Question: does health on Yi actually matter? Seems to me that when I have to play against him I deal enough damage to either kill him between Q cds, or I don't and his ridiculous auto attackdamage and the heal from BT and using Q to Dodge damage / CC is more effective.

Also isn't triforce like 200 hp or something? Doesn't seem like that's a significant enough number to actually be keeping you alive if you're being focused in the first place.

RoA is definitely a luxury item on kassadin, same with seekers. If you get them while you're ahead they're good, but they really don't do anything to give you the power to get ahead if you're behind. Catalyst / tear kassadin is not scary early to mid game. For the 2.4k gold you spent on those 2 items you could have gotten a Needlessly large rod and blasting wand. That's 120 AP independent of your runes and masteries; kassadin (if you land all your skills with one auto from w) had a total ap ratio of 2. At that point' you sacrificed your roaming potential to survive a lane that you were never going to win in the first place.

For me, when looking at what to build I classify my champions into two categories: bruisers (mordekaiser, renekton, jarvan, etc) whose job it is to either soak damage and provide consistent damage on at least one enemy target, and glass canons, whose job it is to go 1 for 1 (ideally better) with the enemy at all costs. Only build defensives options (Armor n magic resist, and or sustain) on bruisers otherwise you aren't going to be useful to your team. *

*applies only to top and mid champs, and occasionally carry jungles. ADC and support -and traditional jungles- have their own specific attributes.

 

Health is really nice when you're playing Yi because it helps you survive burst damage. Sustained damage isn't a huge threat once you've built some lifesteal and you're mashing Q all the time to go intangible, but getting blown up in the duration of a single CC will ruin your day. Having a good chunk of health can let you survive long enough to go back to mashing Q for resets.

 

Does anybody else have trouble playing ranked games? People in my ranked games are so negative and toxic that being positive and keeping everyone from going on tilt is incredibly taxing mentally. I find myself playing a game and just feeling exhausted afterward. I play only the bare minimum of ranked necessary to keep myself from decaying because I honestly just can't find the ambition to put up with the shit I usually do.

I guess I need to just spam normals to get to a level where I can carry without having to suck my teammates' collective dicks. I dunno.

Sadly, my friends in higher elo tell me the general attitude doesn't improve as you go up, so it makes me wonder what point there is to playing ranked anyway. Bleh.

 

I disagree, I've had much better attitude games in gold 4/3 than I did in silver anything.

 

It's weird, actually. Although it is true that people rage and/or troll in higher divisions as well, do not, for one second, think that it happens with the same frequency as Silver/Bronze. Hell, I am low Gold, and I have noticed a significant difference.

And even if you do get toxic people, you will still hear much less retarded shit than you would at a lower division. The people who you can swear are clinically retarded if you watch them play/talk in chat usually can't make it past Silver.
There are exceptions, of course, but in general, I find ranked games in Gold less annoying than in lower divisions.


P.S: Still don't have access to my account. It is, admittedly, partly my fault, but all I need Riot to do is reset my password and send it on a differnet email. Is that so hard?

 

You guys give me hope.

I guess I just need to work on improving so I can play at a level that will hopefully net me less-horrific games. Gotta believe in the dream.

 

This is me, although I'd argue it's much more my queue anxiety than it is negative players. It's a pressure on myself to perform well and not fuck up, so I can see I'm improving as a player and what needs working on - I haven't played ranked in over 2 weeks and I'm sat on a promo for Gold III again.

My best piece of advice honestly is as soon as someone start's becoming toxic, and doesn't listen/heed/play nice post advice/morale booster/whatever you do, is to just mute them and focus on you, yourself and your champion alone.

What I mean by that is, group up, try not to make mistakes, play as a team, but focus on what you're doing. Not whether the Volibear's going too deep or the ADC's jumping into the middle of the fight because that Ahri has 20hp left, focus on what you're doing exclusively and how you can get better at it.

Recognise mistakes, hell, it's the reason I talk to myself when I play - outside being a bad habit I formed as a kid that has my parents thinking I'm nuts, it helps me think and plan ahead as to what I'm gonna do. Why was that bad/good, could it have been better? What did I do wrong? Do I need more wards? etc.

Being stuck in a toxic cesspit of players never helps, there are positive players out there, the problem is there are people like me who think we're better than we are and want to be higher up, we just can't get there yet because unsurprisingly, we're not ready. I'm just happy I've managed to draw my rage in and just blast music during the rough times and focus on (usually) becoming the tanky brick wall that nothing's gonna get through.

