Current state of Kassadin

I just got done with a ranked game as Kassadin - my first as him in a long time - and I won't be doing it again in the foreseeable future.

Here's why.

He simply feels terrible to play. I barely scraped through the laning phase vs the enemy Brand, who would dump his aoe on the creep wave denying my last hits. My shield would just about mitigate the burn. I managed to pick up a fast double kill on botlane as soon as I hit 6. Luckily for me the enemy was pushed to the tower. I got a series of successful ganks off, and ended the game 17/5/13. The trouble was, it just wasn't FUN.

Allow me to expand. Back before his rework was undeniably broken. He had an easy time in lane, his ganking was monstrous, etc. The trouble is, when they fixed that they introduced all kinds of new problems. I found it ridiculous that after going 5 kills up, there wasn't a single champion on the map I would comfortably 1v1. It felt like I was just stealing kill after kill from my team, because if the enemy wasn't below 50% I simply couldn't get involved. At no point did I think I could win a 1v1 with . Isn't it strange that an assassin, the very idea of which is to catch out unsuspecting targets, couldn't do so against his own lane opponent, who was at this point 1/3/?

The reason is obvious, but the fix may not be. Without his silence, and without the ability to 100 - 0 a champion before they can do their combo, this is simply something Kassadin no longer can do. Being on the receiving end of 100-0 is obviously not fun, but given that all other assassins -

• Can do this makes him feel out-of-place and without a clear purpose.

I would also gripe that his shield should simply be a shield, not just a magic shield. It makes hard counter him in a completely arbitrary way, and it feels stupid to die from physical with a full shield.

I would like to reiterate at this point that I'm not asking for a direct buff to . I think he needs to be repositioned, and I think the assassin play-style is what matches his character the most. I think that to make that happen making his escape weaker and all-in stronger would be best. I think the mana-stacking part of his kit is good, but the damage-stacking on his ult is bad because it encourages pointless blinks to increase your damage.

My personal suggestion on that would be to put more damage into his Q/W , remove the cooldown from his ultimate entirely (!) and put it onto 10 second cooldown after he takes any damage. The idea being that he could blink several times in a row to get into a fight, maybe 2-3, but then mana costs would stop further movement, and he would have to avoid damage to escape. (I'm no balance designer, I'm just thinking of how he could be made fun to play and less annoying to kill).

This turned into a bit of an essay. What do you think of right now? Do you agree he needs drastic changes, would numbers be enough, or is he fine where he is?