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I find it ironic that Cassiopeia's rework came during the Shurima event...a few days before Azir...

5G8Nri0B54··33 votes·3,018 views

Both are rushed out (I love Azir, but you gotta admit, the number of bugs he had and still have was record breaking), thanks in no part due to the Shurima event and in snake-girl's case, the LCS or something. Both are apparently a by-product of the Shurima event though I suspect they were in development for far longer than that...Azir was anyways. Both are intended to fullfill the totally unique and untouched role of being the game's premier AP Marksmen.

However a few differences.

-the sand manipulating birdman Azir somehow feels more natural, he really does play like what he comes off as -he plays even MORE like a Marksmen despite his unorthodox attack method -despite the above...he doesn't feel like he is gunning down the vietcongs with a semi-automatic -and on a more gameplay related note, one doesn't get screwed over by overlapping units, just...gamebreaking bugs

I guess what I'm trying to get across is...Stashu, did you get the initial idea of reworking Cassiopeia and the term "AP Marksmen" from eavesdropping Azir's development team? Or does the idea of the Shurima even just makes everyone in Riot HQ REALLY want an AP Marksmen so badly that you ended up releasing two together? And speaking of development team, how large is the team in charge of her rework? I know you have been the face of her rework, but there is no conceivable way that Riot would just let a single person handle an entire rework. But considering the trainwreck her rework's been, it doesn't look like many people are even involved at all making me suspect the entire team responsible for Cassiopeia consists of you and a guy really good at giving thumbs-ups.

PS - since I brought up Azir, his Q+E combo SOMETIMES doesn't work after the latest patch...as in he'll only dash to his minion's position during the time he pressed E rather than be taken on a magical journey like the patch before that intended...and his AA glitch is still at thing for some reason. Still love the guy and he can still be strong despite his existing bugs, but...fix it fix it fix it fix it

32 Comments

Abyssphere41 votes

The thing I find funniest about Cass and Azir coming out together is that Cass was reworked due to being a lane bully and hard to lane against... and then Azir is possibly the biggest lane bully/hardest champ to lane against in the history of the game. Good job Riot.

5G8Nri0B5414 votes

Or hell, why they have a problem with her being a supposedly "non-interactive" lane-bully to begin with considering that description fits like...almost all popular mids and tops.

Junkο2 votes

Most popular mids can be interacted with. Gl interacting with Ryze/Gnar/Riven without dying though.

Fluppets2 votes

She got QoL fixes AND a rework, because IF she had gotten her QoL fixes without the rework THEN she would've been an impossible lane-bully.

Go ask anyone that seriously played Cassiopeia, the only thing keeping her down were her bugs and clunky mechanics. The designers were trying to think a few steps ahead, but obviosuly it went horribly wrong somewhere in the execution.

5G8Nri0B545 votes

You're giving them waaaay too much credit.

They didn't think anybody even played Cassiopeia at all so they randomly ****ed with her kit thinking there wouldn't be anyone pissed that they screwed her over. Hence why there was literally zero threads asking about Cassiopeia before they started the rework (in contrast to Nidalee, Skarner, Urgot, Viktor, Taric, Poppy, Sion, etc.). Why Stashu never even bothered creating a thread discussing the trainwreck until 1 day before it went live.

Also no, the only thing keeping Cassiopeia down wasn't her bugs and clunky mechanics, if it were, Azir's bug fixes would all have come with serious reworks and kit overhauls too. Cassiopeia's was lack of mobility and how easy she is to gank.

Fluppets1 votes

{quoted}

Also no, the only thing keeping Cassiopeia down wasn't her bugs and clunky mechanics, if it were, Azir's bug fixes would all have come with serious reworks and kit overhauls too. Cassiopeia's was lack of mobility and how easy she is to gank.

Im just going to ignore the Azir part, because that doesnt make any sense.

Her lack of mobility ang gankability is just par t of her design, you want every single champ to have a ranged, hard cc, a gap clo ser, some AoE and a reset mechanic? Yes, she is ganked easily and not particularly mobile, but it's the bugs, the unreliability that prevented her from either properly dealing with them or play the lane to her strengths to avoid those dangers.

