Akali's Smoke Kills Counterplay

Capn Of Capns·8/2/2018, 5:59:25 AM·76 votes·16,827 views

Just played a game against her in mid as Pantheon. It worked great until about level 4 when she just gave up. Sat back just out of range, used her kunai to farm, threw down smoke any time I came too close. I liked the smoke at first because it seems interesting, but 15 minutes of absolutely nothing happening was boring beyond belief. Between her ability to hide in the smoke (which lasts forever) and the heal off her kunai she's unmovable unless you can get some sort of burst on her. I thought the point of assassins was to be squishy high burst? She seems to be missing the squish part.

tl;dr Twilight Shroud lasts too long and is boring to fight against.

148 Comments

ModWulf Helhammer8/2/2018, 6:49:42 AM163 votes

A Pantheon complaining about low interactivity.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/334972991282741250/474469385441116170/image.jpg

meowwow78/2/2018, 6:10:24 AM23 votes

the only good part about it is that the cd doesn't start til the shroud is gone

Ionian Vulpix8/2/2018, 12:20:25 PM16 votes

I can't say for sure how good she'll be, but that shroud is one of the most obnoxious abilities in the game. It's like Wind Wall where it takes away everything you can do save for them screwing up.

Baron Barian8/2/2018, 6:54:57 AM16 votes

That's a good thing. It meant that you had complete control of the middle lane. You should've taken advantage of that by pushing the lane and roam to others. Help snowball your team (and maybe yourself) when the opportunity rises.

Also, small tip, but item 3751 is terrible on pantheon.

The Highest Noon8/2/2018, 3:07:08 PM14 votes

I like how everyone's complaint about Akali is "omg her smoke I can't believe I'm unable to go in on her whenever I want"

Congratulations! You're doing it wrong [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Colton1478/2/2018, 7:14:06 AM14 votes

[deleted]

My Waifu Vanilla8/2/2018, 4:54:00 PM11 votes

How is this a complaint? You literally had free reign to do whatever you want in lane. If she backs off and shrouds she isn't doing anything and she just put shroud on a 20 second cooldown. Her Q has a shorter range than your Q so if you play up she can't farm with it unless she wants to eat like 150 damage for each and every cs. Another thing is you can literally just freeze the wave on her if she wants to play THAT far back at which point she gets nothing and at any point you can just break your freeze and ult bot lane for double kills. She isn't going to follow you and you are going to have like 30+ cs on her by the end of the laning phase.

Hayaishi8/2/2018, 7:11:28 AM10 votes

For whatever reason the whole concept of assassins in this game is to have no counterplay.

Just gut this class already.

mack91128/2/2018, 9:21:20 AM9 votes

It felt like low interactivity for you because half your kit was point click.

Pika Fox8/2/2018, 2:14:54 PM8 votes

Vision reveals her position and you can smack her with AoE. Your E can cover a good bit of her smoke.

Tomoe Gozen8/2/2018, 8:06:59 PM7 votes

Akali's kunai heal is basically near full or full energy, which means she can't spam it forever. And since you always had the advantage, she chose to play it safe and not die. What counterplay you want in this case? To constantly kill her so that she can't even be in a lane if you so much as chose to Flash + stun combo her to death?

I don't think you know what counterplay means in this case. Counterplay =/= counterpicked No champion should feel like they've lost the lane from champ select. That would've been her game if she didn't have a valid way to deal with you, without actually having to beat you with brute force when she clearly couldn't. At least, not that early into the game.

She was being bullied by you so she had an option to make sure she doesn't die if she can't get a kill. That sounds like a valid option to me, instead to opt for gameplay that revolves around absolutely decimating your lane opponent or failing once and not even being a factor in the game. If that interaction sounds boring to you (because it's not a clusterfuck at mid), you could've ulted on some other lanes and chosen to roam and make a difference there while leaving Akali to her own devices.

Furthermore, her AoE waveclear is her Q and it has to be leveled or filled with AP first. She can't CS properly either so her smokescreen safety net isn't a completely foolproof option to be sitting under a turret and taking no damage from poke. I've played Akali, i know her weaknesses. The way you describe them is basically you not taking an advantage of her passive gameplay and influencing other lanes because you likely wanted to prove that you were better by getting kills.

