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Regarding Akali's nerfs

PMAxSmiles·1/18/2020, 2:33:33 AM·2 votes·894 views

Dear Riot,

I have been playing your game on and off (mostly off) for years now since season 2. I've not been the best player ever, but I have always enjoyed the game and I try to help others have fun, too! I used to be a support main with a special place in my heart for Soraka since she's amazingly solid in many aspects of play. Recently, however, I've been playing a variety of different champions and roles to explore new playstyles, and I've found how amazing Akali is.

I love her lore, her kit, and how fluid she moves on the rift. I just bought her K/DA skin because I recently found those promotional music videos and fell in love. I'm a music teacher and the production quality, composition quality, as well as collaboration from those incredible artists blew me away. Akali's the first champion I've tried to play who has a lot of outplay potential. Usually high skill-floor champions scare me off because I'm not the best mechanical player. I play her now (and even main her!) mainly because I love everything in and out of game that makes Akali, Akali. Even though Diana is op right now, I get more enjoyment from playing Akali merely because I identify with the champion more.

I understand that she has a suboptimal win rate at lower elos and she's oppressive at pro play. This can make her difficult to balance fairly for everyone, and in a game like this it's impossible to please everyone. That said, I feel the nerfs proposed to her in 10.3 are too much. I agree that reducing her ability to escape reliably is the way to go, but I loved the feeling of using her ult freely to perform combos. It made me feel like the hard work I was putting into her was worth it, and made my bond with the character stronger.

Making her R1 no longer free cast fundamentally changes her kit. Her current R1 as of patch 10.1 makes her escapes more reliable, but ninjas to an extent have that implication. I feel that taking an important trait of her R1 away doesn't align to the character's design at all. Her ult is already on cooldown for so long after she casts it that it feels unfair to the lower elo players who are putting in work into her combos and mechanics to have it ripped away not even two patches after deciding to main her (I'm speaking for myself on that point). I even feel like I'm understanding the game better through her kit.

Please, Riot, I wouldn't go out of my way to make a post and bother you (I'm sure you're all entirely too busy as it is!) if it wasn't super important to me that you rethink these changes. Please don't kill Akali for us low elo players. We may be trash, but we want to feel the rush of executing combos and managing her mechanics, too. Change her to where she's not abused by the pros, but don't let those changes make Akali into a champion that we no longer recognize or identify with - especially if we love her enough to buy her skins to support your company.

I hope you all have a great day, and thank you for reading this.

Sincerely, Smiles

Edit: Editted for clarity and a few simple revisions.

2 Comments

Super Sandmanne1/18/2020, 2:58:55 AM2 votes

I don't believe these changes were meant to "balance" akali's current kit. Instead, this is what riot's balance team does when it can't figure out how to make a champion not overbearing while still being viable; they nerf it to the ground. It's a sort of strategic retreat by their champion designers.

My reasoning is that we see this pattern whenever a sub-50 wr champion is nerfed. I predict that either akali will continue to get hit with nerfs and wallow in obscurity, or be reworked again.

The reason this is seen as necessary is that no matter how hard you hit her numbers and scope of her kit, akali's shroud in its current form will continue to be frustrating to fight against, even if the akali player is direly underfed. It's my opinion that if they'll ever get the balance right it will either be without true invisibility altogether, or with a straightforward way to dispel the shroud, such as the counterplay present in Yorick's ghoul wall. If the power budget or her shroud were moved back into her damage, I feel that akali players and their opponents alike will be less frustrated.