This is why you ban Kassadin

Letting Kassadin through champion select was almost a deadly mistake for LMQ this week in the League Championship Series.

Last split, Kassadin was a permanent ban, a champion so feared no team risked letting him into the game. Since his rework in March, tuning down his mobility but upping his defense, he’s slowly started to make his way back into competition, with middling results.

But for Cloud9, Kassadin proved to be just what slumping team captain Hai Lam needed.

Lam obliterated LMQ with a quadra kill twenty-three minutes into their NA LCS, allowing his team to take Baron and take control the match. Lam used the champion’s teleport to deal massive damage and pick off the players trying to escape destruction, narrowly missing out on a pentakill as LMQ mid laner Yu “XiaoWeiXiao” Xian barely managed to escape thanks to the slow from his Orianna ball.

While Cloud9 would quickly squander their advantage by pushing into a bad position in the river at dragon, allowing LMQ to wipe them with a couple well-placed ultimates, Lam showed that Kassadin is still a weapon to be feared in the LCS.