Cassiopeia mechanic concepts

So, while I haven't played Cass yet, and I may be a stranger to the discussion, I've played against her and made a few observations:

1. She's a little obnoxious with those dots
2. She's not really scary against my playstyle, and I always seem to have an easy time scaring her off or taking her out, but the rest of the team has a real hard time against her. Is Zyra a hard counter?
3. She has the most awesome death scream.

Anyways, I figured there's an awful lot of discussion around Cass, and it would probably help to have a place to throw some actual ideas for mechanics or mechanic changes.

(I am, after all, a game designer)

So the way I understand it, she's supposed to feel like a mythical snake lady. Venom and poison (though that's technically the wrong term to use) are key to her identity. You already have the given medusa tropes to play with, and she has that as her ult (It doesn't seem to work very well, just saying).

She's probably a mess right now because there are a lot of contradictory mechanics at work just in the concept alone. If she's killing with her venom, doesn't it cure someone when she turns them to stone? If they turn back, is the venom gone? If she creates a venom pool on the ground and turns someone to stone, doesn't the stone effect protect the enemy from her own spell? ridiculous. On one hand you have an effect that stops targets in their tracks, and on the other, one that's supposed to kill them over time, slowly and painfully. Which doesn't really work in a hit point based game.

See, one of the tropes that fails hard in game design is the idea of poison or venom dealing damage over time. Head out to the wilderness and make out with a wild snake of some kind, and you'll quickly find out that the venom doesn't just deal you hit point damage while you operate at 100% normal levels until you suddenly die. Venom will fuck you up. We are talking, you will barely be able to move, you will probably be in intense pain, and you may end up crippled because of the chemical reactions at work in your bloodstream.

So start there.

I say that Cassiopeia's venom effects, even if they're magical, should not do ANY damage over time components. Instead, her magical venom spells should apply stacking speed debuffs(movement, attack, casting) and magical damage multipliers. say, 3% extra damage per stack. that gets nasty fast and as you keep taking damage from her, you'll feel like it's a damage over time effect, but it's really just you getting owned hard. If you want to get away, you have to do that fast, or you have to kill her. It would feel like she's getting faster with every spell, but that's because you're getting slower.

Her Ultimate could probably use some work too. just have it slow targets above 66% health, stun targets between 33% and 66% health, and instantly execute anyone below 33% health , creating a permanent statue in that spot that can be stepped on and broken for a few gold(while enemies that are turned away have the punishment reduced by a category). This would make it suddenly have a LOT more synergy with her other abilities and it would cement (hehehe) her as a caster with a powerful, obvious combo that you build toward. And you could expand it even further to create some counterplay, just by increasing its range. If an enemy target is looking at her and their wards grant vision, have it affect them too. Cass would then be able to punish enemy teams for having predictable ward coverage, and she could coordinate ganks on enemies in other lanes if you're split pushing properly.

Right now she gets a currency, a stacking buff that goes up when she poisons enemy champions or kills poisoned units. those are two odd choices. poisoning enemy champions is to be expected but if the enemy champion is playing passive, they're hard countering your passive, which is weird. Killing poisoned units... What if it's someone else that poisoned them? So singed lets loose with a poison cloud, and Cassiopeia slaps that unit, and kills it, and that makes her poisons stronger? I'm not seeing the connection. Let's scrap that.

Something like: As Long as Cass is alive and visible to an enemy, Cassiopeia and her team gain +1 Gold when an enemy champion is hit with a venom or poison attack, or when a minion or monster dies to venom or poison or a magical attack (anything that uses AP). What that means is, instead of someone trying to prevent Cassiopeia from landing the last hit or playing passive, the enemy team now has to commit harder to winning the lane, or has to secure ganks against Cassiopeia because she represents a significant gold advantage, or they have to try and land blind skillshots or turn away from minions while Cass and her teammates are last hitting (next to impossible if she's visible due to wards). And how about that throwback to her ultimate, eh? And at the same time, this gives friendly laners the opportunity to change some of their typical strategies. You'd see characters like riven and morgana doing wave clearing with their abilites, for the long term gold advantage. at 7 gold per teammate per wave, that's 35 gold per participating lane for the team just for playing smart. It'd be interesting to see the impact.

So here's the abbreviated list of suggestions:

For her passive, make it a global ally buff that gives a gold advantage for venoming and poisoning targets while she's visible to enemies.

For her venom, replace damage over time effects with stacking debuffs that magnify magical damage while slowing targets.

For her ultimate, give it a chance to turn targets to stone permanently (executing low health targets) for a slight bit of gold to the person that squashes the statue.

All to reinforce the idea that she's a mythical caster that focuses on magically envenoming targets, while punishing enemies that look at her.