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Adding a meaningful cooldown to Akali's ultimate

Monotachi·10/30/2014, 12:49:26 PM·47 votes·9,112 views

Quote:

Posted by Statikk

To be honest, the ult cooldown change may just have been flat out the wrong direction. It was essentially an attempt to reduce her ability to use her R's simply for free damage harass at level 6 and force her to be much more thoughtful about its use...

That's because its how Shadow Dance is currently optimised. Its a flat cooldown for each stack charge. You attempted to nerf the feast case (when Akali is gaining alot of charges) but ended hitting the famine case as well (when she has no charges/not gaining much charges).

The ability to manage and keep full stacks should be a constant thought throughout the match. This is intended to reduce her highs, but improve her lows at the same time, increasing consistency and making her less feast/famine.

Proposed Shadow Dance Change

  • New Base Essence of Shadow: 15s / Xs / Xs

Active: Akali uses an Essence of Shadow, dashing to and dealing magic damage to a target enemy. Akali gains an Essence of Shadow periodically, affected by cooldown reduction, up to a maximum of 3. Each subsequent Essence of Shadows gained after the first has double the cooldown time from the previous stack. Additionally, gaining a kill or assist will restore an Essence of Shadow.

So you get the following (numbers are an example):

  • First Essence of Shadow: 15s / Xs / Xs
  • Second Essence of Shadow: 30s / Xs / Xs
  • Third Essence of Shadow: 60s / Xs / Xs
  • Total 3 Essence of Shadows: 105s / Xs / Xs

An attempt to make a full stack Shadow Dance feel like its got some downtime like other ultimates (because it does have that problem of not having to commit fully when using charges), while also keeping her power level relatively intact with an ammo system. Akali currently doesn't have to commit fully when using her ultimate against her opponents in lane. Having the 3rd charge feel like an ultimate cooldown will mean it will have a meaningful downtime for her opponents. This will make it easier to deal with Akali when ahead, since she won't always have that guaranteed 3rd dash.

But the first two charges are overall easier to obtain, especially the first one. This helps her when she is not getting much kills in a game, i.e. famine case. So she can pull off some tricks with dashes without relying too much on resets.

With Akali somewhat terrorizing solo queue at the moment, what does the community think about this solution? Please post feedback and your thoughts.

Edited: Some ideas from following posts:

Perhaps adding an obvious reward for lowering the Shadow Dance cooldown would be good, that requires melee interaction? I.e. AA's and spells reduce CD of current stack of Shadow Dance by X%? That way Akali has to put herself at risk to get the CD back to normal, which will introduce some skill into playing her. It will also make it more effective at higher cooldown charges which is the whole point.

Edit 2: Updated with more information for clarity: And that's increasing depth in the use of the current number of stacks Akali has! Ammo management would be more apparent than the current 'just wait til all my stacks are up then proceed'.

If she is just waiting around with low charges, i.e. 1-2, her harass potential may increase, but Akali needs all 3 charges to be up in order to commit to a kill with less risk. Sure she can do it with 1 charge, but that increases the risk involved, esp. if something stuffs up.

As mentioned by others:

JJI744 (NA) Keeping yourself at only 1 charge means that if your opponent decides to fight, you are at a disadvantage from having only 1/3rd of your ult available. And even 15s is a considerable window where your opponent can go aggressive while you have zero charges.

Auz the Ripper (NA)

If she keeps her charge at one, yes she can use it to harass, but she would lose her kill potential if she did Early game, she needs all of her dashes to realistically kill anyone with the slightest self-peel like zed or syndra and considering how kill dependent Akali is, she would be quickly outscaled by most other champions she would lane against

Cindikle (NA)

Also how does this cooldown factor in? Does the cooldown lower as you use charges?

This could work. If the cooldown was based on a percentage. If you are third way of cooling down on a charge, this gets transferred to the next stack if you use the current stack up, and it would not cause a 'cooldown overload' onto the next stack. Basically the cooldown update system will stay the same as it is on live.

Edit: And for reference:

Actually according to LolKing, Akali is in the top 10 most banned champions in Ranked: http://www.lolking.net/charts?region=all&type=bans&range=daily&map=sr&queue=normal . And that's only overall statistics, about ~23% ban rate.

But if you filter, in NA region alone, Akali is the second most banned champion in Ranked: a ~58% ban rate. http://www.lolking.net/charts?region=na&type=bans&range=weekly&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=ranked . This already signifies from one of LoL's major player bases, that something is up with Akali. Other regions do not ban Akali as much so this drags the overall ban rate statistic down.

