Boards›Gameplay

OK! Serious Akali thread, what is wrong, what is right, what is meh. Contributions encouraged.

THEJJSLAY·5/19/2015, 12:41:11 AM·14 votes·9,237 views

Hi I've mained Akali since season 1 under various other names. I have been seeing talk of Akali needing a rework and frankly that terrifies me when i look at reworks like kassadin. I think it's time we sat down and really talked about this. @Meddler @BaconHawk @Riot @Reworkteams

Rules.) Don't flame the thread. That's it

Positive points (Imo) 1.) You can solo an entire team if you are fed and in a good position 2.) The enemy cannot hit you directly without pinks 3.) Can snowball amazingly well 4.) Large damage output on demand 5.) Requires going in to do damage 6.) Spell vamp fo' days Bad points (Imo) 1.) Feed or famine Akali either is fed as hell or irrelevant
2.) little counter play in lane (and out to lesser extent) 3.) Little skill required (easy to snowball, much like kat) 4.) Hard to catch if you to gank her 5.) Near impossible to get away from if she's on you 6.) Spell vamp fo' days

Meh points (Imo) 1.) Her E is really the only thing that I feel is meh as is in her kit. It serves little other purpose thank farming in the late game and just being a random extra damage spell that has no cohesion after the q proc part of it was removed.

Thoughts? Contributions encouraged.

95 Comments

Solideus5/19/2015, 7:39:52 AM23 votes

Reworking a champion is **not **about making a strong champ weak or vice versa. It's about establishing playpatterns, counterplay, strengths, weaknesses, etc. I think Akali could use a touch-up on those. It should be clear what you're supposed to do when playing against Akali, and that shouldn't be "stay far far away from her".

Imho, remembering to buy a pink ward isn't a very interesting counter to her W.

Spellvamp can be fine, but I've always felt it's problematic on her; it makes her very stat-check-y. It'd be more interesting to focus on her W as her tool for escapes if she's in too deep.

**For example: **Remove Spellvamp. Make W smaller and give it two charges. Make her smokescreen targetable by R. Enemies entering the smoke have lower vision range but Akali is de-stealthed.

That would gives her W a built-in reveal-mechanic; a tactical one rather than a strategic hard-counter one. Engaging enemies have to following her into her smoke to commit for a kill. It also gives Akali the option to escape if she saves one R-dash. Energy-management would be more important. On the other hand, when she engages she is a bit more vulnerable. That forces her to pick her engagements more carefully.

RiotMeddler5/19/2015, 6:21:20 AM15 votes

I don't have much to add at the moment, going to follow this thread with interest though. Akali's a champ we've had trouble balancing over the years, so while we don't currently have a rework for her underway, one's certainly not out of the question at some point. Pretty interested in hearing people's thoughts on her as a result.

Dantilq5/19/2015, 9:32:55 AM10 votes

I feel the biggest issue with Akali is that there is too little things she can do, and even less opponent can do. Playing against Akali, means you either need a team to help kill her, you need to stay far away from her, or you win the stat-check battle against her.

Fighting Akali is closer to a stat-check than anything else, and she have several things that makes her very uninteresting to fight against.

A. She gains lifesteal/spellvamp. This means when she is attacking a squishy she becomes deceptively tanky, and you need to massively outdamage her, and tanks can't kill her, as they rely on wittling opponent down, and she just heals off of them.

B. She turns invisible in her cloud, and it is quite binary in a fight. If you have sweeper or pink ward, the skill become borderline useless to Akali and she turns much much more vulnerable as she relies on waiting for cooldowns a bit. On the other hand if there is no way to see her, she becomes extremely hard to deal with. It's a very binary interaction.

C. More or less a team is required to fight her, but if there is a team around, she struggles big time unless extremely fed. When enemy have exhaust, shields, CC, see-invis, she can't do much about it. She have no fall-back pattern. In case there is not a team, she just kills the target, without much of any interaction, unless she is too weak to do that, then she just fails and can't do much.

D. Limited moments of weakness. Her Q have so short cooldown, it's pretty much always up. Her R being down is just temporary, and with all the stacks she can have it's very hard to play around it, and it's easy for Akali to conserve her stacks until a fight. Ahri have the working version of Akalis ultimate, with clear moments of weakness, and forcing usage of Ahri's ultimate is a big thing. With Akali, forcing usage of one stack is not a big deal, and making her use all her stacks is extremely hard.

