@Stashu and Reds, Concerning Cassiopeia Rework

I'm sorry Stashu, but I don't think you are truly understanding why so many of us are so upset.

I want to start this off by saying I have a lot invested into Cass. When I first started playing a few years ago, she was the very first champion I liked enough to buy. Desperada Cass was the first skin I ever bought, and for the longest time it was the only skin I even owned because I am a cheap bastard but I thought playing her was so much fun that it was worth it to me.

From the first moment I played her in free week ages ago I loved her, and to this day Cass is -- rather, until this rework went live, was -- my favorite mage and the one I am best at (not saying I'm awesome, just better with her than I am with all other mages).

1) It's not just the numbers. Everyone agrees her numbers are really bad. But that isn't the only reason we are upset. As a several years Cass main, I am so unbelievably upset that absolutely everything about her has changed. Old Cass' core identity was:

• High skill cap, high complexity
• DoT poison mage
• Early-game poker, with power peaking mid game, and late game being strong but out-shined by other mages with either stronger damage or stronger utility.
• Low mobility, with moderate kiting ability with Q+W
• Mid range
• Strong AoE damage, especially in high CC late game fights, and more moderate single target damage compared to ADCs or dedicated single target champs like Fiora or Teemo.
• Primarily a skirmisher and kiter, but when forced into a knife fight would turn around, stun, and spam E and pray you don't get CCed and kill them before your CC wears off. E is your dagger to the heart ready to spring when the opportunity to burn them down arises, not your bread and butter.

We are mad because for years these things are why we loved Cass, and you deleted all of these traits. You gave little warning, ignored the incredible amount of resistance before going live, and you are still speaking as if your new direction of poop early game, late game single target hyper carry is a good thing or what we want. It isn't what we want. There are quite literally hundreds of pages on the old GD thread telling you this is not what we want.

2) ...But the numbers really do suck There are a lot of posts floating around with the math, but the short version is that even in the best case scenario with full build and max stacks, new Cass has only a small amount more single target DPS (4% more). Completely ignoring the bat**** insanely gutted early game (reminder, Cass has always had a good early game), I have not heard a single person say they would prefer 4% more single target DPS in exchange for less than 50% of the AoE damage she had before.

3) Updated textures are a major downgrade I'm not joking. I don't care about Mythic, Siren, or the default skin because I don't own them/don't use them. But for the love of God and all that is holy PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE revert Desperada Cass skin. Old Desperada looked amazing, and sure it could use a texture update, but the new version looks totally different. You are changing the color scheme and snake species, and removing a lot of detail from the skin. If you won't revert this skin, PLEASE give me the option of using the old one if you really can't part with this bland and fugly looking new one. Don't get me wrong there are parts of it I like, the jewels on her hands being more defined for example, but the entire awesome color and camo scheme has changed and become far more bland and gross, and the same with the designs for her hat and vest and whips. It is less intricate, and it no longer looks like the deadly diamondback rattler I bought it for.

4) Building stacks is neither fun, nor functional on Cass' kit Let's ignore the fact that the stack cap is exceedingly high. Let's ignore for now that as a longtime Cass player who has always been very aggressive in lane, the earliest I have ever reached max stacks is 30+ minutes, and usually after minute 40. The idea of building stacks to suddenly switch hyper-carry mode "on" just does not work with Cass.

Stacking champs must be able to reliably and consistently gain stacks throughout all stages of the game. They can do this with sustain (Sion), major tank and solid sustain (Nasus), or safe consistent ranged farming (Veigar). Cass does not have the mana sustain to be able to consistently gain stacks from poisoning champs, nor does she have the damage to come anywhere close to winning the trade. She could try farming minions, but that is both extremely slow, and most often results in being zoned and pushed to your turret due to her incredibly terrible new "waveclear". So even if we wanted her to be a stacking champ (we don't), she does not currently have the tools to be able to be a functional stacking champ.

