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Akali is NOT op

FriskySwiss··4 votes·964 views

I've been maining Akali lately, and while yes she is an assassin, there are plenty of assassins in the game. While she's fun and has burst damage, here's why she's NOT OP:

  1. "Stealth Shield, grrrr!" Good job, you forgot to buy wards, blame yourself.
  2. "She can chase with her ult!" Unless you fed her like a scrub and split up all the time, Akali won't be able to hurt you fast enough before getting melted by a team coordinated strike.
  3. "Assassin Damage!" Xin Zhao has way more damage than her, and more toughness, and did I mention he can be built tanky too? There are assassins who do way more damage and are harder to kill than Akali. She has hard counters, quit whining.
  4. "Her E procs her Q!" Not an excuse anymore, they removed that.
  5. "Her range!" Also not an excuse anymore, since they nerfed it.
  6. "Mobility." Since the nerfs, she has to pick between sorc shoes for pen or swiftness for assassinating fast targets. She can no longer pick sorc shoes and comfortably gank whomever. Mobile champs are becoming highly valued, which means you will have to give up that +15 pen if you expect to keep up with your target.

Point being, there are plenty of champs I would ban before I would ban Akali simply because she can be ignored late game with a tanky/bursty/cc team comp. She's really not that scary.

14 Comments

Diamonesd5 votes

Stopped reading at: I've been maining akali recently. Go jump off a cliff you easymoding trash

FriskySwiss3 votes

I can be a condescending bitch too, you elitist prick.

Killer X 123 votes

I would never, and will never waste a ban on akali. If someone is arrogant enough to pick her in draft i'll just play Morde and huehuehue over her corpse.

I own her, but i do not play akali since i put her in my group of champs to easy to bother playing. That being said i'm not surprised by the changes they made to her. You don't need to be fed to kill people, and you don't need to be fed to jump the back line and kill the adc. If you can farm well it wont' matter since Akali will always get to the point where she is dangerous. The issue with her is that she has a lack of counter play. You buy pink wards for her W, but that means you cost your opponent 100 gold every time you fight, that stacks up fast. Your q and R being targeted means they have no chance of dodging and that you'll still follow them through a flash. Your E is only an issue because the R is targeted so its very hard to miss.

While i do not believe that Akali is actually OP saying things like "oh well your team can just peel and kill her" is true for every champion in the league...so its not worth stating. I am fine with where she is now. I think the E change may of hit her laning pretty hard...but it'll take away that retarded cheese she could do at level 2.

FriskySwiss2 votes

Thank you for giving a mature answer, unlike the asshat before you, and for actually explaining in detail. But yes, I pretty much agree with what you said. But moreso, I agree that I wouldn't waste a ban on her. Kudos to you my friend.

Diamonesd2 votes

{quoted}

Thank you for giving a mature answer, unlike the asshat before you, and for actually explaining in detail. But yes, I pretty much agree with what you said. But moreso, I agree that I wouldn't waste a ban on her. Kudos to you my friend.

translation: I dont want them to ban my easymoding champion.

Cindikle2 votes

{quoted}

  1. "Stealth Shield, grrrr!" Good job, you forgot to buy wards, blame yourself.

Not always available. What if I had to use it, but she got away. Now she's on me again. Am i expected to hold 200g worth of pink wards for the whole game? Not saying I have a problem with it. But your counter argument is bad.

  1. "She can chase with her ult!" Unless you fed her like a scrub and split up all the time, Akali won't be able to hurt you fast enough before getting melted by a team coordinated strike.

Still a very long range TARGETED gap closer. There are very few abilities that can get you out of her range once you are in it. And most of those are highly situational.

  1. "Assassin Damage!" Xin Zhao has way more damage than her, and more toughness, and did I mention he can be built tanky too? There are assassins who do way more damage and are harder to kill than Akali. She has hard counters, quit whining.

She gains a massive damage spike once she gets Gunblade. I will agree overall though. To me Akali really isn't an assassin. Her burst takes a few Q procs unless she is fed. To me it's like callling Katerina an assassin. She's more of a clean up champion than an actual assassin.

  1. "Her E procs her Q!" Not an excuse anymore, they removed that.

Honestly never hear people talk about this other than Akali mains who were giving Riot ideas on what to nerf. Because they knew it was coming.

  1. "Her range!" Also not an excuse anymore, since they nerfed it.

Still long. Very long. Oh, and targeted.

  1. "Mobility." Since the nerfs, she has to pick between sorc shoes for pen or swiftness for assassinating fast targets. She can no longer pick sorc shoes and comfortably gank whomever. Mobile champs are becoming highly valued, which means you will have to give up that +15 pen if you expect to keep up with your target.

Akali is a soft counter to mobility because once she is able to R you. You cannot escape without a lot of CC or killing her. Maybe if you use your own dash/blink and flash at the same time you can avoid that next R. Which will take her a fraction of the time it takes for you to get that Flash back. All this, while being mobile herself.

You don't need swiftnes. You could just get a Lichbane too. Since you have to AA them anyway now. Which gives slightly more MS than you would get from taking Swiftness.

And what do you mean "becoming". Mobility has been the second strongest stat in the game for 3 seasons, only losing out to range. Maybe at the start of S4 when the meta was hyper tanks and hypercarry adc's mobility wasn't as strong. But it doubt it dropped a spot.

Also I agree she is not worth a ban slot. But she is annoying as hell and IMO Toxic to the game.

