Like to this day i never understood. Like have you ever had a wukong jump on you from a fairly large distance? How is that healthy gameplay? Like at least with twitch and rengar (i think) you can see them when they get really close. But even so, akali? Theres no reason to not have counterplay to it? Unless of course you ignite. But like even so, i want to know the exact reasoning of why counterplay was taken out?
TehNACHO3 votesHey have you ever heard the debates over Grievous Wounds? They're old and forgotten debates, but as an active member of them I think there's something to learn from the ideas.
The short summary is that while having Grievous Wounds as a purchasable option did indeed provide counterplay, it also largely made a lot of healing in the game really really pointless. Only being able to heal 50% of what your champion is designed around either killed champions or forced them into playstyles away from their healing capabilities, negating the unique attributes of those healing champions. To compensate, you could buff those healing abilities or the champion as a whole to counteract Grievous Wounds murdering their kits too hard, but eventually you run into a new problem. Without Grievous Wounds, that buffed up healing capability is now overpowered and your carries now MUST build Grievous Wounds items to compensate. This is a lose lose situation from a design standpoint. On one hand, you stifle champion design by negating an entire defining element of champions, or on the other you can stifle item diversity by pigeonholing carries into Grievous Wounds items or risk losing to their now binary healing opponents.
Take everything from that, and apply it to Stealth and Stealth Detection. On some champions the counterplay makes total sense; put a little extra into your preparations and Twitch/Rengar can't just sneak past your flanks and destroy you from behind. On other champions it makes no sense. If you have a Pink Ward, Akali basically doesn't have a W. Therefore, keep the functionality of revealing camouflaged units (Twitch/Rengar type stealth) while removing that functionality from short term reactive invisibility (Wukong/Akali type stealth). Now Akali has a reason to use her W defensively and Twitch isn't sitting literally right on top of your carry.
Also just putting it out there, you can easily see Wukong coming from a mile away with regular wards. You seriously don't need Pink Wards for him, at least in terms of ganks and flanks.
Prestige AkaIi1 votesThis^
The days of when Akali's W was mainly used for the slight speed boost because of how everyone on the enemy team has a pink ward is a time that I don't want to remember. I don't think it was healthy for her only defensive ability to be countered by the push of a button. It's also why they nerfed Lee Sin E so it no longer has the true sight, it just wasn't fair, especially to akali, who has to sit in the shroud and doesn't have the option to just walk away while invis.
TL;DR
I'm happy Akali isn't completely countered by a 75g purchase anymore and that lee actually has to land a skillshot to reveal her.
Genjab1 votesI think that Riot thinks that the counterplay (just drop a pink ward) was too easy to do. Which in all fairness. It was easy to do. But they traded something that was okay to deal with to something that is much more annoying, in my opinion.
