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Cassiopeia Nerfs? Really...?

Audiomancy··21 votes·3,280 views
1/16 PBE Update

We're told that Stashu is 'working on her' and that she's still not in a good place right now. First Cass update in weeks? A mana nerf. Is this really happening?

First you completely gut her ratios and base damage, leaving her with only one useful ability, you take away her early game strength and say that she's now a 'late game champion'. You turned a squishy, long ranged, AoE DoT mage with no mobility into a short ranged, single target spam machine. Then you go and make her early game even worse.

Enough is enough. Yes, she is strong at top lane now. But have you ever stopped to consider why she is even in top lane? Because she can't compete with other mid laners as she is now. You destroyed her so much that she has been forced to capitalize on the fact that she has range and sustained damage, in a lane populated mostly by melee tanks. Riot, nobody is responsible for the mess that you have created but yourselves. Don't just throw her at Stashu again and say 'FIX IT BETTER'. Actually work on her. Listen to the feedback you've been given since the conception of this tragic rework and do something with it.

Lots of love, A sad Cass player. Cassiopeia item 3070

24 Comments

MrBuffington8 votes

Stashu is not on the balance team; the balance team makes their own decisions, and yes, Cassiopeia was overtuned. If Stashu is still working on Cassiopeia (which he's stated he is), he probably had nothing to do with these nerfs.

For the record:

  • I also disagree with these nerfs; it's the damage amp that's oppressive on Cassiopeia, her mana costs are already pretty bad.
  • I think the damage amp is stupid; it just adds more invisible power to Cassiopeia (which was the goal in shifting her playstyle away from the DoT mage when they reworked her; sounds like they reintroduced the problem they were trying to eliminate), while not really addressing the 'poison mage' fantasy a lot of Cassiopeia players have (the goal Cassiopeia players had, IIRC, was to make her Q/W meaningful spells on their own, instead of relying on her E, which is exactly the opposite of what these changes did).

EDIT: Also, (though Riot alone really has complete statistics on this sort of thing, other sites generally have fairly good approximations) Cassiopeia's win rate spiked significantly when she was given poison amp to well above 50%; additionally she still seems to be played more as a mid-laner (66%) than top-laner (18%); I don't think these nerfs have to do with her rise in the top lane alone.

Sightless666 votes

Cass is still played a lot as a midlaner, and sees high success there. The fact of the matter is, she's quite strong right now. You can dislike her play style: that's perfectly understandable, and I sympathize with you, but she's not weak right now. Right now, she's one of the stronger champions in the game, and that does need to be addressed. Her rework may need more work, but that doesn't mean that ignoring the current balance problem is a good idea. A good rework should happen, but that can take time (and yes, I empathize with how annoying it is to wait), and balance problems have to be addressed in a quicker manner.

PoisonedPeace9 votes

So where are the Zed nerfs? He's allowed to be a strong fighter, strong poker, high mobility, zero risk, great wave clear, AD assassin but that isn't "one of the stronger champions in the game" and needs to be addressed?

I agree with OP. Much bigger fish to fry than relatively successful cass. Most champs that are played frequently are relatively successful.

Sightless662 votes

So where are the Zed nerfs?

Almost certainly in the next patch, given what the patch notes said. Not really relevant though. Just because Zed needs work doesn't mean Cass didn't, and Cass had a very easy nerf to decide on. There is always a bigger fish to fry.

That said, I'd agree that waiting on the Cass nerfs for another patch wouldn't be a bad thing, just to see if things evened out and she really needed them, but I'm pretty sure she still would have needed them.

PoisonedPeace1 votes

I can't say I agree. Other champs have been able to reign terror for much longer before the community ends up adjusting.

Cass was rarely played before rework, obvious boost in play after, and predictably dropped back to about same amount of play as before. The change before that spiked her win rate is natural when buffing a champion, and it is likely that it would level out subsequently.

On the other hand, Rito says its** healthy** for Zed to have zero weaknesses other than not being ranged. Not to mention, the change to IE puts zed in an even better spot vs other AD mids such as yasuo or talon (both of which he already dominated). Everyone here knows that Riot allows high mobility champs to stay OP longer than others because of their big play potential, but I would argue Cass didn't need the nerfs, nor did she even need a dam rework in the first place.

Sightless661 votes

The change before that spiked her win rate is natural when buffing a champion, and it is likely that it would level out subsequently.

Is it actually natural when buffing a champion? I don't actually think it is. I very rarely notice champion winrates increasing to that level then decreasing very significantly. I'm pretty sure the nerfs would have been completely necessary, although like I said, waiting another patch would have been fine. As for the rework not being necessary: Sure. I'll agree. But it happened, and balance can't stop just because it wasn't a great rework.

You can bitch about Zed all you want and I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'm also not going to agree that Riot mishandling Zed means that other champions should get the same leniencies they keep throwing him.

PoisonedPeace1 votes

You just tried to argue that buffing champs won't increase win rate... I think I'm done here junior xD

Sightless661 votes

No, that's not what I tried to argue. I'm trying to argue that her win rate wouldn't have decreased from where it was like you claimed it would. It spikes up because of the buff, and then it stays there instead of leveling out like you claimed. It's the leveling out that I'm disputing.

