Akali's rework has failed and she needs either a revert or another rework

Śhunpo·Sep 6, 2019·5 votes·3,116 views

At this point you might as well revert her or rework her again, since there seems to be no way to well and truly balance her for pro play. She can be just "good" in solo queue and 100% Pick/Ban in pro play, resulting in her getting hard nerfed despite her decent stats. in general play.

As much as I love playing this Akali as opposed to the old Akali, I'd much rather take the champion that won't get nerfed each and every patch...or Riot can actually put some thought into this whole Akali situation and give her a truly balanced rework.

29 Comments

boricCentaur1Sep 6, 20192 votes

Yeah no. As long as akali has a higher playrate it's not a failure. The point of a rework is to give a champion new life. Them balancing akali more rather then just killing her just shows she is more healthy.

ŚhunpoSep 8, 20191 votes

How so? She's been nerfed, given a mini-rework, nerfed again, nerfed again and now...that's right, being nerfed again.

Legitimately, even when she has a sub 45% win rate she's still a problem. How does that at all not signify that it's a failure?

Sure, her having a higher pick rate satisfies 1 out of many criterias, however, the other criterias have not been met. Thereby, she's a failure.

boricCentaur1Sep 8, 20191 votes

Ummmm yeah you don't understand reworks. Riot could never do this amount of changes with the old akali since she was MUCH more toxic.

Also winrate means nothing akali is a strong that is a fact and being strong will get a champion nerfed.

Yorick is a pretty bad rework because he is in basically the same spot was before and akali is not.

Akali has more counter play, take skill and can be changed. If akali was actually a problem riot would of nerfed her into the ground and no one would play her.

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

She has been getting nerfed into the ground......

boricCentaur1Sep 9, 20191 votes

Ummm no she has not been. If she was she would see 0 pro play and not have a high playrate and no banrate. Please list me another gutted champion with 10% playrate and 50% banrate in diamond.

Akali is close to the best mid right now.

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

She was legitimately rated as "dead" by most tier lists and players in both mid and top prior to her "mini-rework". I'd say that's pretty nerfed into the ground ;^)

boricCentaur1Sep 9, 20191 votes

Nope. Again playrate,banrate and pro play just proves you wrong. It doesn't matter what these random people think since they're wrong and the numbers show that.

IF SHE WAS BAD NO ONE WOULD PLAY OR BAN HER THAT IS A SIMPLE FACT.

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

Aight, guess I shouldn't listen to Diamond 2+ players. You must know more than they do about this champion.

Also if she's only really good in pro play that also means that the rework failed as no champion should ONLY be good in pro play.

When Akali is overbearing in pro play she may well be absolute trash in solo queue. That's not a good example of champion design.

boricCentaur1Sep 9, 20191 votes

Again I don't care what random people think. Those people have been proven wrong.

Also why are you acting like she is only in pro play? She has a high playrate and a very high banrate in high elo meaning she is good in soloQ.

Like she is good in pro play because she is strong just like soloQ.

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

Because the R nerfs haven't dropped yet xD

IP MasquerenaSep 6, 20192 votes

Balanced for who and for what?

You see, there's a problem people don't understand.

Akali is hard to play to perfection, but the pros can and such they show how strong she is when mastered, but then we see the "reworks" from the boards, which all they do is reduce the difficulty but keeping the same power level. Want an example? A guy suggested to remove the circles on the passive, and have it give her the empowered AA automatically after 1s from a spell hit.

Just lowering the difficulty while keeping the same power level will actually cause her to get even more nerfed because she's now easier to execute so more players can play her.

The problem is you either have her:

As a hard to play champ that is rewarding when mastered but pretty bad when played by a dumb dumb (unless played by lil' Jimmy from Plastic 12 against lil' Connor from Paper 3)
Avg skill level with avg reward.

I for one love the fact that she's hard to play, makes it actually feel like it's rewarding to play a character I love. You don't like it, I don't care, you have Annie, go play her if you want something easy.

