Kassadin/Strategy

Skill usage

 * Use at early levels to harass the opponent. Because of the silence that comes with the ability, enemies will have a hard time counter-attacking in time.
 * synergizes well with attack speed items and allows him to cast more spells from the mana gained. It also farms minions well if the minions in question are softened up by.
 * While out of combat use to charge up your  and his passive to regain mana.
 * A risky way to deal a lot of burst damage to enemies is to constantly cast at the summoner pool. This will stack the damage on  while the summoner pool regenerates your mana. Using this method with summoner spell  can inflict devastating damage.
 * is fairly easy to kill if he can't away. When engaging the enemy, consider whether it'd be better to  in, cast your spells, and walk out, or to walk in, cast your spells, and  out.
 * You shouldn't in unless you are certain you can either kill your opponent or that they won't retaliate much. Casters will usually not be able to react quickly enough before the  lands, but AD dps are normally unaffected by your silence.
 * into a team fight will probably draw attention to you, something you want to avoid. As such, walking into a team fight and teleporting out can help you avoid retaliation.
 * Unless it is urgent, when traveling with wait until your last  counter has expired before using it again as  can deplete your mana very quickly.
 * is great for laning with or against champions with spammable spells such as and  as it ensures that  is always charged.
 * lanes extremely well with for multiple reasons:
 * is a spammable skill and can easily charge your.
 * , at full rank, can easily restore your mana even with the stacks of . It can also be used to silence your opponent after the silence from expires.
 * Due to being an anti-mage in nature,  innate  can help you fight even better against other mages.
 * is a melee mage champion. In other words, he needs to get into melee range to deal damage. The bonus armor and heal from can help  greatly.
 * abilities have high ability power ratios and low cooldowns, so a high amount of AP enables him to deal immense damage in short time intervals.
 * The, , and combo is especially powerful against casters, as it silences and heavily damages them before they can react to it. Make sure you have at least 4 charges in  before doing this combo, as  and  will let you gain the remaining 2 charges needed to cast it.
 * can be used to jump over walls, and essentially acts like the summoner spell Flash.
 * As an assassin, excels at ganking. Also, he is best at focusing alone or weak targets, or even targets like casters or low-MR enemies. With all of this in mind,  performs best entering in-progress team fights, once a carry has been slain and the enemy team is beginning to disperse or retreat, to pick off injured champions.

Build Usage

 * With his and his  active, it is possible to build  as Magical DPS, though due to the rarity of the build and lack of proper testing, the effectiveness of this build is questionable.
 * can be built either as a mage with ability power and mana due to his high AP ratio and mana cost, or an anti-mage with cooldown reduction and magic resistance due to his reducing magic damage.
 * and later an can help Kassadin deal with his high mana costs.
 * A and/or  gives  the survivability he needs when using  to a group of enemies. It also gives him some ability power to help him deal more damage.
 * When built as an Anti-Mage with magic resistance, a is a must.
 * Getting the increases mana regen greatly. The magic resistance is also a nice plus, considering his passive and his anti-squishy role.
 * and /or together with  and/or  will let you escape even the deadliest ganks.

Countering

 * is a fearsome anti-mage due to his passive, and his . Since he specializes in counter AP-champions, an AD carry (especially Sivir due to her spell shield) will shut Kassadin down extremely hard.
 * mostly deals magic damage; therefore, stacking magic resistance will mitigate his damage.
 * Buying magic penetration to face is not recommended, as his passive doesn't give him magic resistance.
 * has very great mobility because of his . Take care when chasing him as he may outrun you.
 * can only be activated if he has enough stacks. Engaging him when he has no stacks can help kill him faster.
 * In the laning phase, especially on a solo lane, it can be very hard for to keep stacks on his, so casting spells sparingly can greatly reduce his damage output. Manually detonating a two-part spell such as  or  adds an extra charge to , so it may be beneficial to let these spells expire on their own.
 * has trouble killing minions waves quickly in the early game, as is not always available, leaving him with only melee attacks and the long-cooldown . Playing a champion with strong AoE spells can allow you to push your minions to 's turret, which will force him to either lose gold income when the turret kills your minions, or stay in melee range of your minions, leaving him vulnerable to your ranged spells and attacks from outside the turret's range.
 * Predicting movement can be greatly effective in countering him, as his harass combo involves mostly  into range, and dropping a.
 * Such example could be, by casting and  at the correct position and timing, you can instead damage and stun  during his attempt to harass you.
 * The travel time of is noticeably slow - if you have your own crowd control that can be cast onto Kassadin before it lands and after he uses  to approach you, you can punish him and favourably trade.
 * As a melee assassin, must close the gap to begin fighting, and, more importantly, must initiate the fight to do all of his practical damage. With this in mind, being able to close in before he can  or even applying  your crowd control first will considerably buff your chances of slaying or at least defeating him.
 * Do not use to get away from  because of his  can still be used to teleport to a new area.
 * is a good counter for multiple reasons. Firstly, his basic magic resistance makes him suitably less squishy than other fighters versing . Secondly, his life steal assures that his health is buffed throughout the fight. Finally, his ult,, prevents from using  to initiate the fight, as it suppresses him and places  right on top of him.
 * is another excellent counter, for having even higher base magic resistance than, and that the shield he gains from ability use is very capable of soaking damage from 's spells.