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The recent trend of Tank Akali

Scarletmeow·3/24/2016, 12:27:54 AM·2 votes·952 views

Now when I say "Tank " I don't mean get one health/armor/mr item, I mean getting 1 damage item, go full tank, and then they somehow still make your champions existence go "poof" (Looking at you and your fallen brother ) And don't say tank Akali isn't a thing, just google it, it's everywhere, just like that fed Rengar.

I'm not in the highest elo, so that probably has a factor to play on it, but still.. Tanky champions_ generally_ do little to no damage, a bursty champion will generally blow up if they make an incorrect move. If you take a champion whose kit wasn't made with an effective power gauge so to speak, and give them both of these strengths, you now have a champion who rampages through summoners rift never dying while also killing other champions with a poke of the finger (Yes it's exaggerated but you get the picture right?)

I'm making this post mainly to see if others agree with me that the fact that this build works so well (Or at least, it works against the teams I get and play against) is balanced and if you all agree that some change needs to happen. And if you don't agree, maybe you can help a fellow summoner out and tell me how to beat all the Akali's blowing up my ad carries... Please? [zombie-nunu-tears]

Anyways, when I say change, I by no means mean a complete rebalance, maybe a little less free scaling to force any champion who wants burst to actually build the AD/AP to support it. (3 AP items at the very least- seems fair right? again, no idea what I'm doing here) Or maybe make it harder for these champs to go tanky in the first place, reduce base health perhaps? (I never play assassins besides Kha'zix so I wouldn't know too much what would nerf them to the ground and what is in the safe range)

This obviously doesn't go for champs like Sejuani, Maokai or Zac, since their kits already seem to have the power gauge I spoke of earlier. Just throwing that out there before some person see's a full ap Sejuani video and comes here raging. Let her and bristle enjoy the fun okay.

ANYWAYS- I'll be happy to see any kind of reply, and please, keep any discussion constructive! And if you're confused about anything I said, just ask. I have no life and I basically live on the forums. I'll answer.

7 Comments

mogonk3/24/2016, 12:35:54 AM2 votes

Well, for starters, recognize that doing damage to the ADCs isn't the same as "blowing them up". Look at Akali's stats and her abilities and do some simple arithmetic. She does continuous damage, but without AP her burst is not something to be scared of.

Assuming your ADC is positioning correctly? If she jumps the ADC and her team follows her in, focus their damage sources and ignore Akali. If she jumps the ADC and her team falls behind, collapse on Akali and kill her.

Bottom line, Tankali is no different from dozens of other champions that are hard to kill and do continuous damage.

KuroSolais3/24/2016, 12:43:32 AM1 votes

Even the Akali Bot grabs Sunfire Cape first :/

67chrome3/24/2016, 1:17:02 AM1 votes

I mean getting 1 damage item, go full tank, and then they somehow still make your champions existence go "poof"

That's pretty common for most fighters in LoL all things considered.

Also: Akali isn't really poofing things that fast. It's worth noting everyone's base damage is generally pretty respectable: and that glass-cannons are actually made of glass.

Tanky champions_ generally_ do little to no damage, a bursty champion will generally blow up if they make an incorrect move.

Not in MOBAs.

The games where tanky champions generally do low damage vs. glass-cannons doing high damage are often turn-based games like Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Earthbound, or a range of trading card games.

In LoL: there are plenty of mechanics champions can use to survive long enough to do their job without having to rely exclusively on defense. The biggest 2 are range and mobility: though things like stealth, minions, terraforming, vision control, and crowd-control all play a part as well.

In essence: there's no reason for a slow, low-range, but tanky champion like Nasus to deal substantially less damage than Ziggs and just giving Ziggs range for free.

Also: this allows tanky DPS, mobile DPS, and ranged DPS to all deal roughly the same levels of DPS in a balanced fashion: allowing Riot to really explore a wide range of interesting ways to deliver damage that allows damage to be more multi-facated in-practice with different specializations, rather than just having all the interesting damage-dealing mechanics on Mr. Fireballs. In LoL: Marksman are good at doing damage to towers and structures, Mages are really good at damaging minions and doing damage from afar, Assassins are good at delivering burst damage with surprise-attacks, and Fighters are good at delivering sustained damage: especially in 1v1 scinarios or vs. jungle monsters.

Regarding Akali in her current position: using mobility as a defensive mechanic, the intended defense for assassins, generally relies on 2 core factors:

you have enough mobility in the middle of combat to use that mobility to survive (Zed is a good example here).
you actually deliver damage quickly so you can actually keep moving in combat situations. Requiring 4 seconds of standing still to deliver damage effectively makes you slow an unable to use mobility as a core defensive mechanic, as tanky champions are still tanky while attacking and ranged champions are still ranged while attacking.

Akali's kit was flat out nerffed so she doesn't really have strong points in either. Smoke Cloud was nerffed to require a substatial delay to take effect, relly cutting back on meaningful slipperyness and defenses in several combat situations: especially team-fights. Akali's Q mark dynamic was also nerffed to where Akali must use an auto-attack to detonate the mark, turning her RQER combo into an RQEAAR combo that just sticks her next to her target to long.

However: mixed-damage AA's are pretty solid for bruiser-esque sustained-damage fights and base damages with RQEAAREREAAEAAEAA are pretty solid if Akali is just durable enough to keep outputting damage.

Riot's nerf to Akali has ironically made her a pretty solid fighter. Would like to see the Kama-wielding Ninja be an assassin though, game has tons of fighters and only a few assassins. Also wierd Diana is a pretty solid assassin ATM while Akali is the better fighter.