I get Akali all the time in ARAM and Mark doesn't do a damn thing to help

Johannes Kepler·Aug 10, 2015·4 votes·2,081 views

I've been playing virtually nothing but ARAMs recently, and a couple weeks ago I bought Akali. I don't own a ton of champions, so I get randomed Akali all the time. I've been playing her with either ignite or mark, and I've noticed that mark is pretty much useless for me. So I've started taking ignite pretty much all the time. Then this week was Naut and Galio free week and holy crap it's the most frustrating thing in the world to play against them when they take mark. Especially Naut. It's a nightmare to get away from him without mark and it's impossible with it.

Wasn't the whole purpose of adding mark supposed to help champions like Akali? Can we just get something completely different to help melee dps instead of mark that's, you know, helpful? It's retarded how strong it is on all the wrong people.

Edit: If you vote please explain your choice.

14 Comments

XypherAug 10, 20153 votes

Mark/Dash is just incredibly annoying if you get a squishy and the enemy has tanky bruisers. It's just frustrating, hardly any fun and no balance at all.

MinardeAug 10, 20153 votes

Wasn't the whole purpose of adding mark supposed to help champions like Akali?

Sorta, the purpose of adding Mark/Dash was to help melee champs deal with poke champs. Evidently the best way to do this was to add engagement tools, even though lack of engage generally wasn't/isn't the problem. On the other hand, Mark/Dash seems to have addressed the (mistaken) perception that melee champs are weak.

Essentially, "fun, but bad for balance."

Johannes KeplerAug 11, 20152 votes

That's what I meant. It was added with the intent of helping champions like Akali, but wildly missed.

We can already see the improvements the spell has made because we're seeing higher play rates of some traditionally unpopular champions and lower dodge rates on ARAM.

The spell is a bit overwhelming now, so we're committed to balancing the spell. We want to move it away from a place where it's a must-have regardless of champion, while continuing to improve the viability of some our more unpopular champions.

Like you said, there's a very big disconnect in these two statements. The first states that the champions are more popular, but the second states that they want to continue increasing their viability. Nothing whatsoever has indicated that they're any more viable, just more fun to play. What's not stated is any data on how much less fun other champions are to play because of mark.

So with all that, I really want to know the fun aspect of a few champions is prioritized over the fun and health of the game overall?

RenailleAug 11, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Johannes Kepler,realm=NA,application-id=LFfTlAky,discussion-id=hJUhvMhE,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2015-08-11T02:14:52.408+0000)

That's what I meant. It was added with the intent of helping champions like Akali, but wildly missed.

It wasn't. The problem with melee/tank heavy teams was they would auto lose to a team of poke. Snowball lets them engage more easily. Akali's problem with aram is that she is super squishy and can't teamfight well. In summoners rift she relies on 1v1s and roaming to get kills, in aram she does not get to do that, in addition to her being forced to 5v5 when she is especially weak early on.

Johannes KeplerAug 11, 20152 votes

It was added for melee in general, which is a problem because melee can't be generalized. Tanks never really had problems outside of a select few, yet they get lumped together with the rest of the melee. I can only think of a few champions that I ever have an issue engaging with.

For Akali specifically, the biggest problem I've noticed with her is that she can't do much of anything pre 6. In teamfights she gets dumpstered by stealth reveals (which mark also provides) and AoE, and that she gets focused hard when she doesn't have a dive budy. I've never had an issue reaching a target post 6.

ZielmannAug 11, 20153 votes

Snowball is a 2-edge sword for Akali. On the one hand, if you're doing it right, it should be helping you mercilessly stick to opponents (a good Akali with snowball can easily become an absolute nightmare). Unfortunately, it makes Akali's shroud pretty useless for her. If she's in it, the other team just has to chuck a couple snowballs into it, and chances are they'll hit her and reveal her.

All that aside, I'm in general agreement that snowball has created an artificial 'balance' to the game, but isn't actually that good for it. What I mean, is that because it exists, people are more willing to actually play the melee fighters and tanks since they feel like they have easy access to an engage tool with snowball.

The last pass of changes on snowball did help some. At least I'm not feeling like it's a required spell on absolutely anything (including poke mages / adcs). But by and large, it helped the melee champs that were already fine on ARAM (with their own engage tools to begin with) become even more absurd to play against.

Johannes KeplerAug 12, 20151 votes

The thing is that Akali (and Akali is just an example) can already mercilessly stick to people. Snowball is just overkill and doesn't give her as much as other spells.

But I think you're right on all accounts here. That's why I worded the poll like I did. I wanted to see how many people thought it made those champions more fun, but not necessarily more viable.