E. Low interaction with her. Akali have her main damage tools being her Q and R, both are point and click targeting. If you are within range, you will be hit, and with 3 stacks of her R, you can't escape her, doesn't matter if you have dashs and flash, there is no getting away, as she match your movement with her dashs. Only way to get away is to get under a tower, and win the fight there, or have her give up. There is extremely limited amount of outplay possible against her.

What Akali needs is some combos, more tools, utility and weaknesses. She need to be able to fail, or succeed at a tactical level, and less amount of her power in simple point and clicks. I don't think she can be fixed without a rework, of at least Veigar/Zilean size. Shifting power back and fourth doesn't solve her issues.

LilxPaprika5/19/2015, 1:06:29 AM6 votes

her power output is fine but something is amiss about her kit.

Should add that to the poll.

Godhri5/19/2015, 6:49:41 AM4 votes

I don't main her but I think she is at a good point. The fact that she MUST auto in order to trigger her Q now is a good thing. Before when I used to play akali pre-rework, it was easy for me to win ANY lane match up simply from making plays. I could win against kat, LB, and virtually any other laner aside from Fizz whom I didn't have a chance to face. I haven't really played her enough post-re work so it is hard to say how she is now, but as a well seasoned plat 5 mid main, I can say from general experience and theory crafting that she is in a decent place.

Sure she does high damage still but she is an assassin. This is what she is meant to be doing. That's not the issue. The issue was the counter play and it is definitely more there now than it was before. The need to auto to trigger her Q gives more time for reacting to her. Proper judgment will determine whether you can counteract an engage from her or not. That is, if you're a squishy champion like adc, you really shouldn't be engaging her 1v1 or even 2v1 unless one of you has cc.

To me, she's just like some of the other typical assassins Katarina Talon . They have weak early game but scale well into late game if they are left unchecked. Assassins should scale well into late game, especially with the current meta being a tank meta. Other assassins should follow this example in my opinion; like Leblanc Zed, both of whom are well capable of becoming lane dominant after level 2. Of course this could also be said of Katarina , but she requires a bit more skill to be played as a lane dominating champion at level 2 or 3 (yes this is possible as I've done so on VERY many occasions).

I suppose if you really wanted to make a change on her, you could increase the delay in her ability to recast her ult to give players more breathing room. I mean with her E being at 1 second at max rank, I think it is justifiable to increase her ult delay slightly.

shadowhunter44445/19/2015, 3:50:13 PM3 votes

Akali is the first Champion I bought, and my main up until her recent nerfs (after which I still love her, but have been focusing on improving my top lane play so haven't gotten used to it yet). I feel she's actually in a pretty nice place right now. I enjoy her mechanics, as they go beyond what everyone seems to think about. Sure she's very binary, with few combos and a stat matchup, but the true skill in playing Akali comes in picking your fights, using limited tools to escape rough situations with a bit of luck and positioning, and planning your fights.

Good points for Akali:

Analysis is critical, as you have to decide who to jump on, where you plan to escape, how will you do it, and then evolve that plan as the fight rapidly progresses. I give that the fight itself is very simple, but her planning is more complex than most.

In the new tank meta, a stat-check isn't so bad. It forces Akali to play as an assassin. She shouldn't be trying to take on tanks, she should be on the prowl for squishies. It help to clearly define her role.

She might not have a lot of counterplay, but she's not Zed. You can't just escape from a sticky situation, your actions have consequences. Also, CC her, she's dead.

I find her spell-vamp positive, as it allows her to attack the bursty people that should be her targets in the first place.

Bad points for Akali:

As mentioned above, she has problems with feed-or-famine and binary fights.

Recent changes to her E have made it incoherent with the rest of her kit. That needs to be changed. maybe give it a long cooldown, a high energy cost, and a vortex effect, drawing enemies in to further prevent escape.

Very little counterplay. If you're a squishy champ, you die. If not, you live.

On the negative side of spell-vamp, tanks have a harder time against her, but they usually can just build MR and do fine long enough to fall back to tower or get help.

I realize that I mentioned some points in both categories, but I'm giving the upsides and downsides to those points.

