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It looks like Akali's new kit has put her in a really bad spot for balancing

Akali is SO HOT··5 votes·908 views

After the buffs she received this patch, her winrate is still really bad and she's one of the weakest top laners and mid laners in the game. It looks like the only solution Riot is going to come up with to this problem (if they even bother to address it at all) will be number buffs which will eventually make her overpowered because of how high her burst is at which point she'll be gutted again and left in the dumpster.

The problem with her new kit is that there is no middle ground with her numbers. Now that her burst window is so huge if she doesn't kill her target with her first rotation, then that means most of the time they'll either escape or she'll die before she can do her rotation again. This is really bad because if Riot wants her to do well as an Assassin then she's going to need to be able to kill targets and with her current kit the only way she can do that effectively is if she can 100-0 her target with her first rotation which is very bad for balancing.

With her current kit she will never be a reliable Assassin if she can't kill someone with one rotation. Her numbers will always be too high or too low which means she'll either be too strong or complete trash. What was good about Akali's old kit was that her kill window was just in the right spot where if she couldn't kill you with her first rotation she still had a shot at killing you with her second rotation which made her decently reliable as an Assassin, but still good to play against because you still had that window of time to react against her that you don't have against a lot of other Assassins.

Her old kit made it easy to balance her with small number tweaks because her kill window was in about the right spot where it needed to be, but with these changes there really is no kill window that can be balanced around. Against old Akali there was always a good chance she would kill you (which is how it should be because she's an Assassin), but it wasn't guaranteed because of her longer kill window (compared to other Assassins) which made her easier to balance around. New Akali either kills you or she doesn't and that's it. Her current kit makes her too strong if she can reliably kill someone in one rotation and far too weak if she can't. There will never be no middle ground and she'll always be really good or really bad because of the way her new kit works.

I'm assuming Riot will just leave her in the gutter because that's how they've treated her since all the way back in season 3 and will just nerf her if she is ever able to get up to an acceptable winrate. Pretty sad seeing my favorite champion put into a state where she can't be balanced properly. I've seen a ton of of my friends and other long time Akali players just building her Bruiser/Tank now instead of a true glass cannon Assassin which is very saddening. I guess those are just my thoughts for now.

9 Comments

Horus21 votes

Yeah, of the remakes, Akali's is among the worst. Fizz is pretty bad too, but the opposite direction. Going to be hard to balance those 2 in particular. Meanwhile..Lee Sin..still wildly strong. It's pretty clear Riot has an agenda for what champs they want to see in competitive.

404 Terror1 votes

Honestly, I think they boned her passive a little bit and it isn't very good until later levels (which even then, it's kind of finicky and nobody times those autos for desired effects). And I think they should bring her old proc back for the Q, where even abilities proc it (but it should be a little less devastating).

If I were to re-do Akali, I would re-instate the old passive, the old Q proc, and I would give her cloak a scaling overall damage reduction while she's in it. Then reduce her armor/resist gain through leveling, so she's super squishy when she's outside the cloak; this ensures that she has to play strategically and is a heavy damage dealing assassin, as well as very vulnerable at key times.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

I think that might turn her more into a Bruiser champion with that approach. Because her shroud isn't up all the time, making her base stats really low would make her laning incredibly weak which would make it really hard for her to get any cs or gold at all to go into the mid game where she currently struggles a lot. This might make it so that even to just survive the laning phase she would have to start building tanky. Adding in damage reduction to her shroud would be kinda pointless because she can't be hit by auto attacks or targeted abilities while she's in her shroud so she couldn't really do much with the resists.

404 Terror1 votes

Well, if they're keeping her current trash of a rework, I think maybe they should increase the range of her Shroud cast. It feels super gimp and barely even utilizes her ability to port target location. Meanwhile, you have champions like Katarina, Talon and Lee Sin who can jump around for days.

404 Terror1 votes

Honestly, the biggest nerfs she's gotten have been to her passive and her Q proc. Granted, the Q proc change was pretty much necessary, she still had a solid passive. Her current passive is pathetic and doesn't fit well with her kit. Nothing about her flows well right now.

Ralanr1 votes

So what you're basically saying is that the rework changed nothing about Akali's problems: Being impossible to balance because she's either super oppressive or useless to the general playerbase.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

No I'm saying Akali was easier to balance with number tweaks before because of her good kill window, but with her new kit she'll either 100-0 you or do nothing and can't be balanced that way.

Ralanr1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Akali is SO HOT,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=s2M9tFGg,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2016-11-29T15:50:38.062+0000)

No I'm saying Akali was easier to balance with number tweaks before because of her good kill window, but with her new kit she'll either 100-0 you or do nothing and can't be balanced that way.

I'm not really seeing how that was different from her old kit.

Akali is SO HOT1 votes

If you read what I wrote I explained that Akali's kill window was in the right spot where she didn't need to kill someone with one rotation to be a good Assassin which allowed Riot to balance her numbers around her not being able to 100-0 people with a single rotation like other Assassins rather than her current kit which requires her to kill someone in one rotation or she's useless.

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