User blog comment:Emptylord/2017 Patch Notes (Unofficial)/@comment-1920550-20170811222901/@comment-3974211-20170813074557

In the Mortal Reminder music video, Karthus is seen flicking through his book. If you pause, there's a page that's just a list of crossed-out items that happen to all be removed items - except Tear of the Goddess and Bloodthirster, which are on the list but not crossed-out. I referred to it as his Death Note in reference to the anime, since I was implying that the name of whatever item Karthus writes in his book dies.

tl:dr; it could have been an easter egg for the upcoming preseason.

Regarding Varus and Cassiopeia - the issue isn't necessarily the shape, but when/why you use it. Cassipeia doesn't just throw down her W as an extra/easier Q - she now has a different reason to use it. Sure, she can just waste it as an additional damage spell that she casts whenever it's up - but the point of the rework was to try and give it a different use-case (in my fan rework for her, I gave her a wall-targeted trap that trip-wires when people walked in front of it). Varus' Q and R do not do the same thing and he never uses them to do the same thing (except if he's trying to snipe a kill or playing full-AP-burst, but the ability to obfuscate intended gameplay with gimmick builds is a separate issue). (Although I confess the addition to Varus' kit probably does qualify as being the same issue being discussed here - it just ended up being a second Q, and I should address that separately).

Non-bouncing Mystic Shot and bouncing Mystic Shot, on the other hand, have the same use-cases. They have _slightly_ different optimum times to use, but I'm not sure that's actually a good thing. Not being able to use a skill-shot through terrain is actually a huge deficit versus the potential to hit someone around a minion (I mean, look at Vel'Koz... just because it *can* do interesting things doesn't mean it ever really does). Whatever his new W is, it has to do something different. The slow-moving-orb-that-he-can-detonate was to give him a different time to use it - i.e. only when he feels safe going in. I'll confess it isn't a huge difference, but I was trying to keep him being the "skill shot champion" at the same time. The new innate was something I'd explored on one of my custom champions, and I've also explored giving him a "spell attack" (like Karthus/Yasuo Q or Cassio E) instead of Mystic Shot so that he'd be completely about spells.