Cassiopeia's changes this patch really disturbs me...
Aspect of the Serpent -Now passively generates 1 stack every 6 seconds, and for every second that an enemy champion is poisoned. -No longer generates stacks from unit kills. -No longer generates stacks from using Twin Fang against champions. -Bonuses benchmarks increased to 100 / 250 / 500 stacks from 75 / 200 / 400. Noxious Blast -Fixed a bug where the delay was varying between 0.25 seconds and 0.5 seconds. -Delay increased to 0.4 from 0.35. -Bonus movement speed changed to 20% at all ranks instead of 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 %. Twin Fang -Enemies damaged by Twin Fang will take 20% increased damage from poison for 5 seconds, stacking up to two times( capping at +40% poison damage). -AP ratio changed to 55% at all ranks from 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 %. -Mana cost changed to 35 / 45 / 55 / 65 / 75 from 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 / 90.
Before the patch, Cassiopeia wasn't exactly in the best state, as she hanged around the ~45% winrate area. Her pick rate also dropped hard, as many players weren't happy with how the rework went. It shifted Cassiopeia from an early-game lane bully into a late-game hyper carry, which are two completely different things. The forums were ablaze with issues people had with her rework, ranging from her theme made no sense, her gameplay wasn't fun, her stats weren't good enough, she didn't feel like a poison-based mage, etc. etc. Personally, all I wanted was my early-game monster back, but I digress.
The changes her were meant to try to shift her to be more poison oriented, but... they don't. At all. Instead, they make an already overloaded kit even worse. Let's take a look at Twin Fang. Currently, it provides: -Single target damage, a lot of it. This can't be dodged unless your champion can enter an invulnerable state, such as Fizz. -A heal that scales off of ability power and Cassiopeia's level. -A mana refund if Twin Fang kills the target, based on Cassiopeia's maximum mana. -If the target is poisoned, the cooldown becomes non-existent. -It now provides a debuff on the enemy that increases poison damage dealt by Twin Fang.
Five abilities crammed into one ability. That really seems completely insane. Especially on a kit that also provides: -A movement speed buff whenever you land Noxious Blast. -The ability to land a massive slow in an AOE. -A 2 second stun to all enemies that are near you and facing you, or if they're facing away from you, another powerful slow. -A large amount of cooldown reduction, the largest amount of cooldown reduction in the game from one source. -A massive ability power steroid.
Why exactly does Cassiopeia's kit need to be so incredibly overloaded? She already has so much, and this patch added even more because of complaints. If I recall correctly, none of the complaints were "She doesn't have enough bonuses to her abilities", it was "Her passive isn't fun", "Her theme isn't right", and "We don't like the focus on her E". Not everyone (heck, I'd say about half of the Cassiopeia player base were complaining) were unhappy about the changes, but I sincerely doubt that anyone thought she needed more stuff tacked on. I mean really, look at this, it's insane.
What really gets me, though, is that in order to make Cassiopeia into a "Damage-over-time oriented poison mage", they tacked on another ability onto her Twin Fang, which makes 0 sense. It forces players to focus even more on spamming Twin Fang if they want to get the most out of Noxious Blast. Why can't Noxious Blast do anything on it's own? Why can't Cassiopeia players be allowed to just us Noxious Blast and expect to do any damage with it? Why are they forced to then follow up with Twin Fang? The kit forces players to use combinations of their abilities to do anything. That's ridiculous. Especially because, again, this was to make it so Noxious Blast would be better, but for it to be better you have to use Twin Fang. I'm sorry, but I don't see that as good champion design.
Ultimately, however, what really disturbs me about this is that instead of giving reasonable changes to Cassiopeia's design, such as moving power from one place to another, they instead simply tack on more power. As it stands, Cassiopeia's kit is incredibly overloaded, her Twin Fang alone has five different effects. Why is that necessary? The more things you add to a kit, the harder it becomes to balance. One of Riot's goals with the rework was to make Cassiopeia easier to balance out, but now she has so many features that it honestly feels like that's impossible. Good champion design isn't just adding more things to a kit to make it work, good champion design is taking what's there and improving it. I really try to have faith in Riot and their balancing team. It's their job to balance the game, and they usually know it best as a result, but I really cannot agree with anything that's been done with Cassiopeia's rework.
It really feels like instead of changing Cassiopeia again to try to please people, they just tacked on even more to "force" it to work. Instead of taking the kit as it was and trying to tweak the numbers to make it better, they just added even more things to make her better. That really, really disturbs me. Varus isn't in the best spot right now, so are you going to make it so his Piercing Arrow also amplifies the damage of his auto-attacks after he fires it? Will you make it so his Chain of Corruption will do damage based on the level of his Blighted Quiver? I don't want to sound mean but, you can't just add more things to a kit to make it work. You just... can't.
tl;dr - You can't take a kit that doesn't reach your expectations and then just add more features to it to make it work.