Not everything IS and MUST BE for everyone. A-Sol was unique, few played him but those who did loved him, and well, then a rework and now you see the result, it's hated because it's not good. It took away what made him unique and turned him into another combo mage.

ŚhunpoSep 8, 20191 votes

My problem with her is that she's being constantly nerfed, even while she's only just "decent" at most levels of play. I do not enjoy playing champions who get nerfed into underwhelming states, then slightly buffed, only to be nerfed again.

I personally have 0 issues with facing Akali, it's just that in terms of her being "balanced" there are enough signs to indicate that she can never be associated with that term given the current state of her kit.

IP MasquerenaSep 8, 20191 votes

Again, balance for who?

You say she has issues and she'll never be balanced, but balanced for who?

Balanced for the good players or balanced for the average player?

You always need to ask that when talking about balance. For who?

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

Balanced for all players.

IP MasquerenaSep 9, 20191 votes

You seem to want to be vague on purpose, so my question is, are you vague because you don't know how to reply or don't want to?

Balanced for which "all players"?

All players that have her unlocked to the point where they can carry with her after the first 5 games?
All players who mastered her?
All players in lower elos?
All players in high elos?
All players in pro play?

You see, what Riot wants to do with her right now is the 2nd one, balancing her for all players who mastered her. So by your "request", they do that, they balance her for "all players", just that those "all players" has a caviat, they need to learn to play her to be good.

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

I am referring to all those demographics, yes. Although that said, she becomes a real nightmare once mastered since her entire kit is unhealthy, so I suppose that demographic definitely has some more significance than the others; to which I say, you are correct in your response.

However, pro players haven't really mastered her, she's just amazing in co-ordinated play thanks to her ability to counter most champions picked within pro play, especially in the top lane, where she lacks any real counterplay. That's when she gets nerfed, thus hurting those who have mastered Akali within solo queue.

Outright, Akali is worse in solo queue than she is in pro play, and that's due to the nature of solo queue and the champs she has to compete with (who are currently Rambo champs thanks to damage meta), who outperform her thanks to solo queue being a chimpfest.

IP MasquerenaSep 9, 20191 votes

It's just impossible to balance for all those demographics. There's not 1 single champion in the game that's balanced for all.

And no, Akali doesn't do good in pro play because she counters stuff, those players picking Akali actually know how to play her, but they have something yolo que doesn't have, and most importantly, yolo que doesn't even know exists, well, at least the vast majority of yolo que: actual propper wave management.

Yes, Prof. Akali may be a better Akali player than 1 of those pros, and maybe even solo challenger mains may be better Akali than the procs, BUT, those pros are also 1000 times better Akali players than 99-100% of the Akali you see in your games, based on your elo.

Akali is outperformed in solo que for 3 reasons mainly:

Most players don't know how to properly play her and her power spikes/curves
Most players don't know how to properly manage waves
Most players don't know how to properly play match-ups.

Akali needs much more than just "skill on the champ". Yes, being able to play her well is nice and all, especially when the enemy is dumb as a rock (like the Veigar in my last game, he was actually allowing Akali to get in melee range of him without using E or W or R, heck, I've seen him go close to her, for some unknown reason), but even if you can play her, if the enemy also knows how to deal with you, without knowing how deal with the match-up and how to manage the wave, you're cucked.

Weiss GuertenaSep 9, 20191 votes

That's not any different from old Akali. The fact that she was impossible to peel, had all of her damage being point and click, had and a shitload of sustain meant that every time she was good she was beyond opressive and quickly got nerfed. People look at old Akali through rose-colored glasses due to how hated new one is, but her design was way, way worse.

ŚhunpoSep 10, 20191 votes

Well in that case, why not give her another rework that might be healthy and balanced for everyone?

IP MasquerenaSep 10, 20191 votes

You still have to name 1 champ that is balanced for everyone.

Until you can, stop asking.

