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Great guide btw!
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.
SORCERY
Arcane Comet
Manaflow Band
Transcendence
Gathering Storm
DOMINATION
Sudden Impact
Ravenous Hunter
What about Arcane Comet seems to have a better winrate and better damage in lane.
https://i.imgur.com/6lAFOl9.png is different size intentional?
https://i.imgur.com/JP2nEQO.png I don't think you can level skills like this...
About the guide:
Have you thought about putting 3x Merciless and 2x Meditation ? Seems to be pretty useful and common these days, especially since you can then afford to use more mana on farming, which can often be a problem of your laning (or 4x1, as some people do)
Do you think Lich Bane is 100 % core? I've seen some people skip it if they aren't able to proc it consistently. As you said, you often just harass from afar and try to poke in teamfights before actually utilizing your Lich Bane (you just used TLD)
just my 2 cents or something
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.
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.
Many people take Meditation on champs that use mana because Merciless isn't that great, and even one point in meditation can give you enough mana sustain to let you get through those tough times. Sometimes you just are running out of mana in the early game against hard matchups, at least that's what I think. It's not a great or fantastic trick, but it can let you get away with something during the laning phase.
As for Lich Bane, I've seen some people skip it just because of the fact that it is sometimes really hard to proc, or you have to focus survivability before you can actually get around building it. It does offer nice utility, but I think that sometimes you might need to get both Abyssal Mask and Zhonya's Hourglass early into the game instead of focusing on the damage part.
J æ n i. That guy who secretly videotapes you jerking off next to me on the subway and uploads it to vimeo.
Please do, also videotape yourself getting off to it, and then upload that on vimeo as well; we'll make it the new MOBAFire forum game!
You are right with this. Sometimes Zhonya's Hourglass is more important than Lich Bane even if you're not looking for armor, and sometimes Abyssal Mask is needed very early on to deal with magic damage. It's rare but sometimes Lich Bane has to be delayed until your 5th item. That being said I don't ever see it worth skipping it entirely in a full-build scenario.