in > Patch 7.23 notes

Under the current system, with the 720BE leveling chests being removed and the new minimum BE value per level being 810, assuming an average of 3250 XP per level (for levels 50-150 - the exact number doesn't seem to be provided so I had to eyeball it from the chart), the 175 BE you're losing from FWotD is worth about 57 BE. Therefore, you're losing out on 7 BE per first win of the day. For context, it would take 450 days of playing for that additional BE to be enough to buy another 3,150 IP champion, and 900 days for the difference to amount to another 6,300 IP champion. It's not a huge difference.

in > Unleash Kayn's Carnage to Earn 2 Special Icons

If you get the chance at all over the entire week :/

in > You know, I kind of liked the hundreds of points of honour I have saved over the years....

Hahaha, sucks to be them right now. If the max is 999 for each of the three categories (I'm not sure what it is), that'd require 10 days, 9 hours, and 45 minutes of play time (assuming bot games last just 20 minutes). I mean, it was already a waste of time, but now there's just no payoff at all.

in > How do I equip the Riven Dawnbringer Border?

I agree! I just spent **two straight weeks** playing missions so I could get a cool looking border. I don't even play riven. Heck, I'm an Akali onetrick. There was nothing on the event page that even hinted at the border being exclusive to any given champion or skin, and I find it plainly ridiculous that such a restriction would be neglected. I thought Riot was making custom borders a thing, and I was willing to grind up 280 tokens (enough for two of those even orb things, which could have held an exclusive skin) to do it. Now I have nothing to show for it. I can't be reimbursed for my time. Riot should seriously consider making this something that can be applied universally, since I'd surmise that the majority of people who ground missions for two weeks aren't riven mains and many don't even have the skin. I feel gypped.

in > Let's Talk About Assassins...

Preseason 7 Akali ThoughtsHi there! Longtime Akali main here! I've been playing for almost four years (since the Mac release). Before I even started playing the game, I talked to a friend about it and described the sort of playstyle that I liked. He told me 'you sound like an Akali player.' He hit the nail right on the head, and I've been one-tricking her on and off since the beginning. I've been tracking my stats in games with her (just normals - I'm too nervous/have too bad of a connection for ranked) and over the 170 games I've played with her since I started counting this past January, I have a 60.59% winrate, 2.06 KD and 3.00 KDA. Here are my thoughts on the changes to her abilities and how they affect her playstyle.Sorry if this seems somewhat hastily thrown together - I've had a lot of thoughts knocking around my brain for the last couple days.**Abilities**_Passive_Current bonus damage on auto attack is more consistent, gives more damage overall in drawn-out duels, and helps a ton with farming, especially under turret, which is common pre-6. Effects are hard to see unless you’re looking for them but are definitely very important. This hidden power is what Riot is looking to change, but I don't think that that necessarily has to be done by making it less consistent.Current spell vamp is absolutely huge to Akali's identity. To me, the three things that make Akali who she is are spell vamp, stickiness, and clever shroud use. The removal of revolver vamp felt like it hurt her identity enough, and this just worsens the matter.New damage passive does fit Riot’s goal of extending burst window, but is less useful outside of laning phase where Akali can proc her first hit on a minion before going in. Also, the bonus damage not applying to towers is a big nerf, as the old passive's bonus damage to towers made her a good pusher, something that I found myself capitalizing on.New heal passive is flat-out worse as far as I can tell. Spell vamp gives sustained and reliable healing that scaled with her AD as well as having a hidden AP scaling due to increased damage dealt. Now only scales with AD, meaning Riot can adjust the ratio so Akali either loses out on a lot of healing later in the game versus what she had before or instead becomes a sustain goddess with an AD build. This effect could be mitigated by instead offloading more of the heal onto the base component, but this would mean Akali is less snowbally, and Akali’s ability to tear teams up when far ahead is central to why mains love her. Having the first hit be a heal creates the disappointing and common situation where Akali engages at full health and the healing is wasted.Old passive made it so your AD and AP interacted, since the effect of one was multiplied by the other. New passive separates them, eliminates multiplicative effect, disincentives building hybrid. We might even see some people just foregoing sustain altogether in favor of burst and building straight AP, essentially making her a generic assassin._Q_No changes. I expected a QoL buff that would make it so her Q either flew faster or would proc instantly on reaching its destination if Akali auto attacked her target while it was still in the air, but no such luck.Also, it’d be nice for the energy cost to be refunded if the initial damage killed the target. Farming from range with the ability takes great timing to pull off and should feel more rewarding IMO._W_Small dash makes good matchups (largely melee matchups) more favorable since Akali can shroud into melee range against melee opponents for a double Q combo. Decreased uptime severely hurts bad matchups (read: ranged matchups, a.k.a. most games) for obvious reasons, and Akali’s being invisible instead of camouflaged pre-6 doesn’t help her since almost nobody starts the game with a pink ward. Reduced control over shroud placement hurts in bad matchups as it limits how close Akali can get to farm. Movespeed buff in shroud overstates its own usefulness as if Akali uses her shroud for mobility, she’ll be placed at the outer edge of it and not benefit much (if at all) from the move speed.Dash moving Akali over walls give more liberty in regards to what walls Akali can jump. Also creates juke potential _a la_ Shaco. Doesn’t feel like it synergizes with kit - giving a tiny blink to a champion with three long range dashes feels unnecessary, though it does somewhat mitigate the ill effects of her ult CD nerfs.Inability to cast shroud at range means getting closer to a jungle camp wall to jump over it. It also means missed potential to save allies with slow/grab assists/mind game enemies/reveal brush/many other things. Increased cast time is exact opposite of what many Akali players wanted. Old shroud wasn’t useful for the speed buff at early-mid game due to cast time nullifying speed buff/slow. Removing cast time would make for better escapes (including shrouding over wall). There are many times where stopping to cast shroud has resulted in a grey screen, either due to a critical targeted CC landing or that one last auto attack connecting.All in all far, far less versatility for shroud, and if anything, Akali players wanted to see more versatility and creative potential (which means a higher skillcap)._E_Long ago, E did not proc Q and was seen as a bland and useless spell, so Riot added Q proc functionality to it. Later, deeming her Q-RAQE combo too oppressive, they removed it again. Eventually, since a raw-damage point-blank AoE spell is boring, Riot buffed the cooldown and energy cost at later levels, giving Akali much-needed wave clear in the mid-lategame. The changes are an overall DPS and utility nerf (with a tad more upfront burst damage). Before, ability was boring but useful. Now, it’s boring and only slightly useful._R_Severely reduced damage feels terrible but at least makes sense in the context of offloading upfront burst. May be a bit excessive, but numbers can always change.Cooldown nerfs here are perhaps the most unfortunate change aside from the shroud. Having **twice** as long a cooldown between jumps at level 16 is colossal. At least the shroud changes help this.R now gives 3 stacks at level 6. For me, this is a useless change. I’ve adapted to a style where I play safe and farm under tower before level 6, refusing to recall until I’ve hit level 6 (barring extreme circumstances). I end up hitting 6 with low hp remaining and immediately recalling to heal, stack up ultimate charges, and buy a revolver and preferably one or two long swords. Having 3 stacks when you hit 6 is useless if you’re too hurt to go for an all-in, and with the shroud uptime reduction, you’re almost guaranteed to be on the brink of death if you hang around lane until level 6.**My suggestions**Passive -Idea 1) Tweak passive so while above ~75% health, the two hits are swapped. This prevents wasted healing and creates an incentive for enemies to damage Akali before she gets her auto off to lessen her upfront burst.Idea 2) Make the heal shield Akali for excess healing, similar to Bloodthirster.Idea 3) Revert to live.W - Keep same as live, with the additional change that Akali is invisible for the first 4/5/6/7/8 (or even 0/2/4/6/8) seconds but can be revealed by pink wards for the remainder of the time. This allows Akali to survive early in hard matchups but prevents her from having a really long pink-ward-proof stealth at rank 1, which would be an obvious problem.E - Idea 1) Keep same as live - there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for the changes as they don’t seem like they were made to fit the guiding concept of extending burst patterns. They really just seem like raw nerfs.Idea 2) Add bonus damage to minions that only scales with AP - keeps wave clear ability, prevents tank top Akali.Idea 3) Refund part or all of cooldown/energy on killing a unit - allows wave clear, gives flavor. Would probably necessitate other tweaks to prevent abuse (looking at you, tank/AD Akali).R - Revert cooldown.I only just now noticed that for every single spell, I’ve included the suggestion to revert at least part of it to live. I wasn’t even thinking about this when writing these, but hey, if it fits.**FINAL THOUGHTS**Seeing this small-scale rework has somewhat demoralized me. As I recall it, the changes were hinted at as being small QoL buffs to throw a bone to the Akali players who felt that Riot had forgotten them. I believed this, and actually had a lot of faith in Riot. It felt good knowing that they still cared and were specifically trying to give longtime Akali players (is there any other type?) some new tricks without changing the identity that we love.Well, I guess it’s the thought that counts.Or, it would be. The actual changes make me think that they went the way of Evelynn, Urgot, and Olaf, throwing out that previously described idea and deciding instead to just gimp her until they could come out with a full and proper rework. Ask Yorick (and Sion [and Poppy {and Warwick and Galio}]) how long that will be.Until then, Talon’s looking very fun.EDITS: Typographical errors, slightly improved readability. Small note on passive damage to towers. Changed suggestion idea for W due to camouflage mechanics.

