Malphite is a rock-solid top pick. He is distinguished by his simplicity, tankiness, and engage potential. Malphite has several viable playstyles, however, the strongest one is a pure tank. All that said, it’s time to move on and unravel the highest win rate Malphite build.
Best Malphite Items
Sunfire Aegis
Generally, the best first item for Malphite is Sunfire Aegis. The item will give us great amounts of HP and armor, as well as a deadly scaling passive. The passive will deal damage amounting to a percentage of our bonus HP, to all nearby enemies. It’s really strong in the early game, and it scales even better once we have a few items in our loadout.
Frozen Heart
The second item that is an essential pick for Malphite is Frozen Heart. A great thing about this item is that it will greatly increase our mana stores in the early game. It will also give us an amazing amount of armor, as well as some ability haste. If this was not enough, Frozen Heart will also reduce our enemy’s attack speed by 20%.
Jak’Sho the Protean
Jak’Sho is a nice mixed defense item that we will use to introduce some magic resist to our build. Jak’Sho will give us a nice well rounded amount of HP, magic resist and armor. The item will also add stacking resistances whenever we are in combat. This item is an essential for team fighting, and you can build it a little later in the game as well.
Thornmail
Thornmail is an old school armor item. It’s known for its insane armor ratio, as well as two other passives. The first passive will reflect a percentage of the damage we receive back to enemies, while the other passive will inflict all the enemies we hit with Grievous Wounds. Grievous Wounds will reduce enemy healing by 40%. All this considered, it’s fair to conclude that Thornmail is one of the greatest utility items.
Kaenick Rockern
Kaenick Rockern is the tank item. It will give us a massive magic resist boost amounting to 80 MR. It will also give us 400 flat HP, as well as a massive passive shield to protect us against AP. The item is essential against AP champs that pose a significant threat and it can be built earlier in the game if the situation calls for it.
Boots
The boots we will run on our tank Malphite build are the old-school defense ones. We will take the Plated Steelcaps against heavy ADs and auto-attackers. When playing against CC-heavy opposition, we will simply take Mercury Treads.
Runes for Malphite
- Sorcery
- Manaflow Band
- Transcendence
- Scorch
- Second Wind
- Overgrowth
The best keystone rune for Malphite is Sorcery. It will allow us to poke the enemies in the early game, and it generally does more damage than the alternatives. The next rune we will take is Manaflow Band, which will increase our mana stores and help us with mana sustain in the early game.
We will take Transcendence for scaling ability haste, and Scorch for poking in the lane. Finally, we will take Second Wind to protect ourselves against poke, and Overgrowth for scaling HP stats.
Final Thoughts
Malphite is one of the greatest tank top lane picks. The best build for him includes some core items such as Sunfire Aegis, Frozen Heart and Thornmail. There are additional items that can be build depending on the situation, but generally, you will be fine by just running Jak’Sho and Kaenick Rockern. The best boots for this build are defensive ones.