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.
Try to fight Sylas when he isn't able to take your ultimate.
Sylas's healthbar can be deceptive, watch out for his Kingslayer!
The stats shown on this page highlight some strategic Malzahar against Sylas counter statistics that can help you interpret the distinctions between this set of champs. As an example, Malzahar’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Sylas’s ratio of NaN, showing that Malzahar may be more central to his team's team fighting potential than Sylas..
Malzahar normally has a slightly smaller longest kill spree than his counter does. Commonly, he receives less damage than Sylas. This is usually reflective of different amounts of tankyness; however, it can also hint that the one champ has less mobility and thus is unable to flee from additional damage when engaged or poked.
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 Sylas, with a 54.0% win rate. Thus, Malzahar makes a great counter to Sylas.
While Malzahar does have a much higher win rate compared to Sylas, when on opposite teams, Malzahar also has a greater learning curve that makes him a more complex champion to pick up and master. You don't need to be too worried when picking Malzahar into Sylas.
Furthermore, Malzahar also has a good amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Sylas. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting 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 Sylas matchups, Malzahar is the better champ with a noticably higher win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during teamfights.
Malzahar is a great counter for Sylas. Make sure you focus your tactics on keeping up your gold income and clearing objectives. If you are able to do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Malzahar against Sylas.
If you would like to truly master Malzahar to counter Sylas during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to learn a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and stats shown here, you should increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Malzahar typically accumulates more CS compared to Sylas. Champions who typically don't take many minion kills usualy don't have to have much CS to be valuable teammates, such as supports. They are capable of scaling well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually require a lot of items to be effective. In either situation, try to do better than the values reported on this page to do well.
The best items to focus on in your Malzahar versus Sylas build include Malignance, Stormsurge, and Liandry's Torment. When Malzahar incorporated at least these three pieces in his build, he performed a lot better against Sylas than with many other common builds. In fact, Malzahar had an average winrate of 54.0% battling Sylas with these items in his kit.
To have the highest chance of annihilating Sylas as Malzahar, you should equip the Summon Aery, Manaflow Band, Transcendence, Scorch, Magical Footwear, and Cosmic Insight runes from the Sorcery and Inspiration rune sets. Of all the rune sets players picked for Malzahar vs Sylas matchups, this mix of runes yielded the greatest win rate. In fact, these runes provided a 54.0% winrate overall.
By default, tips, stats, and builds on how to beat Sylas as Malzahar are shown for all skill levels, merged. If you would like to narrow the stats and builds to a specific rank, you should use the selection menu earlier on the page.