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Updated thoughts on the Akali rework

Akali is SO HOT··22 votes·2,120 views

After a lot more testing with different builds on the PBE this is what I think. Compared to all of the other Assassins getting reworks, Akali is, by far, the weakest. Every Assassin getting changes still has very high burst to kill their targets quickly, but Akali's burst has been nerfed really hard which makes killing targets much harder for her compared to the other Assassins. She still needs a lot of tuning before this patch comes out. Riot stated that this rework would be geared more towards Akali mains instead of casual players and this rework doesn't really seem to hit the mark.

Passive: I'm still kinda liking this passive, but it definitely needs work. In today's patch the ratio was increased slightly for the damage and the cooldown was lowered from 8-5 to 8-4. Considering this ability starts its cooldown after the first auto attack it is up way too often early on in the game, but is still not up often enough mid and late game. In my last thread I stated that the cooldown should be changed to around 11-3 seconds (I think now maybe 11-2 seconds could be worth testing) because that would tone it down a little bit in the early game, but make it where it should be later on in the game.

Something that also definitely needs to happen is have her auto attack animation sped up to feel less clunky. I've been playing this champion since Season 3 and to this day I still find myself whiffing auto attacks which is very frustrating and since her passive now requires her to auto attack twice to get the full benefit from it this change is a must.

Also, I feel that maybe the way the passive works should be switched around with the damage coming first and the heal coming second. Akali's heal is one of the ways she uses to survive in fights so it doesn't really make sense for her to heal when she is at full health and then do her burst damage after she's already done her burst damage. It would make much more sense for her to do her damage in the beginning and then use the heal to help her survive after since she won't be at full health anymore.

Twilight Shroud: This is a big one so I'm going to make a separate thread for this.

Crescent Slash: I'm guessing the aim here was the completely gut Bruiser/Tank Akali. Although the build was only okay to begin with (way overhyped) it still works kinda works with the current iteration of Akali on PBE. The base damage was increased, but the AD ratio was changed to bonus AD so the overall damage is about the same throughout the game. The only difference now is that the cooldown was nerfed from 1 second to 3 seconds at max rank which is pretty huge.

The problem with doing this is that it is Akali's only way to waveclear later in the game and tripling the cooldown at max rank hurts this more for AP Akali. Bruiser Akali can still waveclear pretty well because of Sunfire Cape and her faster auto attacks due to Trinity Force, but AP Akali cannot do this so this is an overall big nerf to AP Akali while only a small nerf to Bruiser Akali which is counter intuitive to what the change is aimed at.

I think that the cooldown needs to be reverted to what it is currently on the live servers. Instead of the cooldown nerf the base damage should be nerfed and the ratios should both be increased. Since Bruiser Akali will only get only a little more AD than AP Akali will while building almost no AP at all this is a small nerf to AP Akali's early game, about the same for mid game, and a small buff late game. On the other hand, this is a nerf to Bruiser Akali across the board.

Shadow Dance: As of today her ult now starts with 3 charges when first learned. I definitely think this change should not go through. Akali has a pretty big powerspike at level 6 already, but giving her 3 stacks right off the bat makes it so she can hit 6 and immediately go in on you for a kill. Right now she hits level 6 and can get some damage off on you if she decides to go in on you with 1 or 2 stacks, but can't quite all in until she gets all 3 stacks which gives her lane opponent more time to bully her before she gets those sweet three stacks. I don't think this change accomplishes anything other than making her more annoying to play against.

It is now affected by CDR again but, that 2 second cooldown at all ranks really hurts considering most builds don't include much CDR anyway. If one second really is too much then at least changing it to 2/1.75/1.5 wouldn't be too big of a buff and would feel much better for Akali players. Considering the damage got halved for both the base and the ratio I don't think this is asking for much at all.

22 Comments

Akali is SO HOT13 votes

Also return the sideboob 2016

Linna Excel1 votes

I wish they would... I wish they would.

