The State of Akali

Akalis Bra·Jul 14, 2019·10 votes·6,925 views

ok so basically, is uhhhh not very good rn. Currently rocking a 43.53% winrate in platinum+ games, she is second to last for midlane winrates, right ahead of . After the myriad of nerfs from riot, she has became an incredibly lackluster pick almost always. She still can do damage, but to do damage comparable with other assasins you have to be mechanically skilled as her. Compared to someone who does not have to be mechanically skilled, . having functionally unlimited mana in lane due to her Q mana refund and reset mechanic. Annie outdamages Akali at every stage of the game, with the advantage of doing it from a considerable range with no skill required. I hope Riot continues moving in the right direction with Akali. Her being outdamaged by every other assasin with little upsides makes her feel awful to play, even with a considerable amount of experience. Thanks for reading

29 Comments

InfernapeJul 14, 201912 votes

I vote neither.

Akali needs re-reworking. Granted Riot is getting rid of Obscured (which is what they should've fucking done in the first place), but I still think even without Obscured, she's going to still be busted in competitive play. Riot needs to actually take the champion right back to the drawing board.

kda akaliJul 15, 20194 votes

I don't think she will be a popular pick in proplay anymore tbh. TwistedFate can make her useless for a whole fight. And now her highest damage spell is a unreliable skillshot.

InfernapeJul 15, 20192 votes

[{quoted}](name=kda akali,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=p5qwy0He,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2019-07-15T00:18:29.979+0000)

I don't think she will be a popular pick in proplay anymore tbh. can make her useless for a whole fight. And now her highest damage spell is a unreliable skillshot.

TF isn't picked in pro play. The only champions that are somewhat common picks in competitive that has the ability to reveal her are Lee Sin and Kai'Sa. All the other underlying mechanics are still there aside from Obscurity meaning not much will change in competitive.

Her Q AP ratio is now 80%, and she has better scaling on her E, while her ult is up less often.

Because of how low her Q is (it's 1.5 seconds between casts), two Qs will deal more damage than her entire E going by the changes. Assuming Akali is level 18 and has nothing but Hextech Gunblade (to make things easier), two Qs will deal 536 magic damage, whereas both casts of her E will deal 510 physical damage. The same is true even if Akali is full build (even more so because she builds magic pen and doesn't build Lethality).

Akalis BraJul 15, 2019

{quoted}

TF isn't picked in pro play. The only champions that are somewhat common picks in competitive that has the ability to reveal her are Lee Sin and Kai'Sa. All the other underlying mechanics are still there aside from Obscurity meaning not much will change in competitive.

Her Q AP ratio is now 80%, and she has better scaling on her E, while her ult is up less often.

Because of how low her Q is (it's 1.5 seconds between casts), two Qs will deal more damage than her entire E going by the changes. Assuming Akali is level 18 and has nothing but Hextech Gunblade (to make things easier), two Qs will deal 536 magic damage, whereas both casts of her E will deal 510 physical damage. The same is true even if Akali is full build (even more so because she builds magic pen and doesn't build Lethality).

the thing about spamming q on akali is that she is an energy champion, which makes spamming her Q makes her run out of energy in only 2-3 casts depending on how long you wait between casts. energy management is very important considering if an Akali does not manage energy correctly in team fights she will get caught with no abilities which means, no damage and killed. spamming abilities is not viable, which is why her passive needs buffs.

Akali is SO HOTJul 15, 20192 votes

It's being changed to 60% not 80%. You get 8 extra damage on Q after completing Gunblade

SathelightJul 15, 20195 votes

{quoted}

TF isn't picked in pro play. The only champions that are somewhat common picks in competitive that has the ability to reveal her are Lee Sin and Kai'Sa.

Nemesis played TF at least 3 times in past weeks. He even played it specifically vs Akali and she couldn't do much. W nerfs were only a part of her problems though.

Akalis BraJul 15, 20191 votes

{quoted}

I vote neither.

