Talk:Kassadin/@comment-168.8.249.173-20130320185534/@comment-37.128.215.240-20130321132303

^That's only partially true.

1. Mana: Mana is a HUGE problem! You brushed it aside as if it's nothing, while in truth, it controls everthing! The reason E-stacking "works" as a burst limiter is EXACTLY because '''Kassadin cannot spam his spells in the first place, due to him running oom very quickly if he does. '''It takes a partially or fully stacked Tear of the Goddess and a Rod of Ages to fully nullify his mana-spending - which you won't have until about 15+ minutes into the game.

Pre-6 or exactly at 6, you'll barely have the mana for 2 full combos. You're pushing it if you claim he can pull upwards of 3 combos. 4 combos simply won't happen. If you add Riftwalking to that list, you'll be oom 24/7 if you keep spamming abilities.

2. The presence of the blue buff: The blue buff proves the point I make above. Any long-time Kassadin player will know just how powerful a harasser Kassadin becomes once he no longer needs to worry about mana. There is no escape from harassment, there's no end to the harassment, and you can keep stacking up that E for as long as you desire. At best, you're giving the enemy about 5 seconds worth of time until the next full burst.

3. The problem of burst: This also seems like a non-issue. Kassadin's burst is '''heavily level dependant. '''If he levels up the Q, the Q is the only skill that'll deal any significant damage. The E just becomes a glorified slow until he starts putting points into that ability as well, which won't happen until the late 7-8-9's... At which point, laning-phase is mostly over and team fights are soon to commence.

Look at the damage distribution, and you'll see what I mean. His Q and his E literally deal the same amount of damage, have the same scaling, etc... No matter what abilitiy sequence Kassadin chooses, his burst will always be even:

- He'll either stack the entire burst into his Q, making the E very weak.

- He can fully level out his E instead of the Q, which essentially fucks him up (more on this later)

Or...

- He can do the one thing that'll ACTUALLY reduce his burst as you describe; he can level up the abilities evenly... Which no one does.

4. The lack of counters: Assuming he has access to limitless mana(which he more or less has with a blue buff), even when the E isn't stacked yet, he still remains impossible to counter directly. If the enemy isn't zoned, Kassadin can simply Q him for immense damage and just Riftwalk away. That is also "uncounterable" unless you have some form of instant-cc, which barely any mid-champs do, never mind the fact that they'll likely be silenced for 2~ seconds after landing the cc, giving Kassadin enough time to break the cc and Riftwalk out anyway.

What charges do for the Pulse: Artifically adds an additional 5-7 seconds worth of cooldown to it, assuming limitless mana is available. It doesn't give opportunities to the opponent at all if the Kassadin knows his way around his champion. Riftwalk is simply far too powerful a utility tool - its mana cost being its only penalizing mechanic.

- Burst remains nigh unaltered.

- Ability to farm and push diminished quite a lot.

- Robs the player of choice when choosing abilities early on. This is the biggest issue I have with the mechanic. You simply CANNOT pick Force Pulse as a level 1 ability or level it up early on in lane! It's simply far too unreliable to have at that stage.

- Handicaps Kassadin during early engages. At level 3, all champions generally have their core abilities and they'll generally have them back shortly after having used them. Kassadin can engage an enemy ONCE with a full combo, after which he'll only retain half of his combo. He outright loses half his damage if a fight lasts longer than 3 seconds.

All in all, the stacking mechanic doesn't seem to solve any REAL problem and creates a few problems of its own.