Akali is a full AP champion, regardless of her passive. Her passive just means Gunblade is a huge powerspike for her, that's it. The only AD she will ever need is from Gunblade.
Riot actually made her more clunky when in Patch 5.9, they added a strikethrough to her ultimate, detais: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/YRkrpFVK-akalis-dash-travels-slower-since-patch-510-got-ninjad
- the dash takes longer to complete than intended compared to the old dash.
In regards to autoattacks, I'm surprised they haven't done the Katarina treatment to Akali's autoattacks (autoattack finishes faster but overall attack speed remains the same). One of the most easiest things to do to improve Akali without having to buff her numbers.
The strikethrough in general, in my opinion, was a low quality change that wasn't tested thoroughly. Now that her Crescent Slash doesn't trigger Mark of the Assassin, she is forced to autoattack to do so, and being set more further away from the target Akali just dashed to is extremely counter-intuitive. There were very few champions with strikethroughs to begin with (Fizz, Yasuo) but those kits were designed with the strikethrough in mind. Akali's kit did not.
In teamfights, it puts Akali in a worse position because it pushes Akali more into the enemy team. Also, when there are multiple opponents clumped together (which always happens in teamfights), bodyblocking becomes an issue and makes autoattacking more difficult. The strikethrough doesn't help here because it can push you away from your target and strikethrough another opponent so Akali ends up being blocked from autoattacking the target with Mark of the Assassin on.
It also doesn't help in laning, when you want to dash to trigger Mark of the Assassin near the turret, it pushes Akali into turret range, again, how stupid is that? As an Akali main myself since S1, since her 5.2 nerfs, I never had problems triggering Mark of the Assassin with an autoattack because I have played Akali when she didn't have her Crescent Slash trigger MoTA to begin with. The old dash functions like other dashes in the game (Irelia and Xin Zhao) and in almost all situations, puts Akali in a better spot to autoattack her target. Irelia and Xin Zhao have only one dash with a much shorter range yet they can still autoattack their target just fine, Akali has three. Why did Riot feel the need to change what was not broken?
The only situation where strikethrough does better is if the target is running away from you in a straight line, (i.e. Co-op bots). If the target has a brain, all they need to do is to side step or run back 180 degrees, and it will put Akali much further away when she finishes her dash. It's much further than intended because the dash travel time got increased as well (above mentioned link), so this gives the target more time to change their movements. This situation always happens especially when the target is running towards you, Akali overshoots by a large margin and is put much further away from her target. Again, if the target is smart, and can side step accordingly, this delays the autoattack from going off. Even in the case when the target is running away in a straight line, the fact the dash takes longer to complete means when Akali finally lands, the distance gained isn't as much as you would think.
I personally would want it removed, and have a better replacement. If Riot really wants to keep the strikethrough, fixing the above mentioned bug so that it atleast matches the old dash completion time, or in general, just increase the missile speed of the dash, would help in reducing the side-effects of the strikethrough. A faster dash means the target would still be around when Akali lands within her autoattack range (what the old dash did), or very close to it.
