I like removing Akali's true stealth, but something feels a little off

PopcornBunni··1 votes·1,475 views

On the PBE, Akali has changes aimed to bring her to a point where its actually possible to balance her. One of the changes is the removal of her "obscurity" or as its more popularly known "true stealth" from her W. In its place, she has normal invisibility , meaning she can be revealed by abilities like TwistedFate ult or LeeSin Q. It also means that if she's in turret range she can be targeted by autos and spells from enemies.

All good, I have no issues bringing the move more in line with Talon's ult since it IS a basic ability and the true stealth mechanic was a major breaking factor for her.

However, something about a ninja throwing a smoke bomb when spotted and remaining spotted afterward doesn't sit right. What I mean is that, when revealed with the aforementioned abilities, whether she is stealthed already or not, her W won't grant its effects. Well there's no issue there techincally speaking because that's what true sight abilities do. However, if I"m playing a ninja with a smokebomb and get spotted, I would expect, ,mechanically, that throwing the smoke bomb would remove the vision.

Now if she gets effected by vision-granting abilities after casting her W I think they should still work as normal. They are meant to grant vision in such cases afterall. Specifically, casting W would only remove vision debuffs Akali already has on her. IF she Ws early, say, for the energy refresh or near the start of a fight, TF or Rengar or LeBlanc or Lee Sin could use their abilities afterward to counter her stealth. In the same vein, she could hold onto her W to remove current vision at the expense of having to stay low on energy or unable to position freely with the stealth.

This would only also effect true sight debuffs from champions. Wing when a turret sees Akali wouldn't have a debuff to remove (visible as the rotating cooldown boxes when, say LeeSin Qs her). True Sight-granting tethers would still apply their effects and still obviously tether where she is without granting the sight, same with Lulu pix hovering over her even when stealthed.

So,

3 Comments

iiGazeii1 votes

I mean, if we're going from how things "feel", it goes the other way, too. If somebody uses a magic ability to keep eyes on the elusive ninja, that ability should keep working through a smoke bomb.

From a balance perspective, I think keeping things simple (as simple as Akali can get, I guess) is the right way to go. No special interactions or weird vision-cleanse effects, just simple invisibility.

They just buffed the cooldown of her shroud from 25 to 20 seconds. Combined with the fact that the cooldown starts on cast, she'll have 25% uptime on her shroud at rank 1, versus live, where she has 17% uptime. Her shroud will be active almost twice as much as it was before, so I think it's fine to let her be reveal-able if she gets lots of opportunities to use it.

PopcornBunni1 votes

She would still be revealed under this proposition.

Lapantino1 votes

if they are going to remove true stealth they must increase the size of the cloud 2 times, because it's impossible to hide in this little circle without true stealth

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