Cassiopeia Build Guide by Dakirokor

Cassiopeia's Story

While her sister Katarina has always been the most celebrated member of the household, the Du Couteau family has a long history of service to Noxus. It has often been said that no soldier has ever been as fortunate as General Du Couteau to have been graced with daughters. His youngest, Cassiopeia - despite lacking her sister's killer instincts - was equally renowned in court for her stately character and elegance. Cunning as she was beautiful, the temptress could never be found far from the arm of any foreign dignitary, her wiles prying secrets from the lips of even the most wary attach�©. With the Noxian barbarian pacification campaign having ground to a standstill, Cassiopeia had set her sights on a diplomat from a tribe of the Freljord region. Thinking him an easy mark, the scheming seductress set about beguiling him. He refused to confide in her, however, until she swore an oath of secrecy upon his sword - a strange weapon with a serpentine curve to the blade.

Once her tryst was over, Cassiopeia provisioned her father with information regarding the barbarian resistance. As she divulged this intelligence, a wave of revulsion washed over her. She screamed in agony as her silky skin hardened to scales, her lustrous hair thickened to leather, and her manicured fingernails sharpened to claws. Dazed, she fell upon a group of horrified servants, rending them limb from limb in a heartbeat. When it was over the blood soaked figure was no longer the ravishing jewel of the Noxian court, but a horror trapped somewhere between woman and serpent. Unable to serve in her traditional capacity, Cassiopeia departed for the League, continuing her service to Noxus on the Fields of Justice.

'Though she may have appeared the innocent flower, she was the serpent under it.' - Katarina, the Sinister Blade

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my third guide for AP Cassiopeia. As usual feel free to leave any suggestions or critisizims in your comments below. I think the think that sets Cassiopeia a part from other AP champions, the reason I like playing her, is she doesnt need to have as much AP as other champions to do a lot of damage. This allows you to get more tanky items without having to worry about not being able to keep up with the other carries in damage. With that said lets continue.

Pros / Cons

Pros:
- Great harrasing since you can spam Noxious Blast indeffinatly
- Your ultimate can turn a gank into a kill for you
- Great early damage being able to spam Twin Fang
- Amazing sinergy with other champion's poison ( Teemo, Singed, maybe Twitch)
- Amazing farmer

Cons:
- Not a lot of burst damage
- Since you need to spam your abilities you can easily over extend
- If you can't hit with your Noxious Blast then your damage will drop a lot
- Ultimate can be a little difficult to time

Abilities

Deadly Cadence (passive) - After casting a spell any subsequent spellcasts will cost 10% less for 5 seconds. This ability stacks up to 5 times.

Pretty self explanetory, a nice passive that allows you to spam your Noxious Blast as much as you want without having to worry about running out of mana. In a team fight it just helps in the background. Makes sure you don't run out of mana since you have to spam your abilities in order to do damage.

Noxious Blast (Q) - Cassiopeia blasts an area with a delayed high damage poison, granting her increased Movement Speed if she hits a champion.
Cassiopeia blasts an area with a delayed high damaging poison, dealing 75/115/155/195/235 (+0.9) magic damage over //// seconds and granting her 15/17.5/20/22.5/25% Movement Speed for //// seconds if she hits a champion.
Cost 35/45/55/65/75 Mana Range 850

The main way to apply your poison to a target, also a great harrasing ability since you can spam it all day. Works pretty much the same as karthas's Lay Waste with a delayed blast where your mouse is. The best way I have found to use this is to be overly aggresive with it, it's a lot of damage early game and making people go back at level 1 or 2 is a big plus for you.

Miasma (W) - Cassiopeia releases a cloud of poison, lightly damaging and slowing any enemy that happens to pass through it.
Cassiopeia releases a growing cloud of poison that lasts for //// seconds. Any enemy that passes through it is poisoned for //// seconds, dealing 25/35/45/55/65 (+0.15) magic damage each second and slowing them by 15/20/25/30/35%. Continual exposure renews this poison.
Cost 70/80/90/100/110 Mana Range 850

Not the best damaging ability but it does have some utility uses. Since it grows in size the longer it is on the ground it can affect most of the enemy team eliminating the need to apply your poison with Noxious Blast so you can spam Twin Fang even more. Also since the built in slow and the slow from Rylai's Crystal Scepter stacks it slows a lot of people by a lot which can be quite useful in a teamfight where you don't have a massive AoE ultimate ( Amumu, Galio, Malphite)

Twin Fang (E) - Cassiopeia lets loose a damaging attack at her target. If the target is poisoned the cooldown of this spell is refreshed.
Cassiopeia deals 60/95/130/165/200 (+0.55) magic damage to her target. If the target is poisoned then Twin Fang's cooldown is reduced to 0.5/0.5/0.5/0.5/0.5 seconds.
Cost 50/60/70/80/90 Mana Range 700

Your main damaging ability for both early and late game. Some people think it would be better to max Noxious Blast first since it has better AP scaling but what they don't consider is since Twin Fang's cooldown is pretty much refreshed when you hit poisoned targets it allows you to put more damage on a target in the same amount of time. Also alright for harasing but since it's mana cost is a little heavy when compared to Noxious Blast it's better just to leave it for when you commit to a fight and you don't need to worry about mana for the next little while.

