Malzahar is a perfectly acceptable AP carry. He has strong burst, good damage scaling and good teamfight presence.
There are a few reasons why you see him less in tournaments:
A) believe it or not, people got bored of him. Malzahar was a high level pick/ban for a long time, and after his nerf on W, people found different champions to use despite him still being viable
B) QSS can REALLY hurt his ability to fully combo high priority targets
C) No escapes. He's extremely susceptible to ganks. Most picked AP carries nowadays are a little harder to tag down. Think of Kennen, Ahri, Ryze, Morg etc. They all have good ways to ward off ganks. Malz does not
Don't let this sway you from playing and mastering him if you love his playstyle. He's still an extremely potent champion
First and foremost, practice your last hitting. That is the single most important thing in any lane role in League of Legends.
Pick a champion that seems right for you. Right now, the popular ones are Kassadin, Ahri, Sion, kennen, Ryze, Karthus, Morgana, etc. After you pick your champion and are ready to practice, learn their auto attack animation and get comfortable with it. You can push A then click on a minion to force your character to attack a certain minion the millisecond your champion can autoattack.
As for masteries, I would run 21/9/0 grabbing all the AP/damage you can in the Offensive tree, as well as magic resist in Defense with the extra health. Runes should be Magic Penetration reds/marks, Ability Power per level yellows/seals, and Ability Power per level blues/glyphs with flat AP quints.
Your build usually starts with boots and 3 health potions, as the mobility to farm, evade ganks/harassment, and harass back is super duper important, as well as it enhances your ability to go gank other lanes. And as a tip, always build to win your lane. If you start taking too much damage and keep getting CC'ed by your opponent (or their jungle) and there is nothing you can do, grab merc treads for boots.
The magic resist and CC reduction is well worth giving up extra damage. but I'm going to go my usual build from farming and a normal not incredibly fed game. I usually go 2 Doran's Rings into magic pen boots, into a Deathcap, Void Staff, and then defensive items or more AP damage to either nuke harder or to help keep yourself alive.
If you happen to get super fed, go 3 Doran's Rings, into magic pen boots, Deathcap, Void Staff, into more AP. But these builds are just the normal AP route. Different champs call for different builds.
To put a short version on this:
- Practice your last hitting, this is the most important thing to do in your lane.
- Learn your champions abilities, in and out, as knowing what does what will help you out.
- Watch your minimap and if you feel safe, steal their wraiths to help get yourself ahead. careful though, only do this if you are sure their jungle is nowhere near them, as you do not want to die for the 60 extra gold.
- Did i mention practice last hitting? yes, its this important.
- Watch for your jungler to also give you the blue buff, as unlimited mana is always a good thing for an AP mid.
- Look up a guide. google a guide for a set champion, and build off of that. theres plenty out there that give their advice on what they build for certain champs, what runes, masteries and what skills they level at certain levels.
Those are the things that go through my mind when I solo mid as an AP. I hope its not too confusing and gives good pointers.
Best Answer
This is a standard AP rune setup. It provides more damage from abilities, some resistance vs your enemies abilities, and mana regeneration to stay in lane longer.
Note that this is a "typical" AP setup, and is much less effective against non-AP mids like Talon.