Hello, My name is SuspiciousOther, many people in Diamond Rank know me as the Kassadin who always says Kassadin quotations in all chat, “YOU ARE NULL AND VOID!”, “THE BALANCE OF POWER MUST BE PRESERVED!”, “YOUR MAGIC IS POWERLESS AGAINST ME!”. I’m going to start this guide off with a joke: I tried to silence my mother once. Boy, did I regret that. That folks is the most important part to winning the game as Kassadin.

Last season I was ranked number one Kassadin in the world I also have most mastery points on Kassadin

This guide will primarily focus on Kassadin in the Midlane and Toplane however he is actually a pretty good off meta Jungler in the Late Game.

The best way to dissect Kassadin is to explore the various stages of the game, Early game, Mid game, and Late game respectively.

Kassadin is considered to be very weak in the early game. This can however be used to your advantage to catch the enemy team and your enemy laner off guard. Many options exist for starting. A standard start is first item corrupting potion this can be very effective as it offers Kassadin the necessary health and mana sustain he needs. Your Null Sphere, Q , may be used to harass the enemy laner and it can often be the bane of an enemy Ability Power Laner due to the spell shield associated with your Q. An important thing to do if you started corrupting potion is to activate corrupting potion the moment before impact. This allows you to get extra harass on the enemy laner due to the corrupting potion and allow the corrupting potion to last longer for you to perform other abilities, such as your E and W, and maximize laning damage.

It is important to use your W as an auto attack reset to assist in CSing and even when trading. Many players do not realize that your W restores mana when used on minions and even more when used on an enemy champion, 20% of your missing mana at tier 1!

Eventually you will find that you need to recall and based off of your gold and how you feel with the matchup you can determine what you will buy. Often after my first back I have around 1100 Gold my favourite item to buy with this amount of gold is Sheen it gives Kassadin a big early power spike and can actually make him a threat in the earlier part of the games. The sheen is a good buy if you would like to take control and dominate your lane. If you back and you are short of the sheen it is also smart to buy one or even two Doran’s Rings to attempt for an early snowball. A more standard option when backing is to work towards building your rod of ages particularly the Catalyst component or if you want an early power spike but not to waste any time on the scaling of Rod of Ages you can also build a blasting wand. The blasting wand is a good amount of AP and can provide decent amounts of early damage. If you are going against an AD match up especially Pantheon or Zed it is a wise decision to rush Armseeker’s, Ninja Tabis, or even just some early Cloth Armor. This can make the hard matchup so much more bearable and even potentially give you the edge you need to win the matchup.

It is important to note that the most vital part of this phase is to accrue as much CS as possible and exploit any early power spikes if possible to try and get an early snowball creating a smooth transition into the Mid Game.

The Mid Game is when Kassadin really begins to shine by this point in the game you will have your ROA completed and should be working towards a Lich Bane, Perhaps the biggest power spike if completed early enough, You will now have Kassadin’s R, the Riftwalk using this you can take complete control of your lane and even other lanes if you transitioned smoothly into the Mid Game. With the Riftwalk it can be useful to roam to other lanes and try to snowball them. Kassadin’s Riftwalk is so effective because it allows him to take eccentric paths where enemy vision is unlikely to be presented, See Section on Roaming. It can even be used to flank from so many different positions and angles. In this point of the game it can be extremely effective to place a pink in a bush and wait for an enemy squishy to walk by. Using your combo of R >> W >> E >> Q it can completely assassinate the enemy. This pick will allow you to snowball more and works extremely well in making objectives uncontestable by the enemy. Don’t forget to farm during the Mid Game phase many amateur Kassadin players tend to forget about farming during this phase and only roam and this often costs them Gold and just as importantly experience.

During this phase of the game it can be effective to implement a tactic called Triangular rotations, this is a tactic many riven players use, the key to this tactic is to always be moving.

Triangular Rotations:

The fundamental backbone of this technique is to gain as much gold as possible and always be moving. When using this tactic I will farm the enemy or even my jungle along the way to another lane then arrive at the lane and gain farm. Always make sure that the path of resources you are taking is always towards where objectives are and your team is. Basically you are able to farm gain as much EXP as possible and be ready at any moment to support your team in a team fight and contest an objective. Using this tactic can allow you to be several levels over your enemy laner and this can be the dominating factor in a teamfight. When teamfighting it is often not the best move for you to engage fights instead wait for your other team members to engage and follow up off of their engage. A good tactic is to stay with your back line and pick off the enemy front line and then after that proceed to dive the enemy front line when you are sure your ADC is safe. Also another way to teamfight with Kassadin is being unseen. If Kassadin is out of vision he can effectively create flanks and even place the enemy backline in a false security. The enemy backline, in false security, will then be easy to dive and assassinate. Be careful no one is there to back them up and don’t be afraid to use your flash to instantly catch your opponent off guard.

If the game is not over after the Mid Game you will transition to the Late Game where you should be able to take complete control over the game.

At this point of the game you will have achieved your tier 3 ultimate. Now you will have maximum mobility and you should take the tactics from the midgame to extremes. A good option in the Late game is to split push if you took Teleport. Teleport will allow you to offer so much pressure while split pushing a lane and the enemies will have to send multiple champions to stop your push as Kassadin can easily 1 v 1. If they send multiple players Kassadin can also easily evade their flank with his extremely high mobility. If a teamfight breaks out Kassadin can also instantly get their with his Teleport or even just keep pushing, Kassadin does some of the most damage to towers, out of any champion, at this point in the game. Often when playing top lane I like to build tear and stack it to get Seraph’s Embrace this makes your split push even more effective providing Kassadin with greater dueling ability and a huge Mana pool. Also it is very viable in many top lane match ups since many top laners are not ranged which Kassadin struggles with. Kassadin is free to farm and scale.

In the figure below is a good visual representation of how to avoid wards and be successful in roaming. Of course it is important to understand the dangers of taking these paths without vision. It is important to keep an eye on all enemy players and their current locations especially the enemy jungler before taking these paths.

Kassadin is a fun, extremely versatile, AP assassin with high burst damage and lots of opportunities for outplay potential. I put a lot of time into this guide, and I believe it can really help some of you elevate your Kassadin gameplay to the next level. I hope you enjoyed the guide and upvotes are really appreciated. This guide doesn’t cover everything but I believe it is a nice spin on a guide as it focuses more on the strategy and game knowledge components of Kassadin and can really help you improve not only on Kassadin but as a player.

The guide is not fully complete but if people like it and show positive feedback I will update it more.

Updates coming soon:
- Various Kassadin Builds
- Updates in making the guide more Aesthetically Appealing

June 2nd, 2017:

-Added Roaming Section for the guide
-Added Updates Section