Being able to land Q's much more reliably, 3s CD on Q = constant movespeed boost, E's not giving false-positives for poison and E's hard resetting to .5s would have made Cassiopeia devastating from level 2-6 vs any opponent. She wouldnt just be a bully, she would just destroy everyone. To be clear this never happened. She never was an oppressve bully, but Stashu knew she could/would be.

ps.: All the top players are saying Azir is broken as hell, now that his bugs are getting fixed, just to point out the huge (invisible) effect they can have.

X8ViEhkPS022 votes

Or or hear me out.

He wanted Cassiopeia to be Kayle .

"Lets make Cassiopeia an AP scaling marksman so to speak cough Kayle . Well she already has the slow and movement speed boost. Let's shoehorn all her damage into her E." "But Kayle has a heal." "Just slap it onto E and call it a day."

5G8Nri0B5414 votes

huh...you have one point that I'm surprised nobody brought up during all the controversy.

Stashu brought up "super late game AP Marksmen" like it's a totally fresh new unique play style (as though mass in-combat poisoning wasn't already a niche only she could fill) when Kayle exists.

Granted everyone keeps trying to tell him Ryze exists too, but yeah...Kayle too.

Centuros1 votes

Kayle has always been at least potentially hybrid though, since she actually uses her attack stat.

5G8Nri0B546 votes

But the lion's share of her damage has often been magical. And now with her Q nerf, she's 90% AP...

Riot seriously needs to learn to balance champions into what they're supposed to be rather than coming with cheap compromises.

Ariel the Cruel7 votes

. . . (I love ,Azir but you gotta admit, the number of bugs he had and still have was record breaking) . . .

Yorick Azir may have more bugs right now. But overall. Yorik's ult has traditionally broke.......... Just about everything at one point or another.

5G8Nri0B548 votes

Makes you wonder exactly what is it about pet-based champions that screws with LoL...

kunkudunk1 votes

Probably has to do with how they code things. So many random things are coded as minions you wouldn't believe. Like lux's ult. Heck I'm surprised there wasn't a bug with lux's ult and syndra's w. I don't know the specifics of yorick's ult but the coding for it has to be bonkers.

5G8Nri0B542 votes

Like lux's ult.

Wait. Wat.

That sounds needlessly complicated just to make her have a super laser.

Kaisha6 votes

The riot client is based off the old WC3 engine. Where everything (and I mean just about everything) was done with spawned and hidden/disabled minions. The fact that it made it over to lol unchanged is just ridiculous.

5G8Nri0B544 votes

Ah HA yes! I remember that WC3 map editor! I actually tinkered with it myself and made some stuff with it back in the old days!

...yeah you had to find creative ways to make things happen. Starcraft 1 was even more ridiculous if you decide to make a character have "special powers"...

Thunder Dreamss1 votes

It made sense in WC3 - Allot of the more complex maps (such as DotA) were pushing the engine in directions the original developers never imagined. Creative hacks were a must.

LoL on the other hand...

Wheatloaf1 votes

One of the bugs with Azir's Ult was that he could use it to kill Jayce's gate. Meaning, the minions it was made of, for which he would receive gold and XP, not the actual gate itself.

kunkudunk1 votes

Yeah that is where a lot of weird interactions would come from a assume.

5G8Nri0B541 votes

The fact that it made it over to lol unchanged is just ridiculous.

I thought about it some more and I suspect that Riot never expected LoL to be as big as it's gotten. Their coding itself was basically a spaghetti of codes that were apparently quite amateurish.

They may have just made LoL on a whim, but eventually it got traction and now...well...no one's been able to give LoL a run for it's money.

HeadHonchkrow5 votes

Shaco Rito: WE HATE PETS! NERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERFNERF

Kingsgrave3 votes

Cass has always been called an APdc since her release

5G8Nri0B548 votes

Okay first of all, no one's ever used the term APDC because D is a part of AD. The term you had in mind is APC which has jack all to do with Marksmen by the current definition. APC's consisted of literally any AP champion who could carry their game when they get ahead, which at the time was pretty much most AP mids.

If you wanted to prove that Cassiopeia was in anyway considered the AP version of a Marksmen, feel free to prove it. Because Riot and the community in general don't even talk about Cassiopeia at all, except that one time Phreak told everyone to build a Zhonya's Ring on her and to use her Q to detect Twitch.

Demonsolder212 votes

Your mom is ironic that Cassiopeia's rework came before the Shurima event.

Rinky Dinky1 votes

Isn't teemo an AP marksmen as well?

