Is Riot Really Okay With How Akali is Right Now?
Now I'm gonna start by saying that I don't think Akali is overpowered. At all. She's in a decent spot strength-wise.
The problem, however, is that her playstyle is broken. She's far worse than she was before the update. The one factor that made old Akali not a monster was that her lane was so pathetic that she would easily be put 2-3 levels behind her opponent and 30-40 cs down. Akali snowballs harder than any champion in the game, that much is true of both old and new Akali. The difference is that old Akali could easily be shut down early to prevent her rampage before it could get started. Now Akali not only has a dash pre-6 (which also has invisibility tied to it, which has no counterplay), but she also got her inbuilt sustain frontloaded completely. Old Akali had natural spellvamp, but it was pitifully small early, so she would have to use a lot of spells and attacks to heal up, so it was easy to poke her out of lane. New Akali only has to get off a single auto attack to heal back a significant amount of health. This makes her lane much safer, while her post-6 power is still as terrifying as old Akali's.
New Akali still has the same weaknesses, which is why I wouldn't call her OP. She can still be locked down and bursted, she's still really weak to strong peel, and she's still a melee locked champ. However, new Akali is fundamentally flawed, as she is the hardest snowballing champ in the entire game, but she doesn't pay for that strength nearly as much as she used to. Akali is infamous for her 2 powerspikes; when she hits level 6, and when she finishes her Gunblade. Akali's powerspikes are insanely huge, which is why she snowballs so hard. If she goes even in lane, she can easily kill almost anyone the second she hits level 6. If she's behind, she farms for Gunblade and then still effortlessly kills anyone the second she can. Hextech Gunblade is such a perfect item for Akali that her getting just this one item is an equivalent spike to most champions getting their second or even third item.
So how would I go about fixing these issues? Well there's 2 ways. Either you decide that Akali is a pure blooded assassin, and you cut her sustain, and let her keep the jump on her shroud. Or, you decide that Akali is a skirmisher, and you play up her DPS and sustain, and remove the jump on her shroud. Letting Akali keep both her insane sustain and her shroud jump is a mistake. It gives a champ whose weakness is supposed to be a bad lane too many tools to keep up in lane. I firmly believe that any champ that scales as well as Akali does should pay for that strength with a really weak early game. That isn't always the case (Gangplank), but that's how it SHOULD be. Right now against Akali, you have to push her out of lane consistently and get a huge lead, or she will kill you at 6, easily. But that's pretty hard for a lot of champs, as Akali can sustain through poke, and run from engages with her shroud. It's too hard to punish her when that's your only safety net for when she gets a murder-boner for you and decides to kill you. Also, Gunblade is far too big of a spike for her. Akali with just Gunblade easily slaughters most mages who have 2 items complete, even if one of them is a defensive item like Banshee's. It gives her even stronger sustain, so that you can not push her out anymore, and the active range is just bigger than her jump range, so if she gets even just barely close enough, you die.
