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State of Cassiopeia [4.21]

Fluppets·1/6/2015, 6:42:07 PM·13 votes·3,491 views

State of Cassiopeia in 4.21

I’d like to gauge how people feel about the state of Cassiopeia in terms of Balance, Gameplay feel and Fantasy Satisfaction.

Tl;Dr: How would you describe the current state of Cassiopeia based on Balance, Gameplay Feel and Fantasy Satisfaction?

*This isn't a survey, I just include some questions to get things going in the right direction. Just separate Balance, feel and Fantasy in this discussion. (ie: No "I think she sucks because I cant exclusively poison from afar"). *

  • Balance: What I mean here are her numbers; too high, too low, too crooked, too purple…?

    • Is there a fair trade-off between damage and skill requirement? To pull off the combo, squishiness i.e. positioning, item dependency (need to get fed/high CS).

  • Does she have clear strengths and weaknesses? Does she have a clear and thus exploitable power curve?

  • Does she have good counterplay?

  • Does she have good/flexible Item paths?

  • …

  • Gameplay Feel: Regardless of how you want her to be Fantasy-wise, how does she feel?

  • Do you enjoy playing her?

  • Does she feel clunky?

  • Are there any obvious bugs or QoL fixes?

  • Do you feel your choices matter or are you just mashing your keys with similar outcome every time?

  • Do you feel sufficiently rewarded for the risk/effort you put in playing her?

  • …

  • Fantasy Satisfaction: There’s no right or wrong here, how does your Fantasy of Cassiopeia compare to the in-game reality?

  • Do her voice-overs and emotes make sense to you?

  • What is your Cassiopeia Fantasy and how is the current Cassiopeia not fulfilling this Fantasy?

  • What is Riot’s Cassiopeia Fantasy and did they succeed or fail in bringing it?

  • Do you like her skins? If not which ones do you dislike and why?

  • …

IMHO:

  • Balance: I think she’s in a good spot. In the experienced hands, Cassiopeia does insane amounts of damage, once a certain skill ceiling is breached she can carry a game. It is hard to say for me if that Skill ceiling is too easily reached though I dont even know if Im quite there myself.

She has strong trade-offs:

  • There are a number of matchups that are really hard for her.
  • It’s easy to screw up; one E on a non-poisoned target and it’s over and literally missing one or two last hits with E can cost you the laning phase due to mana issues. If things go perfect and a small misstep by an opponent however, she can be quite devastating even at level 2-3.
  • She has very flexible itemization, but that doesn’t make it easier, on the contrary, another skill ceiling that, once breached brings out her potential.
  • More than other mages. She can work with multiple Summoner spells: ignite, heal, exhaust or teleport all benefit her in some way depending on the lane or team comps, she can benefit or suffer significantly from a good or poor choice.
  • Just like an ADC, but without a gap-closer she is very squishy so she relies heavily on good positioning, exacerbated by her poison > Twin Fang combo that makes it more difficult to switch targets. With very high damage potentials, I feel there is a fair trade-off here.
  • It is very easy for an opponent to know when to go in and when to back out vs Cassiopeia, often I win simply because an opponent doesn’t respect my Miasma, that’s entirely his fault and avoidable.
  • Gameplay Feel
    • I enjoy playing her, she’s strong, I can melt faces, melting faces is fun!
    • I have long been extremely frustrated after playing Cassiopeia, not anymore. There were bugs and inconsistencies, doing well on her didn’t feel sufficiently rewarding and item choices didn’t feel impactful enough.
    • The poison visual clarity, it is known.
    • I can clearly see when and how I fked up in lane or during a teamfight. I think this is in large part due to the QoL fixes spread out over the past months (unfortunately hand in hand with new bugs and under tuning (no shit)).
    • She has a very fun risk/reward gameplay, you need to get in and melt face sometimes but only at the right times and never all the time. It’s all about darting in and out, choosing to follow poison up with Twin Fang or not is crucial and not necessarily a straight-forward choice.
    • You can’t mash your keys or you will end up with a long Cooldown on E, which means death and Petrifying Gazes into thin air are common even amongst much higher skilled Cassiopeia mains, not to mention actually landing your Q’s. So contrary to some other “high skill” champions (you know who you are) when you see a Cassiopeia doing well, it means they’re doing very well and when they fuck up, they fuck up tremendously.
  • Fantasy Satisfaction:

To me her Fantasy is nearly spot-on (this can’t ever be perfect though).

