Here's what it would take for me to like Kassadin again.

I've started playing Kassadin again even though I don't enjoy him anymore. It turns out I can win more games by playing him, but I don't enjoy him. There's so much less strategic choice than before, and less interesting gameplay too.

So here's what it would take for me to enjoy playing him.

• Revert to his old passive. I have a LOT to say about this. But TLDR is the new passive added nothing and the old passive had good gameplay.

The situational attack speed was great design. I'm tired of people saying that something being situational is bad. Situational is good. When something is not situational, it's boring and needs to be tuned lower because it's always good. An ability that is good in every situation pushes out other things. That is one of the prime reasons why champions get nerfed, because they are always good and therefore they push out other picks. This is why we want Lee nerfed. So situational design is good design. It requires more player creativity and strategy to use effectively compared to something that is always good.

Now more specifically about Kassadin's old passive, people in season 3 didn't appreciate it because his burst damage was too high so 90% of the time there was no point to doing sustained damage with him because he'd kill people too fast. Believe it or not, when you overtune certain things, it makes other things appear useless. But the reality is that those things are useful relative to the rest of the game, just not relative to the overtuned champion kit.

Kassadin's new passive (no collision) is useless to him in 99% of situations. There were rare times when Kassadin would be minion blocked during the cooldown of Riftwalk, but this is completely outweighed by the fact that with collision he is able to block enemy champions by riftwalking in front of them, a very useful tactic. Furthermore, enemies can now walk through him in melee range to avoid Force Pulse. While you might argue that this is healthy counterplay, a champion's passive isn't supposed to add counterplay while doing nothing else. It's supposed to be a positive benefit you can use. The new passive removed nuances from his gameplay without adding anything.

• Rethink W and R. Now he's forced to stack a huge mana pool which is very build limiting. Mana pool should be useful to him but not as required as it is now. Before he could get away with a lower mana pool even though more was always better. I don't want to write a wall of text on this issue. All I really want to say about it is that the current W and R reduced his build diversity and made his gameplay patterns less interesting.

• Rethink Q. I don't even know what Riot would be willing to put here but the current one is weak and boring. The interrupt is not useful unless your opponents have picked a few specific champions. This is the bad kind of situational because the situation is champion select. Riot has said many times they don't want the game to be heavily focused on champion select. I don't think a skill that is weak outside of interrupting a few specific ults has a place in the game.

Anyway the main thing is his old passive. I'd enjoy him and reluctantly overlook everything else if he had his old passive.