Advice for Cassia?

General Discussion
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Although I typically prefer to play warriors or support, I do have a few assassins I can play when needed, but I want to expand my hero pool this season, as having more options is never a bad thing. After trying a few out, I have settled on working on Cassia for a number of reasons. She fits in well with all team comps and maps, both of her heroics are strong, she outputs decent sustained damage, she can burst when needed, has reasonable wave clear for an assassin, and she is almost never banned. With the number of heroes in the meta who rely on AAs for various things, her blinds are really powerful.

With all that said, I am still basically a novice Cassia, and can use some advice. I have been playing her in QM to try out different talents, and drafted her once in TL as the last pick counter to their AA heavy team. So here are my main questions:

  1. What are some suggestions for talents? I normally pick the Q quest at level 1 and Ring of the Leech at 4, mostly because they seem like safe options. The heroic will depend on the map and comps.

  2. What is the best use of Fend? I have seen too many Cassias dive in 1v5 with Fend and get blown up, so I tend to hold it for when I spot a golden opportunity. This is generally when my tank has one or more enemies locked down, as part of a wombo combo, or as a finisher. I am working on getting better using it as a gap closer and escape, but that is just a mechanics issue, as far as I can tell.

  3. Any other tips or tricks with her?

I am really enjoying her kit and deceptive tankiness, and her strength against divers, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

2 Likes
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Dont under estimate her AA talent at level 1. Not only it bounces to near by heroes (think of it like a mini ball ligtning) but can be good to harass and finish off enemies. 8 Seconds is a long time so make use of it.

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Q is good for situation were you want poke damage, but takes the longest of the 3 to build up. The other 2 talents offer much faster benefits. Her lvl 1 Blind is good if you wanna really hard counter AA comps with Blind, and charged strikes has low cooldown and and allows your attacks to bounce from a tanking foe to squishies behind them, or can be used on minions to have it bounce to enemy heroes while staying at a safer range.

Ring of leech is immediate benefit. Plate of the Whale maxes out at 20 regen/sec while avoidance is active (on top of her base regen), and gives you 10% health (which amounts to about 440 @ lvl 20, 540 @ lvl 25 and 650 @ lvl 30)

Maps fighting in close quarters 5v5 over single objective tend to have more benefit from lightning ball. Valkyrie has a low cooldown and as such is good for interrupting channeled abilities on the other team, or isolating a single target for a kill.

Fend is a double-edge sword. It can do great damage (especially if they are blinded first) but it sorta roots you in a spot doing damage in a cone while using it. It can also be interrupted early on with CC or knock backs typically leaving you in a bad spot (out of position). Note you don’t benefit from avoidance trait while using it so you are more vulnerable. I use it mostly for clearing waves of minions, closing the gap between fleeing targets (ensures you get at least a couple lightning ball bounces) because it will bounce of yourself), or to finish off low health opponents post level 7 (as I like to take impale there)

You cannot use fend on structures, but if you use it on a minion or someone in front of a structure the cone damage will hit the building behind.

If you use the Q at a perpendicular angle to a wall it will hit all structures along the wall once it splits.

And she pairs well with other heroes that can offer blinds

I know you are probably hoping for advice from better people than me, but I hope there is something in there that might find somewhat helpful.

4 Likes
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Take the activatable level 1 talent that makes her attacks bounce. It’s stupid good.

I use fend to help bounce lightning ball tbh

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fend is there mainly to finish off a target that’s trying to run away more than a main bread and butter damage thing.

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Her level 1 talents are all fairly good in their own situations, it’s honestly up to you to find out which talents you like for what situations (I even think the blind at level 1 is pretty solid - level 30 cass)

Level 4 I basically always take leech
Level 7 I’d recommend always taking surge of light if you haven’t been, I can’t imagine playing her without it.

I would say 13 and 16 depends on which level 1 you took, if you went q get q reduction and q pierce, if you went aa get slow and % on slow.

W is your most important ability by far (asside from being able to a-move always), mastering when to use it for damage and when to use it to regain the most health (whether through leech or the blind itself) is what I believe to be the most important part of her kit.

Fend is best used imo when you don’t have q up, just autoed, and the target is preferably blinded, or when you can catch of clump of (blinded) enemies. It is also really good to guarantee some damage with ball of lightning (which I don’t generally take because I biasedly hate it)

Oh I guess a tip would be if you are trying to secure a kill on someone running away, canceling fend early to get in an extra q/aa/surge is very important if fend won’t do enough by itself (I cancel it early anyways if the rest of my abilities are up because I think you effectively lose damage going for a full fend)

Also I tend to save w for a good time to combo it with surge of light, but that might be a bad habit on my part.

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My counter point to these other people is that you can build Fend into a team wiping ability by taking blind at lvl 1, then taking every Fend Talent as well as the self healing from damaging blind targets. Let your team engage first, drop a ball lightning, a blind, and engage with Fend. It melts just about everyone.

Combo with mosh or ring of frost or apoc.

