Boards›Gameplay

Cassiopeia Plans!

RiotRiot Stashu·11/1/2014, 1:40:09 AM·84 votes·81,689 views

Hey guys! Today I’d like to go into some detail about our upcoming Cassiopeia changes. Real quick though, I’d like to add that I’ve been surprised to see all of the attention Cassiopeia has been getting on Boards-- I’m really happy to see that so many players care about our favorite Snake Lady, even though things got a bit... passionate. Your enthusiasm is definitely noted.

Also, sorry if I haven't been as involved as I should have been in directing the conversation. At the end of the day, I had to take a step back to examine all of your feedback as I distill it into something actionable. Truthfully, it felt like many of the discussions would spiral into the same 10 paper kits or unconstructive comments on repeat, which wasn’t particularly useful. I’d like to get into deeper debates about why a proposed spell will or will not work, but those can be pretty tough because they usually don't just stop at just one reply. That said, I’ve been reading virtually everything, and there has been a wealth of insightful and helpful feedback aside from these, even since the beginning.

So, let’s get into it. Here are a few of the major pain points that many people seem to share:

  • Cassiopeia is no longer a poison mage
  • While this sentiment is a bit harsh, I totally agree that we’ve lost some of what made Cassiopeia so cool to many of her biggest fans. This is my biggest regret from the update, and we’re looking to get this back.
  • Aspect of the Serpent is chore-ish
  • This was not the intent. The most chore-like part (minion farming) has too much focus for what was intended as a fall-back, so we’ll be addressing that as well.
  • I miss the long range, AoE, DoT pattern
  • In actual fact, DoT’s do a lot more damage than anyone realizes, and often times so do AoE’s, so in order for Cassiopeia to be balanced as a long-range AoE DoT dealer, she’d have to take some significant hits. We had to make a choice here, and we went with giving her the most potent DoTs on single targets. Cass can still apply DoT from long range, but accessing her full power requires commitment to a single target (with E). This way we can give Cass meaningful DoT power on single targets instead of weak DoTs to all enemies. Fishing from long range with Qs and Ws is an important and fun part of her play pattern that we want to keep.

So with all that in mind, let’s take a look at a proposed changelist (which should be hitting PBE soon):

  • Aspect of the Serpent
  • No longer stacks on poisoned unit kill or on Twin Fang casts on enemy champions.
  • Now, stacks once every 6 seconds (10 times per minute) and for every second that an enemy champion is poisoned.
  • Breakpoints adjusted to keep them at approximately the same game time, but this is still up in the air (i.e. maybe they should come sooner).
  • Noxious Blast
  • As it turns out, this ability uses old tech and has always been inconsistent in delay, hitting anywhere between ~0.25s and ~0.5s after casting. This means that the ‘change’ to a 0.3s delay didn’t actually do anything >.> We’ll be fixing this is the same way that we’ve fixed abilities like Rupture and Dark Matter in the past, so now it will consistently hit at the same time. We’re starting with a 0.35s delay time, which should ultimately result in a much more reliable ability (this is a buff), but will see if we need to change this.
  • Miasma
  • No change.
  • Twin Fang
  • No longer restores mana on unit kill (mana costs reduced accordingly). Some people really enjoyed this, so I’d consider adding it back, but with the minion farming mini game gone, this seemed less fitting on the kit.
  • Now adds a debuff on the target which significantly amplifies further poison damage. We have less confidence in this change, but it’s potentially super cool and solves some problems, so I can’t wait to see how it tests. Also, this is strictly a buff.
  • As a note, this is not possible yet, but we're looking into some better buffering tech on spellcasts so that spamming the E button as it's coming off CD is more responsive.
  • Also, how does everyone feel about the current CD? 0.5 s might just be a little low, as it keeps Cassiopeia locked in place, casting E's and hardly being able to move. I'd love to hear what people would think about skimming off some power here (say, bringing it to a 0.75s CD or something) and loading it into the DoT amp aspect, or something else. Thanks!
  • Petrifying Gaze
  • No change.

And there you have it! Please let me know if there are non-power related kit concerns that you feel are unaddressed, new problems created, or things you miss about old Cassio that these changes don’t bring back.

By the way, in these discussions, it can be really hard to get through proposed solutions that are focused on number analysis or are of the form "here's what the ability should do!" They get focused on what's difficult to solve or what might create more problems, rather than being focused on honing in on the original problem -- the real purpose of the discussions in the first place. Personally, I find the most valuable responses to vaguely fit some form like “I don’t feel that [change] solves [problem] for[reasoning],” or “These changes don’t address [problem], which I believe is concerning because [reasoning].” This lets both of us discuss possible solutions and hash out potential problems rather than arguing about the validity of suggestions :)

Lastly, as, a disclaimer, none of the above is certain, and everything is still in testing. But you can expect to see most of this or some form of it hit PBE pretty soon (probably early next week)!

Alright, that’s about it. I look forward to hearing what everybody has to say :D

769 Comments

Thryale11/1/2014, 3:08:41 AM84 votes

Okay, I'll try my hand at this:

I don't believe the changes to Cass's passive fixes the core issue here. Currently her passive provides no gameplay; just a ball of stats at certain points in the game. Wasn't that the reason why Irelia can't be viable? She's just a ball of stats, no gameplay?

Also, I don't understand how her passive ties into her theme of poisoning enemies. Cass (in my eyes at least) has always been a siege/zone control mage with a large amount of damage over time. If you didn't engage on her, she'd whittle you down to the point where you can't engage safely.

Next:

I appreciate the change/fix to her Q. I certainly do hope that it feels more reliable. However, I still dislike how it is lacking as cass's primary form of dmg. I honestly feel that by backloading her dmg into her passive is really hindering cass from scaling well with items. her early game is too weak because of this, and all the champs that used to give me a headache are still gonna obliterate me now that I can't harass them since my Q does not provide a real threat.

Same goes for Cass's W. Before her rework, her W was a great zoning tool. It wasn't crazy strong, but it did enough dmg to act as a deterent to those that would stand in it. Now, it barely does more dmg than their innate healing. The slow isn't strong enough to be a threat in and of itself like singed's adhesive. And with it's dmg output so low, the enemy is more than willing to sit in it when trying to cs knowing that they can harass me if I try to spam E on them.

Next:

Okay, big one here. It's clear you are trying here. I'll give you that. However, there are still some glaring problems with your proposition. First and foremost, Twin Fang still occupies too much of Cass's power budget. It really feels like you are putting all of Cass's eggs into one basket with this spell, leaving her with precious few fallback patterns. If you are really dead set on this, then you need to make cass's E dmg more accessable. You already mentioned an issue with cass being unable to kite/chase enemies due to being locked in place while firing her E. So why not incorporate a super mini-slow like talon's hamstring(cut throat) or allow her to move while casting?

