To clarify why Akali is different (a detailed letter to those who spoke to me yesterday)

Hi, I'm PhantomGG, and this is a open letter, to address to any of those I have failed to properly dress my points with on why Akali is very different from every assassin in this game.

Akali if we are going old school terms, is what you label as an assassin, now here is a list of the majority of the assassins, and sorta assassins.

To keep this list simple I kept it to the laner assassins. Now Akali as we know it is by far the oldest traditional assassin. The only champion who rivals her in age who can somewhat be considered an assassin is (yes once upona time this champion was a laner) However let's look at Nidalee for a moment, why is it I had to say "yes once upona time Nidalee was a laner"? Well the answer is simple, the majority of the people reading this knows Nidalee as a jungler. She has essentially for the most part been reworked into being a jungler. But if you look at her toolkit, excluding her spear, it has for the most part remained the same. So why is it, Nidalee, went from laner to jungle? The answer is simple.

-She lacked the tools to help her manage minion waves the same way modern laners do, and her ability to trade with her abilities was becoming awkward to do vs modern laners. (plus riot changing her numbers around didn't help either)

If look at Ahri, Ekko, Kassadin, Katarina, LeBlanc, Talon, Zed, these are all champions you commonly see in mid lane. They are quite good at it to, sure they suffer against some ranged match ups against champs like or , but if you are good on one of the champions I listed, you should be able to hold your own, roam get some kills, and come out just fine. However if you re read that list again, there is a champion I did not name.

Fizz is a champion that Riot has struggled to balance, he lacks ranged abilities, so to compensate that, riot has to put a lot of power in his up close and personal burst. Once he is level six, many mage players see it as a death sentence for either themselves or the teammates down in bot lane. This is once again because he has a lot of power in his up close and personal burst play style. Because of this, riot has struggled to keep him balanced for a long time as a laner. But despite his heavy pros, we still rarely see him in mid lane in both pro and casual play. The reason for this is very simple.

-Not many players can endure (this is a player issue) the annoying harassment from mages. An Ahri, or hell even just a syndra can throw hell upon fizz, the moment he even goes for a single minion. By the time you are level three, you will often be poked out to 75 percent of your health if your lane opponent is any good. However though a good fizz player can fight back, which is why he sits at a modest 50 percent win rate. But however an obvious trend is starting to form here.

-Melees are at a clear advantageous against range, so to make up for that they need either tools to out play the range, or burst to kill the range once they get close.

Now onto Akali (these stats are directly from league of graphs) Top Akali: 50 percent win rate Mid Akali: 48 percent Jungle Akali: 50 percent

Both top and Jungle Akali are currently out performing. Granted 48 percent win rate is nothing to terrible, but it does fall onto that line where "if it was even 1 percent less than it would be pretty terrible". Why is it Mid Akali is suffering but jungle and top are not? Well the answer is simple, Literally everything pre 6 completely squashes mid Akali. Unlike every assassin on this list who has some reliable form of poke, harassment. To my knowledge Riot is giving Akali a buff in her W to lower the cool down by 2 seconds. I will bluntly as possible say this.

-This won't fix crap

This is like seeing a man bleeding on the side of the road and simply tossing him a towel so he can wipe himself.

Akali is a champion who suffers from what I like to call "wackamole" or "Math check" syndrome. What is a wackamole or a "math check" champion? Well to put in simple numbers, it's a champion that lacks creative ways to out play the enemy champion and wins it's trades or gets kills purely by mathmaticaly being bigger than you. Champions on this list include.

. This isn't to say Akali and these 4 champions take no mechanical skill, but it's saying they are champions that heavily rely on a mathmatical advantage to get what they need done, for unlike other champions who have very large toolkits, these champions do not offer that, instead they offer big numbers once they are ahead. This is a common theme that a lot of the older champions suffer with and riot has been trying to adress with major reworks. (And possibly why riot has struggled so much with Ryze but that's another topic for another day)

To put it on a TLDR

Champions with simple kits are complicated to balance, for the only thing to buff and nerf is the damage, buff it slightly, they become over powered, nerf it, they become under powered. The middle ground is almost none existent.

For complicated champions with lot's of utility, often times the answer is nerf the utility not the damage, and often times in nerfing the utility the champion will go down to a soft tame 48-51 percent win rate.

So we have exposed 2 key problems about Akali

1-She lacks range, she also lacks tools that compensate for her lack of range 2-She has zero utility

To put it simple, Riot has even said this themselves, she is a champion with a huge list of problems, and no buff or nerf can fix it, it's a problem that can only be fixed with a rework. She is simply a out dated champion, with a out dated toolkit that is no longer proper for modern day league of legends.

What makes her different from

-They don't need to be level 6 to do things -They have ranged harass to help them survive lane phase -They have combos that can get them kills before they are level six -Once they fall behind, they still have hope to snag a kill or two to get back into the game from how reliable the toolkits they have are. -They can roam very effectively, the entire toolkit doesn't consist of Press R over and over again untill you get a kill

Zed has his W and his R, Talon has his E and his Q, Akali is horribly reliant on her ultimate.

I can go on and on in why she is different, bottom line, she is old, she needs a rework, riot admits this.

And that is my detailed letter to those I spoke to yesterday on Akali and why she is very different from other assassins, in all the worse ways possible.

P.S I didn't even get into detail in why her methods of damage are horribly unhealthy for the game.