What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Welcome to a complete history of Kassadin, the Void Walker.
Although he might not be in the best spot right now, he has an incredible history of
changes throughout the years, some very exciting moments, and a whole lot of nerfs.
If you enjoy the video don’t forget to hit that like button, and if you don’t enjoy
the video please click the dislike, and if this video hits 15,000 ratings, I’ll make
another champion history.
Anyways, let’s get started.
There is a place between dimensions known as the Void, filled with unspeakable things,
and although most knowledge of the Void has been lost, there are many who have unwittingly
gazed into the beyond, unable to turn away.
Kassadin was once a man forced to look upon the void, and was forever changed by what
he saw.
Initially a seeker of forbidden knowledge, he sought out the void and discovered that
it was something else entirely.
He is one of very few men to have ventured to the lost city of Icathia and lived to tell
the tale.
But within the city he found secrets that threatened to consume him forever, so in order
to survive he let the void inside of him.
And miraculously, he was able to overcome the alien urges, and emerged as the void walker.
Now he protects valoran from the terrors of the void, in hopes that no one further will
be consumed by the darkness.
The history of kassadin begins during the very early phases of League of Legends, where
a character known as Kassadin began development as part of the original group of 40 champions
that League of Legends started with, headed by Ezreal, the designer who worked on champions
such as Ahri, Irelia, and Nocturne, and was voiced by Adam Harrington.
Not unlike a lot of the other original 40 champions, Kassadin’s design took heavy
inspiration from a Hero from Defense of the Ancients, the first ever MOBA, known as the
Anti Mage, who was a hyper mobile anti caster Hero, that involved blinking around, damaging
people based on their mana pools, and using powerful anti magic shields.
Although Kassadin and The Anti Mage have somewhat different gameplay, they have fairly similar
kits, and there’s no doubt that Kassadin at least took some inspiration from what was
a pretty interesting hero from Defense of the Ancients.
Upon his completion, on patch 0.9.22.7, on August 7th, 2009, Kassadin was released as
the 29th champion in League of Legends, after Veigar and right before Gangplank and Taric.
Although the overall powerlevel of champions in the beta was generally quite higher than
it is today, he was without a doubt overpowered upon release, as a dominant anti mage champion
who brought insane mobility and some nice burst damage to the table, as well as a targeted
silence on his Q and the ability to steal mana on hit using his W. Riftwalk also had
a huge range and a cooldown of 3 seconds, and his force pulse took 4 abilties to charge,
not to mention higher AP ratios and base damage overall across the board, with his passive
giving him bonus attack speed when taking damage from abilities.
It wasn’t too hard to figure out his strength, and in the patch immediately following his
release, which was only 5 days later, he received a hefty nerf to his ultimate, increasing the
cooldown, mana cost, and the timeframe for doubling stacking additional casts.
Buuuuut he was still a little crazy and so on the next patch again he received a nerf,
and again on the next patch right after that.
So in under 30 days from his release, Kassadin had been nerfed 3 times.
This put him at an okay spot for a little bit of time, but in the early phases of League,
the game was a lot different.
Mobility was nonexistent in most champions, which gave Kassadin a massive advantage over
almost everyone, and along with the fact that he became the prime counterpick to mages,
this paved the way for him to become an incredibly dominant champion.
In early season one his force pulse was finally nerfed, and although he had a huge mobility
advantage over most champions at the time, the meta was to play an ad carry in the mid
lane, and an attack damage, auto attack based champion is hard to lane against as kassadin.
So although he had a reasonably strong kit, he actually wasn’t that popular, until about
half a year later when season one was beginning.
And on patch 96, we saw the first removal of Utility from his kit, in making his w no
longer steal percent maximum mana from his target, but simply just restore mana on hit
instead.
Stealing mana from someone was a pretty crazy mechanic, and with the removal came another
dip in popularity for our anti mage friend, as it was regarded as a huge blow.
Later, on patch 99, he actually received his first buff!
But immediately in the next patch we saw another case of removal of utility, as his riftwalk
could no longer be cast while rooted.
I think we can all agree that that was a pretty fair change.
Kassadin received another series of buffs and nerfs that ultimately resulted in his
W being reworked.
Because the rest of his kit did less damage, the fact that his W just provided armor penetration
started to shine through as a really strange element of a champion with mostly AP scaling,
so it was changed to deal magic damage and scale with AP as well.
However, time proved that the damage values were actually still pretty small as Kassadin
struggled to succeed in the strange season 1 meta that didn’t exactly favor him, so
on patch 125 he received a pretty significant buff to his force pulse with a minor nerf
on null sphere, to shift some power off of his Q. With the beginning of Season 2 season
came the massive meta shift that would solidify the current league meta, and although Kassadin
was already being played in the mid lane due to his mobility and roaming, this is where
we began to see his matchups in lane start to improve bit by bit.