Right now, I don't understand how adding a debuff to cass's E for her poison dmg is gonna help Cass be who she used to be. She is still too short ranged. She is still spending too much time on one target (instead of switching targets when needed) She is still too weak to zone the enemy, and outside of her ult, she lacks any way of dealing with champs that jump on her (zed, akali, fizz, leblanc, talon, kha'zix, etc) Basically, if cass can't obliterate champs within the 2 secs they are stunned by her ult, she dies. There is too much cc + burst + gap closers in this game for her to chunk ppl down like adc's do.

Here is the biggest problem I see with your current design trend. You want cass to be like an adc. But you aren't giving her the right tools to do what an adc does.

First: If an adc is chunked to half hp, they can heal up on a minion wave or jungle camp. If cass is chunked to half hp, she has no other recourse but to back and heal.

Second: An adc generally has a form of self peel or a reliable escape, only a few are an exception from this(MF, ashe, varus) However, due to the aforementioned lack of sustain, and cass's dependence on building pure dmg to get the most of her passive (and terrible ratios) is left extremely vulnerable to any form of hard engage. Most midlaners and counter this buy building defensive items due to good ratio's and fall back play patterns.

--TO BE CONTINUED

exe311/1/2014, 2:15:21 AM46 votes

So with Aspect of the Serpent from what i'm reading you want the stack rate to be pretty much unchanged. If so this doesn't solve a thing. It was never a chore from how you gained stacks, it was a chore from the very fact that you had to gain stack (it is neither fun nor engaging hence why it's a chore), specifically because of how painfully slow it took to get the stacks. No one likes being useless for 40 minutes of the game which is the whole issue. I think you took the term 'farming passive' a little too literally when people were using that term to complain about the passive.

I think a mana return on her E should remain. The extra mana was random and unnecessary imo but mana return on kill will encourage using it for last hitting which is what you want E to be, an autoattack.

With the poison debuff I don't feel like that really solves the issue as what people liked WAS the combination of AoE and DoT. You're (possibly) only giving us back the DoT, the AoE remains gone.

Can't really comment on the CD change since I haven't experienced not being able to move around since I don't actually play Cassiopeia anymore (2nd champion you guys have killed for me after Karma), and yes I did give her a chance. Before this rework happened I championed the E bugfix of the poison check happening on cast with the CD increasing to 0.7 to account for the projectile travel time so perhaps this proposal wouldn't be an issue although technically it is a nerf to her damage.

Overall these changes don't feel like they solve anything really. The look a little haphazard in an attempt to please some peoples wants and compalints while not addressing Cassiopeia's very real problems. Her rework direction is exceptionally flawed and making tweaks while clinging onto the core of the rework will never fix her.

darkdill11/1/2014, 2:12:49 AM40 votes

While you're at it, can you make Cassiopeia's passive stack up faster in Dominion? It's very rare for her to get max stacks in that mode.

Hellioning11/1/2014, 2:07:48 AM34 votes

I have no complaints about this on paper (then again, paper kits are difficult to figure out). My primary problems are A) your consideration that spamming E on one target counts as a DoT and B) that you still have the stacking passive.

E is not a DoT. I have to press it every time I want it to do damage. Like, I get your basic thoughts, and I agree that AoE DoTs either feel terrible or feel overpowered so it might be better for her to be single target, but I feel that's a miscommunication problem that's been common with the rework (see also: How is Morde a DoT mage?)

Secondly, I don't like the stacking passive for Cass. It makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, if you want to make her a late game hyper carry, but it doesn't make sense for her thematically, as a poison mage or as a character. Poison doesn't make you stronger, it makes your enemies weaker. 'Poisoning your enemies to buff yourself' was in the old kit, and it was kinda weird that landing your Q makes you move faster, but the rework massively increased that, by gating her entire late game behind poisoning people to make you stronger. As a character, it doesn't make much sense either. Cass is a sly manipulator, with lines like 'If you don't use pawns, you are one.' The whole 'unlocking my TRUE POWAH!' thing would make more sense for Syndra or Xerath.

5G8Nri0B5411/1/2014, 7:42:39 AM24 votes

I can't really give too much of a reply as there aren't any numbers and I haven't played this new theoretical not-finalized Cassiopeia yet. But just replying to what I'm reading.........................................

I will admit certain things makes the rework less painful. For instance, not needing to specifically kill poisoned units just to get stacks. And her E atleast having something to do with Poison now.

But....there's still a lot of things that are still meh about her kit.

-still hate her stacking Passive that is utterly worthless until very specific milestones. Unlike other stacking champions who actually benefits from each stack, only 3 out ~400(or whatever the new number is) of her stacks actually jack. In fact, I've told you this before. Her Passive doesn't make her stronger. It simply shackles her for most of the game until it's slowly removed. That SUCKS. Other champions have a Passive that complements their playstyle. A Passive that benefits her. Her current Passive exists to justify her godawful ratios and how crap stats.

-I still dislike how hard you're trying to push her as a Hyper-carry who is complete trash until she finally get all her stacks and finish off her build. I hate the idea of Cassiopeia being a hyper-carry, it REALLY doesn't suit her.

-**unless you max her E ASAP, landing her Q and W is still unrewarding as hell. While I like the direction of the new E, I still dislike the fact that nearly all of her power-budget is jammed into her E **

-her being an AoE mage is still a lot more fun. I know I haven't play this new not-finalized Cassiopeia yet. But what made Cassiopeia so attractive before was how I could spread a deadly gas of Poison in battle and devastate multiple enemies. Not, *"mildly annoy them with Poison and rely on her E to kill everything" *

-it's still a complete beech to precisely hit a Poisoned enemy with her E, but not that un-poisoned enemy right next to your poisoned target...

TL;DR - hyper-carry to such an extreme degree and still E-focused as main reason why I'm still not a fan of your Rework. If I want to be a focused hyper-carry, I'll play Ryze...but I WON'T because that's why I hate him so much! To you credit, this is an improvement over her current design. On the other hand, the current Cassiopeia didn't set a very high bar...

I'll ask these questions.

  1. Why are you so concentrated on making her a single-target hyper-carry? If I wanted to play that, I'd play Ryze or something, atleast he is completely screwed over if he misses one of his point-and-click abilities. Atleast building he can afford a build path that supports his "stand there and spam spells" playstyle thanks to his intense-mana scaling and the tankiness a mana build path provides.

  2. Look at Cassiopeia, does she seriously scream hyper-carry to you? She looks like a manipulator looking to cause as much pain as possible, not some mano-a-mano 1v1 champion that your E-focused Cassiopeia is trying to be. Playing Cassiopeia as a mass poisoner with less focus on her E in her old form, while sub-optimal, was fun and fits her character perfectly. More importantly, it gives her a fighting chance against champions she really doesn't want to get into E-range with.

