V1.0.0.125 * Void Stone magic damage reduction increased to 15% from 10% * Null Sphere missile speed increased to 1400 from 1150 * Nether Blade base damage increased to 30/45/60/75/90 from 20/30/40/50/60
V1.0.0.120:
* Nether Blade Nether Blade o Passive mana restore increased at earlier ranks to 8/11/14/17/20 from 4/8/12/16/20 o Active changed to 20/30/40/50/60 (+0.15 ability power) bonus magic damage dealt on hit instead of 7/15/25/38/50 armor penetration
V1.0.0.115:
* Fixed a bug where the visual for Force Pulse Force Pulse occasionally wouldn't align with the direction cast.
V1.0.0.113:
* Force Pulse Force Pulse: o Damage reduced to 60/115/170/225/280 from 60/120/180/240/300. o Ability power ratio reduced to 0.7 from 0.8. o Cooldown increased to 6 seconds from 5. * Riftwalk Riftwalk ability power ratio increased to 0.5 from 0.4. * Void Stone Void Stone damage reduction reduced to 10% from 15%.
V1.0.0.103:
* Nether Blade Nether Blade cooldown reduced to 12 from 15.
V1.0.0.101:
* Nether Blade Nether Blade mana cost reduced to 25 at all ranks from 30/40/50/60/70. * Riftwalk Riftwalk: o It no longer shows cast particles over fog of war. o It now leaves a buff showing the duration of the increased cost and damage of subsequent casts.
V1.0.0.100:
* Riftwalk Riftwalk can no longer be cast while rooted. * Nether Blade Nether Blade's level up tooltip now correctly states the increased mana cost.
V1.0.0.99:
* Stats: o Attack range increased to 125 from 120. o Magic resistance gained per level increased to 1.25 from 0.
V1.0.0.96:
* Nether Blade Nether Blade has been redesigned: o Passive: the mana drain component removed and replaced with a flat 4/8/12/16/20 mana restore on hit. This effect returns triple the mana against champions. o Active: Kassadin gains 7/15/25/38/50 armor penetration for 5 seconds. + 15 second cooldown. + 30/40/50/60/70 mana cost. + Activating this ability counts as a spell cast for the purposes of Force Pulse Force Pulse. * Null Sphere Null Sphere projectile speed increased to 1150 from 900. * Void Stone Void Stone: o The attack speed effect now stacks and renews instead of being replaced on spell impact. o Duration lowered to 4 seconds from 5 seconds.
V1.0.0.70:
* Void Stone Void Stone now applies an additive attack speed boost, rather than multiplicative.
V1.0.0.61:
* Force Pulse Force Pulse ability power ratio reduced to 0.8 from 1.
Force Pulse (Active): Kassadin draws energy from spells cast in his vicinity, gaining a charge whenever a spell is cast near him, including his own spells. Upon reaching 6 charges, Kassadin can use Force Pulse to deal magic damage and slow enemies in a cone in front of him for 3 seconds.
Riftwalk (Active): Kassadin teleports to a nearby location, dealing magic damage to surrounding enemy units. Each subsequent Riftwalk in the next 7 seconds costs 100 additional mana and deals additional damage. The cost and damage can stack up to 10 times.
* Cost: 100 mana * Range: 400 * Radius of Damage AoE: 150
A lot of how I used to play him got nullified by new heroes and a brutal 1 second nerf on his E. It means his efficacy in forcing fights got weakened (due to being unable to near-perma-slow people). The masses of new heroes means his slow isn't as effective in preventing incoming damage, which is brutal because his strength (even now) is his durability. Heroes like Jarvan seem specifically to counter him completely, with multiple jumps. His weak laning against ranged DPS got exposed by the rise of the DBlade stack strat. He's seeing a bit of a come-back now as more and more people bring AP heroes to solo lanes (a matchup he dominates) but otherwise he's been very much cornered to the same spot that Veigar once was - limited to an AP counterpick. The old Tankassadin playstyle simply doesn't work anymore, as it's impossible to withstand flurries of jumping heroes; his base survivability isn't strong enough.
Currently the two main playstyles are GJ's Vulture Kassadin and statikk's ToG/SS/GA Kassadin. I can't tell you which is stronger, or which is more consistently viable, except that they both work when the game is right.
Masteries These are very much up to the playstyle, the matchup, and the opening item. For example, if you intend to open PStone, then you don't need SoS as much, unless you're going for a heavy attrition fight (ie. against a good Karthus, Malz, etc.) in which case every little bit may, or may not, help. On the flipside the 15% magic pen is quite nice on him now considering how you want to do as much damage as possible (how about that!). Others still argue that in order to stay in lane you want to have 21 defense, to mitigate as much damage as possible. Generic Teleport/Flash 0/9/21 Caster
Runes Like the above, and as with all AP casters, these are also up to the playstyle, matchup, and sometimes even the opening item of the player. For example, if you're intending to do MPen cheese (Sorc+Haunt) then mass MPen is obviously a good choice. If you're running against low-MR opponents and intending to win with Q, then flat AP quints can be good. MSpd quints are good for playing the footsies game. etc.etc.
Summoners Have shifted around, in part because of play, and partly because of various changes and nerfs. Now it is up to playstyle and matchup. The #1 thing to keep in mind though is survivability. You want to have as many outs as you can, because for Kassadin, you have an In for every Out, and so the latter is really your #1 issue. The other skill really is up to playstyle, as I've seen stuff ranging from Clarity to Clairvoyance to Teleport to another Escape to Ignite to Exhaust to whatever. Typical AP hero flexibility.
Skill order Has remained mostly the same, especially with the buff to mana gain on W making it more favored (although you'll notice I and most others have taken the early W since the rework anyways). QWQEQR. This is because Q is phenomenal for laning power, and is also a stronger disable (silence duration increase) than the snare, which gets stronger but the duration remains the same, and as said tends to not be very useful against jumpers. You can take the E if you favor the AoE damage, esp. in 2v2 lane, but otherwise I would really not recommend it, unless you're cheesing some spellblock matchup (ie. Sivir).
Play and Items For clarification purposes, please, if you're going to come and talk about item builds, read the spoilered previous OP below. Most of it still holds true, as concepts of "what people think about" when they buy seemingly random items. I re-wrote the OP because the tankassadin build struggles mightily these days and isn't as dominant. It's still viable, but it's anyone's guess how much more viable it is than the two primary builds you see. And those are just core items anyways.
Unfortunately his overall flexibility has been dumbed down due to his inability to God-Mode. He's still brutally efficient late-game due to his outs and re-positioning (although he still suffers heavily against ranged DPS). Nowadays you'll see most Kassadins weather the storm for the first 20 minutes and then start kicking in. You play him like the Katarinas and Melee DPSs of the world. Wait a bit, jump in, nuke someone, gtfo, rinse repeat for the duration of the fight, always with an eye on staying alive at all costs.
You'll generally see a Regrowth opening, although brave souls have opened Sapphire (depending on matchup). Either way the goal is to hit Pstone -> Cata or straight Cata, then standard AP setup involving Deathcap etc.
They say you can also open boots+3pots, especially if against a skillshotter.
Statikk's build involves a very fast Tears (if sidelane straight tears, if solo probably cata->tears, although I believe he still usually skips the Cata because he is brave like that) into Soulstealer into survivability (usually GA), in an effort to snowball using SS (cheap high-AP high-reward item) and keeping it alive, being mindful of how difficult it often is to farm as Kassadin early-game. This gives him threat power with roughly 2000 gold + boots, which is quite nice.
It behooves you to whore blue buff. Kassadin is a mana-guzzling bum. He's not at the absolute top of the hierarchy with wanting blue buff, as you can definitely build around it to a certain extent, but you definitely feel stronger with it. Heroes that're probably better with it include Anivia, Swain, etc. the heroes that have a strong DPS-type channel.
Boots Always a major topic of discussion; what Nikes you'll wear. A lot of people get Sorc but I think it's an overrated item unless you're hitting them really early (esp for its cost) - in general for AP casters I feel you should only go Sorc if you're determining that the 20 MPen is worth as much as a Blasting Wand, as they have similar costs. Otherwise you're much better off running else. Ionian is a nice item because you can hit high CDR with just Ionian + Blue, and his ult CD is deceptively long from level 6-10. Also it doesn't hurt to spam your disables more often. Otherwise I'd recommend Treads for the obvious survival.
Also, carry-over from the previous thread: Dinky section on abusing Q Because I love having the freedom of an OP where I can add sections at will.
It occurred to me a lot of people, both for and against Kassadin, don't realize the most douchey thing Kassadin does that wins lanes if you're on top of your game. Abusing the fact that he has like a 0.1 cast time, if you're dancing, then one thing you can do is time your "turn" just at outside reach; this leads you to poke your sword out and out flies pew pew lasersphere of OP-ness. But if you've clicked back, he instantly turns around and runs with hardly a hitch - this means the other player had to have responded FASTER than you. The toughest part about this is timing your in-and-out so that your Q radius barely outreaches their range, but if you're on top of your game anyone with less range cannot hit you.
Takes skill, and I myself am inconsistent at it (I have good days and bad days). But if you really want to master Kassadin this is your #1 priority (#2 being spacing E, #3 being last-hitting).
Tips n' tricks Wall-jumping It's not intuitive if you've used Flash and been denied, but for whatever reason Kassadin's R works slightly differently. As opposed to preventing the wall-jump if you don't have enough distance, Riftwalk has a tendency to PUSH you across if you lack the distance. This means you can actually jump hilarious wall distances that otherwise don't really make much sense. For example the wall near mid lane, the one with the little corridor that people sometimes use to sneak up on mid-laners from behind (when their focus is on the river bushes)? If you jump from mid lane toward golem, you can actually travel a fair distance along it and get pushed out on the side. So if your jump will only take you 2/3 the wall's thickness, give it a shot - most of the time you'll find yourself on your way to freedom.
Fountain Rift into Teleport Charge up Rift Stacks in fountain, teleport, and kill someone. 'Nuff said.
Charging Pulse with W Really shouldn't be in this section, but people tend to forget that W has an active, and so you should be using it to charge up Force Pulse like people charge Annie's stun with Molten Shield. It's cheap, and saves you a lot of time, especially if you're running toward a creepwave and want to gib it with an R->E.
On November 06 2010 07:25 Southlight wrote: He's a poking initiating nuking snarebot, that can also get anywhere he wants to ward (pretty safe warding) and can push lanes/towers like a boss. There's almost nothing you can't do with Kassadin, so this is entirely your playstyle. I play him as a tanky initiating poking snarebot, generally de-prioritizing actual damage output (hence not getting ZRing as fast as people like GJ) - most people don't, they play him like this whonky terrible-burst (only two nukes) nuking vulture but hey, whatever floats your boat as long as it works.
Different playstyles include my Tankassadin, Grandjudge's Vulture Kassadin, DOGkaiser's DPS Kassadin, and statikk's SS/GA/Clarity Kassadin, among many, many others others (Eu DFG Kassadin is also a playstyle, although I think it's a horrible one and only works against bad players/team comps). Especially true when you consider that Kassadin is a highly flexible hero with a strong base selection of spells and a relatively high ceiling for potential (although I still maintain ranged DPS > him, especially teams that babysit their ranged DPS). Knock yourself out, the "line of thought" posted first below (I'll add other stuff as people post them) is my tankassadin and is (as mentioned) pretty different from most players.
Also, sorry for most of this being copy paste mish-mash from the doomed thread and the guide I wrote months ago. Nothing has changed since I wrote my line-of-thought guide (except for W getting shorter cooldown lol) so it's still 100% applicable.
Masteries
0/9/21 non-negotiable. He needs the summoner spells (esp. Cleanse), he needs buff duration, he needs meditation, and he needs SoS.
Runes
You have flexibility here based on your preference. I run MPen Quints and Marks, mana regen per level Seals, and AP per level Glyphs, with one MPen Glyph to let me hit 15 MPen. Some people like having Flat AP Quints instead.
Skill order and play
This is gonna be long and more of an essay than a clear-and-cut guide, and maybe someone (like Neo) will pop it and change my mind on a few things etc. but this is the sort of "flowchart" I follow when I play Kassadin.
Ideally you want a solo lane, IMO, because he's a very dominating solo hero (he plays a bit like Pantheon) and you really want the level advantage to hit 9 ASAP, 9-13 is like the sweet spot for Kassadin because your nukes begin to hit their max firepower, which is important because he only really has two.
Soloing is relatively simple and yet not. For the most part your primary spell is going to be Q, due to its relatively low cost for its damage. Beyond that, a lot depends on who you're facing.
Against most physical DPS you're going to do something like Q W Q E Q, although in some rare cases you may go Q W Q W Q instead (I did it against Kayle) - I think I ended up doing double W because I didn't expect anyone to come (it's annoying ganking Kayle) and I wanted to overwhelm the Kayle with Q spam to supercede her heal - that's where the mana came in. And if she ever tried to stand and fight the higher armor pen let me actually outdamage her. Against Sivir I do something like Q W Q E, I want that early W to pop off the shield and actually land a good Q. One E I found was enough to outdamage her in a standing fight. Against Morgana I just massed Q and W for the same reason as Kayle - I wanted to pound down her shield and out-last her mana-wise. However if you're against someone with Clarity and/or Teleport you switch into farming mode, because you can't outlast, etc.
In the rare circumstance you're 1v2 against two melee, or are 1v1 against a melee, you can raise E over Q, as E scales better (kind of like Annie's W > Q), and E is a much more important spell in teamfights anyways. Even if I open with a stronger Q most of the time I stop at like level 3 Q and just pump E to bring it to 5 ASAP, as it's crucial for teamfights, given that it cools down almost twice as fast and is AoE.
In a 2v2 you're almost always going to level E over Q, and for the most part you ignore W altogether (as is the case against two melee usually) because you're not gonna need that mana return as desperately. It kinda depends on the lane, though, sometimes you'll find it beneficial to grab an early W for extra mana help and to smack people back if they try standing up to you. Always remember that grabbing a level of W is a weaker Q or E, and by relation ~30 less damage every harassment cycle, which adds up really fast. Only get it if you're absolutely certain you just want to whack them down via attrition, because W is largely useless in teamfights. It's hard for me to tell you how exactly I know when to get W, because I usually do it by instinct. Just try to look at your mana expenditure, damage output, lasting power, etc. and try to plot out what you need. It's not super complex but if you mess up it can slow you down a lot.
I favor Cleanse/Ghost. Because of the way you position yourself, and who you tend to go after, you end up being public enemy #1 for a significant amount of time. Between an Annie standing in the back and a Kassadin teleporting into your team to fuck up the carry, who do you think is the easier, and more urgent target? Yeah, the Kassadin. If you play REALLY careful you can get away with not having Cleanse against minimal CC, but I've found I get into the habit of relying on it, and die to the only CC on their team (Rammus taunt) etc.
A lot of people like Clarity, but I think if you're in a solo lane W can trump Clarity, especially if you land a few champion hits, so it's much more of a 2v2 domination spell. I have trouble using it, though, because I'm really stingy with spellcasting, so that's going to be up to player comfort with Clarity. It's nice to have the odd time that you jump too much and need one more bit of juice to escape etc.
I've not taken Ignite because I feel like for the most part Kassadin himself is like an Ignite - if there's a weak target he can usually get them anyways, especially if you take Cleanse.
Flash is nice, but it's about distance covered for me - Ghost will save you in places Flash can't, and vice versa. I'm more comfortable with Ghost, and have randomly died because I didn't realize Flash wouldn't save me in a situation Ghost would, etc.
I run 0/9(SoS)/21 Masteries, reason being that I love Meditate, faster cleanse (from uti21), and the extended neutral buff duration. Because of his nature as a spellcast harasser creep hits usually aren't that big of a deal, anyways. 15% magic pen is overrated IMO, the 3% cooldown is nice but not really worth the 9/0, so get the 6 armor, MR, and some decent hp regen. Better than nothing, anyways.
Item builds, wow I go all over the place here. The only real constants are that I open Doran's Shield + health pot, and I make Catalyst and Sorc Boots, unless it's late and I find I'm just being CC'd to death (then I'll switch to Merc, especially once I've finished Void). In a solo lane you have, if played well or simply better than the bad opponent, been able to farm well due to your OP Q (mm, tears). After Cata, it's really up to whatever you want to do, ala the playstyles I listed way at the beginning of the game, or whatever else you want. Cata's EHP is simply ridiculous, and its level-up effect basically wins you lanes. I have seen some people double-Cata because he's not as reliant on AP, and I've also seem some very good Kass players open Banshee first. Especially if there's a mirror-match - although this worry is obviously not for ranked games though.
I used to rush Soulstealer, but it's risky business. My typical Kass build sidelane Soulstealer into Guardian Angel into Void Staff, but depending on the game I've ended up with weird stuff like 4x Ring into Tear into Abyssal. He's very flexible, and doesn't need much money to dominate the time period he dominates (~level 9 to level 14), and after that it's just a matter of staving off father time via gold. Even with 20 stacks you'll find you just can't keep up late-game, so you're just a tanky support hero. You really, really want to end games in under 35 with Kassadin if you want to remain a relevant nuking carry.
Items I've been known to use: Tear/Arch NLR/Zhon Soulstealer Leviathan GA Abyssal Scepter (for MR) Void Staff Heart of Gold Aegis of the Legion Sheen (for mana)/Lichbane (mana + MR + proc) Haunting Guise Rylai
Positionally he's got some bizarre issues of having one of the most accessible escape/chase spells (that's expensive), a really long-range poke/silence, and an absurdly short-range aoe/poke/snare. What you'll find is that you have to have a really good mental image of the effective ranges of different heroes, and you also find that you chase/engage on foot (instead of teleporting) a lot, unless you're trying to surprise people or needing to cover ground in a hurry. People, in turn, will try to stay a whole screen away from you to force you to teleport for initiation - this lets them get a countermove on you, where you teleport, snare, but they just jump at you, and you've got seconds until your teleport out. His most effective spell is Force Pulse, it's your bread and butter, and it's really tough to use. If you can get good at spacing for Pulse, and can position yourself to constant catch multiple enemies (bonus points if they're squishies) during teamfights, you're on your way to abusing one of the nastiest spells in the game. On the other hand if you're getting ripped apart trying to space it, or die misplacing yourself, etc. then you'll feel pretty weak.
One of the tricks I use a lot initiating is to teleport in just into range, pulse, and ghost backwards, or I'll ghost up, pulse, and teleport a half-step away so that if they're still running I'll have a charged pulse and be able to teleport up to catch them again. If they're running Kassadin has a field day because he can port, pulse, and smack them with autoattack. And in teamfight skirmishes as you're pushing a tower, you're almost always at the front, poking with Q, harassing with E whenever you get the chance, and just being a general nuisance maximizing your damage output
For everything else, check out the spellcaster thread I'm working on :D /end shameless self plug for something that's not even REMOTELY close to done. But that's okay.
Dinky section on abusing Q Because I love having the freedom of an OP where I can add sections at will.
It occurred to me a lot of people, both for and against Kassadin, don't realize the most douchey thing Kassadin does that wins lanes if you're on top of your game. Abusing the fact that he has like a 0.1 cast time, if you're dancing, then one thing you can do is time your "turn" just at outside reach; this leads you to poke your sword out and out flies pew pew lasersphere of OP-ness. But if you've clicked back, he instantly turns around and runs with hardly a hitch - this means the other player had to have responded FASTER than you. The toughest part about this is timing your in-and-out so that your Q radius barely outreaches their range, but if you're on top of your game anyone with less range cannot hit you.
Takes skill, and I myself am inconsistent at it (I have good days and bad days). But if you really want to master Kassadin this is your #1 priority (#2 being spacing E, #3 being last-hitting).
Afterward
Sorry if this doesn't seem very absolute a guide. I hate stamping my foot down and saying PLAY THIS WAY, because that leads to flow-charty drones that suck at the first sign of strange-ness (and yes strange things happen in this game). I'll encourage people to do something, state my reasons, and let them decide, or discourage something, etc. but I really hate going THIS IS WHAT YOU DO, especially on a flexible hero like Kassadin where evidently going DPS works okay for some people like DOGKaiser, bless his heart. I can't fathom doing it. I just don't play in a structured enough way to write a guide that's much more than a patchwork of "things I think about" as I buy items/level-up skills/etc. over the course of a game.
Hopefully the OP gives you a good idea of how to approach him, though, and the pros and cons of different items and skill builds, and lets you think about how you can take advantage of him the best you can. And if you have any questions we're here to help :D
I think Kassadin's jump is probably best in terms of completeness, unlike Trist's which I absolutely abhor or even compared to Corki's or Flash.
Also consider R to jump walls to avoid the more notable ward placements, and to initiate/follow dives from behind towers.
I tend to run flash/ignite because sometimes that flash will save your life pre-6 (esp top lane) if you don't have the coverage and double blinks allows for so many shenanigans. Ignite for its purposes. Other summoners are of course viable as well.
I also agree with getting at least two levels of Q. While E's manacost remain the same, you need the Q levels to trade well in lane. Also the longer silence could be crucial while you may do less damage.
Change to W allows for a little more liberal harassment and since Kass can dominate if the opponent cannot trade as well (especially after level 6) maxing Q is viable and should be considered.
i'm not sure what Vulture Kassadin is, so i don't know if it's the same thing, but I love kassadin because of his amazing harassment post-6, which i personally call harassadin. as soon as i hit 6, i b home and get a ToG and port back into my lane (which is usually mid). after that non-stop blink right into range, Q, run away, blink in range, Q, run away. ToG helps mitigate the high mana need. unfortunately doesn't work well vs. high sustainers, but it always works for most champs (or maybe it's just cause i'm lowly 1500 elo :[ )
after that it's just standard rift when time's appropriate, fuck shit up, gtfo with a troll face.
Vulture Kassadin is a glass-cannony Kassadin that masses AP with Catalyst being the only real survival item, waits out the start of a fight and picks weak people off.
Basically, you know how in horror movies you have the tough hunky guy with the flashlight leading a group of terrified-yet-sexy college co-eds through a dark hallway/forest/whatever, and then from a rear-view angle a dark shape suddenly crosses between the camera and the group, and flashlight-guy whips around and swings the flashlight everywhere and doesn't see anything out of the ordinary, but then notices that the pretty, quiet girl that always lagged behind the group a little bit is simply gone without a trace?
Vulture Kassadin is the serial killer that just omnommed the sexy quiet girl.
On July 20 2011 06:36 Southlight wrote: Vulture Kassadin is a glass-cannony Kassadin that masses AP with Catalyst being the only real survival item, waits out the start of a fight and picks weak people off.
ok yeah that's basically how i play him. i just think the name Harassadin flows better :3
I feel like Boots + 3 pots is a better opening on him than Regrowth. There are a decent number of matchups that are a LOT easier with boots. Orianna for example - it's basically impossible to dodge her ball without opening boots first.
