Watch out for people with tenacity (tanks with merc treads) as it screws the poison from miasma. The miasma poison debuff counts as a slow and falls off faster than it is reapplied.

Your twin fang will reset if your target is poisoned when it actually lands, instead of when it is cast.

You might want to look into frozen heart of chalice for more mana in your build!

i've started playing her exclusively top. i max q first since it's the safest, and typically the most reliable sustained damage output she'll have. unholy grail + rylai's makes me pretty happy. deathcap, abyssal, haunting guise, sweeper, lich bane, and dfg are all cool too--i pick from them when building other items.

the little touches that i feel make good cassi's better than others are: paying attention to her passive and knowing when to keep it up, not missing cs to friendly minions (i see this a lot early game when her poisons tick for less), and kiting well.

What is this "sweeper" item you are talking about? Last I checked, SR doesn't have a "sweeper" item.

Hextech Sweeper. And last I checked, this was the Dominion forum.

O.o Oh, my bad. I was just lurking in the dev tracker. Didn't notice which forum this was on. Sorry.

No problem, welcome to the community.

Thanks for all the replies thus far. I've taken bits and pieces here and there and obviously my success with this will come down to experience. So far, I'm having my ass handed to me by champions with gap closers.

First game, I bullied Akali around until she hit 6. Then she just jumped on my face and wiped the floor with me. The burst... it hurts.

Next game was against Jax, Fiora, and Shaco. I actually did marginally better... but one wrong move, and I had a face full of dagger/sword/lamp post.

She has high sustained damage, but it doesn't come close to a crit-built melee. How do you mitigate the devastation that is the 'Gap Closer'? Armor, obviously... but even that only let me survive a second or two longer.

Another exclusively top Cass player, huh Rickless?

Have you tried maxing Twin Fangs first? Once the Windmill skirmish goes full-blown, the DPS you can put out from E spam really helps change the tide of the fight.

Positioning and kiting.
As you already know, you can't go toe-to-toe with a lategame fed AD of any type as Cass.
What you CAN do is hang back behind the tank, and poke people from a safe distance.

If they manage to gap-close to you, start kiting.
Q is a speed-boost if you land it on an enemy champion, and W is an AoE slow.

Just keep back-peddling while dropping Q's, W's, and E's on your chaser.
It's usually all you can do at that point while you wait for someone to peel your attacker off of you.

If you're against an Akali, get a Megatron Cloak and upgrade it to an Abyssal, OR get a Chalice.

Against physical attackers of any type I would recommend picking up Wardens Mail once they start
becoming a problem.
Don't bother upgrading it to Randuins except as a 6th item though.

Especially if you have a Singed or Teemo around.