My Cassiopeia Fantasy is a predator that stalks its prey, deceivingly weak at first; inciting a reaction only to scurry away and come back again and again, poisoning and whittling down an opponent. Until at some point, the prey sufficiently weakened, she slithers closer sinking her fangs in the flesh, going in for the kill.

Right now the fantasy is there, but it goes a little too fast to the kill part (twin fang).

Her voice-overs could do some work, I like them, but they're not all in-line with what she's about.

Tl;Dr: How would you describe the current state of Cassiopeia based on Balance, Gameplay Feel and Fantasy Satisfaction?

36 Comments

yellowbricks1/6/2015, 10:05:57 PM14 votes

Current state of Cass:

Shit rework that has been spray-painted gold by numbers buffs and now everyone is eating it up. Go ahead and enjoy this shambling husk of what the champ once was, only a matter of time until riot remembers she's not in the elite cool kids club of the LCS BIG PLAYS crew and nerf her into next week.

Cass once had a good laning phase, now she's locked down by stacks.

Her poisons used to do good damage, now it's just a setup for her one good move.

Her twin fang is now her entire damage output.

But it's all okay because everyone's been hypnotized by the pros playing her and her slightly above average winrate. Whoop de do.

Cannot wait to get my more stubborn friends to actually give Smite a shot so I don't have to ever look at this game again.

Grand Eleven1/6/2015, 7:58:41 PM10 votes

Current State of Cass:

There is no denying her current power or effectiveness in game. I used her almost religiously during poro king and could easily melt teams. Her most effective playstyle was somewhat surprising though: dive in and destroy. destroy destroy. That's right: Super-flying-snake-lady was sleeper OP in Poro king, allowing me to poro toss then engage with an ULT and spam my foes to death. Even if my team was busy watching in awe or typing "my god she went full ham" I could take 2 down before getting gibbed by the other 3. If the king was up i could even zone to safety. Her damage output by the first passive milestone is respectable, sustain good, and by the 2nd milestone she's a beast. Cass is powerful, and powerful much earlier than before.

In that light it is clear to me that Cass has fundamentally changed.

While it was fun to play, and dominating damage meters is always satisfying in it's own right, the "in your face 100% of the time" Cass play style just doesn't feel like Cass to me. WIth her latest passive tweaks she can't gain stacks by farming ... she get stacks by harassing the opponent. Farming is more of a "oh dang ... I need some mana" (assuming you get past the first milestone). When this journey started we were told the lane bully needed to go but her kit basically is designed now to harass 100% of the time regardless of the effectiveness on the opponent because you need to get those stacks.

Cass can snowball again. Hard ... she just has to grow a pair of ... whatever it is snakes grow and harass regardless of how much it tickles and with the new "disengage poison" she will slowly find herself winning trades. Her miasma doesn't really clear like it used to and that's oddly a good thing: means she can use it to zone and harass without needlessly pushing the lane (place it near where they have to stand to last hit ... if they go for the gold you get some twin fangs in).

These latest changes have completely changed a champion Riot felt used to be too agressive into one thats hyper-aggressive even if the damage isn't felt right away. It's an odd change ... one that will undoubtedly appeal to people who want that playstyle. But to those of us how liked the idea of a poison mage who slowly wore her opponents down over time and subtly weakened you for the kill it's completely yin/yang to the point of feeling wrong. This Cass is about being constantly in your face ... about being a persistent threat that wears you down until she gets ahead or enough passive points to just erase you. Her new poison amp feels like a finishing move/kill secure rather than a strategic tool.

