Matchup as well as personal preference.

AD champions in general, Talon and Zed are some of the hardest counters, mid lane Tristana too, also mid lane Lucian. I guess the most common counter would be Zed. In general though there's so many easy counterpicks to Kassadin that you just shouldn't blind pick him if counters is something you're worried about. Instead focus on figuring out which matchups you're comfortable with and saving him for those matchups.

This video is for Fizz but it should help you.

Walls you'd want to Riftwalk over are basically just the same locations you'd want to take blast cones over, but also the spots where I point out potential pink ward locations, if a gank looks free AF and you don't want to risk a pink ward being there and calling your gank out, you can just go through your or the enemy jungle.

Especially on the blue buff side of the jungle that massively extends the time it takes to get the gank usually since you have to walk around such a big wall, but with Kassadin you can just Riftwalk over the blue buff wall so you can ignore potential river wards, and Riftwalk over any wall that would either force you to walk into a common ward spot (like bot lane tri brush) or force you to walk a really long way to avoid it unless you just skip the wall.

Like in that blast cone location where I talk about having a good dive opportunity in the video, if there's no blast cone there at the time you can just Riftwalk that easily. In that same gank path, to avoid potential pinks in the river you can also Riftwalk straight into the enemy jungle from the bottom mid lane brush (ideally you should know you're not about to facecheck into the enemy jungler if you do this).

If this is too risky, you can check the river pixel brush for a pink and if there isn't one, you can walk into the dragon pit and ult over it either into the tri-brush if ganking over-extended enemies who are too far forward to react in time even if they have the tri warded, and if they're not then you can ult over it into the enemy jungle, far enough away from the tri that a ward wouldn't see you, and go over to that blast cone location and either take the blast cone if it's there or ult over it again.

There are too many of these kinds of things to explain over text, I just wanted to give you some examples of how you can abuse your mobility to avoid common ward spots. This warding guide should give you an idea of common ward spots for mid lane/jungle and experience should tell you where side laners tend to ward, use this knowledge coupled with some creativity to figure out the best ways to use your ult to avoid vision.

But also remember that it's not necessarily always the best choice to avoid vision. Maybe you shove out mid and there are no great gank opportunities but you have nothing better to do so you may as well try; rather than avoid the river in case there are pinks there, walk through the river and look for pinks. If there are any, clear them out to deny enemy vision, a reward of its own.

Since your gank wasn't guaranteed to work out anyway, clearing out enemy vision may be a more valuable act anyway. The paths which are designed to try and ignore enemy vision as much as possible are only for when you really want to get the gank off, if you know it has a good chance of success. Otherwise, clearing out vision is a good alternative.

You definitely don't want to use Sorcery primary, Electrocute and Fleet Footwork are better keystones.

It simply takes too long to scale up, Kassadin already takes a while to come online and Tear of the Goddess delays that even further for mana that's usually overkill, and then on top of that it means you have to skip out on either Rabadon's Deathcap or Void Staff.

Summon Aery is better since Kassadin can't easily proc Electrocute until level 6.

It's actually what you're meant to do, I hadn't realized that I haven't updated that.

DON'T TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CAN'T DO

But yes I will fix those things soon™.


1-2 points feels like such an arbitrary amount. People use the argument "some mana regen is infinitely better than no regen at all", but I don't buy into this when every champion has base mana regen to begin with, so increasing it only by 1-2 points of Meditation , on every single champion, regardless of how much mana they build and what their mana costs are, seems more like a product of flawed logic than ingenious strategy. It's the same reason I don't buy into the x3 AS/1 LS quint page on ADC's, or running 1-2 points of Vampirism to have "some lifesteal rather than none at all" when you're starting Doran's Blade and often even rushing Blade of the Ruined King nowadays.

1-2 points is just an oddly specific yet arbitrary amount to take in any 5 point mastery, so I don't bother with those and won't bother until I actually hear a convincing argument in favour of it. I could see the Meditation mastery itself as being decent/under-rated especially after the Merciless nerf, but not necessarily on Kass, and not as an arbitrary split in points.

Also spamming Nether Blade on minions is pretty good for mana regeneration, I don't find myself having mana issues until Riftwalk so long as I can auto-attack minions, and at that point Meditation won't help much either.



Yup. Delayable for sure, but you'd definitely want to aim for it in all your games. If you can't proc Lich Bane then they likewise can't land Nether Blade or Riftwalk, and you'd be useless no matter what you build if all you can do is hit enemies with Null Sphere and Force Pulse. And since it gives 80 AP, even builds focusing on AP rather than Sheen proc would still not be doing that much more damage through the other spells than Lich Bane would. Like theoretically if we were skipping Lich Bane we'd just be building Morellonomicon in its place, which only gives 20 more AP.

I personally have never had the trouble of mana regen on Kass, only thing you need is mana, not mana regen, so what really is the point of Mediation?

Also, imo, I've always found Lich core because of the tower pushing, the CDR, and the massive, massive burst it grants. There's also the movement speed, so hey.

That being said, are you questioning the great Vapora Dork? Good, because you should.

Please don't eat scented soap products; I know they smell nice, and kinda like food, but they definitely do not have the same nutritional value.

G M D. That guy who jerks off next to you on the subway.