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A Cultured, Respectful Criticism of the Akali Rework

Ruthenox·7/17/2018, 8:38:07 PM·1 votes·809 views

First off, I'd like to applaud CertainlyT and all other Rioters that worked on Akali. The new Akali honestly looks like an extremely fun champion to both play and watch, and there's no doubt that she's a perfect fit for players who love to make flashy plays.

However, with all due respect, I don't feel that she provides enough counter play. Please do correct me if I'm wrong after she goes live on the PBE, as I admit, yes, I am going purely off of the few videos we have of Akali so far. Still, as someone who plays mostly immobile mages ( Xerath Velkoz Karthus , etc... ), I feel that there is simply not enough that we can do against a champ like this. With the exception of post-roa Karthus, some mage champs really struggle at close range and rely on turrets as safety nets to lean back on. These champions value positioning above all else; making sure that they stay far away from their opponents to poke them down. This is because they have little counter play if they misposition, leaving a close-up opponent in their face.

Normally if I were killed by an all-in champ, I would blame mispositioning; putting myself at fault for allowing the enemy to get close to me. However, with this rework I fear that even that has been taken away. It looks as if Akali's main windows for trades are short, brief moments when she jumps out of the obscure, but for champions with weak melee confrontations, this leaves almost nothing we can do.

I know that champions have, and will continue to always have counter picks. Hell, I practically one trick AurelionSol in ranked, so I'm no stranger to playing losing matchups against assassins. I know that I have to position myself to zone them off of cs until I can use the strength of my roams. I know when I have to back off so that I can hit my skillshots and avoid death via high-mobility champions, because they are my biggest weakness. Although, when champions have so many dashes, they start to become far too difficult to land skillshots on.

I feel like a great example of a high-mobility champion is Yasuo. His mobility is highly telegraphed, with it being limited by cooldowns and enemy minions, and when I get towerdived, I feel fine with it. Not great, mind you, but fine. I know that I can always cc him under tower, as his windwall won't block the shots, but when a champion can't be seen, targeted, or hit by towershots unless they attack... I can't help but feel that in those situations I'd be useless.

Once again, with all due respect, I think that this rework is indeed innovative and exciting, and even as someone who plays champions that can be abused by high-mobility, I think that another high-mobility champ is healthy for the game, but I also feel that it needs to be toned down. Truly, I believe that simply removing the obscure mechanic and giving her regular stealth like Shaco and Kha'zix would make her pretty balanced. Sure, she could end up being a tad too strong, or a tad too weak, but numbers can adjusted. So, adjust numbers all you want, but when it comes to new mechanics, make sure that the enemy will be able to react properly, rather than being a blind berserk throwing out skillshots in the hope that they can hit their opponent.

If you took the time to read this, I'd like to thank you and remind you that the people at Riot work hard to make these new and exciting things for them, and that they should never be harassed, berated, or abused because of what they make. If we want to communicate as a playerbase to them and express our best interests, we should be respectful, because quite frankly, Riot is an exemplary company that shines above many of the scummy companies that could care less about their playerbase. :)

2 Comments

Kai Guy7/17/2018, 9:20:24 PM1 votes

A pretty simple nerf if it proves to be a problem, Takeing tower damage recently increases her fade duration by a second, have this on a 3-4 second duration debuff.

SiriXV7/18/2018, 5:39:26 AM1 votes

I understand your concerns and to tell the truth, it’s the same conserns I had too. I’m also an Akali main btw.. When I first saw the obsecure mechanic on Akali that she would be invisible under tower and watching Professor akalis videos, I thought no way this is gonna go live.

People compared it to other skills from Assassins to talk it good like the Fizz E or Zed R or even Vladimir W, but still there’s some difference to it, and I mean a lot. Those 3 examples I just gave have the skill to be untargetable and dodge damage for a brief moment of around 2-3 sec, while Akalis new Shroud makes her only invisible, so she still receives damage from skill shots or AoE damage, point and click skills will have a hard time dealing with Akali, so many champions like the mentioned casters above (vel, xerath, Karthus, veigar etc) have aoe and also skillshot based stuns, it will be possible to hit Akali but at same time a hard matchup, but there are times when she gets vulnerable for example when she dashes with E you can directly see the path of her so player can adjust their stuns or skill shots, and because it is a dash it can be interrupted by Janna tornado or veigar cage(which counters her shroud hard imo). But the most important problem In my mind was the invisibility under tower, after looking at some more gameplays up I noticed, when she receives tower Aggro it doesn’t go away when she goes invisible, so basically when she receives tower Aggro and then goes obsecured under tower, the tower won’t target her, but as soon as she reveals herself by using a skill or attack, She will get hit by the tower again, else when a teammate is under tower too the teammate will receive Aggro instead and it stays on him.

I’m not sure if this is good of an argument enough that her new shroud is not op but it has its downsides as well and it shouldn’t be overlooked. But to be fair as I’m an Akali main I’m biased from the start , so judge it yourself after this info and remarks I gave, I’m fine either way whether it gets nerfed or not, this shouldnt be decided by me, as this is too much of a sensible topic that a kind of biased main to decide.