Akali nerfs on "rework" why?

My Waifu Vanilla·10/19/2016, 7:38:09 PM·6 votes·892 views

Twin Disciplines (Passive) - [reworked into a two hit passive]: Now gives Akali's next two attacks bonus effects (base values scale with lvl) then goes on cooldown. First strike restores 10-170 (+70% bonus AD) health. Her second strike (within 4 seconds) deals 14-70 (+45% AP) magic damage. Cooldown for empowered attacks is 8-5 seconds based on level.

Twilight Shroud (W): Now teleports Akali to cast location and leaves a shroud where she was before. Range = 250 Cast time increased to .35 from .25 Duration changed to 4/5/6/7/8 seconds from 8 seconds at all ranks

Crescent Slash (E): Cooldown changed to 5/4.5/4/3.5/3 from 5/4/3/2/1 Damage changed: NEW: [70/100/130/160/190 (50% AP)(70% Bonus AD)] OLD: [30/55/80/105/130 (40% AP)(60% total AD)

Shadow Dash (R): Damage changed to 50/100/150 (+25% AP) from 100/175/200 (+50% AP) Cooldown changed to 2 second at all ranks and is no longer affected by CDR from 2/1.5/1.

I don't understand the direction with these changes at all. The passive is basically a straight downgrade out of lane since the heal on the first auto doesn't do anything if you are at the start of a fight (you are anywhere near full health) and the on-hit on the second hit is just a downgrade from the permanent on-hit she had before. The heal is kind of useful in lane, but it is still arguably worse than just straight spellvamp on Q+Auto.

Cool you get a dash on W, but the duration nerf is odd and the changing duration makes for very hard for people to read how long you are going to be stealthed. Imagine if Zhonya's duration scaled with champion level.....it is close to the same concept except not NEARLY as "broken".

E is a straight nerf where it does less damage overall due to the AD ratio getting changed to bonus (your base AD ratio almost made up for the added 60 damage). Triple the cd at max rank and having to actually buy meaningful AD for it to be worth makes it now an unviable first max in losing lanes.

The ult.....I just don't understand at all. Lowering the base AND the scaling means that yes, it won't kill anyone anymore with "just kicks", but you aren't killing much of anything when they hit all of your damaging abilities besides Q with zero compensation. Also, it having a fixed cd of 2 seconds makes it rather....awkward since 2 seconds is a rather long time and makes you EXTREMELY easy to disengage off of.

Akali's early game was already bad enough and she was incredibly feast or famine, but at least in a losing match up you could always max E and waveclear to stand a chance and still get a kill with your relatively high bases. Now you need to just buy straight AP in order to get a kill...and even then your ratios are pretty bad with the 0.25 ratio on ult now. Akali is now going to end up having AP Ekko's problem of being item reliant as hell but having no ways to get the gold to get the items. Lowering her bases means she isn't getting early kills against competent players and removing E's reliable waveclear means that farming creeps isn't a fallback so there is no real "way" to get AP at a decent time to actually kill anyone outside of tp'ing bot lane to kill 2 half health laners if they let you. You now have to rely on your opponent being bad more than your own skill since as it stands you probably aren't killing your lane opponent unless they let you unload your combo 3-4 times in a row.

I understand that Akali isn't in the healthiest state right now (130k mastery almost), but just lowering her damage across the board for a mediocre dash on W as "compensation" in order to make her even MORE feast or famine (which is yet again arguable since they halved R's AP ratio so the "feast" part got nerfed in the end) is definitely not a step in the right direction. The assassin update was all about "emphasizing strengths and weaknesses while making skillful plays", but I don't see where my strengths are as Akali when half the assassin roster does the same thing as Akali or more.

6 Comments

Jesus Is My King10/19/2016, 9:13:17 PM2 votes

i hate riot so much right now because of this bull shit. i agree man, they killed her. Rest in peace my one trick. Akali

SpongebobIsLife10/19/2016, 7:40:58 PM1 votes

i think they are trying to put her in an even more unplayable position she is now, until they can give her a full vgu.

Narvuntien10/20/2016, 5:05:36 AM1 votes

I think is all comes down to what you want out of Akali, what is her identity and what makes her Akali?

Do you remember her heyday? The best way to describe it was that akali made killing look like art... Jump in kill, smoke, run one away, then jump back to someone else run the other way.. then duke into the bush and back into the smoke then bamn jump onto the squishy... it was amazing when you pulled that off. I did it once I felt like a god.

I think the rework is trying to recapture this. Just jumping onto one person and killing them in one shot is not actually what Akali is about.

I am not sure about her current rework is at doing that though. I think from all the evidence I have seen that they might of nerfed her damage too much, she needs to have to get kills to keep jumping about and that is why, hopefully even with this play style, tank Akali shouldn't be as big a problem as Tank Ekko who has a very short cool down blink.

I think what she needs is an excute on her abilities somewhere, chip chip chip away and bamn dead. reset on jumps lets go again... perhaps that would make the danger of tank akali worse though.

Oh perhaps she should have the little counter that Annie and Jhin have, for how many jumps she has and you can always keep track of how many she has.