I think thats the key term here: strategic. Playing Cass now feels less about strategic movements and ability use and more about constant pressure. That strategy .. the choice ... is gone. How does that align with the lore? I'm not sure how it does ...at all. The seductive and deceptive mistress doesn't come through at all ... its a boxer. A fighter. Then again they pulled all seductive referencing from her voice over, and her lore is generic backstabbing (again devoid of seduction). Was it intended? Was the seductress who kills you slowly just a theme Riot didn't want anymore?

So yeah: Cass is dead. Subtlety has been replaced by pressure. Sexy theme replaced by thief/traitor theme. She's a strong champ. She's a fun champ. But thematic murder has been committed IMO. This is a Yuan-Ti warrior.

5G8Nri0B541/6/2015, 11:24:55 PM7 votes

Balance: May actually be too high in the right hands. However balance of a rework is IRRELEVANT because anything can be balanced if you just throw in numbers after numbers after numbers like Stashu did. People don't like playing Cassiopeia, they like playing a champion overloaded with lots of big numbers.

** Gameplay Feel:** Surprise surprise, Ginga finds that she feels horrible. They took a Poison Mage and made her into god damn Rambo. If I want to talk about balance, the most I can say is that fishing out the poisoned and un-poisoned targets in the orgy that is a messy clumped up teamfight can be a real **** sometimes, especially if the fight is especially messy and things start overlapping.

**Fantasy Satisfaction: **

What she should be:

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/2/25835/1954127-bmtdk_cv3_dasjhfalsudyflasdf.jpg

What Stashu gave us:

https://tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/jenny-rambo.jpg

(I like the black-yellow eyes from her new splash art though, and the scales of her snake tail too, but other than that...eh)

Kowe The Ewok1/6/2015, 7:22:19 PM6 votes

Balance: Actually quite good. She has very specific peaks when she shines, if you manage to use them right she is very rewarding. I also feel that there are good options for counterplay (or maybe I just perform well AGAINST Cassiopeia because I know her really well) (Secret hint: Other than boots - Doran's Shield reduces the damage of her E significantly, ruining her level 2 all-in potential)

Feeling: If you manage to get 6 items you feel like a God. Before that point? Meh, pre-rework was more fun.

Fantasay: 1.) I dislike the redesigns for her skins, both Siren and Desperado. I prefered the orignal ones. (Especially desperado is fugly now) 2.) I would love to have the old movementspeed (30%) on her Q :/ She feels so clunky without it.

Lt Cuddles1/7/2015, 4:02:48 AM2 votes

Cassiopeia item 3152 :^)

Galgarad1/6/2015, 8:46:04 PM2 votes

Balance :

  • I think her numbers are good. The damage on Q ramp up quickly, meaning that you can chunk quite a bit of damage (if you can land it!). Also, the DoT with the resetting E is quite awesome. Me like!
  • She does have clear weaknesses. If you don't get Tear, she is very mana hungry, meaning her damage potential is greatly affected. In addition, she is slow, very slow, and has no escape (apart from a waste of the ult). Thus, machup against manaless champs like Yasuo or Zed make her life a living hell.
  • I don't feel like she has a ton of possible itemization path. I mean, Tear is core, and since you don't have escape, you have to build health to survive. Even then, burst champs will kill you (looking at you, Syndra!).
  • She feels balanced to me. Her lategame power is phenomenal (>1000 AP FTW!!), while he early game is okay. Farming is not as easy as it seems, since the ticks makes last hitting tough through minions.

Feeling :

  • She's very fun to play, specially since she is not a guaranteed win. She feels rewarding when you can land her spells. And the fun you have when you almost melt the entire ennemi team with 1 ult late game!
  • Visually, I would like to see an indicator of some sort when I get stacks from poisonning champs. Maybe there is one that I haven't noticed, but I feel it would be even more rewarding to land a Q!