Her passive is also negated by your own, which means that if you rotate your spells, you can potentially block 2-3 passive applications from her, severely cutting down on her poke damage. You weren't an easy matchup for her and she had an option to deal with it instead of having to concede her own lane that early.

jeanne mulaney8/2/2018, 6:41:38 PM6 votes

So you're upset that an assassin with somewhat limited laning potential can play defensive? Kunai doesn't have a massive range and smoke has like a 15 second cool down. If she's walking into Kunai range to farm when her smoke is down you should be able to get off some ez pz punishment. If she's not walking into Kunai range to farm when her smoke is down she's falling behind massively so long as you farm properly -- which will eventually mean smoke or not you can go in for the 1v1. Akali definitely has issues, but in this case it sounds like you just didn't punish right.

Also Akali is super squishy. The heal on Kunai isn't exactly massive, especially in early laning, and so long as you pressure her (which Pantheon's Q should allow) I don't see how you could struggle against it.

EDIT: Her push power is also fairly item reliant. Her q takes a massive amount of energy so it can't be spammed, and up until you get like Gunblade + Sorc Boots you can't clear casters with one cast. If you shove her to turret and then roam/ult/tele somewhere you should have plenty of time to get back before she starts beating on your turret. So roaming is also a pretty good way you could have countered her defensive attitude.

PurpleKingCrazy8/2/2018, 4:07:31 PM5 votes

"Boring." From the Pantheon of all things.

Taliyah

Nevrankroaton8/2/2018, 10:25:02 AM5 votes

Akali obligatory loose something is she need to stay back that long, it also mean that her waiting under turret let you freeze and starve her to 'death' if the wave isn't near the tower. Her shroud has a long CD early on and it also mean that her playing like this let you roam as Pantheon.

You are litterally protesting against someone playing entirely defensively, using all of their kit tool for this. What is more interactive than a tank activating their shield and farming under turret safely? Or someone who has lifesteal/sustain like nasus/vlad?

PrinceOfStorms8/3/2018, 5:39:40 AM4 votes

> playing as Pantheon, the champion with literally no counterplay whatsoever

> complaining about lack of counterplay on another champion

does not compute

Chumpzi11a8/2/2018, 2:03:44 PM4 votes

All Morg, all the time, every role. Puddle will tell you if she's on it though healing and cooldown.

Wimbledofy8/2/2018, 11:28:17 PM3 votes

The only reason you can even complain about akali's lack of counterplay is because your champ has 0 counterplay. Any champ with a skillshot can hit her.

Nut on my Butt8/3/2018, 12:11:44 AM3 votes

That is, completely your fault for not exploiting the 17 second cd it has in lane, which doesn't even start until the shroud disappears btw. If she's staying out of range then that means she's not pushing or farming, which means you have lane priority and are free to roam.

VoraciousX8/3/2018, 4:41:23 AM3 votes

You picked Pantheon mid. You absolutely require a target to hit anyone as Pantheon, there's no counterplay to a Pantheon W either outside of "be out of his range" or "be in stealth". Akali has that advantage vs Pantheon, so of course you might find it unfun as Pantheon to fight her. But her shroud does have counterplay. It's called the shimmer effect you get when you hit her with an ability. You also could have just used your E in random spaces to damage her. She's not immune to damage in the shroud. Maybe you should have actually picked a mage mid lane so that you could hit her in her shroud. Also her shroud has around an 17 second window so you also had 17 seconds after she used it to get her. Saying that Akali's shroud has no counterplay because you used the worst possible scenario when playing against her does not mean anything. If I'd used Teemo and hid in a bush and you came after me but didn't know my exact location, it'd be the same exact thing.

4th3t0s8/2/2018, 1:57:46 PM2 votes

Pantheon is probably one of the worst picks against her now because most of his damage comes from targeted abilities or autoattacks (aside from his e). Just based on that, Ziggs / Syndra / Xerath / Kennen and Taliyah would give her problems. The only thing about her shroud that concerns me is if the reveal duration when she attacks out of it is too short for a tower to retaliate.