If you position properly I'm fairly sure you should be able to give Orianna a piece of your mind without needing to rely on boots, as her balls takes a while to reach you and she can't follow up with W.
About the boots+3 thing: I played kassadin alot lately. I think it is never wrong to open boots because it makes abusing Q's range way easyer. I would even say that you get better and more harassement with boots especially if your opponent has boots as well. 3 pots should suffice to be able to push out at some point and get philo stone and more consumables.
About the boots upgrade: mercs are good ofc. I just found that they dont really fit to the builds you suggest. Both builds rely on scarying the shit out of the opponent you jump and doing as much damage as possible. If you have only mercs, cata and philo for survivability then you have not enough survivability to initiate anything anyways. They can help in specific situations but on the whole they dont fit a build that relies on burst. For example on Akali, mercs are awesome because you rush Rilay's which then scales into her increased HP. On Kass you go heavy AP which scales better with magpen.
Also the sorc vs wand math I dont get. They do not have "about the same cost". Sorcs are significantly cheaper and also give added MS which you should never underestimate on a champ that relies on mobility and range to survive.
That said, I had some success with mercs, roa, dcap. It's a slower build but much more forgivable because of the greater manapool and survivablity. You can actually survive 1 additional nuke or so with this which is nice.
But on the whole I found the Vulture build superiour. So thanks for putting your thoughts on here!
(atm I go boots+3, philo, cata, sorc, dcap, tear and then what i need the most)
On July 20 2011 23:12 Southlight wrote: If you position properly I'm fairly sure you should be able to give Orianna a piece of your mind without needing to rely on boots, as her balls takes a while to reach you and she can't follow up with W.
If she just lets her ball chill in the mid you're gonna have a hard time dodging it + she'll probably win in a straight challenge early because of her passive.
You're off to one side; she casts it once, hits you, but you should always been prepared for that and always, always attempt to trade Q for Q; assuming you manage this, you'll prevent the W follow-up, and your passive > hers in this case. Also now that you forced the ball to one side, you walk over to the other; now she must either try to land a travel time Q on someone who can play to dodge and is intending to hit her (hence near-max range Q to avoid trade) or she needs to reposition with Q once before she can actually go after you again.
I feel like that's a lot easier said than done, since you're forced into melee range in a relatively narrow area, which makes her Q+W a lot easier to hit than yours. If she is just saving it for when you move into to hit something, she's either going to deprive you of CS or get free damage when you go for one.
It's the classic mind-games thing (see my Kass vs Malz posts somewhere), you can bait her Q out with the last-hit fake too, and every time she wastes a spell you can punish as Kass with your own Q to drop her; eventually she'll either run out of juice or drop low enough HP that you control the lane and last-hit up. It's standard Kassadin play, you rarely can last hit unimpeded for a decent amount of time, which is why he's the "suffer for 20 minutes and then start carrying" type of hero. It's also the reason why Ori often loses to actually-good Annie players, because they can bait out her Q and land a 100% combo, as opposed to Ori having to skillshot it.
Edit: Bear in mind obv that I run mspd quints so while it's a marginal increase, I'm faster than base move speed.
My brother and I have been experimenting with a tank build for kassadin. This is not actually meant to be a troll build, for reasons that I will list below. This started back before his rift blade change (back then it gave you 50 armor penetration when activated) and that change has given both pros and cons to this build. This build is still experimental but it has given us quite a few good results and so I would like others to test it before I write a full guide to it.
The basic idea with this build starts with your passive, which helps reduce magic damage by 10% (formerly 15%, and once again we were experimenting even before that change). This may be a sought out aspect with the passive, but the second part is what most people overlook. You attack faster the more magic damage you take. This is actually extremely significant so long as you are actually able to take the damage (we have no idea the exact numbers on how much the attack speed/damage is though).
The core of the build consists of Manamune, boots(either merc treads or ninja tabis depending on the situation, which is 99% merc treads), a catalyst, and a glacial shroud. After the core you would finish either a banshees veil or frozen heart depending on if you need mr or armor first. Prefered final items afterwards tend to be a randiums and a force of nature to finish all 6 items. You should have over 200 damage without any damage runes. While you might be building a manamune, we have actually seen an almost even split in your damage done being from physical and magical, which i would explain later. The reason we chose manamune over archangel's scepter when considering what to transform that tear of the goddess into was through testing. Archangel's scepter costs a lot more than a manamune to create in the early game for kassadin, mainly due to how poorly you farm in the laning phase. Manamune also charges the tear of the goddess effect much faster because you can charge through hitting things. Getting more damage rather than ap also allows you to last hit and farm without having to use your mana, which helps conserve kassadins much needed mana pool for when you engage with champions.
For runes, we generally used armor penetration marks, armor/level seals and mr/level glyphs, although that might not be optimal. We are still experimenting and we don't have access to a huge amount of runes.
Masteries would be either a 9/21/0 or 0/21/9 depending on your preference. This is pretty much a normal tank setup in terms of masteries. Summoner skills we have found to be the most optimal(?) are flash and exhaust, since your job is to shut down their carries as a tank.
One thing we noticed with kassadin is that his ultimate is not so much ap dependent, but more mana and time dependent. The more times you are able to hit them with your ultimate, the more damage they take. This goes without saying for any skill or attack, but kassadins ultimate's total damage done in a fight scales exponentially as opposed to linearly. With a tanky build, you can actually stay in a fight for much longer and even have the ability to just get right into the face of their back line, thus doing more damage with your ultimate. His q and e skills would be significantly weaker due to the complete lack of ap, but their disabling properties do not change. You still retain a skill that can silence for just as long and an aoe slow that slows just as much.
In the spoiler would be tips if you have never played kassadin or if you are completely new to this playstyle. + Show Spoiler +
The most important part of this build would probably be the play style. During the early game and laning phase, you still play the role of a castor. The items you would get first would primarily be a catalyst and tear along with boots, so depending on your rune and mastery setup you can actually change your build to an ap build, abet one that might not be optimal. As the game progresses and you finish your manamune ( try and get this as soon as safely possible, even skipping your catalyst if you feel it is safe. the faster you finish it the faster you can charge up the mana which gives you a much stronger midgame with this build due to how the size of your mana pool directly scales with your total damage and effectiveness and not just the damage provided by manamune) you would become a hybrid "dps". Going into the midgame, it is extremely important to know your limit (how much damage you can take before you absolutely have to retreat). You would pretty much never be able to kill someone 1v1 unless they have either low mana or have their hp in a low enough range. During this stage of the game, you want to be participating in ganks due to your chasing capabilities and your ability to help chase in the form of slows and silences. As soon as you finish your banshees veil and frozen heart, as long as you are not behind, this would be the point in the game when you truly shine. Get/request a blue buff immediately. When engaging any champion, be sure to stack your ultimate to about 2 stacks and then engage with the third blink/ultimate. This is also the point in the game where you should be able to effectively take out their carries 1v1 or even 2v1 (so long as the other person is a support/tank, you can actually kill their carry before they kill you and retreat due to your ultimate and flash). During a team fight, you want to run straight at their carry (which should also be the biggest threat to your team) and proceed to shut him down. If you are getting focused, that is actually a good thing since you can take absurd amounts of damage at this point and if they are hitting you with magic your attack speed will spike, which increases your damage output by a lot. If your hp is dropping too fast however, it might be a good idea to blink/flash out and re-enter the fight once they take their focus off you.
I am going to keep this post at this length since this is getting to the length of a real guide. I would appreciate if people can help test this build as I feel this is truly a usable build. The general idea of how the build works and how to use it should be explained clearly above(hopefully). Feel free to pm me with questions regarding this.
We actually thought of using teleport to jump into a fight with 6-9 stacks up but never really put it into practice. Seemed to gimmicky to be worth it.
I think I should have mentioned the skilling order...
R>Q>E>W with one point in w at level 2/4. Getting it at level 2 is quite good simply because you won't have much chances to use E during laning phase so having more sustainable mana for spamming Q might be better.
Also, blinking out of a fight and jumping right back in to lose focus from the enemy team is really effective. This kind of alleviates the need for cleanse unless their team is really cc heavy, which can be fixed with a qss.
Thanks for testing this by the way. I really want others to try this to see if its actually legitimate instead of just opponents reacting poorly to the build.
The problem is you sacrifice a lot of mid-game burst which is what really makes kass scary along with his rift powers. A melee build totally nullifies that scary factor, and you're now farming up for late game relying on a huge mana pool as your source of damage.
I'm sure the build works but I think it's success is more dependent on how aware your enemy team is during teamfights and how well their team can peel for their carries. When you rift in you're vulnerable for 3-6 seconds before you can rift again and you have to be in melee range to do most of your damage. AP kass rifts in does fat burst then runs away.
Also, if you do plan on utilizing such a build you should tell your team to get another AP carry, otherwise most of your team's damage might end up being physical. Would you put tank/melee kass mid? or top?
I'm gonna try some melee kass later before I theorycraft anymore. Will report findings because kass is one of my favorite champs.
You actually only sacrifice some midgame burst. Kassadin's ap ratios along with how much ap you can safely get in the midgame means you don't lose too much damage. You should not underestimate the power of your passive and a manamune when you have over 2k mana in the midgame (you would be doing upwards of 170 damage a hit). Its a different play style and you have to be slightly more conservative when you are by yourself in the midgame, but you can be much more aggressive than usual if a team mate is there due to your significantly increased survival stats. As soon as you finish your glacial shroud and catalyst (after the manamune and boots ofc) you can effectively tank 2-3 people at once and still have enough time to get out alive, which allows your team to do much more damage because they usually exhaust all their spells on you. with this build, you essentially play the role of an alistar that takes more damage, but has much higher damage output in the midgame. Your main job as a tank is not to do damage and take kills, but to disrupt their team (usually in the form of cc) and soak their skills.
The thing with this build is that you really are NOT vulnerable after you blink in because of how tanky you are. Notice how all your items except for manamune are defensive items. You can take a serious amount of punishment and still live thanks to how easy it is to simply get out of the fight.
I thought it was a given that you would be telling your team that you are building tank and never bothered to mention that. One thing to note is that your damage would only still be at maximum 50% physical since most of your damage actually comes from rift walk stacking.We actually checked this multiple times in after game stats. Building pure armor against this would not be optimal. Neither would building pure magic resistance. In terms of efficiency Tankadin (this is what we dubbed it) is most effective against teams with heavy magic damage since you then make the most of your passive.
Any lane works as long as you are not top solo. You play as a mage in the early game, a tank/hybrid in the mid game, and a tank/sniper in the late game. Your early game should not change that heavily with the exception that you should not solo top since you cannot threaten them after they shop (or at least that's what it looks like. Once again this is still experimental and the only thing we have done is refine the item build to the point of usability).
I would also like to mention that Kassadin has a bit of a global taunt like teemo.
The only difference I see is that you spec 21 defense (which IIRC Smash advocated anyways), that you're open to running Glacial Shroud, and that you turn Tears into Manamune. Otherwise there's not a whole lot special here, sorry to burst your bubble.
Kass' problem still stems from his atrocious laning (ie. it only works against burst AP casters with inferior range) that prevents him from getting farm at comparable speeds to "better AP heroes." Aside from trying to open Cata you're still probably going to get trashed by anything other than burst AP heroes, will have a significant farm disadvantage, and won't be enough of a threat for most smart players to really bother dealing with. Same issue as another tank, called...
... Leona.
Also your core build of Cata Manamune Glacial costs like 6000 gold. That's an end-game build for Kassadin given his incredibly fast farm speed.
On August 29 2011 16:26 rwrzr wrote: I'm going to try tanky style kassadin. I'll get back to you later.
My one successful kassadin game involved cleanse + qss and a lot of roaming.
EDIT:
Also going to try the tanky style with teleport so I can enter the fight full charged!
I used to do AD/tanky kassadin a lot actually. It got really nerfed with the changes to his W though.
I used to build:
manamune, mercs, rush warmogs then atmas, then banshee if you need more MR. If you're doing well you can cram a bruta in there somewhere, which gives you much needed CDR and more arpen. Nice damage boost, but slows down your tankyness.
The general idea was that your passive maxes out your attack speed without needing to build any AS items. Your AD gets to around 250 as soon as you finish atmas, and you have 50 arpen from W, then bonus from runes/bruta. You actually deal sick damage, and you just never die with soooo much HP.
Champs like ashe will try to 1v1 you and suddenly realize that your auto attack hits twice as hard as hers does. Fun times!
However without the armor pen from W anymore, I think a tanky/AP build would be better. Sweet dreams, tanky trolladin!
since kassadin can pretty much choose who he is attacking/tanking why not build sth like mercs, roa, lichbane and just jump their ap carry all game long? I tried this build several times agaisnt annie and one time against a veigar. Its pretty easy you just jump on them, press q,w,e and autoattack.
The entire idea of this build is to capitalize on every aspect of kassadin without ignoring everything. This puts everything to efficient use from the attack speed bonus from your passive to the rarely used active of w.
On August 30 2011 01:36 clickrush wrote: since kassadin can pretty much choose who he is attacking/tanking why not build sth like mercs, roa, lichbane and just jump their ap carry all game long? I tried this build several times agaisnt annie and one time against a veigar. Its pretty easy you just jump on them, press q,w,e and autoattack.
This would no longer work in a team fight scenario because the other team should be watching out for just that. With this build, you retain a lot of damage, just over the course of several rift walks. Normally you would only be able to rift walk onto the enemy team at maximum 3 times with an ap build before it would be suicidal since you cannot take very much damage. This build allows you to take a lot more punishment.
I really have no answer to the farming thing. We never tested this in higher elos simply because we don't have access to an account with a high elo. All I would suggest is to try it out yourselves.
Yes, my point is that the EHP of your Kassadin is not much better (if not worse) than multi-Cata Kass (before they nerfed it via unique, although you can still stack Cata for the EHP), despite it being significantly less cost effective. The only difference is that you run a Glacial instead of a second Cata, and that you make a Manamune. In effect we are comparing Cata Cata Boot vs Cata Glacial Tear Boot.
The only significant difference is taking Exh instead of Cleanse (good idea) and 21 defense instead of 21 util (which some people already have been doing whenever they run Kass).
Edit: Essentially, you have comparable if not worse EHP and mana pool than me olde tankassadin, with less AP, instead relying on autoattacks to do the damage. Amusingly, me olde tankassadin build probably does more or comparable AA damage anyways with the AP-scale W and Lichbane.
Again the core issue I have boils down to the fact that the base item build is essentially identical to me olde tankassadin build except with a higher gold cost, on a hero that already has incredibly efficient farming.
Edit2: Also a fortunate side-effect of building AD is that Kassadin's creep-clearing speed gets even FASTER.
I just did the comparison for a cata cata boots to cata glacial tear boots.
Costs about 1.4k more for the change from glacial shroud to cata with an added tear. The thing with a double catalyst is the fact that its a dead end route if you end up doing a pure tank build. defensive stats are about the same. The main difference becomes the fact that you have half the mana pool with a double cata build. If you were to add a tear to a double cata build you end up getting about 400 more gold opposed to glacial shroud build. With the same amount of gold spent, you still would not have any ap at that stage in the game. Even with turning one catalyst into a rod of ages with the 1.4k gold difference (you would still be missing about 300 gold) , you end up with 85 ap The rod of ages path equates to a 1k mana difference with the glacial shroud build. With 85 additional ap (we would assume you waited 10 minutes already) you would do 56 additional damage with Q, 56 additional damage with E, and 40 extra damage with R.
The comparison would be whether it would be beneficial to get more mana, since your total damage from rift walk goes up exponentially the more times you land it, as opposed to ~50 damage increase to your skills which you would be not be able to use as much due to having a lower mana pool. There is also the problem with having a second catalyst in which you have only the choice of building another rod of ages which would take an additional 10 minutes to get full benefit, or to build a banshees veil, which would not increase your offensive capacities at all.
You are no longer a carry with this build. You are essentially playing a completely different role.
Theres no need to be sarcastic when discussing something that is completely experimental...
Glacial costs 200 more than Cata, gives you no HP (armor is an easy stat to buy) and no significant damage boost, but we know this. Double Cata turns into Double RoA or RoA + Banshee, both of which provide a significant amount of HP and mana (comparable) while giving all of your spells, and your melee attacks, a damage boost. If you do get a Tear with Double Cata you can turn it into Arch and start pounding shit with all of your spells, and your autoattacks.
That said, even double cata these days is quite rough for Kass.
Most people open either PStone or Cata, usually the former because Cata' hp burst got nerfed and it's too hard to get to it with Kass these days. They then follow with The Midgame Item, because that's the amount of farm Kass will get against a decent player. Your strat calls for a Glacial Shroud after Cata, which is based off a Chain Vest and Sapphire. Or maybe you want a Tear after Cata. Either is fine. The reality is that this is the build you are going to combat with. I'm being sarcastic because your end-game items don't matter at all, this is it. This is your build. This is the set of items that you'll end games 50% of the time. A boot, cata, and either a Tear or Shroud. How this differs significantly at all from a boot, cata, and second cata or NLR or tear or whatnot boggles my mind.
Understand this?
Assuming you rush the Glacial after Cata, by your own admission you have no particular survivability increase. This means that the idea of bashing peoples' faces in with autoattacks is no longer any more viable than it never was even with the double cata opening - you still explode against competent players.
The problem with the Tear in your build is that you get it after TWO costly items from Kass' perspective. If you really want to compare mana and damage, then you look at the completed set of three items. RoA Banshee (to be on the nicer side, because double RoA would destroy your theorycraft) vs what, Banshee Frozen.
Why, look at that, you're actually *behind* 225 mana by going Glacial/Frozen instead of RoA! And you're down 80 AP to boot. You've also traded 620 hp for 98 armor, which may or may not be worth it, especially against spell and true damage. But hey at least you have the FH debuff, for 300 less gold.
Don't even get me started if the double cata turns into double RoA because I mean, I won't mention that you'd be down a mere extra 245 hp and 375 mana on top of what you're already behind by.
I have no idea why you're comparing THREE items (as you're including Tears) to the relatively standard (though outdated) double cata opening, but I'm not going to be sarcastic enough to deal with that. But I will point out that Infinity Edge, Last Whisper, and Black Cleaver provides more damage and more attack speed than Bloodthirster and Last Whisper. This, too, is stunning information.
So really what you're ACTUALLY comparing is whether the damage from Manamune is worth it or not. Let's be on the safe side and assume you have 3000 mana. Manamune would give you 60 AD.
What's this, you say? With double RoA giving 160 AP when fully charged you would get 24 ratio damage on W anyways? Along with all of your other shit doing some token extra damage?
And at end-game if you decide to build a Lichbane you'd be proccing shit for some stupid damage? Really?
I would never have guessed.
Tankassadin in general in terms of item builds has been around forever. You can see my old guide quoted and spoilered in the OP to see some of the thought process behind the items, you can see my mention of Statikk's GA build still there in the OP, etc. The difference is that you seem to believe that a silly Glacial Shroud is going to turn you into a melee hero despite the fact that it provides little to no advantage over the Catalyst it's replacing.
I'm sorry for being ridiculously sarcastic but until you realize that (to me) hilarious fault in logic I can't really think of any other sort of response beyond, well, something much more frank.
Ive tried two setups in my last games with kassadin. First I wanted to make teleport+revive work on him (cuz my Idea about running this setup on singed got crushed, then I figured it could be worth it on getting this on the most mobile champ thats kinda designed to cleanup fights). So this brought me to getting standard tear+cata+boots into roa AA just to be more mobile and more aggressive with R lategame.
It worked well, I carried, it felt strong but gimmicky.
So then I thought "ok if you can run almost everything on that champ since he is not AS reliant on flash then why not get exhaust+ignite on him?" 9/0/21 masteries and again cata+tear+boots into RoA+AA lategame.
I was amazed this time. The amount of "shut down" this provides along with his silence is pretty sick. This combo makes a champ worthless for a freaking long time. your opponent has like a 3s window where he can do stuff (if he doesnt just try to run from you) if you open with silence and exhaust him afterwards. basicly you fuck up everything that is not in turret range with this cuz you hve an inbuilt flash anyways.
He's flexible, if you can circumvent his early laning/farming problems. I've seen Tele/Flash work well just because he can go from point A to E and then from E to F faster than almost anyone else in the game - usually when you teleport you want to teleport somewhere close but he can get slightly distant and still get the jump in such short time.
On September 01 2011 08:25 Southlight wrote: He's flexible, if you can circumvent his early laning/farming problems. I've seen Tele/Flash work well just because he can go from point A to E and then from E to F faster than almost anyone else in the game - usually when you teleport you want to teleport somewhere close but he can get slightly distant and still get the jump in such short time.
I think thats the biggest point to make. If you choose a setup on him then allways think about the laneing phase. Thats why your example with tele+flash is good too. Teleport helps alot with the early game farm on kassadin. But for the same reason you can run ignite+exhaust on him. Even if you cannot just straightup kill your lane opponent with it, you will certainly hurt him much more than he will hurt you if you unleash it with a well timed skill combo. This can give you the edge you want on him.
I'am thinking now of just straightup timing those summoners in the laneing phase. For example just attack with them at lvl 3-4 while not even attempting to kill the other one but just doing a solid trade or forcing a panic flash.
For me the biggest bottleneck for Kassadin in general is that his cooldown on his lane presence is simply too long to make headway, and even if you do make headway, they simply have to go back once. And because it's so hard to snag creep kills against a competent opponent without taking a beating, even if you force them back you're still generally behind in CS. This isn't as big of a problem because Kassadin has a lower item threshold for usefulness, but against ranged AD heroes, farming AP heroes (the Morg/Lux/Swains of the world), and Bruisers, allowing freefarm as Kassadin is usually going to backfire heavily because Kassadin takes forever to catch up and get back on equal footing. You end up with a giant stack of time that you're simply behind and vulnerable to a helpless loss as a freefarmed carry chews up your team while all you can do is hope the game is extended long enough for you to become a threat.
It's why I don't play him anymore, why most people don't play him anymore, and why most theorycrafting about mid-late game builds on him hardly matters.
Kassadin is my favourite champion and I really disagree with getting an early rank in W over q or e. I shoudl maybe attempt to put this in my play but it hurts your aggressive potential in lane.
Unless i sense my opponent is really bad (can tell by how much they harass you early on kass), I wont even really waste mana trying to harass them down in lane unless I have blue. You're better off looking for ganks and using your resources there.
On September 11 2011 00:05 ODKStevez wrote: Kassadin is my favourite champion and I really disagree with getting an early rank in W over q or e. I shoudl maybe attempt to put this in my play but it hurts your aggressive potential in lane.
