Tentative Kassadin Rework Suggestions

Kassadin the Void Walker - bane of the immobile and terror of incarnate of every Mage, whose name is buried within a cesspool of notoriety that inspires dread, fear, and awe in all who speak of this enigmatic being.

Much discussion both for and against Kassadin has been brought up in past seasons and continues to this day with the issue of the meta catering to mobility as an impossibly unappraisable asset to any champion's kit.

Bearing this in mind I wanted to open up a line of discussion with the community and Riot themselves to explore the possibilities of the suggested Gameplay Update Kassadin will eventually receive that follows along the current understanding of his core identity.

• Anti-Mage
• Flexible Mobility

As far as combinations that can co-exist without the current counter-play issue of unstoppable burst rotations; I have opted to re-envision Kassadin as an AP Mage/Fighter, who deals sustained chase based damage instead wielding a frontal payload of burst whilst escaping retaliation.

With that in mind it would carve out a new niche for Kassadin as a Melee Mage Carry that is not of the Assassin caste.

[New] Innate Passive: Void Touched

Kassadin's basic attacks mark enemy minions, champions, and monsters with a magic resistance reducing debuff that confers magic resistance equal to the amount stolen. This debuff can be stacked up to 5 times. Should Kassadin strike a unit with this mark with any of his activated abilities - it consumes the debuff and confers an additional effect to the ability. The debuff's duration can be refreshed with subsequent basic attacks, but upon consumption by a spell; new stacks of Void Touched may not be re-applied on the target for 10/8/6 seconds.

With this new passive in mind, the ideology and play-style of Kassadin is re-tuned to follow along with stronger commitments in combat in order to deliver a meaningful trade or window of opportunity for enemies to either retaliate or flee. This in tandem with the other empowered ability effects of individual spell cast that consume the mark gives a measure of downtime between spell rotations of potential burst that requires Kassadin to understand he isn't using his kit to its full potential without first trading a couple of blows in close-combat and is encourage for the rewards when done so, whilst keeping him manageable if he is held at arm's length.

[NEW] (Q) Null Blast

Kassadin fires a linear pass-through skillshot in target direction dealing magic damage in a line whose hitbox narrows the further it is from him.

For each target struck, Kassadin gains a magic damage absorbing shield. The shield amount is doubled for striking Champions.

Void Touched Bonus: Null Blast's Damage and Shield Bonus is enhanced by an additive 20% per stack of Void Touched on affected targets and silences them for 0.1 second per stack.

Following along the theme of counter-play as well as meaningful windows of trading blows, telegraphed attacks, and mindfulness of cooldowns - the formerly tacked on channel disruption with silence removal on Kassadin still proved somewhat frustrating for channel oriented champions given his innate mobility and former free resistance towards magic damage sources.

With the MR stealing of his passive in mind, Kassadin also has to weigh up the value of exchanging his MR for a magic damage blocking shield based on the number of enemies he can actually hit with this thin skill-shot. But otherwise targets unaffected by Void Touched would take light damage and confer negligible shielding - making it a mediocre poke at best if Kassadin would rather stay at range.

[NEW] (W) Netherblade

Passive: Kassadin's basic attacks deal bonus magic damage that scales with ranks in this ability and a percentage of his ability power. This passive is deactivated whilst its active component is on cooldown. (This passive applies spell effects as a single target spell).

Active: Kassadin's next basic attack deals bonus magic damage in an AoE around the struck target.

Void Touched Bonus: Netherblade's Damage is enhanced by an additive 40% per stack of Void Touched on affected targets and restores a small percentage of Kassadin's missing mana (mana restoration against champions is doubled in effectiveness).

Following along with the inherent synergy and symbiosis between how his passive interacts with each of his activated abilities, Netherblade's updated iteration follows along the same clause in that its mana sustain component and damage potential is much more effective when activated against targets with stacks of Void Touched. This also means during the laning phase - if Kassadin is zoned from stacking Void Touched - his ability to counter-push and waveclear is significantly reduced.

[NEW] (E) Vortex

Passive: The cooldown of this ability is lowered by 1 seconds for every spell cast within 450 units Kassadin.

Active: Kassadin emits a pulse of void infused energy that rapidly collapses around him with an AoE of 450.

Void Touched Bonus: Force Pulse's Damage is enhanced by an additive 20% per stack of Void Touched on affected targets and pulls them to Kassadin's location over 1 second, slowing them on arrival for 0.2 seconds by 20% additively per stack of Void Touched.

Following along the theme; Kassadin's (E) has received what could be a power adjustment; with its crowd-controlling abilities only present on target marked by Void Touched, and a diminished reach of 450 from 700; it can still be used in tandem with Kassadin's other spells in a rotation for burst, but is still better off used to catch fleeing targets. Additionally; the flat cooldown reduction of the ability with diminished spell cast detection range can justify a longer base cooldown to mitigate its use during the laning phase - whilst giving him some measure of presence in team fights, but must be careful not to exhaust his mana pool too heavily if he uses it to consume Void Touched marks instead of saving them for (W) Netherblade's active component.

[NEW] (R) Rift Walk

Passive: Rift Walk's activation applies a stack of Warp Instability on Kassadin; causing Rift Walk's subsequent cooldown and mana cost to increase with each stack. Each stack gives Kassadin bonus Attack Speed for the duration of these stacks. These stacks decay after 30 seconds.

Active: Kassadin rips a hole in the material plane, teleporting him to target location - dealing magic damage at both his initial cast location and destination to units within an AoE of 150.

Void Touched Bonus: Rift Walk's magic damage is enhanced by an additive 20% per stack of Void Touched on affected targets and reduces the damage they deal by 10% additively per stack of Void Touched on each affected target for 3 seconds.

With the slotted nerfs to Kassadin's range on Rift Walk down to 450 from 700, it seemed relatively fair in going with a similar approach in curbing his reach in terms of mobility, whilst maintaining its personal mobility aspect of a relatively efficient blink at low stacks. However, a couple of significant changes curbs excess use of the ability whilst maintaining viability.

First off, the damage of Rift Walk is only improved when it strikes Void Touched targets - which is only as often as Kassadin can get in melee range to stick to target to apply basic attacks.

Secondly, the Void Touched Bonus of Rift Walk asks of Kassadin to gauge instances where it would be more beneficial to lower the damage output of a high priority threat instead of any of his other Void Touched Bonuses for the duration.

Third, the cooldown stack and mana cost is an additive stack instead of the heavy handed gating of doubling - meaning it can be used with some measure of frequency without completely depleting his mana pool (and thus be forced to pre-emptively consume stacks of Void Touched with Netherblade's activation). This does come at the cost of a significantly longer stack decay which will of course punish Kassadin for rampant use - giving enemies a relatively large window of counter-attack should he fail during an engage.

Finally, the Attack Speed from stacking Rift Walk synergizes with Kassadin's desire to commit in close combat and apply stacks of Void Touched - and also ease its frequency in stacking as a trade off for putting his core escape/engage tool on longer and longer subsequent cooldowns. Should he require the activation of (W) Netherblade, he will lose his on-hit magic damage effect, which is also another important consideration in gauging whether a target will continue to flee; or potentially turn around and fight Kassadin while his most consistent damage tool is down - which should decidedly raise the skill ceiling for Kassadin player's decision making of when, where, and how Void-Touched stacks should be consumed or utilized.

I am sure many other players and Rioters will have their own concerns and observations to put forth on the matter of Kassadin and I encourage others to discuss and make suggestions so that we may all strive to better help carve out a fun, recognizable, and hopefully someday - balanced and healthy iteration of our renowned Void Walker.