@ricklessabandon In Regards to Cassiopeia

ricklessabandon,

You may remember me. I'm a D1 Cassio main (most games NA!) and reached out to you in the past in regards to my favorite champion (see here: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4188355).

It's been a little over half of the year since that thread, and I would like to ask the same question I did back then to see if the answer is any different: Does Riot have plans to make Cass a bit less than an incredibly niche pick or is she in a desirable position right now?

While I'm sure the answer to the first part of the question remains the same (yes, she should remain a niche pick), I wonder if the second part has changed. Some meaningful discussion came out of the last thread, and it would be cool to see what comes of this one.

Since the last thread, my opinion on Cass's state/viability has changed. You may read the first post of the last thread and see that I thought she required significant changes. However, after playing in high Diamond 1 for a while now, I think that she needs only small changes - specifically to her ultimate and possibly cast times.

Riot has stated many times, especially recently, that they want to characterize champions by having specific strengths and specific weaknesses. Karthus, a champion with a similar role to Cass (constant high magic DPS), is a good example. He excels in extreme AOE damage, but his weakness is that he needs to be in your team with Defile running to get his maximum DPS out. This of course leads to Karthus dying a lot, but his passive allows him to go on. Cassio's strength is similar - high magic DPS but more target specific than AOE. She also shares the same weakness of Karthus in that she must be somewhat close range to deal that damage, however, unlike Karthus, if she dies, she has no way to further contribute to the teamfight.

So, whereas both champions' weakness is short range and a need to be in the enemy team's face to do damage, Cass must also be cognizant of her positioning a lot more AND make sure she lands her skill shots in order to deal her damage. If Karthus misses a Q, he has no 5 second downtime - he keeps on trucking and spitting out damage. If Cass Twin Fangs the wrong target, her damage is essentially out the window for a decent gap of time and she brings very little utility aside from a slow and conditional stun. Syndra can easily put out as much damage as Cass can (due to itemization differences - Syndra can afford a straight AP build whereas Cassio usually needs to focus on a mix of tankiness/AP) in a teamfight while bringing slows, stuns, and huge single target damage. All the while her abilities can be cast on the fly.

So yeah, my question is, does Riot have anything planned for Cass? Please, don't totally change her, but she could use some QoL changes to keep up!

I think everyone saw how useless PowerofEvil's Cassio was in UoL's game that he pulled her out. She won the laning phase and was just dead weight later on.

TL;DR: What can be done to Cass to make her worth picking over other sustained damage mages and to make her less punishing overall?