Petrifying Gaze - Cassiopeia releases a swirl of magical energy from her eyes, stunning any enemies in front of her that are facing her and slowing any others with their back turned.
Cassiopeia deals 150/275/400 (+0.6) magic damage to all enemies in front of her. Enemies facing her are stunned for // seconds while enemies facing away are slowed by 60/60/60%.
Cost 120/160/200 Mana Range 700

It's a new kind of ultimate since it varries depending on whether or not they are facing you. Probably my favorite thing about this ability is the insiration for it, Medusa. She was a crazy snake ***** and looking dirrectly at her turned you into stone, which if they are facing you does turn them to stone for the stun. I could probably dig up a bunch more on that topic but that's not what this is for. In general I use this as an "O ****" button. If someone like Master Yi who can close the distance without really being affected by all your other slows this is what will save you. Even at level 6 when you first get it you will almost deffinatly kill them in the stun duration since you can spam all your abilities without having to worry about them.

Runes and Masteries

Runes

Marks:Since you start with a Doran's Ring you don't need the flat AP here so what else is there to get? The more magic penatration you can get without working for it the better.
Seals:This combined with the mana regen from the Doran's Ring and your passive is what allows you to spam your Noxious Blast. It might not seem like a lot but without those you do run out of mana early game.
Glyphs:I've seen a lot of people running with cooldown reduction runes for AP champions so they can use they abilities more but I don't see how that is a problem on Cassiopeia. Most of your damage comes from Twin Fang which, if you have done your job right, has a 0.5 second cooldown. Also since you don't build any big AP items early game you need something to give you some AP.
Quints:I know I said you don't need the flat AP on your marks but since the flat AP quints give so much it's worth it to get these to try and get an early kill.

Masteries

Not a whole lot to say about the masteries just your typical 9/0/21 AP champion masteries. You might be wondering why I get the increased neutral buff duration when you aren't really mana hungry. The reason is just for the cooldown reduction on your ultimate so you can kill you laning enemy more often.

Items

CORE ITEM'S

Not a whole lot to change in the item build but I'll note the few possible changes down bellow.

Doran's Ring - As you may have noticed from my other guides I like starting with doran's items and Cassiopeia is no different. You might be wondering why I don't pick a starting item that allows me to get some health potions. The answer is that I belive that Cassiopeia's best defence early game is a good offence. If you can out harass the enemy and force him to go back then you don't have to worry about healing back their damage.

Tear of the Goddess - You are going to want to start stack the passive on thise item as soon as possible. Since there is a limit on how many time you can increase your mana in a six second period you would need 12.5 minutes of none stop spamming to cap the passive. Plus the extra mana regen allows you to use Miasma a little more often to farm more.

Boots of Speed - No real reason to get these aside from the fact that you need movement speed. Try and stay in your lane for as long as possible so you don't miss out on farming.

Haunting Guise - A great item that you don't see that often on all those squishy AP carries out there. I gives everything you need for early game: health, AP, and some more magic penetration. Since Cassiopeia isn't a standard AP champion that needs really high AP to burst down an enemy in one rotation you can afford to pick up some more health and resistance items. Also the magic penetration helps incase your lanning enemy buys a magic resist item.

Sorcerer's Shoes - Finally you need to get your full boots but now you have a choice to make, which boots to buy. You see a lot of AP champions getting Ionian Boots of Lucidity since their damage is limited by their cooldowns but that isn't the case with Cassiopeia. As long as you can hit people with either your Noxious Blast or Miasma then you don't have to worry about your cooldown reduction. Which leaves you either Mercury's Treads or Sorcerer's Shoes. Your choice is all dependant on the enemy team, lots of CC champions get Mercury's Treads, if not then go with Sorcerer's Shoes.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter - Such an amazing item on Cassiopeia since you can cover a lot of ground with your posion which slows a lot of people. It also has great synergy with your Noxious Blast which already speeds you up but with a Rylai's Crystal Scepter slowing them at the same time there is no way to run from you. Plus it gives you even more health so you don't get bursted down while you are finishing someone off.

