Why Akali Needs to be Part of the 2018 Rework Schedule

PhantomGG·Jan 17, 2018·7 votes·8,735 views

The 2018 rework schedule is as follows

https://orig00.deviantart.net/a32f/f/2016/030/4/1/412081c7e322ba34b9badcc39499f854-d9pv688.jpg

Swain, Irellia, Aatrox. Upon being posted on the page once you are first in line, it typically means you have about a month before riot is comfortable posting you on the PBE. Granted their is no set schedule, no guarantees, but that is the typical trend that they follow. So with that information we can assume Swain will come out some time this month however this month is almost over so I am putting money on, next month for sure. Irelia some time during April and aatrox during June. ONCE AGAIN these are not guarantees just rough estimations. But if my calcualtions/estimations are correct, that leaves only six months left for reworks, which is about enough time to accomplish 2-4 depending on how ham riot feels like going on the reworks this year.

Personally I hope but not just hope, but believe Akali should be in the 2018 line up of major reworks and here are my reasons at to why. To put it simple I will begin by stating these reasons in bullet points then go into depth about those reasons.

Is no longer good in her old main role and an out dated toolkit
Huge Identity crises
Huge fan base
Very Unhealthy toolkit
Lots of missed lore oppurtunity

#"Is no longer good in her old main role and an out dated toolkit"

Akali use to be a AP mid lane assassin and a pretty good one at fact, during season 4 Akali mid and Akali top was seen as "herp derp, you didn't ban Akali so now I win game". She was a feared and very strong pick but despite being a strong pick she also had a lot of clear weaknesses that plague her to this day, and those same weakness are largely why we don't see her very often in the mid lane and almost in any game. These weakneses eventually pushed her out of her main role into two other roles where they could not be so heavily exploited. Top and Jungle. What weakness am I speaking of?

Don't even try to farm cause we got poke for days. It's fairly easy to poke an akali out of lane and force her into a situation where she can only last hit under tower, but even then certain top laners are also capable of doing the same thing. . And these are only small example lists, not complete lists, Akali struggles heavily in this new game of league of legends. Personally I believe we have two forms of league of legends. I believe season Season Beta-3 was league of legends 1 and starting around season 4 we began to enter into league of legends 2. You can notice this from how much more detailed and complicated champions were becoming. Riot may not be calling it league of legends , but we are basically playing league of legends 2, the proof in this is the fact riot has made a clear goal to update all the old champions from the time frame i'm mentioning, quite literally deleting champions and replacing them with new ones that have similar themes. This is league of legends 2 people and Akali is suffering heavily from a growing power creep.

All new laners have the following

A form of wave clear and harrass
A reliable form of burst
At least one soft to heavy cc tool
A reliable way to farm minions
Some way to make their roams effective So basically what people look for in mid laners, is a way to nuke minion waves, a way to help them farm minions, and a tool that helps them roam or make roams effective. But most of all it's really about surviving the lane phase for mid and top laners, if you have no tools to help you do this you really aren't a viable laner. But this is where Akali breaks these rules and why she excells in the top lane in certain match ups. She has sustain with her passive and Q, not many top laners match the harass mid laners have. and she scales very good unless it's against a tank comp. All her power is put inside her ultimate, once she has an ultimate, she can do things, almost her entire kit is designed to work around her ultimate, but honestly that isn't exactly healthy game play. Just look at Malphite, a champion who always borders around game stupidly busted, or game stupidly useless. His entire kit is put around his ultimate combo, and it has been a very very long time since Riot has made a champion so heavily ultimate focused. The closest champion I can think of is Illaoi, and just to back up my example look how she turned out, answer, not very good. So I think we can all agree, champions so heavily focused on ultimates is a BAD IDEA. Her toolkit is very out dated and can use a tune up to fit the times before she becomes a completely trash tier champion in general. Which could be very easily the end of this year.

#"Huge Identity Crises"

Is she a mid laner that's suppose to suck her thumb until she hits six? Is she a top laner who focuses on sustain and becoming this tanky..pseudo tank with decent damage...or is she this jungler who focuses heavily on farming and playing safe, so she can jump into the game with proper farm and levels later? Frankly I don't know anymore, with her modern day problems pushing her out of the mid lane, but those same problems finding themselves creeping into top lane, yet also having the inability to handle enemy junglers if they chose to invade her. She seems like a really fragile creature that can become the worlds most annoying warhead nuke if given the oppurtunity. She has a identity crises and needs to be given a identity, a role. Do I build her tanky? Do I go full AP? Do I meet it in the middle? Where am I even suppose to play this champion? All I know is, my job is to eventually jump onto adcs and mages and chase them to the end of the earth to remove them from team fights. Honestly every champion that has been reworked also suffered a simliar problem where they lacked an identity.

#"Huge Fan base"

Short reason, but to be frank Akali has a huge following, artistically, lore and player base, the Akali mains aren't seen often but when you see them it's clear they really love Akali and are passionate about her. She has a fan base and a group of people who do have interest in her as a character, update to this old champion if it is to be done correctly would please a large group of people

#"Unhealthy toolkit"

This was somewhat touched upon in the first post, but I just want to say, Akalis toolkit is really unhealthy, like easily if I was to make a top 10 list of unhealthy toolkits that should not exist, Akali would score around number 6 or 5. So let's put it simple. Akali...can get large heals to make her tanky..has large bursts with her Q...and an R that has 3 charges that allows her to jump around like a maniac that also has a short cooldown so in all reality in a long team fight she can get around 4 to 5 Rs. That being said that same ability allows her to chase a mid laner or an adc to the ends of the earth and most likely kill them and no matter how hard they try, if the Akali isn't an idiot, she will most likely have her way. Oh and than she gets to get out of situations of danger with her W. And lets not go to deap into the fact her scaling and toolkit abuses and better than any other champion in this game and with the introduction of at 30 minutes if you chose to ignore zhonyas, you can just buy a stop watch, and do a big major play to then go into stasis and win the game off that. While Akali like any champion does take skill, the way she plays once mastered just feels abnoxious to play against. Good Akalis make you want to pull hair out.

#"Really missed Lore opportunities."

Akali exists in a time frame where Riot didn't really write lore and instead had the fans write the lore for themselves. Sorta like star wars, Riot would suggest an idea and allow the fans to go absolutely NUTTS with fan theories. Riot would feed the fans by giving abilities suspicious names, or hinting at comments like "Akali is the only one of the 3 who believes zed can no longer redeem himself" With an ability name "twin disciples" it hints she has had two masters with very oppisite abilities, a ying and a yang, which led us to believe zed was her dark side, and shen was her redeemer. All of her lore has basically been written by the fans, but 5 years after her creation I think it's time for Riot to pick the pen back up and decide which story they want to go with. Fan theories are fun and all, but after half a decade some of those theories should be confirmed or denied. When Riot reworks Akali I hope they really go into her lore and confirm some of the questions we have about her while leaving even more room for fan theory. Basically Answer some of the questions

-Who is Zed to Akali -What was her child hood like -Why is she so angry compared to her brotheren

but you can answer those questions while creating new ones, and this is something the cast of star wars, in both the good and the bad movies does an amazing job in doing. They revealed to us who darth vader was, and even showed us his life as anakin but left us asking questions like "what resulted in anakins creation, why did the force chose his mother? Are anakin and darth vader the same person or two souls in the same body?" you can answer old theory questions while safely introducing new ones. If Riot fears spoiling Akalis mysterious aura, they don't need to fear that, if they know the art of "subtly answering"

Anyways that is all I have to say about Akali and why she should be in the 2018 line up, feel free to say your thoughts everyone.