I played a game with Cassiopeia this afternoon during which a friend asked an interesting question: “If you could only change one thing, what would it be?” I liked the question so much I’m going to feature it in each Champ of the Week rotation in some way.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a great answer. My gut response is to say change the way Noxious Blast is cast. Honestly, I would rather have to click cast it than mouseover – at least then my cursor would be in the right position for me to land my other skills. It would also give us a visual indicator for the size of the blast, something that currently isn’t in the game, even if you click on the spell icon to cast it as is the case with Karthus.

Another option would be to make Miasma cast at a static size. I really don’t know why the spell grows. It’s a cool idea, but it’s so functionally clumsy as to be infuriating. The problem with both of my ideas is that it makes her combo a little too easy to land. Twin Fang would probably need some tweaks if either of those changes happened.

If I had to choose one and just one, it would be Noxious Blast.

Cassiopeia released today, adding another caster to the mix. I had the chance to play a couple games with her this afternoon and, I gotta say, I don’t really like her. Though she has a fairly active playstyle, the poison and Twin Fang combo plays away from a mages typical strength: super burst damage.

As Phreak mentions in the champion spotlight, Cassiopeia relies on a full combination of spells to get a kill. She has to land her poisons, maximize damage output from Twin Fang, and land her ult. Miss one of those things and her damage plummets. It sounds fun, like a sort of high risk, high reward game. The problem is, her skills all utilize different casting mechanics, so it’s pretty tough to chain them. Her Q skill casts on mouse position, her W is a ground target, her E is a single target nuke, and her ultimate is a cone. Add to all of that the fact that you need to move to get into position because her range is fairly small (with the exception of Miasma), while watching your enemies to determine when they’ll be facing you so you can get a stun instead of just a slow. When you pull it off it feels great, but with Flash and all the champions with ranged slows, dashes, knockups, and knockbacks, it’s actually extremely hard to pull off perfectly.

As I mentioned above, there’s also a very simple positioning issue. When I want to get a kill with Annie, I’ll Disintegrate -> Tibbers -> Incinerate -> Ignite -> Disintegrate, which is almost always a kill (if I’m willing to blow that full rotation). The thing is, I can cast those spells very rapidly and then get out. If I just want to harass, I can stun with a spell and cast either Disintegrate or Incinerate for a nice, solid chunk of health. With Cassiopeia, the full kill combo takes a lot of mouse movement, and the equivalent harass combo, probably something like Noxious Blast or Miasma to a couple Twin Fangs. The fact that you have to cast four or five times means you’re in range for return fire for the majority of those casts. She has no disable, so you better hope you can give better than you’ll get, or harassing won’t work very well for you.

That said, I found she’s much more fun in lane than as a solo. With a lane partner, there’s someone to produce a little threat with you, and someone to soak some of the heat if you’re about to take return fire. It also brings more damage, giving you plenty of opportunity to bring a target down.

As much as I wanted a poisoner, Cassiopeia doesn’t quite cut it. She has to expose herself too much to deal respectable damage, so she typically ends up casting a Twin Fang or two, which isn’t quite enough to prep someone for a kill. Her current skillset is tough to balance, though. Buff her damage output too much and she does big damage in burst, but continues to deal sustained damage like a late-game carry at every stage of the game. Honestly, I think she might be better if they just made her into a carry. Make her abilities deal physical damage so that she has some early game burst and can rely on her auto attacks later in the game. She has a ranged slow, a movespeed buff, and targeted nuke for early game harassment (that would scale well early because it worked off armor pen instead of magic pen).