Even more so than Azir and Cassiopeia?

LordOfTheLeague8 votes

I'd say they are all comparable to an existing adc to an extent. Teemo is like the ap version of quinn if you talk about the blind and top lane bully, cassiopeia is comparable to varus with her immobile kit and aoe CC/self peel ultimate and azir.. I'd say azir is comparable to tristana, he has huge fighting range, aoe knock back ultimate and very nice mobility.

Fluppets1 votes

Her "APC or Ability Power Carry" is easily confused with what we have come to understand as "ADC or Attack Damage Carry", which is a marksman that scales exponentially in the late game with Crit, AD and lifesteal for sustained damage in teamfights **and **push towers with ranged Auto Attacks.

"AP marksman" is definitely a misquote, thats not her steez. What is meant is a champion that can carry a team come late game through sustained damage in team fights, but with AP and not necessarily auto-attacks. Leblanc for example although AP and can definitely carry a team when fed, doesnt fall under "AP carry" because her damage is burst, rather than sustained. Same goes for, for example Zed, who can carry a team, is AD, but isnt specified with the term "AD carry". The problem is an "AP carry" in the same sense as an "AD carry" will always be less efficient because **they cant push turrets **unless there is some AA-mechanism, which kinda defeats the purpose of an "AP carry" if its going through AA's anyway.

Meta-wise its not a particularly good pick unless you have a strong ADC too, so the enemy team cant build MR... but why not get a burst/assasin/AoE AP champion then? making life easier for the team/adc by picking out other carries or providing utility, rather than having a second carry the team needs to protect, as if the ADC didnt need enough handholding already.

In the case of Cassiopeia her skill curve and late-game damage curve atm does allow her to do (very) well... in a team that knows what they're doing and a Cassiopeia player who knows what they're doing, starting from the pick/ban phase. So its no suprise she has a very good win-rate in high-level Ranked games. Not only is she only picked when the team fits her, but all players will know what to do (like a Jungler ganking/protecting Cassiopeia early). In low level games (like my ELO) a Cass is often picked into bad team comps and the jungler fails to protect them early. resulting in the Cass feeding and falling behind. (I jungle main and if there's an enemy Cass I gank and gank her until she RQ's).

Im not sure anymore what my point is though :P

as to the OP; its a great shame this (and Azir's) rework was rushed, alot better results wouldve been achieved, with less effort and alot less frustration. Maybe if they had stuck to QoL fixes and postponed a rework for after Preseason and/or more feedback it wouldve been better... woulda-coulda-shoulda...

5G8Nri0B545 votes

Maybe if they had stuck to QoL fixes and postponed a rework for after Preseason and/or more feedback it wouldve been better... woulda-coulda-shoulda...

That was literally all Cassiopeia players asked for. Her E to not detect poison upon hit...and an R that wasn't so clunky

Attaching it to this rework was their way of saying * "But this was what you've wanted all along right?! Oh? You don't like the rework? Let's take it all away along with those QoL fixes because as far as we know, all the changes in the rework are one and the same!"*

Biooutbreak2 votes

{quoted}

That was literally all Cassiopeia players asked for. Her E to not detect poison upon hit...and an R that wasn't so clunky

Attaching it to this rework was their way of saying * "But this was what you've wanted all along right?! Oh? You don't like the rework? Let's take it all away along with those QoL fixes because as far as we know, all the changes in the rework are one and the same!"*

Iirc, theres a post on....mmm it was either reddit or twitter, that talked about why cass couldnt get QOL fixes, (this was a looooong wgile ago too. Way before stashu and the rework) but getting qol fixes for cass wouldnt be hard, but they didnt want to do it because theres no way to nerf her to compensate for that power spike. Again this was a while ago, before reworks and the "levers" terms were being used.

Gunpoint1 votes

I find it ironic that everyone's angry about Cass rework when there's really nothing wrong with her being "an E machine gun." Shit, once she builds rylais everyone without a gap closer can pretty much forget about getting anywhere near her, and if they do she just ulti's and then kills them. People WITH gap closers can still be outdamaged and outsustained.

5G8Nri0B545 votes

And I find it funny that there's always someone who completely misses the point in a Cassiopeia thread...

Cindikle1 votes

I find it ironic they reworked cass at all in the idea of making her more like a poison mage.

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