Reworking Kassadin (Restoring identity while maintaining health)

(Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the Silence)

So I don't think it's a controversial decision to say that Riot has had some serious trouble balancing Kassadin. Right? We all agree there, right? After his recent Rift-Kneecap-Breaking, Kass was finally no longer a problem...because he'd been reduced to a purple slurry through a woodchipper.

Why might Riot be having so many problems balancing Kassadin? More importantly, why might Riot be having so many problems balancing Kassadin while catering to his "Core Fantasy," as they put it? Could it be the fact that a champion who's core fantasy being "Teleport in, murder someone, and teleport out" might not be the most...healthy of designs for the game?

I think that in order to balance Kassadin, we need to go back to his roots. Kassadin was initially designed, first and foremost, as an anti-mage. A disabler, as would be described in DotA. Before people realized that perhaps his crazy strong scalings might be used for something other than just disabling a mage for a teamfight, Kassadin's core fantasy was to blink into a team, remove their mage's AoE capabilities when his team initiated, and then clean up anyone who tried to get away. That's a reasonable fantasy for an assassin to have, and I think if we went back, we may be able to return Kassadin to the healthy fraction of his former glory. Let the Anti-Mage rise from his ashes (and assorted chunks, seriously, I hate Kass and even I think those nerfs were ludicrous) and be reborn, to Silence again!

• Passive - Voidstone

• Kassadin absorbs 10% of the Magic Damage that would be dealt to him before resistances, converting it into Mana. Additionally, Kassadin ignores unit collision. (Starting off his anti-magic makeover, Kass now turns his enemy's aggression against them, allowing him to be a strong counter-harassment mage while still leaving him open to said harassment.)

• Q - Null Sphere

• Active - Kassadin fires an orb of void energy enemy that implodes upon hitting them, dealing 60/90/120/150/180 (+60% AP) magic damage and slowing them by 30/35/40/45/50% for 2 seconds. Enemies marked with Severed Arcana are dealt true damage instead.

• Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 Mana

• Cooldown: 10 Seconds

• Range: 800 (Null Sphere loses damage and the inconsequential shield but gains massively increased range and true damage if used as a follow up to Sever Arcana, his new W.)

• W - Sever Arcana

• Passive - Void Blade - Kassadin passively empowers his basic attacks to deal 20/25/30/35/40 (+15% AP) bonus magic damage. This damage is doubled against enemies marked with Severed Arcana.

• Active - Kassadin imbues his next attack with chaotic power, causing it to deal 60/75/90/105/120 (+45% AP) bonus magic damage instead and marking the enemy with Severed Arcana for 3 seconds. This damage doesn't stack with the base damage from Void Blade, but applies spell effects such as Spellvamp and Rylai's slow. If this attack damages an enemy champion or kills an enemy minion or monster, Kassadin restores 10.0/12.5/15.0/17.5/20.0% of his missing mana. Enemy champions damaged by this attack are dealt bonus magic damage equal to 10% of their current Mana plus 20% of their own Ability Power, are silenced for 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds.

• Cooldown: 10/9/8/7/6 Seconds (Nether Blade becomes a tad more complex, but offers up some interesting choices for Kassadin. Do you use Null Sphere to slow an enemy and get in range, or do you save it for them if they try to escape? Do you remain to take advantage of the bonus passive damage, or do you take your mana restoration and go? Do you use it on minions for CS? Do you wait for the opportune moment, or take advantage of its short cooldown and risk the enemy engaging on you the minute they see it's down. It rewards damaging enemy mages without outright requiring it, and

• E - Spell Rend

• Active - Kassadin summons a Spell Shield around himself, blocking the next enemy ability to hit him within the next 1.5 seconds. If an enemy breaks the shield or when it expires, it detonates, dealing 80/120/160/200/240 (+60% AP) magic damage to enemies in a radius around Kassadin, as well as to the enemy who triggered it if they aren't in the area. All enemies damaged have their Magic Resist reduced by 15.0/17.5/20.0/22.5/25.0% for 3 seconds. Spell Rend's cooldown is reduced by 1 second whenever a nearby enemy uses an ability and whenever Kassadin strikes an enemy champion with an autoattack.

• Cost: 100/95/90/85/80 Mana

• Cooldown: 24/22/20/18/16 Seconds

• Blast Radius: 300

• Spell Cooldown Radius: 1000 (Something that's always confused me is the lack of Spell Shields in the game. As a cooldown gated mechanic, they're very interesting and hold up the ideals of "counterplay" Riot is so fond of extraordinarily well. You play different when you know an opponent has a spell shield off cooldown, and Kassadin takes this one step further. Breaking his spell shield is actively detrimental to your health. Mages and initiators alike beware.)

• Ultimate - Riftwalk

• Active (First Cast) - Kassadin begins channeling, increasing the range of Riftwalk. Kassadin can still move while channeling, but can't attack or activate abilities and is slowed by 15%. Kassadin reaches maximum range after 1.75 seconds, and after 3 seconds the ability fails, going on cooldown and refunding 40 Mana per Empowerment stack.

• Active (Second Cast) - Kassadin blinks to a point within range, rending space around him to deal 80/100/120 (+30% AP) magic damage to nearby enemies. This damage is increased by 50% per Empowerment stack.

• With every successful jump, Kassadin gains a stack of Empowerment for 20 seconds, which stacks up to 4 times. Each stack increases the damage Riftwalk deals by 50%, but doubles the mana cost per stack. Empowerment stacks are lost upon recalling.

• Cost: 50 (x2 per stack)

• Cooldown: 10/7/4 Seconds

• Range: 300 - 800

• Radius: 150 (I can already hear eyes popping and blood vessels bursting. "800 RANGE!?" I hear you say. "WHAT ARE YOU STUPID!?" I hear you say. "WHY WOULD YOU GIVE KASS EVEN MORE RANGE THAN HE USED TO HAVE WHEN HE WAS BROKEN!?" Two reasons. One, Kass's burst is even less with this rework. His damage output is higher over time, but his raw burst has lost about 50% of its AP ratio. Two, Kass's problem was always that he could bamf in, murder someone, and bamf out before anyone could do anything about it, because it used to be at max CDR Riftwalk was a 700 range dash with a 1.8 second cooldown at max CDR. That 1.8 second cooldown is now the charge time to even get to that distance. Even with max CDR, Kassadin now has to stay in a fight for a minimum of 2.5 seconds before he can even think about trying to Riftwalk away, and 4 seconds if he wants maximum distance for his jump. Which, most importantly, can be interrupted now. If you try to bamf away immediately now, you'll barely make it over the wall to dragon pit. Yes, Kassadin can jump on you from range and ambush you: As rightly an assassin should. But he'd now stuck at the crime scene for potentially twice as long, and his damage is primarily locked into his autoattacks, which drag out fights. Even with the massive range increase, Kass is a higher risk assassin with these changes.)

Now, because I know how this is going to go, let the skimming and flaming begin! Lets see how far into my post before people flip their shit and head to the comments to immediately rant about how I obviously don't know anything about league with my Bronze-ness, despite the fact that I've only played about...5 ranked games in the last two seasons because caring about rank is for people with self esteem issues who need to prove themselves to somebody because they never had that approval at home.

Yeah, I went there. And I can guarantee that's gonna be tamer than whatever's slung my way.