@Riot - The Main Reason Why Cassiopeia's Stacking Passive will Never Work
EDIT
Stashu just stickied a thread with a little more specific, number based information! Find it here: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/1jXwf2BP-latest-on-cassiopeia
Yes, I'm posting yet another Cassiopeia thread. There have been about a million in the last week or so ever since Stashu's post explained some of the things they planned to do with new Cassiopeia to make her better. This has received both positive and negative feedback, but I wanted to explain why I think Cassiopeia, in this current iteration, will NEVER work as intended, or in a way that is fun for the player.
Essentially, it boils down to the way her passive stacks. In the proposed changes, it gains 1 per 6 seconds and 1 per second an enemy is poisoned, with a proposed cap of 500. At certain benchmarks, currently 75, 200, and then 400, she gains bonuses to her AP and buffs to her abilities. This, in itself, is a fine idea, especially if they want to make a late-game APC that is focused on dealing damage and building squishy. However, the way they made the bonuses work is fundamentally flawed.
Essentially, in order for Cassiopeia's passive to be balanced, it must be under-tuned purposefully. This is because of the way she gains bonuses through her passive: those tiered "benchmarks" of stacks which then grant all of their bonuses immediately. In this way, Cassiopeia is useless from 0-74 stacks, has a very weak heal and AP buff from 75-199 stacks, and then has a buff to her cooldowns from 200-399 stacks, and then finally reaches her ultimate potential, when she receives a massive 30% AP bonus.
The problem with this lies in counterplay. Particularly in lane, in order for an opponent to be able to adapt to the bonuses a stacking character gets, they must be balanced in a way that doesn't surprise them. This is why Veigar, Sion and Nasus' stacking passives work so well: they give minuscule buffs that compound over time into something gigantic. This way, it is fair for both players: the player gets to feel their power building gradually over the game, resulting in a massive power bank at the end, yet the opponent is able to predict and counter their power spikes because of their gradual nature. Cassiopeia's passive takes this idea and murders it. Rather than being a gradual power increase, her passive's power stays the exact same until their benchmark is reached. Once it is, she instantly receives large buffs to both her damage and even the way her abilities work. This situation, where Cassiopeia is allowed to gain a massive power bonus all at once, without any visual or statistical keys to indicate counterplay opportunities, is what makes Cassiopeia's passive a broken mechanic.
Now, I'm not saying Cassiopeia's passive is OP. Almost every single Cassiopeia player, myself included, absolutely despises the new passive because it's such a chore to stack. The reason it feels as if the passive is a chore is because, in order to be balanced, its tiered benchmark stacking bonuses MUST be weak enough for the opponent not to get suddenly overwhelmed. Basically, you can assign ANY numbers larger than the ones on Live, or different mechanics they can add to abilities at certain stacks, and they have to potential to be completely broken on her, simply because she gains these bonuses all at once instead of over time. If Cassiopeia received her bonuses similar to Veigar and Nasus, they could potentially be bigger or more impactful because the opponent would constantly be able to check her power level. However, in its current state, they can't. The numbers and mechanics on her passive must be purposefully lowered for the sake of readability and balance. In a balanced state, Cassiopeia's tiered, "lump-sum" stacking mechanic has to be unrewarding for the player in order to create counterplay.
This is why HIGHLY urge Riot to listen to the constructive criticisms of the current iteration of Cassiopeia. Almost all the complaints about her are how E-central her kit is, and how horrible her passive is as a mechanic. I think a great portion could be solved by AT LEAST changing the way Cassiopeia receives her stat bonuses, but IDEALLY by recreating a simpler passive which works across ALL areas of her kit, not just her E.
Please don't attempt to make a broken mechanic work just because it's unique. Riot will never be able to make a reworked Cassiopeia that EVERYBODY likes, but they can create one that MOST people like, and a great start is to rework the wonky passive that forced the rest of her kit to change completely.