If you don't need the mana sustain then by all means.
On September 11 2011 00:27 rob.au wrote: Unless i sense my opponent is really bad (can tell by how much they harass you early on kass), I wont even really waste mana trying to harass them down in lane unless I have blue. You're better off looking for ganks and using your resources there.
Usually good players will just stomp you out of lane and build up like a 100 CS advantage if you don't try to harass. Unfortunately his harass isn't very strong anymore except against other burst AP heroes, so...
I'm a pretty pro Kassadin if I do say so myself (for this season, I am 4-1 and 36-5-29) and I almost never lose unless there is a leaver on my team.
The skill build you want is Q, E... max Q and E, then W last. Ghost and teleport for summoner skills. You want to always take mid no matter what and be very passive using your Q to last hit creeps. You want to focus on nothing but creeps until 6, possibly harassing to get a kill at 6 if you can afford to do so. For items, start with a sapphire crystal and HP pots, and graduate that to a catalyst of the protector asap. Use teleport to tele back and get the catayst as soon as you have the gold. Afterward, get a tear and boots. Then you want to get a soulstealer (if you are a good player, this is the best item as you shouldn't die often if you have game sense) and from there get arachgel staff, deathcap, sorc shoes, lich bane in that order. Only go back to base to buy when your teleport is up or after/before you get blue. Kassadin is mobile as hell thanks to blink and is one of the fastest and best farmers in the game. He can also quickly get to team fights from farming due to this as well.
The key with Kassadin is to communicate with your team that you are going to need blue buff every single time it comes up after 10 minutes. Tell them whatever they need to hear to understand how severely you need it. Why? Because you are absolutely useless for the most part without it and it will hinder your farm capability if you don't have it. If there is another hero on your team that is dependent on the blue buff, don't play Kassadin. You are dependent on it.
On September 16 2011 11:58 -Trippin- wrote: I'm a pretty pro Kassadin if I do say so myself (for this season, I am 4-1 and 36-5-29) and I almost never lose unless there is a leaver on my team.
The skill build you want is Q, E... max Q and E, then W last. Ghost and teleport for summoner skills. You want to always take mid no matter what and be very passive using your Q to last hit creeps. You want to focus on nothing but creeps until 6, possibly harassing to get a kill at 6 if you can afford to do so. For items, start with a sapphire crystal and HP pots, and graduate that to a catalyst of the protector asap. Use teleport to tele back and get the catayst as soon as you have the gold. Afterward, get a tear and boots. Then you want to get a soulstealer (if you are a good player, this is the best item as you shouldn't die often if you have game sense) and from there get arachgel staff, deathcap, sorc shoes, lich bane in that order. Only go back to base to buy when your teleport is up or after/before you get blue. Kassadin is mobile as hell thanks to blink and is one of the fastest and best farmers in the game. He can also quickly get to team fights from farming due to this as well.
The key with Kassadin is to communicate with your team that you are going to need blue buff every single time it comes up after 10 minutes. Tell them whatever they need to hear to understand how severely you need it. Why? Because you are absolutely useless for the most part without it and it will hinder your farm capability if you don't have it. If there is another hero on your team that is dependent on the blue buff, don't play Kassadin. You are dependent on it.
My build is very similar to this but I find it hard to build a soul stealer after the tear. If you fail to get any stack fast your AP will be at a low level for an extended amount of time (all you got is the catalyst and tear, nothing in AP.). I feel getting the archangel staff first and then you can decide on your next item, depending on how the game goes. Archangel is almost a must for anything you want to do with kass.
Hi guys, I don't usually post in here but I have always loved Kass as a hero and I've played him in high level games (games with 1900+ elo players) and in tournament games before. I see a lot of misinformation in this thread, so hopefully I can set some of you guys on the right path. First off, don't even plan on getting a stack item on any hero unless you're doing REALLY REALLY well and know there's one feeder on the other team you can take advantage of over and over again. Basically ONLY if you vastly vastly outskill your opponents.
The key to Kassadin is getting a good start - If you can go relatively even with mid or maybe even just slightly behind, once you hit 6 you should be good. You will most of the times want to take 1 level into W at 2. Why? Because the mana return from it is very good and you will want to Q the enemy as much as you can for harrass. Getting W will let you last hit better and harrass better at the same time - very useful. Remember, the key to a good game with kassadin is the start. If you can get a decent early farm, you're set for the game.
In terms of items, I highly recommend tear boots catalyst into hat, sorc boots, void staff. you don't get much AP for a while, but that's fine. You need the mana because there will be times you won't have blue and even with blue you can go oom if you use your ult correctly when you gank. And again, this build will allow you to get a solid early game farm in. Getting a mejais will gimp you severely early when you are already not an early game hero. Also, don't get archangels till later because the upgrade fee is 1k and your tear doesn't even have enough stacks to justify getting it so early. After your hat/void staff, go ahead and get a banshees for defense and then upgrade into archangels because at that point you will have a lot of mana.
If you find yourself without blue buff (it got stolen or something, or you died with it) dont hesitate to get a blue. Kassadin NEEDS cooldown reduction badly. Without blue buff, the elixir can help compensate.
Also, you should get ignite for the burst on kass and Flash for the escape. Flash is essential because it makes you safe from ganks pre-6 and it also allows you to double blink late game which is incredibly important late game once the enemy's #1 priority is killing you.
For runes, you should be running mpen reds, mp5/lvl yellows, ap/lvl blues or flat mr blues if you anticipate heavy AP harrass mid like cass. and ap quints obviously. For masteries, the standard caster setup 9/0/21 is mandatory because it gives you everything you need as kass. Mana, exp for faster 6, neut buff duration, cdr, movespeed, flash cd, SS cd, mpen, more cdr from offense, and some AP from offense too.
If anyone wonders why I've become so cynical in this subforum (although I've always had a sarcastic streak), it's because people keep coming into this thread and freaking regurgitating what I've said both OPs and acting like they're presenting new information, and acting like their Kass is all dat without ever dealing with the crippling issues for Kassadin when he's not just a counterpick.
If you know you're going to get 2nd blue you can rush RoA and add tear right after, but that is riskier. You need the mana as kass, because when you go to gank you should be avoiding the wards using your ult then using a charged ult along with QE to finish off the gank.
It sounds like overkill on mana but Kass is the most mana hungry hero in the game. And mana indirectly translates to damage with his ult. Getting tear early helps you build up the stacks early and catalyst gives you lane dominance and more health to live through ganks that will inevitably come because you are doing well and a fed kass is trouble.
On September 16 2011 16:09 Southlight wrote: If anyone wonders why I've become so cynical in this subforum (although I've always had a sarcastic streak), it's because people keep coming into this thread and freaking regurgitating what I've said both OPs and acting like they're presenting new information, and acting like their Kass is all dat without ever dealing with the crippling issues for Kassadin when he's not just a counterpick.
Good lord.
Apologies for posting information that directly addresses posts that came after yours. And I'm not really sure what the latter half of your post is all about, or why you sound so elitist. I didn't come in here to hijack your thread, I came here to post information relevant to how Kass is played at a high level.
Edit: And your OP implies a lot more flexibility in his build than there actually is. If you want to play kassadin non-troll style, he's pretty rigid in terms of how he has to be built in order to make up for the fact that he is a melee caster.
On September 16 2011 16:09 Southlight wrote: If anyone wonders why I've become so cynical in this subforum (although I've always had a sarcastic streak), it's because people keep coming into this thread and freaking regurgitating what I've said both OPs and acting like they're presenting new information, and acting like their Kass is all dat without ever dealing with the crippling issues for Kassadin when he's not just a counterpick.
Good lord.
Apologies for posting information that directly addresses posts that came after yours. And I'm not really sure what the latter half of your post is all about, or why you sound so elitist. I didn't come in here to hijack your thread, I came here to post information relevant to how Kass is played at a high level.
Edit: And your OP implies a lot more flexibility in his build than there actually is. If you want to play kassadin non-troll style, he's pretty rigid in terms of how he has to be built in order to make up for the fact that he is a melee caster.
Southlight used to be one of, if not the best Kassadin player in the game. He's also 1900+ elo I believe.
On September 16 2011 16:09 Southlight wrote: If anyone wonders why I've become so cynical in this subforum (although I've always had a sarcastic streak), it's because people keep coming into this thread and freaking regurgitating what I've said both OPs and acting like they're presenting new information, and acting like their Kass is all dat without ever dealing with the crippling issues for Kassadin when he's not just a counterpick.
Good lord.
Apologies for posting information that directly addresses posts that came after yours. And I'm not really sure what the latter half of your post is all about, or why you sound so elitist. I didn't come in here to hijack your thread, I came here to post information relevant to how Kass is played at a high level.
Edit: And your OP implies a lot more flexibility in his build than there actually is. If you want to play kassadin non-troll style, he's pretty rigid in terms of how he has to be built in order to make up for the fact that he is a melee caster.
Southlight used to be one of, if not the best Kassadin player in the game. He's also 1900+ elo I believe.
To say you're the best player at ____ is quite pretentious - If you actually read the contents of my post, I actually agree with most of what he posts in his original post. I was addressing the other (more recent posts) that he had not talked about yet in detail, which for some reason offended him because I think I'm "all that" because I'm posting information that is consistent with pretty much how all high rated players play Kass.
Why is it that everyone in this subforum these days is so quick to point every single build or strat that isn't theirs a troll build without ever testing shit, or verifying shit. Why is this subforum turning into an elitist circlejerk of stubborn brainless lemmings who follow tier lists and top-end players like Egyptian gods without ever thinking for themselves. Why, why, why.
/end rant unrelated to Kass
He's flexible because almost every top player (and I mean 1900+) that is reknown for Kassadin plays him a different way Edit: And I don't just mean item builds. They literally play him a different way, and their item builds reflect their playstyle, after much refinement and comfort. He's flexible because his base power has not changed a single bit since like two years ago, and he has the same exact strengths and weaknesses; his use has only changed because his weaknesses have been exacerbated by better knowledge of the game by opponents and the fact that he gets utterly shit on by 2/3 of the game's heroes. People are regurgitating shit that has been proven to be plenty viable by many good players, and acting like they've come across "that new magic formula" when all they're doing is posting one way people can play Kassadin... when he doesn't have an "I lost the game for us" laning phase. Which is his main problem!
Just because you feel your strat works well for you doesn't invalidate builds favored by top-end and famous players like DSBu (w/e his name was) and statikk and GJ and such. Especially aggravating is the fact that you're posting stuff that's already covered, without going into much more depth than saying "X works," without explaining WHY it works and why it is a SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVE to other strats/builds, usually because you have nothing more than personal opinion to ride on. Hey guess what, there's a 2000 rated player (or wherever he is now) that has consistently favored the Tear -> SS -> GA build. I guess he just sucks!
It is frustrating for me to read this thread because every few months someone comes in posting a build that has extremely minute variants from what used to be a standard build, or posts a build that only works with a favorable matchup (duh) or an incompetent opponent, without ever dealing with the critical flaw that currently makes him hell to use against proper picking. The one time I tried playing Kass solo queue in the past month for instance they counterpicked me by dropping a Mord and Yorick solo lane combo. Fuck you all and I hope you die Edit: sorry this was pointed toward the people counterpicking me. Solving this is the one and only (as far as I'm concerned) mystery to unraveling his current niche status. I have given up, having found his early-game power level too weak to deal with his flawed matchups. I have given up since last year when they introduced MF and I got curbstomped by every excellent MF, even before the DBlade stack (which completely renders you useless). Not one person since then has offered a single solution to the problem, instead bringing up more and more guides about "hey if you stomp X shit player or X AP hero you can farm up a storm and miraculously carry just because Kassadin with farm is pretty fucking OP." Hey, newsflash. Everyone knows this.
I especially loved the part about emphasizing blue buff. Everyone knows this! Everyone!
Edit: Also for the record, for people thinking I'm being elitist. I like to think I'm one of the more open-minded (with regards to how you play a hero, etc.) players here. I will rarely, rarely ever trash a build or strategy just because it's different. But I will always compare a "new build" or strategy to an existing one, and point out flaws that are based on stuff like raw numbers. Sometimes I am wrong. Many times I am not. An example is the post in the... previous? page about how one guy somehow felt replacing Catalyst with Glacial Shroud would suddenly make Kassadin a good melee hero. Except there is a logical fallacy there from pure numbers. The inability to see that logical fallacy is what drove me angry that time. Every time someone posts a new idea I come in with the hope that someone has figured something out, some setup, something that is able to consistently circumvent his major, glaring weakness. Every time over the past year I have been devastatingly let down. Stop doing this.
He's brutal to pick first pick because if the other team is any smart they'll simply slide a ranged AD or something at you, and you're fucked again because 20 minutes into the game you're staring at Kassadin: 70 CS Insert Random Ranged AD: 250 CS and they'll just have a bruiser or lame-o tank top like Singed with a similar issue. He's a fine counterpick, obviously, but that has never been refuted, and I even posted following the recent patch that he's just back to curbstomping AP heroes and nothing more, nothing less. But again, when you curbstomp an AP hero and get farm up the ass it hardly matters what you build because you're Kassadin, one of the most aggravating carry heroes in the game if he can actually managed to get farm without giving his opponent 15+ minutes of superior free farm.
It seems I hit a nerve just trying to give myself a little bit of credibility when I was mainly trying to explain how mejais is terrible and offer a concise post that is how MOST players play kassadin. I'm still not sure why you are so angry at me for reposting certain information. Is there a rule against agreeing with the norm and stating the most common (and in my opinion) effective way of playing kassadin? Did you even read the post before mine? Someone posted about going early mejais and another going early archangels - both of which are terrible ideas.
Sure, there are variants of how to play a hero. Then there are the ideas that are just bad because they.... are bad. I've never seen statikk's build in action and I can't see it working when playing people who don't feed endlessly. Did you see me once say that the GJ's build is not viable? No. In my post I wanted to accentuate the importance of Kassadin's early game and list out how you usually set kass up. You reference MF and how no one has offered a solution to this yet people are just bringing up the same shit over and over again. Well the reason I didn't even mention MF is because you almost (basically never) see AD carries mid anymore. Oh and in reference to the blue portion of my post, I obviously mentioned it in reference to the elixir. Which you probably forgot to mention in your blind rage of reading my post of information you probably already knew.
I'm not really sure where your rage comes from still.
It is frustrating for me to read this thread because every few months someone comes in posting a build that has extremely minute variants from what used to be a standard build, or posts a build that only works with a favorable matchup (duh) or an incompetent opponent, without ever dealing with the critical flaw that currently makes him hell to use against proper picking.
Sure, my build is standard but with the current metagame of AP mid (and recent kass buffs) he is a bit more playable now than before. Also, I reiterate the fact that I was mostly posting my build to aid the people who posted just recently. No where in my post did I say that this build is the end all be all of kassadin builds. I recognize that he is hard countered by a good number of heroes, but I'm not posting an exhaustive guide on Kassadin, nor do I have the responsibility to. This obviously makes Kassadin a hard hero to play in ranked because you want to pick him at the end of your lineup, but you also need mid (which you rarely get as one of the last picks), but this is besides the point.
Not one person since then has offered a single solution to the problem, instead bringing up more and more guides about "hey if you stomp X shit player or X AP hero you can farm up a storm and miraculously carry just because Kassadin with farm is pretty fucking OP." Hey, newsflash. Everyone knows this.
Hey, newsflash. I wasn't saying stomp X shit player of X AP hero and farm up and miraculously carry. I was offering a build with specific runes and masteries that I feel was getting lost in the thread because of some posts that just don't make sense (like going early archangels). I'd also like to point out that no where in your main post is this exact setup posted (which is the most common one, I don't think you'd argue with me on this point..)
1) I hate unilateral disdain of an item without logical backup. Soulstealer is usually terrible, because you are reliant on combat and the ability to maintain stacks. You also invest heavily in an item that gives you low cost efficiency for a significant amount of time, on a hero archetype that usually is expected to hammer people from start to mid-game, and sometimes onward. Soulstealer works on Kassadin with the Tears build (primarily Statikk's one) because Kass as a hero is not as reliant on AP to do early-mid game damage (which is where so much of his flexibility originally comes from), allowing for a relatively cheap 1.2k investment in a single AP item, while spending the rest of his meager gold on utility and sustain (Tears and GA, for mana and survival). If things go well, yay, you've got stacks, and you only need 5 stacks to have "break-even" on gold, and up till that point you're reliant on so many other factors with Kassadin anyways. With this sort of item setup, and the sort of playstyle in which you play conservatively and patiently and simply work as a supporting/sniping nuker, it works fine. Especially because it is NOT gold intensive.
2) Kassadin's item flexibility largely comes from the fact that there are 3 distinct playstyles, although I dislike the 3rd (my own) because jumper heroes can wear you down too fast. Most of his stuff for the good players is reactive, unless you are doing statikk and vulture builds. I do mention the vulture build below though because that's what I consider the norm these days, which is the Pstone -> Cata (or skip Pstone, not sure how the AP matchup works these days, and you might need to shift back and forth depending on which AP hero you're against) into Deathcap into random other standard AP carry stuff. This is all very standard. For any AP hero.
People are being nice and not jumping on you (beyond Shake's little quip) about Tears -> Boots -> Cata because they're being kind to what works for you and aren't jumping on a different strat like you are. For my part, I find it incredulous that you can get Tears on Kass before Cata because he's a melee hero, and takes damage against any competent opponent every time he goes to get some moolah. But hey, if it works for you, it works for you. See, I'm being flexible here and not trashing on someone else's build, even though I really could.
3) I hate people posting regurgitation because it means it's yet another person who didn't just read the freaking OP (holds true for any thread), and it's especially annoying when they come in acting like it's the new, best way to play the hero when it's absolutely nothing new.
My brother and I have been experimenting with a tank build for kassadin. ... This build is still experimental but it has given us quite a few good results and so I would like others to test it before I write a full guide to it.
I'm a pretty pro Kassadin if I do say so myself (for this season, I am 4-1 and 36-5-29) and I almost never lose unless there is a leaver on my team.
I see a lot of misinformation in this thread, so hopefully I can set some of you guys on the right path.
Why is it that every single person feels like a hotshot with this hero? There's like zero respect to anyone else who's played the hero because every person feels like the next great thing and they've unlocked the mysteries to Kassadin not being played much. Dubya Tee Eff.
I mean you say one thing and say the other. You attempt to say that you respect the opinions, but then drop this wonderboy.
Edit: And your OP implies a lot more flexibility in his build than there actually is. If you want to play kassadin non-troll style, he's pretty rigid in terms of how he has to be built in order to make up for the fact that he is a melee caster.
O REALLY. Well thanks for respecting other people who play (or played) this hero.
TL;DR you come in acting like you're "correcting" people (in truth just placing your own opinions, much of which is redundant) and instead stomp over other peoples' opinions (many of which are validated at top-level play) and lay down your own law. Now you act incredulous and martyr when people give you flak for it.
Edit: Heading to sleep now because it's 4:22, may or may not respond further "tomorrow" because I usually stop caring about arguments after I sleep. Really I should just sleep instead of instinctively arguing but it's a bit too late for that now.
Alright, here we go. I thought some things from my post were implied, but I guess not and I'll go more in depth since you want to pick apart everything I say.
Soulstealer works on Kassadin with the Tears build (primarily Statikk's one) because Kass as a hero is not as reliant on AP to do early-mid game damage (which is where so much of his flexibility originally comes from), allowing for a relatively cheap 1.2k investment in a single AP item, while spending the rest of his meager gold on utility and sustain (Tears and GA, for mana and survival). If things go well, yay, you've got stacks, and you only need 5 stacks to have "break-even" on gold, and up till that point you're reliant on so many other factors with Kassadin anyways. With this sort of item setup, and the sort of playstyle in which you play conservatively and patiently and simply work as a supporting/sniping nuker, it works fine.
True - His damage isn't heavily reliant on AP early, but by spending ~800 on something that does not give you any immediate benefits, you are gimping yourself in the early portion of the midgame with lesser survivability and mana (catalyst) and ability to build a banshees later or go for a RoA. Currently, if you don't do big damage and or provide lots of utility in the midgame as mid AP your team will lose team fights over dragon (as well as being weak in lane against other strong AP carries like brand). An 800 gold gimp on a hero that is already struggling before he really ramps up is not a good ideal. It's not just the cost of the mejais you are losing - You will most likely lose farm and map control because you cannot carry your weight against their AP mid. Even if you do get ~5 stacks, you give up too much control with mejais. Alternatively if you built a catalyst/tear, you would have more map mobility with more mana, be more durable in team fights allowing you to ult onto them to do more damage, ETC. A build without catalyst like you said is more of a sniper build, which really relies on your teammates doing the brunt of the work.
2) Kassadin's item flexibility largely comes from the fact that there are 3 distinct playstyles, although I dislike the 3rd (my own) because jumper heroes can wear you down too fast. Most of his stuff for the good players is reactive, unless you are doing statikk and vulture builds. I do mention the vulture build below though because that's what I consider the norm these days, which is the Pstone -> Cata (or skip Pstone, not sure how the AP matchup works these days, and you might need to shift back and forth depending on which AP hero you're against) into Deathcap into random other standard AP carry stuff. This is all very standard. For any AP hero.
People are being nice and not jumping on you (beyond Shake's little quip) about Tears -> Boots -> Cata because they're being kind to what works for you and aren't jumping on a different strat like you are. For my part, I find it incredulous that you can get Tears on Kass before Cata because he's a melee hero, and takes damage against any competent opponent every time he goes to get some moolah. But hey, if it works for you, it works for you. See, I'm being flexible here and not trashing on someone else's build, even though I really could.
Personally I have not tried the philosopher's stone build myself. While I could see the health/mana regen being very useful in lane, I feel it would delay your core too much. Your ultimate, a silence, a slow, and a few potions should be sufficient to keep you alive in the ~lvl6 to ~lvl10 range. (I'd also like to note AGAIN that I posted my item build because someone also recommended a fast archangels).
You could get cata or tears first - It's preference - The reason I had tears listed first was because I'd rather have tears + boots + pots rather than just cata - Catalyst is quite a bit more expensive than tears and you need to be dodging lots of skillshots mid against the popular AP lineup that is so prevalent these days. Also, while kassadin is melee you will have your ult to get out of sticky situations and silence the opponent to prevent a lot of the harrass that is to come your way from the mid heroes, so catalyst isnt really necessary until you start getting in the more engaging battles (dragon).
3) I hate people posting regurgitation because it means it's yet another person who didn't just read the freaking OP (holds true for any thread), and it's especially annoying when they come in acting like it's the new, best way to play the hero when it's absolutely nothing new.
Did read the post.
