reminder that cassiopeia needs a re-rework ( +300 games cass main )

Oerba No Naja··13 votes·10,965 views

Aspect of the Serpent 100 STACKS: cassio'q range increased to 900 from 850 , on kill or assit the ms bonus is refreshed .

Aspect of the Serpent 200 STACKS: cassio gains stakcs of twin fangs on champs and on drake/nash/blue/red for 1 twin fang hit she gains 1 stack , max 5 stacks , when u got the 5 stacks the next twin fang will deal x2 more dmg and will ignore magic resist .

Aspect of the Serpent 350 STACKS : 10 % spell vamp . (her actuel e sustain is 10 % hidden spell vamp anyways )

Aspect of the Serpent 500 STACKS: + 100 ap . flat values because she got decent ratios now .

you should get the 200 first stacks before 25 min , the 350 stacks between 30 min and 40 min and the 500 stacks in very late game

this is a rework of her current useless passive until 500 stacks . remove it could be also great

Noxious Blast : 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 mana cost 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 ms bonus if spell hits a enemy champ + u can get the half of the bonus on jungle camps / scutlle crab 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 265 + 75 % ap cd unchanged

Miasma: 25 / 35 / 45 / 55 / 65 + 15 % ap 9 seconds couldown at all ranks ( Cassio's W CD is just too long to handle dash machines in early game. We need a panic poison to help us handle match ups like fizz/yasuo ) mana cost and slow unchanged

twin fang: 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 / 180 + 55 % ap 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 / 90 mana cost the twin fang's couldown goes on when the ability HITS a unit ( thats important , twin fangs max range = less dps , twin fangs close to target = dmg increased) if twin fang kills a unit it refunds the tf mana cost + 2% of cassio's maximum mana (before the rework cassio could spam without a tear because of her old passive now its gone , so she needs to keep this mana sustain )

Petrifying Gaze: 200 / 325 / 450 + 70 % ap 120 / 110 / 100 couldown . " stunned targets take x% more dmg from her poison" ( this is way too op in this context , but still a good idea for optional cassio's buff )

now you have the choice to max q or e because they are both viable . this is rly important since u can choose your early playstyle ( max e and all in vs low ranged mages or max q and poke vs ranged " safe" mages )

i think this would make cassio more enjoyable and viable everytime a long the game instead of a boring twin fang bot hyper carry late game. and it makes comeback her poison mage identity . and give her old bad ass quotes , one of them ( at least ) .

i have done this with a another cassio main .

35 Comments

RiotRiotRepertoir18 votes

Hi there nomoreflame naja,

It's pretty clear you've put a lot of time and effort into this post, and that you care about Cass, and that's cool. That said, you don't seem to really call out specifically the kind of change you're looking for, though you do suggest a lot of very specific changes.

Please do correct me, but it looks like you're interested in (and feel free to add others if they exist):

  • A reason to max Q over E on certain matchups
  • A bit more emphasis on poisons

For someone that's not a Cassiopeia expert (like myself), can you explain to me why those are important to you, and why those problems currently exist?

Thanks!

Edit: I don't have any immediate well thought out plans or solutions, but I'm going to think about whether there are some easy wins to be had to retain her old poison mage feel.

Hellioning16 votes

Not the OP, but...

My problem with Cass is the entire rework. Yes, I understand that change is occasionally necessary, and apparently Cass was too much like a lane bully with her old kit, but I feel that the rework didn't actually solve any of her problems, and added new ones. Remember, she got nerfed into trash-tier after her rework (which required about 5 buffs from her release rework state) because she was too much like a lane bully; considering the rework was aimed at avoiding that, it's clearly been a failure from that perspective. It's a failure from a theme perspective, too; all of her VOs, both pre-and-post rework, revolve around her being manipulative and poisonous. The rework based her entire kit around a non-poison ability that is direct and to the point. And in terms of uniqueness, we lost one of our few DoT mages for what is essentially an ADC with a worse autoattack.

