Cassiopeia is in a terrible state

AquariusGine·May 23, 2015·35 votes·4,149 views

She's a ball-of-stats champion that had to be overtuned to be viable. When these PBE guttings come next patch, she will be Elise-tier. They aren't even minor nerfs. She's going to be trash after this.

**Like what's the point of it all anyways. **After her rework, she was really weak. Her Q and W feel completely unsatisfying to use. You guys overbuffed her to shut us up. Now that everyone's quiet, you GUT her.

Where are we going with this? Some of us have stuck with this champion from the very beginning, 80% of her fans have already given up. Her new so-called fans are only in it because she's OP and she wins games.

I don't know what else to say, except that I'm disappointed..

bye.

57 Comments

CanastusMay 23, 201516 votes

She's by no means overpowered, infact she has more counterplay than any other popular midlaner right now. She's immobile, squishy and lacks any real range thus making her a prime target for ganks and an automatic focus during teamfights. Also her ultimate comes with a nasty cast-delay which makes it extremely hard to hit without anyone cc'ing her target(s) beforehand.

The PBE nerfs are going to make her lanephase almost nonexistent since she will be having a hellish time just at sustaining through the enemy poke while being unable to restore her resources in a sufficient way. She'll be pretty much back to her 4.16 self where she couldn't do ANYTHING at all except for dying.

People obviously don't realize how dependent she is on her inherent sustain, without it she cannot survive. Her manacosts are already abnormally high, the most logicial course would be to reduce her manacosts if these nerfs go through.

What this champion needs is a real rework and not that half-assed champion update she received just to meet the deadline for a disappointing event which was the Shurima one.

Mooing KevMay 23, 20151 votes

Idk man, gutting her laning phase seems appropriate considering how monstrous her mid late game is. Kinda like how nasus early laning phase is shit but as time progresses his q starts to like chunk more and more. She out trades pretty much most of her match ups and her sustain was too unreasonable. Whether she will be back to her 4.16 self we shall see.

XietninMay 23, 20152 votes

{quoted}

She's by no means overpowered, infact she has more counterplay than any other popular midlaner right now. She's immobile, squishy and lacks any real range thus making her a prime target for ganks and an automatic focus during teamfights. Also her ultimate comes with a nasty cast-delay which makes it extremely hard to hit without anyone cc'ing her target(s) beforehand.

The PBE nerfs are going to make her lanephase almost nonexistent since she will be having a hellish time just at sustaining through the enemy poke while being unable to restore her resources in a sufficient way. She'll be pretty much back to her 4.16 self where she couldn't do ANYTHING at all except for dying.

People obviously don't realize how dependent she is on her inherent sustain, without it she cannot survive. Her manacosts are already abnormally high, the most logicial course would be to reduce her manacosts if these nerfs go through.

What this champion needs is a real rework and not that half-assed champion update she received just to meet the deadline for a disappointing event which was the Shurima one.

As a Cass main, I'd like to say she's plenty mobile and ranged, her design is intended to q>e>e>e>w>e>e>q>etc. Against people with jump-escapes like Katarina, Ezreal, and others, she can't compete as much. However, she can chase near anyone otherwise (so long as she lands her q). The R cast-delay is a real pain, but its more for punishing/disengage over anything else (however if you are the only engage in the team, that's tough to swallow). If you really need to hit a team with it cast R THEN flash to mitigate the delay. It may seem drastic, but it is well worth the risk in certain situations where you can outnumber/outdamage.

I don't like the PBE nerfs either, I feel like early mana is really important to helping Cass push. Pushing is time-consuming as Cass and Twin Fangs really help that. Her old passive used to help that even more, but that's out the window as we know. So yeah, the PBE nerfs will hurt bad.