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Cassia is overall good except 1 big weak point which is too weak against spell dmg which most of the match always got 1 or 2 in their side. With low hp and 0 spell armor, once opponent found out you deal too much dmg to their team and start focusing you, your cassia gonna hard to survive in teamfight.

I mostly go for Q path. I like Thunderstroke compare to Charged Strikes because Q got more range than normal attack. Most of the time I keep spam my Q when available, no matter to hero or their building. It can even use the right angle to bounce and hit the hero so you can quickly complete the quest in short time. Spamming Q is a must. Don’t save mana, anytime when cooldown ready, just use it so that can keep pressure to opponent force them go back regenerate and complete quest. It is not waste even you cast in on samuro or nova mirror for quest and found out whether that one is real hero or mirror.

lvl 4 mostly go for this Ring of the Leech. You can pick this Inner Light if you really want to directly counter hero such as butcher that always charge you then hit you. That is direct counter to butcher. It can also prevent kerrigan to cast stun on you.

Lvl 7 I always go War Traveler. This one good when I want to chase down opponent or flee away from they chase. With that I can always outrun them. I even can poke them with long range Q then move then Q again. (At least min is 4% spd. For movement spd, as long as you faster then opponent then you always got chance can outrun them and kite them) This to train you when play cassia, you should always q, move, attack, move, q,… Never stand still when playing cassia. Your action per second must go up.

Then for ulti, most of the time I pick ball lighting because in most fight opponent always stick quite close. Using this after casting Blinding Light will give 20% more dmg. With that those AA opponent force to leave in fight while those mage also busy running away from it. That time, you and your teammate charge in can easily kill a few of them so it is also a good initiate spell especially in narrow area.

lvl 13 I mostly go for Grounding Bolt to slow them so that i can chase down or flee easily. With lvl 7 increase my movement spd and this reduce opponent spd. I can easily kite them in fight. Either 1 or 2 of them tricked by me to chase me so far still cannot get me and my teammate can easily kill those leave behind at there or just focus this 2. When they flee, due to my movespd, I can chase them then Q to slow them down so that we able to finish them off.

Thundergod’s Vigor also good if you can keep spam on hero and your aim are accurate.

lvl 16 Pierce ,I use this can easily clear minion wave plus also can pass thru those unit that always block my Q such as anubarak bug, raynor banshee,…

Lvl 20 Infinite Lightning as I pick ball at lvl 10.

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+1 (plus one to that)

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No more likes I see. :frowning_face:

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A little known secret of Cassia is that she has a very strong auto attack build. No not that bouncing attack one at level 1, the Blind based one. Normally her blind up time is too low to take much advantage of it, however throw in a Li Li, Johanna, Artanis and basically anyone who can blind and that quickly changes. At level 20 your auto attacks will do over 700 damage each to blinded targets, which is butcher level damage but potentially with good range. Many squishy heroes will only survive 4-5 auto attacks at most, and her attack speed is pretty good as well. It also can be made to completely ignore armor! This is on top of untalented other abilities. Only down side with this is that it needs at least 1-2 other hero choices made around it.

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As someone who mains auriel, I make it a point to know every one of the main batteries well. Cassia is definitely one of the best thanks to high auto attack damage and Being able to take a few hits to deal damage.

My typical build is this
Seraph’s Hymn
Ring of Leech
Surge of light
Ball Lightning
lunging Strike
Martial Law (Depends on comp though)
Infinite Lightning

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Thanks all! I will definitely give these a try, and especially thanks for the suggestions for talent options.

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I agree with all of this. That’s almost my build exactly only i take the fend damage at level 7 for a quick burst on fleeing targets. It’s a little annoying to handle the lack of movement speed until the slow at 13 but i enjoy having the option. I don’t get why people take the CD reduction on 13. Once that Q quest is completed i can barely keep up with casting it as it is.

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Some good advice is Press Q, than press Q harder and then press Q some more.

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If it hits multiple targets it has as good as no cooldown. You could literally burst them for >1k damage per second by repeated casting of Q. If you already got heroes to provide slow such as Jaina or Stiches then the slow is effectively useless as well.

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Yunalescka is a streamer on the blizzard launcher… shes a plat cassia main. You should watch her shes really good.

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War Traveler (at 7) losing movespeed on stopping or using an ability, so with some practice with her stutter stepping, you can keep the movespeed bonus between basic attacks.

Plate of the Whale doesn’t work while mounted, so it can be a decent compliment with war traveler to get the extra movement without having to mount to go between lanes or to the objective, though Plate is really only worth it if you can get quest progress done quick and early - like laning against tracer - otherwise ring of the leech is the safe/go to pick.

Far a q goes, lotta players will know and react to direct shots at them, but aren’t so keen on the branching hits, so its usually better to aim the primary at other targets and get quest stacks off the splash, esp if they’re hiding behind the wall.

2 Likes
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It seems the talent was designed that way. It is not even that hard to maintain stacks and stutter step.

As far as I am aware it is impossible to maintain the stacks and cast Q or any ability. Hence it is strongest with auto attack builds.

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I did try War Traveler, and really liked it on Dragon Shire. Thanks for the tips on that.

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