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Akali Rework

Zerenza·7/17/2018, 2:41:35 AM·1 votes·2,200 views

The Good and The Bad.

Good

  1. She has a higher Skill Ceiling and Higher Outplay Potential, which every assassin usually has.
  2. More Counterplay in the form of more Skillshots, but a stronger lanephase to offset that(which i'll get into)
  3. She looks beautifully well made in terms of Design changes and her playstyle is more like a ninja than any other champion to date.

Like i can't explain how much i love this rework because of how it looks and feels, thematically she's perfect, balance wise we'll need to see but i don't think she'll be as hard to balance as Yasuo and Zoe, she's still an though assassin and assassins that have large outplay potential have a tendency to be difficult to balance, usually riot opts to make them really weak so that only master's of the champions can play them well enough, but again, we will see. I will say this though, i'm much more satisfied with this rework than Aatrox.

The Bad.

  1. Tower Immunity, this is a long one because people don't read abilities.

"While obscured, Akali is stealthed and though her position can be revealed, Akali herself can't be—meaning she can't be targeted by abilities or attacks, including by turrets."

Read that before going any further, what this means is that Single Target Abilities, Auto Attacks and the Like will not hit her in her stealth. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT SHE CANNOT BE REVEALED BY ANY MEANS, THIS JUST MEANS THAT YOU HAVE TO LAND SKILL SHOTS TO HIT HER. This means that while yes being Immobile will suck against her, she's still diving you and the entire time she's revealed, everytime she attacks you she'll still take a turret shot, it won't change much she'll just have more time under tower during a dive than most champions do.

To expand on this though, i do think this ability came at a bad time, tower's are well known for being pretty crappy right now and riot won't do anything to fix it. This makes a lot player's feel like tower's don't even exist, especially when a new ability like this comes to the game.

2 We don't know her base damage and her scaling, considering she's supposed to be a "Hit and Run" style of assassin, like an actual ninja and the tools that she has at her disposal, if the base damage and scaling on her abilities are balanced correctly i think this could be perfect but if their not she's going to be a huge pain and probably end up OP, we will see on her release and balance changes will most likely be applied during her time on PBE just incase.

3 The state of the game right now probably isn't the best time to release this iteration of Akali, the tower diving ability she possesses is on a completely different level than other champions and this coupled with assassins, high mobility and high burst being extremely prevalent in the meta at the moment, also complimented with the lack of real turret presence makes player's feel like the game is becoming to fast and that losing once in lane or picking anything immobile will simply lose you the game outright. Even as an assassin player, i can say i completely understand where your coming from, and i to wish that turrets were stronger, but as player's we can't do much to change it since riot hasn't been listening to as much as they used to.

7 Comments

soniccloud1368/12/2018, 9:54:27 AM2 votes

she needs a balance change and no i don`t mean her w her heal and waveclear sucks compared to the old and her snowball potential is just gone

i would buff her heal and remove the 4 sec cd between her ult but would reduce the damage of it because her r2 is just a stupid amount of damage

Daze Clover7/17/2018, 3:06:15 AM1 votes

can she still be played in top lane

Brutalitops017/17/2018, 3:06:22 AM1 votes

How her new stealth works is that basically the only way to show where she is is to hit her and get the shimmer effect or use some kind of AoE or skillshot push to get her either out of the range or into the center of it as it expands into a donut. Akali players who don't watch this and move outwards as it expands will also make the mistake of revealing themselves, leaving themselves vulnerable to counterattack. Also, any time she attacks you while in stealth, as you mentioned, she will reveal herself for just long enough to take a tower shot and a counterattack.

I personally am not a huge fan of her new BASE skin, but all of the updates for her skins look absolutely beautiful to me and I've already fallen in love with Blood Moon Akali all over again. The animation of the E heavily reminds me of a kusarigama, a real-world ninja weapon that consisted of a sickle (not out of place in the ninja's home because ninja were farmers as a day job) connected to a weight by a chain. The ninja would use this to grapple around enemies with the weight and chain, tie them up, and finish them off with the sickle. The way she swings it is identical to how historical ninja and even modern-day practitioners of the kusarigama martial arts would utilize the weapon. And nothing is more historical ninja than the new W.

Even the new main splash art, which I have seen so many people complain about because she looks sexy in it, is sexy for a reason. This reason is because of the way that female ninja specifically would fight, infiltrating their enemy's home and hiding in place sight as a maiden or mistress. Girls being trained as ninja would, even at a younger age than we in the West would consider acceptable, be trained to use their bodies as a way of seducing men and tricking them into giving up their secrets, then slit their throats and flee back to the ninja village in the dead of night. Why? Because feudal Japan was, like most of the world in their own respective feudal periods, 99% controlled by men, resulting in it being really hard for a woman to get anywhere. And what better way to get secrets and bring the downfalls of horrendous men than by promising them a good time in exchange for the very thing that would lead to their demise? Cue Gaijin: https://youtu.be/MHlzYEu3UDI That video talks about the whole thing as it relates to Senran Kagura, a very highly sexualized Japanese game following female ninja who dress in plain clothes and hide in plain sight, explaining why the copious amounts of fanservice present in these games isn't so farfetched for a female ninja.

dvd051/26/2020, 3:43:47 PM1 votes

this is honestly not very smart akali was in no way op because her whole kit involves skill and the unnecessary nerfs that could be coming are completely overkill while there are so many unbalanced champ you decide to kill akali? her win rate isn’t even crazy high like others riot what’s going on mordekaiser is still broken and your just gonna kill a champ cause some people dislike skill matchups?