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Cassiopeia PBE Update: Avoiding the real issue

Serpents Embrace·11/5/2014, 11:29:12 PM·16 votes·1,345 views

How long does Stashu and the design team want to dance around this issue? The problems with the Cassiopeia rework are myriad but most stem from just one, single change: Aspect of the Serpent. This new passive is bad because it's not just restrictive, it's debilitating. And even with all of the extra red tape and stress that it breeds - it's not even rewarding! The bonuses it gives you are just band-aids for the nerfs her active abilities received:

  • 25 Bonus CDR? Doesn't even make up for the additional cooldown to Q or the almost doubled cooldown given to W. Not to mention the sheer amount of CDR here limits her itemization in a way that only adds more stress - if you purchase any static CDR item you're going to feel like you wasted gold because you did, which is counter-intuitive because the timing of the CDR buff makes you crave CDR early and have an over-abundance late. I thought Feast/Famine patterns were one League was trying to move away from.
  • 30% Bonus AP? You deal the same damage at 200 stacks and 700 AP that you used to be able to get around like 350 to 400AP because her ratios are now abysmal at using AP. This change also limits her itemization, because if you don't have the AP to make bonus AP hit useful returns - oops, you're shit out of luck Ryliandry's users.

Aspect of the Serpent's changes on PBE fail to address any of this. The rewards are unchanged, despite the fact that what it gave you was half of why it was a chore. Decreasing the pressure on Cass players to continuously perform the same tasks early or face falling off even harder means nothing when they still don't get rewarded for jumping through your hoops. Aspect of the Serpent has nothing on Deadly Cadence simply because it never punished the player - which is all Aspect does.

The other changes to Q and E on the PBE are garbage only because they continue to dance around the real issues with the rework. Aspect is terrible, and the forced focus on Twin Fangs completely misses what was so rewarding about playing Cassiopeia before. Not to mention they seem half-assed. Oh, they want better poison damage? Let's throw a percentage increase in there somewhere even though her damage output can only look good on paper, and even then it's not often it does.

Stashu even admits the problems he's caused with the update. Loss of identity and loss of rewarding gameplay are two things that have been acknowledged about the rework, but the changes continue to cling to the very thing that caused it. Why?

28 Comments

AtheosisX11/5/2014, 11:44:41 PM11 votes

Man am I glad I'm not a Cassiopeia player. Worst rework ever.

BigDaddySenpaiii11/6/2014, 4:52:58 AM10 votes

Aside from the passive, which just needs to be removed,

They keep sticking to this "late game hyper carry" goal. It just doesn't work with her kit.

Vayne - extremely low CD dash with stealth built in, pushback with a stun if properly positioned, built in true damage

Kog Maw - Long range siege, built in armour/MR shred, %damage. Less mobility than Vayne but more than makes up for it in utility/shred

Cass - only one form of CC, which not only has a windup but is easily avoided if you know Cass. No self peel, no true damage, no % damage, no long range siege, no mobility, no ability to quickly change targets (imagine if any ADC had to wait 3s to change targets because they missed a SS or it just wore off on a diff target)

See the difference between a hyper carries kit and Cass? It just doesn't support it. She literally gets every negative aspect of the "stacks" mechanic and hyper carry status while having none of the advantages both of those types of champions enjoy.

DUDE BRO11/6/2014, 7:08:49 AM6 votes

How to properly make a lategame AP carry:

  • Abilities AP Ratios scale as you level em up. (Rank 1 use 30% ap, while rank 5 uses 80% ap)
  • Make skill cooldowns go down as you rank them up.
  • Abilities are needed for damage output. So champ is at max potential when all abilities are maxed.

How riot makes a lategame AP carry:

  • Cut all ability power ratios down to a tiny amount.
  • Make the champion magically get AP bonus 40 minutes into the game
  • Double CD on skills but magically give you bonus CDR endgame.

One of these allows you to build naturally and scale well. The other forces bogus stats on you and requires you to build as much AP as possible to offset the terrible scaling and make use of her 30% ap bonus. The second is not very thought out at all.

AtheosisX11/6/2014, 3:45:12 AM5 votes

Yeah I don't get this notion that the old Cass was a problem that could only be fixed by completely changing how she worked from the ground up and in such a way as to make her trash tier.

hOrnn11/6/2014, 12:12:18 AM1 votes

nobody cares, if you play cass i call you a botter.

Narasimha11/6/2014, 1:59:01 AM1 votes

Seriously speaking, all Cass players want is for her to return to her old form. Which is BAD. As much as everyone hates changes, old Cass was just a mess. She was designed as a high dps champ who somehow ended up as a glorified waveclearing sieging machine. Much like the Gragas rework, this was intended to put her back in her place. Its not perfect and certainly needs work, but its a step in the right direction.