Why does Akali have natural sustain?
She has a lot of mobility and poke can go nearly untouchable for about 7(?) seconds, ignore turrets and her core item is 
.(spell vamp)
Why should she also have the benefit of self healing from the start?
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TBH sustain on an assassin should be done like talon's Q, if he last hits a minion w/ his Q he gets a small amount of hp back, it shouldnt be as free as akali's is.
Did you play against old Akali ?
“We want melee champions to be able to survive against ranged poke”
“Why does X melee champion have minor sustain?!”
The sustain is there as both a tie in to her old kit (which, by the way, had literal spellvamp at first, then on hit healing on her auto) and as a sort of choice for the Akali. The choice is there because of the healing requirement (90% energy or higher, meaning 180/200 or higher.)
Her Q's default cooldown is 1.5 seconds (every second is 10 energy back, meaning 15 energy back with no CDR.) It starts with an energy cost of 100, reduces to 80 at max rank. Either way, let's stick to the important part here: it's an artificial cooldown.
Assuming a Q at max energy, you have to wait 8-10 seconds early game before recasting it to heal again, instead of just spamming it whenever you get the chance for waveclear (this reduces to 6-8 seconds late game) and this value is unreduced by CDR. This gives Akali a cooldown she can't change, and one the enemy can see.
If Akali gets shoved under tower because she uses it too sparingly and only for heals, she'll likely miss out on quite a few minions as a result, unless you get pushed off because Akali went aggressive. If she uses it too much, meaning spam for clear, she has no sustain and is much, much easier to take down. This gives the Akali a lot of agency to work with as a result, again, being either spam to clear waves, or save and heal. Whichever you value more, you have to wait for the energy accordingly.
Also, her W really doesn't make her untouchable. Yes, the whole "can't be targeted" thing, but keep in mind a lot of champions can simply ignore this (things like thresh's E or Q can still hit her) and you still AOE her just fine, just can't be directly targeted (autos). I played against a malzahar earlier today, and he would ult me as I revealed myself in the shroud; I would proceed to take the AOEs that they had while invisible.
This is coming from a currently M6 Akali? I think I'm at least decent enough to be saying stuff like this, but "just AOE her" and all the other excuses for the shroud are just annoying to hear, overused, and quite frankly I think they could hit the re-entry time into the shroud to make it easier for her opponents. But yeah.
TL;DR: Q heal is to get her through aggressive enemies and to give her a bit of thinking on how to use her Q other than "just spam it for waveclear" since she's an energy champion. The energy cost becomes an artificial cooldown.
Because she had it before, and CertainlyT hates taking anything away, and they took her ult resets away so. everything else had to stay
because she was created for mid lane gameplay, where she would be matched against ranged champions that constantly poke at her, and nobody asked what would happen if someone just took her into top lane.
this is just another symptom of ranged abilities and auto attacks not having a counter mechanic in this game. we dont have turn rates, so the only way to deal with range in league of legends is to outstat or outsustain.
There is no reason. Gameplay and thematically.
Why does Akali’s kunais heal if she’s not tired. They’re just normal kunais.
No other assassin has sustain as easy as Akali either. Just press Q every 10 seconds or so and get heals for days.
Hey man... Assassins are high risk medium risk low risk safe as fuck high reward, thats how its supposed to be!
Joking aside, I wonder this too.
She has outplay potential going for her, having sustain so you have to work even harder to poke her for an all in seems overload... Wait... overloaded... Oh yeah, CertainlyT overloads champs. Working as intended.
EDIT: Im going to take some joy in each downvote knowing there is some extremely butthurt CertainlyT fanyboy who doesnt like reading this post, but also cant argue with its validity.
She has a lot of mobility and poke can go nearly untouchable for about 7(?) seconds, ignore turrets and her core item is
Why should she also have the benefit of self healing from the start?
You do understand they nerf'd her built in sustain when they reworked her? She used to be able to heal every other auto attack from her passive, now she can only heal in lane when she has near MAX energy, which can cost her TwilightShroud in order to get enough energy to heal if she HAS to heal.
He sustain is much lower than it used to be.
If she did not have any sustain, I think she would actually be unplayable, because she is to easily harassed in lane vs ranged opponents