What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
The assassins rework is pretty much confirmed by this point, and is set to come out during
what I expect would be the next preseason update or maybe a little bit before it.
And in that assassin class update, one of the more notable characters that is going
to receive some changes definitely has to be Akali.
She’s been in a rough spot for a while now, and certainly is more deserving of changes
than most of the other champions being looked at, and as well, there is quite a lot of bits
and pieces of information that rioters have mentioned in the past that actually tells
us a lot about what we can expect during her rework, and what you might be able to expect
will happen to akali.
And most of all, Akali’s rework is shaping up to be totally awesome.
And if you guys enjoy the video hit that like button and if you don’t enjoy the video
hit that dislike, and if this video gets 5,000 ratings Im gonna do 100 pushups!
So let’s start off this conversation with what we know for sure, which is all of the
Rioter comments from the past about this exciting Akali Rework.
So with the general assassin rework, Riot is trying to accomplish 3 specific things
within each individual champion.
Number 1, to make each assassin have healthy gameplay.
This is something that Akali struggles with quite a lot Number 2, is to make each Assassin
bring something unique to the table, to make them worth picking over other assassins.
Again, this is something akali struggles with quite a lot.
And Number 3 is to make assassins meaningfully contribute to winning the game, which Akali
does okay, but can struggle a bit with since her split pushing power isn’t exceptional,
and neither is her utility.
Riot Meddler said that the Akali rework would be focused on making her more distinct from
other assassins and giving her healthier gameplay for the most part, which does make a lot of
sense, I mean she struggles a lot with just being straight up outclassed by champions
like Diana who do her job much better, as well as having some weird mechanics that create
for some very weird counterplay interactions.
Riot Meddler also said that Akali’s W was a really unique ability, but the rest of her
kit was not, and that there’s a lot of cool stuff that can be done, and that it would
make more sense to bundle the Akali rework changes with the rest of the assassin class
as a whole.
However, recently Riot Reav3 described Akali as someone who needs much more work then they
could do in a roster scope project.
But he went on and said that she would still be a good candidate for some smaller scope
work though.
So it’s actually possible that Akali may receive two reworks, but based off of what
Meddler said previously I wouldn’t be surprised if Akali is just instead going to end up being
the biggest assassin rework during the overall assassin update in terms of receiving the
most changes.
Riot Scruffy also described Akali as being in the top 2 of assassin champions who could
be so much cooler with a rework, and stated that her kit was not nearly as cool or deep
as it could be.
He also would go on to share a ton of Riot’s plans for Akali, and they really explain a
lot about what you can expect to see in the upcoming Akali rework.
First off, The Akali rework will also create a much more clear path for success in terms
of gameplay other than just getting fed, to the point where Akali will be a lot more impactful
when she is behind, but also have a lot more counterplay when ahead.
He also said that the Akali rework was going to have an overhaul and upgrade to her W shroud,
in a way that would remove the hard counter issue with pink wards and stealth revealing,
in favor of some form of counterplay that is a bit more accessible, and as well, her
new W shroud would likely have some new interactions with her teammates.
And he described the future Akali rework to be somewhat similar to the scope of Fiora,
in that they want to play up her theme a lot more and really ramp up that coolness factor,
especially since Akali has a lot of spells that have a lot of room for improvement, and
will be redone in favor of much more flexible and more importantly fun gameplay, with the
goal of preserving and enhancing the Akali playstyle, so although she will likely receive
some mechanics changes, her playstyle will almost certainly remain the same.
She will still have dashes, she will still have burst damage, she will still have the
gameplay of juking in and out of a shroud, and she will still have dual scaling effects.
Riot Scruffy also said that the Akali rework in short would overall be a buff for sure,
but would also introduce some elements that are much more fair to opponents.
And he ended his post with a big shoutout to those of you who are Akali mains out there,
essentially saying that if you are an Akali main there’s nothing to worry, as the overall
design they are making is being targeted towards Akali mains specifically, rather than being
just a generic design reboot.
So that’s about everything Riot Scruffy said and what we know about the rework so
what does that tell us.
Well, in a previous video I breify mentioned Akali’s E in the sense that it was an ability
that just has so much room for improvement, so I would expect for her E to probably become
a completely new ability, just because there is so much more cool stuff you could do with
it.
Either that or it is going to gain a bunch of new interactions within the rest of her
kit, kind of similar to how Ryze’s E gained a much of interations in his rework.
As well, her W is almost certainly going to have the counterplay of just slapping down
a pink ward or using a stealth trinket removed in favor of something else.
Whether this means she no longer has stealth on the ability you can’t say for sure, but
the Rioters like this ability a lot since it is super unqiue, so she will definitely
still keep it, but it will interact in a way that has counterplay based on decision making
rather than just using an item to be both more fun for Akali players, and less pubstompy
in the sense that its super good vs lower ranked players and completely useless vs higher
ranked players.
Akali right now plays like she almost just doesn’t have this ability in her kit at
all sometimes in high elo since those types of players are good enough to literally always
have some kind of pink ward or stealth reveal, and that aspect really locks her out from
being competitively viable and it also makes her super frustrating versus newer players
who have no idea what to do.
So what will probably happen is that the stealth may get removed in favor of giving some extreme
tank stats or defensive power, or the stealth will just change to be something that is more
interactive, but not counter able by items or effects.
Her ultimate will probably remain roughly the same, because her unique power of being
the assassin that is the best target at killing super hyper mobile champions is something
that is kind of core to her fantasy, but I would expect her ultimate to get some sort
of new interactions with her abilities or something.
Maybe she gets some bonus movement speed if her opponent has a mark on them or something,
but overall she’s definitely going to keep having dashes, and I doubt they will put her
dashes on an ability other than her ultimate since that could potentially conflict with
her playstyle.
One thing that they probably won’t do, but I could actually see as something that is
really fun and interesting, is to actually give her access to her ultimate at level 1,
but then toning down her ultimate a lot in terms of damage and cooldown.
This would make her so much more fun, but again probably won’t happen because it’d
remove a very important weakness that she has right now.
Her Q is also a core ability as well, so it will almost certainly not change much at all,
but I would definitely expect to see mark of the assassin gain a bunch of additional
interactions, and that’s probably the mechanic they will be designing her kit around, or
at least that’s the one that makes the most sense.
Since they said they are focusing a lot on appealing to Akali mains, it’d be a lot
better to just build upon her already existing mechanics and ideas rather than introducing
new ones, so I’d expect her mark to be the majority of her gameplay now.
It’s not impossible that they make her a skillshot, but taking away Akali’s reliability
is a very anti-fun thing to do so It’s probably not going to happen.
But overall, the Akali rework is looking pretty damn awesome, and it’s definitely something
I’m super excited for, because Akali actually used to be one of my favorite champions until
she got nerfed pretty hard and had her EQ mechanic removed on patch 5.2.
Anyway, looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video consider subscribing
if you haven’t already, but thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!