Linkttp2 votes

Buy pink wards? Yea that works Oh yea did I forget to mention that you have access to a free sweeper. And your pink wards stay there??? If she tries to break it Beat the crap out of her. Over the duration of the time it will take to break it, with you dealing damage over that time. I'd say that it is worth far more than 100g but that's what you get it for. Also her most damaging combo, her double proc, doesn't exist any more. She was thoroughly gutted and left to dry.

Cindikle2 votes

Digging up old posts?

Yes Pink wards can counter her defense. That does not stop her though. And often it requires communication to fully use it. Your whole team cannot carry pink wards all game. At some point it comes down to the trinket or your support. Or Lee Sin. Because it's Lee Sin.

Red trinket gives an oracle elixir effect. Meaning whoever is using it has to stand in her shroud to show her. Often multiple champions have this later in the game. But it's still a risky option.

And double proc is still there. It takes skill to land it now, but it is still there. Them making her E procing her Q was a bad idea from the start.

Hardly gutted. Those who are good will her will adapt to the proc change and 700 ranged targeted gap closer is still very strong. They made her take more skill to play, but she can do the same thing she always has.

B3ER1 votes

Actually, skill has nothing to do with landing double proc. It simply takes more time to do it, leaving the opponent with more time to evade it or to trade more favorably. None of the changes actually increase her skill cap what so ever as they reduced the available play patterns AND reduced raw power.

If they reduced power while increasing play patterns, then you'd be correct (like the changes that gave Nidalee her Hunt mechanic). The arguments you're making are unfortunately not sound. Try approaching the problem in more academic way and in a less biased fashion.

With regards to the people who are good with her, not even they can make her work. She is picked 10 times less implying that a larger ratio of her player base are Akali mains instead of Akali FotM players, compared with the ratio pre-nerf. With this information in mind, she's statistically under performing at every skill level. It is safe to say that she's lacking power, options or both.

Final note, the fact that true sight trinkets are cheaper means the counterplay to one of Akali's mechanics is more available. This creates a reduction in opportunity frequency for Akali, ergo less probability for success. All of this together will reduce her statistical performance.

Cindikle1 votes

The ability to proc it with her E made it take no skill to proc her Q. R did all the work of getting you in range. Why may as well just let R proc it in that case.

It does take more skill to proc that Q as you also have to be able to work around the enemy being able to avoid it. Be it by throwing your W on top of them so they can't move away as fast, or using R quick enough that you can proc it before Q's cooldown is back. There is a skill difference. Has nothing to do with bias or "academic" views. Being able to orb walk as a melee is just as important as it is to a ranged. Being able to stay on your target while continuing to AA is a skill based mechanic of the game.

Her reliability of her damage and the range she can preform it were a problem. This problem started when they made her E able to proc Q. There were many Akali mains who wanted this change gone before they changed anything else about her.

Trinkets offer true sight in two ways. One is a 2 minute cooldown that drops a pink ward. The other grants the user their own Oracle Elixir effect. Meaning they have to be in her W to show her. What this means is that nothing actually changed. Before the vision changes(S3) you could buy an Oracle Elixir(usually support or a tank had this already) and it wasn't rare to spam pink wards all over the map. While their availability is higher(free trinkets vs must purchace), the usability is lower(cooldowns, durations). The actual vision options to face her have not weakened. They just work a little different.

And what do you mean Nid lost power to gain her ability to jungle? She gave up nothing for that. She'll stay toxic her current state until they give a form of counterplay to her Hunter debuff. And "dodge the neverending spear spam" is not counterplay. It gives her a 750 range targeted gap closer that she can follow up with a lot of burst. After the spear itself already did damage. I would agree that it is a good change for the jungle in general. Being that it's in such a poor state, just gaining one more viable choice is a good change. Toxic or not.

While the E change did help her lack of counterplay beyond "beat her up before 6". I don't think it fixes the real problem with her.

R is still powerful as hell and she will kill almost whoever she pleases with it.

Give R the Yasou dash treatment. Making it so you cannot dash the same target within X seconds. Make procing her Q remove this timer. Revert the old Q damage shift, allowing her to farm easier.

If this proves too much of a nerf to her ability to stay on a target. Consider undoing the R cooldown change they did.

Honestly undo all the nerfs they gave her back in S3 and do the R change and she'd probably be in a good spot.

Mãge2 votes

OP or not, there is little that Akali's opponents can do to outplay her when she's ahead. Similar to Xin Zhao, if you're within range of him and he outstats you, you simply die, and there's not much you can do to stop that from happening. As a result, Riot has to keep her numbers relatively low so that it's fairly difficult to become the unfair point and click without much thought to win champion Akali can be when she's snowballed.

Leti the Yeti2 votes

I dont think anyone considered Akali OP after the nerfs in fact people are unhappy with it and think she's weak

B3ER1 votes

I can understand if you had problems with Akali before the nerfs, but if you have problems now, it lies fully in skill difference. She is statistically weak and equally skilled players will beat her hands down.

Malix Farwin1 votes

  1. buy a mid lane ward she will all in you if you go near it to protect it and jungler will come in and just clear it.

  2. i dont see how not feeding her somehow prevents her from reaching lvl 6.

  3. Xin doesn't have a 3 point dash like akali and has no escapes so he can only go in while akali and cheese shroud to get out(which increases MS btw). Oh and lets not foget Xin uses mana and akali does not.

  4. and?

  5. Yup

  6. so what?

Is she OP now? not really and no one is saying she is now. Was she before the nerfs? Hell yea.

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