!!!!!!!3!!!!!!) Hear me out here. Consider the possibility of an AoE DoT champion...that does not have any instant-damage abilities like her current E and R. She will deal significant DPS by spreading her Poison like mad. But in return, she can not burst her enemies down at all. All her damage is countered by barriers. All enemies have the potential to save themselves by healing up somehow.

  1. The fantasy of inflicting Poison is to harm the opponent. Why is her Passive still going the complete opposite direction? Why is she still growing massive biceps to throw her fangs faster and harder instead of the much more appropriate, debuff the opponent the longer they are poisoned?
yellowbricks11/1/2014, 2:06:32 AM24 votes

Could you please elaborate on why there's this insistence on having this stack passive? It's a nice bandaid fix for sure to automatically give stacks, but I just don't see why we need to build stacks at all. Shouldn't the scaling fall to items rather than this arbitrary ball of stats?

If you're really deadset on this, then the breakpoints should definitely come sooner, it's unfun sitting around with our power limited by arbitrary stack passives.

Grand Eleven11/1/2014, 5:23:02 PM24 votes

To be honest this post bothers me on a number of levels, not only when reviewing the planned changes (which I'll dedicate a separate post to due to character limits) but also the way they are being presented.

The most annoying part of your response I'm going to highlight here:

Truthfully, it felt like many of the discussions would spiral into the same 10 paper kits or unconstructive comments on repeat, which wasn't particularly useful. I’d like to get into deeper debates about why a proposed spell will or will not work, but those can be pretty tough because they usually don't just stop at just one reply

I'm not sure how you can possibly be surprised/upset/disappointed or in any way expecting anything other than the discussion not getting "deep enough" when you never replied beyond anything but the most general and generic questions. This frankly reads elitist almost like a "I'm the designer and you're not so allow me to use an in-house buzzword to convey that and then make sure you know that I expect more from feedback." It's like you are upset with us ... when frankly this whole process has been botched from an execution standpoint. Let's look at this very thread:only 2 posts from you in total. How can you expect deeper responses when you don't engage?

After going over proposed changes you decide to revisit your disappointment in feedback again ... because apparently you need to make it doubly clear that we are reading your changes wrong and it's not at all a disconnect between what you're trying to turn her into and what players actually want (which is the real crux of the issue here ... one you seem to be doing your best to avoid):

By the way, in these discussions, it can be really hard to get through proposed solutions that are focused on number analysis or are of the form "here's what the ability should do!" They get focused on what's difficult to solve or what might create more problems, rather than being focused on honing in on the original problem -- the real purpose of the discussions in the first place.

I get number analysis is a an annoying thing to read through especially as we have access to 1/1000 of the tools you do to get the numbers accurate, but again: how hard would it be to write a one line response to the poster? "I appreciate the number crunch but we have the servers that can process this a lot more accurately, so I'd rather focus on the thematics and how the kit solves the problem at hand". Which brings me to the next point: what is the original problem? You talk about it as if it's a given ... yet as someone who's read every one of these Cassi threads I can tell you is not clearly spelled out. At all. Only repeated pushing and a response from multiple Rioters have I been able to draw out a single "thematic issue" and a single "mechanical issue" that Riot seems to be addressing:

Thematically her identity as a dot champion is overshadowed by other champions and thus not a clear part of her style, Riot would like to define a clear identity for Cass

Mechanically you don't want her to be an early game lane bully but instead a scaling APC as thats a niche you feel can be unique vs. the other 120 champions

Is this correct? If so it would be awesome if you lead the discussion by posting this clearly (kind of like I just did) then acted as a moderator to the thread and kept topics on track. You can't just lay down your disappointment, leave for 2 weeks, then come back with your exact proposal you mapped out, with no PBE testing, then act like we were no help in solving the problem and as if this whole feedback process is a waste of time. I'd also like to point out that if this is correct, you yourself have done a terrible job stating what your proposed answer is thematically ... which is why you are getting such "passionate" response. If she's not a DOT champion thematically ... what is she? What is poison if not a DOT?

TLDR: You need to actually work with the community to make this a successful experience. Blaming us does nothing.

Sailor Mint11/1/2014, 1:52:53 AM22 votes

Have you toyed with something like the old WotLK shadow priest play patterns? i.e.: Shadow Word: Pain would amplify direct damage. Mindflay would refresh the duration of SW:P.

So something like: Poison amplifies Twin Fangs damage. Twin Fangs refreshes poison duration.

This would probably mean lowering the CD of Twin Fang and removing the reset, but I think it's a cleaner interaction.

I think it's sad that we can't choose between a Q or E centric play style.

Hawkefire11/1/2014, 2:04:31 AM21 votes

Also, those mana costs had better have been reduced massively

chumbler11/1/2014, 5:08:50 AM19 votes

Jesus Christ, you still have no understanding of anything. These changes are at best marginally better than your complete garbage first attempt. Stop trying to mess with the original design by a person much better at it than you are. Especially when you don't even understand the intended gameplay style of the original design. Apparently nobody at Riot does though, considering "Poke someone until you find the opportunity to make a risky all-in" is I guess anti-fun or whatever today's useless buzzword is.

For the love of fuck, just admit your rework was a complete failure and revert it. You can't fix this because the entire concept of it is flawed.

I look forward to you ignoring this feedback like you ignored all the initial feedback you got until people got even angrier at you.

PUMPZILLA11/1/2014, 5:53:13 AM19 votes

"Also, how does everyone feel about the current CD? 0.5 s might just be a little low, as it keeps Cassiopeia locked in place, casting E's and hardly being able to move. I'd love to hear what people would think about skimming off some power here (say, bringing it to a 0.75s CD or something) and loading it into the DoT amp aspect, or something else. Thanks!

Why have a cast time at all then? If she's stuck in place because the CD is so low, why not just remove the cast time on it and let her move freely like Syndra (easily the most comparable mage) or Vel'Koz? She's got that big ol' snake booty to move on, why does she have to stand still to throw out some magical fangs? One of the highest skill floor/ceiling champs in the game is just that uncoordinated herself? If you're removing her role as the poison mage, who no longer deals any respectable DoT, you could at least let her manage her position around a single champ better. You guys could have given her a model rework so she moves smooth like Vel'Koz before you wrecked everything about her out of the blue.

Addi11/5/2014, 2:57:03 AM17 votes

Have you ever thought about making her an interaction with q + w?

I feel if you made her w spread faster when a q is cast inside it, while maintaining the same duration of the spell, it might solve a bit of her lack of spread of poison during team fights where she can't ideally change targets as efficiently she can. I think this change will be fun to use and make her kit more fun, poison affecting poisons. Imagine the noxious blast exploding inside miasma and making it poof and spread haha It would be great!

