Did the Akali rework fail?

Re-post from the Akali sub Reddit.

First of all let's have some quotes from Reav3 about the goals of the update:

"Now let’s move on to the next big VGU that will be stepping out of the shroud: Akali. Akali has always been a beloved champion, but she hasn’t aged particularly well. Her assassin pattern is very all-or-nothing, so it can be difficult for her to succeed unless she snowballs off of early kills. We want to give her more options for success by playing up her ability to hide in plain sight. We think her Shroud is an awesome and iconic ability and want to push it even further. Akali also has trouble laning against a large portion of the modern League cast, so we’ll be looking to give her a stronger laning pattern that should bring her more in line with the current needs of solo-lane champions. This will allow us to reduce her snowball potential, as she won’t have to be as dependent on early kills to succeed. Overall, we are pretty satisfied with Akali’s high-level theme of a “Ninja Assassin,” but the current execution is a bit generic. We’ll be looking to add a couple more unique traits to Akali to elevate her beyond this common theme. As for her narrative, we want to go with an approach similar to the one we took for the Gangplank VGU, meaning we want to extend her narrative rather than rework it. Instead of a new Akali, this will be a tale of growth and change."

"So let’s go rogue and talk some more about the upcoming Akali VGU. In the last roadmap, I mentioned that we wanted to preserve her Shroud as the ability that makes her unique and helps her stand out in the Assassin class. Though the baseline functionality is the same, we’ve made some pretty dramatic changes to Akali’s Shroud so that her play pattern of “hitting hard, repositioning, and then striking again” is more engaging for Akali players. Outside of her Shroud, we felt it was important to maintain her high mobility, especially since it fits really well with her ninja theme, so don’t expect that to vanish. Another thing we wanted to maintain about her kit was her dual scaling, as that gives Akali flexibility and really makes her feel like a champion who has mastered a wide range of weapons—both magical and physical. And speaking of her thematic, we’ll be extending her current lore and looking at what her life looks like a couple years down the road when she strikes out on her own, ready to show the world her skill as a ninja."

Some hidden goals: Slow down burst time and clear windows of power (= champ has a meaningful downtime, eg. cooldowns, delays).

Now let's see how it went:

All or nothing pattern: I think that, due to her Ult and shroud CD's and her being reliant on these 2, especially against ranged champions, the assassination pattern is even more hit or miss. Used E and R and enemy ADC is still alive? Well bad luck. Honestly it looks better against melees, as low CD Q and passive procs allow her to continue fighting. Most issues with all or nothing were already solved with 6.22 stealth changes in the assassin update.

Troube in laning phase: The update definetely met this goal. Akali is probably on of the best early game top-laners right now, especially into melees. She has some problems in midlane against mages due to her limited and predictable gap-closing and low sustain after heal removal, but it's still better than 6.22 and especially much better than pre 6.22 Akali

Lower Snowball: Definetely met. Akali can't carry games at all. Okay it isn't that bad :) but her unreliable combo, delays and kinda bad scalings don't make her much stronger with lead. I belive that's also the issue that leads into today's bruiser builds: If offense sucks, you build tank items.

Ninja Assassin theme: I think they hit the theme quite well with the update, with the exception of the passive. Having to walk back and forth feels counterintuitive for an "assassin".

Preserve Shroud as unique ability: Beside the fact that her shroud is basically worse than it's pre-rework iteration, it is still iconic and I love the new visuals. The "pretty dramatic" changes got mostly reverted by balance changes.Also, I feel like they missed the point. It wasn't shroud that was why people played Akali, it was the mobility, damage, just being able to completely shit on other mobile champions and the healing. Playing Akali was living on the edge, always close to inting to just turn in around and get the kills. People never played Akali cause it was cool to hide in shroud lul.

Dual scaling: While it is there, it mostly comes down to either building AP or AD, with the exception of gunblade which is the only hybrid item she builds. And right now, it seems like the AD bruiser variant is straight up better than the AP assassin build, and even the AP builds has a couple defensive items like Zhonyas; Banshees or Rylais. Building deathcap or lichbane is basically suicide.

Slower burst: Definetely met. Passive AA Q gunblade R2 can still deal a very high amount of damage in less than a second, but it needs setup and is predictable. Also Akali is less frustrating to play against. Akali dashing across 2 minion waves just to oneshot you after chasing you across the whole map isn't going to happen.

Windows of power: Way higher CD's on her dashes and extensive shroud CD made it happen. Passive ring and R2 being an execute further meet that goal.

Result: Partial success. Akali is less reliant on kills, still has a cool theme and unique abilites. Her main problem right now (at least my opinion) is her inablity to carry and close-out games. You may stomp your lane, get kills but you have a very hard to translate your lead into something that helps you team winning. Akali sucks at taking objectives, be it turrets, drake/baron or the fed enemy draven :)

Opinion of myself not the one who wrote this: It is a failure, her bruiser build will always be better unless they gut her AD ratios or do huge mechanics changes. Top Akali is so god damn better than mid Akali, that it makes me laugh why Riot even thought this rework isn't a failure.