Talk:Malzahar/@comment-71.93.124.132-20121124234534/@comment-88.186.19.90-20121125171619

Who you ult depends on positioning, enemy team comp and who's in your pool. Knowing who to ult in teamfights is probably the most difficult part of playing Malz. You must think in terms of total damage output during teamfights.

Ask yourself the question "If I were to ult that target, would the 3 seconds suppression help my team?". Most of the time the supression part of your ult is more important than the burst damage you derive from it. In teamfights an opponent running away=your team getting an advantage; so using R to keep an enemy rooted in the pool is not as important as in lane where you need to get the kill before they flee to their tower, because anyone wasting time to run outside the are of your pool is not using it to DPS your team (not counting allied CC). Landing all your spells on as many opponents as possible is much more important than busting a single target down IMO, because unlike some single-target burst mages, making full use of your AoE increases your damage exponentially.

If you can prevent an opponent from using his AoE ultimate (Amumu, Maokai) or an initiator from folloing up on their initiation even if your team is busy bashing the opposing bruiser and your W+E are on the carry, do it, because that will pobably turn the fight in your favor.

Here's an example: Diana lands a Q and dashes to your carry, and you ult her immediately although you haven't cast your other spells on her, the carry has enough time to create some distance and to DPS some more; once the supression ends, just turn around and mass silence the enemy team, using your W to zone and casting your E on whoever is about to die: you didn't burst anyone, but you gave enough time to your carry to deal another 1500 damage and you still landed your own damage. Another example: Amumu lands a bandage toss, ult him immediately (in this case you probably have enough time to land a W), the rest of your team should focus him and bring him down as fast as possible: you didn't burst him, but you just saved your entire team from getting AoE CCed with all the implications (enemy ADC DPS more, enemy AP can burst anyone he chooses, enemy bruiser can position himself better etc..), and you still have a huge amount of damage available if you hit enough people with your spells.