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So how about these changes for Akali?

NorthernDruid·1/20/2015, 1:17:35 AM·4 votes·1,155 views

So a lot of people think Akali needs to be reworked or retuned or nerfed into the ground until they never see her ever again.

Some people think she should have a revamp of her burst potential, and skill excecution of it, others think she should lose her trademark sustain (Most of which comes from the passive spellvamp on item 3146 )

I think her energy costs should be tuned, and also that her E should be redesigned to be more interactive, and not just a "click-for damage" skill (which is kinda overkill on an Assassin with already high point&click burst). Her E has a small skill ceiling in learning it's range, but especially with it triggering the Mark of the Assassin from her Q, it's often a no-brainer to use it in melee range either immediately after Shadow Dashing to your target, or after trigerring and re-applying the mark. In any case you'll be in melee range so your E is guaranteed to hit.

It's also an effortless waveclear tool that you don't even need to aim, but it's not an effective one until very late game, so this is not really that big an issue.

So what do I think would be suitable changes to Akali?

First, remove it triggering Mark of the Assassin. Replace this with moving her W's slow effect over to her E. (Note: This slow should be scaling with level of the ability, like her current W's slow, and could potentially be doubled on targets still with Mark of the Assassin on them, being rather pitiful on targets without, forcing you to make the decision of whether to apply a solid slow, or proc the damage immediately before they flash/dash out)

Then you make it a targetted Cone Area, about as wide as Braum's Unbreakable at it's base and with a range between 110% and 130% of what it is currently.

You now have to target your E.

It's not very much harder to hit, but it's (marginally) slower in execution. And it's much harder to hit more than one person with it, but it retains it's dispersal of spellvamp (as all AOE abilities have).

As for her energy costs, one of the things that would limit the power of her resets in combat, is a modest energy cost on her R (15-25 sounds reasonable to me).

I mean, ideally, if she spams her entire kit out as fast as she can (including Twilight Shroud) then she should be entirely dry of energy.

Additional easily tunable levers I think Akali has:

  • Energy costs and return mechanics
  • Cooldowns on her skills, especially her Q
  • Resets or not on her Ult
  • Ease of applying her damage (this is the tricky part, because neither her Q nor her R works well as skillshots, and her E can either be made a short, wide, cone or be replaced in it's entirely)
  • Other utility (CC, etc.)

tl;dr: Her E lacks interesting decisions entirely, and her energy costs are too forgiving lategame.

So does anyone else think something like this would make her E interesting? Personally, I think that sort of very short ranged cone is a really cool idea, and would make her E require more skill to be able to use well consistently. I'm not entirely sure she needs the slow on it though, but once again decicions if she has to decide between a noticeable slow and being certain to proc the damage and energy return (especially if her full kit unload gets 45-75 more energy tacked on).

According to some red post I saw somewhere around the boards, Riot's currently checking out nerfing the range of her R, which is gonna be a kind of lackluster patch on the situation, and to me seems to be at risk of being the sort of situation where she's either overly viable with above X range and then completely unviable below it.

8 Comments

Monotachi1/20/2015, 3:16:00 AM1 votes

You mean the thread here?

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/hMJmmtbp-a-really-simple-change-to-add-finesse-into-playing-akali

The cone could make it even more interaction and requires skill to use, directional aim is very interesting.

Adding an energy cost doesn't make sense on her ultimate because it already has a resource on it, ammo.

For her R to use ammo and energy is overcomplicated and not simiplicity in design. If her the availability of her ultimate is a problem, then just nerfing the ability to obtain charges quickly is better than adding energy.

Acidalia1/20/2015, 9:43:54 PM1 votes

i like ur idead m8

Drunk Rummate1/20/2015, 9:51:48 PM1 votes

I like the plan to reduce the range on her R. It makes her less likely to chain kills, which is a weird thing she is able to do considering she's a single target assassin. It also gives her a little more counterplay in the form of poke (albeit very little since most champions can't poke well from outside of 600 range).

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the range go even a bit lower. I'd like to be able to flash away from her without her just clicking on me with R immediately after as if I didn't even use a cooldown.

I do like your ideas on her E and how it relates to the rest of the kit, but personally I prefer to have the slow on her shroud since it's her defensive cooldown which means that if she wants to slow you she needs to give up her defense to do so.

Linkttp2/25/2015, 7:24:56 PM1 votes

Actually the current nerfs have left her in trash tier. And I can't believe you want to nerf her E. She already doesn't have an E. Her E deals LESS damage than her AUTOS. The proc was the only semi good thing about it. If they lowered the spell vamp on gunblade to 10% and raised the ad and ap it gave it would remove the Akali spell vamp problem. Then they could undo the nerfs that crippled her.