in > Patch 6.9 notes

I agree. I've mained her for about three years (ignore the name) and I can say with confidence that this patch is the single worst for her since the Great Akali Gutting of 5.2 (which she _still_ hasn't fully recovered from). Revolver's vamp was 110% necessary in lane - the one thing that kept Akali somewhat viable was her sustain. She could q-ult in for a trade and then retreat if she wasn't ready for an all-in, vamping back up to full before doing the same again. Now, she can't even do that. In return, she does ~100 extra damage every **40 seconds**. That's nothing. Maybe it makes it easier to proc Stormraider's with a short trade, but you'd be doing that anyway, and the 40 second downtime essentially means that your opponent is likely to have recovered by the time you can do it again. One might add that revolver is cheaper now, but its price before was perfectly suited to Akali's first back (ideally immediately after hitting level 6), at which point she'd have just enough to buy a revolver and possibly a couple potions. Now, if you go back at level 6, you have a really awkward buy and you're stuck either spending all the leftover money on consumables or just waiting to back until you can grab a long sword. All this to come back to lane with less than half the sustain you used to have. On top of that, even gunblade, her core item, is worse on her now. She gets a small damage bump in return for a 1.33x longer cooldown. The damage spike might seem fine numbers-wise, but the shorter cooldown was much more valuable for Akali players as any good Akali player would be using it for the slow anyway. (E.g. one would ult to minions upon returning to lane and immediately gunblade opponent, or perhaps use gunblade as part of trades if lane lasted that long). What set Akali apart from many other assassins was how she wasn't terribly reliant on cooldowns and could trade/all-in very frequently. All this without even mentioning the fact that most of her lane opponents got buffed and now even have an item that gives them an escape. This eventual rework coming up had better be good. Very good. (Just not FotM nerf-worthy good.)