I had the chance to play test Cassia for a bit at this year’s Spring Summit, and I’m a pretty big fan of the hero so far. She’s got a really unique feel to her that succeeds in capturing the essence of it Diablo 2 progenitor within a MOBA environment.
Cassia’s trait plays a major part in making her stand out from the crowd. Called Avoidance, her trait provides 65 Physical Armor against Heroic Basic Attacks at any time when Cassia is moving unmounted, resulting in 65% reduced damage. This makes continual movement crucial to optimal play; a-move is going to be a Cassia player’s best friend (if you’re a Heroes player unfamiliar with A-Move, I would highly recommend checking out MFPallyTimer’s video on the subject here).
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Cassia’s remaining basic abilities are as follows:
Lightning Fury hurls a javelin that damages the first enemy hit, splitting into two lightning bolts that move perpendicularly to the original skillshot and damage all enemies they hit. If you build around it, this can be a real heavy hitting poke skill with an incredibly short cooldown, and it’s going to be the source of most of your damage.
Blinding Light is a two second targeted AoE blind on a half second delay. The skill also includes a 15% passive increase to all damage done to blinded targets by Cassia, giving this skill a rather obvious use in setting up burst. The passive also applies regardless of the source of the blind, which is a nice bonus if you have team mates who can blind, as well.
Fend causes Cassia to charge onto an enemy and channel a heavy damage frontal cone AoE hitting six times over 1.5 seconds, with 50% reduced damage done to non-hero targets. If talented into what we were affectionately calling “the HAM build” at the summit, this does a serious amount of damage to enemy heroes caught in the AoE. Keep in mind that during this channel, Cassia’s Avoidance passive won’t be active, so you’re at a real risk of being squished if you’re not using the skill judiciously.
Cassia’s two ultimate choices both have the potential to be popular choices.
Ball Lightning throws a ball of lightning at an enemy hero that bounces up to six times between nearby enemy heroes and Cassia (if there isn’t more than one enemy hero around), doing quite a bit of damage each time.
Valkyrie summons a Valkyrie to come in from decently far away after a .75 second delay, pulling the first enemy hero hit and stunning them for half a second at the end of the path (which during the test was actually behind Cassia, even). On the way, the Valkyrie will knock any other enemy heroes out of the way. This is going to be a super powerful tool to separate a back-line character from their position of perceived safety, which, let’s face it, is just really fun to do.
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Based on my own hands on experience with Cassia, I think there’s going to be plenty of opportunities for skilled players to make a big impact when the amazon warrior joins the Nexus. The passive armor from her trait and the blind on her W can make her a real pain for physical assassins like a Valla, and Valkyrie’s potential for pulling enemy players out of position in a team fight is the kind of utility that never goes out of fashion.
And if you’re someone, maybe an old Diablo 2 veteran, who just wants to have some old fashioned fun? Cassia’s got that in spades. So get ready to grab your spear and start hurling some lightning.
Be sure to head over to GameSpace.com to read an interview with Kent-Erik Hagman!
