Riot, your balance paradigm regarding Kassadin is both hypocritical and dishonest.

So, once again, Kassadin is getting nerfed. Really f'ing hard. Again. Just pointing that out. That's fine, honestly, it is. The problem is Riot is a bunch of lyin' bastards about it. There are a few reasons why they claim they're nerfing him again, and specifically targeting his ultimate. Supposedly, according to Riot,

• An assassin should have to account for the frontline before charging the backline
• Having that much mobility is bad for the game
• A champion with that much mobility should have to pay significant costs for that mobility
• A highly mobile assassin shouldn't have '100-0' potential
• There should be worth-wile windows of vulnerability for an assassin with this much mobility.

And I sit here, and I have to restrain myself from breaking my poor mouse with how infuriating your incredibly obvious BS is. Firstly, I agree with all of those points, wholeheartedly. I think the game would be much better if you followed them, Riot. But you don't. You guys are, if I speak candidly, either insanely out of touch with your own game, or outright intentionally play favorites/nerf when you're butthurt. I'll try to make that the last I'll be bashing on Riot directly in this post, but I'm not ashamed of being so judgemental seeing as you need called out on your BS and pretend you want feedback ('course it seems like you only want feedback that makes you guys feel good, but hey).

This is yet another major nerf to Kassadin. Meanwhile, Leblanc and Lee Sin (give me a chance here "mains" of those champions, don't downvote me quite yet) violate all of those points of balance used to decide on this Kassadin nerf. All of them.

Which is fine too, except you can't balance champions around differing sets of rules for what balance is.

"Oh wah wah wah this is toxic no counterplay blah blah range too far CD too short blah blah".

Meanwhile, Lee Sin does what makes Kassadin scary/frustrating better every day and is also crippling the jungle along with Vi (as tbh I doubt J4 will be nearly as big a problem earlygame after the armor nerf, that's going to hurt his sustainability a lot, but that's a different topic), but expecting them to actually hurt their widdle favorite at this point is probably insanity.

And even worse, Leblanc, even without her silence, is literally just "better Kassadin". People complain about Kassadin's riftwalk every 2 seconds at max CDR, but the stacking mana makes it only realistically possible a few times and then he's out of juice, as his ultimate. Even with the mana cost decrease you're still looking at 960 mana per hop at max and that's ignoring using the rest of his kit's mana costs. Personally I think the stacking mana thing is a good gate to Riftwalks power, HOWEVER..

Leblanc has a 6 second CD on W (a basic ability, which she can/usually has from level 1) at max CDR, and something like a 14 second CD on her ultimate at max CDR. Both can be used to jump immediately after each other, both can be used to juke to vastly greater effect due to there being no restraint on how soon she can jump back to her original position, she does more damage than Kassadin in EVERY part of her kit and can do it with no room for retaliation due to the sheer speed at which it can happen (not to mention Kassadin must be in melee range for the majority of his damage to actually happen), and she has stronger CC than Kassadin.

Personally I think Leblanc is a horrible champion for the game (Lee Sin as well but he's not strictly "better Kassadin" like she is), and has literally the exact flaws but worse than old Kassadin, but that's not my point: My point is she's literally just "better Kassadin", but Kassadin keeps getting nerfed and gets fingers pointed at for "low counterplay" and "toxic design" while Leblanc and Lee Sin are completely ignored. That's not logical or honest balancing whatsoever.

If Leblanc and Lee are fine in their current state, Kassadin sure as fuck should be too. And if they're NOT fine, both of those champions should've been nerfed long before Kass saw another nerf because they violate your rules many times more than Kassadin does. Quit your favoritism BS, please, anyone who's been playing longer than a year is just plain sick of it.

P.S. Thanks to anyone who reads the long post, respect to those Leblanc/Lee Sin players that are able to come to terms with the situation and see what I'm getting at with this.