Concerning Cassi being the ideal archetypal poison mage, It would be hard to pull off in the current state of how her dot's work. It won't make her a strong contender against the many burst champions in the game. It just won't work without really making her op. Maybe we should entertain the idea of her E and W increasing the number of ticks her Q did up to a set amount. It would not only make sense for a poison mage (as the more poisons on a target the more detrimental/damaging it should be to one target) but it would allow the whole combo nature of her poisons work cohesively in a really dynamic way.

Otherwise I've really enjoyed her change of kit. To the people complaining about the passive I can't really understand where you are coming from. Her old passive was not that much better.

Using some other's people's logic in this thread it was basically 'Cassiopeia casts spells so why do you want to give her something she's going to be doing anyway?' vs 'Cassiopeia poisons people that's what she does so why this passive?' So I don't really think any of that is valid. imo It's a fun mini game to try to achieve as many stacks as you can and hitting that sweet 400 mark is great!

Lastly please don't take away her mana refund + extra mana on E ;__; it's really nice to be able to last hit with E instead of her auto attack.. and I share the same sentiments of others not increasing her E cooldown. Only the inept would be standing in one place spamming E when you do not need to.

I hope some people's brash comments on your design choices/style don't get to you Stashu! I believe you pushed Cassi into the right direction! :D

Sincerly, A Cassiopeia lover since s1!

Hadriel11/1/2014, 6:17:11 AM17 votes

I'm pretty disheartened Riot chose to ignore the feedback we gave prior to the changes hitting live. To me, the biggest problem is that you approached Cassiopeia as if she is by nature an unbalanced, too powerful champion, when she clearly wasn't even viable. If balance was an issue, old cassiopeia with her interactive passive and cool identity could have gotten the QoL changes she deserved - namely her fixed hitbox for ult and her added reliability to E - and, had she proved to be too powerful, fix her numbers accordingly, but you unilaterally decided, disregarding the continual contempt the meta has had for her, that her old kit was overpowered at its core. The results can be seen today: a champion nerfed across the board that feels utterly unsatisfying to play until she hits the point where she is as powerful as her old iteration (wasn't even viable!) at the only stage of the game that's not assured to reach, lategame. You could have saved yourselves the trouble. We were right on Lee Sin, right on Skarner and are right now.

Regarding the proposed change, you're just moving her damage so Q becomes relevant. The fact that Q as a ranged harass tool lost its effectiveness is unaddressed. It will still feel unsatisfying and will still depend on hitting Es in a AP marksman Ryze 2.0 style. E is the most unfun part of Cassiopeia, yet you have no damage outside of it. It's an autoattack you can't animation cancel, and you were wrong to make it her cornerstone. Please, listen.

This here is the problem: "In actual fact, DoT’s do a lot more damage than anyone realizes, and often times so do AoE’s, so in order for Cassiopeia to be balanced as a long-range AoE DoT dealer, she’d have to take some significant hits." Why are you trying to pass this as undeniable truth? Why do you not offer an explanation to why DoTs or AoEs are too powerful for a kit to hold when clearly old Cassio bore them fairly? If the problem with DoTs is their unpredictability, why didn't you target that and instead account for it in a way that requires power to be taken elsewhere? Why are we acting like they somehow do more damage than an instant damage skill when those don't allow for regeneration or damage avoidance methods after the fact? I assume AoEs aren't the problem since they're on every champion but two (?) in the game.

I suggest you add visual aids for DoTs on the affected champion's health bar, coloring the section of the bar that will be taken by the next interval of damage differently so there's no mistaking how powerful an ability will be. Why are we not striving for solutions like this and not "if it does DoT, it needs nerfs elsewhere" that drove Cassiopeia to the state she's at currently?

sharamall11/1/2014, 3:43:43 PM17 votes

The whole error of the Cass rework was shifting power to her E. Her E isn't fun to use because simply pressing a key over a target every half a second isn't fun. The old power in Q was really fun to play because the damage it dealt was high but it was also quite hard to land on moving opponents. Basically, you felt like you were actually interacting with the enemies through your positioning to get in range for Q and your prediction of their movements. Now Q is useless, because it's much easier to get E resets while they are in Miasma, rather than hitting Q. You should push power back into hitting the skillshot of Q instead of the targetted reset ability E.

For a champion with low mobility and no dashes, who has to stand still for all her abilities, a long delay on ult, she should be hard to play well. She should be rewarded extremely well for landing Q because as an immobile mage, focusing on her will blow her up. This is also why power shifting to E is bad, because she was never good in teamfights. The range is too low for her to safely E any target consistently. Pushing her power from anti-siege and poke to all in high DPS doesn't make sense when that's her biggest weakness. There needs to be mobility rewards on E if you want to make E the focus of her kit. But that's still a poor solution because E isn't exciting to use and enemies can't outplay it. Her power needs to be where the Cass player feels skillful while DPSing and an opponent feels outplayed when they lose, not that they got hit by 6 Es in 5 seconds for over 2.5K dmg from a 1.1K AP Cass.

Worgslarg11/1/2014, 1:47:06 AM16 votes

Any thoughts to allow her q to be cast while moving? It's solid cast time contradicts its movespeed bonus.

Piggy Azalea11/2/2014, 1:10:04 AM16 votes

I'm so happy you haven't forgot about Cassiopeia and am delighted to hear that you're bringing her identity back as a poison mage. I'm particularly excited about the Q-fix.

I've played many Cass games in D1 and Master; I hope to shed light on her performance in high-skill match-ups while also sharing a few thoughts from my end. I hope these can be of at least some help.

  1. Do not increase the E cooldown to 0.75s

When Cass's E was bugged to 0.7s cd instead of 0.5s, she felt extremely clunky. The best Cassiopeia players are untouchable and mechanically proficient. They hit and run, slithering away from immediate threat but chasing right back after enemies when they think they're safe. I wouldn't deliberately make her E slower to encourage movement (in fact, it will weaken her kiting). Ideally, a good player will know to move while E'ing, and good enemies won't give her a chance to spam E while stationary (similar to ADC play style). I also wouldn't take away the experience of bombarding enemies with E. It feels so much more powerful and impactful.

  1. Sustain

Cass's ability to passively farm should be increased.

While playing Cass in high elo match-ups, I noticed Cass gets destroyed every game around level 3 - 6. Of course, she SHOULDN'T be able to match her laning opponent early game, since she's a late game AP carry. However, she simply cannot withstand 95% of match-ups, because it's simply too easy to drive her out of lane. By the time she reaches 40-50 stacks, Cass gets bullied out of lane, especially under pressure from the jungler. She recalls only to be bullied harder once she's back, and with the level advantage, the enemy laner will most likely have obtained his/her ultimate before Cass and even before Cass gets 75 stacks. Once she obtains 75 stacks her laning phase does improve substantially, but at this point she is likely to be behind in experience and in gold by a significant amount. Her situation is much worse than farming as a late-game adc like Vayne, equipped with early lifesteal, a support, and a repositioning tool (tumble).