ŚhunpoSep 10, 20191 votes

Name a champion? Well, that's quite difficult since Riot has pretty much f**ked every champion up in terms of balance. Buuuuttt, if I had to name one, gun to my head...probably pre-rework Katarina or pre-rework Garen. That is of course if "balanced" means fair and not completely overbearing.

If we're talking like a purely "balanced" champ in regards to actual game balance I'd probably say Singed actually. Even when he is strong there's still lots of counterplay to him, and he's never actually weak thanks to his playstyle being both effective against players not used to it and consistent against all skill levels. Zac also comes to mind, at least right now since he's just an "ok" pick.

Again, it's hard to actually name a champion that is completely balanced since Riot has either reworked them into a balance mess that removes a lot of their counterplay e.g. Katarina, Garen, Akali, Irelia, Mordekaiser etc (basically they removed point and click abilities only to give them more tools that allow them to completely nullify all counterplay, such as Katarina's spammable Shunpo and Irelia's ultimate) or they have buffed them beyond all belief (cough Darius cough).

SukishooSep 9, 20191 votes

Reverts don't occur on VGUd champions. Their designs are meant to last longer. Yes, they have begun to rework more of the recent one, Irelia, Swain, Urgot, after their initial updates but they will not change them to their older kits.

Akali for one sees a lot more nerfs right now because of Proplay and will for a few more patches most likely as were getting in to Worlds.

ŚhunpoSep 9, 20191 votes

Kog had a revert, granted he didn't receive a VGU. However, it would be more than easy to give Akali her old kit.

preternaturalSep 9, 20191 votes

akali is actually fine as she is right now, i would even suggest rito pull back the incoming nerf.

IP MasquerenaSep 9, 20191 votes

Or at least part of the nerf.

Ok, she's losing damage on it, that's cool. Ok, she's losing the micro stun on it, that's cool.

But for the holy name of Ahri, at least don't let that CD nerf to go through as well.

preternaturalSep 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Or at least part of the nerf.

Ok, she's losing damage on it, that's cool. Ok, she's losing the micro stun on it, that's cool.

But for the holy name of Ahri, at least don't let that CD nerf to go through as well.

nah, way i see it it can just be pulled back entirely. no need to even touch the micro-stun at this point. her Q is what is annoying about her and what actually frustrates people when they come across a "good" akali, which just translates to "they see zones better than i do" so they maximise the Q-pasive spam which should get some reward no doubt, which while i can do it's not something i enjoy fixing my hands to do so clearly there's some mechanical floor that has to be met to play teh champion. what should be done about her Q? dunno, would just call it a feature at this point, i can assume that lowering the cooldown makes her energy redundant and she'll be kennen 2.0 with no real costs because all the moves are on cooldown long enough for energy to have been recovered, so there's a game to be played with the low cooldown Q in terms of baiting energy out of akali.

are people willing to play by akali rules though? probably not, so she'll get nerfed in this way this patch, and then her Q or passive will receive another nerf in the future. what's left at that point of the champion i dunno. my main gripe with her was her obscurity cause i legit didn't get to play league against her, now she's playable. punishes idiocy hard, but she is playable even if the opponent is a "mastered" akali.

IP MasquerenaSep 10, 20192 votes

Look, I know that, you know that, most don't know that.

Look at this guy, the OP said she has to be easy enough to be able to carry after just a few games, in a thread I made, people said she has to be weak enough for anyone to beat on autopilot (not their exact words, their exact words were "players shouldn't be forced to learn to play against her").

People will never be happy no matter what Riot does. Is she weak if not mastered but requires a bit of extra thinking to play against? "Ree cancer champ".

mirAcIeSep 10, 20191 votes

So has Evelynn's rework, but who's counting?

Pre-VGU: this champion is hard to balance Post-VGU: even harder to balance

[zombie-brand-mindblown]

ŚhunpoSep 10, 20191 votes

Yeeeeaaahhhh....this is why I would much prefer it if Riot would tone it down with the reworks and only rework champions like Taric and Yorick who actually need it not "need" it.