League of Legends: Riot Attempts to Push Cassiopeia into the Mid Lane

Riot Games is attempting to shift Cassiopeia to the mid lane on Patch 10.12

Patch 10.12 is right around the corner, and the balance team at Riot is attempting to limit the power of Cassiopeia in the bottom lane. Currently, the Serpent’s Embrace is supporting a 52.95% win rate in Platinum and above games when she is played in the bottom lane.

In the mid lane, although a much popular position for the hyper carry, with a 5.26% pick rate,  Cassiopeia has a lower win rate, at 51.75%. In the bottom lane, she benefits from the low HP of traditional ADCs, easily chunking them with her Q – Noxious Blast and E – Twin Fang. Once she gets Tear of the Goddess, ideally on her first recall, she can dominate the lane, cycling her combo over and over again.

To attempt to limit her prowess on the bottom side of the map, Riot has released these changes to the serpent: reducing her base HP by 15 (575 >>> 560), reducing her base armor by 2 (20 >>> 18), and increasing her base magic resistance by 4 (30 >>> 34).

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By lowering her base health and armor, Riot has decided to try to push Cassiopeia back into her original role of mid lane, making it harder for her to survive in lanes against AD-centric champions. This change also hurts her presence in the top lane, where she had an easy time bullying traditional bruisers. Now, if caught by any form of crowd control, Cassiopeia will be easier to kill than in previous patches.

However, reducing a champion’s base health by 15 and armor by 2 isn’t the most drastic change in the world. This nerf ultimately won’t affect her standing in the bot lane too much, whereas the buffs she received to her magic resistance are quite nice.

The main way to counter Cassiopeia is to hit her with some type of crowd control and attempt to kill her from 100 to 0. If you fail to one-shot her, she can simply use her R – Petrifying Gaze and kill the opponent in a matter of seconds. Therefore, that extra 4 magic resistance will help her in matchups where the opposition tries to burst her early on, such as Syndra or Fizz.

So, although the Cassiopeia nerfs will likely push her more towards a traditional mid lane champion once again, she’ll still be one of the best champions in the game at her three main roles.