cass is one of the hardest to play champs in the game right next to lee sin and karma. the reason people say bad things about cass is becaues they have yet to see a good cass in action however once a good cass does come by they will roll face just like the good lee sin and karma who are rarely seen. this build works on theory and i have yet to test it's actual effectiveness in game as i do not have the runes yet. however i do have faith in the build to perform well.

may/09/2011 - initial launch of the build
may/13/2011 - i have now tested this build with a half completed rune page. results posted. as well the conclusion has been rewritten

yes i am well aware that there are much more benificial runes for cass such as mana regen or even max mana and mpen however i have chosen AP per level for a very special reason. the reason is because GA is a huge psychological debuf to the opponent and will give them a huge incentive to not attack you and if your building GA, your AP wont be getting bigger so to have AP you need it from somewhere else and the only place that i can fit it in is in the runes. and when you hit lv9 you have the equvlent of blasting wand in AP from runes and at lv18 the equivalent of needlessly large rod.



this set up is also worth a try.


many people who worry about survivability will put it into their runes and build glass cannon. this however is not mathematically correct. lets say you have a setup for runes that looks like this: Greater Mark of Vitality Greater Seal of Vitality Greater Glyph of Vitality Greater Quintessence of Vitality results in at most a (1110g) at lv18. if its split into something like Greater Seal of Vitality Greater Quintessence of Defense the result at lv18 is less than (1575g) where as the above runes is equivalent to (1600) at lv18. just judging from the numbers, an all AP rune page is worth more than the other two defensive setup. and as we all know from experience hopefully, > or . i'm sure there are rune setup that are alot more effective than my listed defensive setups but even at best, a few more stats in her defensive stats wont be as effective as 80 AP.

looks normal 9/0/21. this is rather flexible if you enjoy your defensive masteries then there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't go 9/21/0 or 0/21/9. any other caster setup is acceptable.

i cake clarity and flash because clarity will keep me in lane longer and will help me out late game to keep you in the fight longer as well and flash is just a "get out of fail free card" as some may put it where it helps you escape often. however if you dont like to take one or the other of the summoner spells there are other options. they are listed in the order of which pops into my head first so if its at the top of the list, its equally recomended as one at the bottom of the list.

this is a spell that a team often need but no one end up taking it for some reason. if you like your map awareness then definitely take this.

for another "get out of fail free card" take this. additionally often people will pop this before the fight starts to make sure nothing gets in their way such as minions and other champ when in the team fight.

for the extra burst early on and a hard counter to mundo/vlad/swain/healers in game. this is works really nice since your a DoT champ so why not have more DoT in your set?

a tool for ganking. as well a good way to hard counter alot of physical champs.

a get out of CC free card. Disables and interrupts are a real pain to casters and silence being almost the biggest threat to you. you can now have a counter against teams that have heavy CC in them.

this is a fun spell that gets you around the map really fast. it has a super long cooldown so i personally wouldn't go this but it really helps against backdooring.

like it is hard to last hit with your auto attack so instead we put 2 points into your miasma and farm the exact same way morgana farms, put the pool on the 3 caster minions and get 3 CS per wave almost always. at lv4 with amplifying tomb, your miasma does 35 (+3) damage per second over the 7 seconds the caster minions sit in the pool and the poison lasts for 2 seconds making it a total of 38 damage per second for 9 seconds. it works out to 342 damage in total where each minion has about 320 hp by that time.

you can also do miasma + noxious blast at lv2 and that will also get you the 3 caster minions. needless to say you can only do this on a solo lane. however the problem to this is that it takes 9 seconds to get the rear 3 minions where as for morgana it takes 5 seconds or less to get the rear 3 minions.

needless to say this works best on a solo lane where the opposing team isn't super stupid and pushes like crazy. if they do push like crazy, punish them with a gank from your jungler.

the reason for 2 points in W rather than maxing E asap is because it will last hit all 3 caster minions. as well you aren't really super important till lv9 where your duo lane should be around lv 6-8 (depending on how often they went back, if there's a roamer or not, do they have exp masteries/quints) and at lv9 you still have all 5 points in E so why not take the extra point in W early for easy last hits. alot of people do tend to max their W last however i disagree because you W offer's a huge slow and even though it doesn't do as much damage as Q, because no one will sit in it for the full duration, the slow from it is equally important as the damage from Q.

