Cassia Reworked: The Goddess' Spear Descends

13 Jun 20

Guides

Joyk

Cassia Reworked: The Goddess' Spear Descends

With the Pantheon patch, Cassia is seeing a lot of changes to her talent tree. What are good choices if you want to play this hero?

With the big Pantheon patch, we've seen the rework of Cassia. I wanted to delve a little deeper into her talent changes. Let's see what they have done to the warmatron of HotS!

So Cassia has received some changes in her talents, but also in her health and damage. Blizzard has given the community a long awaited range increase in basic attacks. These are the baseline changes that stand out the most from the patch notes. Now we shall have a look at the talent tree below.

Talent Guide:

Level 1:

Thunderstroke: Increase Lightning Fury damage by 1.5 every time it hits a hero.

This talent seems good for reliable poke as it increases damage with every hit. It takes you quite some stacks to get actual value out of it in my opinion, but nonetheless a good talent.

Impale: Increase cast range and damage of Fend.

Increasing the cast range of Fend makes it easier for Cassia to chase and catch up with a target. However, while casting Fend, Cassia is left very vulnerable to be caught and get killed herself.

Charged Strikes: Gain 20% passive attack speed. Every 3rd basic attack bounces to nearby enemy heroes and deals 20% bonus damage.

This is in my opinion the best talent on the tier, because you will always get value from it. This talent replaced the activatable talent with the same name that had a 30 seconds cooldown.

Level 4:

Plate of the Whale: Avoidance regenerates health and works while mounted.

This talent has not been changed since before. It’s not often picked, but I think it could work nicely into overtime damage. Think about Lunara's basic attacks that apply poison to you. While walking around Avoidance will then be active and regen health that way.

Ring of Leech: Basic attacks heal Cassia. If the enemy is blinded Fend and Lightning Fury also heal Cassia.

This talent was already on Cassia's talent tree but was slightly changed. The healing on basic attacks was added as a passive on this talent and healing off blinded targets with your abilities was already in the talent tooltip. In my opinion, this is still the strongest talent on the tier since you always get value from it. It’s, in terms of health regen, the easiest and most beneficial talent.

Inner Light: Activate to heal for 25% of maximum health. Lightning Fury hits reduce the cooldown of this ability.

A new talent that came with the rework, an activatable heal with a decent way to reduce the cooldown. I have to get used to playing with it and since the heal comes over time I don't think it gets much value in teamfights.

Level 7:

Seraph’s Hymn: Increase Blinding Lights damage bonus to 30%. Basic attacks refund mana and lower Blinding Lights cooldown.

Works nicely with the Q-build for Cassia, that costs overall more mana, which you can refund with this talent. The extra damage on blinded targets synergises nicely if you have any other heroes in your team composition that have a blind in their kit.

Grounding Rod: Enemies hit by Fend and Lightning Fury are slowed by 20% for 2 seconds.

Adding a bit of CC to Cassia’s kit is a good shout by Blizzard. She is very susceptible to CC herself while casting Fend, so it might help her get away once the channel of this ability has completed, the Q slow on the other hand is nice for chasing. Compared to other talents on this tier, I wouldn’t recommend it though.

Surging Light: Activate Avoidance to deal damage in an area.

This talent was already very strong in Cassia’s old talent tree and remains the same. You will always get value from it and it adds some extra ‘ranged’ abilities to her kit.

Level 10:

Ball Lightning: Throw a bouncing lightning ball.

If you have another ultimate on your team like Mosh Pit or Warden’s Cage that keeps the enemy clumped up, this ultimate does a lot of damage. On the other hand, it’s easily wasted if the ball doesn’t have anywhere to bounce to. Keep that in mind when picking and using this ultimate.

Valkyrie: Summon a valkyrie to impale enemies.

Fantastic ultimate to isolate or catch a target. It’s good follow up for a stun and often secures a kill. I would say this is the default pick, because it allows Cassia to get onto enemies without putting herself out of position. Can you tell I prefer this ultimate?

Level 13:

War Matron: Fend grants protected.

Maybe a good choice into burst, because ‘protected btw’. Compared to any other talent on this tier, however, it's not a great choice.

War Traveler: Increase movement speed, grant instant mounting.

Actually a very nice change to the talent to add an instant mounting option. I feel like this is making it a bit easier for Cassia to disengage, still not an overwatch button sadly, but it’s a good change.

Gloves of Alacrity: Gain basic attack range.

Have you really played Cassia if you’ve never complained about her basic attack range? That's what I thought. That said, it makes this talent the must-pick and I expect this to become the most popular pick on the tier.

Level 16:

Power Strike: Lightning Fury pierces. After hitting an enemy three times, cast Blinding Light at their feet.