Her mana costs ARE high, missing a Q can be pretty detrimental, because you have to keep up in farm and harass too. Q is your bread and butter, and those Twin Fangs are the only thing to help compensate.

tl;dr: Cass can't push too hard until around 7-8. Her Q just isn't enough, but Twin Fang helps. Her R is limited, and you can engage with it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Heckin SupportMay 23, 201512 votes

Let me know if I'm wrong here. Isn't she a champion meant to deal damage with poisons? Then why do her poisons do nothing and 90% of her damage comes from twin fangs? I was hoping they'd rework her into a poison character who deals damage from afar and slowly kills the enemies with poisons.

MatezoideMay 23, 201512 votes

Just revert her rework, Cass' new passive is a massive ball of stats that cant be properly balanced.

Only Play DariusMay 23, 201511 votes

Tried playing her as it is. Extremely hard to use.

Mana hungry early game.
Reliant on landing her Q's (not easy)
Very, very vulnerable to champions that can quickly close the gap on her during laning phase.
Reliant on team to peel for her outside of laning phase.
And worst of all: She is total gank bait. I cannot describe how easy it is to kill her during a gank, she has zero escapes and is squishy. Every time I play Cass, I get ganked the moment I step two centimeters past the median, and I ALWAYS die during the gank. Lane bully my ass, if she gets too aggressive during laning the jungler comes in and puts her in her place without breaking a sweat.

As it is I have almost nearly given up on learning her, it all seems so much effort for a reward that I almost never reach because it comes in 45 minutes into the game. And seeing the upcoming nerfs makes me consider giving up on her entirely.

Frankly I don't know how the LCS players are able to make her work, especially since many other late game champs Poppy Nasus MasterYi Veigar Lux Vayne are unusable in LCS because the enemy teams know how to abuse your early game weakness and end the game before you get half built.

Mooing KevMay 23, 20151 votes

I have to pretty much disagree on most of your points here. I had zero mana issues early when i played her unless you're spamming a q every time it's up trying to harass. Landing her q wasn't that hard.. it has like 850 range and a small splash radius. If you can predict your opponents csing movement landing it isn't that hard. I faced a diamond 5 ahri last night and i pretty much all in cheesed her at lvl 2 after landing a q. I felt pretty disgusted how cheesy she can be.
I mean almost every single traditional mage is vulnerable to ganks if you push past the middle with no wards. Btw she now stands a chance to zed if she has her ult due to that delay on zed ult and franky her late game is just a monster that makes zed look like a wimp. Once again every traditional mage cannot self peel and are usually in the back regardless. Cassiopeia is more of medium range mage but if she can land a good ult she can probably decimate 2 people during that stun duration. Lastly no offense but you're bronze 5 and I don't think your experience with her is really representative of her current state. She can and usually be absolutely disgusting and it does NOT take 45 mins for her to reach her peak. Sure if a game gets to 45 mins the cass will be monstrous but if you get to higher elo you will notice games will be a lot shorter because players tend to take a small victory and make a big lead out of it, snowballing even further. If you are proficient enough it usually doesn't take 45 mins to close out a game.

Only Play DariusMay 23, 20152 votes

All i'm saying is that right now I have little reason to play Cass since there are other midlaners that are far, far easier to use. I mean honestly, I played Zed free week and first round of games I won lane 90% of the time, but Cass I have won lane I think 2 out of the 25 games I have played with her.

ChargeItDownMidMay 23, 20159 votes

[deleted]

Neo CyrusMay 23, 201510 votes

"Balancing tweaks" - The only thing they've given her in the past eternity is nerfs. Thanks for the clarity Stashu, oh wait he hasn't said anything in a year.

ChargeItDownMidMay 23, 20152 votes

[deleted]

Rinky DinkyMay 23, 20156 votes

No, Stashu has total control over cass right now.

The only reason she is being nerfed is because stashu saw her win a game at MSI, and he said on his twitter, and I quote "That's it cass. Enough is Enough".

The next day she is gutted on pbe.

