Devil's Advocate and pretending to like Cassiopeia's rework. Even then there are kinks everywhere

Ahem...lemme just do a quick temporary transformation first.* "O-M-G dat 54% win rate! I just did 600 damage with an E! And I always wanted to play a champion firing a machine gun! Fuck poison, it's too similar to Brand's Passive!"*

There...now that I have that out of the way, let us assume that her current rework isn't a pile of Teemo Shrooms. It's design process have been subpar even then. IGNORE my misgivings that you just ruined her. IGNORE the thematic inconsistency I've railed on and on about. IGNORE the Poison Mage stuff for a moment. Filter all that out and here is how I feel about the rework so far Stashu...

• you just pissed off and completely ignored half of the fanbase. If I use another champion as an analogy, I actually kinda enjoy the current because playing her doesn't prompt my teammates to report me for being a troll and because her look no longer makes me puke. But if I had to choose, I would rather the REAL Karma fans have their way. Not me who only like playing the current Karma because of her shield and her ability to not get me reported for trolling. But no matter how you look at it, something extremely fun and cool was lost with the rework, and unlike me, the real Karma fans should be the ones enjoying Karma the most. You should have found a way to preserve her DAMAGE+HEAL cone ability and Passive

• her Passive, even if I pretend I like the whole hyper-carry schtick, even if I pretend to not understand how it contradicts her identity, is still amateurish for a number of reasons...

1. Even after all this time, even after 4.21, it still feels like a shackle. Forget about the "omg 30% AP!" part for a while. Look at it's CDR. Compare Cassiopeia's Q with and without the cooldown bonus. Have you noticed how it is impossible to keep up her Poison unless she has the CDR? No matter what side you take, THIS is a huge step down from the old Cassiopeia.

2. It still feels like a shackle rather than a being who "evolves" or "grows in power"...and beyond the obvious reason, I think your decision to CAP her stats has a huge part in doing so. Just think for yourself, what are the implications of a stacking system that is capped (but never reached anyways...) and an un-capped stacking system? Anyone with a brain probably figured it out by now, but the capped system implies one thing, and that is "you have a limit, and that limit is how strong you are supposed to be. So until you reach that cap, here's a straight jacket btch"*. On the flipside, with someone like and , they are un-capped, for them, their cap system means "this is your full strength and you suck, but your potential is UNBOUND! Only YOU have the means to reach godhood!" In short, an uncapped stacking system implies one who is growing in power, whereas one who is capped gives the feeling of an artificial pair of shackled. Combined with point #1, it's not even subtle.

3. In 4.21, you allowed her Passive to gain stacks passively, but you removed the ability to gain stacks from farming. This is a GOOD and a BAD thing and it's your reworked kit's fault. The GOOD thing? This is obvious, forgetting how I feel about this direction, but Stashu wants Cassiopeia's early-mid game to be shit, her Passive forcing Cassiopeia to interact with her opponent despite how trashy you wanted her to be, how you want the player to put extra attention to not just farming, but HOW they farm, was nothing short of FRUSTRATING. You made me shit...and now you also want me to jump through that extra set of hoops?! And I can be countered simply by my opponent playing Passively?! This is why I say allowing Cassiopeia to gain stacks Passively is a GOOD thing. The BAD thing? You took out an interaction, a gameplay element you had in mind when you first thought up this horrible Passive. Now it's just a frustrating lump of withheld stacks that's going to happen sooner or later. I mean, your implementation was frustrating sure, but don't you think the solution was a little lazy?

4. She has 500 stacks. 497 are unrewarding waste of time. Only 3 stacks does anything, and the "thing" it does is restore you to how you once were (#2). More importantly, the first stack requires 100 stacks which is already a chore, THE SECOND THRESHOLD REQUIRES 150 STACKS, AND THE THIRD THRESHOLD REQUIRES 250 STACKS! I don't think I need to further elaborate the problem with this.

• There's a heavy hint of my real opinion on Cassiopeia in this next bit, but that's because there are overlaps. But PRETEND that I genuinely like playing AP Rambo machine gunning the commies with my machine gun. 3/4 of my kit being shit just to accommodate a single ability is bad design. When more than half of my kit feels so unrewarding, all I see is the designer giving up in his job 25% of the way through and just be content that atleast ONE of her ability feels powerful. "Hey, if only one of her ability is rewarding, maybe the players will ignore the unrewarding and incomplete abilities of the rest of her kit"

• In 4.21, you loaded even more power into her E. The machine-gun obsessed devil's advocate in me tells me I like it because I'm all about her E now. It's still a rushjob intended to poorly appeal and silence the playerbase screwed over by the rework. For one thing, it looks like the stacking system is supposed to be a pretty big deal. Have 1 stack and her Q sucks a little less. Have 2 stacks and it's a little better still! Alright then, why is there no indicator for how many fan stacks are on my target? Why is there no indicator or something telling me that the poison damage my opponent are taking is slightly stronger than normal? For all Riot harps about "visibility" and "invisible power" and all that, I find it shocking you'd implement a system whose power is based on how many stacks of something is present, but not provide any sort of visual cue on the target.

• You made me like the rework because you gave her a 54% win rate...the balance team is about the nerf her so she will no longer be "OMG 54% winratez!" The real Ginga is amused by this. The devil's advocate pretending to like the rework is seeing the only reason to play her being taken away.

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In conclusion...

I mentally filtered out all the biggest and most obvious flaws. I mentally forced myself into the mindset of someone who currently likes the Rework. I mentally forced myself to forget that exists. And after all that...there are still all those gigantic holes in the rework.

These are all problems with your rework, even after I mentally filtered out all her main issues.

Stashu, before 4.21, you tell us that you will continue to keep and eye on and fix all of Cassiopeia's problem. This is 5.1 already, and having seen the preview for 5.2, we still see nothing for Cassiopeia (except for those mana nerfs on PBE...to fix the "OMG 54% winratez!" I guess).

If even after ignoring her biggest flaws, she is still so full of holes, I will be very disappointed if your revisit of her does not involve any sort of overhaul. Some of those holes violates even very basic game design rules, such as plain old readability.