Edit: -

True, but that's why Kassadin's a risky gamble, odds are extremely high you're going to get bullied throughout laning phase and potentially camped because you only have flash pre 6 to be defensive, and if you get denied your blue you're so screwed it isn't even funny. I honestly think you can avoid taking a tear on Kassadin as nice an item as Seraph's is, he's rather slow to stack it and I fel like Archangels just isn't good on him after RoA.

I honestly don't think Kass can deviate too much from his build though, RoA is such a core item, even if you're behind there's not a lot else you can build/do short of cleaning up a scrappy teamfight and scraping the gold together to buy something. There's nothing cheap and substantial, and it's why I hate mid laners that build something like Mejai's when they're behind - it's a gamble that won't pay off 85% of the time. Even then, all you're doing if you get a few stacks is putting yourself further behind if you get killed theoretically due to your squishiness.

Should be noted I don't play mid, and always go RoA first on Kass in aram, so short of watching pro players, I know very little on the subject - it's all just guesswork and experience of watching/seeing Kass in action.

I also forget to mention seekers - Well, much more-so than RoA, though I feel the stacks should be easy enough to gather even if you're shoved out of lane for a while, and it's better than nothing due to the stats when stacked.

 

That's your problem right there. your entry timing. If the enemy has enough CC and damage to explode you upon entry, then that's a terrible time for Yi to engage.

Yi is all about timing. You use W and Q to negate as much of the leftover damage as possible after your tank has initiated and the enemy has thrown their CC.

How much HP Yi has should not be a factor since the ultimate goal is, at most, to lose only 75% of your HP to get your Q train going.

And if you need a good chunk of HP, then you buy Randuin's or SV and call it a day as you go to town murdering people. Ancient Golem if you need CC redux that badly.

Either way, you don't build a Tforce or aim for Tforce on Yi as a survivability item. It's a raw damage item and Yi doesn't utilize it well enough for a Tforce to be a factor.

If you need mana, you buy Chalice and a flask. You now have catalyst level sustain.

I play Kassadin a lot. Playing Kass is never a gamble. Playing him is an assured victory as long as I dodge skillshots and gank. The only time Kassadin should be losing is if he is failing to dodge attacks that badly.

Kassadin players are called Kassholes for a reason. They're the ultimate fuckers to basically any and all mid champs. You literally can't lose as Kassadin unless you majorly fuck up so spectacularly that they have 2 levels on you or you aren't ganking at all.

All the items suggested so far are ignoring one core issue. Kassadin is a single target poke/assassin. He doesn't go in nuking an entire team until later. His entire plan is being this annoying fucker weaving in and out with Q and E pokes slowly eroding enemy defenses.

To accomplish that, you build Mpen. Haunting Guise and Sorce shoes are amazing for a neutral kassadin. If winning, straight AP so you can E waves and gank more often. If disadvantaged, Chalice and Flask for incredible sustain and damage mitigation while being an annoying asshole to the enemy with constant Q spam. No matter what path, you're building for more damage output, not more survivable. Even the chalice/flask path is so you save money for AP while neutering magic damage and pumping out more lane poking.

RoA never fits into the build in SR because it takes too much gold and time for it to be any benefit on Kassadin's regular gold budget. He, like other AP assassins, has far better items to prioritize if they want to kill people. Haunting for HP, Chalice/Doran's stack for mana, Abyssal vs Magic, Seeker's vs AD. Too many far better tailored items than a one-size-fits-all tool that only kicks into full gear at the 25 minute mark, assuming an average game.

Now, if you as Kass are somehow murdering god damn everything and can get RoA at 13 minutes? Do it. If not, forever ignore the item because it's far too late for it to help you in the gank phase.

Kass flowchat:

Mid enemy in Q range?

Y -> Q and walk back.
N -> Ulti in, Q, then walk back.

They should have zero retaliation capabilities because of the silence. If they did fight back, then that means they fired a skill shot early and you failed to dodge, which is then a skill problem that needs to be fixed.

 

Except the math for that doesn't add up.
Background math info below

Spoiler

Damage is calculated as a level 6 kassadin with 3 points in Q, and one point in the rest.

Damage is calculated on a level 6 Ezreal with 47 mr through mr glyphs and defensive masteries in the typical 21/9/0 adc build. His effective magic health is 1550.