Akali is SO HOT7 votes

What's pretty lame is that since Akali is an Assassin that's hated by most of the people that post here on boards all of my threads about her get almost no attention which just lets them sink into the depths of this board never to be read. It's very frustrating because people usually dismiss my thoughts about anything because I'm an Akali main and insta downvote me which makes getting reds to read my threads about her hard.

When I do get posts on my threads it's either from the few Akali players on this board that actually care about her or everyone else saying "gut Akali", "stfu you're just a biased Akali main", or "good riddance I hate Akali." Very unfortunate. The thread I'm going to make later about her W probably won't get attention either, but oh well.

Linna Excel1 votes

My biggest problem with Akali isn't that she's an assassin, IMO she's one of the least annoying ones. Right now I thought she needed to be reworked so she's better at killing people so she's not a tank-assassin anymore and I don't think riot quite fixed that.

Irelia Bot3 votes

I would deal with her ult having a 1.5 second cooldown at all ranks and being effected by CDR. But it currently feels way to slugish to stick to anyone based on playing the past couple days.

Making her passive proc'd on enemy champs by crescent slash would make her combos a lot smother since it would only be one auto attack required instead of 2.

Beyond that perhaps making her ult have a .25 bonus AD ratio would be the only damage buff i might suggest. There are all of these assassin AD items in the game and akali can almost justify them but not quite. Duskblade, Maw and Edge are all screaming being good on akali but AD is still not nearly as ideal as AP.

She was created as a hybrid damage dealer and it would be nice to see her return to being seen more as hybrid then AP.

Akali is SO HOT2 votes

Yeah since she doesn't have as much burst anymore I think bringing back the Q proc on E wouldn't be a bad idea considering it's already getting nerfed pretty hard anyway.

Irelia Bot1 votes

I was thinking passive procing on E instead of Q since sheen would still not proc on E. Getting one auto off is manageable although it would be nice if the animation was better for it but getting 2 off is not easy without getting CC'd and usually killed.

This was mainly targeted at making the second part of her passive easier to proc. Her kit is lacking flow to it without becomign extremly vulnerable for couple seconds.

Another interesting thing might be making E not interrupt other abilites or auto attacks which would actually make all the changes to it at least partly justified. But that would likely take too much work to change before akali leaves PBE.

PapaGreg212 votes

Already looking past this rework to the next Akali rework. If I wanted to be an initiator that had to autoattack champions to get kills I would play irelia because she at least won't be blown up in three seconds.

LankPants2 votes

I'm still kinda liking this passive, but it definitely needs work. In today's patch the ratio was increased slightly for the damage and the cooldown was lowered from 8-5 to 8-4. Considering this ability starts its cooldown after the first auto attack it is up way too often early on in the game, but is still not up often enough mid and late game. In my last thread I stated that the cooldown should be changed to around 11-3 seconds (I think now maybe 11-2 seconds could be worth testing) because that would tone it down a little bit in the early game, but make it where it should be later on in the game.

Something that also definitely needs to happen is have her auto attack animation sped up to feel less clunky. I've been playing this champion since Season 3 and to this day I still find myself whiffing auto attacks which is very frustrating and since her passive now requires her to auto attack twice to get the full benefit from it this change is a must.

Also, I feel that maybe the way the passive works should be switched around with the damage coming first and the heal coming second. Akali's heal is one of the ways she uses to survive in fights so it doesn't really make sense for her to heal when she is at full health and then do her burst damage after she's already done her burst damage. It would make much more sense for her to do her damage in the beginning and then use the heal to help her survive after since she won't be at full health anymore.

I was thinking about this and I think a far better way to deal with Akali's passive would be something like 'After damaging an enemy champion with a basic spell Akali's next attack deals bonus damage based on her AP, after damaging an enemy champion with an attack Akali's next spell will heal her based off of the damage dealt (both procs for Q) based on her bonus AD, these bonuses are amplified if Akali has not proced either in X (2-3) seconds'

What this would do is encourage a sort of spell and AA weavy playstyle for Akali where she wants to go for specific combo orders. It also makes her engage champs to sustain up and makes her think about the best way to use her passive. She can AA first to go for a large heal, which is also why I specified basic abilities, so you could R-AA-Q-AA to burst heal or R-Q-AA do deal more damage with lower healing. You'd also have to chose whether it's better to try to duck back into shroud for another big passive proc or stay in the fight to try to proc the passive repeatedly.

