Riot, I just want to know, what is the end goal for Kassadin?

In the most recent patch Kassadin's range on his ultimate was reduced to 450. The justification as provided in the patch overview video is that Kassadin could leap to the back line to target the carries in the back, completely bypassing the front line. I found this statement in particular to be somewhat interesting, Kassadin was often referred to as "the most mobile champion in league", so I decided to look some other champions with various leaps and dashes to try and compare the numbers between champions. Just how long was kassadin's walk?

Enemy Targeted leaps Akali - Shadow Dance, Range 700, stores charges, cooldown down to 1s, gain charge on kill Talon - Cutthroat, Range 700 Xin Zhao - Audacious Charge, Range 600 Irelia - Bladesurge, range 650, apply's on hits Zed - Death Mark, range 625, grants untargetablility Master Yi - Alpha Strike, Range 600, grants untargetability Katarina - Shunpo, Range 700, Resets on kill Poppy - Heroic charge, range 525, stuns on wall slam Fiora - Lunge, Range 600, useable 2x in quick succession

Non-targeted leaps, "free mobility" if you will Leblanc - Distortion, Range 600, may be used to blink to return pad, may be used twice with ult Ezreal - Arcane Shift, Range 475 Lucian - Relentless Pursuit, Range 425 Vayne - Tumble, Range 300, 2 second cooldown at max rank Tristana - Rocket Jump, Range 900, Resets on kill Kha'Zix - Leap, Range 600, on evolution range becomes 900 and resets on kill Shaco - Deceive, Range 400, turns shaco invisible, next attack becomes crit Riven - Broken Wings, Range 260, may be used up to 3 times in quick succession; Valor range 325 Zed - Living Shadow, Range 550, may attack from shadow Lissandra - Glacial Path, Range 1050 Tryndamere - Spinning Slash, Range 650 Kassadin - Riftwalk, (past: 700) now: Range 450, 3 second cooldown at max rank, quadratic mana scaling

Middle ground - Conditional leaps (think things like ward hopping, or conditionally better mobility depending on circumstances) Jax - Counter strike, Range 700 Nidalee - Pounce, Range 370, becomes 750 vs hunted target Lee Sin - Sonic Wave -> Resonating Strike, Range 1100

I had always assumed that Kassadin had had the longest distance jumps in the game, but looking through other champions, it seems that there is a wide range of jumps, with ranges in the 600's being the most common. All of these champions have significantly lower costs than Kassadin in executing their mobility, and many of them have even very long range "free mobility", so what was the niche that made Kassadin's mobility unique and good? It's the cooldown - most of the other champions on this list have very long cooldowns on their mobility usually not going much lower than around 10 seconds, where Kassadin's ability gets down to a 3 second cooldown - despite this, he has a quadratically scaling mana cost on his ultimate, so it could be said that Kassadins ultimate functions more like a series of dashes followed by a 20 second cooldown (the amount of time it takes for his ulti stacks to reset)

Now where we run into issues is where we look to see, what does Kassadin actually do with his mobility?

I don't have access to your measures from the thousands of games that take place every day, I can only base this on my own experience and the comparisons of damage values between Kassadin and these other champions, so I apologize if I'm inaccurate in saying this but, Kassadin's damage is incredibly low. Despite being classed as an Assassin he appears to have one of the lowest total damage across his abilities in the game, on par with supports like Leona and Nami. His only CC (a slow) lasts for a mere second, meaning that he can't use it to simply stick to his opponents, since, if they have some form of dash ability, they will use it to escape, and run out the slow duration. So what can Kassadin do? The most benefit I've gotten from his Riftwalk (again personal experience here) has been to very quickly finish off a severely weakened opponent (around 20% health or so), or mainly, to use it to run away. It feels like, by the time I'm able to do any relevant damage, the game is basically already over, and I have many more assists than kills.

Even taking into account the fact that I suck, my damage still more or less plays out the same even in bot matches -_-; I feel like, the cost for being able to make multiple free dashes in short successions is the inability to actually do anything useful, other than throw out an aoe slow and maybe tank some magic damage before dying or escaping.

It would seem that nearly all of the above other champions, if not all of them, either do more damage than kassadin, have better forms of CC, better tankyness, invisibilty/untargetability or some combination of the above. They all pay less cost for their mobility than Kassadin, and even though their abilities are less spammy (not looking at you Vayne), while they function more or less the same in escape capacity, they feel ultimately more impactful when using their mobility offensively since they can do more once they get to their target destination.

Now comes the question: You guys aren't stupid, you had to know what this would do to Kassadin. You already know the state of Kassadin's damage, and the overall efficacy of his kit outside of his ult. What exactly is the game plan for Kassadin? Is he not supposed to be an assassin anymore? If the cooldown of his ultimate was increased to 10 seconds, would he be allowed to do damage again?

I know text is toneless so please understand that I'm not mad, I just... Kassadin is really cool, like this hero from the void. I want to have fun playing him and feel like, if I go in, I can actually do some damage and blow people up. I just can't see what the big broken thing is that forces you to leave him in this state.