Boards›Gameplay

Akali Rework

Akali is SO HOT··2 votes·436 views

Edit: Pls no immediate downvote for Akali ;_;

Note that most of these numbers are just estimates or placeholders or whatever

Passive: -Akali's basic attacks deal 6% (+1% per 6 AP) of her attack damage as bonus magic damage. -Akali has a natural 5% Spellvamp -Akali only benefits from 75% of spellvamp gained through runes, masteries, and items

Q: Mark of the Assassin -Cooldown now 5/4.5/4/3.5/3

W: Twilight Shroud -Movement Speed bonus now decays over 1.5 seconds up from 1

E: Shadow Dance -Range: 850 -Cooldown: 22/20/18/16/14 -Cost: 30 Energy at all ranks Active: Akali throws out a kama at a targeted location that passes through minions, monsters, and champions marking all enemies it passes through. Akali can reactivate Shadow Dance to end the ability early. Once the kama reaches the end of its path or is reactivated it explodes and marks all targets hit. Akali then has a few seconds to dash to a target (note that she can only dash to one target and not all of the ones hit in a row). If Akali hits nothing then you suck and her sideboobs get smaller for the remainder of the game. Procs Mota

R: The Power of the Sideboob Passive: Akali gains a natural 5%/7.5%/10% Spellvamp (This is not affected by her passive) Passive: Shadow Dance now holds up to 2/3/4 charges. Cast in between charges is 0.75 seconds Active: For 7 seconds Akali is enraged with the power of the Sideboob and gets the following buffs: -Sideboobs greatly enlarged -Getting a kill or assist grants Akali 0.5/0.75/1 charge of Shadow Dance -Bonus 100 range on Mota -Procing Mota grants an extra 50% Energy -Movement Speed Bonus from Twilight Shroud is increased -Getting a kill or assist during the duration slightly reduces the cooldown

Overview:

  1. No more OP spellvamp but still has enough early on to do something for her. Obviously the numbers on her ult can be tweaked if she gets too ridiculous with the spellvamp.
  2. Her Shadow Dance is now a skillshot (something everyone wanted) so she doesn't have constant kill pressure on you all the time. It is a skillshot now so it gets a little extra range as well as can hold up to 4 charges now at max rank ult as a reward. Right now starting at level 6 all she has to do is wait for 3 charges and then she can zone you for the rest of the laning phase and with this change she can't get more charges immediately making her more bearable to play against during laning.
  3. No more annoying resets all the time except for the 7 or so seconds from her ult so she doesn't always have potential to pentakill your team 1v5.
  4. Mota has a shorter cooldown so she can use it more during her ult which gives her higher kill pressure during her ult. Dashing costs energy so the higher energy return during her ult helps her with that (it starts to add up)
  5. Shroud gets a small buff because it is basically useless right now with how many nerfs it has gotten.

Thoughts?

10 Comments

Lil Soybean2 votes

Primary issue lies in the fact that her passive would actually punish her for making her current #1 most useful/core item, Hextech Gunblade.

Also, I personally find ultimates that are just stat-based rather than actually actives are very dull. She needed more to do with her E - not to have her E scrapped and replaced with what is essentially her ultimate.

And besides, you're underestimating the cost of reliability. An assassin that has to wait for a skillshot to fly through and hit a very specific target out in a teamfight...would be beyond useless. If you tried to make it near-instant like it is now by making the new E skillshot super fast, you'd also make it even less reliable to land. And then you miss one E and you can do literally nothing useful. You just hide in your mist and hope the enemy didn't upgrade a sweeper for 250g, because you're useless.

Basically, you removed her E and her ultimate, then fused them into a much worse version of her current ultimate. She would be even less played (and more failed with) than she is now.

Other notable points: I'm not sure if you changed her Q cooldown, but it looks like you increased it. Her Q being constantly available is extremely necessary for her kit. Increasing the cooldown at all is devastating. Also note that having the mark's duration just barely outlast the cooldown of the mark is essential. It's not a cheese/abuse system; it's the skillful way of trading with her - applying your Q, backing off, waiting for the brief window where your mark is still applied but your Q came off cooldown, and attacking at that instant. Lastly, you didn't account for the fact that you changed her from needing skill point priority in two skills (her ulti and Q being necessary) to needing it in three skills. Basically, if you max your Q to be useful at all like it currently is, then you suffer terribly because your ultimate's function is now on your E. If you max your E, instead, aside from arbitrarily making her have to have a horrible Q in lane to play her, you also completely change her play patterns, which currently revolve entirely around proper use of your Q in lane. (For poking, for cs'ing, for chaining...etc.)

