Kassadin, the destruction of identity, and changes that remove fun instead of fixing a problem.

"Kassadin is a champion whose fantasy and identity are both defined by a single ability - Riftwalk. While this does makes him super effective as an assassin (as you might expect, ignoring walls and terrain makes it hard to hide your carries from him), it's tough to both respect what makes him unique while also respecting the need for opponents to... fight back. With this change, we're still trying to preserve the dream (one might say a very difficult dream) of letting Kassadin keep his trademark mobility but, unless he finds a specific flank or angle, he also needs to pay respect to the enemy's tank line before rendering his squishy targets Null and Void. "

Here we stand once more.

Kassadin's identity wasn't riftwalk alone. It was riftwalk /and/ silence. But, as I said on your previous patch notes. You look at Kassadin's kit, and say, 'he kills people before they can react, this is a problem'. Okay, fine, good, that is a problem. Then, your solution is, 'So we will do every other possible thing to Kassadin other than reduce the scalings on his abilities.'

If the problem with someone is that they can one shot you, the solution isn't to remove his silence, nerf riftwalk, nerf early game damage. It's to fix the problem, in Kassadin's case, his late game damage.

This is an issue I see with design philosophy that branches out across multiple games on today, and has been a personal thing with Riot since the beginning, at least with Kassadin. He was released in League as a melee disabler, back when roles were a much more fluid thing. He had a silence, a slow, riftwalk, and a mana steal. Because, his original purpose was to counter mages through utility.

Kassadin became an AP mage when people realized how high the ratio's on his Q and E were.

Riot liked how people were playing Kassadin with variety, which is good, but the issue is what they let that become.

As Kassadin was played more and more as a mage, you started treating him more and more as a mage. Kassadin has been known to do way too much burst from way back then, but, you didn't nerf his scalings. In fact, you actually /increased/ the issue by changing his W from armor pen, to bonus magic damage, and giving Riftwalk a really high AP ratio.

Riot, you created the monster that Kassadin had become, you encouraged it, and you recognized it. But, now that you're trying to fix it, you're ignoring the solution, you're beating around the bush, stripping out everything from his silence, to the attack speed on his passive, to now even riftwalk, that made him fun. When all he needed was reduction on his AP ratios, from the very beginning.

It's really a shame, I got into this game because of Kassadin, I spent so much time playing Kassadin, not just going AP to faceroll people, but even trying new things, constantly iterating on builds and playstyles. When ADC's were still a common thing mid, I learned to build a glacial shroud, even though it nerfed my damage, just to counter them, and it worked. But now, with each patch, you make Kassadin builds more and more restricted, more and more focused, and less and less fun.

I don't want the days of Kassadin one shotting people back, but I want the days of Kassadin where I could feel useful to my team with a silence, a decent duration slow, and heavy kiting and chasing power back.

The fun of Kassadin was in creating opportunities for you and your team to thrive, and by nerfing everything except his damage, you're turning such an interesting champion into a less-useful version of every other assassin in the game. It's disheartening, and an immense shame.