User blog comment:Simbey/Real Talk: Kassadin/@comment-2010873-20140325230626

Kassadin's rework is pretty much a nerf to his atrocious early game and buff to his incredible late game damage. Lowering his damage and removing silence means he'll have more trouble trading during laning phase. Changing his R scalings to max mana and increasing his mana dependence forces him to build him like Ryze with RoA and possibly Frozen heart. He'll do amazing damage and be tanky AP mid if given time to fully build items.

His ban rate should have stayed at #1, but it's fallen by so much. I guess people mistakenly assume that Riot's reworks succeed in re-balancing otherwise horribly designed champions. That he can blink even more often makes his roaming even scarier and makes him more difficult to gank or catch him out in all phases of the game. He's even more unpleasant to play against than before.