Like the above, and as with all AP casters, these are also up to the playstyle, matchup, and sometimes even the opening item of the player. For example, if you're intending to do MPen cheese (Sorc+Haunt) then mass MPen is obviously a good choice. If you're running against low-MR opponents and intending to win with Q, then flat AP quints can be good. MSpd quints are good for playing the footsies game. etc.etc.
You listed a mpen cheese, and then two vague references to some quints. I laid out a runeset page that is standard for almost all AP carries and works well for kass as well.
These are very much up to the playstyle, the matchup, and the opening item. For example, if you intend to open PStone, then you don't need SoS as much, unless you're going for a heavy attrition fight (ie. against a good Karthus, Malz, etc.) in which case every little bit may, or may not, help. On the flipside the 15% magic pen is quite nice on him now considering how you want to do as much damage as possible (how about that!). Others still argue that in order to stay in lane you want to have 21 defense, to mitigate as much damage as possible. Generic Teleport/Flash 0/9/21 Caster
While you do imply 9/0/21 by saying you don't need SoS, you never explicitly say it. Also, there is some synergy in my build with my masteries in that the CDR from offense works will with the plentiful mana pool you will have. Also you post the 0/9/21 alternative which is better sustain but less damage. I posted my preference (and the one that I see most commonly) 9/0/21.
I see a lot of misinformation in this thread, so hopefully I can set some of you guys on the right path.
I'll be damned for trying to give people a build that works for me (and some players from streams I've watched) Also, where in my post did I claim credit? Where in my post did I say, MINE MINE MINE, my build, this is innovative, etcetc? I made some recommendations and tried stressing the importance of going even in the early levels against your opponent in lane because that's when it will be toughest (when auto attacks are most devastating) which has been grossly exaggerated by you as:
"hey if you stomp X shit player or X AP hero you can farm up a storm and miraculously carry just because Kassadin with farm is pretty fucking OP." Hey, newsflash. Everyone knows this.
When in reality I said nothing of the sort and I actually have useful information in my post.
I mean you say one thing and say the other. You attempt to say that you respect the opinions, but then drop this wonderboy.
Edit: And your OP implies a lot more flexibility in his build than there actually is. If you want to play kassadin non-troll style, he's pretty rigid in terms of how he has to be built in order to make up for the fact that he is a melee caster.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of ways to play Kassadin. Then there are very very few ways to play him competitively - That's what my post was trying to outline - imo, the most effective way to play him. Why do you feel the need to exaggerate everything I say? Obviously Kass has traits that make him very vulnerable in certain areas, so he needs to be played a certain way in order to be effective.
For example:
Have shifted around, in part because of play, and partly because of various changes and nerfs. Now it is up to playstyle and matchup. The #1 thing to keep in mind though is survivability. You want to have as many outs as you can, because for Kassadin, you have an In for every Out, and so the latter is really your #1 issue. The other skill really is up to playstyle, as I've seen stuff ranging from Clarity to Clairvoyance to Teleport to another Escape to Ignite to Exhaust to whatever. Typical AP hero flexibility.
Clarity? CV?
If you want to play him in any kind of serious game, you can't run those summoners. You need ignite for the burst, and flash because it's... flash. And... AP heroes don't really have much flexibility in summoners. They almost always (pretty much always) go ignite/flash.
TLDR: Maybe I should have quoted the parts of the posts I was responding to earlier. I read the thread and I saw some things I majorly disagreed with and I put together a concise post that contains the most common (and in my opinion, effective) way to play Kassadin. You come into the thread, outraged at my post as if it contained NOTHING new and saying that I am basically stating the obvious while not addressing his weaknesses, while I actually do (the item/runes/masteries speak for themselves). You reference weaknesses from a metagame that has already passed that's not applicable if you pick him at the right time (one of the last picks) and then scold me for not talking about it? I have no responsibility to make an all comprehensive post about Kassadin. I wanted my initial post to be something someone could look at, try out, and test to see if he/she liked it. As for your high level play of Kass with the philo build and the mejai build, I'd be very interested in seeing those replays given that they are fairly recent. I act incredulous and martyr? You've been the one walking over me the entire time when there is substance in my posts that you fail to recognize.
Where in my post did I say, MINE MINE MINE, my build, this is innovative, etcetc?
Then there are very very few ways to play him competitively - That's what my post was trying to outline - imo, the most effective way to play him.
You are very clearly locked into a playstyle and gimping yourself. There's a reason why Uta played tank Kassadin at just as good a level as all the Korean vulture Kassadin players, but you're being too narrow minded to see that.
outraged at my post as if it contained NOTHING new and saying that I am basically stating the obvious while not addressing his weaknesses
It didn't. Really, there's nothing special or valuable about the content you posted whatsoever. It's common knowledge that has been debated and discussed already in this thread and the previous one.
You reference weaknesses from a metagame that has already passed
The fact that you think it's an issue of metagame makes me laugh.
Just take a step back and look at what you've posted - it's a standard build with a weird build order (tear boots cata really?); and you came in (and still are) parading it as if it's the end all be all for playing Kassadin at a "high level". THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT YOUR BUILD.
The only part where your posts started to get somewhat interesting is:
not applicable if you pick him at the right time (one of the last picks)
But then you dropped the soap and went back to parading your ego. If you want to have a constructive discussion instead of puffing up your ego, you might put out your thoughts on that.
You are very clearly locked into a playstyle and gimping yourself. There's a reason why Uta played tank Kassadin at just as good a level as all the Korean vulture Kassadin players, but you're being too narrow minded to see that.
Gimping myself as well as the other few Kassadin players I still see these days playing at a high level - Okay, that makes sense. You call me narrow minded, I say it works. I've personally never seen Uta's Kassadin before, but I am genuinely interested.
It didn't. Really, there's nothing special or valuable about the content you posted whatsoever. It's common knowledge that has been debated and discussed already in this thread and the previous one.
I've already quoted and posted information that has not been mentioned in this thread (not sure about previous thread, I haven't read through that one). And while I do agree it is more or less common sense to higher level players, with people discussing fast archangels as an option, it then doesn't appear so obvious.
The fact that you think it's an issue of metagame makes me laugh.
Just take a step back and look at what you've posted - it's a standard build with a weird build order (tear boots cata really?); and you came in (and still are) parading it as if it's the end all be all for playing Kassadin at a "high level". THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT YOUR BUILD.
The only part where your posts started to get somewhat interesting is:
The fact that you don't think the metagame has affected Kassadin makes me laugh. The current conditions favor Kassadin more (the AP mid rather than AD). And I never stated that this is the ONLY POSSIBLE way to play kass, but I believe it is the best style currently and I haven't seen any footage proving otherwise.
The funny part to me is where you said this part of my post
not applicable if you pick him at the right time (one of the last picks)
is actually quite funny. It's common sense. Also funny that you talk about my ego, when Southlight comes in here like he owns the forums (he is the OP, which is why I didn't really bring it up) but then criticizes me for posting common information when people are still "experimenting" with fast archangels and mejais.
Regardless, it is clear I am not welcome here. After my posts with absolute no substance and intense ego, I will take my leave. However sarcastic my last statement was, I sincerely apologize for for causing a ruckus in your thread, however relevant I feel my input was. It was never my intention to martyr myself, I never thought that there would be such a scene caused by me posting a relatively basic setup in this thread that I didn't really see much discussion over and may have contained some things that have already been stated vaguely by other posters. If there is anything more that you still have left to say to me (maybe a tank kassadin vod or something interesting of that sort), then I'd appreciate it if you PM'd me as I would not see the message otherwise.
Looking at your post history I assume you don't have a grasp of the history of this subforum. It's pretty old. And I'm sure most of the community here has seen builds like yours a million gazillion times before, so your post is really meaningless. It's like your guide should be dated March 10, 2011, instead of Sept 16. Not trying to bash, just trying to give the perspective of a person that's been on this subforum for a while.
On September 16 2011 16:36 Southlight wrote: He's brutal to pick first pick because if the other team is any smart they'll simply slide a ranged AD or something at you, and you're fucked again because 20 minutes into the game you're staring at Kassadin: 70 CS Insert Random Ranged AD: 250 CS and they'll just have a bruiser or lame-o tank top like Singed with a similar issue. He's a fine counterpick, obviously, but that has never been refuted, and I even posted following the recent patch that he's just back to curbstomping AP heroes and nothing more, nothing less. But again, when you curbstomp an AP hero and get farm up the ass it hardly matters what you build because you're Kassadin, one of the most aggravating carry heroes in the game if he can actually managed to get farm without giving his opponent 15+ minutes of superior free farm.
I don't know if US is different but on EU people are so fixed on the 'metagame' that you will have an AP hero mid 98% of the time no matter what. Can't speak for super high elo tho, maybe people are smarter up there.
On September 16 2011 16:36 Southlight wrote: He's brutal to pick first pick because if the other team is any smart they'll simply slide a ranged AD or something at you, and you're fucked again because 20 minutes into the game you're staring at Kassadin: 70 CS Insert Random Ranged AD: 250 CS and they'll just have a bruiser or lame-o tank top like Singed with a similar issue. He's a fine counterpick, obviously, but that has never been refuted, and I even posted following the recent patch that he's just back to curbstomping AP heroes and nothing more, nothing less. But again, when you curbstomp an AP hero and get farm up the ass it hardly matters what you build because you're Kassadin, one of the most aggravating carry heroes in the game if he can actually managed to get farm without giving his opponent 15+ minutes of superior free farm.
I don't know if US is different but on EU people are so fixed on the 'metagame' that you will have an AP hero mid 98% of the time no matter what. Can't speak for super high elo tho, maybe people are smarter up there.
at high elo people counter pick you anyways, as in if someone does Udyr they swain etc
I'm not really sure where your rage comes from still.
It comes from the tears of the innocent that he has been feeding off of since LoL was released, growing steadily until one day the rage will take over the world!
My god you are so pretentious Southlight. I emphasized the blue buff because not "everyone" knows that as you seem to think. I wrote a small guide pinpointing important things and that is one of them. I'm not a super pro or anything, I was about 1600 elo, and at that level not everyone realizes that they need to help me get blue every game after 10ish.
Mejajs is underrated as shit. It's a great item on Kass if you can avoid death and keep blue. Chances are many think it's bad because you don't see "pro LoL players" pick it up. In my opinion, it's utterly retarded to watch LoL pros and try to emulate their builds and play when in comparison to something like Starcraft just because of the sole reason that it is a team game. You can cut many, many corners in solo and team queue because of the lack of organization, skill, and teamwork in this game because it is a team based game. Even at 1600 elo, which is probably higher than most people who would even read what I posted, what I said applies. Even then, I've yet to personally reach a level where Mejajs didn't pay off for me later in the game. Kassadin above all is a carry hero.
Last thing, it's really discrediting to you when you try to drop an ad hominem saying that someone like me thinks I'm "hotshotgg" (and therefore discredits Kassadin players) because I point out that I am okay at playing the hero. I play LoL maybe once or twice a week when I get bored of Starcraft and I don't think I am even close to being one of the best players, but I think that I am still much better than most players my level. With that, I think that me posting how I play can help other players of a lower level increase their skill. All I am trying to do is help.
Personally I have not tried the philosopher's stone build myself. While I could see the health/mana regen being very useful in lane, I feel it would delay your core too much. Your ultimate, a silence, a slow, and a few potions should be sufficient to keep you alive in the ~lvl6 to ~lvl10 range. (I'd also like to note AGAIN that I posted my item build because someone also recommended a fast archangels).
You could get cata or tears first - It's preference - The reason I had tears listed first was because I'd rather have tears + boots + pots rather than just cata - Catalyst is quite a bit more expensive than tears and you need to be dodging lots of skillshots mid against the popular AP lineup that is so prevalent these days. Also, while kassadin is melee you will have your ult to get out of sticky situations and silence the opponent to prevent a lot of the harrass that is to come your way from the mid heroes, so catalyst isnt really necessary until you start getting in the more engaging battles (dragon).
With the tenacity buff I'm thinking philo first is superior to cata first now that you can upgrade it to Miracle without feeling gimped without merc's or whatever. It's undoubtedly kind of a shitty lategame item to have but if you reach the 45 min mark and you're full you can always replace it with spellblade...?
I've almost dumped Archs and mejai's on every character since the charge time for most champs is awful and playing like a pussy to keep stacks is not often rewarding. I much prefer survivability for lane and building strong AP for mid-lategame ---vulture build.
On September 17 2011 05:59 -Trippin- wrote: Last thing, it's really discrediting to you when you try to drop an ad hominem saying that someone like me thinks I'm "hotshotgg" (and therefore discredits Kassadin players) because I point out that I am okay at playing the hero. I play LoL maybe once or twice a week when I get bored of Starcraft and I don't think I am even close to being one of the best players, but I think that I am still much better than most players my level. With that, I think that me posting how I play can help other players of a lower level increase their skill. All I am trying to do is help.
On September 16 2011 11:58 -Trippin- wrote: I'm a pretty pro Kassadin if I do say so myself (for this season, I am 4-1 and 36-5-29) and I almost never lose unless there is a leaver on my team.
To be fair, when that's the opening sentence of your post, it's pretty hard believe that you DON'T have an overinflated opinion of your own abilities. There's very little that saying something like that accomplishes other than attempting a not-so-subtle brag. It doesn't lend credibility to what you say, and it just makes you look like an ass.
I think Uta is being overly aggressive about this, but I can definitely see his concern. The champ threads are largely supposed to be a venue of discussion, not of people who individually all think they're super good at the champion trying to teach the "right way" to everyone on how to play the champion. The OP obviously is a guide, but its largely to amalgamate the information from the discussion in the thread. It obviously has to start out somewhat preachy as before any discussion occurs, the writer has to use his own judgment to put the guide together, and I think Uta has at least done a good job of not being overly forceful in saying "THIS is how you play Kassadin".
Pstone vs Cata is weird because you really benefit from the max mana on Cata. PStone HP Regen helps you get TO the Cata though. I think the ideal is still to hit Cata ASAP, it just may or may not be more or less difficult than it used to be. I know for a fact that against an Orianna who understood the matchup non-Regrowth would fuck you up because all she needed to do was shield herself and right-click on you. That was dumb. Fortunately they nerfed her AA range so you don't lose in such a retarded way anymore lol.
I understand the SS hate, my point is just that there's a specific playstyle and item-build that caters to it, which has worked consistently for one of the best Kass players for the better part of two years. You can like it or hate it, but it's effective, validated, and has logical backing as to why it works. I don't like it, as I've never been able to pull off his strat/build, but I also understand that I preferred playing tanky, because I generally play either tanky heroes or support heroes. I just want people to keep this sort of open mind and willingness to understand the REASONING behind other peoples' decisions. Again, as stated in the OP, his build costs like 3000 gold (incl boots) to be effective. That is dirt cheap, and when he took Clarity (despite what you may feel about the spell) allowed him to be a sick 2v2 laner a year ago because he'd even skip the Tears! SS -> GA! I dunno if he can pull off that stunt, or whether he even really wants to, but it's been done. At a high level. By a very good player. I just want people to respect that it's possible instead of going HERPDERP CLARITY MUST BE NUB.
Re: Trippin I was saying people were being a hotshot, not hotshotgg. Hotshots that don't read the OP and regurgitate information. This is because there's a lack of respect shown to people who've put in time and effort into discussing, debating, and consolidating information. The OP is long, I've had a guy remark to me it might be too long last night. But that's because I don't believe in giving people a "do X Y and Z and be pro" sort of pointer. I want people to understand the thought processes behind what some of the good players do with specific heroes, and then let you think for yourself. Almost everything is covered, and if it's not, sure, bring it up as a discussion topic or a pointer that I haven't dealt with it, and shit will get done. Barging in here talking about how pro you are or how you're gleaning from high-elo friends or blatantly posting a guide that doubles up with the OP or has a logical fallacy screams lack of respect to the people before you.
Not mentioning blue buff in the OP was an oversight, and one I'll correct both here and in the Malz thread, although I still maintain that "blue buff on AP hero" is common sense at almost all levels of play.
I mean, the point of the champ threads isn't for 5 people to all come in and post their mini-guides. That's the problem all the old champ threads had. The purpose is to invite discussion on various issues, which the OP than can collect into the first post as a guide. Both Trippin and marvin's posts are written in such a way that they do not allow easy discussion, in large part because many points that are worth discussion are taken as fact and hence do not give reasoning for the reader to discuss. There should at least be some reasoning behind things because people aren't going to take what you say as gospel.
Examples:
The skill build you want is Q, E... max Q and E, then W last.
Some Kassadin players get W at 2 and many have a rank by 7 or 8. It's a non-negligible amount of mana restoration, gives you an E charge at very little cost, lets you win some weird trades with the extra autoattack damage, and scales another 0.2 AP into your combo. So provide reasoning why you consider it not worth the extra E damage.
Ghost and teleport for summoner skills.
Summoner spells are one of the most malleable and situational selections for a player to make. What about Kassadin makes it such that even vs. champs/team comps where Flash/Ignite/Exhaust/Cleanse might be useful, you'd still take Ghost/TP?
For items, start with a sapphire crystal and HP pots, and graduate that to a catalyst of the protector asap.
Many bad matchups might call for a more defensive item start than Sapphire Crystal, such as Regrowth Pendant. Give reasoning as to why you believe that all matchups are good enough to allow you to get away with Sapphire Crystal.
Personally I have not tried the philosopher's stone build myself. While I could see the health/mana regen being very useful in lane, I feel it would delay your core too much. Your ultimate, a silence, a slow, and a few potions should be sufficient to keep you alive in the ~lvl6 to ~lvl10 range. (I'd also like to note AGAIN that I posted my item build because someone also recommended a fast archangels).
You could get cata or tears first - It's preference - The reason I had tears listed first was because I'd rather have tears + boots + pots rather than just cata - Catalyst is quite a bit more expensive than tears and you need to be dodging lots of skillshots mid against the popular AP lineup that is so prevalent these days. Also, while kassadin is melee you will have your ult to get out of sticky situations and silence the opponent to prevent a lot of the harrass that is to come your way from the mid heroes, so catalyst isnt really necessary until you start getting in the more engaging battles (dragon).
With the tenacity buff I'm thinking philo first is superior to cata first now that you can upgrade it to Miracle without feeling gimped without merc's or whatever. It's undoubtedly kind of a shitty lategame item to have but if you reach the 45 min mark and you're full you can always replace it with spellblade...?
I've almost dumped Archs and mejai's on every character since the charge time for most champs is awful and playing like a pussy to keep stacks is not often rewarding. I much prefer survivability for lane and building strong AP for mid-lategame ---vulture build.
nah late game u sell ur spellpen boots for mercs for tenacity kus u got dat voidstaff
edit: put the quote in question since 5 ppl posted between browser refresh lolol
You're pretty much hitting the nail as to why I lashed out at the two guys from last night, so that's that. If you post a guide, then make it be something new, something innovative. Blow our minds away. If you want to raise discussion, bring it on in a normal manner, not an "Im a pro this what you do."
On September 16 2011 18:36 marvin. wrote: Also funny that you talk about my ego, when Southlight comes in here like he owns the forums (he is the OP, which is why I didn't really bring it up) but then criticizes me for posting common information when people are still "experimenting" with fast archangels and mejais.
Like that.
Respect.
I feel it.
Somewhere.
Maybe.
Edit:
On September 17 2011 06:32 barbsq wrote: nah late game u sell ur spellpen boots for mercs for tenacity kus u got dat voidstaff
I still hate on Sorc boots :< but we had a loooooooooong discussion in the general thread about that so w/e lol.
Thx for your guide Southlight, I'm really new to LoL (less than a week, just playing because of Dota2 really ) and Kass is one of the only Champs I play, your guide was awesome, and all of the discussion about items has been really helpful in trying to understand how to play him more efficiently.
On September 17 2011 08:30 Wrongspeedy wrote: Thx for your guide Southlight, I'm really new to LoL (less than a week, just playing because of Dota2 really ) and Kass is one of the only Champs I play, your guide was awesome, and all of the discussion about items has been really helpful in trying to understand how to play him more efficiently.
This is the guide that inspired me to learn Kassadin 8 months ago so I know how you feel! *Uta fanboy*
I DO have a question for Southlight (hopefully nobody asked this already) regarding cleanse nowadays: is cleanse still a good option for Kassadin? How do you feel about cleanse ghost in the current gameplay? 8 months ago it allowed me to do crazy brave shit and not pay for it due to cleanse + R... but now that Kassadin has a TON of trouble in the lane that I almost feel that cleanse is just sitting there for most of the game and just taking up a precious summoner spot that I can otherwise use for say exhaust or TP....
I dunno if there's as clean-cut an answer anymore :< Obviously if the other team is stacked on CC and you don't think you have like 1.6k or w/e for QSS then it might be good for survival... although alternatively you can just stack normal survival and try to wing it that way. As I mentioned I sort of prefer Teleport/Flash because Teleport lets me hang onto the lane a bit more than I probably would otherwise, and so on and so forth.
On September 17 2011 08:30 Wrongspeedy wrote: Thx for your guide Southlight, I'm really new to LoL (less than a week, just playing because of Dota2 really ) and Kass is one of the only Champs I play, your guide was awesome, and all of the discussion about items has been really helpful in trying to understand how to play him more efficiently.
This is the guide that inspired me to learn Kassadin 8 months ago so I know how you feel! *Uta fanboy*
I DO have a question for Southlight (hopefully nobody asked this already) regarding cleanse nowadays: is cleanse still a good option for Kassadin? How do you feel about cleanse ghost in the current gameplay? 8 months ago it allowed me to do crazy brave shit and not pay for it due to cleanse + R... but now that Kassadin has a TON of trouble in the lane that I almost feel that cleanse is just sitting there for most of the game and just taking up a precious summoner spot that I can otherwise use for say exhaust or TP....
On the note of S-in' Uta's D, I remember wayyyy back last summer when I first started postin up in heeeaah, Uta posted some videos of himself playin' Kass (which also inspired me to get him....that and my friend's good play).
I remember bein' like 'Wow those black/white spell particles and his skin is fucking cool I gotta get this guy.' And I never quite understood why he was this weird purple colour and no one I ever played against had the cool black/white skin....
Man I just found his vid and looked at that skin again.....Riot really needs to use it.
For the sake of veering this discussion into something constructive (away from our little dick measuring contest), I think that blue buff is more important on Kassadin than almost any other hero in the game. Having the blue buff on Kassadin allows for you to blink around farming everything without fear of running out of mana for an important engagement. This makes Kassadin one of the best farmers in the game (probably the best period) and it allows him to explode out of control if you allow him to keep the blue buff.
I would rather put the Blue buff to better use by picking off their carries instantly. But I guess thats just me. But yea there are times in a game where you can farm happily with your blue buff.