I think in theory you follow the sort of "make something a skillshot so it feels less toxic" template but accidentally completely gutted her into being absolutely useless at the process. The most notable problem being that an assassin who has to shoot out her E and then try to land it on the squishy target in a group of enemies would be horrible at assassinating, which is her job.

Diana has a similar function but also has much heavier burst as well as the tankiness of her shields. Akali's trade off versus Diana is the mobility, essentially; the reliability of quickly dashing to the target. Even then, she's not used compared to Diana now. This rework would make the thought of picking Akali over Diana - of picking Akali at all, ever - probably laughable. Like, pre-buff Urgot tier. You'd be taking her current Veigar'd kit, and Olaf'ing it. Double whammy. Boom. Identity gone and viability gone. All instantly.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lil Soybean,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XTOPfZYz,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2015-04-23T12:08:50.317+0000)

Primary issue lies in the fact that her passive would actually punish her for making her current #1 most useful/core item, Hextech Gunblade.

Also, I personally find ultimates that are just stat-based rather than actually actives are very dull. She needed more to do with her E - not to have her E scrapped and replaced with what is essentially her ultimate.

And besides, you're underestimating the cost of reliability. An assassin that has to wait for a skillshot to fly through and hit a very specific target out in a teamfight...would be beyond useless. If you tried to make it near-instant like it is now by making the new E skillshot super fast, you'd also make it even less reliable to land. And then you miss one E and you can do literally nothing useful. You just hide in your mist and hope the enemy didn't upgrade a sweeper for 250g, because you're useless.

Basically, you removed her E and her ultimate, then fused them into a much worse version of her current ultimate. She would be even less played (and more failed with) than she is now.

Other notable points: I'm not sure if you changed her Q cooldown, but it looks like you increased it. Her Q being constantly available is extremely necessary for her kit. Increasing the cooldown at all is devastating. Also note that having the mark's duration just barely outlast the cooldown of the mark is essential. It's not a cheese/abuse system; it's the skillful way of trading with her - applying your Q, backing off, waiting for the brief window where your mark is still applied but your Q came off cooldown, and attacking at that instant. Lastly, you didn't account for the fact that you changed her from needing skill point priority in two skills (her ulti and Q being necessary) to needing it in three skills. Basically, if you max your Q to be useful at all like it currently is, then you suffer terribly because your ultimate's function is now on your E. If you max your E, instead, aside from arbitrarily making her have to have a horrible Q in lane to play her, you also completely change her play patterns, which currently revolve entirely around proper use of your Q in lane. (For poking, for cs'ing, for chaining...etc.)

I think in theory you follow the sort of "make something a skillshot so it feels less toxic" template but accidentally completely gutted her into being absolutely useless at the process. The most notable problem being that an assassin who has to shoot out her E and then try to land it on the squishy target in a group of enemies would be horrible at assassinating, which is her job.

Diana has a similar function but also has much heavier burst as well as the tankiness of her shields. Akali's trade off versus Diana is the mobility, essentially; the reliability of quickly dashing to the target. Even then, she's not used compared to Diana now. This rework would make the thought of picking Akali over Diana - of picking Akali at all, ever - probably laughable. Like, pre-buff Urgot tier. You'd be taking her current Veigar'd kit, and Olaf'ing it. Double whammy. Boom. Identity gone and viability gone. All instantly.

All very good points. Here are my thoughts on the post:

  1. I think there really isn't much you can do with her current E. It does minimal damage and costs a hefty amount of energy. No matter what you really do with it it will never be interesting or fun to use. I've thought of a ton of ways to try to fix it but all of them don't really seem fun or useful in anyway and really the only thing to do with the ability is to scrap it. If you have any ideas for a new E I would love to hear them however.

