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Akali Changes - Good and the Bad

ChaosFross·5/25/2019, 3:51:17 AM·10 votes·8,089 views

First thing's first, in no way is what I say 100% the feelings of Akali mains everywhere, and I am always open to discussions on what I say. I'm just here putting out my opinions on not just the changes to Akali but changes that happen to champions as the result of their use in pro play.

Second, I feel the need to point out I am a Silver player who peaked at high Gold, so this is not the opinion of someone highly knowledgeable about how she fairs in high elo except from what I see on streams and pro-play. This is all just one summoner's opinions on the recent outlook of his favorite champion. Sorry in advance for the lengthy post :)

With that being said, several things I wanna talk about. First being how Riot decides on nerfing Akali in general: Looking at Akali, we see original pro players playing her. This alone is nothing too spectacular, but once we see them playing her pulling outplays out of thin air and working around their combos then they attract attention. But once they do this on a continuous basis (of sorts, leading their team to victory) then this should trigger a flag, standing to reason this champion is doing too much.

Personally, I have a single problem with this, and no it's not the usual complaint that "ooh rito shouldn't balance things around pro-play". Most of their views comes from those watching the e-sports games themselves, along with those players supposedly representing the "best" of the community, so it only makes sense majority -not all- things revolve around their play. My problem, however, is how we nerf and do not fix issues wrong with the champ.

No. My problem is the consistent nerfs with no fix.

Plenty of Akali players have been saying ever since her rework there are bugs in her kit. I have no personal experience with any bug (none that are game-breaking or ones that lose me the match) so I'll just leave this here for someone else to hit on.

I mostly refer to her presence outside of kills when I speak on fixes, or compensations rather, for her recent nerfs. Comparing her to others in her field, assassins like Leblanc Talon Zed and dare I say Katarina all have stable presence outside of kill pressure. They can all proc every single one of their abilities and passives (minus their ultimates of course) on jungle monsters. For Riot to nerf Akali's whole play style (shroud simply compliments her damage, damage here being her style) is absurd to me because of how it renders her a sitting duck. Even Zed has no trouble killing camps without his shadow, and with his shadow assisting his team taking an objective is no hard task for him. But lowering Akali's energy rate and then lowering damage?

Sorry for that long rant, honestly my whole point was that if we nerf a champion because they excel at something in pro play, why not compensate? Several posts on the board congratulate Riot on taking steps to tone down damage. If we go down this route, it only adds more potential for outplay mechanics instead of champions dealing crazy amounts of damage. The compensation does not have to be in base stats alone, but nerfs after nerfs will only draw a game out longer if nothing is fixed.

This also will contribute to balancing things for soloq as well and not leaving the common people out. If things have to be changed for those who play at a much higher level, a simple balance fix for soloq won't hurt them as a result. Side note, I could also go on and list how proccing passive on a camp could lead to outplay as well, but I'm sure that's self explanatory.

Second point: Why in my opinion reverting isn't such a good idea. Of course we know reverting to be a last resort sort of deal. And even though I would say Riot isn't handling Akali as good as they could be, what would be the use in going back to how it was? For one she was changed for a reason, and it wasn't just a visual update to her character design. Old Akali wasn't broken, but she definitely had more designated damage in her kit. Almost same uses of dash (her shroud even giving blink allowing for outplay over walls). I personally believe this version to be a lot better simply because her dashes are limited, but her outplay potential while in skirmishes is what makes her shine. Whether the overall meta focuses on tanks or goes back to burst, new Akali is jack of all trades, so to speak, to whereas I would argue old Akali had more damage in her kit alone to blow up enemies as soon as possible. But of course what else can you do? I don't think going back and forth with nerfs/buffs is the best solution unless we compensate her with something that wont make her lackluster (if someone complains and says "Omg akali 2 much dmg" and we nerf that damage, what is she? A walking shroud? Of course i exaggerate the nerfs but am I really?).

Another side note, personally it feels as though the collective nerfs for Akali is like reducing the damage of Zed's clone or altogether getting rid of it. Remember when people used to complain about Zed? Good times... To be honest it was really a simpler argument of its time, but that's another story.

Third point and final (realized I started rambling, gonna just list what is major to me): Nerfing damage is a place-holder for actually tuning down her overpowered strengths. Was her damage really the issue, or was it the damage she was able to continuously sprout from her shroud?

