She has high damage, high mobility, heals, stealth, hard CC, slow, decent AA range passive, manaless, hybrid scaling.
Her one clear weakness is the lack of poke. For that, she has everything else a champ could have. How is that fair design?
DuskDaUmbreon4 votesShe has high damage, high mobility,
So she's an assassin
heals, stealth
Usually only found on jungle assassins, but still an assassin.
hard CC
It's a microstun. She no more has hard CC than Kassadin does.
slow
Most viable champions do.
decent AA range passive
It's also a single auto and requires her to walk away from her target to get it. Giving her some range to compensate for that fact seems reasonable to me.
manaless
Many assassins are.
hybrid scaling.
Only technically correct. In reality, she gets Gunblade, then AP or AD. She does not buy both AD and AP outside of Gunblade.
Her one clear weakness is the lack of poke. For that, she has everything else a champ could have. How is that fair design?
Or her lack of real hard CC. Or her lack of real range. Or her lack of DPS. Or her lack of instant burst. Or her lack of durability. Or any number of things she lacks.
Also, yeah, if you list every positive and fail to list the negatives (such as having a much longer burst window compared to other assassins, or having a Q that takes half your resources on cast), it sounds unfair. But if you list everything in her kit - the good and the bad, it's basically fair.
Kai Guy2 votesManna is not a handicap also. Like why do people think energy is a huge benefit? you miss out on a lot of solid items, or they just have wasted stats. You have to control spell usage or your locked out of abilitys.
Glad to see some one calling out folks for ignoring negatives.
SithesisLord1 votesBut if you list everything in her kit - the good and the bad, it's basically fair.
By that logic, release Zoe was fair.
Why did she get things removed from her kit and other things eventually gutted then?
Kai Guy2 votesThat would be a separate list and The good and Bad would be all Zoe related. By Dusk's Logic we would need to make that analysis then decide if its fair trade offs or not.
Why do we need to look at that you ask? why cant we focus on streinghts alone? It sets a bad expectation. Reality needs to apply, not just on paper arguments for best cases.
Example.
Random guy on Boards Post.
WTF OVERLOADED KIT. Op AF! NERF THIS TRASH CHAMPION 
.
Passive gives her a 70% FREE MS STEROID!
Q. is long range poke. Its Literally a 230 Damage Poke on a 5 second base CD. That heals her, and gives ms, AND slows enemys, And buffs her W to Heal teamamtes, OH and it gives them MS as well. 7 Things in 1 ability, on a microscopic CD with 800 RANGE AND ITS AOE. Broken.
W.
The best heal in the game because its on a 2 second CD. Only 
Have heals with higher base values. Raka can cast hers 5X times befor they get a 2nd cast off. Only ultimates heal for more... and the best ulti for heal in the game? On Raka. Busted kit.
E. Can Silence in an aoe for the same duration as a garren Q. Oh and then it snares folks for a full 2 seconds. who needs telegraphs? not RAKA! Its instant cast with no delay so its impossible to miss. Did I mention it can do 460 (+ 80%) damage? with 2 diffrenty types of CC and that damage this Basic ability is stronger then some champions Ultis. [zombie-brand-facepalm]
Oh god... her R.
Hands down, Arguably the best heal in the game being a Instant cast at a global range. Gets stronger for low hp targets. Level 16 that's, 525 (+ 82.5% AP). Multiply that for the rest of your team and R is worth 2,625 base with 412% scaling. Oh and supports items INCREASE HEALS AND BUFF DAMAGE 
BRILLIANT WORK BALANCE TEAM SOME ONE FIRE CT ALREADY!
I did my best to make this a common tilt post, but I did not lie, everything functions as I said. Does this focus only on positives create a realistic expectation for ? Or should we also account for trade offs and consider difficulty in best case usage for ability's?
DuskDaUmbreon1 votesBecause Zoe's numbers were too good and her tradeoffs weren't enough because of that. However, note that Zoe lost basically nothing from her kit except numbers and a few item/summoner spell drops from minions.
Akali's issues, on the other hand, are mostly just generic champion release balancing (which basically every champion has needed on rework/release, with the only exception coming to mind being Warwick's rework) and a proplay discrepancy (which I suspect might actually just be a case of Rivenitis - when a champion is useless unless you OTP her in which case she's really fucking strong and can basically 1v9). There's some frustration, yeah, but mere frustration does not mean there's significant issues.
Dynikus1 votesA lot of champions have everything you mentioned with the exception of stealth.
Remove stealth under turrets, make it take longer to go back into stealth, buff her somewhere else. congrats, you now have a reasonably balanced champion.
Kai Guy1 votesHonestly just make it so her Re-stealth is gated by Level. Reduces a lot of power in her early-mid game dives if tower can get 2 shots off. Makes W more into a defensive play as folks can trade back in lane as well, with the energy return being situationally usefully for aggression.
DuskDaUmbreon1 votesHer stealth under turret exists so she can dive.
Her burst rotation is actually really long for an assassin. Talon, LB, Rengar, Zed, Fizz, Ahri, Eve...They all have lower burst times (from risk start to end of combat, that is - meaning Eve waiting for W to cook does not qualify as part of that burst window, although it is part of the reaction window, nor does Fizz waiting for R to pop, etc.) than Akali does.
Her R hiding her under turret can be frustrating, but I'd rather that than the alternative of her being outright tankier (to actually survive the turret shots that her kit doesn't let her avoid) or bursting fast as fuck (so that she doesn't have to spend a consistently lethal amount of time under turret). It's a necessary evil, at its core.
PhearBunny1 votesOverloaded has been the standard, pretty much ever since Yasuo. Im actually amazed that Neeko is a mechanically balanced champion(Just overtuned on the numbers).
The thigh guy2 votesOverloaded has been the standard, pretty much ever since Yasuo. Im actually amazed that Neeko is a mechanically balanced champion(Just overtuned on the numbers).
Why can’t they just make champions like kayn. Dude has been balanced since release and isn’t crazy overloaded, while still managing to have a nice high skill ceiling.
