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Cassiopeia Rework explained

FFirebrandd·12/28/2014, 5:49:03 PM·12 votes·2,585 views

I think I've figured out why Cass got the rework she did. Please note this is just a theory.

Old Cass happened to have the combination of strengths that Riot absolutely hates.

A) Poke B) Speed Boost C) Slows D) good damage per second

Before you go typing in the comments that Cass doesn't have many slows I'd like to point out that she uses ridiculously well... possibly better than anyone else in the game. Now lets take a look at how her rework kinda ruined most of those strengths.

A) Q's AP ratio got trashed and its cooldown increased by 1 second. W lost over half its base damage. Deadly Cadence used to allow for a lot more casts of her poke before going OOM.

B) the raw numbers for the speed boost is... well its better at early ranks worse at late ranks so... neutral right? No. Q has a 4 second cooldown now and the speed boost still lasts 3 seconds when they used to match. What makes it worse is that Riot gives Cass 25% CDR at 250 stacks. That means you can't build CDR early to get back to perma speed boost status. You have to wait until the point of the game that Riot thinks it is ok for Cass to have that again.

C) The 30% AP amp kinda makes you really want to rush all the 120 AP items instead of . Also rank one of W got a 5 second cooldown increase. Granted W did get a 10% stronger slow on all ranks but I'm not sure that helps a whole lot.

D) This is the only one of those strengths that didn't get reduced.

The final part is she got turned into a hyper carry. That means that early game she probably isn't going to want to chase anyone even if her kit still allowed her to do it.

Now why Riot hates that combination of strengths I haven't a clue. I also haven't a clue why they STILL haven't just come out and told us specifically why they changed Cass the way they did.

45 Comments

5G8Nri0B5412/28/2014, 9:24:51 PM11 votes

The alternative explanation he gave earlier was "doing DoT made Cassiopeia step on Brand's toes because he has a Passive that also dealt DoT"

5G8Nri0B5412/28/2014, 8:43:52 PM5 votes

From what I could pick apart from Stashu's many different explanations, they ****ed her over with the rework because pre-rework she...

a) Did decent damage with her Q...which isn't a problem in and of itself, but...

b) Her E was stupid powerful, to the point where no champion could really afford to get close to her lest she E-spams

They didn't like how she could harass with her Q, and unless the opponent also have decent range, they couldn't answer for it because her E held too much raw power to make any interactivity an impossibility.

Now WHY Riot decided go on a drunk rampage and remove everything that made Cassiopeia enjoyable just so he can have his slithering E-button rather than actually try to balance or preserve what made people like Cassiopeia...I have no god damn clue.

Narasimha12/28/2014, 6:32:49 PM4 votes

Now why Riot hates that combination of strengths I haven't a clue.

This is the easy one, because it promoted an anti-interaction playstyle. Old Cass could lay down poke for days, and there wasn't much your opponent could do about it. You had to wait until she made a bad move, called for your jungler, or just suffer. She could even afk waveclear so ganking her was still a pain. Mind you, new Cass has issues of her own, but atleast she involves good interaction with the opponent, which is an infinetly better scenario.

Tendrian12/29/2014, 3:34:40 PM4 votes

Cassiopeia Rework explained

Cassiopeia was fine but needed some minor number tweaks to balance out the power she got from the QoL fixes.

However, Riot decided to randomly rework her, destroying her kit, playstyle and identity as a champion in the process.

There, explained.

MrBuffington12/28/2014, 9:02:49 PM3 votes

My personal theory is that old Cassiopeia had the kit for a late game hypercarry (namely her E resets giving her a lot of DPS) but wasn't built around it with her gameplay pattern. She was primarily a lane bully and, from what I've heard, didn't do much else besides this, since although she had the potential to deal tons of damage with her E, she didn't have the openings for it. I think Riot wanted to move her away from the devastating-lane-bully-but-lacking-late-game-pressure style (my understanding is that she fell off kind of hard in the late game because there are less openings for a squishy DPS mage to lay down damage. It was a combination of her strengths being too oppressive in the early game and too irrelevant in the late game), and, seeing the potential for the late game playstyle, decided to push that direction full speed (I recall Stashu saying he wanted her to be the "premier late game DPS mage" or something to that effect). Based on all the complaints he might have pushed this direction too far and had to cut back on the other elements of her kit to compensate, so ultimately I think he'll just have to change her into a champ with solid lane phase and solid late game, as oppose to weaker early game and strong late game, which generally seems like the direction he's heading with her right now.

RumblesMeatballs12/29/2014, 10:21:27 PM1 votes

its mostly all number changes tho. they change the number values of a lot of champs and they still work fine. for example they supposedly "nerfed the hell" out of Irelia yet because her kit in general is so strong she still does phenomenally well against a lot of matchups or another rework they've done is Skarner which while yes his new kit is very different from how it originally was its still very strong with all the nerfs to his numbers and changes to some of his abilities

imo despite all the changes to Cass she still has a very strong kit that with the right build can still do fine against many of the fotm champs. her kit is meant for her to try and wait till late game where she can just sit in the back and spam away with her skills and kill shit almost instantly. just learn to play with her new kit instead of QQing about it :L

you can blame Rito all you want but its not gonna change anything. they've had their minds set on her kit being something like this for awhile and they've said they're still keeping an eye on how well or not well she does and are working on her kit right now more than likely since there were PBE changes for her awhile back that were actually buffs