Hyper-carries, on the other hand, need gold. Lots and lots of gold. They have a weaker early game (check), have a best case at full build compared to other champs at full build (check), have extreme killing power to the tune of 1-1.5 seconds to kill a squishy a la Vayne/Koggles/Tristana (definitely no check). To get to this insane damage dealing capability, they need only to be fed kills and farm, and levels don't really matter as much. Constant jungle help force feeding Koggles to a 3 full items at 25 minutes spells doom for the enemy team, and a full build is downright terrifying (this is not at all the case for new Cass). In late game team fights, in addition to killing any squishy very quickly and full tanks not much slower, hyper carries need something else to ensure victory: extreme range (Kog/Tristana), disproportionately strong defenses (Ryze/very farmed Sion, Vlad), target-less dashes (Vayne/Tristana), and/or an avoidance ability like stealth or troll pole (Vayne/Vlad). Cass has none of these traits. She does not have the tools to be an effective single target hyper carry without further reworking her kit (again, this is not what we want). Your recent post about cramming even more power into her E is shockingly ignoring everything said in the hundreds of pages in the GD thread, and honestly you are giving her the Irelia problem of way overloaded kit to make up for a bad idea -- even if we wanted Cass to be a single target late game hyper carry (again, we don't), her kit doesn't support it at all and so you are forced to overload the kit (really just E) with tons of random things like health on E and now possibly this new stacking mechanic to increase poison damage... It's just a terrible idea to overload one spell at the cost of all the others, and it is going to make balancing her really difficult if you keep throwing random new things onto her E.

Furthermore, even if you are doing well at either stack generating or gold accrual, the fact that you are hard-gated by both of these things means that it is pretty impossible to get to hyper carry damage status regardless of how amazing you are doing and are able to outplay the **** out of the enemy. It does not feel good to still be useless even after your jungler spoon feeds you 3 kills, after which ANY OTHER champion would be able to dominate the lane. But Cass can't, because she is essentially gated by the 40 minute mark due to requiring a full build and 400 stacks by design (let alone the fact the actual numbers are only a 4% increase in single target DPS at this point).

On top of all of that, Cass is required to have an enemy poisoned before spitting out damage. Cass cannot poison an enemy at will, there are cooldowns on Q and W (and with the increased Q cooldown can't even keep a single enemy perma-poisoned without them standing in W). Hyper carries CANNOT function if they are unable to switch targets at will.

5) Increasing delay on Q? Granted, the amount isn't very much, but it is a skill that was already one of the harder ones to land consistently, and having the enemy poisoned is critical to her kit. I don't think any extra delay, even one this small, should have been added -- if for no other reason than the current delay is the one I've been playing with for years. Stashu, I am honestly perplexed why you would increase the spell casting delay on this, especially considering how insane the mobility creep has been over the years. Ahri's true damage ball will hit Cass before the poison cloud hits, and the effective hit box for that spell is a hell of a lot more than Cass' Q. So why make it so that you both can be sitting still, then cast spells at the same time aimed at stationary targets, and then walking to the side at the same time, and Ahri's spell hits you but your spell is delayed so long with such a small hit box that Ahri was able to walk out without being touched. Not to mention the paltry rewards for you landing Cass' Q vs any other poke spell in the game.

Even if I get used to the increased delay, why add this in the first place? It doesn't make sense to make an already hard to land skill shot harder to land, especially when all of her damage depends on that Q landing. I'm all for having the interaction for poison and E resets, but this is a huge nerf.

6) ...And on top of that increasing the cooldown?? For most champs, increasing the cooldown of a spell isn't too game breaking of a nerf. But for Cass (Q), this marks an incredible breakpoint that she no longer passes, and that is the ability to permanently keep a target poisoned. This has a lot of ramifications, notably this more than negates the MS buff to Q because it happens far less often, and it drastically reduces the DPS you can put out with E because 1/4 of the time you will not be able to fire off an E since the enemy won't be permanently poisoned. To be clear, this means her best case DPS means to wait about an extra 1.5 seconds before firing off another E, assuming you land the next Q. This is not a good decision to have to make -- it doesn't feel good as a Cass player, and it doesn't make sense as it is counter-intuitive to raise your DPS by NOT firing off an ability, despite landing all your spells as your kit's design intended.

