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Akali - Small Kit Rework Suggestions

kanacho·10/26/2014, 5:50:45 AM·4 votes·1,932 views

Hey guys and gals,

I've been playing Akali Akali ever since she came out, and I've been maining her for quite sometime. Since I primarily play mid, Akali is a go-to pick for me against a large number of champions. She's versatile, agile, high bursting, and does her job as an assassin well. However, playing Akali as my main, I've come across comments like "Akali is noob" or "Akali is easy to play" and things like these... To be honest, I don't completely disagree with them. Akali has two target click abilities and a third that deals automatic AOE damage around here. Really, although she is my most favorite champion and the most fun for me to play, she's really not that hard to play. There's always the subject of balance issues with Akali, and I don't want her kit to change tremendously, nor' do I want her identity as an awesome snowballing assassin to change either. With all my experience playing Akali, I wanted to make some suggestions for some possible changes to her kit to raise her skill-cap and make her more rewarding for just playing well. Even taking a champion like Lee Sin as an example, although he is annoying to fight (especially since I main akali and that AOE stealth detection doesn't go over well with me), he is a good example of a high skill-cap champion. There's a lot of mechanical details a player can employ to get the best out of lee, and I really enjoy that. I would also like for Akali to be similar in regards to being very rewarding for playing right, but not a champion that's an insta-pub-stomp simply because she is so easy to play (even now that's not 100% true but I still think it can be better).

Please Remember I am no expert game developer, so numbers here are subject to change. These are just my rough estimations of what they could be, but I'll explain what I'm trying to accomplish with each change so you'll get the idea I'm going for.

So, without further ado, here is what I suggest.

Akali's Identity Maintaining Akali's Identity is absolutely necessary in order to make her still feel like Akali, and as an Akali main, this is extremely important to me. I also really do enjoy Akali's kit, but it just seems too simple and too easy to play. Being able to simply click a target is too easy, when the champion doesn't have any skill shots to speak of whatsoever. Spell Vamp is also an iconic part of Akali's kit and she's really known for making use of it in her kit to better her survivability in a fight. With the nerf to her defenses she got from her shroud (that was pretty necessary), she's not as powerful as she used to be, right? AOE abilities and counter-play were not rewarded as much because of the defensibility boosts she used to have. The way Akali survives is by doing her job, and that's assassinating her targets like a ninja would more than likely do. Akali being a shinobi, is more than definitely an agile character, and this is something that's been emphasized with the recent MS buff added to her twilight shroud, and the quick jumps she has with shadow dance. Keep in mind these are some of the things I'll be thinking about when suggesting the following changes, so here they are.

Passive: Twin Disciplines: Discipline of Force: Akali's basic attacks deal an additional 6% bonus Magic Damage, increasing by 1% for every 6 Ability Power.

Discipline of Might: Akali gains 6% Spell Vamp, increasing by 1% for every 6 Bonus Attack Damage.

No changes here, this ability is still as awesome as it is currently :)

Mark of the Assassin: Cost: 60 Energy Range: 600 800 Akali spins her kama at a target enemy to deal Magic Damage and mark the target for 6 seconds. Akali's melee attacks against a marked target will trigger and consume the mark to cause additional damage and restore Energy.

Akali throws her kama at a target enemy to deal 35/55/75/95/115 (+40% Ability Power) Magic Damage and mark the target for 6 seconds.Akali's melee attacks against a marked target will consume the mark to cause ~~45/70/95/120/145 (+50% Ability Power) ~~ 35/55/75/95/115 (+55% Ability Power) Magic Damage and restore 20/25/30/35/40 Energy.

New - Skillful Ninja: Akali's Mark of the Assassin is now a standard skill-shot (functioning like an Ezreal projectile might) and mark of the assassin will hit the first target it comes in contact with (champion, minion, monster, etc...). New - Dual Kama: Akali now stores up to 2 stacks on her Mark of the Assassin and she will regenerate 1 stack every 15 seconds. New - Activation Cooldown: Mark of the Assassin's cooldown is now 3 seconds at all levels (This IS affected by Cooldown Reduction). New - Speedy Kama: If Akali has less than 2 stacks Activating a Mark of the Assassin Will reduce the stack charge time by 3/4/5/6/7 seconds. New - Just Practice: The stack charge time reduction is doubled if Akali kills a minion with mark of the assassin and she restores energy as if she had activated it. New - Expert Throwing Precision: Kama Range increased from 600 to 800. New - Sneaky Blade: Mark of the Assassin will ignore enemies and monsters and only contact enemy champions while moving through twilight shroud (ignores collision with minions, monsters, etc...)