My current problems with Cass are: A) E. It is basically her entire kit at this point. Q is to speed yourself up to keep in range and enable resets, W is to slow down the enemy to keep in range and enable resets, R is to do the same thing. This is annoying because it is by far the least interesting part of her kit. If I wanted to hit someone a lot with a targeted ability, I'd play an ADC!

B) The passive. This is mostly come from an amateur game design perspective, not a gameplay one, because it has no gameplay. It's an arbitrary gating; a way to let you 'unlock' and start being super mega badass without actually doing anything differently. At least Veigar and Nasus have to farm stacks; Cass just gets it by...poisoning her enemies. Which she was gonna do anyway. It doesn't help that, instead of having a singular, granular benefit, like Veig and Nasus, she instead gets breakpoints that add seemingly random stuff to her kit (free CDR! Lifesteal!) in addition to the bonus AP.

C) She has mana issues. Her only form of mana sustain is killing a minion with an E. If she is not fighting near minions, and if she cannot afford to use an E to kill a minion, she is going to run out of mana. Even when she was SUPER BROKEN OP enough to warrant dumpstering she ran out of mana whenever she tried to kill anything that didn't die in 3 or so Es.

D) I don't think Riot understands her theme. Like, I get I harped on his often enough, and he doesn't deserve all the hate he gets, but it's clear Stashu did not understand why some people liked Cass. I harp on him enough for the 'Brand is a DoT mage!' comment, so I won't say that again, but he got so wrapped up in his idealized hyperscaling ADC analogue that he forgot he was dealing with a champion that people like on live, not a completely new character.

E) She's still clunky. It's difficult to see poison indicators in a teamfight and there's still the delay on Q, meaning if you Q-E someone fast enough you won't get the reset (which means you lost.) The positioning requirement on her ult is still really stupid in a game where Annie/Sona exist, especially combined with her delay. And making mistakes punishes her far more than most other champions, given she has to land a skillshot to get any mobility at all.

I guess this post kinda got away from me, but Cass does that. If I had to summarize the changes I want to see...: I want her to be a poison mage; deal damage primarily through DoTs and cripple her enemies as utility. I think she should remain less mobile. I want that passive gone; her old passive was boring, but it would help with her mana issues and had SOME gameplay attached to it. General clunkiness gone; her ult isn't strong enough for the unreliability it has.

Thryale4 votes

don't forget stashu also included Morde into the "dot mage" list. Which is even funnier now that riot is officially dropping him in the 'juggernaut' bucket.

Oerba No Naja5 votes

"I guess this post kinda got away from me, but Cass does that. If I had to summarize the changes I want to see...: I want her to be a poison mage; deal damage primarily through DoTs and cripple her enemies as utility. I think she should remain less mobile. I want that passive gone; her old passive was boring, but it would help with her mana issues and had SOME gameplay attached to it. General clunkiness gone; her ult isn't strong enough for the unreliability it has."

i tried to do that , i have just post all my ideas to make cassio more like " before " but peoples didnt understand that some of them can be good and some not .

i agree with you this passive sucks , increase the range of the ult and it should be fine imo , the delay on the her ult is too important for summoner 4 + ult

ULTRAF0RCE2 votes

a lot of her players want Cass to be a full on poison mage, also just as someone who doesnt play Cass and hated her prerework when playing bots it would be nice if in the future riot implemented a system to make dot more engaging for the champion that is attacked

sp4416 votes

As a non-Cass main, I'd say that the reason for more emphasis on poisons is because she's a giant fucking snake.

A snake with really great boobs, but a snake none the less.

Abyssphere7 votes

{quoted}

Hi there nomoreflame naja,

It's pretty clear you've put a lot of time and effort into this post, and that you care about Cass, and that's cool. That said, you don't seem to really call out specifically the kind of change you're looking for, though you do suggest a lot of very specific changes.

Please do correct me, but it looks like you're interested in (and feel free to add others if they exist):

  • A reason to max Q over E on certain matchups
  • A bit more emphasis on poisons

For someone that's not a Cassiopeia expert (like myself), can you explain to me why those are important to you, and why those problems currently exist?

