HOW TO PLAY KASSADIN - FULL INDEPTH GUIDE - RANK 1 CHALLENGER MID 

As an over 1 million point Kassadin Main great video. Just want to add a few things that helped me play the champ that may help others. 1) Itemization, I think this depends a lot on your rune choices and one dark technology that wasn't really discussed here was ingenious hunter. This is rune dramatically increases your ability to build/utilize crown of the shattered queen by essentially cutting the cooldown in half when fully stacked. It also reduces the time it takes to stack tear and lowers the cooldown of archangels zonyhas and lich bane. In fact basically the only time I would consider building lich bane is if I have ingenious hunter however generally I think Lich Bane can be a bit of a trap item. But ya I think crown is actually better in most situations than ROA and I believe it is Kassadin's highest WR mythic however if you don't want to think about crown CD or can't utilize it properly ROA is also fine. 2) Runes, Great info here just a few things to think about. I personally would never go treasure hunter, totally see the logic in rushing ROA which I dont think you actually necessarily want to do since delaying it a little bit early tremendously increases the value of the level you get. But if you want to try crown Kassadin 100% go ingenious hunter and in all other cases where you're in the domination tree I would recommend going ultimate hunter. It just gives so much ability haste on your ulti and that really is the biggest thing gating Kassadin early game, his ultimate CD. Additionally I think sudden impact > TOB. Sudden impact is honestly just Kassadin's highest damage rune it's kind of comical I've had plenty of games where this rune does more than electrocute or first strike. It does suck because it does very little pre 6 unless you flash and I think a lot of people don't go it because it's not really something you 'feel' like a ludens proc or electrocute but honestly it's just insane how much this rune helps your damage. First strike is also good in matchups where you want to play at q+e range but don't want to get closer than that because you lose actual trades. i.e. talon, bruisers, things like that. It allows you to get more value than electrocute in lane since if you're ever close enough to them to proc electrocute you're probably about to explode anyway, and just eek out a little bit more gold in lane. It's also a good comeback mechanic. One think I think we forget about is that first strike applies to all damage you do. So you can really accelerate yourself in mid game but hitting combos on multiple people in team fights. 3) Skill order, this can be very fluid however in 99% of games I recommend people just max e. I think everything Shok said about leveling abilities is true however even in ap matchups you should be fine with e max. The biggest reason is waveclear and the slow. A really important breakpoint for Kassadin is when you can clear the casters with 1 e + no stack ultimate since it dramatically affects the speed at which you can respond to river skirmishes and roam, however you can reliably hit this at level 7 with a little bit of AP. It just basically makes it so you don't need to dump all of your mana into your ultimate to clear waves and then show up at the fight with a 4 stack r and no mana to use it. In that same vein I also don't think it's necessary to rush catalyst early. Imo it's almost always better to get the blasting wand or amp tome early since his AP ratios are so high and like I said you do need a little bit of ap to hit that level 7 breakpoint. There are also a lot of matchups that you can generate kill threat in with a little bit of AP. Honestly I usually won't find myself even buying tear until second base. since it's just so bad for the laning phase. On interesting thing about Kassadin is he's pretty happy to operate on low mana because of his w so in a lot of situations the early mana isn't necessary to actually do things. Don't know if anyone actually read that just wanted to share some other thoughts about Kassadin from someone who has played this champ in every elo from bronze to Masters. Great thing about Kassadin is that he's very versatile in how you can interpret him. There are lots of successful Kassadin players who have played him to a high level with many different builds. A good example of this would be around 2 years Permaban popularized a strategy for Kassadin where u skip tear and take electrocute every game and reached EUW challenger while another player named lunalina in KR played fleet tear Kassadin every single game in Korean Challenger.

Full respect for releasing this after this champ is not top tier

shok, you’re single-handedly going to be the reason i continue playing this game and improve - thank you so much for all of these awesome guides

Okay, lets go! I've been getting into Kassadin and was sad to not see him in any of your guides so this is a god send! Thanks Shok

banger guide I liked the pacing of this video it didn't feel like 45m at all. well done and hope you continue to release long form content like this

Just started playing Kassadin and this helped me out a lot, thank you!

just started with kassadin, and thanks a lot for exhaustive explanation, very helpful.

Thank you Shok, been watching you for a bit and I love all your videos and your chill personality, keep up the good work man

Finally a good guide for my main from my favorite youtuber! Feeling amazing.

I still don't understand why kassafin can't have a silence... Briar has a point and click stun. Moreover, new Champs are quite broken by comparison.

