@Riot, Cassiopeia needs YOUR help!
I know, you guys can't impossibly respond to every single piece of feedback but at least lend us Casslovers some of your attention. I'm sure you've seen the many objections regarding the rework before it went live, apparently they weren't so misguided after all. Not only did her winrate reach an all-time new low (35%), it also alienated countless Cass mains out there. And what do you know, the amount of complaints has almost doubled since then.
I could talk about her issues for HOURS (why not read RiotStashu's thread instead?) but I'll try to go straight to the core problem: Cassiopeia's laning phase is horrendous. Most of your time you're either facing an assassin or a high ranged spellcaster with great poke who can harass you with ease. Sometimes you also face control mages like Orianna who simply negate your poke and outtrade you at any given opportunity.
Your only chance of beating those champions is to shut them down before they reach level 6 or have their core item(s), so you've automatically lost your lane by picking Cass. This reworked snakelady has absolutely no early kill potential and has to stay at tower during the entirety of the laning-phase if she doesn't want to feed the enemy jungler over and over again. Once they've hit their power-spike, they'll dive you after you're low enough. And they're going to do it, over and over again.
You can't even protect yourself since your mana-pool will be at a constant low thus making any retaliation impossible. And pray to god you're not facing someone like Zed since it'll take you ages before you have that Zhonya's Hourglass. By that time he'll be already snowballing thus costing your team most likely the game. What's even worse, there's no one with the least amount of understanding for this predicament. So far every single teammate refered to this Cassiopeia as being useless since she lacks the power to do ANYTHING.
Old Cass was very much capable of dealing with various counterpicks since she had good poke which also enabled her to farm safely while harassing the opponent from time to time. Combined with her old passive, she had surprisingly good sustain in terms of constant damage output. This new Cass has absolutely no means of reducing the health of her opponents beforehand without going ham and wasting insane amounts of mana.
Infact she can't even partake at ganks anymore since she'll be already out of mana once her jungler arrives. In the end she won't recieve support from her own team, no matter how pushed back her lane is, since no jungler wants to feed an opponent who is at full health and has a higher level than them while you're stuck sitting at your tower.
The issue remains that Cassiopeia's current laning experience is terribly onesided due to reducing your lane-activity for the first 20-25 minutes to constant farming and cowering in fear once someone looks into your direction. Her poke is laughable and only serves to gather stacks now, a reward-system which works terribly delayed and has no other purpose besides resetting your E.
And here we are at the root of her problems, her Twin Fang. This ability was NEVER meant to be her main source of damage. If you compare her 'total damage dealt against champions' at the end of a game, you'll realize that she struggles to even keep up with ap supports now. Old Cass dealt the majority of her damage via poke, that's how this game is played most of the time. And by god, don't get me started on the mana costs for this thing once you've fully leveled it. You'll cast less Twin Fangs than you did before with the old passive.
If you're a squishy immobile mage you should never go ham, especially against a healthy opponent - and even if they're low you have to consider your positioning. This utter reliance on a short range single target damage ability is simply impractical which makes Cassiopeia an even more situational champion than she was before, the risk/reward-ratio is entirely skewed to her disadvantage now.
Should you ever fall back, you might as well surrender since you're forcing your team to 4v5. Once teamfights start, it becomes almost impossible to farm due to your teammates taking all the cs from you. Your only source of stacks will be from applying poke, it's too bad you'll most likely die the moment you try to do so. Even if you manage to get ahead in score, it'll take you at least 35 minutes to gather enough stacks - if you avoid feeding, it'll take 40 minutes. Should you die or simply get pushed out of lane, you'll never reach that amount.
Cassiopeia used to be a risky champion who, despite all odds, was capable of making comebacks since she had great ratios to back her up. Now she's an unreliable pick with an incredibly delayed powerspike who can't even deal with counterpicks anymore. She's entirely at the mercy of her opponents and is unable of helping her team until she reaches her lategame - and that is if you weren't camped to death before, which will happen A LOT. And even if you managed to survive a fight, you can't take objectives like raidmonsters since you'd need a full mana-bar to do so. Old Cass never had those problems.
I dare say she's worse off than Poppy now (at least she can make herself invincible) - Cass' disappointing early to midgame performance makes her entirely reliant on getting carried by her team. There's no chance for you to carry the game before the 40 minute mark and once that point in time has come, the game has been decided already.
You seriously need to consider lowering the stackcap or giving her new ways of gathering additional poison-stacks. Maybe even make her poison apply Grievous Wounds to opponents so her poke might finally leave a mark so they can't instantly recover from her pitiful damage - using your poison should cripple your opponents, not tickle them. And if nothing else helps, you could at least raise the ratios on her Q and W so she may actually deal damage again.
Your initial goals were to make her a more reliable/viable pick while increasing her dps - in the end you didn't fullfill any of those goals. Her damage-output is even more unreliable now while her new gameplay forces her to be more cautious than ever before. The numbers you had in mind may have seemed quite nice on paper but the results are vastly different if applied to reality.
Sincerely, a very disappointed EUW Cassiopeia main.
