to scope the stats and builds to an individual rank, you should use the selection menu located earlier in the counter matchup guide.