HOLY SHT. Thank you so much Shok. I play kassa but I'm waiting for a full indeep guide from you. I love u

been playing kassa for a while and helped my friend get to masters using kassa and the full gold accel build with no tear that X22racer was doing. honestly ludens way better than roa after the catalyst nerf and the lost chapter buff, getting chapter on first recall and moving to jglr feels way better than waiting for late 3 item spike with bad agency early atleast in lower elo since his late isnt as strong anymore

Looking forward to watch this as a kass main

Loving the content recently, the guides on how to play Syndra and Ahri especially have been really useful and beginning guides like the champ pool one have helped, any chance we can get a Lissandra guide/do you know any good existing guides?

shok ushering in the new era of non racist and toxic kassa mains, love to see it.

the miami heat lost but the goat posted a new guide so my day is better

Nice guide but you forgot to add Ryze in matchups difficulty and also, you forgot to add him in some other guides before. Also, Ryze is getting buffed soon! Just saying. XD

Would it be possible to see a anivia guide coming out at some point? Now with the new vicotrias skin i would believe people might want to start trying her again. on top of that she is doing quite good in plat+ atm

Such an amazing guide! Please make a Seraphine one, stay slayful king!

I don't think you'll read this comment so I'll try to keep it short. You and coach curtis are absolute Godtier content creators. With that said, I would really really love to see you make a tier list about all the heroes that are amazing in teaching you the fundamentals of the game so later on you can expand on it. Viktor/Ori come to mind but I am more of of an assassin type with mixed with gragas and anivia. But I feel like cause I don;t fully always understand my job except on assassins which im pretty decent at but the higher you go the harder it is to play them, so I would love to have a hero that really teaches me csing, fundamentals like roaming, wave management etc. Its not as similar with aggressive heroes and me seeing the game from mainly only 1-2 perspectives seems contrproductive. Ive seen some people asking for the same thing, so besides your absolutely amazing videos so far that noone can match, I think a lot of us would love to see you make a 'tier list' for heroes in mid with differnet identities and which ones are the best to figure that out. It always depends on the player obv, but I think it would be a great overview. I mean I used to be diamond then I took a 6 year break and now am barely gold so a lot changed and I would love to hear your opinion about it because you always put it in the most clear words ive ever seen anyone put it in. Similar to curtis. I hope you see this someday and think about it! IReading through comments i think many would like that.

Any plans on making an updated azir video? Much love!

What are your thoughts on Aery Kassadin? Wouldnt it be more consistent than meteor because enemies know how to move around meteor arcane in high elos

Yimit needs to see this.

I'm the worst Kassadin one trick. I always lose to Ekko lmaooo

I struggle deciding on a champion pool for mid, but I LOVE KASSADIN. Returning player, played last time 5 years ago in plat 2. Picking him as a blind pick option tho is considered bad as I've read because he has very punishing counters. Do you think I'd still be able to OTP him with customizations like your sweet foot page or should I really settle for another blindpick and only counter with him? BTW Thanks for the guides Shok, I watched you like 8 hours the last 2 days :D

literally my second game on kassadin i played against a 170000 mastery jayce. that was a fun game

Just one question, isn't Coup de Grace better than Last Stand? I am just wondering.

you don't think sapphire + refillable is a viable choice? 950g for catalyst is op in Ryze, idk about Kass.

just gonna liketh is cause ur cool

can you share the item set?

Alot of high Elo Kassadin Onetricks swear on crown these days, like Blitza for example. What's your reasoning behind dismissing it as a mythic for Kassa? They play it with Firststrike and ingenious hunter. It also gives as much AP as RoA when the shield is up without you having to wait for it to stack up. Just curious :) Keep up the good work, love this video!

how to deal with people oneshoting you while having item like MAW

`` Make sure to pick it in the right game `` Me who instalock him no matter my roles : Mmh.

but is not kassadin dead in meta ? 😢

I just want silence back :(

Poggies

Lissandra still Soon TM I guess?

How can you call yourself rank 1 kassadin when permaban exists

Is veigar better than kassadin ?

shok can u read this

Do not max W second on Kassadin ever pls it does nothing meaningfull Q Dmg goes 65 / 95 / 125 / 155 / 185 W Dmg goes 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 / 150 The total dmg increas from Q is 120 while the total dmg increas from W is only 100 Q Cooldown goes 10 / 9.5 / 9 / 8.5 / 8 W Cooldown stays always at 7 The mana from W goes up from 4% to 6% max mana but that is kinda usless if you are good at Kassadin you understand how to use your mana well and you wont need it also getting 2% more max mana back is not _that_ much more The mana thing alone is _not_ worth maxing W second for Obviously if they have any magic dmg at all the Q shield also matters even after lane since we are speaking about the second ability to max Even if they dont have any magic dmg at all (why did you pick Kassadin lol) you should max Q second since it gives more dmg and gets a lower cooldown Conclusion max Q first or second

step 1- develop fierce hatred of minorities

I started playing kassadin for the meme but now i am racist

I know a much better kassadin otp on EUW that will be very mad

copypasta arsenal?

Bro is the most racist player

Bro become racist

everything is pretty ok except the tier list, especially the skill tier, in no world is for example the kassadin vs yasuo matchup skill depentant, i mean ok you cant know that because you play in NA where people dont play their champs properly but in euw master atleast you will have a rough time against half of the 'skill' tier list champs. skill matchups in lane are fizz, kata sylas for example. you used to counter those guys but the early damage nerfs made kassa worse in lane.

great guide