Talk:Kassadin/@comment-26808509-20160813163558/@comment-27029062-20160825034018

The passive mechanic used to be powerful since Kassadin once had MR-per level, but the way his Q and passive function make it so that he is capable of surviving the ranged pokes from bursty mage-types. He desperately needs the magic defense or else he instantly fails. He is one of the few melee-magic based champions, but his overall defense is poor. If he didn't have the passive, he would immediately be one-shot.

The only true use of the passive is to counter early magic-penetration that is built against him. Kassadin can NEVER out-range ANY of the mid-lane mages without using rift-walk aggressively. His max-ranged ability is his Q, which has 650 dmg, which most mages EASILY surpass with their pokes (except Katarina and Annie). The passive will keep him just tanky enough to actually be able to survive a hit when he engages to delete the enemy carry, but otherwise, it is useless.

It can only be strong against % magic penetration IF kassadin isn't even building MR since it would only lower his defense against magic by a small amount. Flat Magic pen immediately cancels the passive out. the Q shield is very weak late game and i feel like the AP scaling needs to be increased to scale into late-game better, but obviously not too much. Something like 50% would be a good amount.

Kassadin as of right now excells in terms of dealing burst damage (especially with maxed R stacks combined with a Lich-bane empowered W), but his mobility suffers early/mid game since his movement speed is not particularly good and his rift-walk has a 6~4 second CD without CDR. his defenses are poor and his abilities without the use of items like Seraph and Lich bane are INCREDIBLY weak (Q and E are primarily used for the utility/debuffs they have... the damage sucks ever since they lowered the base dmg from 240 to 180 on each of them) and his only damage comes from his MELEE POTENTIAL (R splash dmg and W poke... Lich Bane is pretty much required to dish out high burst dmg). He needs a change to give him more utility like he used to have, but without giving him too much power... some of it might need to be taken away (lower AP scaling on W... for the 4th time)