Kassadin Rework with Counterplay and skill interaction.
The current state of kassadin is not acceptable in any shape of strength or weakness. In honesty I've been playing him since his "broken" state and I will use a metaphor to describe kassadin. His current kit is complacently strong and he's missing the one thing that was core to his gameplay, a silence. Now don't throw a hissy fit. The way I see it Kassadin might need to be toned down, but I have a suggestion that will give him what he used to have, and in exchange, tone down some of his scaling and power. The way a lot of my friends at school look at it, kassadin is like olaf in that his kit is just overloaded or underloaded and can't really be tinkered with. Therefore I suggest we take a look at the things that are RIGHT about kassadin, and then worry about what's wrong with him.
Passive: Voidstone.
Kassadin naturally takes 15% reduced magic damage. He will lose his ability to walk through minions as he does now, as this will make it a little harder for him to "barge in unnanounced"
Passive: Silence of the void.
Kassadin has special interactions when using multiple abilities.
Q: Null Sphere
This ability remains largely unchanged minus a key component. This ability will interact with his second passive, which unlike yasuo, will be very very vocalized and predictable. Null Sphere will no longer provide a shield, but will give the following bonus stats when the sphere makes contact and to give an interesting interaction with the rest of his new kit. it will no longer interrupt channels, because as you will see why, kassadin will retain one of his most historically powerful mechanics, while losing some strength early. A lot of early strength actually.
Magic damage:
20/30/60/120/200 + (.70% Ability power). There are some clear nerfs to his Q's early damage in exchange for about 20 extra damage at lvl 11. This is fine. It makes it so that he has to get into melee range to farm at the early levels so that good trades can win the opponent the lane. Some strength will be removed from his early game in exchange for a very strong lvl 18.
Bonus magic resistance and armor
2/3/4/5/6% bonus magic resist and armor will be given to kassadin when the null sphere makes contact with the enemy. This will interact with some of his other abilities and his second passive. It might seem a little strong late game, and thats the point.
W: Void Sabre Kassadin's void sabre is charged with the energy of the void, dealing bonus magic damage on hit and applying on hit effects.
Passive: the attacks deal (2% mana)+(.1) ability power on hit. Kassadin's base attack speed will be lowered for this small buff. The ability has no base damage, and relies entirely on scaling.
Passive: Interaction with Null sphere.
Attacking a target who has been recently hit by null sphere with the active ability of Void Sabre steals 4% of their mana. Kassadin does not receive this mana.
Active: Kassadin deals extra damage on his next auto attack and consumes a stack of silence of the void.
Magic damage: 20/40/80/100/110 + (.50%)
Mana restored: 2/3/4/5/6%. This bonus is doubled versus champions and applies spell interaction
In exchange for the powerful buff to Kassadins E, a small scaling nerf to his w and his mana return was in order.
E: Void Pulse
Passive: If a stack of silence of the void is present on a champion hit by void pulse, the target will be silenced for 1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds. Kassadin will be silenced for twice this time. Kassadin may choose instead to use his ultimate ability as opposed to using this ability to pop the passive, for extra damage.
Void pulse remains exactly the same as it is now. Except it takes 7 stacks to charge and no longer charges from activating his w. In other words. You will be able to speak vs kassadin most of the time.
R: Rift Walker
Kassadin moves forward 400 distance on the first cast. 500 on the second. 600 on the third. and 700 on the fourth. Each stack of Rift Walker applies a debuff but does no damage. The debuff prevents the target from being silenced but causes force pulse to do a percentage more damage.
2%/4%/10% bonus damage
The mana costs would be the costs from patch 5.2.
The point of this rework is to give kassadin back what made him strong in a very nerfable, number oriented kit. He can easily be toned up or down depending on how itemization changes. Especially with the rise of Luden's Echo this version of kassadin will be STRONG. I encourage riot to consider the mechanics put forth and the community to criticize and demand that riot listen to the community. The numbers in this kit can be changed. I just strongly believe giving kassadin a silence and letting him keep it would constitute toning down his scaling. Even if he can only silence every seven times he uses q and R.