With the AP build his effective health is 1425.

With the mpen build his effective health is 1056 (you over penetrate his Mr dealing true damage).

The AP build is 2.5 k gold for a blasting wand amd needlessly large rod. It yields 8 flat mpen, 8% mpen, and 148 flat AP. Your total raw damage is ~650.

The mpen build is 2.5k gold for sorcerer's shoes and haunting guise. It yields 49 flat mpen, 8% mpen and 48 AP. Your total raw damage is ~450.

At about the same gold threshold (2.5k gold) you can either have -with identical set ups- 49 flat penetration and 48 AP (mpen build) and deals 447 damage to a level 6 (42%) and the AP build deals 653 raw magic damage (before resistances, post 43%). So the two are virtually identical mathematically speaking. However once you get 900 more gold (blasting wand for mpen, finish dcap for AP) it isn't really a contest for which deals more damage anymore. I didn't even bother with the calculations because the disparity gap between 49 (+8%) mpen and 88 AP and 9 mpen (+8%) and 220 Ap is huge given that Kassadin had a total AP ratio of 2.05.

Of course keep in mind you are giving up the utility of boots2 by rushing the dcap. But overall if I'm neutral then I'm going for the dcap. His ratio are so high that pen builds don't see worth it comparatively.

 

Sure, Yi aims to wait on the sidelines until the enemy team have used their CC before diving in. Trouble is, a competent enemy team will aim to save a stun or silence for the moment you show your face. You will occasionally be hit with CC as Yi despite your best efforts and you will be focused down whenever that happens. It's going to happen a whole lot more now that the nerf bat has been swung and Alpha Strike doesn't fully reset after a kill.

How much health any champion has is always a going to be factor. It's bizarre that anyone could think otherwise. If you run out of health, you stop dealing damage and give the enemy team gold. Neither of those are good things. I'm not saying you have to build pure tank, but if you're playing Yi then you're literally throwing yourself into melee range. Building durability at that point isn't an option, it's a fucking requirement.


Trinity Force really is a shitty defensive item though. No argument there.

 

I've always been of the mind that RoA is key on Kassadin. Most times I rush it. It gives everything Kassadin needs. Sustain in lane, extra mana so you can go crazy with Q and R, health, because Kassadin is melee and your R brings you in melee range, so you need to have some survivability for when teamfights roll around and you inevitably get focused, and AP.
Plus, 90% of the times I see streamers/pros play Kassadin, they build RoA. It doesn't mean everything, but I thought it was pretty well accepted that RoA on Kassadin is not only beast, it's what you should build if you have enough gold in the early game.

 

. . .

How is 447 true vs 305 after reduction at 6 virtually identical?

And you're using the wrong set-up for Kass on runes.

Standard masteries are 21/0/9 with 15 AP + 9 MPen + 12 MR + 3.5 Mana/5 so that Kassadin can fill his role of mage shutdown better.

Haunting Guise build leads to 48 AP + 39 Mpen (+8%).

NLR + Blasting is 148 AP + 9 MPen (+8%).

Assuming the usual Q3, E2, R1 at 6 and for sustain in mid for this first run.

Kass is rarely going to use W or R for actual damage this early because he doesn't have the CDR, bulk, mana, or the speed to get into position for that against a ranged enemy. Those two skills will be ignored in the damage calc, since if he could get into position then that'd be optimal/advantaged Kass, not neutral.

So kass's base on a Q3/E2 are 310 + 1.4 AP at this level.

Haunting Kass does 377 base. Using the Mres of 47 base for ADCs, leftover of 4 Mres after pen which is a 3.5% damage reduction. Actual damage is 364.

NLR does 517 base. Mres after Mpen is 34. Damage reduction is 25.5%. Actual is 385.

Assume that you got DCap gold at level 7. All other variables are still the same except Q3 is now Q4.

Haunting: 436 base -> 421 after mitigation

DCap: 579 base -> 431 after mitigation


Now, here you'd be all happy about AP Kass doing more raw damage by barely double digits. I know I would. The problem starts with AP kass having far more downtime getting from lane to lane because of zero boots.

Blue mitigates that weakness by letting him spam Ulti, which is why I suggest the pure AP route for a winning Kass. You're far more likely to receive blue from it.

A neutral Kass's chance for blue are lower so he'd need to ration his mana, making boots required for timely ganks that don't burn his entire bar.