  2. As for the spellvamp restriction I think it is necessary if you want to keep it in her kit. It's just like how Yasuo's crit works. Crit is so powerful on him that if he was able to benefit fully from crits he would be bonkers broken. It's not there to make him any less fun or ruin his identity it's there to make it so he isn't retarded op and that's what I'm doing with Akali. It's only a 25%% difference meaning she'll still have an incentive to buy spellvamp on her.

  3. Let's face it. Have 3 targeted dashes in one ability makes her so impossible to get away from that once she gets ahead it is near impossible to deal with her. Most other Assassins you can dash or flash away from but not Akali. You can flash all you want but she'll still catch up to you. Also, don't forget that she still has a very short interval in between casts meaning it won't kill her if she misses an ult charge. What would you think if it worked more like Diana's Q where it marks everyone in it's path and then it would explode at the end or if she reactivated it early? That would make it more reliable. Giving her multiple targeted dashes just really won't work with any kit she has.

  4. I originally lowered the cooldown by 1 second at all ranks but it seemed like people did not want the double Mota proc so I raised it up higher. I do see that it would hurt her and force her to always max Q making her engage really weak so I think lowering it back down would be justified. Since most of the time she will be wanting to max Q first lowering the cooldown on the recharge time for her E would be a good idea as well.

I will update the OP with a few changes after this post.

Edit: And the missile of her E would be fairly quick so she would have a good chance of hitting her desired target but wouldn't be impossible to dodge at the same time.

Lil Soybean1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Akali is SO HOT,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XTOPfZYz,comment-id=00040000,timestamp=2015-04-23T18:03:37.880+0000)

All very good points. Here are my thoughts on the post:

  1. I think there really isn't much you can do with her current E. It does minimal damage and costs a hefty amount of energy. No matter what you really do with it it will never be interesting or fun to use. I've thought of a ton of ways to try to fix it but all of them don't really seem fun or useful in anyway and really the only thing to do with the ability is to scrap it. If you have any ideas for a new E I would love to hear them however.

  2. As for the spellvamp restriction I think it is necessary if you want to keep it in her kit. It's just like how Yasuo's crit works. Crit is so powerful on him that if he was able to benefit fully from crits he would be bonkers broken. It's not there to make him any less fun or ruin his identity it's there to make it so he isn't retarded op and that's what I'm doing with Akali. It's only a 25%% difference meaning she'll still have an incentive to buy spellvamp on her.

  3. Let's face it. Have 3 targeted dashes in one ability makes her so impossible to get away from that once she gets ahead it is near impossible to deal with her. Most other Assassins you can dash or flash away from but not Akali. You can flash all you want but she'll still catch up to you. Also, don't forget that she still has a very short interval in between casts meaning it won't kill her if she misses an ult charge. What would you think if it worked more like Diana's Q where it marks everyone in it's path and then it would explode at the end or if she reactivated it early? That would make it more reliable. Giving her multiple targeted dashes just really won't work with any kit she has.

  4. I originally lowered the cooldown by 1 second at all ranks but it seemed like people did not want the double Mota proc so I raised it up higher. I do see that it would hurt her and force her to always max Q making her engage really weak so I think lowering it back down would be justified. Since most of the time she will be wanting to max Q first lowering the cooldown on the recharge time for her E would be a good idea as well.

I will update the OP with a few changes after this post.

Edit: And the missile of her E would be fairly quick so she would have a good chance of hitting her desired target but wouldn't be impossible to dodge at the same time.

Well there's the problem. You're designing this reworking under the basis of the idea that Akali is currently OP or lacks counterplay and needs to have her strengths punished.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lil Soybean,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XTOPfZYz,comment-id=000400000000,timestamp=2015-04-23T19:29:08.725+0000)

Well there's the problem. You're designing this reworking under the basis of the idea that Akali is currently OP or lacks counterplay and needs to have her strengths punished.

But you see her strengths are what make her lack so much counterplay and have an unhealthy kit and for her to be healthy her strengths need to be punished in some form or way. You either are going to have to nerf spellvamp as a whole or make it less effective for her and the latter would obviously be the best. Basically her two main problems are drain tanking with retarded spellvamp and targeted gapclosers that you can't get away from. The 75% restriction is meant to tone her scaling down while giving her nice base spellvamp to begin with (to keep her spellvamp identity). As for her other problem, targeted dashes that you can't get away from, I can't really fix it without making it a skillshot. I do see the reliability issues but other than making it a skillshot I don't see a way of fixing it. Can you suggest some changes you would like to see? I think this rework is alright so far but not close to being done yet.