Fantasy :

  • I have to agree with Grand Eleven. She doesn't feel like a charming champ anymore. She is just a creepy, slowly growing on you type of champ that will jump at your neck the second she feels that you're vulnerable. She's more of a dangerous black mamba or viper than a defending anaconda. Her skins should thus reflect a lot more of agressivity, rather than a respecful threat. She's an in-your-face champ, let her show it!
Chortle1/6/2015, 9:48:17 PM2 votes

Balance

Well I've seen Voyboy, Froggen, and a few other pros play her just from their streams today so I think it's safe to say she's in a pretty good spot.

Feeling She feels a lot better than she did right out of the gates after the rework and a lot less clunky than pre-rework.

Fantasy

I always saw her as a sultry monster. I felt that her old lore wanted to tie her to Katarina too much and didn't give Cass enough room to fulfill her own story.

I also think her kit as it stands now is much better equipped to showcase a monster/gorgon/medusa type rather than the poison mage people on the forums seem to gravitate towards.

Giovarco1/6/2015, 10:41:50 PM2 votes

BALANCE: Her numbers are ok, however I noticed that her power curve is strange:

  • At level 2, you can all-in with Q and E
  • When you've maxed E and you're going to max Q, you get outscaled until mid game. From here, your poison means nothing. I mean, I can't feel her poison doing substantial damage to be noticed.
  • In mid-late game, she has a strong dps and CC. Normally I get fed here
  • In late game, you get outscaled and your dps isn't enough to carry, even if you're fed. This is especially true if the enemy team has a tanky frontline. You deal no damage.

Her weaknesses is her immobility and her uselessness if she fails her poison and Es a non-poisoned target. However, sometimes it's not easy in teamfight to understand who is poisoned.

I feel like she has counterplay. She gets destroyed by mobile assassin.

She's flexible with her build, more flexible than other mages.

GAMEPLAY FEEL: I feel ok, but her power curve is agonizing because you need to finish the game before late game, otherwise you're useless. Besides, the poison damage should scale with missing health I guess.

I enjoy playing her.

She need a mana item like tear or RoA to be played. And she sometimes go OOM even with that item after mid game. In lane she has good mana sustain. I buy item 2041, which give me more and more sustain.

I feel like she's clunky, but I think that she's supposed to be in this way.

No bugs, I think.

My choices matter because if I fail my skillshot (especially W in teamfight, which is super important) I have no damage. I'm not mashing the keys.

I feel sufficiently rewarded for the risk/effort I put in playing her, but she's not easy to play and I think that other mages can do better than her. She should be more centered around her poison because ATM it's just a bonus damage and nothing more.

FANTASY SATISFACTION: I feel like Cassiopeia is someone who tempts you and after she kills you. This has nothing to do with her being a poison mage or maybe her lore.

I like her voice, but I would like she says something reasonable XD I mean, for example Urgot says "Eternal life, endless torture", you see him and you understand why. His condition, I mean.

Cassiopeia should be a posion mage, but after level 6 her poison isn't noticiable.

Riot tryed to patch her, even if she was ok. He wanted Cassiopeia to be a late-game poison champion, but she's a mid-game DPS monster who falls off late game.

I have no skins of her. No opinion.

Caustic Crusader1/7/2015, 5:09:41 AM2 votes

She's a balance nightmare. I've said before that given her obscene power spikes, buffs that make her early game halfway as fun interesting viable as it was pre-rework would make her sorta busted. Lo and behold, her early game is now workable, she gets her stacks too early, and is significantly overpowered.

Gameplay-wise, nothing has been changed to make her less E-reliant, they've just buffed her E so that using it more often makes her stronger. She's more or less received very minor changes for her Q and W gameplay style, it's just that her E spam has become even more potent, to such a degree that the others are more or less non-existent because why would you ever try playing her with her old gameplay style you dummy?

Basically, she still feels just as bad to play as she did when the rework launched, but now she's powerful enough that we're almost forced to overlook it. She's gonna be nerfed really hard in a few patches and then thrown to the wayside because hey, we made her usable for a little bit, and we can easily call her toxic and anti-fun because there's actually now an argument for that being the case, given how boring she now has become to both lane with and against.

