Se was around 10% + pick rate in 2020 but ever since her pick rate is slowly but steadily falling.
She is now at 1,6% popularity in emerald and below too.
https://u.gg/lol/champions/cassiopeia/build
The reason many high elo players quit cass has nothing to do with her hard matchups being being strong or weak in the meta.
She used to be a tempo/snowball mage with early kill pressure This has been deleted. Now she is a “scaler”.
How did she ended up in this state?
- Shes extremely immobile.
- Lowest range among mages.
- If you play for control, it opens enemy up to spam roam’s in positions you can’t follow as they can turn on you w jungler/they got t2 boots way before your MS could reach up to them
- Low burst in a game where people die instantly.
- Low pressure.
- Lowest base armor in the game (18 at start). Vladimir has 27. Even Sona has 26 at start.
- She doesnt even stand that strong against melee stat check mids anymore (yone/talon/sylas) due to apalling mana costs.
- She looses hard to mages and assassins.
- One of the few mages that rely on item passives to be playable, so her itemization really sucks.
- Component building is brutal on her (sitting on a giants belt never feels good).
- The reason shes considered a scaling champ is due of the extra 6th item slot, but games are over at three items on avg. In lower elo where games are polonged then most other mages scale better even if you reach 6th item.
- She has no % hp or true damage.
- Only way to get kills using F + R combo.
- She is flash and /or fog reliant for cheese an ult land as she is the only champion ingame where opponent’s facing orientation matters to land a stun.
- In low elo she is easy to snowball with because people dont know her damage but even tehy feel she is just outdated as her pick rate terribly low.
It’s not rly just one specific thing that made a lot of the higher elo cass mains stop playing her. Its a myriad of things that slowly grew over the years to her losing her identity as a champion.
Some of the others that quit playing her said shes high risk low reward, where she has to land a pretty easy to dodge skill shot at tier 2 boots to deal dmg, and if she misses she dies at higher ranks.
Most other champs that have that high cost to play have something to support a comeback from a lane deficit (yone early item spikes/ kat strong roam snowball pressure/ ryze w jungle river plays/ eve picks etc) whereas if she falls behind, only thing launching her back in the game is the enemy team making a major misplay.
There are so many issues with the champion I don’t even know how to propose fixes at this point.
All the issues we have listed has nothing to do with meta.
She is palyed every once in a while but at mid masters-gm elo players think even winning on her doesnt feel fun. And why play something that is not fun.
Malzahar is a bad comparison as he does not have to interact on lane to win with perma push gameplay with dots. On him it’s completely reserved since he is an uninteractive matchup.
Veigar has one of the best CC and raw scaling in the game with cage and passive. That is why Veigar V2 came up with a mythc into rabadon into tank items combo as you could farm out crazy amount AP and just build resistance afterwards.
Taliyah is actually scaling as she comes online at lvl 9 and she has way better forms to fight against mobility + she does rewards high skill plays with her ceiling.
Ziggs was overtuned in the last couple of patches. You either don’t see him aside a few games when h is semi balanced-weak because hes just a boring design with low ceiling gameplay or they overtune him for no reason.
Malza and Veigar CC just superior to both cass W and R. Taliyah simply better design on the long run but remember she needed 6 years to reach this state as devs hadno idea what to do with her…and You can see ziggs above.
They don’t suffer from such issues as Cassio right now.
It’s difficult to land and easy to dodge as you climb because not everyone walks into your face mindlessly and palyers know ho to sac minions for poke and free damage even. It’s not too difficult to land it iin teamfights on someone but it’s not something meaningful when its up for 3s while it costs a lot which would not be an issue with better component itemisation. But it is an issue because overall high mana demand on a ksillshot oriented champ who can’t deal burst.
As mentioned in the post high risk-low reward.