As an Akali Main, Here are my thoughts

I've played league since season 1 off and on, and over the course of my time playing, I've played Akali quite substantially, and as the title of the post suggests, Akali is my main. In light of the recent changes made to Akali to try to balance her out and not make her an easy pub-stomping snowball of death, I understand the attempts made by riot to try and balance her, and I actually endorse it, but I don't think Riot has taken into account all the effects of the changes they put into place. Here are my current thoughts on Akali in her current state.

Thoughts On The Recent (and not so recent) Changes

1. The Largest and most obvious change is that Akali's Q is no longer triggered by her E, and although this may be viewed as a small change by some, anyone who has played Akali enough both pre-update and post-update will notice a LARGE change in the time it takes to land her burst damage. In a game like league of legends, even seconds (even 1 second) can matter a WHOLE lot when it comes to damage. The problem here is that with the E no longer triggering her Q, you cannot pull off the one of the most common lain pressure combos which is Q, wait a moment until Q is about to pop up again, then R onto the champ, E, then Q again, and auto attack. This effectively doubles her burst damage from her Q allowing you to double proc the Q within a short period of time, and this is the main thing that contributed to her early game lane pressure. Akali, being an assassin champion, is centralized on dealing burst damage, but in regards to this change the Q moves her in the opposite direction by toning that burst timing down. I do agree her burst damage in a small window was very high, so this change is fine, BUT ONLY if the necessary rebalance is added. I'm talking about BASE STAT CHANGES.

2. An additional change was the nerf on the range of shadow dance which is totally fine with me since it pretty much shut down anyone who was virtually within a half mile radius of akali, and the amount of zoning pressure it applied was upredictable and rather toxic for other players to play against (I've landed tons of kills with that amazing pre-update ulti just because my enemy doesn't anticipate its range when they come in to try and farm). This change I completely support, as a successive multi dash like this was a bit overpowered when coupled with the high range and multiple activations. This change, for the most part, I do like, and the following change to the Ultimate to cause Akali to pop out on the other side of the enemy has actually compensated for the nerfed range by making it easy to land the following damage on your target. Once i got used to it, I actually really enjoyed this change (especially cuz' I can do some awesome jukes now xD).

3. Though this change was quite some time ago, Twilight shroud acted as a key component in Akali's kit giving the squishy assassin the unpredictability and defensive utility she desperately needed. This twilight shroud was reworked removing the MR, and Armor bonus it once gave, applying a vision component to the shroud (allowing you to peer over walls at enemies who might flash over or what not), and of course a movement speed buff was added. I think the defensive reduction was well warranted considering Akali is an Assassin and not a bruiser, so having the mobility makes more sense stylistically than having a bonus to her defenses out right, but my main problem with this is that the subsequent buff to the twilight shroud giving it the mobility boost is almost non-noticeable entirely. The movement speed buff duration is so insignificant and only applies to her each time she becomes cloaked when she was previously uncloaked, meaning that you gain a very tiny movement speed boost for a brief second after attacking or initially moving into the shroud and such. Akali being a MOBILE assassin and that being her primary distinguishing play-style component is not reinforced by this unnoticeable movement speed buff. If the movement speed buff was longer (maybe 2-3 seconds) and maybe toned a bit down in the value of the movement speed buff, it could make the mobility component of her twilight shroud feel much more impacting and could help in getting those awesome jukes, or follow ups on your opponents!

4. The last change in this list is the change to Akali's E. Outside of the change that makes her E no longer trigger her Q, her E has been compensated with a much faster CD than before, and it becomes very noticeable at higher levels (max level has a 1 second base cooldown!) Now this change is rather strange to me, because the burst component on Akali was toned down, but by having a 1 second AOE sweep around her, it feels almost as if she is meant to do sustained damage, particularly because this ability is on a 1 second cooldown. Now i know there is limitations because of the fact that Akali has only so much energy, so spamming her E isn't much of a worry as it would be on a mana-based or other resource/resourceless based champ, but in all honesetly I feel like this is completely out of place. Let me give you an example. Skarner who is a tank, and will stay in the fight long who is built to add CC, and consistent but low damage to opponents has an attack that feels just like this new E. Akali's E has effectively turned into Skarner's AOE crystal slash. Mind you, Skarner's Q is a bit longer cooldown than Akali's E, but the abilities serve almost the same purpose whether they were meant to or not. An AOE consistent damage dealing ability which is most effective on bruisers or tanks. Akali having such an ability was the result of the two changes that were made to make her less oppressive but still relevant. The problem is that Akali IS NOT a Bruiser, so it doesn't even fit into her kit, nor is it nearly as useful on her (except for farming) as it is for other champions!

Suggested Changes That Could Round Out and Fix Akali To Fit Her Identity and Remain Viable

1. The changes to her Q's Interaction with her E is fine simply to reduce her oppressive characteristics she used to have. In order to compensate for this change however, I would suggest a small increase in base attack speed to make it easier to land her follow burst on her Q's and optimize the use of her on-hit passive damage to try and compensate for the drastic decrease in burst timing. The nerf was in the right direction, but as of right now, I feel her burst is still just a tad too slow to be viable against those squishy suppressive CC champions like Syndra or Anivia (even if they miss their other abilities, it's still easy to follow up with a Syndra ulti and another Q simply because Akali is not doing damage fast enough in my opinion).

2. I do like the change to Akali's ultimate, and I don't really think it needs much tweaking. Keeping an eye on the range it's got and how it effectively relates to the role of the ability needs to continue to make sure the ability isn't still too strong or even too weak.

3. In line with Akali's Mobile Assassin theme, a change to her twilight shroud mobility buff to increase the duration to 2-3 seconds and lowering the intensity of the buff slightly would make the ability not only feel more impactful, but give better opportunity and decision making time to use the buff to juke/follow up.

4. This ability is most certainly in need of the biggest change. Although I appreciate the attempts to rebalance akali's Damage out due to the decrease in burst speed, it's a step in the wrong direction, simply because Akali being a single target assassin has this ability being changed to be more useful on doing sustained damage to multiple targets (that's the opposite of how she is designed!). It conflicts with her role and other abilities so my suggestion would be the following. Change Akali's E back to the cooldown it had before the buff, but add a new effect to it. "Champions Akali hits with Crescent Slash receive a bonus X% damage from Akali from all of sources of damage she does." This change attempts to do 2 things. By increasing the CD back to her normal CD time, the ability isn't anymore targeted at sustained AOE damage (something that doesn't fit well into her role), and the second thing, is that this ability attempts to not only boost her burst damage back up again in a measurable and easily tweakable way, but it also gives her E relevance outside of farming (Before the buff to the cooldown, I pretty much only used her E to farm since it was a waste of energy and no longer triggered her Q, as it didn't contribute enough to bother with it unless absolutely necessary).

These were my overall thoughts on the recent changes to Akali (and the twilight shroud change), and I hope, Riot you take the time to finish tweaking my Favorite and Main champion in league! Thanks for reading!