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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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If anyone wondering what this patch does, he bashes AP heroes harder, and still loses to like everything else. Status quo.
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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.
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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.
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EPT
