At worst, they slapped tank Akali players on the wrist.
Tank Akali is the least effected by these changes. She's the most likely to get her passive off multiple times, the most likely to benefit from the heal and she's able to rank shroud second, so she gets the least fucked over by shroud changes. The only way to play Akali if these changes go through will be tank, even more so than now.
Her passive is no longer just a mass of numbers that amounts to "hit harder and heal a bit". Now, instead of sitting in a fight spamming your spells in hopes that your spellvamp keeps you alive, you have to dip in and out of combat. Early game that can be a pain, but later you will be able to throw out your damaging passive proc every couple of seconds (A 4 second cooldown that starts on your first auto makes it possible to time it such that you line up two damage procs in 3 consecutive autos)
You heal for 0 because the heal procs first, before you take damage then deal about 2 old AAs worth of damage after already attacking 2 times. It's just strictly worse than Akali's old passive, you also lose your bonus damage towards last hitting which makes Akali's garbage AA animation more prominent.
The W change is an increase to both her power level and skill cap. That "200 range blink" (It's 250, by the way) turns this spell into one of the most potent escape tools in the game. You can blink over walls with this ability, which while cool is only a part of its value. Because of the invisibility, enemies have no way of knowing where within the shroud you went; should they persue over the wall, or did you bluff the wall jump? Jumping certain walls (such as the raptor camp) can be done such that you barely clip the edge of the shroud, but the shroud itself remains out of sight, allowing you to do your best Teemo impression for up to 8 seconds.
Sorry to break your narrative, but Akali's new W is far easier to use. You no longer have to think about shroud placement at all. You just plop it down on top of yourself and blink in a very obvious direction. You also can't wait in the corner of your shroud as you suggest because this is a thing. Finally, 4 seconds, not 8. Assassin Akali cannot afford to start putting points into W until level 14, so for most of the game her shroud has a pathetic 4 second duration.
Oh, and the movement speed. With the combination of a 100% speed buff (Which no longer decays, but persists only so long as you remain in the shroud), a blink, and a dash (should there be targets to dash to), you are a very elusive ninja. Oh, and you mentioned a 0.35 second cast time. Boo hoo, they increased it by 0.1 seconds.
Oh right, the non decaying MS which does nothing because I can't place the shroud in front of me, it has to be on top. You could cover the distance between the centre of the shroud and the edge of the shroud in the duration of the MS boost before, you don't even have to do that anymore. The non-decaying MS boost is basically worthless.
Her E does, indeed, do less damage in a long fight. The thing is, Riot doesn't WANT Akali to be able to stay in a long fight, spamming this shit (Do you not remember the terrors of tank Akali?). It is better for what they want her to do.
This is wrong. Her E does less damage in any fight over 1.2 seconds, in a long fight, longer than 5 seconds the energy efficiency of her new E starts to kick in. Basically she uses her E the same amount of times in a long fight because the energy constraints on E mean that you can't just spam it out as much as you want.
I agree that the R change is a slight hit to her lategame, but you skimmed over one important change to it; you now get 3 charges instantly upon leveling the spell. This makes her level 6 powerspike much greater.
Losing half of the ratio, a quater of the base (worse at lower ranks) and doubling the delay between ults is a 'slight' hit. That's basically half of the abilities power, gone. And sure you gain all your stacks instantly, but they're literally half the damage they used to be. In the early game what you really want stacks past your first for is damage, now you have to burn 2 stacks with a 2 second delay to deal the same damage as if you ulted once before the gutting.
Q suck so much?
support does... but people cry over janna
had a 100% win rate one week.. Granted only 3 games were played by the same player BUT DAMMIT HE WAS OP