Tendrian1/7/2015, 7:33:01 AM2 votes

Balance Can't say too much honestly. I only played her a couple of times after the latest patch and didn't touch her since because I had no fun whatsoever. She seemed to be on the stronger side though.

Gameplay Feel What bothers me most about her is how one-dimensional she has become. Hitting Q and then following with E spam is literally the only thing she ever does these days. In a way she really plays like an adc now - your main concern is your positioning and not getting jumped on, and apart from that you simply fire your E. When compared to her old kit, it feels incredibly dull and watered down.

Apart from that, her kit also feels incredibly uncohesive in general. The biggest issue is just how much power is loaded into her E. Formerly, her Q provided strong poke, her W provided awesome waveclear and surprisingly strong zone control late game, and her E was used to chunk or finish of enemies if you had an opportunity to stay in close range without being killed instantly. Everything felt really useful, it was fine. I would even say it was exceptionally good with how round the kit felt. Right now, her Q only exists to set up her E, her W only exists to set up her E, and her E has become her last hitting tool, her mana sustain, her health sustain, a poison amplifier and 90% of the damage she puts out against champions (the poison amp IS E damage, no matter how much certain people are trying to sugarcoat it...) I guess it makes sense in the end: a rework that aims to enforce a playstyle that is actually discouraged by the majority of a champion's skills can only be "succesful" if the majority of this champion's skills are completely nerfed to the ground, which of course frees up a ton of power budget that needs to be funneled in the remaining elements of the champion. in a way, a lopsided trainwreck was the only possible outcome the rework could have, given its goals.

Also, there's still the passive. Admittedly, there has been an improvement here. Not because the changes made the passive itself somehow better, but because it doesn't impact her power curve as heavily anymore. Basically, it got less annoying because it is less noticeable. The moments where you do notice it however, it is still an exclusively negative force on the champion that makes you ask why you have to put up with it. Removing it completely would just be another improvement.

Fantasy Satisfaction This is by far the worst thing about her. Her underlying themes as a character have always been deception and seduction. It literally used to be her entire backstory - she seduced and deceived someone and got turned into a snake for it. The strengths I expect such a champion to have are things like resourcefulness, things like subtlety and controlling the actions of your enemies. Old Cass had all of this. Those moments when you zoned someone out and whitled him down from range, until he had to jump on you despite knowing that he will die, because it was literally the only way left for him - those were the moments where you were really feeling like a deceiver, where the fantasy behind the champion really connected with your experience. Of course, this is all gone now. Instead you can go in and spam E like a wannabe rambo until your enemy falls over. Yay.

It doesn't even stop at her gameplay. While the art of her old splash may be somewhat outdated, the message it sends is nonetheless pretty clear: Cass is reclining, like a queen. She is smiling. Luring. As if waiting for prey. If she were to say something, it would propably be something like "come closer... if you dare~". Now let's take a look at her new one. She seems to be vicious. She seems to be aggressive. Suddenly, she is the one who is about to jump on someone. She is no queen anymore - she's a soldier. It's a complete reversal of her character. And as a fan of her old self, it feels absolutely awful.

Her new VO, too. She was stripped of every line that made her feel like a seductress. Instead, she got some shitty poison puns and lines that sound like something the villain in a Twilight fanfic would say. "There's no antidote for me" ... seriously Riot? I have even trouble to lock her in these days, because I have to cringe everytime I hear it.

Pretty much every element I love about Cass and feel is essential to her as a character has been systematically removed from her art, gameplay and even voiceover. Thematically, all I can say about her is that she feels absolutely dead.

Fluppets1/7/2015, 10:42:17 AM2 votes

There are some nice comments here, alot of solid, clear feedback Riot could, nay should work with.

I feel there's a clear consencus on her balance part; she does alot of damage in the right hands, in the right circumstances.

This is not a free pass for Stashu, regardless of opinion (Colours & Tastes) there is alot of dissatisfaction between her gameplay and fantasy that needs to be addressed.