I'm of the opinion that post-cata kassadin really doesn't have as problematic a mana consumption issue as you make it out to be. There's no reason to stack rift over 2x, no one can keep up with you anyways.
Cooldown reduction is a bit moot too with how he functions. Give that blue to the other more deserving ap.
On September 17 2011 05:59 -Trippin- wrote: Chances are many think it's bad because you don't see "pro LoL players" pick it up.
I agree, that is clearly how I feel.
I gotta agree with southlight here, most people see a champion thread, post their 2 cents CONTRIBUTE NOTHING and act like its gods gift to the thread. If you have something to discuss about the guide or argue a point sure, but "hey guys, this is how I play kass, do this, build x and y" posts should be deleted as there shouldn't be a guide with 20 posts a separate miniguides there should be constructive discussion and questions below the main guide. Like that random dude in that nasus guide who posted his 3 on his full DPS nasus and just left it. That shit should be deleted it is totally worthless.
If you're going to say X is better than Y or Z is terrible at least post your credentials as getting 20/0 score in a 1200 elo game means nothing at all.
On September 17 2011 22:42 TL Blazeraid wrote: I'm of the opinion that post-cata kassadin really doesn't have as problematic a mana consumption issue as you make it out to be. There's no reason to stack rift over 2x, no one can keep up with you anyways.
Cooldown reduction is a bit moot too with how he functions. Give that blue to the other more deserving ap.
I actually encountered alot of situations where I was forced to stack rift more often than 2times. Also if you are able to stack it then youll do alot more burst than if your not and your alot more mobile.
I think it might be viable to build kass completely around riftwalk instead of going mass AP. But I'am still gathering some experience on that. tear+kata into roa+aa never felt wrong/weak so far.
See, I'm not even as extreme. I'm fine with miniguides, as I've done random ones in various threads too. The difference is that mine were 1) Lanemumu (opened some eyes) 2) Cata jungle opening on Amumu (again, opened some eyes) and 3) Jungle Rammus with Wriggles (had some discussion until Loci validated Turkey and I's opinion. Shit that hasn't been done or just isn't in the OP. I also didn't advertise myself when posting something.
As for Kass with blue buff, don't get me wrong, I love having blue buff with Kassadin (I call it super fun time), but you're kidding yourself if you think he does the MOST with it. Heroes like Malzahar (even if he's not a favored blue buff option) will literally 1v5 poke a tower siege down with blue buff. Heroes like Swain can carry with blue buff and simply die in 3 seconds without. There're some make-or-break heroes and heroes that can perform acts of God with blue buff. For Kassadin all it does is increase the amount of times he can perform his short-to-mid-ranged spells. Great, but not necessarily game-changing. Now if you have no other real option and Kassadin is your AP carry yes, obviously Kassadin needs it more. I've lost a lot of games where a fight broke out while I was saying I needed blue buff and I simply ran out of mana mid-fight and we crumbled.
On September 18 2011 04:18 Southlight wrote: See, I'm not even as extreme. I'm fine with miniguides, as I've done random ones in various threads too. The difference is that mine were 1) Lanemumu (opened some eyes) 2) Cata jungle opening on Amumu (again, opened some eyes) and 3) Jungle Rammus with Wriggles (had some discussion until Loci validated Turkey and I's opinion. Shit that hasn't been done or just isn't in the OP. I also didn't advertise myself when posting something.
As for Kass with blue buff, don't get me wrong, I love having blue buff with Kassadin (I call it super fun time), but you're kidding yourself if you think he does the MOST with it. Heroes like Malzahar (even if he's not a favored blue buff option) will literally 1v5 poke a tower siege down with blue buff. Heroes like Swain can carry with blue buff and simply die in 3 seconds without. There're some make-or-break heroes and heroes that can perform acts of God with blue buff. For Kassadin all it does is increase the amount of times he can perform his short-to-mid-ranged spells. Great, but not necessarily game-changing. Now if you have no other real option and Kassadin is your AP carry yes, obviously Kassadin needs it more. I've lost a lot of games where a fight broke out while I was saying I needed blue buff and I simply ran out of mana mid-fight and we crumbled.
I agree. Even if you are the n1 candidate for bluebuff, you should not build so you are completely reliant on it. Saying you "should" have bluebuff all the time its up is unrealistic. You die and you lose it, your jungler ganks bottom and theirs steals it, you dont have time to get it, you want to do baron and your solo top is oom...
On September 17 2011 17:53 -Trippin- wrote: For the sake of veering this discussion into something constructive (away from our little dick measuring contest), I think that blue buff is more important on Kassadin than almost any other hero in the game. Having the blue buff on Kassadin allows for you to blink around farming everything without fear of running out of mana for an important engagement. This makes Kassadin one of the best farmers in the game (probably the best period) and it allows him to explode out of control if you allow him to keep the blue buff.
tl;dr: "I don't care about the argument but blue buff is pretty good on casters."
First few pages have been real good. :/
I started slowly "getting" Kassa after like my 10th try, however I have one major question for you:
wtf is the difference in playstyle between the Catalyst -> AP and the Tears -> Mejais -> GA build?
I mean, the cata won't really change when you explode and when you dont. So, aren't both "Vulture builds"?
Also, did you ever play around with WotA? My gut says it should make sense for those long, drawn out fights (which kassa kinda loves).
Hmm, it's hard for me to say because I've never pulled off the latter with any consistency, but with the former you play him like any other AP hero, to be honest. He has less range, but you still focus on outputting maximum damage.
With the latter, you're playing more like a support hero for a while, until you start rolling. The itemization early means that you have no extra survival and no extra damage. It's focused on giving you some mana-based battle sustain and getting gold efficiency out of teamfights, assuming that you ensure your own survival after kills/assists.
Edit: Essentially, focus on damage vs focus on perfect CC, early on.
WotA probably is nice, though his mass AoE and relatively high CDs might mean his spellvamp isn't as noticeable as you might think. I tend to be high on WotA anyways because it's one of the cheapest 80AP items though. I still would think it's hard to jostle Deathcap/Void out of position as two core damage items no matter what, but if you run like a heavy tanking style (ala original OP) then it probably wouldn't hurt.
So some experimentation in an attempt to learn how to love again.
Running ye olde 34 armor 13 MR (or something like that) runepage with 21 defense for SoS AND Nimble (and 9 util) with a Cloth +5pot opening allows him to deal with bruisers. Against non-jumpers like Udyr you can open Regrowth+pot and if you play it perfectly you can actually yack his HP quite a bit. Whenever he goes for you if he has Tiger you can either kite him or just fight back with W. Pretty funky.
No amount of rune/mastery yackity made me prevent a crushing defeat to lame ranged AD heroes like Caitlyn. Fortunately for whatever reason you don't see this in solo lane as much, but worth noting. Probably another cloth+5 pot matchup.
Not notable, but I suppose worth mentioning that the flat 34(ish) MR page seemed redundant, as i didn't really feel a difference.
I've been racking my mind on how to come up with a more HP-sustainable opening, as I honestly feel that Cata is too weak now (especially without being able to stack it anymore), and PStone is nice but doesn't seem like "enough." Enough that I pondered opening Wriggles, lol. If anyone has a better idea I'm all ears.
I actually dunno my self. But what I saw xPeke run vs TL EU was that he had hp5 seals, and he started with dorans shield. He was quite tanky mid. Dunno if its really a viable solution - just putting it out there.
I ran armor, movespeed, and 2 mpen blues for 30 mpen with sorcs the other day. It actually worked very well. You trade the pop on q for the ability to just kinda coast around and farm as much as you want. I still need to try playing him with ap quints just to see if that actually makes a difference in terms of damage.
For items I just went cata, tear, sorcs, cap, bv, void (I cant remember if i built a ROA with the first cata, im pretty sure I at least thought about it fairly hard). Laning post 6 essentially came down to fighting and killing my lane opponent, being at too low health to really farm all that much safely, going back, and repeating the process. Worked well enough since I ended up 11-0-13 and could beast them all, only I didnt really need to cuz Shitcombo's power cho was doing that already.
I would get Dodge seals if you go for nimbleness and also have a lot of armor on marks/quints/masteries/cloth.
The solution to the HP sustain issue is obviously to get Cata + Philo. Before you consider getting Wriggle's on Kass, you really should just stock up on potions more generously. Assuming you already have the cloth and we consider a duration of 15 minutes for the wards (=5 wards), then Wriggle's needs to compete with 26 potions. Potions win.
I personally think going more offensive build is more useful than straight up trying to tank since for the most part you just can't outtank the harass and you are still going to get pushed regardless so might as make them scared of a jungle gank with constant Q balls to the face but w/e.
Since Kassadin does really well with teleport the sustain issue goes away a little but pretty much always going to be behind on creepscore unless you straight up win the lane.
@Shr3dd3r full hp5 seals only gives like 3.87 hp per 5, which on conjunction with DShield is 11.87 (or 12). Regrowth is 15.
Interesting thought though is that HP5 Seals + Quints is 11.97, which is what Shitcombo told me he runs on certain heroes. Certainly food for thought with regrowth (for a total of +26 hp5 at level 1 on) and like a Cloth opening to shore up armor.
The problem is that I feel that HP Regen is great against AP heroes but not so much against bruisers and ranged AD, both of whom can hammer you with impunity. Not sure, would need to test.
@TD The post-starting items don't matter to me. It's honestly the first 10-15 minutes that bothers me. It's impossible to keep up with a Cait for instance, especially one who just fires ult at you on CD. Her traps + ult hurt your CS so much that you end up with like 1/3 her CS which is terrible.
Edit:
On September 20 2011 00:46 spinesheath wrote: I would get Dodge seals if you go for nimbleness and also have a lot of armor on marks/quints/masteries/cloth.
The solution to the HP sustain issue is obviously to get Cata + Philo. Before you consider getting Wriggle's on Kass, you really should just stock up on potions more generously. Assuming you already have the cloth and we consider a duration of 15 minutes for the wards (=5 wards), then Wriggle's needs to compete with 26 potions. Potions win.
Yeah going to switch around runeset to have dodge 'cause I'm running Nimble.
Edit2:
On September 20 2011 00:46 Juicyfruit wrote: I personally think going more offensive build is more useful than straight up trying to tank since for the most part you just can't outtank the harass and you are still going to get pushed regardless so might as make them scared of a jungle gank with constant Q balls to the face but w/e.
Since Kassadin does really well with teleport the sustain issue goes away a little but pretty much always going to be behind on creepscore unless you straight up win the lane.
I used to run straight offense with MPen quints and everything to just try to hammer them, the problem is that ranged AD (and bruisers) hit a certain point where their sustain and max HP is simply better than Kass' Q cooldown. Culminating in this exchange with Turkey:
[9/18/2011 11:20:50 PM] nightseternal: i honestly think [9/18/2011 11:20:53 PM] nightseternal: they need to lower cd on q :/ [9/18/2011 11:22:21 PM] stuffed_turkey: like 1 second off CD and 10 less mana all levels [9/18/2011 11:22:23 PM] stuffed_turkey: imo
Edit3: Also for the record I already do run PStone -> Cata, and I spam potions up the arse. The problem is that he falls behind SO BADLY in CS against ranged AD. He tends to struggle vs bruisers too (hence why I say he gets shit on by 2/3 the heroes in the game) but the Cloth+5 with defensive runes and masteries offsets, so that he's still behind but he can still 'get his farm' relative to opponents. So that's slightly less an issue.
Ranged AD is just absolutely brutal, primarily Cait and MF, although good Trists tend to fuck him up as well. This is really "the last bastion" for me, as I'm a bit more open to playing Kass now that I can at least hang with bruisers, and the primary counterpick in lane got nerfed (Mord).
Give jiji's cass page a go (id sub ap/lvl yellows for armor if i knew i was going up against a ranged ad), and open up boots+3. I was laning against an mf and had enough mobility to do whatever the hell I wanted, even against strut.
Cait is hard cuz she hits like a truck and has super range. If i had to play against her i'd grab that supermovespeed page and just try to zoom around and minimize the amount of autos im taking pre 6, then just try to kill her post 6.
Cait is hard because she pushes and traps up the creep so that you can't actually grab the last hit very easily. Standard Cait vs Melee gayness.
I'm not sure what Jiji's cass page is but if it's ManyReason's AP carry page (which coincides with my own - MSPD quints + mpen red + X seals + X blue) then it doesn't really do the job, as you simply take too much damage.
The issue for me, and this may or may not apply to a lot of other people (hate bringing up the bad opponents good opponents statement but I feel like this is the case here, as even a year ago I wrecked bad ranged AD but got wrecked by good ranged AD), but the issue for me is that Kass' harass is simply too little for too long a CD, and so if you want to remain even in farm you need some sort of innate sustain (to melee creep) while relying on quantity of Qs to do your harassing. That's why I've been running all over the place trying to find HP sustain from anything and everything :[
Just to clear things up, I'm perfectly fine with being behind on creep stats. I find that Kassadin's base power is so good that I don't need THAT MUCH farm to have an effect, although obviously it's better if I do have farm.
The issue is more that I hate sitting there with 70 CS when the Cait has 180. That's a game-ending disparity.
By contrast with Bruisers I can remain somewhat even now. If they have 100 I'll usually have like 80, which isn't equal but is "equal enough."
I dunno. When I play kass I make it my goal to just be alive by the time I hit 6. Any cs above 0 is just gravy. Post 6 I feel you can be aggressive because there is NO way anyone should be able to match the consistent burst you can drop on their faces.
Ranged AD just whoop your ass straight-up post-6 if the farm disparity is too big. Is why I always used to say that ranged AD counters Kass, as his damage cycle is too damn slow to keep up with the constant barrage of ranged AD hits :<
I mean obviously right now it's SO RARE that a ranged AD takes a solo lane (lolyay) that this concern is somewhat alleviated, and so I can feel a bit more comfortable taking Kass, but yeah. Also I'd imagine against true sustained bruisers (Irelia) or high powered bruisers (Jarv/Xin) whatever sustain I can maximize is probably for the best.
Edit: A lot of this paranoia might be coming from him being so razor's edge to me, obviously. It's a bit different with like the Malz and such of the world where I can be like me dying? no prob. I carry anyways huehuehue.
How about hextech revolver? Sounds stupid but it does scale up in terms of regen with blue buff and you get 40AP to play around with so you can truck people harder with your Q's.
Just to do some random math: with 40AP you will be hitting 308 damage Q'd at level 9, which will heal you for 46.2HP at around 7second cooldown with blue buff = around 33 HP/5 yay
For the cost though you could get Catalyst, which is better for skirmish/teamfights due to max mana ;; Nyargh, why this hero so tough to fix his weakness ;;
Edit: Unless you mean open Revolver instead of PStone or whatnot, but........ I dun think you can, lol.
I just did some testing last night... it seems that Revolver will actually heal when you use your W because apparently the extra magic damage counts as spell damage :O Not sure if it's that worth noting but it may help lane a bit better as every now and then you can activate W to last hit/smack some dude and get some HP back as well?
I still don't think you can rush it though, maybe get it after a Pstone or tear/cata?
btw Uta did you ever get that other smurf account of yours back to silver with 3v3? lol
On September 20 2011 06:28 Southlight wrote: Friend's account? Nope :x
After PStone/Cata I'd honestly be looking toward mid-game items, not sustain. It's really that first one or two items :/
I dunno if you bank on turning the Revolver into WotA eventually I could see it working. I'll try it out later. My basic start is still PStone-->Cata though.
I'd assume you would, because it's a cheap upgrade, the real question is whether it's an improvement over PStone (for instance) vs ranged AD, or whatnot. Hahah.
Tried it out against a Malz....not convinced. You definitely hit MUCH harder early on and the sustain is decent, but I couldn't see how well it translated into midgame because the game was over long before that with our jungle GP lagging out and bottom feeding real hard. Gonna try again probably. As far as laning against bruisers/AD ranged I'll have to try it out in a practice environment because metagame lololol.
Edit: I should actually specify: the sustain from autoattacking with W on is REAL nice. Not worth leveling W more than once though.
Dun think it's worth it vs AP hahah. The PStone -> Cata (honestly you can just rush Cata off Sapphire IMO) is sufficient. I'm trying to adjust to Bruisers and Ranged AD; in particular the latter, as Cloth+5 with defensive rune/mastery lets you even up a bit against Bruisers :[
So is Kass insanely powerful, or do people just not know how to play against him?
I'm pretty sure I've gone about 10-3 the last 13 games. Been destroying mostly AP champs (Cass, Annie, Swain, Malz) but I've also taken down TF and Trist mid.
Granted, I'm still in blind solo queue, but come on.. I haven't played Kassadin in like 2 months and now I'm just dominating nearly every game I play as him.
Players that know their heroes and give Kassadin the respect he deserves, as opposed to the respect they think he deserves, can bludgeon him. At low levels of play though people give him far too much respect, which allows him to equal/get ahead in farm, which offsets his one crippling weakness (early-game). Also he hardcounters a bunch of AP heroes.
Other than that though he abuses lack of coordination, so yeah, a lot of people struggle mightily against Kass.
On September 21 2011 13:13 Southlight wrote: I tested out stuff for bruisers, I can do okay against them now.
Last bastion is ranged AD...
... specifically Cait and MF.
/me sighs
You can lane against Kog'Maw? It feels like if cait/mf aren't amazing kass vs. cait/mf is winnable, but kass vs. kog'maw feels like I can't get a single non-Q creep kill without taking massive damage. His w range makes it so that I can't q him either without trading like 4:1 because his range is longer than mines.
On September 21 2011 13:13 Southlight wrote: I tested out stuff for bruisers, I can do okay against them now.
Last bastion is ranged AD...
... specifically Cait and MF.
/me sighs
You can lane against Kog'Maw? It feels like if cait/mf aren't amazing kass vs. cait/mf is winnable, but kass vs. kog'maw feels like I can't get a single non-Q creep kill without taking massive damage. His w range makes it so that I can't q him either without trading like 4:1 because his range is longer than mines.
I can't farm or trade damage vs competent caitlyns.. so Idk what their doing wrong in your games ;/
On September 21 2011 13:13 Southlight wrote: I tested out stuff for bruisers, I can do okay against them now.
Last bastion is ranged AD...
... specifically Cait and MF.
/me sighs
You can lane against Kog'Maw? It feels like if cait/mf aren't amazing kass vs. cait/mf is winnable, but kass vs. kog'maw feels like I can't get a single non-Q creep kill without taking massive damage. His w range makes it so that I can't q him either without trading like 4:1 because his range is longer than mines.
Oh yeah Kog, Kog's kind of a bitch too. Fortunately unlike MF and Cait he's at least predictable; the traps and the MF Q really fuck up Kass in those matchups, is the difference the way I see it. I haven't tested vs Kog tho, and the last time I faced one was like last summer, lol.
Ok, I saw the enemy team first pick Kass so I thought I'd take Cait and go mid. I was all confident and stuff when I got the the lane and started trapping it up like crazy. Was absolutely dominating the Kass (without actually landing a kill, though), having at least double his CS for the entire laning phase. He was raging at me in all chat about my traps and stuff, so I knew I was doing something right, but then WW hit 6 and I got exploded by him and Kass together.
After that it was downhill. I could still out farm him and control the lane, but I guess I got way too overconfident and kept giving WW (who was camping my lane pretty much all the time from then on) chances to ult me and, therefore, Kass free kills.
Now, I haven't played Kass in ages, maybe once or twice in the last year at most, so I'm not too familiar with his current power curve. There are a couple of mistakes that I know I made, namely: I didn't build Mercs, or even buy a negatron before I'd died several times to him and I pushed too hard against a post level 6 WW.
Is there anything else that I should be aware of? I mean, does it just get to a point where you have to switch lanes with someone who can survive his burst? Do you have to build heavy MR even if you're miles ahead in farm?
To be honest, it felt like Kass didn't even need WW to ult me after the first time. His burst was so powerful that even if I flashed his first combo and even recalled to heal up, I would be super vulnerable once I returned.
Fortunately I got carried super-hard by a friendly TLer who was playing solo top Blitz and we ended up winning the game, but it was the worst I've ever done with Caitlyn by a long long way.
put 2 wards, 1 in j brush and 1 on wraith ramp, depending on what side you're on if you're dominating him hard enough you should have more than enough gold for that buy some pots for safety if you're not rushing bt and therefore the vamp scepter anytime soon you are now ungankable and can continue with fair confidence up to the middle of the lane from which cait can practically cs most reasonable waves lol
when your wards are about to run out push wave and back buy wards and new items rinse and repeat
Well realistically your post just sounds like you got rocked by WW, not Kass, lol.
Edit: Also, for ranged DPS the #1 weapon against Kass is lifesteal. It's really hard for Kass to deal with it, to the point where when we were doing testing Turkey mentioned he thought DBlade -> Vamp was actually superior to DBlade stack vs Kass, lol.
Also he'd just fire his ult on CD just to fuck with me. Blah.
On September 22 2011 20:36 goldenkrnboi wrote: after today i am thoroughly convinced that RoA kass is the pussy way to play him. ToG -> deathcap -> AA is only way
i dont think i've ever seen tear abbreviated as ToG, had to look it up rofl
On September 22 2011 23:02 Southlight wrote: Well realistically your post just sounds like you got rocked by WW, not Kass, lol.
Edit: Also, for ranged DPS the #1 weapon against Kass is lifesteal. It's really hard for Kass to deal with it, to the point where when we were doing testing Turkey mentioned he thought DBlade -> Vamp was actually superior to DBlade stack vs Kass, lol.
Also he'd just fire his ult on CD just to fuck with me. Blah.
how you utterly humilliate kassa as caitlyn: wriggles negatron cloak GEEEEEEEGEEEEEEE I know you know it, but it happend to me last time i played kass, ugh I wanted to be sadistic soo badly afte that
On September 22 2011 23:02 Southlight wrote: Well realistically your post just sounds like you got rocked by WW, not Kass, lol.
Edit: Also, for ranged DPS the #1 weapon against Kass is lifesteal. It's really hard for Kass to deal with it, to the point where when we were doing testing Turkey mentioned he thought DBlade -> Vamp was actually superior to DBlade stack vs Kass, lol.
Also he'd just fire his ult on CD just to fuck with me. Blah.
how you utterly humilliate kassa as caitlyn: wriggles 3 dblades negatron cloak QSS GEEEEEEEGEEEEEEE I know you know it, but it happend to me last time i played kass, ugh I wanted to be sadistic soo badly afte that
On September 22 2011 18:40 Navi wrote: put 2 wards, 1 in j brush and 1 on wraith ramp
Yea I was definitely playing like a complete idiot and didn't place any wards for WW.