Thanks!

Forgive me for the brief anecdote but I promise it has a point...

Way back when Stashu was discussing the rework with us, he said that it was not ridiculous for a champion to have an ability that isn't satisfying if not combo'd to justify the weakness of Noxious Blast and Miasma. He compared Cass to Anivia, because Anivia's E is pretty weak unless it's been enabled by her Q and R. However, what he failed to realise is that he got the comparison backwards. Anivia's E is comparable to Twin Fang, not Noxious Blast or Miasma. If you use Twin Fang on an enemy that isn't poisoned, just like if Anivia uses E on an enemy that isn't chilled, it's not satisfying.

The problem is that Cass's QWR are more appropriately compared to Anivia's QR. They're the setup abilities. And there's a huge difference between them in that Anivia uses her R not just to set up her E, but to spread some big AOE damage and crowd control around. Anivia uses her Q not just to set up for E, but to get clutch stuns and do powerful damage in its own right. Her Q and R are satisfying moves independently, and in using her combo. Cass is the opposite - none of her abilities feel powerful on their own, their use in enabling her Twin Fang takes up the vast majority of their power budget. Throwing out W for a slow is OK, but even someone standing in it for the full duration doesn't feel strong (I've heard stories of people standing in it spamming laugh at level 1). Using Q for poke is something you can do if you have the mana, but it's not worth it after a few levels because you need to max E and the AP ratio is gutted. R is nice if it saves your skin but there's on point throwing down any poison on the person you've stunned unless you're gonna bite them to death.

If you were to rework Anivia today and absolutely slash the damage on all of her abilities, then give her E ridiculous stuff like spell vamp, mana sustain and much higher damage, you would have a champion that was roughly equivalent to the Cassiopeia of today. That's the problem.

tl;dr Cass needs to be more like Anivia. Anivia has 4 abilities that feel powerful, but her combo move needs to be enabled to be satisfying. That's great design and a balanced kit. Cass has 1 ability that feels powerful (E) and there isn't a single ability in her kit that feels satisfying if it's not combo'd, because the combo move (Twin Fang) is obviously worthless without being setup, but the enablers are worthless unless they're used for setup. No champion should feel like they have 3 abilities (really, 4 if you count the passive) that function only to serve one insanely overloaded ability.

p.s. it doesn't help that Cass's only good ability is one that doesn't have anything to do with poison - people who wanted to play a poison mage are genuinely better off playing Singed right now, what does that tell you?

Terchio1 votes

As a skeptical bystander amongst the Cass Rework talk, this actually makes sense. I understood why it felt wrong thematically before, but now this makes it feel more wrong conceptually. +1, agree 100%. I'm not sure how this would be implemented exactly, but it definitely needs changed somehow.

ShadowParker1 votes

I know your not a cass expert or anything, but what are your thoughts on having the e scale instead of damage with ap, but with % Poison Amplification?

Oerba No Naja5 votes

hi , i wrote this with the aim to make cassio feel better with her poison , the max q viable , make cassio less DEPENDANT of her twin fangs and to allow cassio to deal a decent dps without 500 stacks + make her ult rewarding ( its realy hard to ult the backline in team fight without a flash , basicly you will use it to stun the frontline and help your adc ) .

I wanted to share my opinion ( since i have a lot of games with this snake ) on cassio potential balance changes, and i know that some of them can be good / healty for cassio and some of them could make her really broken .

why the max q would help cassio vs certain matchups ?

actually cassio is e dependant ( you MUST max e in first place ) , e has a short range : exemple Cassiopeia vs Orianna Azir Lux " safe farm mages " they will play really safe , kite you , push super easily and poke you . the actuall cassio will try to hit q and then go for some e . but when u will try to get closer to your target you will get kitted and pushined again and again at the point u will not be able to agrro anymore and just farm undertower ( i played these matchups a lot , i killed them only with a successful flash ult ) . with the old cassio you could max q depush easily and poke them decently . Now poke with q in laning phase isnt efficient if u dont take the risk to aggro with your e .