These changes are targeted at a few areas. The first obvious change is the change from a target-click ability to a skill-shot which will increase the skill in playing Akali tremendously. Dual Kama is used to make Akali a bit more consistent once she does decide to engage. The Activation cooldown will be the brief time period she will have to wait before throwing out any additional kama if she has stacks still. Speedy Kama are also an important addition to further increase Akali's consistency in a fight so she isn't sitting around doing nothing after her initial burst. The double charge time reduction upon killing a minion is to help Akali's early game a bit more and reward her for successfully last-hitting minions with this ability while allowing her to maintain a more safe distance than she can currently. The increase of range helps Akali engage from a bit longer distances with her standard Q R E combo, but that's only if she can land it! A very important thing to notice is that her Kama make contact with minions and monsters normally, but ignore collision with them if the mark is moving through her twilight shroud. This allow Akali to essentially prep the fight by placing her shroud over the minions, then throwing her Q which will now move through those minions, which would allow her to hit the enemy champion, then jump on that champion with shadow dance and activate the mark with her E allowing her to successfully engage and burst the enemy before they know what happened. Remember though, her shroud requires quite a bit of energy, so you need to be careful to manage your energy if you decide to engage. The changes with the active damage on her mark is necessary in balancing the tremendous early-game power she could have acquired. Akali's farming with her Q could be damaged too much by lowering the initial damage of the mark, so the follow up base damage is reduced to prevent her from absolutely stomping the enemy with essentially 2 mark of the assassins in 3 seconds (that would be a bit much...). So, in order to compensate for that spike in early-game damage, the base damage is lowered and the scaling is increased slightly so her late-game isn't hurt much.

Twilight Shroud: Cost: 80/75/70/65/60 Energy Range: 700

Akali throws down a cover of smoke. While inside the area, Akali becomes invisible and gains a short burst of Movement Speed. Attacking or using abilities will briefly reveal her. Enemies inside the smoke have their Movement Speed reduced.

Akali throws down a cover of smoke that lasts for 8 seconds. While inside the area, Akali becomes invisible and gains a 20/40/60/80/100% burst of Movement Speed which decays over 1 second 1.5 seconds. Attacking or using abilities will briefly reveal her. Enemies inside the smoke are slowed by 14/18/22/26/30%.

New - Gone in a Flash: Twilight shroud has a faster cast time (almost instant)

The only changes here is with the duration of the movement speed buff and how face her twilight shroud can be set down. It just doesn't last long enough to feel satisfying, make much of a difference, or even seem noticeable, so the duration is increased to 1.5 seconds to allow her to feel like the agile ninja she is! The reduction in cast time helps give this ability better synergy with her new Mark of the Assassin and activate the bonuses of her twilight shroud quicker so she can make for some extremely quick and skillful plays.

Crescent Slash: Cost: 60/55/50/45/40 Energy Range: 325

Akali flourishes her kamas, dealing damage based on her Attack Damage and Ability Power.

Akali flourishes her kamas, slicing nearby enemy units for 30/55/80/105/130 (+60% Attack Damage) (+30% Ability Power) physical damage. Triggers Mark of the Assassin on targets affected by it.

New - True Sight: If crescent slash activates a mark on a target, Akali gains True Sight of the target for 3 seconds.

Akali is an assassin, so she should excel at chasing down enemies, even through the jungle! This true sight addition will allow Akali to fight other stealthy champions if she can activate her mark, or help her chase down enemies even if they run into brush. Note that she has to activate a mark on that target with this ability to gain this bonus!

Shadow Dance: Cost: 1 Essence of Shadow Range: 800

Akali moves through shadows to quickly strike her target, dealing damage and consuming an Essence of Shadow charge. Akali recharges Essence of Shadow charges both periodically and upon kills and assists, max 3 stacks.

Akali moves through shadows to quickly strike her target, dealing 100/175/250 (+50% Ability Power) 75/125/175 (+70% Ability Power) Magic Damage. Akali stores an Essence of Shadow on kills and assists as well as every 30/22.5/15 seconds up to 3 total.

New - Assassin's Focus: When Akali Shadow Dances to a target, that target takes 10% increased damage from Akali for 5 seconds.

The changes here are pretty simple. Akali should feel greatly rewarded for playing well and doing her job as an assassin. Because a huge portion of Akali's damage comes from her Marks, I took a pretty sizable portion of the flat damage out of her shadow dance. To compensate for this change, I increased the scaling damage as to reward Akali with higher damage the more she can itemize from acquiring gold from in-lane kills, ganks, assists, etc... This also means that Akali is easier to counter-play if they are doing poorly with her meaning that you can better handle fighting her instead of her getting ridiculously fed regardless of what you do. The other change is the bonus 10% increased damage from Akali to the target she attacks using shadow dance. This means that your Q R E combo will still be effective, but this also means that if you miss your Q, you can't rely too much on your R to give you the burst you need. Since my intention was to raise Akali's skill cap a bit more than it is currently, she isn't rewarded as much if she misses her Q since she can't make full use of the 10% increased damage if she misses one of the largest portions of her burst combo. Remember though, if you only missed the first kama, you could still follow up with the second one so she can still recover to do decent damage in the fight if she doesn't mess up too many times, but her optimal damage comes from optimal play!

I hope you enjoyed reading my suggestions, and please post a comment bellow on what you think! Thanks for reading!

