Akali's passive is one of the most random passives on the game

YumaS2Astral·Jan 3, 2016·2 votes·739 views

Akali permanently has 6% 「 (+ 1% per 6 bonus AD) 」 spell vamp. However, building AD is pointless as only Akali's E scales with AD (and it is AoE so it gets reduced spellvamp). The rest of her damaging skills scale with AP, so I will not be able to take advantage of the spellvamp to begin with.

Akali's basic attacks deal 6% 「 (+ 1% per 6 AP) 」 AD bonus on-hit magic damage However, building AP makes this part of her passive do very little damage even with the "1% per 6 AP" part.

The only real use of this passive is to allow Akali to be the champion who gets the most use of Hextech Gunblade. However, it is a random passive, and a broken one when combined with Hextech Gunblade. It is one of the reasons why she can't be buffed otherwise she is OP.

7 Comments

Nanuk PihoqahiakJan 3, 20162 votes

The amount of magic damage she does lategame just by autoing is insane. It also affects towers, making her a pretty solid splitpusher.

CreationFlawJan 3, 20161 votes

You could just go 500 AD akali and 2 hit people with auto attacks :P

Pierce The VealJan 3, 20161 votes

I disagree.

It would, however, be pretty cool to see AP making her abilities have ad scaling instead of her autos gaining bonus damage that scales with AD based on how much AP you have.

Valderis VandalaJan 3, 20161 votes

That's not random, it just seems poorly designed.

DehitayJan 3, 20161 votes

Akali was designed as a hybrid champion. Hell, she's still perfectly viable if played that way. The ap burst builds are just more her assassin style.

Pretty much eveybody who was designed as a hybrid champioin tends to be better off ignoring either ad or ap. This is like complaining that Jax's ult scales off of ap when he's best build as AD.

QuephaJan 3, 20161 votes

Her original design was supposed to have her seek a balance of AD and AP as a hybrid champion. Originally those benefits didn't turn on at all until Akali hit a certain level of bonus AD and AP, so people would use bizarre rune setups that would forego lots of defensive runes to hit that point out of the starting gate.

Her kit works way better as an assassin with its high mobility, stealth, and lack of team utility other than damage that makes her want to build glass cannon, so the benefit of sustained damage from AD never fit her kit very well and people built her straight AP anyways. Not to mention that Lichbane, Rabadoodles, and, when it was around, DFG caused her to benefit even more from straight AP.

The Sword SaintJan 3, 20161 votes

It's thematic, gives her magic damage on auto and innate spellvamp, and synergies will with her signature item - the gunblade. Nowadays the gunblade heals you for all damage dealt, so all of her damaging spells and her passive damage plus spellblade proc from lichbane if you have them count towards her healing.

Her passive is a core part of her identity, and is a large part of what allows to survive in lane pre-6.

And no, the difficult to balance part of akali isn't her passive, it's her ultimate and q combo. It creates a situation where getting caught out of position by akali means there is no running away and no juking her damage - she WILL catch you every time and she WILL land her damage combo on you.. so it comes down to whether or not she has the damage to kill you or not without much that any squishy champion can do other than try to kill her first. THAT is the volatile, hard to balance part.

If you weaken her damage or chasing ability by slightly too much she become unable to ever kill anyone and just dies because her attack pattern requires 2-3 damage rotations to kill a single target unless super super fed, unlike other assassins like leblanc who can just pop in kill instantly and run away. But if you buff her damage or chasing by slightly too much she will always catch everyone and kill them without them being able to stop her.

They did nerf her ult range not too long ago and right now I'd say she's doing better than previously because sweepers don't reveal stealth anymore so literally everyone can't just buy an anti akali shroud button for cheap like in previous seasons if she gets ahead. But twin shadows still exists and so do cheap pink wards, so it's not like her stealth is perfect either.