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Healthy Kassadin discussion - Riot please help

Dyonas·7/16/2015, 1:22:54 AM·3 votes·504 views

I'm sure I'll get some unhelpful "leave him that way" replies but I'm still going to try and have some sort of reasonable discussion here. Hopefully a Rioter (Meddler?) can add their thoughts.

After the range nerf from 700 to 500 for Rift Walk even with the lower mana cost and stacks dropping off faster Kassadin is in a very weak state now. All mid laners he is likely to face have far higher damage early and most of them are ranged too. Any of the current mid lane meta champs would bully him hard and don't even get me started on Ekko. I realise he still has his uses and can be very powerful if he gets to late game but the chances of that happening without a jungler camping your lane are very slim.

I'm not asking for massive changes to his power or for massive nerfs to other champions but I would very much like to be able to play a champion that I enjoyed once again. There were a lot of creative ideas about changes to his kit that Riot ignored in favour of just plain killing him with a massive range nerf. To go from permanent ban status in all ranked games and draft to never being seen with a very low win rate is just a big "we don't want this problem" sign to me. I'm by no means a fantastic player and I know that higher ELO players will likely still be able to fully abuse his power but I figure if LCS players aren't using him at all and aren't banning him it's because they know he has no real place in the game right now.

Is there anything coming down the line that will have Kassadin being looked at again? I just want to be able to play him again without feeling like I'm handicapping my team and putting myself at a disadvantage. I'm posting this now because a lot of older champions or underplayed champions are being looked at - Miss Fortune, Gangplank, Caitlyn to name a few. I don't have a magical solution but does making him so weak that many existing champions and all new champions can dominate him in lane and be more effective the rest of the game really benefit "champion diversity"?

2 Comments

RedTrinketGoneHa7/16/2015, 1:30:12 AM2 votes

+1, I've been suggesting some basic ability damage and utility buffs to E, W, and Q,

Q: Possibly a slight damage increase, 190 at max rank, and shield to 200 + 0.5 AP max rank, not as high as post buff before they nerfed it again, but it's reasonable for a magic damage only shield.

W: Higher base damage, reverted from post nerf so 180 at max rank and the cooldown reverted to 6 seconds, This shouldn't be a huge buff to tank Kassadin since the range is much lower on ult now.

E: This ability needs to deal way more damage, maybe 240 base at max rank. For something that takes forever to charge during laning phase, it's way too weak, especially after they nerfed the slow time to 1 second.

Dyonas7/22/2015, 7:24:43 AM1 votes

Well I see this went nowhere fast. I don't expect an immediate response but come on.. he was permanently banned at one stage then highly banned after the micro rework. Each time he was smacked with a bunch of nerfs but the range nerf on Rift Walk is what finally killed his impact on a game and reason for being picked.

He has low base damages (not one ability over 180 damage at rank 5), awful scaling on all abilities, a slow that is pointless at 1 second when so many other champions have far greater slow durations and is outclassed by all current meta mid laners. His ult is now a joke. It may have lower cool down, lower mana cost and stacks may fall off faster but the range is now the bottom tier ADC basic attack range. It's a little larger range than Flash and while I admit it can be used quite a bit more later on you still have to get to that stage of the game. Kassadin was a nightmare until he was hit hard with the rework and nerfs but then he became a late game scaling monster. Unfortunately even that wasn't allowed and you nerfed him even more Riot.

With so many reworks floating around, buffs and nerfs flying all over I just cannot see why such an iconic champion has been essentially sidelined by nerfs and forgotten about. Can you please give some insight onto your thoughts on his current state? It would go a long way to alleviating my fear that Riot just do not want to have to deal with him and so purposely kept hitting him.