User blog comment:Deshiba/No counterplay/@comment-24959480-20140519053337/@comment-4022742-20140519144126

Well as I reiterated below, Running out of mana is part of it, but a bigger part of it is that old Kassadin had the scaling and base damage to actually take a squishy person down in 1 rotation. The current Kassadin has to hit everything in his rotation on the target, and then it's still a question if he will die in that first burst (most likely the answer is no). As for his combo, you'd get in range, Cast the silence first, and while it was traveling, followed up with ult, slow and possibly (usually not needed) aa's. So you'd basically have free reign until your ult was back up to get the heck out of dodge. With current Kassadin, not so much.

When you say that Malphite wouldn't make sense if he wasn't unstoppable due to his design of a living rock. Then why aren't the and  unstoppable? As for focusing a tank, that's generally a bad idea. Are you going to use your precious crowd control on something that doesn't really do all that much damage by himself (enough to be a threat). Or would you be better off using it to disable their main damage source of APC and ADC? It would be a different story if you could prevent their main Crowd Control spell with it, that'd be worth your own CC to stop. But currently you can't, making the champion itself a bit less interesting to me personally, since there is not a lot of consideration towards what steps the enemy can take to stop you. You're going to arrive at your destination no matter what, even if you only disable 1 champion, if they focus you after that you still get what you want. You're in the middle of things dealing damage and soaking it for your team.

You will never have to think about: "Where is their cc coming from", "What CC did they already use and is now on cool down", "What's the range of their CC", "Is it safe for me to ult". The only thing that goes trough your mind while playing these champions will be 3 things: "Where are their carries?", "Is it more profitable to hit the bigger group?", "Will I be in a good fighting position when I leave my ult". Having the unstoppable mechanic reduces the amount of thought you have to put into it and I still have to hear a good argument that proves me wrong.

When I say "Ability based" I am referring to anything that you can do with the skills of champion you picked. Using those mechanics to the fullest without "Choice based" considerations like what items you could build or what summoner spells would fit that champion. Also Abilities that will be up every time you have a window of engagement to team fight. When you take those 2 things into account, Summoner spells are a tactical choice: "Do I take Ignite to have a kill chance in lane, or do I take Teleport to have more map presence" (top lane). And they are not going to be available to you in every fight, seeing as most of them have a cool down 3-10 times those of ultimate abilities. Statistically speaking you could flash Malphite's ult once in five times but you could or  that same ult every fight. If that wouldd be an actual possibility in the heat of the moment is a different question.

As for counter play, Shaco has it. He's a slippery one and his game play is quite rewarding for both sides IMO. He's balanced to the extreme early game, which is a choice. I personally don't like that choice, but it's a valid one.

Vi's ult on the other hand, is going to knock someone up, it will disable a person for 1.25 seconds, no counter play to it. You can counter play what happens before, and you can counter play what happens after. But that 1.25 second knock up is going to happen, irregardless of skill, summoners or items (assuming no spell shields, which is actually the only viable option to stop it). The ability to apply the strongest form of Crowd Control in the game without error is the strongest thing you can possess.

And it is unique to Vi. Every other knock up is ground targeted, debuff based or doesn't have a gap-closer attached to it. Meaning they are dodge able, stop able and counter able.