I am going to take a positive point of view: With Balance issues out of the way, I hope Stashu and co. can take that relief in pressure to do some serious work on Cassiopeia based on the months of feedback they have received. '

The negative approach would be that they can leave Cassiopeia alone, now that she's not trash anymore.

Kat Head1/8/2015, 12:52:25 AM1 votes

She is to strong. She is fun though.

U4fyn2vZzW1/10/2015, 3:44:29 PM1 votes

Still no reason to pick her over Syndra or Orianna.

EfficientDynamo1/7/2015, 5:10:36 PM1 votes

I feel like Cass is pretty close to being well balanced. Her E spamming can chunk people very well at any point of the game (although if you do it early game you will go OOM very quickly), and it is nice having a mage that can delete people from a distance that quickly in a way that feels different from burst mages.

That said, I would have to argue that her poisons feel like an afterthought. I never know how much damage they do, and thematically it feels like they only exist to set up an E barrage.

Also, her ult is very annoying to use. If someone like Zed or Fizz dives me, at least 50% of the time my ult is useless since it is very hard to aim when they are right next to you. ESPECIALLY with the windup. Also, it would be nice if the ult poisoned it's targets. I have lost several duels/teamfights because I have to lay down a Q or W after I hit my ult, and only then can I start spamming E's.

Finally, I feel like Miasma should do something more. Maybe shred MR/Armor? More ticks of poison? At the moment the damage is negligible and it only exists as a slow/poison setup. As it stands, it means that the E poison damage boost won't do much at all if you are relying on her W to poison the target.

Buzzkillington01/7/2015, 8:13:26 PM1 votes

Fun fact: Riot reworks Cassiopeia into this because she supposedly was a very toxic lane bully with little counterplay and interaction and her DoT was too OP and stepped on Brand's toes. Then they release Azir which is totally not a lanebully and totally doesn't scale into lategame.

Tetris Chemist1/7/2015, 12:08:26 AM1 votes

60 fucking MS from q at max rank

BlackTh0ughtz1/6/2015, 7:53:38 PM1 votes

I like her. She's my new favorite champ. Her poisons could use some buffs tho. They're pretty useless outside of getting stacks.

Whether they increase the length of poison (stack increase to compensate), the damage, more utility (longer/stronger slow on w, increased speed on Q), or something.

She hits pretty hard with E and missing the reset makes u useless in a fight. She's very immobile and needs help somewhere to just bring her to a solid top teir place.

LadyMoonsong1/8/2015, 12:32:34 AM1 votes

-1 She's half snake, but far too slow. Cassiopeia should be able to strike in any direction in an instant, like a snake, but simply can't. She's limited by her animation and must turn in order to strike in certain directions instead of using her waist and serpentine body to its greatest advantage especially in luring others to their doom. (Snakes are deadly, not necessarily because of poison, but because they're extremely fast when striking to deliver said poison.) This causes a huge loss in her gameplay, her ult in particular takes too long to cast and so doesn't always hit or even go off. (Her animation needs updating!)

-1.25 The other issue with her ult is it ends too quickly leading to champions evading it too easily, ie champions like Katriana can evade her ult while spinning so fast it should be impossible not to get a face full. Her gaze shouldn't just be deadly, it should be downright powerful & commanding, that of a cursed queen, and even the tiniest glimpse is devastating.

-1.5 Mobility: Her speed buff isn't dependable. Remove the passive on strike and make it a permanent passive or increase her base movement speed.

-2 Stacks: It just takes way too many and too long to be of any use. How about buffing her overall damage by 10% each time she hits with poison or TF up to a max of 3 times(30%) or a similar variation, which shouldn't be game breaking at any point in the game. (Sometimes simple is better than complex)

In short, Cass in the right hands can be great, but she's still highly situational(all in or nothing) and tends to fall off late game.

Fantasy: Well first off her Desperada splash art was far better than the current which is ugly. Secondly I have to agree with Tendrian & GrandElven, before she was regal and seductive, assassinating the unwary, and luring those foolish enough into her deadly grasp. Now she's in the middle of the fray like the common soldier. This is a huge step away from who she was and I preferred the older theme and splash.