How I would change Akali

Akali is... frustrating to play against. She has burst damage, sustained damage, several types of CC, mobility, and the ability to render herself totally invisible, even to towers. She can jump in and kill somebody under turret with no ult or summoners.

I don't want to gut Akali, but there are a few things in her kit that I think should be tweaked so that counterplay exists in her kit, and so that Akali can't just have it all with one build.

Assassin's Mark

• Akali must cross the edge of the ring from either side in order to activate Swinging Kama; simply being outside of it is not enough. She gains the movement speed moving towards the edge while within the circle, and in a 500-unit distance from the outside edge, indicated by a lighter circle on the ground.

Swinging Kama

• Bonus AD scaling increased to 100% (was 90%)
• AP scaling decreased to 60% (was 70%)
• Bonus attack range changed to 100 + (33% AP) (was 125)

Five-Point Strike

• Bonus AD scaling increased to 75% (was 65%)
• AP scaling reduced to 40% (was 50%)
• Slow changed to a 10%/25%/40%/55%/60% (+1% per 2 AP) slow decaying over 1 second (was a flat 50% slow for 0.5 seconds)

Twilight Shroud

• No longer restores energy on-cast
• Akali's energy regeneration is increased by 8/9/10/11/12 energy per second while she is in the smoke.

Perfect Execution

• Damage flipped between casts; the first cast is magic damage that scales with AP, the second is physical damage that scales with bonus AD.
• First cast stun duration reduced to 0.1 seconds (+0.1 seconds per 40 AP) (was 0.5 seconds)
• Second cast bonus damage changed to 0%-150% (+1% per 3 bonus AD) bonus damage based on the target's missing health (was 0%-200% bonus damage)

The philosophy here is simple: AD gives Akali more damage than AP, while AP gives her more CC and range.

The change to Assassin's Mark makes it behave a bit more like you'd expect it to. Currently, if Akali lands her Shuriken Flip from outside where the ring is created, she automatically gets the empowered auto. This change forces her to get back into mid-range with her target in order to get that Swinging Kama attack.

The AP/AD scalings have been adjusted both on Swinging Kama and on Five-Point Strike. Building AP would give Akali slightly less damage output than before, which also means less waveclear, less healing, and less poke.

Swinging Kama starts off with less bonus range, but an AP Akali would gain increasing range as the game progressed. This would let her play further out from her target and get that empowered attack off for easier energy regeneration and safer damage. An AP Akali would be more mage-like, able to use her abilities more often and deal damage from further away.

The slow of Five-Point Strike not only scales with the ability's rank, meaning early-game Akali will have a tougher time catching enemies out, but the slow also scales with AP. A decaying slow over a longer duration makes the slow feel smoother, and gives Akali more time to get in range of her target, but the overall distance the target can move will be better for the target until Akali builds a good chunk of AP.

The change to Twilight Shroud forces Akali to commit to her position in order to get the energy regeneration. If she just sits in it for the entire duration, she'll get comparable energy to its use before, but if the enemy can force her out, she'll get less energy back. Additionally, if Akali weaves in and out to get a longer duration, she has the potential to get more energy back, but this requires her to both stay for longer and reveal where she's hiding in the smoke.

Finally, the change to Perfect Execution sticks to the philosophy of these changes and gives AP Akali a better stun, but AD Akali a better execute. The mage-like AP Akali gets a great tool for setting up her Shuriken Flip and keeping enemies in place for her combos, but needs to get her enemies lower to finish them off than AD Akali would.

The intention is not to nerf Akali, but to accentuate her hybrid status. It's should matter what items you pick. Gunblade into Zhonya's is the standard Akali build, i.e., AP Akali, but these changes would open up the option of instead building AD for a different playstyle or situation. These changes add counterplay by giving her a weaker early game and gating her energy regeneration behind remaining in her cloud, but also making her late-game stronger and giving her more build variety.