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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

My thoughts on playing Cassiopeia

Normally, I don't buy champions that are in their first few weeks of release. However, I was reading the LoL forums yesterday, someone posted that Cassiopeia was apparently created by the same champion designer for Anivia. This intrigued my interest (I am a die hard Anivian), as I opened the LoL client as quickly as I could to check her info and price. Not to my surprise, she is rated at maximum difficulty and is a caster, much like Anivia. Some might say her handling difficulty is even beyond that of Anivia. As a player that is proud to main one of the hardest champions in the game, I simply could not let Cassiopeia take the new "hardest playable" champion spot if I want to keep my pride (hehe). Of course, she is also very interesting and likely won't be used much by others, making Cassiopeia players a unique find just like Anivia players. So I decided, I must buy her at all cost!


Well, from playing a few games with her I can say that she seems to have potential to become a force to be reckoned with! (whew, my 950 RP didn't go to waste). Cassiopeia has great bursts, great chasing ability, farming skills, almost no CD, and most importantly, teemo-tier annoyance poisons. However, she is very, very fragile. My HP goes down quickly from pretty much any attacks. Getting ganked usually means death even more so than other champions without escape summoner spells; hell, even with escape spells, surviving is a pain. This I will explain below.


The way I see it, Cassiopeia uses poison to control the battlefield. Miasma has a really large casting range, and it reveals the area it hits. Both Twin fang and Q have around 1.8 second CD with perfect CDR (twin fang 0.5 sec CD if poisoned), thats ****ing ridiculous considering it hits 250 damage each (including poison) mid to late game at least. Q and W used in conjunction, with the optional Rylai, makes sure the opponent has almost no chance of escaping with the constant slow. With decent aiming and remembering to move forward with each skill hit, she can nuke constantly. Smartcast, especially for Twin Fang, should be used when nuking to ensure maximum speed, but this takes a lot of aiming skill. (read guide for smartcast here: http://lolinsider.blogspot.com/2010/12/improve-microing-guide-to-smartcast-and.html" ). In early-mid game, Cassiopeia focuses on using Twin Fang/poison combo to do damage because it is spammable and has high base damage.  Mid-late game once Cassiopeia farmed some AP items, the combo focuses on spamming Q, which has excellent scaling damage, while incorporating Twin Fang -not as strong as early-mid game due to poor scaling but still spammable. The thing is, mana management aside, you won't get to nuke that much most of the time without dying yourself.


Cassiopeia's hardest part, in my opinion, is positioning. Her only way of escaping using champion skills, is the combo of Q and E, clutch skill of R. Q's hit procs speed bonus, while E is a very small AOE slow. R basically allows you to turn around and stun anyone chasing you. However, they are not good escape skills because you have to cast them, which means stop moving for a second. If someone can jump on you like Jax, it might as well be GG.


So far I can get many kills but die many times too. Of course I haven't even yet to begin to grasp her true potential. But I do have a couple of suggestions in regards to items.


-rylai's for spammable slow
-early catalyst or giant's belt
-mid-late tears
-banshee


 I recommend everybody play her your own way and experiment with different builds.


                                                Good luck and have fun!

4 comments:

  1. i myself a die hard anivia fan have looked at her from afar. i typically wait a while to see what champs are played the most with new ones. in edition to anivia being hard to control, i like that not many people use her, its a mind game. so many people fear her because they hear her burst is amazing, but so few see her in action, so they are unsure of how to take her down.

    if cass has the same effect ill deffinitly love her. i love being in mid lane or the side lanes, showing up on the mini as anivia, and the whole fight moves elsewhere, the fear alone to having such a notorious champion is half the fun.

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  2. This week though, Anivia has been free to play. Now more players have become familiar with her and know how awesome she is, so she'll be more common place, I feel like she may have lost some of that notoriety. I could be off though.

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  3. In eu servers she is so common -_-

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  4. Cassiopeia is an AP-Dps Champion, she deals a high amount of damages on the time and can ripost easily versus some ad carry.
    She have skills with low CD this do Cassiopeia Overpowered, she possessed a slow, a bonus movement speed and his ulti is like a stun.
    You will never get bored of playing this champion
    I think she is really good stun who can touch all near enemies!

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