Both Karthus and Cassiopeia have been officially disabled, thanks to the AoE bug I mentioned earlier today. As I said in that post, those two champions in particular seem to benefit in big ways from the problem, though Riot wasn’t clear on how widespread the issue actually is.

Here’s the official post:

Due to a current bug affecting AOE damage spells, we are temporarily disabling Karthus and Cassiopeia. These champions are disproportionately affected by this issue and will be re-enabled when we release a hotfix. Rest assured that we have a dedicated team working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

This is one of few times that we’ve seen champions disabled thanks to bugs associated with their skills. I’m glad to see it, though. I was getting sick of Karthus hitting me from crazy range.

If you’ve been on the forums lately, you’ve no doubt noticed the threads bemoaning an AoE bug. The bug, as far as I can tell, allows AoE spells to land at a larger radius than their animation. Among the top offenders are Mordekaiser’s Siphon of Destruction, Brand’s Pillar of Flame and Caitlyn’s Yordle Snap Trap. Riot has yet to respond, or at least yet to respond in a post that I can find, so it’s unclear whether the bug is official or not. I will say this – I seem to be getting snagged by farm more traps than I used to.

In my mind, this is a really tough bug to assess. It’s frustrating to get hit by more spells than I’m used to, but I can’t help but think that my paranoia about the bug feeds into my analysis of the bug. Still, I did have a Cassiopeia land seemingly every cast on me, even though I had boots at level one. It’s not totally inconceivable that she was just the best Cassiopeia player I have ever seen, but I’d bet it’s more likely that there is some sort of bug.

Have you noticed the AoE bug? Seen a prevalence of AoE casters like Karthus and Cassiopeia?

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.

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.

I’m starting up a new column, mostly because League of Legends is pretty slow during non-patch weeks, not counting the new champion ability posts. I really like writing about League of Legends but I needed a new focus so here we are. I’ll be choosing one champion each week as my Champ of the Week and playing that character significantly more than others and reporting on the experience. After my Cassiopeia post, I thought she would be a good place to start.

I’ll let you read through most of my initial thoughts there – no sense rehashing them. After a few games with her, my biggest problem is that her W is easy to land but low damage and her Q is difficult to land but really big damage, especially with a bit of AP. I know it makes sense – the higher damage should be harder to land – but it’s tough to know which spell to prioritize. Do I go for the cast with the highest potential damage or the reliable, albeit smaller damage?

For now, I’m rocking W after Twin Fang, just to get some reliable burst out of that combo. Later in the week I’m planning to try a build that relies very little on Twin Fang for damage. Hopefully my Noxious Blast skills will be to the point that I can make some use of them.

Check back throughout the week for more on Cassiopeia and in coming weeks for more Champ of the Week profiles.