And thanks Dude Bro: TLDR:

Each Dash's cooldown is longer beyond the first. So it takes 15 seconds to gain 1 dash, 30s for the 2nd, and 60s for the third.

I love this idea as it ensures akali will always be able to jump in, but won't always have a guaranteed 3 dash un-escapable murder combo.

102 Comments

Siriner10/30/2014, 1:10:51 PM9 votes

Hmm, interesting idea.

Worth following up on some reds, it has alot of potential for and against her feast/famine side.

DrCyanide10/30/2014, 1:22:31 PM4 votes

Haven't played enough Akali to know if it's a good idea or a bad one, but from an outsiders perspective it seems possible. It's not as crazy as some of the suggestions I see floating around.

Another possible suggestion is decreasing the max stack count to 2. Again, I admit I'm not an Akali player.

xDingwithsalad10/30/2014, 2:12:57 PM3 votes

i feel like akali is not terrorizing solo queue lol

Hexten10/30/2014, 1:36:50 PM3 votes

I can see the reasoning behind the commit-fully statement. Numbers are just numbers. Perhaps adding an obvious reward for lowering the Shadow Dance cooldown would be good, that requires melee interaction? I.e. AA's and spells reduce CD of current stack of Shadow Dance by X%? That way Akali has to put herself at risk to get the CD back to normal, which will introduce some skill into playing her. It will also make it more effective at higher cooldown charges which is the whole point.

Kingsgrave10/30/2014, 9:53:33 PM3 votes

I don't think the problem is her Ultimate, its the fact that she gets any amount of healing from it due to her passive and her Hybrid build.

So she just spams this mobility + a shroud + healing with no real windows of opportunity to respond to her unless you have hard CC and another teammate.

Quepha10/30/2014, 2:18:53 PM2 votes

if they wanted to nerf akali using her ult for three big single target nukes stacked up, why don't they have it deal reduced damage to targets that have taken damage from it within the last ~10 seconds? that's how a number of other abilities (fiora R, nautilus riptide...) deal with champions being able to take multiple hits from one ability resulting in stupid amounts of burst.

DUDE BRO10/30/2014, 6:51:00 PM2 votes

TL;DR: Each Dash's cooldown is longer beyond the first. So it takes 15 seconds to gain 1 dash, +30s for the 2nd, and +60s for the third.

I love this idea as it ensures akali will always be able to jump in, but won't always have a guaranteed 3 dash un-escapable murder combo.

Edit: Might even be worth changing that kills/assists knock 30s off her dash cooldown. This way if she gets a kill on her first dash (with 2 remaining), she won't instantly get it back. However if she gets a kill with her last dash, she WILL get it back.

acepil0t10/30/2014, 10:06:26 PM2 votes

I simply find the damage from her ult frustrating, because there is no counterplay to a targeted dash. I think she needs to have her damage nerfed on her dashes and to compensate possibly increase AD ratios on her abilities. This would help make Twin Disciplines a bigger part of her kit, since she is almost always played AP instead of hybrid AP/AD, which doesn't really match what her identity is supposed to be as stated by her passive.

UncensoredAngel10/31/2014, 1:50:07 AM1 votes

NOT TILL THEY NERF KAT AND EVERY OTHER CHAMP WITH GOOD STICKING ABILITIES

Salidfingers10/30/2014, 1:37:50 PM1 votes

Means to compensate she will have to deal more damage, because if you don't she will do less damage and leave her a weak assassin. So she will end up killing you in the first dash then

Don't forget extending the CD will hurt her dueling potential

RavenHusky10/31/2014, 3:49:12 AM1 votes

I'm totally biased here, but I personally think that the shadow stacks need to be done away with, and given an energy cost instead. Make it similar to Ahri's ult where she has a limited time to use her three dashes, and each dash costs energy, and then put the entire ability on cooldown.

This way, it puts a limit on what she can do at any given time, and forces her to strategically think about where to dash instead of constantly dashing around avoiding and killing everyone.

Worgslarg10/30/2014, 1:53:47 PM1 votes

I very much like the increasing cooldown per stack, but double is simply too much.( 1.2/1.5?)

ceaselessphantom10/30/2014, 4:16:25 PM1 votes

You say Her second dash will charge faster than now. But that means her first dash will charge over twice as fast as now. Doesn't that mean her sustain will take a large increase by her just using her dash on a minion whenever it is up?

edit You people say it will make her reconsider burning a charge for harrass. If Her cooldown is lower the shorter it is won't that encourage her to keep using her ult? That 3 dash does not matter much until team fights. which of course she will have 3 dashes.