Talk:Kassadin/@comment-68.193.173.8-20120702231828/@comment-88.186.19.90-20120703005224

He can't 1-shot you like brand, annie, leblanc or malz, but he usually kills you with 2 or 3 spell rotations, 4 if you are tanky, and since you can't run away from him, you're screwed.

First of all, Kassadin has mobility: a free flash every 6 seconds is very strong, as you might imagine; you can towerdive, bypass towers, catch up or flee very easily; it also means that this effective range is much greater than his spell range since he can riftwalk then cast. Second of all, his burst is actually very strong because it hits for sure (point-blank+big AoE) and prevents ANY retaliation whatsoever; it has very decent base damage and ratio for a 2 spell burst, and good CD for how much damage it deals (most casters need an ultimate to kill before the opponent flees, Kassa doesn't), furthermore 2.6 second silence+slow means that any retaliation from a caster is impossible, since he can usualy get out of range before the silence wears out.

These two things already make him a particularly strong anti-caster, since casters are usually squishy, rely on spells, and have low MS.

Now add to this Nether blade, which deals on average 240+0.6AP damage with 4 AA, and you have an excelent finisher and DPS potential should the enemy team be particularly tanky, it also solves his frequent mana problems in lane since you regain mana when last-hitting.

His cooldowns aren't that high: compared to other casters, you will notice that his spell rotation comes around roughly at the same time. Sure, he has no 4 sec CD spell, but nether blade fills that role if you AA for 4 seconds, there's an AoE spell with medium-to-high CD (pulse), and a 10-ish sec CD spell (sphere), annie, brand and even LB have higher CDs overall. Also, Kassadin has the added benefit of not needing a high-CD ultimate to kill people in a duel. The charge-up mechanic isn't that much of a handicap to be honest, you usually bait a spell from your opponent or riftwalk once before bursting. If you catch your opponent by surprise you can usualy cast the slow before the silence and win an extra charge; and in the worst case just cast sphere alone, it deals a lot on it's own.

Combine all these things and you get a very fun and strong champ.