This talent is good if you have to keep blinding certain targets in the enemy team like Zul’jin or Greymane. If they are in the backline of the enemy team Cassia can't reach them. The pierce will make sure they receive poke and blinds, while Cassia herself is in a safe position. The talent is harder to pull off into heroes that are much harder to hit such as Tracer.

Static Electricity: Fend releases Lightning Fury bolts.

This talent synergises nicely with Thunderstroke on level 1. The Lightning bolts released will go on to heroes as you Fend. These hits will count up to your level 1 stacking quest.

Martial Law: Basic attacks against enemy heroes deal 1% of their maximum health, increased to 3% if they are stunned, rooted or slowed.

This talent can be easily taken advantage off if you have a lot of single target lockdown. It basically counts as Cassia’s Executioner talent.

Level 20:

Infinite Lightning: Ball Lightning bounces indefinitely.

This talent doesn’t often get value, unless you can make sure that the ball can always bounce to you.

Improsining Light: Other heroes hit by Valkyrie get rooted.

Very good upgrade for an already good ultimate. Being able to provide more CC in the late game is always a good choice.

Titans Revenge: Basic attacks ignore armor.

Goodbye Garrosh, it was fun. With this talent you can melt through any sturdy frontliner, such as Garrosh, who gains armor when he loses health.

Rockstopper: Activate to increase armor to 60 for 4 seconds.

Blizzard probably wanted to add a panic button of some sort for Cassia. Giving her 60 armor for 4 seconds can prevent her from dying in the late game. But I’m not sure if I would recommend this talent compared to the other choices on the tier.

Playstyle:

Cassia is a hero that has a short auto-attack range. This makes her an all-in hero, she goes in and doesn't really go back out until the fight is over. Her kit lacks the ability to escape or gain mobility other than movement speed. Your only option for poke is your Q-ability, so poke your adversary down with that and perhaps Charged Strikes, then get closer and finish them off with Fend.

Cassia is alright at clearing waves and camps by herself, but excels at punishing melee heroes that group up. So for the waveclear department it's wise to draft a hero just for that. With the option for splash damage, an AoE blind and consecutive damage to frontliners Cassia is very good at dealing with tanks and bruisers.

If there's good lockdown on the enemy team, she suffers if picked into that. Fend leaves Cassia stationary while casting and with her short range attacks she's easy to catch. This makes her hard to play in the current meta as CC tanks are currently dominating and being prioritized highly in picks.

While playing her make sure you're on a safe distance to auto-attack the frontline, and only go in with Fend if you secure a kill with it. If you've picked Valkyrie look to follow up on stuns with it, Powerslide for example, and make sure you have your rotation of spells available. With Fend and Surge of Light on 7 you have the burst to finish a squishy target caught in your Valkyrie with ease.

Counters & Synergies:

Cassia is good to pair with heroes that provide more blinds, who would've guessed that??? Heroes like Johanna and Lili that have a blind in their basic kit, but also Auriel that has a blind on level 13 option is a good combination with Cassia. Cassia also provides a fantastic amount of energy for Auriel to heal with. Other good heroes to enable Cassia are tanks with great lockdown like ETC and Garrosh or that enable her kit such as Tyrael. Tyrael can give her attack and movement speed and give a shield when Cassia is retreating or engaging.

Pick Cassia into auto attack based heroes that are in her range. Heroes like Greymane and Tychus are likes she can deal with, because of her blinds and baseline armor while walking around. Blinding Tychus is going to save your tank many times over if you time it correctly. Using your blind wisely is the biggest tip I can give you while playing Cassia. If you're playing into Raynor and blind him he doesn't have any damage left, but if you in turn have to be out of position for that and end up dying, it's not a good trade. So pick your moments to really go in and otherwise just focus on the frontline while stutter-stepping, so you keep your trait active.

As Cassia you hate playing into mages and heroes that offer great poke damage. Heroes like Mephisto and Chromie she can't reach and suffers too much damage before reaching them herself. As mentioned before she's very susceptible for crowd control so be careful prancing around an ETC who has an easy way to get onto you. Into Tyrael it's a 50/50 since as Cassia you can attack him for fairly free. He doesn't really have CC, but on the other side he enables his teammates to get onto Cassia faster and his shields will mitigate a lot of her damage.

Cassia remains in the same position as she was before, perhaps her autoattacks are stronger now, but I feel that she's weaker into CC somehow. She is a niche pick that you take in a specific team composition and where you have to be very mindful of her limits to play her to her strengths. She requires some practice and good stutter stepping, but can be very rewarding if the rest of the team comp allows it. By this I mean, if you're going to get CCed to death, maybe reconsider your pick.

I hope you have fun trying out her new talents and that this guide has somewhat helped you with figuring that out!

Until next time!

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