If her enemy is sloppy about harassing Cassiopeia, he/she should be paranoid. The enemy laner should be thinking "If I don't drive her out of lane / deny her / gangk her, she's going to destroy everyone in the game." Right now, even the sloppiest harass is able to drive Cass out of lane, and even with skillful play she can't stand toe-to-toe at all. Introducing sustain earlier into the game should strengthen her persistence, much like the poison that she is ;). These changes are necessary especially if the mana-refund on E is taken out.

  1. Mana Refund on E

A couple of things regarding removing the mana refund on Cassiopeia's E.

Currently, her mana costs and cooldowns of her poison spells are devastatingly high. I find that she can't afford to poison freely until she recalls to get her first mana item, and even if she lands her poison, the damage is negligible.

More importantly, Cass's auto-attack is quite abysmal. Being able to last hit using E (especially early game when Q-W are not reliable last hitting tools) was incredibly refreshing.

If we do take out the mana refund on E there would have to be significant tweaks to the rest of her kit...but I'm no game designer so I won't go into that.

  1. A hyper late-game, DoT AP Carry

I don't think we have one of these yet - I would love for Cass to take on this niche. I like the idea of allowing Twin Fang to increase poison damage so that we can prevent Cassiopeia from landing just one Q to deal 30% of someone's health. If she is able to stick to you and apply her poison while E-ing, your health should be going down super fast.

A few people on forums said the changes you outlined would bring her right back to old Cassiopeia. I disagree - I do think there are ways to prevent this from happening with the right changes (such as E amplifying poison, mentioned above).

I hope this was of at least some help. I really look forward to the changes that are to come!

Traxicus11/1/2014, 7:29:48 AM15 votes

Hi Stashu,

There's a lot of complaints about her passive, and you addressed it by pointing out how it's "chore-ish," which is true, but you're kind of missing the point.

Cassiopeia poisons people a lot. She'd poison people no matter what her passive is. Otherwise, she'd do nothing. If you're making her passive reward her only for poisoning people a lot, and acting like she wouldn't poison people much without these rewards, then you are not making her poison powerful.

If the issue is that she's losing her identity as a poison mage, you need to ditch this passive. It's jumbling her stats around, adding confusing math and arbitrary benchmarks, and wasting a lot of her power budget.

IMO her passive should help her with mana (but more creatively than her old one, I don't have any good suggestions right now), and all of the stats Aspect of the Serpent would give moved to her Q.

Kowe The Ewok11/1/2014, 12:22:39 PM15 votes

@Stashu in reference to your statement: "**In actual fact, DoT’s do a lot more damage than anyone realizes, and often times so do AoE’s, so in order for Cassiopeia to be balanced as a long-range AoE DoT dealer, she’d have to take some significant hits. **"

DoTs reapply, they don't stack. This means that at 40% CDR a DoT- mage will loose a significant portion of damage since the last DoT stack overlaps with the newly applied one (E.g only 2/3rd of the actual spell damage is applied).

Burst spells don't suffer from this sympton - they always deal dull damage and get a significant DPS increase from CDR against single targets.

PLEASE RESPOND

Grand Eleven11/1/2014, 10:43:19 PM15 votes

OK I feel like picking apart each of her abilities bullet by bullet robs us of a more important discussion of "feel" and "themes". So I apologize in advanced if I don't go bullet by bullet over your design changes (if that's what you want), as honestly I feel like that dodges the bigger topics that we need to address in this kit.

Going over your changes I see two themes:

  1. The passive, while being adjusted, is being largely kept as a mechanic going forward largely because it gives you more direct control of her power curve.
  2. The Poison theme is being blended back in by balancing how E applies it's damage, not by distributing the power anywhere else.

If we look at both of these, it's apparent her current core model is basically viewed as "complete" and we are just trying to tweak the number details to match her theme better.

EDITED OUT I put a philosophical design debate here but decided in hindsight it won't accomplish anything so I'm just going to accept we have to work with the passive instead of revert it. The next paragraph won't flow quite as cleanly due to that but meh .. lets stay progressive. EDITED OUT

That said I doubt one post on her passive will sway you so I'll at least ask for smoother growth experience: remove the power-spikes/breakpoints. Give the stacks a smooth ratio. If we are absolutely sold that you need to stranglehold the power curve then make it accessible constantly. I get the impression that you're trying to emulate what an ADC does when he hits shop and returns with his first B.F. Sword then bloodthirster ... but if that's REALLY what you're trying to emulate you need to put more elbow grease into your item shop: fixing it into your champion is and will always be awkward.

Accepting I can't get you guys to do anything drastic like revamping the entire item pool ... so Ill accept the passive to a degree... but it feels like a bandaid so at least give us a smooth growth pattern.

Onto "Adding a debuff to "E" to increase further poison damage" ...

First off some positive: thank you for at least trying to slip some poison back into her kit.

OK that was hard to do ... onto the criticism:

I think you're approaching this backwards. by approaching the numbers the way you are you are basically saying "all the damage will still be in E, we just make it feel like it's coming from Q or W. It's a purely thematic moving around of numbers which I get, but I think we can push this to give Cass a bit more freedom as well as identity.

The crux of this is that currently her "poison spells" have decent cooldowns and gateway her twin fang damage. This means that while it's neat to call her a "single damage hyper carry" she lacks the ability to change targets so she's a handicapped single target damage dealer. No other single target champion is locked down to said target for 3+ seconds. If someone baits out the Q then falls back Cass can no longer do any damage to Anyone until her next poison spell is up. Akali pokes her head in range and I poison her .... then she leaves I can't turn my harass to ziggs .... he just gets free harass on me and my team because I have to wait for Q to come back.

Basically I'm saying if twinfange is her ONLY damage ... then the gateway is too harsh. (continued on reply)

Drukyul11/1/2014, 3:01:13 PM12 votes

Oh good lord now she won't have her old passive AND won't have the mana regen from E?

Sheesh. The rework keeps getting worse and worse while Twin Fang keeps getting buffed into ridiculous number levels to try to keep up with the design flaws.

mi ramfan11/1/2014, 3:31:29 PM12 votes

I'm probably posting in this thread too late for my comment to have any hope of being seen, but I might as well give it a shot anyways. I'm only giving minor consideration to the changes as a package because there's simply no way to know how they'll function as a package without numbers or testing.

  • Cassiopeia is no longer a poison mage

A big part of it is Cassieopeia's lane pattern is completely different now then it was before. I played Cass a bit pre-rework and I loved spamming Q on people to harass. It wasn't uninteractive or anti-fun because it could be avoided and it could be baited out, and because a lot of Cass's DPS depended on landing it anyone with mobility could use their mobility spell to dodge Q and get onto Cass at the same time. If Cassieopeia's pre-rework Q was too difficult to deal with, I really hope you plan on taking a look at Ryze, Pantheon, and Vlad, all of whom have spammable early game harass that's point and click.