Of course shroud doesn't increase her damage from Q or passive, but her shroud is like poking a bear with an 100 yard stick. Yea it'll break eventually, but I'm safe when it does, and sure as hell safe while I'm doing it.

Even if you nerf her damage (which I feel is ridiculous), Akali will always be safe even if you nerf the cooldown on her shroud. I wouldn't know how to fix it, but I feel as though instead of going 100% into damage, 50% into her "unique skills" softens the blows but that is of course we compensate her in one of her other aspects. Another side note, even if we don't give her procs on jungle monsters, think of something like increased damage to monsters? Thank God I'm not in charge of number balancing...

TL:DR -

  1. Nerfing around pro play is understandable, but I think soloq needs some love with compensations. We continue to nerf, things go bad.
  2. Reverting Akali is no good imo. Let old Akali rest, move forward with what's wrong with Akali right now.
  3. I wouldn't go so hard with nerfs into damage, especially for any assassin. Soften punches, see where it goes.

My overall opinion on the changes is that it guts Akali and further reflects the mishandling of nerfs on Riot's part. Just because I agree with changes due to pro play does not mean I agree with the changes themselves. With that being said, there's a lot of places to start.

What do you guys think? On Akali in general or my post. I wanted to touch on other champions getting treatment like this too, but wanted to start small since I already typed so much lol. Please give feedback, and by no means do I know everything, so please enlighten me to the things I've been misinformed on or things I just don't know! Have a great day people, and regardless of changes, have fun playing League, its a game for a reason :)

15 Comments

Ozzburne5/25/2019, 12:07:30 PM5 votes

The reason everyone wants akali nerfed is BECAUSE its very clear Riot has no idea what to do with her, and has literally lost the playerbase's confidence that they ever will get their heads removed from their own asses. Pre-rework akali? She worked. She wasnt getting nerfed every other patch, she wasn't an unbalancable abomination of bruiser/assassin that is literally useless outside of fighting other champions, she had real actual ways to carry games and contribute to her team.

New Akali? Don't get me wrong, she's fun as heck, but she's a busted wreck. Everything is based on the shroud. Everything. And the shroud? Gutted beyond repair. She's all ready lost the one thing they wanted her to have, and have just been chipping away at the fun parts of her kit until she's a shallow husk of what she used to be. True stealth? Gone. Heal? Gone. Reliable skirmishing in shroud? Nerfed into oblivion so hard it might as well be gone.(shimmer on dmg, delayed re-steath, follow through mechanic, etc)

I'm tired of it, and understandably, most other Akali players are, too. Just revert her back to what she used to be and let us enjoy the champion without having to hear Riot bullshit their way through another patch and we have to see some jackass write "Zero power nerf" again.

Just give us back our cool ninja

Tomoe Gozen5/25/2019, 11:21:45 AM1 votes

I actually like to read more drawn out and thoughtful posts on the Boards, rather than "Akali too THONK, Rito make BRAN DED AGEN!" arguments. Because this way, i feel like i can argue the points someone made and bring in my own than instead trying to figure out what the outraged OP meant and how i'd approach the issue. It's not my problem in having to think of an argument and put in in their mouth, if they are here taking up valuable "hot topic" space, it's them who should be worthy of keeping it with a good point.

With that in mind, i agree that Riot does have to do something to nerf Akali's overall presence in pro play but i don't agree with the approach when it also undermines every other ELO as well. Riot did have a few pro play only nerfs for specific champions and this new Akali was supposed to have more levers Riot could switch on and off so that they'd have more avenues to balance her in the right direction.

I'm not denying the fact others will look at pro play in order to copy-paste builds and even copy the playstyle of the pros. It doesn't matter if it's only a select few people because if they succeed, other players would copy the copycats and indirectly be copying the pros. This is how the knowledge gets disseminated to lower ELOs even if these people don't care about e-sports themselves. We're not perfectly isolated to picking up strategies and builds that work from other players and applying them to our ranked or normal League experience. That's the whole point of LEARNING from our mistakes and adapting to different situations.

However, you can't copy the pro players' skill and experience with the champion. Which means that you have to put in the time and effort yourself if you want to enjoy the success they're having. Sometimes the bar is set too high and sometimes it can be just within our reach. Akali is one such champion where the bar is too high, i believe. What pros do with her (micromanage her abilities and weave in attacks to execute and style on their opponents), is not a real indicative of her actual strength in every other ELO. She is not an easy champ to pick up and she has clear weaknesses before she gets her core items (Gunblade), which was ironically what Riot was trying to fix with the rework. More on that below.

