Anybody else feel bad for Akali?
She's got nothing going for her anymore. She has no escape, she takes ages to do her job now, she has next to no teamfight potential, her counterplay is 100G (or 250G at level 9 for a permanent solution), she has mediocre scaling, no bulk to back up her pitiful sustain (she still explodes within a split second), her in-lane counter primarily consists of any assassin since they all do her job far better now (and of course the obvious choice of spammable AoE).
Like, what does she have that others don't now?
A reset on her ult? Diana has that with the added protection of an AP scaling shield.
Invisibility? Talon has that and it allows him to actually be able to move out of a fight instead of keeping him stuck in one little circle where the enemy can massacre you once they set down a ward (or just AoE bomb you to death).
Spammable AoE on an assassin? Yeah, I guess that almost 1 second E is nice - except that it only does physical damage and so come any kind of lategame your resistance shredding isn't going to do jack (unless you build Black Cleaver, which in that case now only your E is about to be doing damage).
Charges that you can place on enemies to burst for more damage than usually set aside for a Q? Well, that'd be nice if your auto-attack speed wasn't piss poor and took you a full extra second to swing for a kill - unlike, you know, Kat that can just Q/W.
Chase potential? Too bad Luden's exists now to allow any of your primary victims to speed away from you after throwing out poke on poke on poke - and too bad that you building Luden's basically dooms you to dying over and over again as you have no possible way to make up for being a melee, escape-less assassin if you also have zero bulk.
And let's not also forget that now a lot of those mages straight outrange you anyhow thanks to your ult distance being nerfed to near-useless. In fact, one of your main sources of prey, Xerath, is now completely free to wreck your shit thanks to you having no reliable way to catch him out (unless he's just being straight up stupid). Oh, but Diana also does that better with an 825 distance jump ult. Not to mention she also scales in damage better with hers and has absolutely no delay on reactivation, so if that's all you need to finish somebody off before they finish you off is one last R, well... sucks to be you.
Like, I hardly ever play Akali in either case, but it struck me today that I see Diana bumping out basically every other assassin in the game to do their job for them because she does it ten times better, and her kit is eerily similar to how Akali's works - jump someone, blow them up, get dat reset booty. Just that Diana does it faster. And bulkier. And she doesn't suddenly become worthless if somebody doesn't die in that time frame. And she has 830 ranged poke to whittle down targets with first. And she has survivability that isn't so flawed that it goes away with a pink.
As much as Akali frustrated me, I'm watching her sit on the sidelines while another champ just sits in the limelight being equally - if not more - obnoxious. And even if Akali was obnoxious, it's never fun to see what could potentially be somebody's favorite champ be completely and utterly worthless when compared to others in all possible situations.
Riot, you really need to give another glance over Akali because this... really is just sad.