why we need to shift a part of her e dmgs to her poison / why we need to cassio to be efficient with her poison ( 2/4 of her kit btw ) ? ( please dont tell me about her e increasing her poison dmg , this buff just made her even more dependant of this single low range target spell )

As cassio when the enemy team are snowballing objectives ect , when they are about to siege mid / go nash , cassio becomes totally useless because her q/w isnt enough efficient to depush easily and poke the enemy team . the old cassio could cancel nash and tempo the game a bit more . her twin fang dependance also nefed a lot her team fight dmg potential , The Q and W are a joke , seriously in a tight corridor teamfights If you drop a W on the enemy team and they all stand In It without taking any dmgs . Since all her damages is into one single-targeted nuke that requires her to get into a life or death situation . why would u pick cassio for late game team fights if u can pick Azir Anivia Viktor : because the old cass was top dmg dealt no matter what happens . but now her AOE ( 3/4 of her kit ) dmgs are so low with bad ratios and now you cannot punish a bad position from the enemys carries with your q without taking the risk to use some twin fangs (you will propably get caught and lose the game )

thanks for taking time to read my post . i did it because i miss the old cassio gameplay .

Valhala Warior312 votes

hey @RiotRepertoir , now do you think if cassio will be more poison oriented ? does she will receive some changes ?
if yes :3 , When the possibles change would go to the pbe ( before worlds ? after worlds ? ) ? thank you a lot :D ( i think all the community is ok for the comeback of the poison cassio , even more for the cass mains ) Cassiopeia summoner 30

Oerba No Naja2 votes

@RiotRepertoir so now that you know better about cassiopeia , and you know what the community want . will she receive some changes? Cassiopeia summoner 30 . "as someone that wasn't involved in Cass' design very closely, I learned a few things from that thread last night."

Solumindra2 votes

Can we re-open discussion about Cassiopeia. She was reworked for seemingly no reason other than a cash grab during the lackluster shurima event. Hasn't had a skin in forever. The chromas look a little rushed as well, even after the changes they aren't flattering in the least...., she has been nerfed to death.....again....

I really just wonder why your team touched her at all... beacuse, at this point, I feel like I have just been personally slapped in the face.

I don't feel like your company cares at all about me as a player, and I'm sure you don't, after all I am just one player.

After all the Cassiopeia mains are very very small % of the player base....who cares if we make them mad/sad/angry/depressed....right?

Then we have Stashu. Promised us to continue working with us on making the champion work, wanted to do new visuals etc.....then leaves and never contacts us again.

This whole thing, every last bit of it....just sucks for us Cass players.

All old Cass needed was the removal of windup time on ult and fixing the E delay....that is it, she would have been fine. :(

Instead we got......this.....

Oerba No Naja1 votes

i agree on everything . cassio needed small buffs not a rushed rework . Cassiopeia summoner 30

khorney1 votes

i like her how she used to be much stronger then she is now better ratios better late game and early game damage , now you are limited to every thing .

A Miss Fortune3 votes

Cassiopeia right now is really fun and viable, but she isn't a poison mage and she's just a machine gun. The closest thing we have to a poison mage is probably Teemo or Twitch, who are both Marksmen.

Valhala Warior311 votes

not realy .

A Miss Fortune1 votes

I don't see how she's not viable, her being fun is just my opinion but she's completely viable.

Her early game is gated by her mana costs, but she can effectively poke and all-in someone, her mid game teamfighting is insane with her slows/stun and AoE damage, and the ability to blow up a single target, and her late game is incredibly strong since her E can quite easily do 600 damage not including her poisons or ultimate which.