On September 22 2011 23:02 Southlight wrote: Well realistically your post just sounds like you got rocked by WW, not Kass, lol.
Edit: Also, for ranged DPS the #1 weapon against Kass is lifesteal. It's really hard for Kass to deal with it, to the point where when we were doing testing Turkey mentioned he thought DBlade -> Vamp was actually superior to DBlade stack vs Kass, lol.
Also he'd just fire his ult on CD just to fuck with me. Blah.
My main question was (although I didn't make it clear, I think), was it because of WW that I was getting owned, or because Kass hits a point where he can just blow me up regardless of farm? I know getting ulted by WW repeatedly pretty much ensured the free kills.
My early build was DBlade>Wriggles then bought a Negatron for BV and finished IE. Thanks for the advice guys btw. I guess I'll have to try playing the match-up again when I'm playing a bit smarter, as it's not really a good time to form conclusions on a MU when you're just playing below standard.
Kass' single-cycle burst isn't very high, maybe if your max HP and resists were low he might be able to attrition you with REQW whack whack Q, but that's really not that much damage. During Q cooldown as long as you don't panic and fire spells all he can really do to you is Q and W+AA which should really be less damage than sustained AA from a dedicated AA hero.
Ok fair enough, so it seems that it was due to me playing badly, rather than Kass being naturally stronger at that particular phase of the game. I'll definitely try to get someone to 1v1 me a couple of times so I can practice the MU a bit, but the bigger problem was my awareness and positioning.
Tears is a bit of a gamble, it's a fail-safe in case you lose blue as you gain teamfight sustain (for drawn out fights) but it certainly gimps your damage. Some people swear by it, others swear against it. Neo laughed at me for about two months straight for running it.
PStone -> Cata -> Boot 1 -> Deathcap -> RoA -> Void Staff RoA earlier if you want Boot 1 into Tabi PStone into Miracle
Edit: If you want reasoning, PStone -> Cata just because it's the most efficient HP-based sustain, should keep you upright against people who don't know what they're doing/AP heroes. Against bruisers you're going to need a full specialized set of equipment (masteries + runes + cloth opening) so that's a bit hairy, read the previous page for ponderings regarding that. Cross fingers and pray vs ranged AD.
Beyond that, Deathcap rush is always really good on AP heroes for maximizing damage, finishing RoA is nice for cost efficiency of the item, and Void Staff is obvious. Standard AP carry stuff, to be honest, just with an extra focus on being able to hang on in lane early on.
On September 24 2011 22:30 Attakijing wrote: deathfire grasp?
I'd never considered it, but actually having a 3rd nuke would be fun. All the other stats are quite decent for him too, you'd just be missing out on an earlier Dcap.
On September 24 2011 22:30 Attakijing wrote: deathfire grasp?
Way back when, the Euros liked to run it, which I called the glass-cannon build. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're highly confident in yourself and your teammates because the reality is that you end up being extremely susceptible to being shut down (it's very cheesy) and you have very little "come-back" power. Again this is sort of a playstyle mindset difference though - I despise being behind at any point in the game. I always want the ability to turn the game around, so I dislike any sort of glass-cannon, which is why people find it funny watching me play ranged AD :[
OK, watching Loco's stream right now. He's playing Trist vs Kass and pretty much making the same mistakes I was as Cait. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
edit - accept Loco is actually pulling it back quite well by ganking other lanes. I just kept trying to keep zoning the kass and getting ganked myself.
ok I wanted to move away abit from the cata&tear opening to a cheesyer but stronger midgame build. it is half-mentioned in the OP that you can run a magpen cheese build on kassadin.
this is my opening: boots3, dorans*3(can be 2), tear, sorcs, haunting guise.
what it's good for:
you get damage and HP very fast. Openings with comparable costs are: cata, tear, rod and cata, tear, roa. The first one's purpose is to get damage fast, and the second one is to get tanky fast. My build gets you more damage and health than any of those. You can punish mistakes during the laneing phase harder since you build up damage quickly.
Basicly you get the most damage combined with tankyness you can get without missing on a big manapool, which you will need because the purpose of this is to get in peoples faces as early as possible. The small parts of the build supports this purpose too because you get a bit stronger every time your forced to visit your shop. The build is designed to counter any kind of early-midgame defenses such as MR runes/masteries, mercs, defensive auras (sona, soraka, aegis) and similar stuff.
what it's bad for:
you won't get the HP regeneration so it's not a farm build so you get more punished for mistakes in the laneing phase. You also will be forced to sell at least 1-2 dorans as the game drags on so i'ts an early game investement. If you want to build HP later in the game you will be forced to buy either banshees/rilay/a very late roa. Your deathcap will be later compared to the cata&tear into deathcap.
Anyone have good reps of farming properly in a solo lane and dual lane. I always come out of the laning phase under farmed. Also is it good to delay a rabadons for 2 blasting wands and a needlessly large rod? [Considering the recipe price is 200 more than the second blasting wand and it's something I'll need later in my build.]
Kassadin rarely farms well, that's his big bottleneck and why I think he's pretty trashy, especially with the range nerf. You can see diatribes on this over the history of this thread. There is no solution that anyone's come up with, except to play him as a counterpick. He blows bottom lane by the way, with the possible exception of a duo lane with Soraka, but even that usually isn't enough anymore.
Well I've just been doing him in soloq or dualq against baddies. I know he's hard to farm with I just enjoy his play. I come out of the laning phase with 30-40 cs but idk it just doesn't seem like its enough even to get the character started, and his ability to kill doesn't really kick in until 6 or 7 and by that time I've very little mana left because I've been forced to q farm so I can't rely on champion kills to fix the money problem. Like I know the problems with the champions and i'm not doing draft pick because I'm not really trying to learn the strategy of characters I'm just trying to work on my own game and that doesn't really matter who I go up against. Of course I'm not going to mid against someone who destroys me, hence why I go bot. If I'm not mid i'm in a dual lane because everyone refuses to jungle even with this newest patch. xD;;
Farming problem aside, do you think its smart to just delay a few of the expensive recipe costs by filling with lesser items that serve the same purpose that I'll need later?
You should have over 100 CS after laning; the issue is that the disparity against a bad matchup can look like 170 vs 100 and then your team is usually fucked. You have to Q down the opponent but his range nerf really killed his viability, he'll lose to almost every hero now. It was all he had going for him. There's nothing else I can really say on the topic beyond what's been said in this thread before.
As for items, that's more a itemization philosophy you could ask in the general discussion thread. As a tank/support player I favor always buying little items, and have been teased endless by Neo for it in the past where I'll have a full inventory of parts of like 3 items that I never get around to finishing, because I always prioritize "what I need now" than big items. But again, that's just player philosophy and style, at least in my opinion anyways.
He has a pretty sick kit due to R, so yeah, it'd be OP. At the very least they'd have to nerf his ratios across the board, and they already aren't that fantastic. I think he's one of those heroes where one of his skills is so blatantly powerful that they have a hard time really balancing him, so they'd much prefer him be weak than be able to shit all over 1/3 the heroes in the game and end up being an annoying prick because of it.
Wasn't it like that when eve had her stun and just ruined the game? I think everyone enjoys Kass because he's such an in and out assassin. At least that's why I really enjoy him. If I play him really good I go games without dying until I get really greedy or commit fully into a team fight and even then I'm literally the last one dead. Then again I'm probably not playing him nearly at the highest level, but I like characters that have unlimited potential based off of how good you as a player are and not using the character as a crutch. I feel like I have all of those things as Kass. I mean flashes, a silence, and a slow coupled with cleanse just in case they really hate you. It's super fun. Just frustrated at mainly ranged dps or tanky characters where I have to spend all my mana on farming and once I'm able to deal damage back I can't do it because of the lack of mana. It just doesn't feel proper at the moment. However I have faith in riot. Eventually Kass, eventually. x__x;
Nah, I liked him for the exact same reasons. But I also understood that he was borderline OP for the same reasons. I quit him back when ranged AD became really powerful and just DBlade'd him out of lanes because I couldn't stand just flat-out losing lanes. That R is just too strong overall for him to be balanced easily.
Yeah so I don't understand why they don't increase mana costs on the R but give him some laning capability. I mean once I have a blue I NEVER run out of mana, its disgusting. So why not rework r? I guess I already know the answer, but still idk. >:| I want to use a blink stalker in LOL DAMNIT! >:O
So I just played kass (semi-drunk), and gotta HELLA fucked up by a jarvan in lane. Fortunately I got carried to victory.
Laning mid vs a jarv is a once in a lifetime thing i'd imagine... and this was my first time as kass. Just curious, how is the matchup sposed to go? I couldnt bring myself to only CS with Q, I'm too used to characters with stronger early games.
On December 02 2011 16:21 Dgiese wrote: So I just played kass (semi-drunk), and gotta HELLA fucked up by a jarvan in lane. Fortunately I got carried to victory.
Laning mid vs a jarv is a once in a lifetime thing i'd imagine... and this was my first time as kass. Just curious, how is the matchup sposed to go? I couldnt bring myself to only CS with Q, I'm too used to characters with stronger early games.
Jarv has two jumps so he fucks you up. Running my full anti-bruiser set mentioned somewhere in the last page I think may alleviate things, but I've never tried.
Kassadin is pretty good at farming with a Hextech Revolver and Wit's End. The spell vamp and increased attack speed work very well with his W to chop up creeps and dish damage to champions who think they can take you because you are just meleeing them.
On December 28 2011 07:05 HavokTheorem wrote: Kassadin is pretty good at farming with a Hextech Revolver and Wit's End. The spell vamp and increased attack speed work very well with his W to chop up creeps and dish damage to champions who think they can take you because you are just meleeing them.
Yah I've tried a semi-trolly tanky dps build on kass with atmogs and triforce seeing how kass has the highest base dmg in game after cho and skarner. His passive gives him aspd too. It actually works very well once u get your core. Only problem is that doing so basically ignores half his kit and further gimps his laning, especially against competent players. Also, I don't think spellvamp works with his w. I'll check it but generally spellvamp doesn't work with those kinds of abilities.
On December 28 2011 07:05 HavokTheorem wrote: Kassadin is pretty good at farming with a Hextech Revolver and Wit's End. The spell vamp and increased attack speed work very well with his W to chop up creeps and dish damage to champions who think they can take you because you are just meleeing them.
Yah I've tried a semi-trolly tanky dps build on kass with atmogs and triforce seeing how kass has the highest base dmg in game after cho and skarner. His passive gives him aspd too. It actually works very well once u get your core. Only problem is that doing so basically ignores half his kit and further gimps his laning, especially against competent players. Also, I don't think spellvamp works with his w. I'll check it but generally spellvamp doesn't work with those kinds of abilities.
Nope, I'm certain it works. It's magic damage. Unless I am magically healing every time I hit, it works.
On December 28 2011 07:05 HavokTheorem wrote: Kassadin is pretty good at farming with a Hextech Revolver and Wit's End. The spell vamp and increased attack speed work very well with his W to chop up creeps and dish damage to champions who think they can take you because you are just meleeing them.
Yah I've tried a semi-trolly tanky dps build on kass with atmogs and triforce seeing how kass has the highest base dmg in game after cho and skarner. His passive gives him aspd too. It actually works very well once u get your core. Only problem is that doing so basically ignores half his kit and further gimps his laning, especially against competent players. Also, I don't think spellvamp works with his w. I'll check it but generally spellvamp doesn't work with those kinds of abilities.
Nope, I'm certain it works. It's magic damage. Unless I am magically healing every time I hit, it works.
I believe you. Whether or not it's magic damage has no bearing on whether spell vamp is applied. Spell vamp works off of all activated abilities and spells regardless of what type of damage it deals, but it only works off activated spells/abilities. It doesn't work off passive skills like Fizz's W or Oriana's passive.
On December 28 2011 07:05 HavokTheorem wrote: Kassadin is pretty good at farming with a Hextech Revolver and Wit's End. The spell vamp and increased attack speed work very well with his W to chop up creeps and dish damage to champions who think they can take you because you are just meleeing them.
Yah I've tried a semi-trolly tanky dps build on kass with atmogs and triforce seeing how kass has the highest base dmg in game after cho and skarner. His passive gives him aspd too. It actually works very well once u get your core. Only problem is that doing so basically ignores half his kit and further gimps his laning, especially against competent players. Also, I don't think spellvamp works with his w. I'll check it but generally spellvamp doesn't work with those kinds of abilities.
those pseudo dps hybrid builds used to work sooo much better when he did APen on his w. I used to troll around with a manamune, gextech hunblade, triforce build. Tho, i guess an on-hit centric build might actually be interesting (wits, razors, etc). It's kinda silly, but then again, trying to make an ap build work in increasingly poor matchups is a bit silly too
I'm sure I don't heal off the true damage component of hiten style when somebody's got a WotA near me (nor off the lifesteal of, say, a wriggles anyway). Isn't it the same type of skill, relating to the origin of the damage?
It shouldn't work with kassadin's auto-attack with w active based on how spell vamp normally works. But if it does work I'd say it would be an exception to the normal rules of spell vamp. Can someone test this for sure? o.o
It shouldn't work with kassadin's auto-attack with w active based on how spell vamp normally works. But if it does work I'd say it would be an exception to the normal rules of spell vamp. Can someone test this for sure? o.o
I FUCKING NEED HELP WITH THIS SHIT. SOMEONE WHOS SUPPOSE TO CRUSH PEOPLE. I CANT WIN VS ANYONE WITH THIS BITCH
holy fuck just about everyone can shit on him early game and what are you suppose to do when you're down 20 cs? im also down in the 1300s and 1400s. HES FUCKING LOOKED AS A GOD BUT I CANT DO ANYTHING WITH HIM WTF
On February 06 2012 12:48 Kenpachi wrote: any good VODs of Kassadin played well?
I FUCKING NEED HELP WITH THIS SHIT. SOMEONE WHOS SUPPOSE TO CRUSH PEOPLE. I CANT WIN VS ANYONE WITH THIS BITCH
holy fuck just about everyone can shit on him early game and what are you suppose to do when you're down 20 cs? im also down in the 1300s and 1400s. HES FUCKING LOOKED AS A GOD BUT I CANT DO ANYTHING WITH HIM WTF
Every kassadin I've ever seen on the enemy team end up feeding my mid 0-6 pre-lvl6 and then building a mejai's and carrying anyway. :O
The ones on my team feed and build mejai's too, but they just continue feeding.
if i had to narrow down the the biggest mistake that i see many kassadin players make, it would be the following:
they don't fully (if at all) exploit the window where kassadin is fucking GODLY.
once you hit lvl 6 and get a hold of blue buff, you should be looking to exert an unreal amount of map control on the enemy team - ganking top/bottom/jungle/whatever. whenever i see kassadins fail it's because they just sit in lane for too long from levels 6-11 and don't abuse riftwalk's mobility and the unpredictable ganking paths that you can take (basically come from any direction) to gank.
I feel the greatest mistake people make while playing kassadin is to build AP instead of mana regen in early game.
Yes you may be ok if you get blue buff, but you cannot count on it. You need to have a plan B.
Kassadin run out of mana VERY quickly as you must use lots of R to gank during lv 6~12 or you're doing it wrong. Usually you will not ont shot people like LeBlanc but you can chase people extremely well. This is why you must have at least one mana item if you cannot get blue 24/7.
Every Kassadin gets either AA or RoA. Some get both. There is no big mistake being made by people failing to get "mana items," only with how people play in lane. Many eat too many skillshots at the early levels and don't trade or farm effectively with Q + W's free regen. Many play too passively once they hit 6 and don't zone mages like they should. Many don't leave their lanes enough to gank, counter gank, or control objectives. Not having "enough regen" is rarely, if ever, the issue.
I honestly don't think Kassadin should get both tear and cata. You gimp your damage far too long and as Kass you really need to take advantage of your post-6 mid game. Personally, I always feel better going cata->roa than 2drings->tear. The second option gives you more damage and more mana later, but as Kass you're pretty squishy and you have to get pretty close to the enemy team. Not to mention your in-lane staying power is pretty crap. Cata makes you a bit tankier and lets you have better lane sustain.
Biggest mistake I see with people playing Kass is picking him into bad matchups. Unless the matchup is heavily in your favor, it's never a good idea to pick Kass imo. He gets screwed too easily in unfavorable matchups, especially since his Q is only 650 range now.
Ok, I'm bored and doing an AD Kassadin, BD all day long fun as hell. Not sure how to build him tho.
Liek for opening you can go boots3
Maladay is good, Stinger maybe
Gunblade? Seems pretty good with nether blade proccing spellvamp.
Rageblade? Also pretty good
Nashors? Now its actually pretty efficient, but you dont need the mana regen and 25%CDr is too much
Normal AD Items? What boots? Zerkers are good damage, but CDR could be good or mercs for escape, I cant decide.
I havent felt the need to build any mana on him at all really, as you get so much from just whacking creeps and not being an idiot and spamming riftwalk.
On March 24 2012 18:21 sob3k wrote: Ok, I'm bored and doing an AD Kassadin, BD all day long fun as hell. Not sure how to build him tho.
Liek for opening you can go boots3
Maladay is good, Stinger maybe
Gunblade? Seems pretty good with nether blade proccing spellvamp.
Rageblade? Also pretty good
Nashors? Now its actually pretty efficient, but you dont need the mana regen and 25%CDr is too much
Normal AD Items? What boots? Zerkers are good damage, but CDR could be good or mercs for escape, I cant decide.
I havent felt the need to build any mana on him at all really, as you get so much from just whacking creeps and not being an idiot and spamming riftwalk.
last time I tried that i just built him tanky. atmogs with triforce to take advantage of his passive being a strong attack speed steroid+one of the highest (lategame) base AD in the game. his laning sucks really hard if you don't build AP tho.
On March 24 2012 18:21 sob3k wrote: Ok, I'm bored and doing an AD Kassadin, BD all day long fun as hell. Not sure how to build him tho.
Liek for opening you can go boots3
Maladay is good, Stinger maybe
Gunblade? Seems pretty good with nether blade proccing spellvamp.
Rageblade? Also pretty good
Nashors? Now its actually pretty efficient, but you dont need the mana regen and 25%CDr is too much
Normal AD Items? What boots? Zerkers are good damage, but CDR could be good or mercs for escape, I cant decide.
I havent felt the need to build any mana on him at all really, as you get so much from just whacking creeps and not being an idiot and spamming riftwalk.
last time I tried that i just built him tanky. atmogs with triforce to take advantage of his passive being a strong attack speed steroid+one of the highest (lategame) base AD in the game. his laning sucks really hard if you don't build AP tho.
Eh, I cant see the reason to be warmogs tanky, you shouldn't get into situations where you need that much health. I just played 3 games and did really well with Zerkers/Malady/Gunblade/Bveil. The Veil is cool because you just jump people with 2.2 second silence, then the veil blocks after thats over, its really strong on him because blinking around doesnt give anyone an opportunity to pop it before you engage. Also surge.
People have been laning vs me really poorly though, letting me hit creeps gives me infinite mana and therefore infinite silences and harass.
EDIT: The other nice thing about gunblade is that building Cutlass gives you the amazing unnerfed 15% lifesteal, which combined with W mana generation make you infinitely sustained.
On March 24 2012 18:21 sob3k wrote: Ok, I'm bored and doing an AD Kassadin, BD all day long fun as hell. Not sure how to build him tho.
Liek for opening you can go boots3
Maladay is good, Stinger maybe
Gunblade? Seems pretty good with nether blade proccing spellvamp.
Rageblade? Also pretty good
Nashors? Now its actually pretty efficient, but you dont need the mana regen and 25%CDr is too much
Normal AD Items? What boots? Zerkers are good damage, but CDR could be good or mercs for escape, I cant decide.
I havent felt the need to build any mana on him at all really, as you get so much from just whacking creeps and not being an idiot and spamming riftwalk.
last time I tried that i just built him tanky. atmogs with triforce to take advantage of his passive being a strong attack speed steroid+one of the highest (lategame) base AD in the game. his laning sucks really hard if you don't build AP tho.
big fan of bloodthirster -> tank on AD kassadin myself tbh
On March 24 2012 18:21 sob3k wrote: Ok, I'm bored and doing an AD Kassadin, BD all day long fun as hell. Not sure how to build him tho.
Liek for opening you can go boots3
Maladay is good, Stinger maybe
Gunblade? Seems pretty good with nether blade proccing spellvamp.
Rageblade? Also pretty good
Nashors? Now its actually pretty efficient, but you dont need the mana regen and 25%CDr is too much
Normal AD Items? What boots? Zerkers are good damage, but CDR could be good or mercs for escape, I cant decide.
I havent felt the need to build any mana on him at all really, as you get so much from just whacking creeps and not being an idiot and spamming riftwalk.
I think you should read up on how damage to towers is calculated if you want a backdoor kass. With items like rageblade and gunblade either the AP or AD portion is wasted. Nashors is a good item as is BT, IE and crap.
Whoa, I just tried opening boots3 into zerkers into cutlass, and it seems VERY strong, you can lifesteal to full health incredibly fast, then jump on them/silence, 50% slow, and whack the shit out of them, the damage is very high, I was able to outtrade heavily and the sustain is infinite after one item, you can literally roam forever.
Alright, I'm mildly interested. Which lanes does he work in? What do you build after Gunblade? How do teamfights go? What's your late game plan? I'll be that guy and ask "Why not Irelia?" (not that a fun build has to be better, but still).
On March 25 2012 09:44 ManyCookies wrote: Alright, I'm mildly interested. Which lane do you go to? What do you build after Gunblade? How do teamfights go? What's your late game plan?
I've been going mid, because the silence ruins any chance of retaliation when you jump them.
I've also been skilling R>W>Q>E, starting with Q. Going Cutlass also allows you to not put any points into E, because it provides the slow which is the only reason to get E, while ranks of Q are good for harass and more importantly the longer silence when you go in.
I've only got to latelate game once where I built GA and BT. I'm still not sure about items really after Cutlass malady, but that start is so good. GA is pretty cool because as long as you dont die with 5 ontop of you they wont catch you as you revive and blink away.
In Lane you just try to last hit as best you can, and spam Q on every cooldown because you have infinite mana. You cant really trade reliably until after you get cutlass and some AS, but the second you get cutlass and 6 you can just play the lane like a complete douche and jump all over them, you trade really well and heal to full in one wave. Then you roam all over teh fucking map, ward their buffs and steal them and kill anyone who gets low. You can play super dangerous and push lanes.
Teamfighting is careful, you are beast 1v1 and can take pretty much anyone, but you dont want to get into big fights. Just hang out back a bit and toss silences until you see an opportunity to go in without getting focused, or 1v1. The thing is its really easy to do this when you have free 4 second flash. You have mad deeps just have to be not kamikaze. Remember surge lasts for 12 second so just pop it whenever teamfight happens.