Stashu is in full control. He has even said that himself if I recall

101100111000May 23, 201516 votes

I think we all have different definitions of fun, which is why the debate goes on for so long. Because I really don't believe I have to reiterate the whole EEEEEEE- centric portion of her kit to note that she's just an adc that requires you to repeatedly push a button and land skill shots that have no relevant early game damage. She only remained relevant because of her insanely high lategame dps a la e that did a better job of shredding both tanks and squishies when coupled with the only conceptually unique portion of her kit, Petrifying Gaze.

Cassiopeia is like Nasus, gated by their early game. The difference between the two being that in Nasus's early game, anyone and everyone can interact with Nasus to stall him out of his late game or push him into it, primarily determined by the Nasus player's active capabilities in-game to get there.

Cass can basically just wait. She can play as passively as possible until she just gets to 500 stacks by waiting out the clock and randomly tossing poison pools onto enemy champions. Unlike Nasus, where the enemy can work to deny him his late game, Cassiopeia's late-game is bound to happen by virtue of design. The only way you can stop Cass from reaching her late-game is literally by securing victory before she gets to it.

I don't know how many times I've said this though, but it's really annoying when, at a point like this, people STILL believe that the Cassiopeia re-work was ever any good. This is the point where even non-mains, like myself, can just SEE the banality in the re-work.

Her kit's power is front-loaded into one ability. Her late-game literally gated by how long you want to wait. And now this dubbed "ball-of-stats" champion will have such a gimped early and mid game that any game Cassiopeia players' wins will have to be handed to them on a silver platter.

BombkirbyMay 23, 20155 votes

Cass' spike is nowhere as oppresive as nasus. Just build engage around her. She can't escape or live through a Malphite->dive Cass engagement. Try that with Nasus and he just brushes the dust off his shoulders and then 3 shots everyone. Cass is not like Nasus since she doesn't infinitely scale and therefore cannot build tanky and become a raidboss like him. If she misses her poison every time she effectively does nothing. She is always squishy and vulnerable and has no escapes.

The changes on the PBE were VERY minor imo. Mana nerfs and other things to weaken her early game is fine. Just end the game asap and you're good to go. Her scaling is garbage so if you deny her items/gold she can't take advantage of the Deathcap passive which multiplies all of the AP she doesn't have.

101100111000May 24, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Cassiopeia is like Nasus, gated by their early game. The difference between the two being that in Nasus's early game, anyone and everyone can interact with Nasus to stall him out of his late game or push him into it, primarily determined by the Nasus player's active capabilities in-game to get there.

Her kit's power is front-loaded into one ability. Her late-game literally gated by how long you want to wait. And now this dubbed "ball-of-stats" champion will have such a gimped early and mid game that any game Cassiopeia players' wins will have to be handed to them on a silver platter.

Yes, I said that.

OperationDEEZ1May 24, 20151 votes

Even then Cassio's lategame isn't that weak because when all else fails she can just zone you forever by landing her delayed skillshot Q and mashing E.

CubedJusticeMay 24, 20152 votes

Her late-game literally gated by how long you want to wait.

This. So much this. Having been playing Cass lately, I feel like I can go in and bully my lane opponent anytime I want with my E, if I'm willing to lose the mana. I dictate the control of the lane just by choosing how cheap I want to be with my mana.

Leu07May 23, 20159 votes

Cassiopeia main here o/ I think people that don't use her are just butt-hurt for getting stomped by Cassio in the laning phase because they are dumb and they don't get that you are not going to win a trade with cassiopeia if you extend the trade with her, just make quick trades and set up ganks, she is soo squishy and easy to outplay and gank with some mobilit; she has no scape other than landing her ult to scape or flash away! anyways, people now will choose ANY moment to trade with her 'cause all she'll need after the sustain nerfs is one trade to get oom and never come back in mana to trade again unless she is handed an early blue buff, which, tbh, almost never happens to me.