Rabadon's Deathcap - A mandatory item for every AP champion, 155 AP plus increasing your AP by 30% I mean come on how can you pass that up. Makes you hit a lot harder all of a sudden which might catch people off guard allowing you to get some extra kills.

Archangel's Staff - By this point in the game asuming that you have been spamming your abilities to stack your Tear of the Goddess you should have it maxed. So there is nothing left for you to gain from it until you make it into an Archangel's Staff. Gives you a bunch of AP but thats pretty much it.

Banshee's Veil - Now that you have enough AP items to continue to be a real threat to the enemy team you need to work on your survivablity. One of the problems with Cassiopeia is that since you don't have the same burst as say Annie, who just blows her load and runs for the hills, you need to stay in range of your target in order to do enough damage to get a kill. To try and fix that you will need more tank items than a standard AP champion. More health, mana and magic resist but most importantly the spell shield. Not only does it just absorb an enemy spell but I have noticed that when people see the spell shield on you they want to wait for someone else to pop it so they can use their entire rotation on you. If the whole team is thinking that and no one wants to pop your shield then you get a good amount of time to just cast away at them without taking any magic damage.

Zhonya's Hourglass - By now people are focusing you a lot and the resistances can't hold up agaisnt focus from the whole team. The only way to keep yourself from dying is to take yourself out of the fight and that is what Zhonya's Hourglass does. By making yourself invulurable and untargetable you not only take no damage but if the people focusing you just wait for the duration to be over then they are just taking damage from your team without giving any back. If they decide to target other people that will probably lead them away from you so you can kill them without worry about having a Tryndamere right in your face.

Summoner Spells

Ignite - Really the only way for you to counter any heavy healing teams ( Dr. Mundo, Soraka, Taric, etc.). Also great for getting early kills since it gives you yet another DoT to put on your target.

Flash - Since your target needs to be facing you to get the stun off it can be hard to posision yourself in a team fight to get the stun off. Flash allows you to teleport infront of your target and throw down your ultimate before they can react and turn around. Also great for getting out of tons of things: Jarvan IV's ultimate, a gank, Nunu's ultimate, etc.

Skill Sequence

Start off putting a point in Noxious Blast so you can get right to harassing the enemy champion. Also allows you to start farming really quickly, at level one it takes three Noxious Blasts to kill a caster minion. If you can catch all three of the caster minions in your Noxious Blast it is some easy gold especially with the good chance of hitting the enemy champion with it. At the same time you can auto attack the melee minions just like any other champion. Because of your passive you should always be spamming this even when there are no minions around just to keep the stacks up and conserve mana.

This is your hard hitter through out the entire game and you should be putting points into it whenever you can. Some people like to use this as your harassing ability I don't see the point when your Noxious Blast hits fairly hard and costs a fraction of the mana plus you don't need to actually target them to use it, they can acidentaly walk over it or you can lead them with it. When in a team fight you should only use this on targets that are already poisoned the reason being that in the time that it takes for Twin Fang to come off its actual cooldown you don't have enough damage in your other abilities in stop people from ripping you apart.

Miasma isn't that great for the damage but it is nice to have another ability to apply your poison incase you miss your first Noxious Blast. It is also really nice for slowing down a minion wave coming toward your tower and for farming those large waves of minions that magicialy apear at your towers in the middle of the game.

Petrifying Gaze as I've said before it really my "O ****" button but it can also be used to stop say Katarina's Death Lotus from tearing up your team. One thing you have to keep in mind for her is that which ever way she was facing when she started the Death Lotus in the way that she "remainds" during the ultimate so you need to pay attention to how she is posisioned when she Shunpos in.

Changes

This is where I will note all changes to Cassiopeia's abilities or any items in this guild aswell as the dates on which I have altered the guide.

26/03/2011 - Guide created
12/06/2011 - Changed around the item order a bit

Patches:

Patch 1.0.0.115:

- Twin Fang cast animation sped up
- Petrifying Gaze
- Cast animation sped up
- Cast range increased to 850 from 700 (effect now roughly matches the particle)
- Damage increased to 200/325/450 from 150/275/400
- Cooldown reduction with rank is now reflected in the levelup tooltip
- More accurately targets enemies that move in/out of the area during the cast time

Always nice to open up the patch notes and see the very simple damage has been increased on an already hard hitting ability, also having the increased range you can hit more people then before even if you only stun your main target you still hit everyone for a good amount of damage. Not quite sure what the "more accurately targets enemies that move in/out of the area during the cast time" means, I think it is directed at people that teleport around a lot like Kassadin or Lee Sin also for Katarina during her Death Lotus since she is spinning.