Akali needs re-reworking. Granted Riot is getting rid of Obscured (which is what they should've fucking done in the first place), but I still think even without Obscured, she's going to still be busted in competitive play. Riot needs to actually take the champion right back to the drawing board.

if anyone's wondering: Obscured is a mechanic introduced specifically with Akali, meaning her location can be revealed but she can not be directly targeted

IP MasquerenaJul 15, 20192 votes

But is visible and targetable when in tower attack range.

You'd be surprised how many people don't know that.

MakattackJul 15, 20199 votes

Revert her back to old Akali for the time being. Then re-rework her.

CaptainAntiHerozJul 15, 20193 votes

{quoted}

Revert her back to old Akali for the time being. Then re-rework her.

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

TremaursenJul 15, 20197 votes

Rework her. Akali was reworked with zero consideration to how she felt to play against and zero consideration to powercreep. A feeble toddler could have easily explained in detail how her new shroud had no place in the game.

Riot also needs to be held accountable for just how damaging Akali has been to the game overall. Reworks are supposed to bring champs up to speed, where an entire team dedicates a solid block of time to one champ. Dozens of other champs sit in an unplayable state and are lucky to be part of the patch notes once a season. For Riot to use that amount of resources on a single champ just to have her be a literal unbalancable nightmare on re-release, dominating the patch notes that could be spent on the aforementioned dozens of unplayable champs is both amateurish and unacceptable.

Funny thing is that this post also functions nearly word for word for Irelia too.

Akalis BraJul 14, 20196 votes

{quoted}

ok so basically, is uhhhh not very good rn. Currently rocking a 43.53% winrate in platinum+ games, she is second to last for midlane winrates, right ahead of . After the myriad of nerfs from riot, she has became an incredibly lackluster pick almost always. She still can do damage, but to do damage comparable with other assasins you have to be mechanically skilled as her. Compared to someone who does not have to be mechanically skilled, . having functionally unlimited mana in lane due to her Q mana refund and reset mechanic. Annie outdamages Akali at every stage of the game, with the advantage of doing it from a considerable range with no skill required. I hope Riot continues moving in the right direction with Akali. Her being outdamaged by every other assasin with little upsides makes her feel awful to play, even with a considerable amount of experience. Thanks for reading

i kinda agree with people saying she needs re-reworking. her current state is that if she does damage she is broken and if she cant do damage she is garbage. i hope they make some meaningfull changes.

iiGazeiiJul 15, 20195 votes

Akali should be a champion that has an overall low winrate, since she requires a lot of skill to play, but they've nerfed her over and over again due to her dominance in pro play. She was pick/ban for a good while because of how good she was in that environment.

She's got a bunch of good changes coming in the next patch. They've finally taken away the true stealth and put that power budget someplace that actually matters to players that aren't pro. She's got more damage, more uptime on her shroud, and better energy recovery early on.

Akalis BraJul 15, 20192 votes

{quoted}

Akali should be a champion that has an overall low winrate, since she requires a lot of skill to play, but they've nerfed her over and over again due to her dominance in pro play. She was pick/ban for a good while because of how good she was in that environment.

She's got a bunch of good changes coming in the next patch. They've finally taken away the true stealth and put that power budget someplace that actually matters to players that aren't pro. She's got more damage, more uptime on her shroud, and better energy recovery early on.

this would be true, however Akali does not dominate as much in the hands of a skilled player as riven or irelia, which are stronger champions at base, even highly skilled akali players can feel how weak the champion is.

The thigh guyJul 14, 20194 votes

Akali is a failure of a champion who needs to stay in the gutter.

ZaFishboneJul 15, 20194 votes

You do know that she i getting changes in, like, 3 days, right?

Mitsuk3Jul 14, 20193 votes

For me Akali is ok. But I swear the god who's watching me rn. That the times I got oneshoted by Qiyana are more than the times I got oneshoted by Lux since s7.

kda akaliJul 15, 20193 votes

9.14 changes fix whats wrong with her. Riot can then focus on buffing her for the majority of the player base.

shes definitely going to be weak after the changes though. Imo lower the cd on ult and lower the recast timer on R from 2.5 to 1.5.