Lategame I just split push like a motherfucker, impossible to catch you and you level towers and waves pretty fast. With 3 second silence you win like any 1v1, so they have to send a bunch of people to stop you.
2 days ago The Rain Man posted a Kassadin Guide. Check it out, it has tons of useful info. He's a very high-level player, and this guide is currently fully up-to-date, so it should be mandatory reading for any Kass player.
Kassadin is a burst anti-AP-carry champ. He sucks in early laning phase due to him being melee, but once you get to level 6 he becomes a ganking machine. Then once he gets Rabadon's he starts dishing out serious burst damage.
Watch the video in Rain Man's guide, it shows his bread-and-butter combo:
R on top of the opponent -> Q -> E. If you are 1v1, activate W and try to kill, otherwise back off until your spells are ready again. If you have enough mana, R again immediately for a 2nd combo, only this time with increased damage.
Kass is really good at avoiding ganks once he gets level 6 as well, since rift-walk can be used defensively.
One thing that Rain Man's guide doesn't mention that I think should be part of Kass' item build is Lich Bane. His RQE combo silences, slows, and puts you right next to the opponent. This is the absolute perfect setup to proc Lich Bane.
The hardest part of playing Kassadin is his early laning phase. It's hard to farm properly when you're a mana-reliant melee champ in mid, but his W makes it easier to last hit and helps him out with mana problems. You just have to learn to survive harass.
Edit: after playing a bunch more with Kass, I've changed my mind on Lich Bane. You won't get hardly any opportunities to get within melee range in late-game teamfights. Every time I've tried to use Riftwalk for damage in a teamfight I get cc'd and bursted instantly.
R>Q>E>W. I personally get a level of W at 2, but you can get it later if you wish. My reasoning for that is lvl 1 E barely does damage and you won't be using it that early in the game. The mana regen provided by W is much more useful at that level.
Some people get 2drings into Dcap, then other AP items. Personally, I feel that Cata/RoA into Dcap is superior. My reasoning: Kassadin doesn't need so much mana regen as he does a big mana pool. Your spells, especially Rift, build up in cost extremely fast. As a result, you absolutely need a large mana pool to buffer your spellcasts. Not only that, but Kassadin tends to get rather close to the enemy, so he'll need a nice HP buffer and RoA provides a much better stats buffer than Dring stack. The sustain you get from Cata/RoA is also invaluable. Some people get a Tear and/or Philo; they can be useful, but I personally think they delay your damage too much to be worth it. Generally good items (outside of your RoA/Dcap core) include (in order of usefulness) Void staff, Zhonyas (QSS), WotA, DFG/Rylais. Void staff is core when they stack MR; Zhonyas (and QSS) can buy you precious seconds for your Riftwalk to come off cd or the stacks to reset. WotA can be very helpful, but generally the spellvamp won't do that much for you; that said, it's a relatively cheap item for a very healthy chunk of AP and the aura is always nice. DFG improves your burst and gives cdr/mana regen but it's not really that good overall and should only be picked up situationally. Rylais can be nice, but the slow is kinda wasted considering your E already has a massive slow. I see some people suggesting Lichbane, but even though you do get close to the enemy, you really aren't and shouldn't be melee-ing them 'cause you're still a relatively squishy AP champ. For boots, you want Sorc or CDR. After the CD nerfs on his ult, cdr is increasingly important for Kass. If you can get away with not needing the cdr from boots (cause you hog blue like a boss and/or you're chugging elixirs) or are dominating the game then go for Sorc. I usually end games as Kass with Boots, RoA, Dcap, Void and sometimes Zhonyas/QSS/WotA.
Playstyle is mostly be extremely safe from lvls 1-5. At lvl 3, you can start trying to harass with your Q, but after the range nerfs it's a lot harder to do it safely and well. It's okay to be zoned and lose tons of cs as Kassadin in the early levels; in fact if you're not being zoned, the other guy's probably doing it wrong. Once you hit 6 use Riftwalk in and Q them in the face, use E if it's up as well. Then back off. Wait for the Rift stack cd to go away, then repeat. If you don't let the Riftwalk stack go away you'l end up chunking ur mana extremely fast and it'll be very inefficient. Also, play mindgames with your Riftwalk. Additionally, MAKE SURE YOU GANK. Kassadin has godly ganks. Harass your opponent out of lane then go gank bot/top/help invade jungle. Your ulti lets you avoid wards like a boss. Take advantage of it. Ganking is especially important if you're facing a tough lane. A lot of champions need to play very safe, tower hug, and damage control when losing their lane. Kassadin says fuck that and deals with losing his lane by ganking the crap out of the sidelanes. His base damages are quite high for the early/mid game. Often, especially at lower elos, a completely denied Kassadin can still carry and turn the game around by getting a ton of successful ganks off.
Start with boots3 and take Flash/Ignite. That said, Flash/Teleport can have some very hilarious albeit gimmicky results; ie. build up a insane amount of Riftwalk stacks in fountain, teleport to fight, Rift onto enemy team for 50%+ of their health.
EDIT: Also, in teamfights, use your Riftwalk as a positioning tool, not damage. You are squishy and will be cc'd and blown up if you Rift in too close. It's best to Rift to the sides of the fight and pick on exposed targets. Knowing how to flank properly is very important with Kassadin. You want to play Kassadin as a vulture going for easy pickings. There are other playstyles, but imo this is the more efficient and easiest way to play Kass.
[23:24] <Seki> you wanna know how tryhard i was that game wreak? [23:25] <Seki> http://i.imgur.com/09fnf.jpg [23:25] <Seki> gragas fucking trashtalked me [23:25] <Seki> after i died once [23:25] <Seki> frozen heart and QSS lol [23:25] <Seki> they couldn't do jack [23:26] <Seki> cuz their cait got sooooooo fat [23:26] <Seki> but i was like fuck that shit [23:26] <Seki> GRAGAS TRASHTALKED ME
Tank Kass has worked fine for the past 6 months.
Edit: I forgot the guide isn't tank Kass anymore..
PStone -> Cata -> RoA -> Cata -> RoA -> w/e usually a Void but more survival is always > damage.
GLHF
Edit2: Standard treads vs tabi btw. Just be smart about it and base it off whatever defensive item you might get first/who's fat on the other team.
The HP/mana recovery on level-up no longer stacks but that's not the point of it anyways, as by the time you get the second one the recovery is going to not matter much.
For 5th item, I've been trying Lich Bane. I don't like it, every time I go in to try and use it I get cc'd and bursted to death.
After some deliberation, I think DFG would be better than Lich Bane. Kass makes good use of all of the stats, more opportunities to use the active late-game compared to Lich Bane, and together with blue buff + masteries gets him to 39% CDR. It's also 860g cheaper than Lich Bane. Lastly, I think the intermediate items for DFG help Kass a lot more than the ones for Lich Bane.
I haven't played with him enough to try for other 6th items like Zhonya's, QSS, Abyssal, WotA, or Rylai's. I will try them to see, but I don't think WotA or Rylai's are worth it. You should have plenty of health/mana/CDR by late-game, and you already have a slow, so Rylai's isn't worth it. WotA is nice if you have another AP champ and you go double-WotA, but I feel the other items are better.
Zhonya's for when they stack AD, QSS for when they stack cc, Abyssal for when they stack AP. If they aren't stacking anything, probably go for abyssal anyway (unless someone else has it) or possibly archangel's staff (with 2k+ mana you get over 100 AP from AA).
idk why you guys think lich bane and dfg are good on kassadin, the mana regen/cdr for dfg are wasted since you're getting every blue (and if you don't get blue it won't help much outside of lane); likewise you shouldn't need lich bane's extra melee dmg to kill anyone (also quite a waste since you're rarely going to be doing auto attacks unless you're chasing a super low runner in which case it won't take many AAs to kill anyway).
6 item kass should basically be: RoA, sorc shoes, deathcap, zhonyas/void staff (prioritize whichever depending on how much mr enemy team has by this point), banshees
if you're playing kassadin correctly though, the game should be over around the time you get your deathcap or voidstaff
On April 01 2012 04:50 DURRHURRDERP wrote: idk why you guys think lich bane and dfg are good on kassadin, the mana regen/cdr for dfg are wasted since you're getting every blue (and if you don't get blue it won't help much outside of lane); likewise you shouldn't need lich bane's extra melee dmg to kill anyone (also quite a waste since you're rarely going to be doing auto attacks unless you're chasing a super low runner in which case it won't take many AAs to kill anyway).
6 item kass should basically be: RoA, sorc shoes, deathcap, zhonyas/void staff (prioritize whichever depending on how much mr enemy team has by this point), banshees
if you're playing kassadin correctly though, the game should be over around the time you get your deathcap or voidstaff
DFG sounds too situational, if you are dealing with 3+ high HP team comps. The way I see it with Lich Bane, if you can close in to auto an enemy as Kassadin, you already won. In team fights, if you try that it will get you killed by the CC and the only great way to proc it is Rift, which you need for escaping and position. Movespeed isn't super useful either (never really bad though) since you have Rift.
You don't really want to be autoing someone in your combo outside of lane (unless they are low enough to kill) because it could be ez bait from other team. Even in lane it can be dangerous if u go in for a combo and auto + someone like cassiopeia just unloads her full burst at you. Normal combo in lane is R close enough to E+Q then walk away (rinse/repeat).
On April 02 2012 00:08 DURRHURRDERP wrote: Normal combo in lane is R close enough to E+Q then walk away (rinse/repeat).
Yes, and always Q first so that they can't retaliate or use summoners against you. Also with the slow from E you can almost always W for at least 1 aa before they get away.
On April 01 2012 04:50 DURRHURRDERP wrote: idk why you guys think lich bane and dfg are good on kassadin, the mana regen/cdr for dfg are wasted since you're getting every blue (and if you don't get blue it won't help much outside of lane); likewise you shouldn't need lich bane's extra melee dmg to kill anyone (also quite a waste since you're rarely going to be doing auto attacks unless you're chasing a super low runner in which case it won't take many AAs to kill anyway).
6 item kass should basically be: RoA, sorc shoes, deathcap, zhonyas/void staff (prioritize whichever depending on how much mr enemy team has by this point), banshees
if you're playing kassadin correctly though, the game should be over around the time you get your deathcap or voidstaff
I don't like Lich Bane either, but I disagree about DFG, in general mana regen is always good on Kass due to the fact that he can quickly deplete his mana if you stack riftwalk.
As for the CDR, it's not wasted:
-20% CDR from blue -4% CDR from 4 points in the Sorcery mastery (standard for AP champs including Kass) -15% CDR from DFG
That's 39% total.
So the CDR is never wasted unless you do something other than 21/X/X.
I don't think banshee's is very good on Kass. You already have flash + riftwalk + zhonya's/QSS, you don't need a 4th escape. And you should already have plenty of health/mana from earlier RoA. MR could be a concern, but if you want an item that gives MR + other useful stats, Abyssal Scepter is a much better option for Kass.
what are you talking about?.....by the time you're lvl 6+ any ranged AP is going to be running from your combo anyways.
kassadin is terrible in lane <6 but once you have ult+blue you should be easily laying the hurt on people with just your RQE combo + taking like 0 harass, if they auto you you just traded QE dmg for 1 auto, if you stay to try to W + auto yourself you run the risk of eating a full combo in the face with your RQE on cooldown
I was watching rain man, and his blog on solomid for Kassa and I have finally figured out how to play him. You want to get your farm up, HARD, below level 6, you NEED to have a strong CS, like near perfect to get your items fast. You really want to be in your lane and farming till 6, then get the blue buff, go get your philosophers stone or catalyst, and then go make some ganks happen. You have to be incredibly active. Also it helps if you max Q first then max E as the QREW combo works really well for this. Strong comboing off of jumping on people in groups especially with E being a slow really helps.
i have been trying to learn kassadin and sucks at farming against those range AP (annie,ahri,morgana).I tried to Q back whenever they poke me and thats about it,its hard to farm when they keep poking me and farm at the same time.any suggestion?
It's really difficult to CS early as kassadin, the only person who you can do it reliably early against is karthus. I find it much eassier if I run armour seals rather than mana regen. On someone's stream a short while back, I saw someone running armour seals, MR glyphs and opening regrowth + pot and just relying on that to sustain through early game. Kass's Q doesn't draw creep aggro so use it whenever you get harassed or just harass right back with it.
Most of the time you'll hit 6 with half the CS of your opponent in lane. That's not a problem. You have to make up for it by farming champions, both in your lane and top/bottom.
I'm really having problems CSing against some champions mid. Ryze is really difficult for me, and so are champs like cass who can just push my wave and harass me pretty hard. What can I do to LH better as kass early game before I can put a lot of pressure on with R?
On July 23 2012 07:50 Arisen wrote: I'm really having problems CSing against some champions mid. Ryze is really difficult for me, and so are champs like cass who can just push my wave and harass me pretty hard. What can I do to LH better as kass early game before I can put a lot of pressure on with R?
generally you should really only pick kassadin if either a) you've got a strong jungler and b) you pick him into a lane that works well for him (which is very rare). kassadin has a very weak laneing phase and doesn't win most of them on his own. anything that has poke/sustained damage is basicly undoable except you get a ton of ganks. kassadin is a really good gank assist because of his disables and high base damage combo. that being said do never pick kassadin into a bad lane or into one you don't know while hoping for alot of help from your jungler. Opponents you want to have are generally burst casters and some with dodgeable stuff. you should also be aware of the fact that kassadin needs to get ahead during midgame to be really effective (while for example ryze doesn't because he just needs a certain amount of farm and level for this). There are also alot of champion types you don't want in their team, like a very tanky setup or a massive amount of hard disables (silence counts as well). it's not a surprise that you have problems against cass/ryze because those are typically the lane opponents you don't want. cass is manageable with some gank support and you can shut her down during teamfights as well with enough farm but ryze just gets ridiculous if he is tanky enough and who are you gonna attack in teamfights when there is a ryze? the ad carry? most of the time you cannot and alot of ad carries are very strong vs kassadin.
On July 23 2012 07:50 Arisen wrote: I'm really having problems CSing against some champions mid. Ryze is really difficult for me, and so are champs like cass who can just push my wave and harass me pretty hard. What can I do to LH better as kass early game before I can put a lot of pressure on with R?
generally you should really only pick kassadin if either a) you've got a strong jungler and b) you pick him into a lane that works well for him (which is very rare). kassadin has a very weak laneing phase and doesn't win most of them on his own. anything that has poke/sustained damage is basicly undoable except you get a ton of ganks. kassadin is a really good gank assist because of his disables and high base damage combo. that being said do never pick kassadin into a bad lane or into one you don't know while hoping for alot of help from your jungler. Opponents you want to have are generally burst casters and some with dodgeable stuff. you should also be aware of the fact that kassadin needs to get ahead during midgame to be really effective (while for example ryze doesn't because he just needs a certain amount of farm and level for this). There are also alot of champion types you don't want in their team, like a very tanky setup or a massive amount of hard disables (silence counts as well). it's not a surprise that you have problems against cass/ryze because those are typically the lane opponents you don't want. cass is manageable with some gank support and you can shut her down during teamfights as well with enough farm but ryze just gets ridiculous if he is tanky enough and who are you gonna attack in teamfights when there is a ryze? the ad carry? most of the time you cannot and alot of ad carries are very strong vs kassadin.
basicly kassadin is a very situational pick.
ATM im just playing him in normals so If I do have to pick him in a ranked I'm not terrible, so I'm getting a lot of bad MU's it seems.
I've been going double faerie in lane with moderate success--Kassadin is unique as an AP carry in that he plays a lot like a top laner and expects to be behind on farm for the most part until he starts dominating lane at 3/5/6 and on. I've had really good success with him against champions like Vlad, Cass, Lux, TF and Ori so far with a 10/13/7 mastery for block and hp regen quints. Obviously you can't just fp him and expect it to be okay, but he's an amazing counterpick and the hp regen plus the new defensive tree and a bit of smart play means that I can reasonably start double faerie charm and 3 pots. First one turns into a tear on first back, second one into a chalice against AP lanes, and then I just farm and farm and farm until I see an opportunity to either outright kill my lane opponent or a teamfight breaks out near me. After chalice I go Rod, but I'm not 100% sold on the build yet. I might skip chalice, but Kass is really mana heavy even with tear chalice RoA. Pen boots and Archangels or Grail depending on how the game is going. It's been really strong so far, but that's just in my estimation.
On January 25 2013 14:36 Sufficiency wrote: Wait. Tear + Chalice + Rod? That seems a bit of an overkill to me.
TBH that is overkill. Tear Roa is good, but in terms of laning, kassadin doesn't really need any more regen than what blue provides, and for fights what matters more for him is mana pool because over the course of a fight, you could stack riftwalk many times before letting it reset. When you're looking at roughly 1k mana spent in 10 seconds, with 500 more a few seconds later, it's a lot better to build a pool so you can keep doing it rather than regen.
Chalice/grail lategame is very nice though, because at that point having an extra X00 mana at the end of a fight to cleanup or escape is vital.
On January 25 2013 14:36 Sufficiency wrote: Wait. Tear + Chalice + Rod? That seems a bit of an overkill to me.
TBH that is overkill. Tear Roa is good, but in terms of laning, kassadin doesn't really need any more regen than what blue provides, and for fights what matters more for him is mana pool because over the course of a fight, you could stack riftwalk many times before letting it reset. When you're looking at roughly 1k mana spent in 10 seconds, with 500 more a few seconds later, it's a lot better to build a pool so you can keep doing it rather than regen.
Chalice/grail lategame is very nice though, because at that point having an extra X00 mana at the end of a fight to cleanup or escape is vital.
Yeah its alot better to have a big mana pool than mana regen, like swain and anivia for example
On January 25 2013 14:36 Sufficiency wrote: Wait. Tear + Chalice + Rod? That seems a bit of an overkill to me.
TBH that is overkill. Tear Roa is good, but in terms of laning, kassadin doesn't really need any more regen than what blue provides, and for fights what matters more for him is mana pool because over the course of a fight, you could stack riftwalk many times before letting it reset. When you're looking at roughly 1k mana spent in 10 seconds, with 500 more a few seconds later, it's a lot better to build a pool so you can keep doing it rather than regen.
Chalice/grail lategame is very nice though, because at that point having an extra X00 mana at the end of a fight to cleanup or escape is vital.
Yeah its alot better to have a big mana pool than mana regen, like swain and anivia for example
Well he is building Archangel's, so mana also scares for him.
I'm thinking maybe instead of chalice Kassadin can get a Frozen Fist as a third/fourth item. More mana -> more damage, plus the added survivability and CDR.
Kassadin was free last week. Coincidentally, Kassadin was the first champion I ever used. I was feeling nostalgic, so I played him about two dozen times. Some time before or during that orgy of purple goop, I accidentally locked a Twisted Fate when I was supposed to be our team's jungler. I said NO, don't switch your summoners, top lane. I GOT THIS. And I did. The other team actually let me successfully jungle Twisted Fate. I was happy. There is nothing I love more than playing random champions in random roles, even if I'm terrible at it. Then I heard a little click, and visions of Riftwalking Kassadin ganks danced through my head.
Fast forward to the last 24 hours. I finally save up enough IP to buy Kassadin, and I jungled him twice. I win one, and it was hilarious. I lose one, and it was also hilarious, if only because we lost to a jungle Fizz. It was magical.
I then considered writing a "guide" (more like a vaguely coherent suggestion in the form of expository posting), to inspire others. Luckily, I had the foresight to google "Jungle Kassadin" and one of the first results was a lovely video of Saintvicious playing Jungle Kassadin. Effort avoided. Credibility acquired.
Jungle Kassadin, Season 3, by Curse Gaming jungler Saintvicious:
Starting items: a) Hunters Machete b) Five pots, your choice. I don't recommend the blue ones.
First clear:
You can start red or blue. It does not matter. Red might be better because it's scarier, and your teammates can hold your hand. What does matter is the quality of the leash. Smiteless is massively beneficial. The first clear will be rough without help.
Clear order [in the video]: wraiths -> red (smiteless) -> blue (level 3 @ 2:53 w/ lackluster smiteless leash) -> wolves -> wraiths -> first back
ITEMS
- Hunters Machete - Five pots --> Madred's Razors -> Catalyst the Protector - Boots of Speed - Blasting Wand --> Rod of Ages --> Sorcerers Shoes - Blasting Wand - Needlessly Large Rod --> Rabbadon's Deathcap - Blasting Wand - Amplifying Tome --> Void Staff -> Haunting Guise (situational) - Amplifying tome --> Liandry's Torment (situational)
Late game situational: -> Abyssal Scepter -> Frozen Heart
Note: Saintvicious did very well this game, he had a lot of gold.
Tried a game of jungle Kassadin. Zac invaded my red at level 2, we both get pretty low, I'm spam pinging for people to help, NOBODY COMES. He's literally there for like 30 seconds. NOBODY. Eventually he goes to try to gank bot lane, so I try to take red, but I'm too low and die. I ask why nobody helped me, and one of the duo bot says "maybe next time pick a real jungler". Fuck these people.
Normally I just go tear->cata(ruby first)->roa+sorcs->seraphs, maybe with a cloth armor/seekers against an AD lane. Goal really is just to farm pre-6, make a judgement call on whether or not you+jungler can kill the guy, and use that to decide whether to Q for farm, Q enemy, or split Q's. Learning to CS well under turret helps immensely, sit in creep wave so the other mid most likely has to push when he harasses, etc.
Generally I like picking him into either more squishy farmy mids(karthus, tf, lux) or sometimes more vulnerable side lanes(eg. I'd rather be going for a sona cait lane than a graves lulu).
First of all i'm going off the sticky and posting my Kass question here, sorry if i misunderstood, please move if its not appropriate
Hey, I am new to the game, I am not even lvl30 yet on my main (23). But I played dota/sc for years.
I am trying to get very good with a few champs first so I can learn most optimally. Kassadin is definitely my best and most played champion overall. I haven't played vs a good Viktor, usually i can survive til 6 and then get favorable trades with REQ, forcing a kill or back before 8. Then i push lane and go gank bottom.
This korean Viktor fucking wrecked me pre-6 and even 6-8 (although its due to the former obviously). Outplayed me so hard, although I think my tactics were only slightly off. I usually R+E+Q so i get max damage from pulse (it does more closer up) but his stun got me pretty bad (I assumed he would level laser so i thought i could eat the stun and use the extra AS to kill him...I was horribly wrong...he only had <200 (being generous) hp after my full combo sometimes but killed me). We knew he was korean so my jungler even helped me a lot. he still destroyed mid.