  • Aspect of the Serpent is chore-ish

This is 100% of my problem with the rework and at least 75% of everyone else's problems with the rework, so good to see that you guys have actually been reading the threads about this. I don't like the new changes to it, but I'll get to that later.

  • I miss the long range, AoE, DoT pattern

This is the other thing everyone misses about Cass. Her spell spam was definitely AoE and definitely DoT, but not really long ranged. Now, it's lost a lot of the AoE damage due to ratio and CD nerfs, it's lost a lot of DoT damage for the same reason, and it's still not long ranged.

Lux Xerath Ziggs are all long ranged. Put Cassieopeia, pre or post rework, next to them. She really isn't a long ranged mage and she shouldn't be penalized on power budget as if she is one when her range is simply not comparable to that of actual artillery mages.

  • Aspect of the Serpent

It's good that you understand that we hate Aspect of the Serpent, but you completely missed the point on WHY we hate it. We don't hate it because we have to kill minions to stack it; we were gonna be killing minions anyway so why not? We hate it because we're playing half a champion until 200 stacks, and then 3/4 of a champion until 400 stacks. It's just not fun to deal with at all until 400 stacks and giving us free stacks won't change that if you keep the power spikes at the same time in the game.

I have an idea for a different passive but I'll post that up in a reply to this post because I'm already scraping up against the character limit as I type this and I do want to have a real discussion about the changes that are actually happening at the moment.

  • Noxious Blast

Delay fix will definitely help, no issues there. I wouldn't mind a little damage buff as well but there are other skills in greater need of that coughMiasmacough.

  • Miasma

Oh man...I'm not very happy with the lack of changes on this spell. The maximum damage on it is 270 +0.9 AP, which looks really impressive until you realize that in order to land the full damage of this spell, some schmuck has to sit inside your poison cloud for 7 seconds. If you can somehow lock somebody up inside the poison cloud for 7 seconds, you deserve a bigger reward then that.

I'm not one to complain without offering solutions, so I'll post some in the next post as I'm running out of room here as is.

  • Twin Fang

This was the best change in the rework IMO, and the debuff you plan on adding is definitely a really cool mechanic. I just don't like that we have to give up the mana regen/health regen (which is essential for anyone playing an ADC-like role) in order to get it.

Will talk more about this in next post.

  • Petrifying Gaze

Didn't need one, didn't get one.

TL;DR These changes are in the right direction but they're not there yet. They do a lot of good things for Cass players, and the DoT-increasing debuff on E will be very good for making her feel closer to old Cass. More below.

Quepha11/1/2014, 3:53:43 AM12 votes

Please upvote or reply to this message, I think I have some very important things to say about everything stashu is trying to do here.

Mana changes: without any mana refund mechanic, it seems like cass will have infathomable mana issues in lane and when she's looking low on mana there won't really be anything she can do. you said mana costs will be adjusted accordingly but it sounded like that would only be for E, not Q or W and in any case i don't see how mana cost reductions can ever replace those massive refunds.

Twin Fang cooldown reset: if twin fang still only did direct damage, i would definitely support an increased cooldown to .75 sec or 1 sec with a slightly increased damage per cast to keep cass from feeling like some kind of weird turret, but because part of e's damage is the effect on cass's Q and W damage, i think the current 0.5 second cooldown will be fine, as cassiopeia won't really NEED to spam E as much as possible to get the most out of the damage (one E every once in a while will give her a lot of poison damage and she wouldn't mind more e's if possible, but can forego them and keep moving without feeling useless)

The Passive: your proposed changes to the passive may have addressed some concerns, but mine were not that csing poisoned minions felt really annoying. it kinda did, but that actually felt like a more interesting minigame like you wanted it to although 1 stack per cs was VERY unrewarding and made farming feel ineffective. my issue with cassiopeia's passive was that the primary source for stacking by a large margin was (and still would be) from engaging the enemy when cassiopeia is being made into a hypercarry that will, by definition, lose early trades with the enemy. I would actually be happier with the passive if all or most of the stack sourcers were from the current minion farming minigame. I know that sounds counterintuitive with how much riot wants champions to always be interacting, but as a hypercarry cassiopeia wants to avoid the enemy in the early stages of the game and farm and this will make farming slightly harder (it forces her to push the lane slightly and her cs windows shorten) and makes the enemy really want to engage her and try to stop her from farming. I think this is the appropriate play pattern in lane for a hypercarry vs. a standard laner or lane bully and I think you should STRONGLY CONSIDER THIS SUGGESTION EVEN THOUGH IT INITIALLY SEEMS COUNTERINTUITIVE

Overall it still seems like new cassiopeia has a nonsense play pattern of engaging the enemy early and losing trades so you get pushed out of lane or even give up kills so that in the late game you can deal a lot of damage to single targets but still get blown up because you're squishy as hell and have very little mobility or cc. Some of the changes do seem to be in the right direction as the E change may give cass better lategame damage while kiting and staying safe, as well as improving her multitarget damage if she puts her poison amp on multiple targets by e'ing all over the place. The mana rebalance without the refund mechanic should also open up build options since cassiopeia will not need a massive mana pool from tear and/or roa to maximize her cs refunds. If the E poison amp were to work in such a way that it was some kind of always-relevant damage (when cassiopeia is high level to encourage her lategame role, of course) through %hp, true damage, or just high bases it would go even farther towards this as cassiopeia could build tankier and let her poisons do the work in addition to the glass cannon option and letting her stupidly high ratio, rapid-fire e do the work.

Skia Asteri11/1/2014, 1:49:59 AM12 votes

Now adds a debuff on the target which significantly amplifies further poison damage.

Just her poison or the damage of all poison abilities? If you are serious about having a poison theme for her, she needs more interaction with all poisons.

No longer restores mana on unit kill (mana costs reduced accordingly). Some people really enjoyed this, so I’d consider adding it back, but with the minion farming mini game gone, this seemed less fitting on the kit.

???

E is her only way to really farm minions if an enemy is aggressively pushing, so unless the new cost is really low I expect this will have to be reverted.

Khell DarkWolf11/1/2014, 5:05:26 PM11 votes

Said it before and I'll say it again but I'll reword it:

I don't like Aspect of the Serpent as a passive because everything about it from its inception to its conception to what it is today is flawed. Why?

  1. It purposely gates her early and mid game from trying to achieve the rewards of building her items:
  • Because the ball of stats doesn't fit with her
  • Since it gives stats (AP gains and other stuff), its give you an excuse to purposely keep her nerfed with junk AP Ratios which relates to not being able to feel rewarded for your items if you get kills or a lead in gold
  • If you get behind or wrecked in lane, its complete famine because catching up is now twice as hard to get those stacks
  1. The Stacking mechanic is chorish, yes:

  • But applying an over time of obtaining stacks is just as worse as getting them, since you're not playing with the full aspects of your champion since it is locked

  • It promotes no skill differentiation between a player, farm stack based or time based since it doesn't matter whose playing behind the champion. The result is feast or famine as it'll come down to what happened during the laning phase and then whether or not you're more behind in gold for items.

