Akali and Yi are well-balanced reset assassins

XinZhao2WinNhao·Jun 2, 2015·1 votes·353 views

-Their resets have counterplay available. Akali is reset to 2 seconds cooldown on her ult, and Yi is only reset 70% per kill/assist. This gives them a good reset, but also counterplay options for enemies -They use energy/mana. -They can snowball when strong and still, but they can still be outplayed due to the 2 reasons above

Darius is also well-balanced in terms of kit, but I feel like Darius's reset mechanic only on kill and not on assist seems to encourage intentional KS or witholding DPS until the last hit

16 Comments

Troy242621Jun 2, 20152 votes

Balanced? Sure, both of them are. Well designed? Only one is. You can figure out which one I mean on your own.

(Hint: It's not Akali)

Akali is SO HOTJun 2, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Balanced? Sure, both of them are. Well designed? Only one is. You can figure out which one I mean on your own.

(Hint: It's not Akali)

Akali doesn't actually have bad design. She just pubstomps noobs too easily (not as easily as Yi though) because people don't know what pink wards, red trinket, and cc are.

Vistha KaiJun 2, 20152 votes

Last time I checked Pink Ward didn't have a damage reduction aura.

insaiyanbaccaJun 2, 20151 votes

last i checked akali's got removed

Troy242621Jun 2, 20153 votes

She's binary and point-click. She isn't well designed in the slightest. IDC that she can abuse stupid plays, plenty of champions can do that.

3TWarriorJun 2, 20151 votes

well, her strengths are in her bursts and ability to chase, but in reality, she is easy to focus, becomes visible for a long enough period of time when she attacks that you can even auto attack her. She is only invisible in her shroud and she deals entirely magic damage

katarina does more than akali but she's squishier due to not having spell vamp and suffers from th e same magic damage problem

Akali can do wonders in a team fight because she can hide and fight at will, but if the fight moves off of her shroud, she loses her durability, movespeed bonus, and invisibility

if you max cooldown reduction on akali, her E will have about 1.2 seconds on it and allow for 5 uses before her energy is used up

personally, a good tank or fighter or mage wrecks akali, examples are chogath, ryze, sejuani, annie, riven, brand, xerath, ziggs(his minefield is a big deterrent), mage kogmaw, then of course alistar, who can heal his team of some of her damage and can stun in an area of effect while being tanky enough to engage the whole team for a bit with his ult...and i'm tired of thinking of others XD , oh, malzahar is a big one

malzahar can make his W cause 15% of anyone's health per second in an area of effect and his ult can do over 1000 damage

XinZhao2WinNhaoJun 2, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Balanced? Sure, both of them are. Well designed? Only one is. You can figure out which one I mean on your own.

(Hint: It's not Akali)

I like Akali's design. I almost always main AD, but Akali is one of the only 2 AP champions that I would play. She has complex design (like her double trigger Q and her two-part passive) and simple game play mechanics with more complex strategic possibilities, which is what I like. The complex design makes her unique and interesting, but unique doesn't mean you can't be a simple champion. I think simplicity has its place. not every champion has to have multiple skillshots, point and click champs are good to play too

3TWarriorJun 2, 20151 votes

katarina does more than akali but she's squishier due to not having spell vamp and suffers from th e same magic damage problem

Akali can do wonders in a team fight because she can hide and fight at will, but if the fight moves off of her shroud, she loses her durability, movespeed bonus, and invisibility

if you max cooldown reduction on akali, her E will have about 1.2 seconds on it and allow for 5 uses before her energy is used up

malzahar can make his W cause 15% of anyone's health per second in an area of effect and his ult can do over 1000 damage

jDVL20eCYsJun 2, 20151 votes

ZileanUltJesusOPJun 2, 20151 votes

yes lol both need to be plenty fed to pub stomp your team. Akali is absolutely worthless with no kills as she just jumps on the adc in a team fight and gets cced and explodes. Yi is a little better, without kills he still does good damage with his e however he has no escape no invisibility no cc. He can be cced easily and is squishy. Yes if you feed them they absolutely trash your team but thats because they are assassins. Its their job.

XinZhao2WinNhaoJun 2, 20151 votes

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yes lol both need to be plenty fed to pub stomp your team. Akali is absolutely worthless with no kills as she just jumps on the adc in a team fight and gets cced and explodes. Yi is a little better, without kills he still does good damage with his e however he has no escape no invisibility no cc. He can be cced easily and is squishy. Yes if you feed them they absolutely trash your team but thats because they are assassins. Its their job.

this is what im saying. they are high-risk high reward, but they are well-designed as assassins who do the job of assassins

67chromeJun 2, 20151 votes

Only Yi out of those 3 is really in a good state of balance, as balance essentially comes down to numbers, and the numbers on Akali and Darius are not as high as they really should be.