Lil Soybean1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Akali is SO HOT,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=XTOPfZYz,comment-id=0004000000000000,timestamp=2015-04-24T04:21:19.173+0000)

But you see her strengths are what make her lack so much counterplay and have an unhealthy kit and for her to be healthy her strengths need to be punished in some form or way. You either are going to have to nerf spellvamp as a whole or make it less effective for her and the latter would obviously be the best. Basically her two main problems are drain tanking with retarded spellvamp and targeted gapclosers that you can't get away from. The 75% restriction is meant to tone her scaling down while giving her nice base spellvamp to begin with (to keep her spellvamp identity). As for her other problem, targeted dashes that you can't get away from, I can't really fix it without making it a skillshot. I do see the reliability issues but other than making it a skillshot I don't see a way of fixing it. Can you suggest some changes you would like to see? I think this rework is alright so far but not close to being done yet.

Again, the problem. You're presupposing the lacks counterplay. Aside from being super squishy and melee, her defense (mist) was nerfed, and then her stealth was indirectly nurfed even further by making trinket upgrades cost only 250g. For 250G, from level 9 onwards, you can make her W essentially useless. She's incredible susceptible to CC, and can't do much versus tanks. (And even less against bruisers. Try playing Akali versus an enemy Darius.)

The problem with her kit wasn't that she was too strong - she was only oppressively strong when fed, which applies to most champions - the problem was how reliably/easily she could get fed. The recent nerfs heavily, heavily toned down that reliability, while also turning her crap-tier laning phase into cower-in-terror-tier.

Basically, she was too easily at getting snowballing. That was the problem that made her overbearing.

Now she's not easy to get snowballing at all, theoretically returning her to a proper balanced (actually weak) state. Her current weakness is further exacerbated by us being in the tank meta, where she can be obliterated/locked down instantly from all sides by people who she's unable to kill if she tries to assassinate a squishy.

They dealt with the problem, but left her in too weak of a state. It has nothing to do with lack of counterplay. Just that she was too easy to snowball with before.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

Prepping for downvotes

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

b

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

b >_>

GloriousKaiser1 votes

How about you try to spice up her passive like with all the new reworks. Stat passives are getting stale and only provide just that, stats. They provide nothing for champion identity, and they are extremely boring. See, Xin Zhao's was fun because it made AP Assassinations possible with ult. Besides, limiting her spellvamp gains even though it's a supposed strength seems counter intuitive. If you're going to have a strength, don't limit it like Riot did to Sion and Garen.

Also, no weeb please. You can stay in GD for that.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

{quoted}

How about you try to spice up her passive like with all the new reworks. Stat passives are getting stale and only provide just that, stats. They provide nothing for champion identity, and they are extremely boring. See, Xin Zhao's was fun because it made AP Assassinations possible with ult. Besides, limiting her spellvamp gains even though it's a supposed strength seems counter intuitive. If you're going to have a strength, don't limit it like Riot did to Sion and Garen.

Also, no weeb please. You can stay in GD for that.

The problem with her spellvamp strength though is that with it she can become VERY overbearing with just gunblade. If you are gonna keep the spellvamp aspect of her kit then you are gonna have to limit it somehow if you don't want her to get outta control. Think of it like Yasuo's restrictions. He gets so powerful that he needs a 10% damage reduction on crits and a 25% damage reduction on crits for his Q. It's not counter intuitive it's just there to make sure it doesn't get out of control.

What would you suggest her passive be? All I could think of was the spellvamp aspect of it along with her auto attack steroid but what would you suggest? Always open to them.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Akali is SO HOT

I hope the balance team has learned a valuable lesson from watching worlds 2017
Gameplay145 comments
250
votes
Akali and Shen walk into a bar
General Discussion28 comments
222
votes
Jarvan has been nerfed and Vi has nerfs on PBE
Gameplay119 comments
217
votes
"We're increasing the burst windows for Assassins for counterplay"
Gameplay140 comments
211
votes
Alright Riot you took out a lot of the iconic memes in the game already
Gameplay66 comments
210
votes
Can we give back the "Ninja" buff to all of the Ninjas please?
Gameplay90 comments
205
votes