11 Comments

Squeaky Dreemurr10/26/2014, 6:43:51 AM3 votes

Thank you for so passionately addressing Akali. I believe she's currently one of the only remaining quintessential "face roll" champs in League. She has both a low skill floor and skill cap, yet is hugely effective in almost any teamfight situation with little regard to player skill. Her point-and-click spammable ultimate allows her to dash to high priority targets and almost guarantee their death (with three charges, her ultimate can stick to a target AFTER a dash AFTER a flash). If in the unlikely event that she fails to kill her target, a quick shroud and Zhonya's will prevent detection and death while her team bails her out. If she's remarkably fed, she can practically 1v5 a team this way, not to mention her insane spell vamp and life steal that give her massive sustain in addition to massive burst and massive survivability (for an assassin). Oh. And resets.

Sure she has a weak laning phase. But when the roaming starts, her presence in other lanes and in teamfights will almost certainly negate any disadvantage she received from a poor laning phase. In fact, she has a pretty good chance of carrying her team through mid and late game regardless of her early performance.

Currently, Akali's design intends for her to snowball almost without fail. She's not a snowball champ... She's a face roll champ.

Igotlazy10/26/2014, 5:58:01 AM2 votes

I feel like changing the Q from targeted to a skillshot could really affect her playstyle and overall effectiveness. Not to mention it would cause her to resemble Diana (who I like the call her cousin) even more.

Monotachi10/26/2014, 12:53:07 PM2 votes

Twilight Shroud's movement speed duration should scale via rank so it actually is meaningful late game.

Skillshots does not necessary mean increased skill. Being a melee squishy, its rare to include skillshots in their kits in the first place because of other trade offs. MoTA does not need to be a skillshot. It has a very short range because that is the trade off for being a point and click spell. The complications of turning it into a skillshot arises, i.e. range, reward trade off, and the interactions with minions. You effectively made Akali useless in lane because of a skillshot MoTA. Minions blocking MoTA will seriously affect her viability in doing damage.

The other option is making it a line skillshot, which is no as well. MoTA is a single target spell, its not meant to do damage to more target than once.

Simplicity is the best design, basically. Akali's kit currently already filfull what it already needs to do. That is why its hard to make changes to Akali in the first place because her identity is already well-designed in her kit.

There's a danger to having high ability power ratios. You get more of a kick when you are snowballing. Having lower base damages/higher AP ratios tend to do. It also makes the champion extremely feast/famine. This is something you do not want to have on any champion, especially on Akali, which makes her already binary nature even more so. Perhaps having high base damages/lower AP ratios would resolve that, but that would mean a champion would eventually fall off late game. It would help in the famine case for sure.

At the end of the day, Akali's kit is suppose to be simplistic. That does not mean it should be mechanically easy, but simplistic. Alot of carry-like kits are simplistic as well because they show their skill off in other ways due to being squishy melees, i.e. timing and positioning. If a mechancially easy champion is strong, the best way to tackle it is to increase their risk, so they have to put more effort into pulling off combos/getting kills. Nerfing reward does not solve anything as they can simply get back to viability via reverse powercreep --> a ticking time bomb.

SpliceAsNice3/6/2015, 2:36:26 AM2 votes

Thoughts are jumbled on this post, OP, so I apologize:

  • Q should remain a targeted ability or, if it were skill shot, it should go through the minions like Zed's Q but with a proc or debuff on the enemy champion.

  • I would like to see something change with her passive because the reason Akali is OP isn't just because the damage she dishes out, it's because she sustains through all of the counter damage when she goes in. My idea would be to have an evolution-like system set up where you choose between sustain and damage oriented playstyles so we see 2 types of Akali - Force and Might.

  • Instant shroud cast seems cool.

  • True vision on E seems a bit obnoxious and makes flash more useless than it already is VS Akali.

  • Ult INCREASING damage dealt? Insane. Keep R as it is with the same range values as live, but maybe you could move that damage to the debuff I mentioned above?

  • AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, REMOVE THE Q>E PROC NERF. SHE CAN'T EVEN TRADE IN LANE ANYMORE

5 Dolla Succ6/14/2015, 3:38:28 PM1 votes

I think that having the Q as a skill shot will make it extremely hard to hit due to her high mobility,the only way it will have a good hit chance is if the enemy is CC'd .Also I don't think the Q needs a shorter range than it already is so you can't get the double Q combo without punishment.The W is fine with the movement speed buff and the tank taken out of it since she deals high burst damage CC should kill her no matter what so having the tank made her seem less like the reasons we play Akali.The E is dead,Rito please bring back the Q proc,trading in lane is impossible pre 6 now so she can't even get in exp range a lot of the time vs mages/poke champions-For the E to be restored I would happily take away 10-20 odd damage from the first Q hit as well as the range nerf I suggested.The R should go back to the old range so you can do your job as a assassin and kill the back line,a assassin that can't get to the back line is almost useless.The passive should be changed so the spell vamp is not as strong but the bonus auto attack damage is stronger for the same reasons as not having any resistances on W.To make her not just a faceroll champion and into a entirely snowball or late game champion you could rise the AP ratios buy about 10-15% and then taking away about a third of the base damage on ALL abilities.

There's probably a lot of damage ratios crazy here so I think you can change a few of those but overall this would make Akali playable again and fun champion.