XietninMay 23, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Cassiopeia main here o/ I think people that don't use her are just butt-hurt for getting stomped by Cassio in the laning phase because they are dumb and they don't get that you are not going to win a trade with cassiopeia if you extend the trade with her, just make quick trades and set up ganks, she is soo squishy and easy to outplay and gank with some mobilit; she has no scape other than landing her ult to scape or flash away! anyways, people now will choose ANY moment to trade with her 'cause all she'll need after the sustain nerfs is one trade to get oom and never come back in mana to trade again unless she is handed an early blue buff, which, tbh, almost never happens to me.

As a Cass main myself, I only ever have problems if I am basic attacking the turret when I'm playing Cass as far as gank escaping goes. So long as I land Q, I can keep my range against most junglers ganking. I totally agree about trades though, she is a heavy sustained-damage user and quick trades are right on the money. Talon is my baaaaaane.

KING OF MASKSMay 23, 20158 votes

That Stashu guy really fucked up, from what I can tell. My sincerest condolences to all Cassio fans. I pray that my own favorite champions do not meet with a similar fate.

Krys StarMay 23, 20157 votes

All the old Cassiopeia needed was a high cooldown on Noxious Blast, that'd reduce everytime she spammed Twin Fang and the bug fixes on Twin Fang. It'd reward her, or hurt her, if she misses her opportunity to spam Twin Fang instead of missing with Noxious Blast and waiting 3 seconds to use it again. Instead, Riot's full of self-righteous, stubborn "I-know-what-I'm-doing" cowards that butcher a champion's identity and go into hiding for eternity while making smug remarks on twitter.

Yeah, I'm talking about you Stashu. You're a pathetic coward that took on the project of changing Cassiopeia, and then abandoned your clueless, confused and scared players that wanted answers and clarity. You're sickening, and I hope your career at Riot is short. You don't deserve to work in the gaming industry. You're an unprofessional pig with an overdue haircut.

The Queen ViperMay 23, 20156 votes

Meh... personally I'm not worried about those Cass nerfs that much, but instead the upcoming Mastery changes, since that's pretty much a item 1004 that you will not be starting with anymore when they swap those masteries around.

Darth ValerMay 23, 20154 votes

When they reworked her I was thrilled because I was a Cassio casual player and my friends told me she got uber-buffed (everyone was hyped in the beginning, only to rant about her once they found out she was not so Christ-like). I appreciated the subsequent wave of buffs to her (I got to Gold V maining the unbuffed, post-rework Cassiopeia, though u.u). Some foolish babbling prophet said she would become OP and overnerfed once the community was quiet, but we didn't listen to them.

The next nerfs will really put her in a hard spot. I hope Riot will seek to balance her and not merely punish her for her temporary rise in popularity.

A Miss FortuneMay 23, 20153 votes

You said she will become Evelynn tier. Funny because the first nigh I bought her I ended up carrying 7/7 games I played with her, in my opinion Elise is extremely overpowered. She has no real fall offs besides sieging I guess. Her early, mid, and late game are all pretty powerful if you play it right, she does a ton of damage as long as you build her AD (Not AP, it makes no sense.), her ganks are really good and the only thing that can stop you is a pink, and her clear times are definitely really good from my personal experience.

But that's besides the fact, currently I don't play Cassiopeia because she's OP and just in it for the wins, she's actually pretty fun to play and I dont' feel bad for playing freelo gg ez i touched a button and 1 shot everyone on your team. She has a decent skill base and a really high skill cap.

Still, I think she needs another rework. She's basically a machine gun and definitely not a poison mage. Probably a poison-machine-gun-snake-thing. She's stuck between underpowered/balanced because she has a difficult laning phase despite her suppose to be a lane bully and she actually has skillshots, but she's also stuck to being overpowered/broken because her late game is so strong with 1,000 damage instantly from just her Q+E alone being easy to achieve with standard AP builds.

