It always bothered me that popular kassadin builds always focused on staying at distance and going in only for sure shot death kills. Kassadin has a sword... I think he's meant to use it. So in order to melee you have to be able to survive at melee range, for at least a while. Well this guide gives you that. It also gives you a lot of cooldown reduction so you get to use your skills alot! This brings tremendous versatility! More silences, slows, stacked teleport drops, and Liandary procs. Frankly it sells itself.

Well here you have a key departure from other builds. I like the defense tree, ALOT. For a melee guy I can't imagine any other way to go. I think its... just that simple. One of the key aspects of this build is getting up close and personal and clicking your W, each hit will activate Liandary's! Thats exciting! I've also added as much health regen as I could get from masteries. He needs it.

Well I think you need everything. I've mixed it up quite a bit but generally evenly advanced every skill. The silence in your Q is fantastic! Really useful lots of different times! W does damage and gives mana back, cool! E puts out a really powerful and long lasting slow, isn't that handy! I've just delayed the W a bit since I think you'll generally be using it early on to get mana back, BUT... this is not to be an underestimated source of damage! If you manage to scare someone into running, hitting ghost and whacking away with your sword will get kills.

I hope rod of ages and liandary's aren't controversial. They seem like absolutely mandatory items to me. You should definitely rush your catalyst as it will greatly increase your lane sustain. Both add immediate health that increase his tankiness as well as a bunch of other extremely useful characteristics.

Boots: Hard to beat merc treads in general. If you have low cc opponents you could go ionians, cooldown reduction equals more casts equals more utility. That critical second they reduce off his teleport cast time can mean the difference between life and death. Add in a nashor's tooth and you can hardly click the buttons fast enough.

Zhonya's and Abyssal give armor and magic resist respectively with a nice bunch of ability power, everything he needs to be the ap melee he is. The activateable invulerability in zhonya's should be perfect in getting him just enough time to teleport to safety if necesssary.

Attack speed! So many wonderful choices! Maybe you can actually clear some jungle camps! It basically comes down to whether you want increased tenacity, melee damage, or cooldown reduction. Throw me in the briar patch!