Do you really think I'm trying to argue that buffs don't increase winrate? Seriously man. You can afford to give other people a little more credit than that even if they disagree with you.

questir5 votes

I guess we gonna have to waste gold for the Seraphs and RoA build once again...sadly. Riot forgot why they lowered the mana costs in the first place, Cassio before the buffs went oom so fast, especially doing objectives

Zahz4 votes

PBE . they are allowed to test things

PoisonedPeace5 votes

Almost all intended changes made on PBE make it to live.

AHeroNamedHawke2 votes

Yes shes overpowered at the moment, mostly due to the constant whining that her kit was "omg trash unusable never stack passive always oom useless 0 damage", I believe was the term

But please, don't let me interrupt your complaining

FreezerFlare2 votes

The one thing I hate the most about the rework is that people are actually playing her again... All this attention is not what cass fking needs. I swear if they put all of this effort to rework cass just for her to get repeatably nerfed into obscurity like ziggs... I don't even know....

Mannysmoker2 votes

Cassiopeia became displaced of mid to top lane, and became Ryze 2.0 with more exteroids..

Ninpire1 votes

You say she's so bad but every time I see a cassiopeia she just carries. Does insane damage with her e and is somewhat tanky cause they always build roa. I can understand you people complaining about a boring playstyle but she's not weak at all.

Abyssphere5 votes

{quoted}

You say she's so bad but every time I see a cassiopeia she just carries. Does insane damage with her e and is somewhat tanky cause they always build roa. I can understand you people complaining about a boring playstyle but she's not weak at all.

Literally none of the Cass complainers say she is bad. We are entirely aware she is too good. Or rather, Twin Fangs is too good. ALL of the complaints are about playstyle.

Ninpire2 votes

Then why complaints about the nerf when you guys are aware she's op..

Audiomancy3 votes

{quoted}

You say she's so bad but every time I see a cassiopeia she just carries. Does insane damage with her e and is somewhat tanky cause they always build roa. I can understand you people complaining about a boring playstyle but she's not weak at all.

Nobody is calling her weak. Hell, she can probably 1v2 anyone at 35 minutes (except Veigar of course). Yet she still sucks. She's boring to play - both as and against. Land Q/W>EEEEEEEE>Dead. That is literally the extent of her playstyle now. See the problem?

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Audiomancy3 votes

{quoted}

And the nerf fixes the one problem you just pointed out. She will deal less damage in lane since she can't spam as much thereby giving her lane opponent a chance to turn and kill her. Honestly, once her numbers are fixed, she will be a much more fun and unique champion than she ever was before her change =/

'Fun and unique'? Pressing one button over and over again is not fun, nor is it unique. Ryze does the exact same except he can afford to build tanky. As for fixing the problem, no, it doesn't. It makes her bad early game even worse and does nothing to her late game. She needs to land poisons early game, and she can't do that if she goes OOM after a few spell casts. Early game, everyone just shits on her, yet her passive demands that she be a lane bully. She's just a gigantic bundle of contradictions at this point and she needs a complete revamp. A ball of stats that hits 35 minutes and says 'I win' is more toxic than her poisons.

Not that her poisons are even worth being called toxic, mind you.

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Audiomancy3 votes

{quoted}

It is far more fun and unique that what she was pre-rework. What part of her pre-rework kit was fun or unique? Compared to pre-rework, post re-work cass is far better. There is a reason why cass was reworked and why everyone was so damn excited when the concept of her rework came out. Conceptually, post-rework cass is far more interesting than pre-rework. Her numbers are obviously problematic and riot is fixing them with the patches.

Also, if the changes make her too bad, then riot can just revert half of the mana nerf. As you said, she clearly needs a nerf. She is overpowered now. If all her spells cost 1 more mana, she will still be overpowered. If all of her spells all cost 100 more mana, she would be useless. Somewhere inbetween those numbers, she will between overpowered and useless (i.e. balanced). Riot is simply starting the process of finding the right number and the ones of pbe are very close to the correct ones.

What part was fun? Oh, I don't know, maybe the part where you would slowly whittle a target down, waiting for the right moment to strike and move in for the kill with E? That cunning, predatory playstyle that required patience and awareness, rather than 'who can press E fastest'. Nobody was 'excited' to see the rework's conception. Cass mains saw how horrible the new ratios were, and how much power was unnecessarily shifted into E, while non-Cass players just saw 'omg free deathcap and cdr op'. Her numbers are problematic because if they aren't ridiculously high, she's useless. That is what the rework has turned her into; an all-or-nothing ball of stats whose success is dictated not by how skilled the player is, but who has the highest numbers.

Conversely, what do you like about the rework that couldn't have just been done with the old Cass?

ChargeItDownMid1 votes

[deleted]

Audiomancy3 votes

The fact that you are comparing her to Urgot of all things, doesn't help. And Twin Fangs was not her 'most fun and unique' ability. Twin Fangs is literally Ryze's entire skill set rolled into one; a spammy, machine gun that costs mana.

Again, nobody wanted the rework. It was literally a case of a Red saying 'hey, we're turning your favorite champion into the exact opposite of what they currently are and always have been!' Google 'lol cassiopeia rework' and see how many people dreaded its coming. Every. Single. Thread talks about how bad the rework would've been/is.

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