Akshan, the Rogue Sentinel, was introduced in League of Legends Patch 11.15. Because of his unique kit, the developers had high hopes for the Champion. Unfortunately, the community is not impressed at all. This has prompted the developers to release two hotfixes to make the Champion more appealing to use.
According to Jeevun “Jag” Sidhu, lead game designer on Summoner’s Rift Team for League of Legends, Akshan’s win rate is only 34%. This statement was made just hours after the Champion’s release.
Sidhu also said in a post that he has some major weaknesses, such as having the “Worst-in-Marksman-class sustained DPS” and having extremely "unreliable damage in team fights," among many others. He did mention that these were his intended weaknesses. This is probably to encourage players to find a way to utilize him differently.
That said, two hotfixes were released to buff Akshan a little bit.
What Has Changed?
The first update was released on July 24. This minor patch increased Akshan’s base attack damage to 52, his base HP to 560, and his Avengerang (Q) cooldown reduced to 8/7.25/6.5/5.75/5.
While the aforementioned changes were meant to help players improve their win rates with Akshan, it turns out that they were not enough.
Just a week after his release, Akshan’s win rate only rose to 41.67%, which is quite a small increase after he was introduced. So much so that he is deemed as the worst mid-laner in the game.
This has prompted the developers to buff him again. This time, they made changes that targeted his effectiveness in the late game.
The latest update has increased Akshan’s attack speed per level to 4% and his Avengerang’s damage to minions to 40/52.5/65/77.5/90%.
Sidhu said that the latest “micropatch” will be the last set of buffs that Akshan will receive in Patch 11.15. They are going to reassess the Champion’s viability in the next patch.
It is interesting to see that Akshan is less effective than previously thought. This is likely because players have yet to discover the best strategies to make the most out of his kit, especially the Revive mechanic that the developers have been talking about since his release.
What do you think? Are the recent buffs for Askhan make him considerably better now?
