LeBlonc and Kassadin buff ideas.
Leblonc and Kassadin need buffs. It's weird to say that, considering both were once deemed broken. In one case it's because a core mechanic (silence) was removed from her kit, and in the other it's because rito basically scrapped him before worlds using mana gating. (Have you noticed how every time a team, even samsung white, tried to play him they lost?).
LeBlonc. Currently Rito seems to think that the way to go with her is to keep on buffing her passive, and while i think this direction (turning her passive into a playmaking tool rather than just a means of escape), is really good i think it's use is quite limited because it ONLY occurs after you hit 40 percent HP. And while this is often enough to turn around 1v1 with stealth mechanics and stuff, it's really unuseful in teamfights because you HONESTLY cannot expect to not die if you jump in anywhere on 40 percent hp. I think what she needs is the ability to voluntarily proc her passive somehow, forgoing for 60 seconds the ability to proc her passive again. This means you can suddenly use it for playmaking. eg. Proc passive, move in to melee range, e-q-r ignite, jump away etc. or the ability to juke purposely mid combo; long range combo example would be w-r- proc passive for jukes -q-e-reproc w. This, unlike the old silence affords counterplay (pink wards, upgraded sweepers, cant be used under turrets really), but gives her back some way of avoiding just getting cc'ed and killed every time she tries to blow someone up. Also using the passive offensively will render it unusable defensively leaving her vulnerable to all-ins in that 60 second period, as well as gating her playmaking potential meanwhile.
Kassadin. Recently I've found Kassadin to be almost entirely unuseful. It's entirely possible to go 4/1/4 in the early-early midgame by abusing his mobility to be the right place at the right time, and then as soon as people start grouping and you try engaging tf's it goes somewhat like this: "Wtf i'm the most fed person on the map, why can i not kill anything unless it's below 50 percent hp first". And this basically continues until he has a full build. Kass is literally only useful with a full build, because he needs zhonyas, deathcap, rod, lich bane and void staff before he actually does approx same damage as other people, without dying any time he jumps anywhere. You can take lich bane earlier for burst, but if you dont have zhonyas you're dead anyways. IMO there are two ways to solve this:
- is to stop gating kassadin R with mana, but rather gating it some other way, eg: percentage health cost, increasing CD per riftwalk stack or stripping him of armour and mr the more he jumps making him more and more vulnerable. Both the Health, and armour mr gates are sorta fitting because he's "jumping through the void", while the other one is a more generic way to gate his ult. Now.. Why will this help him? Basically it will remove RoA and allow him to go Lich Bane => Zhonyas => Rabadons. Wuhuu kassadin now does damage at three items without getting instantly blown up by everything, while still not having unlimited mobility. World is a good place now.
Give him execute damage on w. This is fairly simple, but also, i think, much harder to balance than the other version, because a kassadin with execute damage, while no longer capable of just bursting shit (as old kass did), is frigging scary.
Cheers, hope someone out there likes the ideas :b if not, feel free to comment with other, better buffs, for the two lates examples of Rito's Olaf'ing of popular champions :b