. . . You're missing the point. If they have only the one CC left, you dodge with Q and call it a day.

If you entered where they still have enough power to nuke your ass, then you've entered at the wrong time. If they do nuke your ass after you've killed someone in that tiny gap before your next Q, then your ADC should be wrecking them instead.

And yes, how much health your champ has is a huge factor. The health margin is your safety margin. As long as you have just enough to stay alive, that's all you need. Any more is waste.

Rushing durability is not a requirement. Should Yi get it at some point? hell fucking yes. As a rush item ever? Not a single chance, or else you wouldn't have picked yi that game.

@Republic: Because the pros are playing a different game from us. They aim to survive and farm while taking advantage of mistakes. You don't have the raw mechanical skill to do the same and actually stay neutral. it doesn't happen. Pro strats are for pros. Don't apply it to anything under Diamond.

And RoA is beast on Kass. Under a certain time frame. If you miss out on it, it sucks ass. If you make it, it's amazing. No one ever denied it. It's just not a huge priority or even on the list any more once you miss the 13 minute mark.

 

And before that pros were rushing dcap and void staff. There isn't really a "right answer" but in each contextc each item has its own use. RoA is a little bit of everything that everyone wants -health, mana, ap, and sustain- but generally things you can do without if you try very hard. Glass canon kassadin is probably one of, if not the, strongest roamers in the game. You have to overcome his shitty laning p par to do this, and RoA (and the resultant RoA/AA build) is a response to better early game pressure by opponents in Lane and jungle.

Contextually, 'investment' style builds get better as the game slows down (such as high Elo or 5v5 play) because the game teems to lay longer when fewer people make mistakes. Or there become more ways to reverse a snowball phenomena (I.e more efficient defenses, better game knowledge, etc). The addition of stronger early game Lane opponents for kassadin (Zed, looking at you) and better anti-magic defenses (new spirit visage, lucky shadows, etc) means that the less stressful ways to play Kassadin -Investment style builds with ROA and AA makes it much harder to kill him once they b pay themselves off- are seen more often then old school "nuke a carry and a half then die" builds. Because dying isn't fun, and what's the point of glass Cannon if your opponent survives your burst?

Most of that higher thinking isn't involved in silver league though, so people just mindlessly ape the pros with no idea of how or why our when to build the different builds.


TLR RoA kassadin is less stressful and about as, if not more, satisfying than glass Cannon kassadin. So it sees more play.

 

Only difference being that building RoA on Kassadin is not a pro strat, it's common sense.
A Kassadin who is ahead rushes RoA to snowball like hell, a Kassadin who is even with his lane opponent builds it to stay in the game, and a Kassadin who is losing in his lane is fucked either way, so all he can do is rush some flat ap items and try to gank other lanes in order to catch up.
Either way, building a RoA on Kassadin is not that hard, nor unusual.

Edit: Yes, people can skip and go for straight damage right away, and that works fine on 1v1, but unless you are a complete jukemaster, you will get melted in a teamfight. Maybe you have managed to take a squishy with you, maybe not, but either way, Kassadin needs some survivability in order to dish out continues damage.

 

The maybe-maybe not part is why people build RoA now, the power of single burst magic assassins had been severely reduced (AD ones are, of course coming into fashion) because of the way the game has changed. Which I said above.

Rather the point of a 'fair' assassin used to be the one for one trade (I.e. I kill one of them then die) but magic assassins now as a whole are rather more like magic bruisers, providing high burst over a short period of time rather than instantly. Ahri normally needs 2 Foxfire procs to kill an opponent, very rarely does a kassadin or Diana 100-0 someone in their initial chain, etc. The game seems to believe that the point of an AP assassin is to pick am already weak target, finish it off, then get away. Which is fundamentally different from the way they operated in the past "pick someone and make them your bitch then die".

The emergence of reset based assassins (akali, khazix, AP Yi, and katarina notably) in s3 is indicative of the change in the design structure of LoL (and the later nerfs they suffered). Older mage-assassins lacking these mechanics found themselves adapting more health oriented builds to try and compensate. Why bring an assassin who can build to potentially 1:1 the enemy carry -but more importantly, maybe not- when you can bring one that (pre-nerfs) can do that to the whole enemy team if they play it right or (post nerfs) provides strong CC and picking potential at minimal risk?