  • The fascination of making Cassiopeia a late game hyper carry:

  • I detest this very idea, because she was perfectly fine prior the rework and I did not pick up Cassiopeia nor any other Cass main to be a glorified Hyper carry without an early game. I told you guys before not to get too hooked up on the idea of making her late game better because any champion can a dream late game, but it'll always come down to how they perform during their early and midgame that determines if a player enjoys actually wanting to get to that late game.

  • This aspect could have been achieved with another champion and misses the mark because you chose to do it as a rework to differing playstyle that most were accustomed to. To remove a large portion of the player base that picked up for their reasons because what has decided to make her now is the main reason most of us as upset.

  • The Lost Identity and lack of choice:

  • I picked up Cassiopeia because I enjoyed the early game and still have a decent late game. Because I had the choice of either trying to whittle down my opponent to open the option to all in or I could stall the wave as I waited

  • Her combo nature was so prevalent back pre-work was another key moment to why I enjoyed her, but it was also because I had tools to try and keep zone control and I could punish them for not respecting that. Now it just doesn't feel way anymore with cooldowns nerfed on all her spells and in addition to her lower base and ratio damage because of the direction you guys want to push her.

  • Her playstyle now forces you to use Twin Fangs much more often, which I don't like because it shifted the way the champion felt before and I knew from before pre-work that if I didn't have time to use Twin Fangs on my opponent. It usually meant it would put me in a bad position and can get me killed since I know in current rework I have to stand there and fire off like a machine gun for longer periods of time as my whittling tool and killing tool since it is all about damage over time.

  • Since Aspect of the Serpent and the removal of Deadly Cadence, the choices of your first item buys are severely blackballed into grabbing a tear of the goddess. Because if you don't have the mana to keep up with the spam, more so now because you have to use twin fangs more often. You'll find yourself running oom faster then Kassadin spamming riftwalks.

  • I enjoyed the old Q and W, but with reduced base, AP ratios and a higher cooldown. Zoning tools and the ability to whittle down an opponent as a poison DoT mage are hampered and don't feel the same anymore. I know why too, because so long as she has that passive of Aspect of the Serpent giving her stats (but importantly the AP gains) you can't give her higher ratios.

  • It was said she was binary before, I won't argue that. But forced to use Q/W for twin fangs is just more so

5G8Nri0B5411/1/2014, 11:50:30 PM11 votes

I'm going to repeat a heavily tldr'd version of what I said again just so you don't miss it.

I LIKE that you are considering making her E-amplify her poison (still don't like that it has a nuke component, or it's still an E-mash mechanic in the end!)

BUT...

-I dislike how unrewarding her Q and W has become -I dislike how worthless Q and W is without her E -I dislike how 99% of her power budget is funnelled into her E -I hate how the rework completely devalued her two most fun abilities (Q and W) in favour of making her most hated ability the sole focus of her kit

Then there is the Passive.

I LIKE that you semi-acknowledge that it's a compete chore(okay, you said chore-ish) to play

BUT...

-I dislike how it's only meaningful during 3 of it's increments out of her 400 total increments, how each soul farmed by Thresh and Nasus feels so hella good, but each stack is just a disappointing reminder that this is what Cassiopeia is now when I play as her -I dislike how this is added onto her despite the fact that she is ludicrously gold-dependant to begin with, giving her TWO barriers to contend with -I dislike how it's the complete anti-thesis of Poison. Her passive should focus on debuffing her opponent, not buffing Cassiopeia herself. It's a Poison right? -I hate how her Passive is clearly** just there to weaken her**, how she is one of the few champions whose Passive doesn't benefit her in ANYWAY at all, that it's sole function on her is to keep her weak for MOST of the game

More generally.

-I hate how she is no longer an AoE DoT mage who did* deceptive amounts of damage* (you know...POISON!) -I hate how she is still single-target even with the suggested E-change -I hate how she no longer is able to be useful throughout most of the game -I hate how she is being forced into being a Hyper-carry that needs to farm like crazy, how she must be ahead just to do well. -I wanna emphasize how much I don't like the sudden decision to turn her into a hyper-carry...

You know, overall I do genuinely feel bad that I'm probably one of the few people you're referring to when you say discussions have occasionally gotten...toxic. For that, I'll apologize. But at the same time, this was a really fun champion before her rework. And that thread in GD has not been well managed at all. Only acknowledging the positive and neutral feedbacks. Being made 1-day before her rework goes live. Feeling of neglect for multiple weeks.

All of that, and you compare it to Sion , Viktor , Diana , etc., who had threads dedicated to asking their fans what they see their favourite champion as, or what they feel like they should be.

Overall I'm glad you're still trying to salvage this wreckage. But the rework, no matter how hard you try to save it, is just fundamentally flawed.

NaNoSoLdIeR11/1/2014, 4:38:19 PM10 votes

First some tips on how we as a community would feel less neglected Stashu:

  1. Answer more posts, I've seen maybe 3 answers to the community from you, Morello seems to have commented more by now on these threads than you.
  2. Stick this discussion so that everyone has access to it, like the other reworks do.
  3. Stop insisting that E is a DOT spell just because it can be spammed, it's a nuke that can be spammed under certain conditions there's a difference acknowledge it.

These 3 things will probably take care of most of the angry posts that I see lying around.

Now onto Cassiopeia.

Stop focusing on the goddamn e, Please and Thank You.

Her e was an addition to her poison damage and you turned it into a mandatory-if-you're-not-using-this-spell-you-don't-do-damage spell. Although there are some people that like this, i'll grant you that one, it's not why people played her before the rework.

I'd be okay with the current play pattern if it was another champion and if the other abilities/ranges enabled Twin fangs reliability. Either more range on E or being able to cast Q/E while moving, or even a mix of both. But I can't stress this enough this wasn't the identity of Cass, and after reading through most of the comments in this post it's not the community will, the community feels like your jamming this character design through our throats.

In actual fact, DoT’s do a lot more damage than anyone realizes, and often times so do AoE’s, so in order for Cassiopeia to be balanced as a long-range AoE DoT dealer, she’d have to take some significant hits. We had to make a choice here, and we went with giving her the most potent DoTs on single targets. Cass can still apply DoT from long range, but accessing her full power requires commitment to a single target (with E). This way we can give Cass meaningful DoT power on single targets instead of weak DoTs to all enemies. Fishing from long range with Qs and Ws is an important and fun part of her play pattern that we want to keep.

