Reign of Gaming

The idea is to find ways to make more of her power conditionally dependent on skill, thus letting her be balanced at low and high levels of play simultaneously.

To be fair, some champs STILL love Grail. These tend to be the ones who loved the CDR (which actually got buffed recently) more than they did 30 extra AP. I STILL prefer Grail to AAS on most of my AP champions, although that's more a consequence of my preferring DPS mage and utility mage champions/builds like non-suicide Karthus, Syndra, AP Zyra, and AP Lulu who really like having their skills up at an even higher rate (DPS mages who don't want to rely on blue buff being consistently available) or frequently (utility mages) and don't really derive as much benefit from the raw AP and active of Seraph's as they do the pure, reliable CDR element of Grail.

I'm guessing the implication is that Kassadin synergizes so well with so many items that indirectly nerfing him is somewhat to playing Whack-An-Irelia?

I'm pretty sure that her E was coded as a DoT spell previously--DOT effects apply full spell vamp but behave like AoE effects for other purposes. 

As a player whose second champion buy (which was at level 10) was Karthus and who loves playing Syndra, would you say that it's an appropriate starting point for wannabe Cass players to get used to another "Skittle cast" champion like Karth, Syndra, or especially Zyra [whose Q is wider, more forgiving, and not as stupidly integral to her damage output as Lay Waste, Dark Sphere, and Noxious Blast are] before playing her for the first time?

Also, free weeker Cass's notes:

-CDR (like through Grail) isn't quite as useful on Cass for damage, but it does mean a much more forgiving Cass. CDR is useful on Cass for the same reason it's useful on Blue Ezreal. More Miasmas to zone away opponents (why wasn't this mentioned?) or MIA waveclear, more poison skittles to kite and proc passive with, less downtime on E if it doesn't hit a poisoned target, and more ultimates for emergencies.

-Zhonya's/Wooglet's="oh hi Zed nice ult lololol." Seriously, that's the main reason I see Cass as not being a terrible idea against Zed. The ability to build an item that weakens Zed's damage output, kills his ult outright, fits in her build, and builds from a good laning item seems to set her apart from how, say, Draven would handle against Zed.

Shyvana's Dragon form is now worthy of playing Skyrim music to.

The area everyone agreed sucked was the Mantra'd W.

They made it more effective to utilize and added to the incentive of the Karma player to keep them in range long enough to land the stun.

Keep in mind that Karma HAS been established as being very powerful in the right circumstances (DominateDominion tournaments have shown this, as does ARAM,) so there might be a bit more reason for Riot to be cautious than not.

Agreed. Having just won a Twisted Treeline game as Kha'Zix, I'm finding that the changes look amazing. While I'm probably going to evolve E first now if the changes hold, the other three evolutions seem to all have their own value now. It seems like Riot hit a home run with the nerf bat this time--making his evolved Q more reliable, forcing Kha players to choose between waveclear/easier slow landing and the raw "get in, murder, and get out" power available to evolved Leap [and actually competitive Q and R evolutions], preventing him from getting mixed damage without having to close into melee range, and giving him the functionality of evolved W on the unevolved form [but making that functionality demand more skill to land if he doesn't evolve it.]

The changes seem like they're simultaneously good QoL AND power trimming on Kha that works.

My only issue with it is this: ROIT WHY U PULL IT FROM PBE???

Indeed. This is a good addendum. Might also want to have covered Quinn. :P

Incidentally, why u no mention Lizard Elder on Corki, since he DOES scale with the on-hit/spell-hit proc?

Meanwhile, Draven's Spinning Axes CAN crit. EDIT: Nvm, they can't. My bad. :(

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You might also want to note that several champs have natural movespeed boosts that can act as a weak escape (Draven, Sivir, Quinn, Miss Fortune, Twitch), and stealth (Vayne, Twitch.) 

I'm also wondering why Ezreal [buildwise, if you go standard AD carry,] Kennen, Quinn, and debatably Kayle/Jayce/Urgot aren't up here. All of them have some ability to use an ADC-like build, and Jayce in particular has good AD/Crit scaling. [In fact, he's also the only ADC-like champ to scale better with CDR than attack speed thanks to Hypercharge--might be a fun thing to note. :P]

As for Corki, why are you not even mentioning Spirit of the Lizard Elder? All his abilities can apply it [hey wait, my Q is actually useful now!], he already deals natural true damage via his autoattacks, CDR means more ultimates, and it gives him a little extra mana regen and dragon control to boot. It's also only 2000 gold. Granted, I don't play Corki, but it does seem like a relatively strong idea on him on SR.

...incidentally, think you could mention Grez's Spectral Lantern and Lightbringer for TT, Dominion, and ARAM? It's an important item/upgrade that shouldn't be ignored on those maps, giving cheap lifesteal, a little bit of armor, attack damage, pushing power (through its Madred's-passive procs on minions) and safety/utility through the vision active. Lightbringer also has a weak on-hit effect (20% chance to deal 100 magic damage on-hit to champions).

Don't get me wrong, this is a great article, but there are some areas that fell short that might be good to edit in. :P

My question is "why didn't you ever take Liandry's Torment?"

Viktor is RIDICULOUSLY good at applying that item's burn effect. Laser burn, his ultimate, Q poke, and thanks to W he doesn't even have to buy a Rylai's first to get the enhanced burn proc.