Basically assassins got greedy because they want their cake but they want to eat it too. Since the game accommodates them via reset mechanics and dual offense and defence items (RoA and AA for AP) they can get away with it. Part of the evolution of the game, I suppose.

 

I build RoA when ahead/even because I make utterly retarded decisions sometimes, and Kassadin with RoA is safer than without while still being able to do the same job. Pretty straightforward.

 

Also really depends if you decide to go through the Tears path on Kassadin. Seraph + Rod of Ages gives amazing survivability, and in general one of the highest damage output throughout the game. I know I generally build Rod of Ages on Kassadin. Sure it's not the only build path, but it works in most situations unless you are heavily behind (In which case you may decide go for something like a Negatron/Seekers). You could rush Mpen, but by doing so you really do gimp your damage a little bit toward mid game (unless you are fed/far ahead). It's not about just straight numbers, but the fact that you are likely to be able to only blow through one spell rotation before dying. If you really only want to kill that one target before dying, I might recommend a Deathfire Grasp instead.

As for Master Yi, you guys may be some monster Alpha Strike masters, but I can safely say I get hit by plenty of cc's all the time. While skillshot cc's are easier, I find most targetted cc's to be very very hard to avoid during a teamfight. (1v1's are different). But I do agree though that Master yi has no need to build tank stats (maybe a GA or Randuins) and should get those damage items if he wants to be useful at all.

 

Yi doesn't become invulnerable during Alpha; he comes untargettable. Targeted CC's will still go through and hit him when he comes out of Alpha.

I think RoA is key on Kassadin. Ideally, I'd like to go Catalyst and Tear. RoA and Seraphs is definitely in Kass's best build IMO. But in Solo queue that's not an option because of how bad everyone is. You make plays that swing the game early or you'll be too late. While rushing a Deathcap would give you the most burst, I would say RoA is the best first item.
Kass's Q and E are very strong, but I think with the buff to W it is definitely worth it to go the regular 3/1/1/1. Not only is your W crucial to early damage, it helps you farm better and push faster. Which will help you roam better.
Kassadin has terrible mana problems. With a Deathcap you'll barely be able to get off a round of spells + a 2-stack ultimate. With RoA you'll be able to do more rotations or higher stacked ultimate and be able to go in as melee to use your W. And early game, every single autoattack counts.

 

Oh, getting W is almost always needed. It adds a nice bit of damage and mana regen, but the more importantly, is it allows you to farm at tower. With it on, you can one shot range minions after a tower hit (pretty normal for many Kassadin match ups in early levels), letting you get a lot more cs that you would've normally have to miss.

 

Played a few good ranked games today.

First game I was Vayne with a Nami versus a Twitch and a Blitzcrank. Were doing ok, but constant ganks by enemy jungler and mid made us stay quite behind, and give a few kills. Xin totally camped bot.
But because of this, our top Vi got huge, snowballed, and carried.

Second game I supported a Corki as Thresh. I am proud to say I carried that game. I gave my Corki enough kills to get godlike, and I kept calling Drake, to the point where we got it the first time and every time it spawned after that we immediately got it. It doesn't sound like much, but our jungler didn't seem to care about it at all, so I had to insist.
Some madlife hooks were had, some great Thresh plays. Thresh is fun

Third game was very weird. I jungled Zac. At first it didn't go well. Our mid laner went 0/3 in the first 10 minutes, bot and top died a few times. We were behind, and we lost two dragons.
We were slowly catching up. Won a few teamfights, got turrets. We got up to the inhib. We didn't disengage in time, so they chased us. Two of us died, and while the rest of us recalled they rushed baron. They aced us and got our mid turret and inhib. They destroyed the Nexus turrets and were hammering away at the Nexus.
At this point only the enemy Twitch and Riven were alive, and only our Nami support was alive.
Nami flashes in to q twitch while they attacked our nexus, and Riven peels to go after Nami. We spawned, and rushed at Twitch. Twitch literally only had to auto attack 1-2 more times, and he would have done it, too, but the inhibitor literally just spawned and he couldn't touch the nexus!
We got twitch, and rushed baron. We got it, and defended our base while our inhibitors respawned. We Vision Warded everything in our base, and rushed mid, which was the only lane with open inhibitor.
Baroned up, we got the inhib, aced the enemy, and won the game.

If Riven had not greeded and gone after Nami, we would have lost.

I'm trying to somehow find the replay and make it into a video. It is priceless.