I'd also like to see a near 0 base on both effects so she'd have to build at least some damage to utilise them.

And I have to disagree with you on one thing, I can't stand the new passive.

Hinagiku332 votes

I like the idea of healing off spells - if it can't be spellvamp, then something like the change to Ahri's passive would be nice. Still applies on spell hits but heals on its own base and ratio separate from the damage the spell deals.

Healing with auto-attacks makes me think I'm supposed to get Lifesteal on Akali now or something.

Belisarius092 votes

As an Akali main since S2 I have to disagree with the OP with regards to the ult.

Originally, Akali had all 3 stacks of her ult the moment she hit lvl 6. This was changed in a nerf back in like S3 or S4, can't remember precisely. So really this is just reverting an old nerf as compensation for these new nerfs. Honestly Akali should always have had all 3 stacks of ult the moment she hit lvl 6. I mean, name me one other champion who only gets 1/3 of their ult when they unlock it.

That said I agree with his points on the passive and E changes. Riot seems to be really inconsistent here with their vision for Akali. In some instances, it seems they're trying to reduce her sustained damage and in return increase her burst to discourage tank akali and encourage ap assassin akali. But like the OP pointed out, Riot then contradicts itself and works against this goal with the way the E changes hurt AP Akali's waveclear moreso than tank Akali's. And if they're trying to make her more burst, less sustained, why increase the cooldowns on her ult? Do they want us to spread our damage out more over time? If thats the case then why lower the duration of shroud? Riot's contradicting itself at every turn with this update. Thier feeble attempts the appease akali mains leaves me baffled and wondering if they even know what it is the Akali mains want.

OP didn't mention shroud but I will. The changes to pinks/shroud needed to happen. Akali was too binary, meaning she'd stomp low elo's too dumb to buy pinks and get shut down at higher levels of play where ppl were smart enough to buy them. This change needed to happen, and it's only natural that Akali lose some damage in return for this change which ultimately raises her ceiling. However it seems Riot approached the number tweaking for her damage with a meat cleaver instead of a surgeon's scalpel.

Pink changes aside, I'd personally much prefer old shroud's mechanics to the new shroud. Akali is already mobile, and doesn't need the new dash. The new shroud is restrictive in where we're allowed to cast it. Current shroud I can be aggressive with, throwing it in front of me and behind/on my target utilizing the aoe slow to cut off my opponent's retreat. Now it only seems useful for closing the gap (which we don't need since we already have ult/flash at our disposal) or for running away.

Hexten1 votes

The ultimate damage changes make it so she can't frontload her damage anymore therefore can't simply burst down a squishy chain dashing onto them once she gets her ult. Therefore, that level 6 power spike is not there anymore. It simply doesn't have the damage to do that. Now it's more about the utility it brings and thus allowed to be given full stacks when first learned.

Even with that change though, it's not going to do much. Since most of the time, you don't just all-in once you are level 6 as Akali. You would need to back to base to heal and buy first most of the time anyways.

The ultimate still lost a ton of damage and this will heavily affect her playstyle.

Apart from that, onto your other points:

I think the passive cooldown is fine. Since her ultimate doesn't have much power in it anymore, her pre-6 needs to be stronger and the new passive does make it stronger. The cooldown cannot get any shorter than 4s else you can double proc her passive just like you can double proc your Q, so I don't think they would make the cooldown at level 18 any shorter. The passive is stronger in quick strikes, i.e. her intended playstyle. You duck in shroud, proc Q and her passive, rinse and repeat. Shroud gives the full movement speed in the zone, so you can weave back and forth while you wait for cooldowns.