Valhala Warior312 votes

BTW cassio has 47 % winrate lol . and its not about viability ,ITS ABOUT GAMEPLAY , a lot of people miss the old cassio . actually her r deal the same dmg than 1 or few twin fangs ( this is ridiculous to shift ALL the damages of cassio on her single target LOW ranged spell ) cassio has issues in mid vs assasins + all the other super ranged mages . "her being fun is just my opinion" keep it for you no one cares. the most of people that main / mained cassio miss HER OLD IDENTITY / PLAYSTYLE . the cassio player base didnt want a machin gun

whatever this guy who actually got +300 games as cassio and a better rank than you propably knows so much better about cassio than you ; but i dont think he will try to argu with you since u played cassio 3 times in silver RANKs . legit salt Yorick

A Miss Fortune1 votes

You're trying to argue a champions viability with winrate and elo.

Yep.

Valhala Warior311 votes

and its not about viability ,ITS ABOUT GAMEPLAY , a lot of people miss the old cassio .

Sir Yamazuki2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Valhala Warior31,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NIPGBp7c,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-09T23:45:45.199+0000)

BTW cassio has 47 % winrate lol . and its not about viability ,ITS ABOUT GAMEPLAY , a lot of people miss the old cassio . actually her r deal the same dmg than 1 or few twin fangs ( this is ridiculous to shift ALL the damages of cassio on her single target LOW ranged spell ) cassio has issues in mid vs assasins + all the other super ranged mages . "her being fun is just my opinion" keep it for you no one cares. the most of people that main / mained cassio miss HER OLD IDENTITY / PLAYSTYLE . the cassio player base didnt want a machin gun

whatever this guy who actually got +300 games as cassio and a better rank than you propably knows so much better about cassio than you ; but i dont think he will try to argu with you since u played cassio 3 times in silver RANKs . legit salt Yorick

http://champion.gg/champion/Cassiopeia http://champion.gg/champion/Cassiopeia/Top

Almost 55% winrate for those who "main" her in ranked mid lane and 63% top lane. Although, sure, lets pretend she's totally weak.

Also, his rank and mmr is bad for 1.2k games playing the same champions.

Oerba No Naja1 votes

[deleted]

A Miss Fortune1 votes

Wait what?

My last game I went 10-10 and the game before that I went 28-7 and single handedly carried my team from almost a huge lost. I don't play Cassiopeia that often, but I don't think I ever build item 3158 on her since she can get 40% CDR with nothing but her passive and one item.

Oerba No Naja1 votes

normals games # ranked games (espacially when u are silver u will play with unranks in norms ) :)
cassio does not need more cdr than her passive since u can already perma poison someone . her bonus cdr on her passive its just for compensate her cd nerf on w and q .

A Miss Fortune1 votes

https://gyazo.com/03ff817b66cc123b4d8cbe62161509c0

My last games. Sure I'm Silver, but almost 100% of the people I play with in Ranked are Gold, and of course I see a lot of Platinum and Diamond players in Normal too. I did trashy and played Ranked as soon as I hit 30 which is why you saw that Cassiopeia game, and I will admit I was a trashy player back then, but I almost have a 100% winrate SINCE I started playing Ranked again :)

Building a CDR item to get 40% CDR isn't bad, her E is already on a 0.5 second CD due to how it works with poison, but her Q can do really nice damage and her ultimate will have around a 60 second cooldown if I'm not mistaken? Her ultimate isn't a joke either when you can potentially stun an entire team for 2 seconds, that can win a teamfight on It's own and subsequently an entire game.

Plus in case you do miss your poison, you're a free kill since unless you're like 50-0 your ult and a single E won't be enough. So having your poison on a reliably low cooldown is awesome.

Photos of Ghosts1 votes

Singed BWAHAHAHA

The Queen Viper3 votes

[{quoted}](name=nomoreflame naja,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NIPGBp7c,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-09T22:52:43.983+0000)

Aspect of the Serpent 100 STACKS: cassio'q range increased to 900 from 850 , on kill or assit the ms bonus is refreshed .

We don't really need more Q range, since Cass never has problems hitting people who are further away from her ... the ms refresh à la Jinx could be nice though.