Besides that counterplay is a separate thing than balance, as are most design flaws (anti-patterns being another). You can't confirm a champion as balanced because they have counter-play, because the two don't relate that closely. And on counter-play: that's the main issue with Akali and Darius. Akali doesn't offer much reflexive or tactical counter-play if she can kill potentially kill you, because all you can do in that situation is never get near her, or hope your allies can peel her off of you. Otherwise her counters are denying her CS early, building MR, and playing a team-fight comp that will probably AoE CC bombard her to death without trying - all of which are pretty drawn-out strategies you generally aren't going to adjust to a single enemy. She's all fun and games to fight as someone like Darius who can build straight into MR itemization and plonk a pink ward down in her cloud: but giving hard-counters vs. her to fighter/tanks and nothing much to squishies is essentially why Riot pushed Akali into a bad state of balance.

Darius is also well-balanced in terms of kit, but I feel like Darius's reset mechanic only on kill and not on assist seems to encourage intentional KS or witholding DPS until the last hit

No re-setting deal on assists does kind of suck for him.

That said - Darius is a fighter, which is as much a kill-based roll as a marksman, assassin, or mage. Rather than ranged DPS or mobile DPS he's tanky DPS. Darius landing a killing blow isn't the same kind of thing as a tank or support landing a killing blow, doing that is actually Darius's job. Darius basically only brings the heat to team-fights and only secures objectives if he kills enemy champions as well, where the poke/harass on mages and marksman can allow them to chip away at enemies enough to force them off objectives, or even steal objectives an enemy team is trying to defend.

Kill-stealing in regards to Darius strikes me as something that just carries the wrong connotation and implied issues to bring up in terms of his gameplay or balance. He technically does it (like all marksman and especially mages and assassins): but it's pretty much a 100% beneficial thing for his team when it happens.

XinZhao2WinNhaoJun 2, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Only Yi out of those 3 is really in a good state of balance, as balance essentially comes down to numbers, and the numbers on Akali and Darius are not as high as they really should be.

Besides that counterplay is a separate thing than balance, as are most design flaws (anti-patterns being another). You can't confirm a champion as balanced because they have counter-play, because the two don't relate that closely. And on counter-play: that's the main issue with Akali and Darius. Akali doesn't offer much reflexive or tactical counter-play if she can kill potentially kill you, because all you can do in that situation is never get near her, or hope your allies can peel her off of you. Otherwise her counters are denying her CS early, building MR, and playing a team-fight comp that will probably AoE CC bombard her to death without trying - all of which are pretty drawn-out strategies you generally aren't going to adjust to a single enemy. She's all fun and games to fight as someone like Darius who can build straight into MR itemization and plonk a pink ward down in her cloud: but giving hard-counters vs. her to fighter/tanks and nothing much to squishies is essentially why Riot pushed Akali into a bad state of balance.

No re-setting deal on assists does kind of suck for him.

That said - Darius is a fighter, which is as much a kill-based roll as a marksman, assassin, or mage. Rather than ranged DPS or mobile DPS he's tanky DPS. Darius landing a killing blow isn't the same kind of thing as a tank or support landing a killing blow, doing that is actually Darius's job. Darius basically only brings the heat to team-fights and only secures objectives if he kills enemy champions as well, where the poke/harass on mages and marksman can allow them to chip away at enemies enough to force them off objectives, or even steal objectives an enemy team is trying to defend.

Kill-stealing in regards to Darius strikes me as something that just carries the wrong connotation and implied issues to bring up in terms of his gameplay or balance. He technically does it (like all marksman and especially mages and assassins): but it's pretty much a 100% beneficial thing for his team when it happens.

I'm just saying. Katarina's job is to kill too but she gets resets on assists as well, so why not Darius? The fact that he only resets on kills makes me withhold DPS so that I can be sure to get the last hit when I play Darius. Thats why I don't play a lot of Darius.

I think Akali is pretty well balanced. While she is fighting, she can only attack 1 at a time, so theres a big chance for your team to kill her while shes attacking the one. You don't need a major MR and CC team, you just need other teammates to attack her while she's assassinating the squishy, which is her job and she is good at it, but you don't need the whole team to coordinate their picks on just stopping her in order to stop her. Also, Akali runs out of energy quite easily too. Not getting near her isn't your only option, but as an assassin, of course she can kill a carry quickly with burst. that is her job after all