I do agree about the order of the heal and the damage. There needs to be more control over this. Since E didn't get any additional effects, it should do something that interacts with her passive. Make it proc one of them, or both (since it takes energy). Or let it proc Q again, since most of her damage is now on her Q and you need to proc this multiple times inorder for Akali to work.

The current Crescent Slash change won't stop tank Akali, and I think it's still the best way to play her currently for most players. The new passive helps tank Akali much more since she can proc the passive more times than squishy Akali. Her ultimate lost a ton of AP ratios so that makes building AP on her much less effective now.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

Did they do anything to akali's level 6 powerspike? Also can you please make a TLDR? thank you.

Hexten1 votes

Akali's level 6 powerspike is from her ultimate. It is weaker now because the damage on the ultimate got massively reduced, so that level 6 powerspike isn't that strong anymore. Against a squishy, all Akali has to do is just use all her three dashes with one Q proc and the damage is enough to kill a squishy at full health (mixing with some AA's). But the damage got reduced now, so you can't do this anymore. You have to proc 2-3 Q's now inorder to kill your target. That already extends the kill window by 4-8s since Q has 4 second cooldown at max rank.

In today's PBE change though, they made it she starts with all three dashes instead of one when she first learns her ultimate. This is an obvious compensation buff to the damage gutting it got.

GULAG 4 U1 votes

So they made her stickier but lowered her damage?

Hexten1 votes

Well, Akali has always been sticky. It's only when you hit 6, you learn your ultimate for the first time, you get all dashes at once, no need to wait for them to stack up during laning phase for the first time.

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

Okay okay very good points, but the most important question of all still hasn't been addressed....

Is she still hot?

Akali is SO HOT3 votes

Yes

TyrekGoldenspear1 votes

There is hope for us yet.

http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2014/11/10/102170911-491726551.530x298.jpg?v=1435689723

General Theritt1 votes

I have a love and hate relationship with this character. Tbh, she either becomes godlike midgame when she gets her kills, or flops pretty hard. I mean, yes, It not good that she feels weak, but granted right now, Akali is just kinda too good as of now. Comparably to other assassins in lane, yes she is not the best, but against immobile targets that have skillshot reliance but without CC... Akali is just downright disgusting. You deal burst AP damage, something I find extremely overwhelming as a tank main, since usually at the start of the game you rush a good HP item like Plate or Visage, but if I rush plate or cape, Akali just destroys me because I haven't built the resistances. then she snowballs. She gets out of hand, becomes extremely hard to pinpoint thanks to invisibility if your team doesn't understand to buy pinks or red trinket, and her consistent movement thanks to shadow dance. I don't want to bench her, but after all I've seen from this season, I think Akali needs to sit out until we can full gauge the power of the new assassins. Remember too, I never said "NERF AKALI OP" i'm just saying right now, she's pretty reliable against immobile targets because she just moves better than most assassins thanks to those consistent dashes, invisbility, and high AP burst which people can't optimize against early on. Katarina experiences the same ordeal, but her changes were a bit too insane if you ask me.

Just putting in my 2 cents, hope your sideboob ninja comes back a bit better next season

Sir Fuzzi1 votes

I haven't really got experience playing Akali a whole bunch, but it sort of seemed like they really wanted her kit to come out less all-at-once. They seem to be directing it toward sneaking in and out of fights, weaving through shadows and spells while choosing select moments to proc her passive.

I guess my biggest comment here is that the activity required in the passive seems a bit counterintuitive since they're pulling away from her sustain in close quarters. She has no reason whatsoever to be that close once the second attack is down, unless that cooldown jumps downward. But I don't really know, I just prefer passives that are... you know, quite passive.

Brimaz The King1 votes

Good news Akali is so hot. ricklessabandon noted he has a set of follow up Akali buffs that he is working on and we should see them in an upcoming PBE update - he later added buffing AP rations on passive heal + crescent strike and lowing cost of twilight shroud.

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