Boards›Gameplay

My thoughts on Cassiopeia's balance

Scarborough Fair·5/5/2016, 10:12:31 PM·18 votes·1,575 views

I'm not claiming to be good at champion balance and numbers, or that I am a god Cassiopeia main. I've been enjoying playing Cassiopeia ever since 2013 and I just thought I'd share my opinions on her recent rework. I have tested her rework on the pbe before her launch so I'm fairly experienced with her new kit.

Passive: This is one of my main problems with the kit. It's supposed to be a bonus right? Wrong. Serpentine Graces not only forces Cass to miss out on boot stats, but it also forces her to have a very slow early game. For a champion that's supposed to be swift, her passive isn't really an actual passive till lvl 14 when it actually gives her the same movement speed she would have gotten at about lvl 8 with boots. And before you mention the glorious free item slot she now has, remember that most games don't even last long enough for her to benefit from it, and having Cassiopeia wait till uber late game to have a meaningful passive was actually one of the complaints from the older rework. My suggestion: Buff her base movement speed by alot and have it scale less.

Q: Overall happy with how it changed.

W: I have mixed opinions about this spell. While i like it's catching capabilities, it's damage, and it's casting paradigm, the fixed cast range is a whole new level of annoying. You can almost never use Miasma to stop someone from chasing you as a mere silence and a rapidly decaying slow doesn't really stop people from just jumping on you and when they do, you're fucked. Fixed cast range mixed with an unreliable way to get an MS boost and a pitifully unreliable ult means that Cass is just meat for anyone to jump on. My suggestion: Remove the fixed cast range and the wall interaction. Have the number of circles decrease in direct proportion with the range so that it's like one circle when Cass decides to cast it on top of herself OR make the slow not decay so it becomes useful disengage tool.

E: Again, for a champion that's supposed to be swift she sure does take alot of unnecessary pauses to use a "spammy" low damage (that includes having the target poisoned beforehand) spell. With this rework you had the opportunity to make her feel actually swift by removing the cast time but now the cast time is still there, it does low damage, AND it's not as spammy as it used to be. The 1 second CD adds to Cassiopeia feeling slow just so it can be a farming tool. My suggestion: Reduce and cap the CD to 0.5 OR remove the cast time OR increase the damage significantly when the target is poisoned, the risk is simply not worth the reward.

R: It's issues hasn't been fixed and it has been instead nerfed for no reason what so ever. The stun is pitifully unreliable unless she's hiding in an unwarded brush. My suggestion: Increase the slow even more than 60% so it can be a more reliable disengage tool OR remove the delay.

17 Comments

Serpents Embrace5/5/2016, 11:16:46 PM4 votes

I think the idea behind the passive was interesting and deserves to be explored but you're right on the money when you say that it's just a detriment to her right now because she cannot buy boots to supplement her speed and her bases are slow as hell.

The nerf to Q range makes it practically useless, since you're in the effective range of the majority of champions in order to attempt to get benefit from it.

The W Grounded effect isn't as powerful as say, being able to use the pool on yourself defensively or being able to peer over a wall for a brief period (such as to check/take blue, check dragon/baron etc) that she's lost so much utility from it the fact they can't flash out of your weak ass poison and weak ass Fang spam is irrelevant.

And the E, well, you're right about that. It's so much clunkier than the old one (unless you get 45% cdr then it's "normal" again) that it takes away from your goal of quickly chasing, running or maneuvering.

The R changes seem mostly irrelevant, though it is weird they'd choose now to weaken the slow when they've weakened the rest of her so considerably.

Whether or not they can number-tweak this version of the kit is pointless, though, as it's unfun and unintuitive to play. You can't early harass with fangs (getting Thunderlord's to proc reliably is a nightmare with the 0.9 base cd that isn't refreshed if they're poisoned) and the slight buff to your late game dps is a change in an area that didn't matter anyway. I guess MY suggestion would be to tool around with the passive a bit more, ditch the Q, W, E changes until that's worked out and then revisit the idea of...whatever the hell they were trying to accomplish with that change.

But we both know that they don't care enough to do anything about it.

Karma Deified5/6/2016, 5:51:14 AM3 votes

Serpentine Graces not only forces Cass to miss out on boot stats, but it also forces her to have a very slow early game

Net nerf to all the mage items and no ability to get the mpen from sorcs. I wonder if they're surprised at the 39-41% win rate.

Kitten of Evil5/6/2016, 3:48:50 PM3 votes

Yeah, the passive doesn't really make sense to me. They could have easily just put the bonus into her base stats (would it be OP for her to have 350 movespeed at level 1? Probably not, since that's her MS at level 6 now).

"Snakes don't need boots" was a cute joke and meme, but needed to come with some other benefit. As it is, her passive is: you cannot buy these 8 items (some of which are very strong on her), but we'll scale your MS up gradually to replace them. What's the point? What does she really gain from having 332 MS at level 1 up to 400 MS at level 18? The only thing is a free slot, which isn't useful until 30-40 minutes into the game.

FantasySniper5/5/2016, 11:15:33 PM2 votes

I don't know about the other stuff, but what if her passive made AP scale her MS?

Rico Nasty5/6/2016, 10:48:54 PM1 votes

Her passive needs so much more movement speed, like you can't even feel it. Annie goes faster than she does without boots.

Tiowthy5/7/2016, 3:32:11 AM1 votes

yup. It's not the damage that's the problem, its just frustrating to play her and to be handicapped even more now with her new kit.

AquariusGine5/6/2016, 1:30:36 AM1 votes

Agreed

CasterGilgamesh5/6/2016, 1:35:59 AM1 votes

i feel like she needs a bit more damage to her Q and her slow should be increased on her W and remove the fixed cast range plus make her passive give more movement speed early instead of just per level while also increasing the slow strength and stun duration on her ult.

GhastlyGhoulMan5/6/2016, 4:52:34 AM1 votes

You hit all the nails on the head. And Rito hammered them into Cassiopeia's kit like coffin nails. :(