Cassiopeia, the unloved one? About pre-season and the future.
I've been observing the recent developments in silence so far and hoped things would turn out better for Cass, but they really haven't.
Instead of recycling the same old arguments from last season I'll focus on what has happened during this pre-season, highlighting the issues with this champion and why she should receive some of your much needed attention, Riot.
Let's start with the introduction of pre-season itself, many champions received numbertweaks to accomodate their players to the new masteries and item-changes. Most importantly, those changes dealt with mana-regeneration rates on a great number of champions - some of them even having inherent mana-refund mechanics in their kits and yet Cassiopeia wasn't among the affected parties.
I want to remind you that the last time Cassiopeia received any balance-changes was over half a year ago (patch 5.10), and those were strictly nerfs to her sustain which also drastically halved her mana-refund whenever she killed minions. We're all very much familiar with her questionable state and lack of appearances over the course of last season, and yet Riot didn't even care to remember her after all this time. She's already extremely manahungry and yet she hasn't seen any changes in that regard which definitely would greatly boost her viability. But obviously you don't want this to happen.
Patch 5.22 hits live servers and what happens? Cassiopeia is as weak as ever with games closing out after merely 20 minutes and comebacks being pretty much nonexistent due to early game champions (and their greatly buffed marksman friends) taking objectives right and left. Even right now the game remains extremely snowbally with very few instances of comebacks actually happening - you've yet to address this matter properly, Riot.
Oh, also in regard to the mastery changes - since you've removed the 5% cdr from the mastery tree, Cass can't hit 40% cdr anymore without either going over the cap or remaining below it. It's beyond me why you haven't cared to change that so far, either cut her passive down to give 20% cdr (but make sure to compensate her in another way) or increase it to 30% like it used to be when the rework came out.
Patch 5.23 comes by and still nothing for ol' Cass - but tons of adjustments for everyone else. Guinsoo's Rageblade still being as broken as ever, oh boy. And of course you had to buff Zed, after all we can't have a meta without this guy - he's pretty much a staple now, right? I wish Cass would be as popular as he is, maybe then you'd finally pay some attention to her.
Games still are onesided curbstomps with tanks being a more relevant force this time to counter the menace unleashed by your marksmen-changes. Speaking of those, Cass still can't beat any of them in a proper solo lane without being outsustained and poked to hell. I've seen more than enough adcs being taken outside of their usual lane and they're simply out of control.
Patch 5.24 finally gets released, and naturally I've expected significant changes in the patchnotes, but still nothing for Cassiopeia. Infact you went as far to nerf her only viable cornerstone mastery (Deathfire Touch) due to Brand turning every other midlaner into a subpar pick (with the sole exception of Anivia) and that's pretty much everything pre-season had to offer so far. Within those last 3 patches you haven't addressed the Cass issue even once but you definitely made sure to buff Riven, another great example of an overly popular champion receiving help the second they fall off the radar. How much more biased can you get?
I've seen the latest PBE-updates and they also seem to neglect the dear snakelady entirely, you even went as far to hand out skins for champions who already received one either this year (!) or last one whereas Cass has been waiting for almost 3 years now with few other champions like Shen, Swain, Nocturne and Kennen. At least you have full relaunches going on for the likes of Taric, Urgot and Yorick but that still doesn't mean you can simply neglect the champions I mentioned earlier.
It's objectively unfair to keep releasing skins for champions who already received more than enough attention in that regard, where's your sense of justice in all of this? I for one won't spend a single RP until you've finally taken steps to remedy that, and I've been keeping this up for almost an entire year now. At least I'll have enough saved up for the moment when you finally release something worthy after all this time.
Also please give her a proper lore-update - four (!) lines of text are a joke compared to those rich and compelling stories you've released so far. She deserves so much more than being some two-dimensional villain, she used to be a very complex character with an actual family history while struggling to maintain her humanity despite her monstrous form. You took that tragic figure and turned her into a cheap cartoon villain without any redeeming qualities, that's the biggest insult she probably has received from you.
Cassiopeia herself is an extremely unreliable champion without any real middleground when it comes to her performance. You either survive laning phase with her (and better pray your lane-opponent doesn't get fed some other way) or you become entirely irrelevant until you finally hit your delayed powerspike which is heavily gated by both her passive AND gold-income. And most of the time you're simply on the losing team since she's unable to do her job thanks to her extremely unforgiving nature and the smallest mistake locking her out of the game for 5 seconds.
Risk and reward don't have the same ratio here, they're heavily titled to her disadvantage. Now slap a very low pickrate to the mix and we have midlane's very own "Urgot". Well, with the little difference that she won't be receiving the privilege of a fullblown relaunch.
It's obvious that you're worried about changing anything about her as long as her current kit remains in place, otherwise you would have taken steps a long time ago. So what remains? Another rework of course. Please try to listen to her playerbase this time, don't repeat the same mistakes which Stashu did by simply ignoring those who actually care about her just to force down some twisted concept that goes against everything we believe in.
And maybe, with a little bit of luck, we'll finaly be able to play our poison-mage again while actually dealing damage with her poison-abilities without being limited to spamming a short range single target ability.
) and that games seem impossible to do anything without a strong frontline. Further impacting this because she acts as a control mage yet only really has noticeable cc on her ult, she has difficulty midlaning as her pre-