Her runes transitioned from Electrocute or Dark Harvest to Fleet Footwork (because it heals and gives MS on charged attacks), which allows her to have some semblance of sustain that she desperately needs, which makes her all-in play all the more underwhelming when it happens because apparently, she isn't allowed to have this kind of damage while Zed can throw a shadow in your mouth and proc every micro ability he has from runes, items and kit (plus R), and blow you up in less than a microsecond.

These nerfs (compounded from her previous ones), really hit her in the knees. Shroud's turret invisibility was cool but also warranted a justified removal of the mechanic because people were getting relatively easy tower dives. And pros abused this, as well as the rest of us did. She wasn't that hard to play, given this particular strength. But then her heal on max energy Q was removed and paired with already short Q range, meant you'd have to take damage while tossing it out. I, half of the time, am barely 1px short and i get dinged for this mistake. Her shroud was also nerfed in a way where she restealths slower, giving more time for opponents to target her with abilities. Shimmering mechanic was also included, where if Akali's taking damage from any source while in stealth, her position will be revealed for a split second, leaving her opponents not having to guess where to aim their abilities at.

Now, her energy restoration from passive was hit while also reducing the damage and AP ratios and all i can say is to what end? We've come at a point where she'll be neutered for an average player while not being impacted that much for pro play because they rarely rely on 1v1 domination first. You already need to micromanage her abilities/dashes so that you can go in and proc everything in order. If team play is all that matters the most before individual play, even in her state she'll find use in teams, if her laning phase can be relatively safe and she can still do her job in cleaning up teamfights. Whereas my butt would require at least 3/4 items and 100+ games played under my belt so that i could make her marginally work (like 50% WR).

These champions are not usually worth the effort you put in because they're extremely fickle. If they end up being immune to the nerfs, Riot would address this with more meaningful nerfs the next time, all the while the champion feeling worse and worse to play for us peasants. I also don't believe reverts should ever be a thing because Akali was changed for a reason and not because a Rioter likes TF Blade that much.

D357R0Y3R5/25/2019, 12:19:07 PM1 votes

They're targetting energy refound and passive damage to lower akali's dps

as for now in pro play, she's able to duel bruisers too much and even using conqueror something that an assassin shouldn't be doing

Bμbble Butt5/25/2019, 4:41:35 PM1 votes

Easiest fucking fix for invisible champs is making pink wards what they used to be. Anti-Invisible Champs, and pinks can burn through gold so yeh.

TwitchInMyPants5/25/2019, 5:58:18 PM1 votes

Honestly they should keep this Akali, but I think the issue is her R. Its an execute, has a ministun, offers two dashes that aren't fixed to any location, and all on a relatively short CD. Also it doesn't factor into the energy use of her combos, the move is actually insane.

On rework release clearly her W with the true stealth gave her absurd safety. At this point though W lost its energy generation and is mostly used for speed for jukes. Q is reliable damage with some waveclear potential, but there's builds where people are taking Minion Dematerializer to make up for the nerfs. E probably doesn't need the mark on shroud for TP given it knocks yourself back and has a go in function, but as is they've nerfed her damage under the assumption she'd have that extra safety tool so it's a bit late for that.

Honestly hacking damage/utility off Q and Passive isn't going to fix Akali. She's always going to do her job in pro play super effectively when R is up. If she's in danger, she gets out. If a gank is about to be setup, she can dive as much as she needs. In solo Q she's much lower impact and that's mainly because the R is a finishing move for skirmishes/teamfights as well as a reposition. If you aren't optimizing the mobility she's going to be weak. It creates a much higher disparity than most champions suffered, her case is pretty similar to Kalista/Azir where even with the team based aspect they're making a strong assumption about player skill with the balance.

If we want her to be balanced around both, her basic stuff needs some power back and R needs some stuff hacked off it. Probably that mini-stun and some of the execute damage. Given that the move is what results in shit like Caps getting a pentakill though, I doubt Riot is taking any steps back off her current design. I'm not even a great Akali (Have like 10 or so games) and I feel like her power is just doubled or more when R is up, otherwise you're just playing the poke/trade dance.