I'm one of the persons that misses the dot aoe long range spells, I've pretty much come to terms that I'll never be playing old Cass and that's fine, but please remove from your head the notion that her being able to spam her E makes her a DOT mage ("This way we can give Cass meaningful DoT power on single targets"), being able to spam E, and being able to reliably spam E are two very different things. Only in the best of best case scenarios does she become a single target nuke spammer mage, the average use case is very different than her best case scenario, and this is what worries me about your whole design decisions on a Dot mage.

Also please answer this question, was the rampant scripting on her a cause for her rework to shy away so much from the q and w?

retnirp11/3/2014, 5:39:23 PM10 votes

I think the biggest problem with the current iteration (and even the proposed changes) is Cass's passive. The current system and the changed one both feel like your are punishing the player who picked Cass until you reached a certain point in the game and then she gets a bonus that puts her on par with other mages. It doesn't enhance any aspect of her playstyle or reward you for holding out until late game.

Compare Cass to Annie. They are both going to build similar items, but Annie sees more value from the items. Annie doesn't have to spam skills [zhonya disruption on Cass's primary play pattern of QEEEEE] and has pretty reasonable AP ratios (Cass's ratios currently are very very bad). Cass's ratios are so bad that she gets to be even with Annie after the 40 minute mark, but annie still has a passive (at that point cass might as well not have one) that allows her to add utility/outplay potential to her team.

This actually goes beyond just Cass as other champions with "scaling" built into their kit usually are underbudgetted on their base stats (or ratios) and are just completely outclassed during the most important parts of the game.

Kingsgrave11/1/2014, 6:59:22 PM9 votes

Im not even a Cass player and I don't understand the stacking mechanic on her passive. I always thought she would be better suited for something like Jax's passive but with spells, not something like Nasus or Veigar. Nasus and Veigar's stacking mechanics make a lot more sense though and aren't just some arbitrary stats. Nasus in particular only gets benefit from his Q.

The only way I could see it working was if Cass got 1 AP per 1 second of poisoning an enemy champion with no cap. Bases lowered, poison durations increased and AP ratios increased.

TheUltimateSpear11/2/2014, 11:30:33 PM9 votes

Okay, first post on the boards, so please bare with me.

Now, I'm currently low Silver. I do not pretend to be brilliant at this game. I don't pretend I'm an expert on game design and character design. What I can say, however, is that I love Cassiopeia. She was the first champ I bought with IP, way back when I started playing in August of 2013. Her 2nd splash art still gives me the sense of intriguing and novelty that comes with trying a new game. Even though I become quite frustrated with my on-and-off success with her, I never gave her up, because she just felt right to play. And with that, thoughts below.

Stashu, my friend, you said that for Cassiopeia to become an AOE, DOT mage, she'd have to take some pretty significant hits. Are you sure? Cassiopeia has mediocre to average range, no cc on a basic ability, no escapes, and is quite squishy. She had these flaws before and she has them now. Are they not enough?

The removal of Deadly Cadence and the addition Aspect of the Serpent Okay, let me explain why I loved Deadly Cadence. This passive gave Cassiopeia a sense of rhythm and momentum and focus and reinforcing that I had to really be there when i played her. Let me elaborate on what I mean. As I said Cassiopeia is squishy, mediocre ranged, no hard cc on a basic ability, and has no escapes. These, for me, were sometimes frustrating, but they made me stay alert, and engaged, and made me have FUN. For me, all champs become old hat in time, even the likes of Syndra who is also (suppposed to be lol that retarded hitbox) a high skillcap champion. But, Cass didn't. I may have never really done well with consistency on her, but I never stopped being alert and engaged, even when other champs lost their novelty. And, I think the new passive maybe kinda takes that from her. It says, stack back, farm up, bide your time. New creep wave, poison, e farm, wait. Until late game, where I throw down a w on someone who jumps on me and then sit there and spam e and 9 out of 10 times they'll get shredded. Or, chase them down absolutely relentlessly and spam my huge fangs at them. New Cass can melt faces mid and late game, but she also is just as likely to get picked off because she needs to be in that range of the e to be truly impactful. Anyways, the sense of weaving through the battlefield and around my opponent just isn't the same. Plus, removing deadly Cadence forces Cass to build tear, because going Rod of Ages and +10 mana item like morello's won't cut as it goes overboard and makes you waste CDR. And many times, players will build both, gimping their early game even harder.

Fun factor Cassiopeia right now just isn't very fun. It's not fun to get murdered until 200 stacks and then turn around and murder others with impunity yourself. Well, maybe it's not that it's not fun. It may be that Cassiopeia's sheer versatility has been axed. Before, Cassiopeia could max q or e depending on her opponent; ranged poke or dueling? Cassiopeia could choose between the two, and it was one of her few reliable points. I really like the poison changes you intend to add, but they still make her a duelist type champion, and thus emphasize the riskier of Cassiopeia's two previous playstyles. (Getting in range with E) Also, I really liked being a lane bully, but if it has to go, I'm willing to compared to other things.

State of actual power Hoh boy. Cassiopeia now is dicey to play. A significantly supbar early game makes it so that her teammates better be going even or winning because she can't help them. Even when she get's those stacks, the poke from q and w, while actually decent, isn't better than other mages. She only gets her shot once a teamfight's initiated, and she's still super vulnerable. That said, i think she's weak, but not as much as everyone else. You can do decently with her, but looking at overall power, I'd say it was a reduction.

That concludes my post. I hope Stashu that you really think this one over, if only because I grew fond of Cass before any other champ, and I miss her.

Nexts11/1/2014, 2:14:26 PM8 votes

Hi there, looks like I'm a bit late to the discussion. Anyways, the main problem that I have with the rework stems from the gating that the passive puts on Cassiopeia. For comparison, let's look at Vayne: she scales very hard into late game, just like Cassio should, and is also considered a relatively short-range hypercarry. The big difference between Vayne and the current Cassio is that if I pick up a few kills, manage to cs better than my opponent, or outplay the other team in some way, my reward as Vayne is that I can pick up items that significantly increase my damage output. As Cassio, the major gateway to high damage output is through her passive now, as her AP scalings aren't that great. As such, if I outplay the other team in some way, or if my jungler camps my lane and gets me a few kills, there really isn't much of a reward - there's no way to accelerate the passive via zoning, kills, etc. This ends up causing a situation where no matter how well I play the champ, I still won't have much of an effect on the game pre-30 minutes.

The real question is: how should this issue be addressed? My suggestion would be increasing the number of stacks gained based on how much damage Cassio does to her opponent. Did Cassio land a Q? Scale the stacks gained not by the time the other champ is poisoned, but rather by how much poison damage they take. Did Cassio land an E? Perhaps the more damage that E does, the more stacks Cassio gets. This way, if the Cassio player manages to get a gold lead in lane, that lead will actually have an effect.