I think they should just change her to most of her damage coming from poisons, and as the poisons stack up they do more damage and tick faster. She might be somewhat more toxic in that case, but also wouldn't remind me that I'm playing a machine gun with a tail every time I play her.

Rinky DinkyMay 23, 20154 votes

That is evelynn not elise you noob

A Miss FortuneMay 23, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lane Cancer,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=KR8FwKMx,comment-id=00050000,timestamp=2015-05-23T21:32:25.484+0000)

That is evelynn not elise you noob

Elise isn't that bad either, she's definitely not the best but she is still decent. I still her current state is commonly believed to be more weak than it actually is, due to her being a champ that requires a lot of skill to play. Take Yasuo for example, in reality he's extremely overpowered but he requires actual skill to play to be effective, and when there is someone who does so then they stomp the game so easily.

Rinky DinkyMay 23, 20153 votes

Yas is balanced by the simple fact that he has certain counters that will literally make him useless for the entire game (Annie, Riven).

He is also heavily reliant on a teamcomp with decent knockups.

Evelynn is fine right now.

Yasuo and Eve aside, I agree Elise is stronger than people make her out to be, however, she is still weak in contrast to her skill cap.

She takes far too much skill to play at her full potential, when her full potential is barely breaking even with other champions.

Can you make her work? Yes. Is there a reason to make her specifically work compared to other, more accessible champions? Not really.

aaronconlinMay 23, 20153 votes

They need to decide what type of champion they want her to be, then do another rework accordingly. Do they want her to be an AP hyper-carry or a poison DoT Mage?

TheUltimateSpearMay 24, 20153 votes

You hit the nail on the head. I love this champ, but she got trashed by this rework. Not only is it bad design, it also forces you to play her as a machine gun. Which she could do before... while also being able to be a poke mage. Seriously. Is giving a champ a new, shitty passive, shoving all their power in one ability, and axing all but one of their playstyles what Riot calls a "rework?"

Mooing KevMay 23, 20152 votes

I think one aspect of her kit has to go. Either her q doesn't give 20 MS or give Her E like an increased cd/ cap. Her level 2 is one of the most obnoxious thing next to LBs lvl2. Get hit by one q? Proceed to get bombarded by 3-4 qs losing up to half ur hp or even more with autos in between thanks to the nice MS boost. Personally i think Removing the MS on q is necessary because simply just sticks on you too hard in the early laning. Cass arguably is the hardest carrying mage in the entire game with proper usage and usually champs with monster late games have weaker laning phases. Cass's laning is actually pretty decent if not strong vs certain match ups.

MathbalnaseMay 25, 20152 votes

A) taking time to AA as Cass while your opponent is in range and poisoned will significantly lower your DPS. If you don't know this simple fact, I don't know how much value we should be putting on any other commentary you might have, but it can't be much.

B) One of post-rework Cass' biggest problems is the fact that the vast majority of her kit's power was shoehorned into her E. And now you're suggesting removing even more power from her Q? No.

C) Cass can't carry if Cass is dead. Or OOM. Or severely under-farmed from being dead and/or OOM too often.

D) Cass has a shit lanephase against almost all of her common lane opponents. Anyone that fares poorly against Cass would fare almost as (if not more) poorly against almost any other classic mage.

Yosuke ApperuMay 25, 20151 votes

A) It depends technically on how much armor and mr your target has, if they had 50 armor.. and 200 mr for some reason, then AA would probably increase her dps.. everything is situational. Oh and by the way, seriously.... stop being such a douche.

KaipopMay 23, 20152 votes

I just hate the amount of free stats she gets and how bad cassiopeia players can still do really well just by spamming e mindlessly

AndroidYumiMay 23, 20152 votes

With the way these nerfs are going she's gonna need another rework in the future

MakersFMay 24, 20152 votes

I stopped playing her after the rework. I see no point in playing a champion in which I'm prevented to have fun algorithmically! Nasus has a bad early game, but if he's good (or the opponent is bad) he can get fed even in the early. Cassiopeia instead takes more time to reach late game if she kills the opponent.. -.-" The rework was bad, and they over buffed it to make people play that awful champion. When she'll get back in line, no one will play her, because she's not fun!

