Akali is back and in spectacular fashion. Riot has just revealed her update and she is a completely different champion. She will still be played as a stealthy assassin though so don’t worry about that aspect of her playstyle but she will undoubtedly be much more complicated to play as her entire kit has been given a makeover.
Only two parts of her kit will remain similar to the kit she had before. The arguably most defining aspect of her Akali’s old kit was her W that let her set off a ‘smoke bomb’ which would make her invisible in the smoke area. This ability will receive some minor tweaks but largely remains intact so that Akali maintains her identity when out on the rift. Although it has been changed to look a whole lot cooler.
The other part that remains somewhat similar is her ultimate as it’s still centered around dashes. However, she will only have two dashes upon activation of the ability and they won’t be point-and-click anymore. This gives you more freedom as when to use your ultimate but also restricts you by giving you fewer dashes. Nevertheless, dashing all over the place is what makes her so much fun to play in the first place so it’s nice that that is still intact.
The rest of her kit has been completely changed to turn her into a much more qualified ninja. She has a wide array of weapons, including kunai and shuriken, and she even has another long-range dash incorporated into her kit so that she can cover even more ground than before.
While it’s great that Riot breathes new life into old champions, Akali is yet another champion where point-and-click abilities were removed from her kit. We saw something similar happen with reworks to Warwick and Sion which also used to have strong point-and-click abilities. While it’s certainly true that these abilities aren’t the most exciting and don’t take much skill, they are really good for keeping highly mobile champions in check. Luckily there are still some champions that can fulfill that purpose but they are becoming increasingly rare.