ŚhunpoJul 15, 20193 votes

She's still really good, just get good :)

Finders KeepersJul 15, 20193 votes

Akali just need a rly good pilot right now. But dont worry with a new skin line her buffs are about to drop.

SeaWeabooJul 15, 20193 votes

Akali is really strong, but her skill floor, and her skill ceiling respectively, are much higher than almost all other champions in the game. Although I think the main issue with her is that she is a sustain assassin hybrid thing that has extremely high burst for how long she can stay in a fight. If she were to have her sustain increased with her burst and mobility lowered then she could be more of a bruiser. If they lower her sustain then she will not be able to stay in a fight long enough to burst down all 5 enemy champs while still being able to take out that one squishy and get out safely.

BestPudgeNAJul 15, 20193 votes

Akali OP right now.

preternaturalJul 15, 20192 votes

no OP annie exists so that noobs can kill people too. akali you must be good at to be good at, that's fair. azir was given this treatment, kata is the quintessential example of be good to be good, leblanc, zed, camille, ezreal, yasuo, sylas, qiyana, what have you. the only difference between these champions is how long they've been available to play and hence "practice" on the rift. unfortunately for the akali players you have challenger akali's still breaking the game with her in high elo, which was always going to happen with such a skill gated champion.

Pool Party PixJul 15, 20192 votes

Her design is flawed i'd rather see her unplayable till next rework.

Tomoe GozenJul 15, 20192 votes

#EDIT:

I deleted my previous comment where i spoke about her issues and potential fixes as i've realized she had changes in the upcoming 9.14 patch. The comment was quite long as it is so i'll focus only on her next patch notes instead:

So i've taken a look at her 9.14 changes and they seem promising.

MR increased from 32.1 to 37

It allows her to be a bit more tanky since she's justifiably melee.

Q AP ratio increased by 10%

Nice for poking and waveclearing.

Shroud changes:

The best one is that its CD is flat 20 seconds on all levels and flat duration of 5 seconds. Which means that you'll cast more Ws in the early game but less in late game. Leveling it second is a thing of the past as well. You can put those points in her E now. The CD now starts from W cast, not when it expires. Extending the duration of W by reentering was removed. Energy restore is now 80 flat on all levels, which also supports the point of not having to level as a second skill.

E buffed

Aside from leveling it as a third skill before, base damage was slightly lowered but the bAD ratio was halved (35%) but was given 50% AP ratio as well so it's not entirely useless as a only AD Gunblade scaling ability. Leveling it second also increases the damage sooner, lowers CD so it's a fair skill to use as a damage and poke tool. It also improves her mobility.

R CD increased by 20/25/30 seconds

This could potentially hurt but i think the point here is that by increasing her Q and E damage and uncoupling her W from early leveling as the only utility tool, Riot wanted to ensure she's not comboing her enemies with a frequent execute Rs.

Overall i think these changes would be good for the general public (us), not sure about her pro play status. Pros are more relying on her W and R and that was exactly nerfed and power was put in her other skills that generally make her better in simpler ways. But we'll see if this is the case when the changes hit live.

Wild GeeseJul 16, 20192 votes

She's gettting a little buff and further adjustments in the upcoming patch. I think after that, they should probably leave her alone for a while, like a very long time. They've done way too much work on Akali too fast already. Better to leave her slightly weak than having Akali players have to constantly adjust.

GrãñðmãstêrShãçøJul 16, 20192 votes

Buff shaco

AnateraJul 15, 20191 votes

History repeats itself. Akali got changes and was broken. Then Riot nerfs her into oblivion in order to "fix" it. This has happened for literal years. Hardly surprising at this point, just sad and embarrassing on their part. Mostly because they're getting paid to be bad at their jobs.

Linna ExcelJul 15, 20191 votes

Since I'm not a pro player I say leave her as-is and rework her early next year. Like Irelia riot is crapping on her solely because she's good in pro-play (instead of just disabling the two) and both are being put in the gutter because of it. Riot just overdid it when it comes to skill expression on both of these champs and now everyone is paying for it.