Akali rework suggestion

Akali’s kit is currently broken, which is why it was nerfed into relative unviability. Though difficult, her kit can be reworked while maintaining her identity.

Her kit has several problems:

1. extremely snowbally -- she is known as a pubstomper because teams in low elo do a poor job protecting squishies and do a poor job utilizing true vision. She can eliminate the enemy carries, then can use her resets and sustain to kill tankier targets. She has been (rightfully) nerfed severely so that she cannot easily snowball.
2. uninteresting mechanics -- her q is targetted and amplifies damage. Her dash is point and click. Her shroud is only important early game (except in low elos where opponents do not use true vision). In teamfights,her e exists as a noobtrap to waste energy.
3. Shroud is of limited usefulness -- early game before opponents have vision wards or trinkets, her shroud has little counerplay. Late game in silver+ elos, opponents are smart enough to grab vision wards, making her shroud useless (movespeed notwithstanding). In lower elos, opponents are too dumb to buy vision items, which contributes to Akali’s pubstomp nature. Thus, the shroud plays a very limited role in Akali’s kit and mainly serves to enhance her pubstomping. This is certainly a bad mechanic.

Solution goals:

1. Akali’s gameplay needs to involve effectively utilizing the shroud at all stages of the game
2. Akali needs to retain the ability to eliminate groups of low-health squishy champions in teamfights
3. Akali should not be able to delete her opponent laner at will simply because she has attained a gold lead and is past level 6
4. Akali should be able to provide some value to her team even if she is behind
5. Akali’s damage should be less related to gold income, both if she does poorly in lane and does well, to help reduce her snowballiness.

I do not know how to change her e, and would like suggestions on this front. However, I have suggested changes to her shroud, her q, and her r that would fix some her problems and achieve some of the goals.

shroud (w) - Akali’s shroud would prevent enemies who are not in the shroud from seeing all allies in the shroud if these allies have not attacked in the last x seconds (even if the enemies have true vision). However, enemies in the shroud would be able to see allies in the shroud, but would not be able to see allies outside of the shroud.

This achieves several goals. First, it adds more counterplay early in the game versus akali and makes for more interesting gameplay by Akali and her opponents. For Akali to avoid being seen, she would want to duck into and out of the shroud. If the enemy enters the shroud, she would want to step out. If the enemy steps out, she would step in. However, the enemy does not need vision items to spot Akali and low elo players would not be stomped simply because they do not understand the power of pink wards. Second, it allows the shroud to be utilized in mid and late game teamfights; a 75 gold ward will not invalidate Akali’s shroud, and this allows Akali to be balanced around properly utilizing the shroud. Third, this allows Akali to provide utility to her team, essentially setting up bush ambushes where there are currently not bushes (hiding teammates in the shroud). This would make the game more interesting for the entire team and allows Akali to make a contribution even if she is not strong enough to assassinate.

mark (q) - Akali’s marks can stack. For only one stack, popping the mark would do less damage than on live. Damage would scale non-linearly, so that popping the mark on a target with multiple stacks would do substantially more damage.

This achieves several goals. First, it would make her laning less snowbally. An opponent without any stacks would have a window to damage Akali because Akali’s damage after applying only one stack would be small, even if Akali was winning lane. Akali would aim to use the shroud over time to apply stacks and turn the trade in her favor. Likewise, an Akali who is losing lane could still win trades if she were to effectively add stacks by utilizing the shroud.

dash (r) - base damage and scaling is reduced, but now also has a % of missing health component, probably as magic damage. Versus low health targets, the damage is greater than live, and versus high health targets, the damage is lower than on live. The execute component does not scale with ability power or ad.

This achieves two goals. First, it allows Akali to excel at cleaning up low health targets near the end of a teamfight, even if she did not snowball in lane. Second, it reduces her damage versus targets that are at full health, which reduces her pubstomping ability both in teamfights and in lane. Even if she is snowballing her lane, she will not be able to delete a squishy enemy laner at will -- her r will do less damage to a full health target, and if she r’s on to them right at the start, she won’t have time to stack q’s to get the q damage. Thus, she still needs to play skillfully by utilizing shroud and stacking q’s even if she is winning her lane handily. A losing opponent can still play around the number of stacks she has on him.

I have no idea what the numbers should be, but I think these new mechanics will allow the numbers to be adjusted in a way that allows for a balanced champion both fun to play as and against. Her snowballing will be reduced. Her pubstomping will be reduced. She will still be able to clean up fights. She will provide interesting utility to her team. And she will have more interesting gameplay patterns than “Am I fed and is an unprotected enemy squishy nearby that I can delete? If so, point and click, if not stay away doing nothing”.

Thoughts?