Just a quick question on your balance, guys.

Akali isn't a hypercarry. You high? She's a snowballing assassin with that being her sole identity - in fights she is absolute shit on buttered toast.

And Diana's ult range iiiiiiiiiiis 825 with her Q range being 830 - that actually outranges just about every mage in the game, and beats Akali's ult range by a full 125. Basically, a fed Diana in theory has zero counterplay as if she has enough power to just ult to you and finish you off, you can't retaliate safely because she will outrange you period.

And you can absolutely interchange them. Why wouldn't you? Two different AP assassins - that's like saying you can't interchange Fizz and LB. Two single target, high-burst assassins that may execute their jobs in different fashions but the end result is the same - single target, high burst.

In fact, the oddity here is that Akali and Diana are the most similar in nature due to the functionality of their ults and how they're supposed to take down targets - the reason Diana gets a reset on her ult was originally supposed to be because she was bulky enough to be built a fighter and she'd need a few hits to put her ult to good use, so they prepared it to be able to keep nailing away. She was supposed to be a drawn-out fighter that would keep hitting resets. Now she literally just nukes anybody that comes close because she has no competition - everything that's nerfed about everybody else already had counterplay but was hardly capitalized on in lower ELOs.

Akali's spellvamp is countered by grievous wounds - Morell and ignite both stop her sustain in its tracks. Her shit burst also basically makes her the worst assassin in the game as she can hardly kill her primary target - ADC's - anymore without just getting outdamaged immediately. Her chase potential is subpar to Nidalee's since Nidalee can both escape quickly as well as get in quickly - Akali has one way in and if her target isn't low, she's probably not winning. That almost requires her team to be strong for her in order for her to maintain any power.

Her old safety wasn't simply mitigated by pink wards as she had bonus bulk to help her when people revealed her - now it's movement speed. For one second on turning invisible.

Diana's bulk is unreduceable, near-instant to the full effect, she has a longer range overall, and isn't required to all in to get kills - her Q still functions perfectly well as, again, a 830 range spell. The only assassin with poke outranging this is Zed, and you can still hear the QQ's about him from here even after the nerfs hit. And Zed's ult isn't even 825 - it's 625. He has to use his own form of unpredictable escape in order to reach his target from the same distance, which was his main selling point. Now he's announcing himself for two seconds beforehand, he's required to sit there for more than enough time to retaliate and blow him up, and he has no additional safety or bulk to make up for this - Diana has an AoE Q with an AoE W that gives her a meaty shield on top of an AoE passive hit on her autos that procs as soon as she R's to a target with the addition of an AoE displacement/slow. More than enough times I have seen Diana actually tear down an entire team's health to half with her combo because, while being seemingly focused on single-target damage, she deals atrocious damage in an area of effect in terms of any assassin with the only competition being Katarina if she were to get a reset. Diana doesn't just outdo just about all her competition in assassinating single targets - she's several times better than most mages at blowing up entire teams. Like, what the hell?

Couple all of that damage in with some very, very meaty bulk, and I have to wonder past Fizz being annoying with a single ability that can mitigate some damage if you can't wrap your head around timing against it - how can you believe he is stronger than her when one of the main counters to Fizz right now is Diana herself for those same reasons? And the counter to LB and Akali and Zed and Talon and just about anybody else whose only option is to oneshot her in a single go.

The reason I'm bringing this up at all is because I can already see how she is outdoing everyone else in her role - don't believe me? She's at 51% winrates total (so this includes all lower ELOs) at 14% playrates and 12% banrates. Please note that mid is the most diverse role in the game, so the fact that she has 14% winrates is saying far more than for any other role - she is only beat in playrates by Zed (which Faker has seen to that just being a thing now) and Lux (who, after the buff, is just consistently, oppressively strong as a mage). She is not outbanned by anybody else in midlane, and the only two contenders for an assassin against her are Talon (who still has less winrates, is less played, and is solely an assassin getting bullied out by a duel-purpose champ) and Malzahar, who is hardly played comparatively (about 3-ish%), has 54% winrates, and is technically a mage before being an assassin (which mages are generally just all-in-all stronger at the moment). She is a fighter/assassin who is outdoing actual assassins at their jobs. That is not healthy. That takes the one weakness assassins had - I.E., no bulk and next to no survivability other than an escape - and says, "You know what? Let's make a champ that's just not and call it balanced against her colleagues because she has one skillshot that she can easily spam safely at max range before going in." This isn't a question of whether people think Diana's OP or not - it's that she's legitimately, and unquestionably, outdoing everybody else in her field with no drawback.

And before the Ekko argument comes up about him having way more safety and bulk than Diana, Ekko also has much more fallible and weaker burst than Diana.