Note: Will of the ancients stats are actually 50AP and aura:30AP + 25% spellvamp

because cass has outrageous DPS, spell vamp is a must thats why the first item is revolver. of course after revolver she gets boots like most champs (which i still dont understand how she makes use of the boots since she doesn't have feet in any shape or form). next up is will of the ancients. for a 900g upgrade cost you get 40 more AP and 5% more spellvamp. best deal in the store, not like blasting wand gives you 5% spellvamp and even if the effects of will of the ancients only applies to yourself, its well worth the buy. and of course the spell pen boots is gotten shortly after. the last bit of your core build is the GA. this will give the other team alot less of an incentive to focus you because they know you'll come back after. because GA offers no AP what so ever, it is during this period that your AP runes comes into play the most. as you level your AP will grow without you having to spend a single penny on AP as a result you dont need to worry about having to buy AP each time you back because your runes will cover it for you.

the total cost of the build, (2100) + (1100) + (2600) = 5800

assuming you are on a solo lane and your good at farming (which you should be if your on a solo lane) you should get about 90-110 minion kills by the 10 min mark each minion gives an average of 21g if memory serves so thats 2100g from just minions and added to the 8:30 min of 1g per second resulting in 510g and the 475g that you start off with then you have roughly 3100g by 10 min. this is not including ganks from your jungler that might have gotten you a kill/assist. and according to the numbers you should have will of the ancients and sorc boots by the 11 min mark. as said this is purely theoretical meaning how it will play out in a normal game is totally different. however with just revolver and boots, you can pretty much 1v1 any other champ because your damage + the heal from revolver is plenty enough to keep you alive through almost anything in a normal 1v1 (yes cc will kill you but you have your own cc too)

in practice i have gotten roughly 70 cs at 10min because i'm not good at last hitting and that resulted in 2100g roughly meaning that you have gotten enough for you revolver and you spell pen boots and a few wards (or will of the ancients and brown boots) right there and with a setup of those two items, you have enough power to 1v1 the enemy solo lainer because your actual hp bar is actually your hp bar and 20% of their hp bar. in practice how will it work will slightly differ but at lv9 with your revolver and boots (or will and boots) and maybe another amplifying tomb it is well enough to face most other lv9s. and again the number will be shown here.

lv 9: (80AP) + (41.6 AP) = 121.6 AP which will round up to 122AP

there are many items that are great to get after you've gotten your core build. here are a few suggestions to what to get after the core build

at lv18, with this and your core build you have roughly 400AP

applies a slow to all your spells as well as gives you 500 HP and 80 AP what's there not to like about this itme?

really nice item to help you survive if your GA melts this will be your backup or maybe you can put GA as a backup because you have this.

we can all use a little more mpen to face those tanks who has somewhere between 200-400 magic resist for no apparent reason.

with the amount of AP you have, this will greatly increase your damage output.

use this to easily do alot of damage at the start of the fight.

use this if you need a bit more magic resist than avarage or buy this if you need more spell pen than average.

this item is self explanatory

reads as cleanse

as you can see, in practice this build actually works. this game, the build was tested with incomplete runes ( x9 x6 x6 x6 ). however as the results shows the build does work in practice as well. a word of advice, if your not soloing then try aiming to lain with someone with early CC such as taric, sion, blitz, morgana, lux, ryze, trundle, singed, vayne, poppy and other championa who can put out a movement disable pre level6 as even a 1sec stun translates to 2 free E which then translates to a kill if they still try to fight you or you can force them out of lane. a taric stun is even more deadly as it can go up to 2 seconds meaning 5 free E and generally that results in a kill.

the conclusion is this build works. even with incomplete runes, i was able to pull off getting kills left and right and ultimately getting fed. there's no doubt that this build can work. however because of the requirements of specialized runes, this build may not be suitable for the general population. part of the credit of this build goes to summoner penny1 as it was inspired by an older morgana build penny1 used to use consisting of full AP/lvl runes and rushing GA.