Despite my misgivings about Cassiopeia, I’ve been having a lot of success with her. My deaths are usually higher than I’d like, but I’ve generally had a positive KDA and in some cases even carried my team. Until now.

As I start this post, I’m in the thick of what is almost surely a losing game, a game that has been laborious from the start, largely due to the way Cassiopeia casts. I laned mid against Karthus early, which was definitely a challenge, but one I was up to if he didn’t get blue buff at 6. Unfortunately he did, which meant I was slammed against my own turret all of the early game, woefully trying to time poisons against tower hits. My farm was pretty bad.

Karthus also had a much easier time with lane harass than I did. His casting mechanics are somewhat similar, but generally much more reliable. His slow AoE is huge while Cassiopeia’s is tiny. Hers grows, but the growth is slow and easy to see – not exactly difficult to avoid. There’s also the fact that Karthus can move his DoT spell by just moving his body. In one fight I hit him with my slow, a couple Twin Fangs, and a Noxious Blast to keep the poison up. It was looking like a kill until he hit me with his slow, which is much more devastating than my own, and then melted me with Defile and Lay Waste. It was close, but he got me and lived.

Cassiopeia’s ult is also extremely frustrating because of the facing requirement, especially against teams that kite. Karthus is a great example of a champion that will run away from you but turn back often to cast a single spell. If you catch him, great, but when he whole team is trying to keep you from him, but also kiting themselves, her ult can feel like a big waste. The slow isn’t really long enough to give you a shot at catching a distant target, and the damage isn’t spectacular either.

The more I play her, the more Cassiopeia seems to be designed around winning fights against champions that don’t know what she can do. She is very hard to 1v1 if you’re chasing her. Her ult plus an Ignite and any poison -> Twin Fang combo is pretty much GG. In most other situations, though, she’s easy enough to handle.

Among the changes this patch were a couple buffs to Cassiopeia. I was kind of excited because I’ve always like the idea behind Cass, I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of her. After playing with the changes I gotta say…not much has changed.

A little disclaimer: I did much better in one game with Cassiopeia than I have ever done, but it still didn’t feel quite right. You might say the buffs worked, and to some extent I think they did. The Twin Fang cast speed increase was a good thing, same for her ult. Her ult also seems a bit more reliable now, which is good.

The thing I still can get, though, is all the different ways she has to cast. She just requires a crazy amount of mouse movement to land all her different spells at the same time. I think the big problem is Noxious Blast, which is on a mouseover cast. I understand the thinking – it has a relatively short cooldown so it needs to be easy to cast. That’s all well and good until your target starts moving. And then that target starts casting spells. Spells that you need to dodge. Maybe I’m just lazy, but this equates to a massive number of clicks to land a couple spells.

This becomes a bigger and bigger problem as Cassiopeia’s opponents get more and more bursty. If Brand can blow me up in 3 spells but it takes me 5 or 6 to do the same thing, chances are he’ll fare better in most fights. I think Brand is a good counter example because both he and Cassiopeia are high energy combo casters. When you land that combo it feels amazing. With Cass, though, I feel like I’m much more taxed to land a somewhat inherently difficult combo.

That would be a fine thing if it felt like a skill ceiling but it feels more like a click ceiling. Is there something I’m missing here?

Cassiopeia, the League’s newest champion, is on release notice as of today. We got the official “champion approaches” post, which included her final skill list. I think she sounds pretty cool, and she’ll likely be a very strong caster, even if she does fall in line with the AoE metagame.

Let’s have a look at the skills:
Noxious Blast: Cassiopeia blasts an area with a delayed high damage poison, granting her increased Movement Speed if she hits a champion.

Miasma: Cassiopeia releases a cloud of poison, lightly damaging and slowing any enemy that happens to pass through it.

Twin Fang: Cassiopeia lets loose a damaging attack at her target. If the target is poisoned the cooldown of this spell is refreshed.

Petrifying Gaze (Ultimate): Cassiopeia releases a swirl of magical energy from her eyes, stunning any enemies in front of her that are facing her and slowing any others with their back turned.

Deadly Cadence (Passive): After casting a spell any subsequent spellcasts will cost 10% less for 5 seconds. This ability stacks up to 5 times.

From her skill descriptions it sounds like she’ll have a cool poison playstyle without being terrible to play against. Teemo and Twitch can be really frustrating in lane because they get the damage of an auto attack and the benefit of poison for one action. With Cassiopeia, you’ll have to land some skill shots to get the benefit of her toxins, which is kinda cool.

Twin Fang sounds like it could be really brutal, especially when combined with her passive. Obviously her bread-and-butter will be a poison to Twin Fang barrage, relying on her passive to keep her mana cost down. It sounds like an interesting mechanic, though I have to wonder if it’s going to release either severely under- or overpowered. That’s exactly the kind of combo that, without very careful tuning, ends up getting out of control or remains completely underwhelming.

Her ult is borrowed from DotA’s Medusa, and should be very powerful in a team situation. A potential five-man stun on a caster is always huge. The size of the AoE will determine how strong this thing is.

I’m always interested to see how new champions change the game. I haven’t hardly seen Trundle since his patch. Where do you think Cassiopeia will fall?