Why was akali's passive changed in the first place?

Based off the feedback that akali players gave, both low elo and high elo, that was clearly not the issue with her kit. So why was it changed?

To make it better? Maybe the empowered bonus magic damage is great but the heal scaled far better when it granted her spellvamp.

To add difficulty to the champion? I mean procing the Auto's with no dashes is difficult but it isn't rewarding to proc it either. Not strong enough to make a power difference and certainly doesn't make you feel like "Wow, I really played that well. I'm proud of myself."

About the only thing that makes sense with is Riot wanted to make the passive more interactive and fit into the theme of "Twin Disciplines" but all that really accomplished was to make the champion worse.

Seems like one of those cases where Riot had their hands full with other champion projects, and couldn't get proper work done. So, they came up with a "band aid" fix to reinvigorate the champion for a short time while they try to get around to a proper analysis and reconstruction. Unfortunately, if that is the case then I think they missed the mark by quite a bit.