I liked the Sona rework, I liked the Sion rework, I like Ashe rework and I'm kind of in favor with the Karma one, but the Cassiopeia one was a total failure

Yosuke ApperuMay 23, 20151 votes

How exactly did they "gut" her?

MathbalnaseMay 24, 20152 votes

current PBE cuts 40% off her heal's AP ratio and halves her mana-restore-on-E-kill

Yosuke ApperuMay 24, 20151 votes

She still has her ridiculous amount of free stats from her passive tho.. plus her passive gives her even more e healing

Leu07May 25, 20152 votes

{quoted}

She still has her ridiculous amount of free stats from her passive tho.. plus her passive gives her even more e healing

"plus her passive gives her even more e healing" Investigate first, passive 100 stacks (the first one you get) gives currently in patch 5.9 an X + (0.1ap ratio) heal on E hit, it's been nerfed on the pbe to a X + (0.6 ap ratio) heal on E hit. Before you hit the first passive bonus you don't have an E heal. So please people, investigate a little bit more before involving in this kinf of discussions, don't be this guy.

MathbalnaseMay 25, 20151 votes

{quoted}

it's been nerfed on the pbe to a X + (0.6 ap ratio) heal

You dropped a zero. This should read (0.06 ap ratio)

Leu07May 25, 20151 votes

{quoted}

You dropped a zero. This should read (0.06 ap ratio)

Thank you! I didn't notice.

Yosuke ApperuMay 25, 20151 votes

Don't be such a jerk. It's spammable.. why should it have a high ratio?

MathbalnaseMay 25, 20151 votes

Since when is .1 a high ratio?

Yosuke ApperuMay 25, 20151 votes

I was referring to pre pbe nerf.. which I ended up misreading anyways, so I apologize. Just build spell vamp on her, and in a skirmish you can still hit your opponent ten times with your twin fang xD if you do that, you have a 1.0 ap ratio currently. After the nerf it'd only be .6 at 10 twin fangs. Anyways, her rework as a whole was bad, because any nerfs and she'll be unplayable, and any buffs.. well she'll be broken. They didn't leave any room at all to tweak her, tho they could have hit her twin fang softer like a .08 . Regardless of all that, you shouldn't come off as a jerk to someone just trying to participate in conversation.

MathbalnaseMay 25, 20151 votes

Did you know that if you AA a target 50 times while carrying a Bloodthirster, your healing's AD ratio is TEN?!

Yosuke ApperuMay 26, 20151 votes

That's rather obvious. You can get roughly three times the ammount of ap in a build as ad. So let's do some maths.. According to your math you multiplied number of hits by 5 so if we say 30 twin fangs instead.. we get a 3.0 ap ratio. So that means that cass regen is balanced. According to you. Anyways, stop just being salty because your champ was nerfed :3

Miku Lv99May 23, 20151 votes

She needs a new rework. Her stacks are very poorly done and just simply do not scale correctly.

But really, she does not need a nerf at all. Even if they want to gut her, that's likely already done by the loss of mana regen from the masteries she's going to get anyways. Without this mana her early game would probably be so weak anyways that I don't think further nerfs are at all justified. Although maybe that 75 mana will be useful but I'm not expecting much from it. At least her archangel's staff will be a little stronger but she's going to be so bad until she has it.

AquariusGineMay 24, 20151 votes

RiotStashu's twitter :

Casey Clough @CaseyClueless : Seriously so proud of my @RiotStashu for achieving the Herculean feat of getting Cass back into the competitive champ pool

Stash Chelluck ‏@RiotStashu : shes a little toooo much in there maybe. Lol. I blame the tank meta.