7) Casting W and Q is extremely depressing W is an area denial and zoning tool. But without hyperbole I have literally seen champions sit in it for the full duration, because passive health regen + MR runes > old W damage/2. As in, the amount of health never wavered below max for more than a full second.

Having low numbers on instant damage spells feels really bad and isn't good, but DoT spells are negated by MR AND passive health regen. So even if you are technically putting out the same amount of dps, DoT champs do less effective damage. That's one of the reasons why DoT classes in games generally do slightly more DPS, or are easier to get max DPS out of them. Neither is the case for Cass.

Old W was really not a strong damage spell, especially considering nobody ever stood in it for the full 7 seconds (usually 1-2 seconds at most), but it was sort of compensated in late game team fights with lots of CC and multiple champs stood in it for 4+ seconds dealing a solid amount of AoE damage. But any nerf to that W damage, at any stage of the game, makes it not only feel like a futile gesture against a stronger opponent, but also forfeits it's true purpose for existing which is area denial.

A poison pool on the ground needs to do a good amount of damage so the enemy is punished by being zoned or chunked in health.

8) Cass's most satisfying play no longer exists As a longtime Cass main, my absolute favorite way to battle is to drop a W at my feet, let an enemy dash to me, Q them either on the way or once they land, then Zhonya and health up some health from their dash/instant damage from spell vamp, then come out of Zhonya and stun them and mash all spells ASAP until they are dead. But with the damage emphasis on E, this is no longer a valid dueling pattern, and no matter what a melee with any sort of gap closer will **** all over you.

9) Your communication and most especially actually listening to what people have said is extremely lacking We said don't go forward with the changes on beta, we said revert changes on GD, we gave hundreds of posts describing what we liked about Cass and what her theme is (pro tip, it is not single target hyper carry mage), but you ignored all of that. I'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular, but many of us longtime Cass mains feel ignored and rejected. Our voices were not heard, and not for a lack of trying. The rework has been out about a month and there has been negligible communication with us about Cass and her current state. Please take a look at the conversations done/being done about other champ reworks. They asked us our opinions and listened to them.

Stashu I know you are really digging on the idea of a late game single target hyper carry mage, and I think there is definite design space for a champ like that. But that is not who Cass is, and it has never been what Cass is. You picked one aspect of her and moved all power to it, changing absolutely everything about Cass' playstyle. We liked Cass because she wasn't the best at any one thing, but she had a response in most matchups. You took away everything fun about her (notably the skirmishing, poking and waiting for the right moment to strike and go all in feeling) and replaced her with a boring spell-click-ADC champ that doesn't benefit from crit and is limited by .5 second cooldown (as opposed to attack speed, which pumps out attacks more frequently in late game) so will never be worth taking over a true late game carry like Koggles or Vayne.

10) Honestly, Cass only needed QoL and bug fixes Hundreds of pages of rage are a result of how much we loved Cass as she was. Nobody is saying she didn't need tweaking, but this totally changed her identity. Honestly, she only needed the E poison detection changes (and even this was really not that big of a deal, and the DPS increase is VASTLY overestimated by you Stashu) and R bug fixes. That alone would have been enough to give her some increased visibility. Perhaps after some testing she could have used a kiting buff, either increased Q+W speed+slow buffs, or give her the Syndra treatment and let her cast spells on the move -- many of us would gladly trade a bit of damage for that.

The entire focus of this rework seems predicated on the outdated notion that Cass was game breakingly oppressive in the early game. But that hasn't been remotely true since season 2. With the league of mobility creep, Cass has always struggled against a large number of common mid champs (Yasuo, Fizz, Kassadin, Leblanc, Khaz when that was a thing, Akali, Diana, Talon, Zed, Ahri) and also against the strong pokers with defensive steroids or sustain or range (Swain, Orianna, Xerath, AP Koggles)

Oh, and also remove the cast time on the ult. It is insane how telegraphed and delayed it is, especially when compared to the reliability of a 900 range Tibbers AoE stun.