Boards›Live Gameplay Balance

@Statikk: Don't perpetuate Kassadin's issues when buffing him.

Slovakattack·4/14/2014, 3:12:07 AM·14 votes·3,920 views

As much as I do appreciate buffs to Kassadin (good lord he needs them), buffing the damage on his W is just gonna add to his bursty spell rotation, not his sustained damage. He still won't have anything to do after the rotation is done, and won't be rewarded for getting in close in a healthy way.

The problems that plagued him before the rework will persist, and he will be forced into a UP state because balance wise because of the burst you are going to give his kit again.

Why not add damage to the passive on W, and make it scale? Seriously, it's kinda ridiculous that the passive has a BASE BONUS OF 20 THAT DOESN'T SCALE AND A .1 AP RATIO. It's inconsequential, and seems like a not very well thought out afterthought to his kit. He is just not incentivized to use it effectively, due to it's low impact.

Why not give him a reason to invest in items like Nashors and LB?

You have a chance to genuinely make a cool, AP based MADC/bruiser that counters mages... why are you turning him into a spell-rotation reliant burster like he was before?

43 Comments

RiotStatikk4/15/2014, 10:04:27 PM7 votes

Hey Slovakattack,

You certainly bring up legitimate concerns with the buffs.

I don't think that I agree with the fact that giving him substantial burst will make him an unhealthy champion, as long as he has to close into melee to achieve its full potential (even for just a second or 2). Removing the Silence has given us a lot of room to move now that his opponents are not completely locked out of reacting to him.

At the end of the day, Kassadin's burst is still not top-of-the-line in comparison to other assassins / mages, his base damages are among the lowest in class and his AP ratios are sizeable but not insane. A mobile, high burst, but squishy Kassadin with a hit and run combat style is something I believe is core to many Kassadin players. The buff to the W is simply to make it compare more favorably relative to Q / E and give him more reward when he arrives at his target.

We ran into some difficulties when creating a sustained damage Kassadin combat style, primarily due to the Mana itemization that exists in the game. Mana items are inherently very tanky, specifically they have a ton of easy access to Armor. Combine this with the focus we want to put on anti-magic in Kassadin's kit, this becomes a bit problematic because he often quickly becomes extremely resilient to both magic (built into his kit) and physical (Mana itemization) damage. Whenever we give a champion both Tankiness and Mobility, they need to have some pretty severe tradeoffs elsewhere on the kit or they become overbearing to play against. For Kassadin, he has to make real tradeoffs between Tankiness and Damage which is something we need to preserve.

Ultimately, I'd love for both Burst damage Kassadin and Sustained damage Kassadin to have places in the game, but to do so we would need to ensure each has its own strengths and drawbacks. With the current Mana itemization in place, I don't think it's plausible to make a sustained Melee DPS version healthy for the game. Currently, Kassadin can opt-in to a riskier AP focused build where he has significant damage and mobility but is ultimately very squishy, or a Mana-Tank build which is tankier and more controlling at the cost of damage output.

Hope this helps explain things a bit.

Earl Eulrich4/14/2014, 10:49:07 AM4 votes

i did already write that on the first PBE iterations - but yea, that really is what kassadin would need. popping out of nowhere and dealing a huge amount of burst is just really unhealthy and doesn´t allow for much counterplay...while allowing him for less burst but more sustained dps would fix all the problems with his patterns as he now could just come out of nowhere, but would still have to stay in combat for a while to be impactful instead of just bursting and stepping away into the void again.

So what i´d really love to see is giving him some kind of vayne mechanic - where he marks the target on every 3rd hit and can now q it for bonus dmg and a silence (and he really needs this silence, it´s part of his identity, having him joking around in the current state is just sooo sad).

HazeyInDaHead4/14/2014, 4:49:27 AM3 votes

It would be awesome if his passive w was buffed a little more to entice tankier items on kass to stay and fight until r is back

exec34/14/2014, 5:01:53 AM3 votes

Agreed about passive W, I was genuinely confused at how low the numbers were on PBE and why they weren't increased by release. If something's so low that removing it wouldn't affect the champ at all then you need to have a good look at it because something's wrong.

TENTACLELUVR4/16/2014, 5:52:12 PM2 votes

You have a chance to genuinely make a cool, AP based MADC/bruiser that counters mages... why are you turning him into a spell-rotation reliant burster like he was before?

No idea. I thought that's what this "rework" was about. That is what Kassadin was always meant to be, but then people discovered high AP ratios on Q/E. Rather than nerfing that and preserving his original kit, Riot decided to accommodate the annoying AP burst-based playstyle. This isn't really a rework, just straight removal of his base MR, unique passive, and silence. Sion had/has a similar issue, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Sion rework was an AP burster as well, rather than his original badass undead fighter self.

Dantilq4/14/2014, 8:28:51 AM1 votes

I think part of the reason why they don't want his W passive to be strong, is because then he will deal too much sustained damage. His pushing power will go up, his objective control, his lasthitting, his jungle power and if it works on towers his splitpush.

He would gain immense amounts of power from it, and they don't want to spend that big part of his power-budget on his W passive, which is the least exciting of his abilities. The power simply would pass by fairly under-appreciated.

If they wanted him to stick to targets for sustained damage, they should instead lower cooldown of his W. Make it rewarding to stick to people. Best would be 2 sec for maximum synergy with LB for sustained damage.Then just remove the passive part altogether.

Zerodias4/16/2014, 6:54:49 AM1 votes

Without the silence in his hit, Kassadin has a really hard lanephase now, buffing the base damage on his Q, with the buffs of his shield that are currently on the pbe should do the job, helps his burst as an assasin and his lane phase. As ive seen people dont know how to properly build him yet. Ive never seen a Kassadin runing lich bane now, when its so good on him IMHO. With a buff to his shield and some base damage buff he shoudl be good to go.

Fool4aLifetime4/16/2014, 10:26:52 PM1 votes

Well seeing as everyones making notions on AP kass, has anyone seriously tryed or considered AD Kass as an alturnitve to the weak AP builds. In all honestly we all know kass's AP ratios are low base solid scaling but hes suffering from one main problem, Gold. he needs too much gold to make Rod to make Zhonyas to make tear to make void staff to make tank items. He takes too long to scale and has little kill potential by himself if opponent builds MR. I dont see the recent buffs changing any of the problems with AP kass.

But AD kassadin is an interesting beast all his own. With Tri or hell fist, he does damage both burst and sustained, slap a muramana on him and ur doing solid mixed damage and can build HP tank items to help him thrive in frays. his kit is set to use and take advantage of Spellblade effects, so until his AP version is boosted to some sort of relevance i sugjest u give this alternative build a shot see what kinda results u can get.