Akali is poorly designed.
Her counterplay is that her numbers are awful and weird. She is like Azir and Kalista now.
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Her numbers are much closer to "too strong" than on the side of "awkwardly awful."
Q-auto at level 1 does 25 + 40 + 39 + 20 = 124 magic damage from a single spell even starting 
and without Absolute Focus, and this can be recast two additional times for that same damage in addition to the base 62.4 x 3 = 187 damage from the autos themselves.
Most spells from most champions at the same level deal around 75 + 10 damage on a cooldown four times as long.
Akali was broken before her rework and more broken afterwards
Instead of reworking the champion, they just preserved as much of the bad as possible and magnified it
Her numbers aren't low enough for her not to be able to do her job, which is what she'd need to be like those two.
This game is poorly designed.
They stopped trying after 4.20.