Earl EulrichAug 11, 20153 votes

her kit just sucks if she doesn´t snowball...and it´s about as unlikly as it gets to snowball with her in aram, as she canßt teamfight well without snowballing.

and yea, snowball still has the standard issues that are towers...melee-centric comps mostly can neither clear waves effectivly to save their turret nor can they attack the turret well when they are pushing towartds it, so there´s not much they can do vs poke/waveclear setups that just poke from underneath their turret...with or without snowballs.

ZielmannAug 11, 20152 votes

The most effective Akali's I've seen for ARAM actually build pretty tanky with some AP. Think something like Ryali's, abyssal, omen, etc. Maybe throw in a wota if you find you're surviving their damage well enough. She's not going to be jumping around getting massive multi-kills in a Katarina-like fashion with this build, but she does make for a decent initiator that commands attention.

Yes, I've seen glass-cannon Akali builds wreck face in ARAM. But that requires both the right team and opponents to be able to work.

FaRmErXAug 10, 20152 votes

people are still dashing into 1v5's.. espescially during this bilge water event

Johannes KeplerAug 10, 20151 votes

That's one stupid part of it, but I'm not talking about it being used stupidly. I'm talking about it being used on champs like naut while champs like akali get virtually nothing from it. I mean, I had every opportunity to ult into someone no problem, so snowball doesn't afford me anything. It's just that most of the time it's a stupid idea to jump in, not that I can't. Then I see naut land a mile away snowball on a minion and pop glory for his team. That's an unnecessarily easy way to engage. He doesn't need it, and it doesn't help Akali. The same is true for almost anyone in either of their positions, so I don't see why it's still here. I really wish there was a better solution that replaced mark. It's not fun at all.

RpgDuskyAug 11, 20151 votes

Do you not realize how many more champs are viable because of mark? Create a custom game, don't use mark. 5 poke champs vs 5 melee champs. Spend 15+ minutes getting poked and hiding under tower till you lose because of team comp.

Johannes KeplerAug 12, 20152 votes

There are almost no champs that were weak before mark that are now viable because of it. Most of the champs that are really strong with mark are champs that were strong without it.

That 5 melee vs 5 range scenario? It's extremely rare. First off, there's more to it than just range vs melee. It's really a squishy melee engage with no waveclear vs ranged disengage with waveclear scenario. What I mean by that is that tanks with strong engage, melee or not, don't really have an issue against 5 ranged champion unless the ranged champions have tons of disengage. They wait it out a couple levels and brute force their way over the other team. It's champions like Udyr, Tryndamere, etc that have issues because they don't have strong engage. They're not really teamfighters to begin with. Even then, if they can stall the game out they even out there chances a lot if the other team isn't a pile of disengage. 5 melee DPS can wreck 5 range later in the game.

So yeah, that melee vs range situation can happen, but it's incredibly rare and mark doesn't really do a lot to fix it. Once the fight's over you're back to getting poked. I'm not saying it's not annoying as hell to get in those situations, but is it worth screwing over the entire game mode to make that scenario more fun (not more viable, just more fun)? There are other ways to address those hard situations that don't give tanks stupid amounts of power and actually do give squishy melees a fighting chance.

Ozias of ScagnarAug 11, 20151 votes

I think the main problem with Mark/Dash is that it made the strong engage champions even stronger while not really doing anything for the champions it was supposed to help. Yes it was nice that they balanced it a little bit, but it has a 40 second cool down and deals true damage while allowing you to engage. A perfect problem of this is Amumu, M/D in, and then either ult right then or Q to finish that last little bit and then ult. but most of them have gotten to the point they don't need to Q now which just gives them extra CC that wasn't there before. Did Naut, Garen, Talon, Lee Sin, Darius or several others honestly need a new way to engage? It's taken some melee champions and made them more viable and fun to play like Nasus and Mundo who only had the option of running at them, not that they did bad but they had no 'easy' engage, but with the changes that have been made and were made, Garen is once again one of the most broken ARAM champions around because you can just dash in and spin, and then walk away like nothing happened and do it again in 30 seconds or so and just constantly harass that way.

I have been on both sides of things now where I was an all tank team trying to survive against the poke, I was on an all poke team trying to burst out the tanks. With the state of the game the way it is, tanks or most people, no longer worry about clearing minions out to push because you just engage none stop, but tanks if they can get some gold will win every time, tanks are just too strong right now and normally bring some form of CC or engage with them, adding Mark/Dash took away most of our outplay options because it's hard to dodge 3+ snowballs coming at you when you get bunched up on the bridge.