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Cass rework was a failure.

CaptnJakSparrow·5/16/2016, 4:07:07 PM·7 votes·1,116 views

I know you guys think there's potential here . . .

aside from the one or two games she's accidentally done well. I have seen her do nothing but perform poorly. I have accidentally in bold because she happened to be on the same team that was 20-3 against my team, and our top laner was 0/9 7 minutes in, and mid went afk, and the jungle gave up. So, I mean. You don't need to be good on any champion to mindlessly turret dive with 4 people and her poison kept me from tumbling as Vayne.

One of the biggest problems actually lies in the very changes they made. For starters, her W for all intents and purposes is a "win more ability." If you are losing this ability will do almost no good because they are already on top of you beating your team to death. But, if you're winning, it will often prove useful in zoning turrets/objectives. If you're already winning the poison will just make you win harder because # mobility.

On paper it sounds like a brutal ability, but in reality a limited skill shot ability that requires very precise range and them actually being on it + not dash over it + have X seconds to actually take effect for a decent range? Get real.

On top of that, she also lost ratios + damage to compensate.

Additional things she lost:

Sustain

magic pen

conditional movement speed.

These were all important for her. +15 mpen sounds silly, but it makes the difference in mid lane. She also additionally lost extra ap she would have had around the 20 minute mark. And the 30 minute mark. Now they're attempting to compensate that via giving Cass a 1100 gold advantage into rushing ap but at the same time sacrificing CD/mpen to do so? The trade off is damn near only 500 gold. If even that, so in reality all that does is give you an amplifying tome advantage over the enemy in power spiking. As crappy as it sounds, the original passive was better overall.

This current passive tries to achieve an early game snowball fantasy + a 6th item slot powerspike fantasy. The problem is. Games never really ever go to the 6th item dream build. In 80% of your games, this passive will do absolutely nothing for you.

It's all these tiny little things that in all honesty . . . made her a blatant failure of a champion. But, guess what, you gave her a potentially pick ban broken mechanic. So, she has to remain a pile of dog shit otherwise her winrate would skyrocket through the roof. So, now you're in a catch 22 situation and the only way out is Yorick . . . oh wait, he's a better champion than her now. ECKS. DEE.

GJ!

6 Comments

Abyssphere5/16/2016, 4:55:49 PM3 votes

I really don't think it was a failure. Don't understand the "And to compensate you nerfed her damage" point because that's literally just numbers. Her damage can easily be buffed if it's causing the rework not to function. Numbers weren't even nerfed anyway - major buffs to Q and W, R is identical and E lost 10% AP scaling for +95 base damage, which is a positive change at almost every stage of the game.

If you want MPen you just replace the Sorc Shoes with Guise. You pay 500g for 200 HP, 25 HP and late game slot efficiency via Liandry's, which is now a good item on you again.

People need to get over the MS thing. Yes the enemy laner will occasionally have more MS than you immediately after buying boots (depending on level timings and that champion's base MS) but every time you spend more than a minute out at a time you have more MS than them and this is especially true before the initial boots back. At level 6 Cass will have 352 MS while most mages are stuck around 335. Late game you're on +65 from your passive (initial MS was 335 pre-rework) whereas every other mage is on +45 from their slot inefficient boots.

The rework is a "failure" right now because she's weak and they made several really stupid changes but her Q range is mercifully being fixed next patch and W is being made significantly more flexible too.

On the other hand, the rework has done a variety of good things for her.

  • Poison damage is meaningful again. Noxious Blast is still not as devastating as it once was (at least until very late game) but it's a huge improvement on before (and possibly a viable max in lane again). Miasma has gone from 30 (+ 10% AP) per second to 80 (+ 15% AP), so can actually pose some sort of zoning threat via damage once more. The forced Twin Fang poison amp is gone, meaning you no longer need E spam to make your poisons less pathetic.
  • Twin Fang is nowhere near as punishing to mess up as it once was due to the reset mechanic being scrapped in favour of the damage spike. Cass can actually afford to mess up on occasion now because all she loses is the damage on one cast of Twin Fang, and this makes her way more forgiving.
  • Her Twin Fang target selection as a whole is now much more flexible, making "mage ADC" a much more practical playstyle. She can afford to mess up and hit a non-poisoned target if she has a poison spell ready now, she can swap from one poisoned target to another without worrying about the chance of picking a non-poisoned target (poison indicator is still terrible), and she can now afford to use Twin Fang for utility reasons thanks to its amazing synergy with Rylai's. Being able to E someone so you can poison them, then E them to death is amazingly flexible for her.
  • No longer has a passive that gives her an extremely forced and largely unintuitive form of scaling. She can now play the game how she wants rather than having to worry about a ridiculous gate to her power.
  • Has more power against divers in certain situations, slightly less in others (in most situations current Miasma sucks, the old one did nothing anyway).

The main problems people had with Cass pre-rework were that her passive was a design nightmare that restricted her builds and forced her into dull and often sub-optimal gameplay, that her poisons were worthless outside of enabling E and that for a champion to have 100% of their strength on one ability, that one ability was way too unreliable. All of those issues have been fixed. Stuff like the unreliable ulti are minor complaints in comparison.

SKT T1 LaFlame5/16/2016, 5:01:55 PM2 votes

.. I don't understand how it could possibly be so hard for a "professional game developer" to properly balance any champion over like, what, 5 renditions? pretty pathetic imo.

The Queen Viper5/16/2016, 5:11:59 PM2 votes

.... pff, it's still way harder to get a team with a brain than it is to play Cass. -.-

She will be just fine.

urgotdangit5/16/2016, 5:11:22 PM1 votes

Honestly, after playing her a bunch, there are a couple of things that needs tweaking - some are already slated to be fixed...

First, Q is fine. Ratios are nice, works as it has in the past.

W - needs to be able to be cast over walls (changing) and, in my opinion, should NOT have a minimum range. Honestly, that change alone would make the whole kit about 100% better. My biggest beef is, right now, if someone gets on me, I'm dead. Anything that's mobile (read nearly every champ nowadays) closes that gap and craps on you. At least before you could drop a puddle underneath them and kite a little. Now it's just DASH BLAM SLAP dead snake. I say keep the grounded affect, make it smaller again, and remove that min range. If someone is going to commit to sitting on your face, really MAKE them commit.

E - fine. I like the CD change. Now you don't get punished for missing a Q or W, and can at least do SOME damage. Would like just a small amount of actual regen on it again, though. Nothing huge. Maybe a MP5 kinda setup.

R - fine, could use a reshape of the cone, though. Maybe slightly more range? It does essentially the same thing as Annie's Q with 4 stacks (not hard to get, btw) and is on a WAY longer CD. Make it bigger, or wider, or maybe it poisons them too? I dunno. Something.

I hear what you're saying about the 6th item fantasy, but even if you don't get to 6 items, you've still built 5 damage items to the other person's 4+boots, or 4 to their 3+boots, etc etc. You're winning either way. Honestly, after a couple of tweaks, I think this was pretty successful, it's just rough at the moment.

Sirsir5/16/2016, 5:32:30 PM1 votes

Cass's win rate is way too low to be a rework failure, they simply didn't take into account the loss of 1/5 of her AP from her passive. They took +25% AP away without buffing her damage to compensate for it. She needs (MASSIVE) numbers buffs and she will be fine.