Honestly, they reworked him and nerfed him because they wanted him to have high risk, high reward. Kassadin has two ranged spells as his main source of damage while his 'High Risk' spells, like his W and R, both do WORSE damage than his Q and E and those two are BARELY able to scratch an AD's negative magic resist.
Currently, his kit sits at....
Q. 170+70% AP
W. (The MELEE ability ffs) 140+60%
E. 180+70% AP
R. 120 base+2% max mana, going up to (At 800 mana cost per shot) 360+6% max mana.
His kit has mobility, but it's super gimped. His Riftwalk is okay at 500 range. Riot has been wanting to get every flash ability to be lowered to Flash's range, at 425, which is why Shaco had originally had his Q randomly nerfed completely out of the blue without any complaining about him or him even doing well in S3. It was nerfed from 500 to 400. Kassadin's R is lower than it used to be, but it's still a pretty good gap closer. The downside to it is you have to wait 15s after 2 or 3 uses to be able to use it again because of mana issues. It stacks incredibly quick up to 800 mana and even at 400 mana, it's already chunking away at your mana pool. If they'd just remove the stacks thing since it's not useful anymore. It used to add GOOD damage to him and made a couple quick R's before jumping into a fight worth it, but now the entire point of the stacks is to gate its use. Better off solidifying the CD at 10s and giving it a damn AP ratio and a small boost in base damage. It's one of his 2 HIGH RISK abilities, so why Riot keeps trying to balance his Q and E in his kit when they want him to be HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD, but never giving his HIGH RISK abilities any kind of use outside of giving him mana or moving himself around is beyond me.
He needs his Assassination tools fixed so he can actually Assassinate instead of having to use his Q and E for it all like he has since release. I mean ffs. They reworked him to make him more HIGH RISK, but they made his two HIGH RISK abilities near worthless damage-wise and kept his power in his SAFE RANGED abilities. >>