My thought is to instead rift where he doesnt expect (putting Viktor into my list of champs where R is used for zoning rather than damage), lowering my nuke damage a tiny bit (for AP's i do like to land close enough to damage them even if its not super predictable exactly where around them I am, the damage i take as a result is usually worth the damage they take from rift even at lvl1 rift). Then IMMEDIATELY Q, lowering my nuke even more (so E doesn't do full damage if he moves back, which he will)...before he can set up his stun field...then E+auto+go back/dodge laser if i can get him mid-range E. or wait to use E next poke. when i dont E i am trying to bait out a defensive stun which seemed to be his go-to for catching me...offensive stun is easy to dodge.
Itemwise, I started faerie + 5 + 1 + ward. On first back i could only afford crystals not recipe for catalyst. in this scenario should i get blue crystal + 400g MR item instead? Catalyst is so crucial to my Kass between 6-10 i dont know if i can really afford to delay it but its a thought. also what if i tried to go 4/2 or 3/3 on the potions and spam Q at lvl3 and 5? Midgame i went full MR tank mode and ended up 10/9/8, but we lost and viktor was like 19/4/xx lol.
Appreciate any help or thoughts, didnt mean to be rambly. Due to the detail of my post I'd politely ask that only people who know Kass well respond to the details but if anyone wants to drop helpful knowledge its always appreciated
Um...for someone who says he knows Kass really well, I'm fairly surprised that you seem to believe Force Pulse does more damage if you're in close. Where/when did you come to believe this?
On August 08 2013 00:37 nath wrote: First of all i'm going off the sticky and posting my Kass question here, sorry if i misunderstood, please move if its not appropriate
Hey, I am new to the game, I am not even lvl30 yet on my main (23). But I played dota/sc for years.
I am trying to get very good with a few champs first so I can learn most optimally. Kassadin is definitely my best and most played champion overall. I haven't played vs a good Viktor, usually i can survive til 6 and then get favorable trades with REQ, forcing a kill or back before 8. Then i push lane and go gank bottom.
This korean Viktor fucking wrecked me pre-6 and even 6-8 (although its due to the former obviously). Outplayed me so hard, although I think my tactics were only slightly off. I usually R+E+Q so i get max damage from pulse (it does more closer up) but his stun got me pretty bad (I assumed he would level laser so i thought i could eat the stun and use the extra AS to kill him...I was horribly wrong...he only had <200 (being generous) hp after my full combo sometimes but killed me). We knew he was korean so my jungler even helped me a lot. he still destroyed mid.
My thought is to instead rift where he doesnt expect (putting Viktor into my list of champs where R is used for zoning rather than damage), lowering my nuke damage a tiny bit (for AP's i do like to land close enough to damage them even if its not super predictable exactly where around them I am, the damage i take as a result is usually worth the damage they take from rift even at lvl1 rift). Then IMMEDIATELY Q, lowering my nuke even more (so E doesn't do full damage if he moves back, which he will)...before he can set up his stun field...then E+auto+go back/dodge laser if i can get him mid-range E. or wait to use E next poke. when i dont E i am trying to bait out a defensive stun which seemed to be his go-to for catching me...offensive stun is easy to dodge.
Itemwise, I started faerie + 5 + 1 + ward. On first back i could only afford crystals not recipe for catalyst. in this scenario should i get blue crystal + 400g MR item instead? Catalyst is so crucial to my Kass between 6-10 i dont know if i can really afford to delay it but its a thought. also what if i tried to go 4/2 or 3/3 on the potions and spam Q at lvl3 and 5? Midgame i went full MR tank mode and ended up 10/9/8, but we lost and viktor was like 19/4/xx lol.
Appreciate any help or thoughts, didnt mean to be rambly. Due to the detail of my post I'd politely ask that only people who know Kass well respond to the details but if anyone wants to drop helpful knowledge its always appreciated
E doesn't do more damage closer up, and most of the time unless you know you can get a kill, you should R just close enough to hit with E and Q and then back off. The whole point is that you slow and silence them so that they can't retaliate. Your level 1 R will do like 100 damage. Not at all worth it against the vast majority of champions.
Personally I prefer to buy tear on first back, but if you're going straight for catalyst, try to have enough for ruby and sapphire crystal. The only MR items that Kassadin can use are abyssal, and chalice/athene's if you don't get a tear. Flask start is much better than faerie start. It helps you for almost the entire game, saves you gold and you never need to worry about buying potions again.
R for laning is a positioning and finishing move. You will basically never R on top of somebody in mid unless you can kill them(this takes practice to figure out, generally you do not R on top of somebody who's above 60% or so without ignite, 70% with). The reason is one sided trading. You can either do 40% of somebodies health for basically free, or 50%, taking 40% in return. R damage really is pitiful until you get some major items going, along with a mana pool to sustain it. You want to R to somewhere in the 5-600 range, QE, and just walk away. The next time you can do it, unless they have some major MR or pot like a madman, you should be able to go for a kill.
Same applies for teamfighting. Assuming you aren't fed, kassadin teamfighting is hovering around an edge, RQE closest person(R only for range), wait for CD's, and then walk back in and start finishing people with stacked riftwalk and EQW.
Itemwise, almost always want to build a tear&catalyst first. Kassadin is one of the strongest mid-lategame AP's due to his short cooldowns, extremely high mobility, and scaling. Unless it's a hard lane, it generally is worth banking on the mid-lategame presence that kassadin brings by itemizing towards it.
Really, the only situation I think you could justify skipping a tear is if you really don't trust your allies and think that you absolutely need to snowball as quickly as possible. Maybe if you get a pentakill at level 1 and can recall with 1200 gold and just want to show off your level 1 catalyst.
I'm a little curious though...its not like Kass charges Tear very quickly at all. Do you want to upgrade to AA as fast as possible for the faster charge or just leave it?
ah, my bad on the force pulse. ok, makes sense now.
i meant that i R onto the hero ONLY if its a (squishy) mage, assuming that whatever they throw at me will let me auto them 2-3x (due to slow + AS increase), so i thought the health trade is still in my favor and worth it...but i guess if i trade this way instead it also reduces my need for health pots...which would let me get a couple blue pots or start bottle.
also i still feel like catalyst first helps a lot more than tear for ganking sidelanes lvl6-9, and i pick up tear after my first couple of ganks (or ~lvl10 if im unsucessful). if i go bottle start though, then i guess i'd get tear + ruby first back
On August 09 2013 00:49 WaveofShadow wrote: I'm a little curious though...its not like Kass charges Tear very quickly at all. Do you want to upgrade to AA as fast as possible for the faster charge or just leave it?
It really doesn't take that long, and the extra mana is so useful anyways. Always get RoA after tear, and then depending on the situation, can upgrade to AA right away, or get another item inbetween.
I only R to people in lane if I know where the rest of their team is and have flash up and I'm sure the silence will be enough time for me to get out with only minimal damage
Otherwise just last hit and harass them with Q E when they come in to trade, you rarely want to riftwalk unless you're going all-in or you're sure it's safe
Don't get Rod on Kassadin! Just go full damage and pick your spots better. With the advent of homeguard and better tear I think it's better to just go AA + Deathcap rather than AA + RoA. If you need defense later you should go for GA/Banshees/Zhonyas. Your main priority is to be able to chunk people. Surviving is not that hard if you pick spots and position well. Kass is like Shaco in that you should only be dying (after 6) when you choose to.
On August 11 2013 05:58 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: I only R to people in lane if I know where the rest of their team is and have flash up and I'm sure the silence will be enough time for me to get out with only minimal damage
Otherwise just last hit and harass them with Q E when they come in to trade, you rarely want to riftwalk unless you're going all-in or you're sure it's safe
Don't get Rod on Kassadin! Just go full damage and pick your spots better. With the advent of homeguard and better tear I think it's better to just go AA + Deathcap rather than AA + RoA. If you need defense later you should go for GA/Banshees/Zhonyas. Your main priority is to be able to chunk people. Surviving is not that hard if you pick spots and position well. Kass is like Shaco in that you should only be dying (after 6) when you choose to.
midgame i feel like i can go way more balls deep with RoA than with a large rod (or blasting wand) if going straight cap. i do get AA and cap after RoA... are you suggesting not even catalyst? straight tear into deathcap?
I prefer tear+RoA, because you are kassadin. All the stats are fairly useful, and you only need survivability+addtional AP in order to nuke targets. You don't even need deathcap, i rarely get to purchase one before the game is over.
On August 09 2013 00:49 WaveofShadow wrote: I'm a little curious though...its not like Kass charges Tear very quickly at all. Do you want to upgrade to AA as fast as possible for the faster charge or just leave it?
Kass charges Tear decently quickly. Activating W on cooldown is essentially free and helps a bit. You can also periodically use R to charge if necessary. He's no pre-nerf Jayce/Nid when it comes to charging Tear, but he ca certainly make good use of it.
I personally used to favor RoA->Dcap since I felt that getting Tear hurt my mid-game damage a bit too much and I prefer to snowball. Tear's still a super solid choice though. The shield from Seraphs also really helps to mitigate some damage if you Rift in too close or if teh enemy team focuses you.
I like building rod first then grabbing a nlr and I decide whether to go death cap or hourglass based on the game. I have tried going tear but I just feel like its not that great in solo q. If u take teleport/home guard and are looking to charge up rifts I think it could fit a little bit better
Tear/Seraph's is extremely good on Kassadin. It solves your mana problems, Provides you with 120-130 AP late game from just one item and also makes you slightly tankier with the shield(which is a must for Kass IMO). It's pretty much covers every area for kassadin that needs to be addressed during any given game.
On August 14 2013 05:45 ReachTheSky wrote: Tear/Seraph's is extremely good on Kassadin. It solves your mana problems, Provides you with 120-130 AP late game from just one item and also makes you slightly tankier with the shield(which is a must for Kass IMO). It's pretty much covers every area for kassadin that needs to be addressed during any given game.
There's no arguing that Tear/Seraphs is a premier Kassadin lategame item. It's just a question of whether you think getting Tear is worth the tradeoff of not having your NLR/Wand/Hat 700 gold earlier for the early-mid game.
I think if you're into the heavy roam/ganking style of play it's probably worth skipping Tear for a faster Hat. Otherwise, not skipping Tear is probably the superior choice.
On August 14 2013 05:45 ReachTheSky wrote: Tear/Seraph's is extremely good on Kassadin. It solves your mana problems, Provides you with 120-130 AP late game from just one item and also makes you slightly tankier with the shield(which is a must for Kass IMO). It's pretty much covers every area for kassadin that needs to be addressed during any given game.
There's no arguing that Tear/Seraphs is a premier Kassadin lategame item. It's just a question of whether you think getting Tear is worth the tradeoff of not having your NLR/Wand/Hat 700 gold earlier for the early-mid game.
I think if you're into the heavy roam/ganking style of play it's probably worth skipping Tear for a faster Hat. Otherwise, not skipping Tear is probably the superior choice.
I also think it depends on the flow of the game as well. If you are snowballing hard early rushing a deathcap may be optimal. If things are a bit more equal the versatility of a seraph's would suit the situation better.
Given the incredible cost efficiency of tear/seraph's and the amount of mana Kassadin can burn in team fights, I can't really imagine not getting it. If you go straight for deathcap, what happens if you don't get a blue?
On August 14 2013 08:15 GolemMadness wrote: Given the incredible cost efficiency of tear/seraph's and the amount of mana Kassadin can burn in team fights, I can't really imagine not getting it. If you go straight for deathcap, what happens if you don't get a blue?
I don't think I've ever seen anyone go for a naked dcap without any mana items. At least not with success.
Some people go RoA then Dcap and skip Tear. You almost have to get at least one or both of RoA/Tear.
Kassadin's mana pool is low and that's why you need tear, it's not about the mana regen, it's about the size of the pool
I just think Rod is too slow and catalyst isn't as strong as it was in s1/s2 after nerfs. AA/Deathcap are my first two items usually but it's usually like Tear -> NLR as first items
Rod is cheaper to build now, as is catalyst. I really like that powerspike around lvl 6-9 where i sit on boots/tear/catalyst with blue buff. Allows you to massively farm and roam properly without falling behind too much. Idk, i really dislike the glass-cannon type of build, because my experience tells me, that i will most likely get punished if i do it.
I guess it kinda depends on your team. I like to go full glass cannon and bluepill all the time for HP because I think that picking spots where you can just annihilate someone from 100% is hilarious
I don't know if it's the best way to play but man is it funny
On August 14 2013 17:44 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: Kassadin's mana pool is low and that's why you need tear, it's not about the mana regen, it's about the size of the pool
I just think Rod is too slow and catalyst isn't as strong as it was in s1/s2 after nerfs. AA/Deathcap are my first two items usually but it's usually like Tear -> NLR as first items
hmm, i'll have to try that. it sounds pretty good considering that Seraphs and eventually Zhonyas can substitute for the HP that RoA provides. Tear/Seraphs is also superior to RoA in every other aspect minus the Catalyst passive, which is admittedly not nearly as good as it used to be.
The only reason i exclusively go RoA+tear/seraph is because hp, mana and AP is everything kassadin needs, and the fact that he scales so insanely well into late-game, that it doesn't really matter at which point you acquire your RoA. Obviously i prefer tankiness on almost every champion i play, so it depends on your play-style and how you get away with stuff, though i seriously enjoy R+Zhonya huehue.
On August 16 2013 00:37 Sponkz wrote: The only reason i exclusively go RoA+tear/seraph is because hp, mana and AP is everything kassadin needs, and the fact that he scales so insanely well into late-game, that it doesn't really matter at which point you acquire your RoA. Obviously i prefer tankiness on almost every champion i play, so it depends on your play-style and how you get away with stuff, though i seriously enjoy R+Zhonya huehue.
Yeah i've been playing so much kass i really have an urge to try a diff. build but just never do...roa/seraph always just works perfectly. I also always run sorc boots but get them after both roa and staff, not sure if others are getting Mercury's.
I didn't want to try straight deathcap. I really would never be comfortable sitting on a large rod or wand midgame unless i was just farming, but kass needs to be roaming midgame imo. the extra HP allows you to do the riskier plays and get away with it.
One build i tried was hybrid kass (Muramana + Hextech Gunblade + Sheen + Hexdrinker) and it was obviously when i was fed as all hell and could do stupid shit like that. Someone (i think on here) told me people used to play AD Kass...was that a thing?
I do want to briefly (if its just dumb) discuss mejai's on kass because he is one of the champs I would say really fits in with this item between levels 6-10....potentially. its just a matter of making it gold efficient and getting the kills/assists. with kass i think this is not a problem. Some games get passive in the midgame so its a risk -- what kinds of comps would this item be good with and what kinds would it be bad with?
unless something has changed in the last 6 months Majai's is considered core on Kassadin in Korea.
In season 2 the Xenics player Cornsalad popularized it and Scarra talked about it a lot when he came back from Korea, I wasn't sure if they were still doing it until I saw it built twice in champions summer, I know the s2 build was RoA into Majai's but I'd have to go back and check the vod for Faker's build.
On August 16 2013 00:37 Sponkz wrote: The only reason i exclusively go RoA+tear/seraph is because hp, mana and AP is everything kassadin needs, and the fact that he scales so insanely well into late-game, that it doesn't really matter at which point you acquire your RoA. Obviously i prefer tankiness on almost every champion i play, so it depends on your play-style and how you get away with stuff, though i seriously enjoy R+Zhonya huehue.
Yeah i've been playing so much kass i really have an urge to try a diff. build but just never do...roa/seraph always just works perfectly. I also always run sorc boots but get them after both roa and staff, not sure if others are getting Mercury's.
I didn't want to try straight deathcap. I really would never be comfortable sitting on a large rod or wand midgame unless i was just farming, but kass needs to be roaming midgame imo. the extra HP allows you to do the riskier plays and get away with it.
One build i tried was hybrid kass (Muramana + Hextech Gunblade + Sheen + Hexdrinker) and it was obviously when i was fed as all hell and could do stupid shit like that. Someone (i think on here) told me people used to play AD Kass...was that a thing?
I do want to briefly (if its just dumb) discuss mejai's on kass because he is one of the champs I would say really fits in with this item between levels 6-10....potentially. its just a matter of making it gold efficient and getting the kills/assists. with kass i think this is not a problem. Some games get passive in the midgame so its a risk -- what kinds of comps would this item be good with and what kinds would it be bad with?
Kass was originally released as an AD assassin/melee carry, think Anti-mage from DotA.
On August 16 2013 00:37 Sponkz wrote: The only reason i exclusively go RoA+tear/seraph is because hp, mana and AP is everything kassadin needs, and the fact that he scales so insanely well into late-game, that it doesn't really matter at which point you acquire your RoA. Obviously i prefer tankiness on almost every champion i play, so it depends on your play-style and how you get away with stuff, though i seriously enjoy R+Zhonya huehue.
Yeah i've been playing so much kass i really have an urge to try a diff. build but just never do...roa/seraph always just works perfectly. I also always run sorc boots but get them after both roa and staff, not sure if others are getting Mercury's.
I didn't want to try straight deathcap. I really would never be comfortable sitting on a large rod or wand midgame unless i was just farming, but kass needs to be roaming midgame imo. the extra HP allows you to do the riskier plays and get away with it.
One build i tried was hybrid kass (Muramana + Hextech Gunblade + Sheen + Hexdrinker) and it was obviously when i was fed as all hell and could do stupid shit like that. Someone (i think on here) told me people used to play AD Kass...was that a thing?
I do want to briefly (if its just dumb) discuss mejai's on kass because he is one of the champs I would say really fits in with this item between levels 6-10....potentially. its just a matter of making it gold efficient and getting the kills/assists. with kass i think this is not a problem. Some games get passive in the midgame so its a risk -- what kinds of comps would this item be good with and what kinds would it be bad with?
Kass was originally released as an AD assassin/melee carry, think Anti-mage from DotA.
although the 'role' is similar the heroes play out way differently...kassadin doesn't scale with AD or AS nearly as well as AP, whereas AM has insane AGI.
On August 16 2013 00:37 Sponkz wrote: The only reason i exclusively go RoA+tear/seraph is because hp, mana and AP is everything kassadin needs, and the fact that he scales so insanely well into late-game, that it doesn't really matter at which point you acquire your RoA. Obviously i prefer tankiness on almost every champion i play, so it depends on your play-style and how you get away with stuff, though i seriously enjoy R+Zhonya huehue.
Yeah i've been playing so much kass i really have an urge to try a diff. build but just never do...roa/seraph always just works perfectly. I also always run sorc boots but get them after both roa and staff, not sure if others are getting Mercury's.
I didn't want to try straight deathcap. I really would never be comfortable sitting on a large rod or wand midgame unless i was just farming, but kass needs to be roaming midgame imo. the extra HP allows you to do the riskier plays and get away with it.
One build i tried was hybrid kass (Muramana + Hextech Gunblade + Sheen + Hexdrinker) and it was obviously when i was fed as all hell and could do stupid shit like that. Someone (i think on here) told me people used to play AD Kass...was that a thing?
I do want to briefly (if its just dumb) discuss mejai's on kass because he is one of the champs I would say really fits in with this item between levels 6-10....potentially. its just a matter of making it gold efficient and getting the kills/assists. with kass i think this is not a problem. Some games get passive in the midgame so its a risk -- what kinds of comps would this item be good with and what kinds would it be bad with?
Kass was originally released as an AD assassin/melee carry, think Anti-mage from DotA.
although the 'role' is similar the heroes play out way differently...kassadin doesn't scale with AD or AS nearly as well as AP, whereas AM has insane AGI.
AM doesn't have really have insane Agi base/growth. It's more that he has an insane BAT (base attack time) so he scales very well with stats/items. However, AM wasn't always like that; he got buffed relatively recently to get his insane BAT. Long ago, AM used to be considered pretty shit.
hi tl long time no see. since kassadin nerfed i been able to play some games with him again, makes me very happy. but i have problems with three champions and since tl always good site i hope you can help me :<
1) zed/yasuo
both kinda the same. i try either flask+pot start or cloth5 and play lane to not die, so no risky cs and farm under tower most of the time. but both can do much damage early on and can hurt you with their Q's even under tower. I think they almost always are able to get kill on me pre-6 :< i think that let's them snowball and win even harder and make me have little impact on game. kass so weak to AD t_t i know these hard matchups for kass but i want to play better!! i dont have as much problem with talon because he usually can only kill me once he get ult.
i try make sure to get seekers before lvl6 and then either archangel or roa then finish zhonya. should i be finish zhonya after seeker or is this okay? am i just bad letting them kill me t_t
2) soraka zzz
i know soraka broken now but holy shit what do you even do to her :< since she has such good sustain i think it very hard to trade with her and starcall so good against kass since it makes my passive less good. i think i just totally lost in this matchup. i try farming under tower but that just give soraka freefarm and she get big and have big impact on game and me get less farm. halp pls tl this match i have really no idea
On May 18 2014 12:00 MrSkyfire wrote: hi tl long time no see. since kassadin nerfed i been able to play some games with him again, makes me very happy. but i have problems with three champions and since tl always good site i hope you can help me :<
1) zed/yasuo
both kinda the same. i try either flask+pot start or cloth5 and play lane to not die, so no risky cs and farm under tower most of the time. but both can do much damage early on and can hurt you with their Q's even under tower. I think they almost always are able to get kill on me pre-6 :< i think that let's them snowball and win even harder and make me have little impact on game. kass so weak to AD t_t i know these hard matchups for kass but i want to play better!! i dont have as much problem with talon because he usually can only kill me once he get ult.
i try make sure to get seekers before lvl6 and then either archangel or roa then finish zhonya. should i be finish zhonya after seeker or is this okay? am i just bad letting them kill me t_t
2) soraka zzz
i know soraka broken now but holy shit what do you even do to her :< since she has such good sustain i think it very hard to trade with her and starcall so good against kass since it makes my passive less good. i think i just totally lost in this matchup. i try farming under tower but that just give soraka freefarm and she get big and have big impact on game and me get less farm. halp pls tl this match i have really no idea
Against Zed/Yasuo, you have to gauge how the lane is going. If you can dodge their skillshots (q) and position such that that you can win engages w hen they e, which usually involves staying near tower or having your q and w off cd behind your ranged creeps, then you can play the lane to win. If you're getting chunked, you need to know when to cut your losses and just back. Having ignite usually enables the first playstyle, while teleport really helps with cutting losses from the latter. The playstyle against Soraka is quite similar: if you have a jungler who is looking to gank middle, then you can go for kills early. If not, you will probably again have to cede lane control and look to gank. The biggest difference being you're probably going to be helpless without a jungler, whereas in the former lane it is possible to outskill your opponent and win the lane on your own.
One reason why teleport is so strong in solo queue is that it allows you to impact the other lanes very quickly - you should practice abusing that.