[{quoted}](name=nomoreflame naja,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NIPGBp7c,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-09T22:52:43.983+0000)

Aspect of the Serpent 200 STACKS: cassio gains stakcs of twin fangs on champs and on drake/nash/blue/red for 1 twin fang hit she gains 1 stack , max 5 stacks , when u got the 5 stacks the next twin fang will deal x2 more dmg and will ignore magic resist .

This doesn't help at all and would only emphasize her Fang spamming. The "MRes ignore" part would be totally broken, and so would be the dmg amplification for her Twing Fang since it already is her main source of dmg anyway, or the other main source in your suggestion.

[{quoted}](name=nomoreflame naja,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NIPGBp7c,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-09T22:52:43.983+0000)

Aspect of the Serpent 500 STACKS: + 100 ap . flat values because she got decent ratios now .

You are joking right? That kind of flat value would be a direct nerf to the current version and % values are usually always superior. When it comes to your concept, those ratios are too high anyway.

[{quoted}](name=nomoreflame naja,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NIPGBp7c,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-09T22:52:43.983+0000)

you should get the 200 first stacks before 25 min , the 350 stacks between 30 min and 40 min and the 500 stacks in very late game

WTF? Why do you want to nerf her now? You can already get full stacks with the current passive during 25 - 35 minutes anyway. And seriously, 40 min is waaaaaaaaaaay too long to unlock her max passive and majority of the games will never last that long. Not to mention, 100 flat AP is ridiculously underwhelming since you already have a full build at that point.

[{quoted}](name=nomoreflame naja,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NIPGBp7c,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-09T22:52:43.983+0000)

now you have the choice to max q or e because they are both viable . this is rly important since u can choose your early playstyle ( max e and all in vs low ranged mages or max q and poke vs ranged " safe" mages )

So all you did, was pretty much increase the dmg of her Q to ludicrous levels so that she would be even more broken during late game and 2-shotting people from the distance with her Q instead.

Oerba No Naja1 votes

"remove it could be also great" . cassio dealt the same dmg with " deadly cadence" late game because all of her kit was dealing decent damages shift everything into the twin fangs and give her % ap scaling passive with low ratio was completly retarded . the increased range is not needed i agree . giving a buff to her e isnt really broken since u can nerf the reset from 0.5 to 0.75

i know that i made something totally broken with mixing her old damages ratios with a " better syndra passive " and i knew that u cant put ALL these buffs options and make cassio god like tier . this rework idea cant be taken seriously since i buffed every single spell of cassio . but i wanted to share my thought on possible cassio changes/balance ( some ideas can be good , some not ) to make her feel better with her poison and feel less like a machin gun , and to give her better matchups in mid .

NERDSMASHER50003 votes

let's see how many times people regurgitate the phrase "twin fang machine gun" in this thread

Valhala Warior312 votes

i dont understand the down votes lol , this main cass just tried to share some ( ofc we cant consider taking them all ) the possible changes to make cassio comeback as a poison mage. downvoting like retardss because you didnt understand that some idea can be taken and some not. great guys

Oerba No Naja2 votes

i dont care lol ^^ , until a rioter saw it

Photos of Ghosts1 votes

It's because he's spamming it everywhere, under every Red post.

Valhala Warior311 votes

his thoughts arent bad tho ..

Rot Panda1 votes

How about this: Passive - I don't really have proper thoughts on fixing this, other than letting poison on multiple enemy champions stack independently. Q - Initial damage prolly a ratio around 40-50% ap, plus poison application. W- Its pretty solid, only thing I could think of for making it better is giving it escalating base damage for standing in the poison too long. E- If we want a poison mage, why not have Twin fang move to a 1-2 second cd, and extend the poison duration on the target R - For the love of god reduce its cast time, a couple a days ago I tried to outplay a sona with this piece of Yoricks Mana Regen, I got hit by her q and ult before the animation 'finished' and went on CD shortly before I got wrecked hard enough to make Cass regret going to Shurima.

More from Gameplay

More by Oerba No Naja