Eventually we saw a decent nerf to Riftwalk, increasing the cooldown by one second, and
for a dozen patches afterwards he was in an alright spot, until his riftwalk and nether
blade received significant ap ratio buffs in order to buff his late game.
And now we head into the beginning of season 3, where to kick off the New Year Xpeke on
Fnatic makes one of the most historic plays of all time.
Let’s take a moment to listen in: *AUDIO FROM THE XPEKE*
I remember watching that happen live, and it really was so insane, one of the most exciting
plays I’ve ever seen throughout my time of watching league for sure.
But despite that incredible play, the first half of season 3 would go on to be pretty
uneventful for kassadin, as he received pretty much no changes.
However, the introduction of flask and shifting around of the starting items in the preseason
helped him out quite a lot as it made it easier for him to survive the early game, so he was
a pretty decent champion in season 3 and saw some competitive play here and there, while
he became a popular ban/pick for lower rankings of play.
Later into the season on patch 3.13 he received a pretty major change that focused on increasing
his risk versus reward, making him less tanky but increasing the damage on riftwalk.
This change also included a decent buff to his early game silence, which would go on
to prove to be quite costly, as this is the major change that boosted Kassadin into an
insane level of dominance.
This buff was intended to be a neutral change that caused a little bit of a shift in his
playstyle, but the silence improved his early game a ton, and the ultimate changes ended
up just being a flat buff because the mana refund was super impactful, while the removal
of magic resistance was barely relevant.
Before this change he was already a pretty strong champion that saw competitive play,
but after this change he exploded into one of the most ridiculous cases of a champion
we’ve ever seen.
As season 3 wrapped up we saw Kassadin hit an 80% ban rate in soloqueue, and as things
continued into season 4, we saw that number his ban rate hit an insane 95%, and combined
with his pick rate we had a champion that was being banned or picked in 99.5% of games
in solo queue, and maintained around the same level of popularity in competitive play.
The combination of being overpowered, but also incredibly frustrating to play against,
led him to terrorize the ladder for over 4 months, and even a major nerf in patch 4.3
didn’t help much.
On patch 4.4 he finally received his major rework, with the goal to make him less frustrating
to play against, more risk vs reward based, and overall just more balanced, removing his
silence, nerfing his passive, nerfing his damage across the board and changing his W
a bit, increasing the mana cost on his ultimate, and generally just overall trying to be a
massive nerf to kassadin.
For the most part the rework was successful in nerfing him, as his win rate plummeted
to about 42%.
He received a buff in patch 4.6 to his W and Q damage.
Shortly after this change players began playing him in a tanky bruiser kind of playstyle,
and he once again became pretty strong, although nowhere near as dominant as before.
However, no champion in the entire game could keep up with the mobility of a kassadin with
his ultimate, and so he continued to be a strong champion as Riot decided that they
didn’t want to change his ultimate too much, as they decided that it was his defining feature
that made kassadin, kassadin.
Throughout the second half of season 4 and early season 5 he would go on to receive exactly
5 fairly minor nerfs.
And now we hit 5.4, oh man what a patch.
For a change that seems so small it’s actually crazy that this was by far the biggest nerf
Kassadin ever received in his lifespan.
With a gutting of his range on his ultimate, Riot did exactly what they said they wouldn’t,
by ruining his ultimate, his key defining feature.
The rest of his abilities had already been nerfed into the ground over time, but the
previous version of his ultimate was such an incredibly ability that it could carry
his entire kit to be strong, and his win rate hit an all time low of about 38%.
But fortunately, Riot immediately realized their mistake and on patch 5.5 he received
a really significant buff that saw the cooldown on his ultimate lowered, which proved to be
reasonable due to the overall range nerf from before.
He also received a visual update on this patch that came with a new model, textures, animations,
and all that good stuff.
Even after this change he was a little underpowered actually, and his win rate was super low,
around 44% or even less for quite a while.
He would go on to receive a handful of minor buffs throughout the rest of season 5, and
that leads us to where we are today.
Kassadin is still a bit underpowered, but with an ultimate like his, I think it’s
a good thing that Riot is being a little bit hesitant with the buffs they are handing out
to him.
He’s had a lot of ups and downs but for the last 10 months or so, things have been
pretty quiet with Kassadin recently, and who knows what will happen to him in the future,
but I’m sure we will be seeing more of him eventually.
And that’s just about it.
Here are some of my favorite comments from a previous video, where I asked what your
favorite item in league of legends was?
For a chance to be featured in a future video, leave a comment about what champion you think
I should make a complete history of next.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!