In summary, Akali has problems, but they feed into her strengths and identity. Her E needs work, but otherwise she's pretty solid. I for one would be sorely disappointed if she were reworked.

CrazedPorcupine5/19/2015, 6:31:04 PM3 votes

Honestly, the biggest problem I've always had with Akali, is her insane amount of sustain. When she's strong, she's overwealming, when she's weak, she's situational at best.

With her nerfs to her ult range, and that E doesn't proc Q bonus damage, she's in a decent spot, but because of her innate massive sustain, she's frustrating to play against when she gets ahead, and once she get's ahead, there's not really much you can do about it.

The things that NEED to stay for Akali to be reworked, are her W and her ult. Those two things are super super Iconic to Akali. Her Q is honestly just there to gate her damage and control her gameplay. Her E is just an energy sink and a way to farm late game.

Hell, if the left Akali's kit the same, but made it so that she can't "BUY" spell vamp (IE, no gunblade, no wota, etc.) and forced Akali to build AD for spell vamp, I'd be okay with that.

Subject 55/19/2015, 7:59:17 PM2 votes

Why is the pole little strong/Littleweak/really strong jesus? Pretty bias, she can be strong and really weak it just really depends. Soooooooo edit the pole for situational strength?

Salidfingers5/20/2015, 2:10:32 AM2 votes

I think she needs more energy refunded

Akali is SO HOT5/21/2015, 7:59:51 AM2 votes

Probably gonna farm a lot of downvotes but whatever.

What's really annoying is that nobody really seems to understand her. A lot of common arguments made towards Akali's balance are:

  1. If she has the numbers she kills you.

That can really be said about any Assassin. Leblanc a little fed? You're dead. Zed has an item or two? You're dead. Kat got Luden's with a slight lead? You're dead. Talon? You're dead. And so on and so forth. That's how Assassins work. If they have the numbers and enough items to do a good amount of damage and they miraculously get passed all of the peel the carries get then you should die. That's just how it is with Assassins whether you like it or not

  1. Never ending kill pressure.

The problem with this is that she has no kill pressure whatsoever until level 6. She used to have some kill pressure against melees pre 6 but that ended when E Mota proc was removed. The reality is, although she may have some kill pressure after her ult, other champions have much higher kill pressure throughout the whole game. Leblanc has kill pressure starting from level 2 and on. Kat and Zed can poke you down as they please until they are ready to go in. Fizz has arguably the best level 1 out of all Assassins and once he hits 6 even without his ult up he can still kill you easily. The point is, when compared to other Assassins, Akali's kill pressure is sub par at best.

  1. Muh Spellvamp

All Assassins have some means of staying alive and since her shroud has been nerfed to hell and is hilariously unreliable she needs the spellvamp to help her not get destroyed in fights.

  1. She can pentakill your whole team ezpz xd

No. She really can't unless she completely outplays your whole team or you're just bad. Her teamfight is sub par at best because of how unreliable her shroud is. Another thing people don't understand is that once she's in, she's in. Unless she can jump to a minion (highly unlikely) then she is not getting out. Meanwhile, Leblanc can instantly port back after her job is done, Zed can blink back to his shadow out of a fight when he's done, you can't do jack shit to Kat when she's teleporting all over the place, Fizz has his trollpole, and even Talon has a somewhat reliable escape. Akali doesn't.

Don't forget that she is one of the few Assassins that cannot 100-0 her target unless incredibly fed. She has always been an assassin that takes 2 spell rotations to kill her target meaning you have plenty of time to react in a teamfight. Other Assassins like Zed, Leblanc, and Talon just dump their load on you instantly and you die with little to no time to react. Akali takes much longer making her teamfight all that much weaker.

To be honest even when she's strong she is still one of the weakest Assassins at best. All I really want are for the ult change to be completely reverted (no amount of tinkering with it will ever make it not terrible to play with) and her E to proc Mota again (prep for the downvotes). I honestly don't even want E to proc Mota again just because it would be a buff. I want it to proc it again so her E is actually useful and she doesn't feel clunky as fuck to play as. I used to really love playing Akali but after all these changes she just feels really terrible and I play her less and less because of how clunky she is as well as how unfun she is to play as. Just give her those two things and then you can go ahead and destroy her when you rework her a few seasons from now.

Bring on the downvotes m8s