User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Concept) Akrai, the Tyrant of the Sands/@comment-5209745-20140109194148/@comment-1330314-20140113014515

Thanks for the feedback! Responding:

I didn't want to give Akrai any other AD scalings than on his Q, since Quell already functions as a very low-cooldown autoattack reset and benefits from his spell vamp, sort of like a built-in on a much lower cooldown. It also causes Akrai to deal a lot of strong hybrid damage if he builds AD, benefits from the MR reduction on his ultimate and makes full use of his passive into the late game, so he already has a lot of tools to be a very strong AD bruiser. I don't intend for AD builds to be the main kind on him, but I don't think he'd be weak at all if he were to build AD, in the same way as AD can still deal a lot of damage despite having no true AD scalings (his Q is an autoattack reset).

I want Astral Form to be a powerful gapcloser, particularly as I gave it a very long cooldown due to its escape potential and interaction with crowd control, but I don't think it's as bad as you think. With and a, Akrai gains about 342 movement speed. , whose also has a 2 second duration, gains 335 movement speed without having to buy items. The cooldown on the Kennen's E is also, a fraction of Astral Form's cooldown.

I changed the damage from flat magic damage to % missing health damage, but you're right, there's not much leeway for a Sands champion's ultimate. That said, I wanted to make this ultimate very specific in that it gets more powerful the longer Akrai stays in battle, hence the magic resist reduction.

You're also right in that I want Akrai to be a good jungler, which is partly why I gave him sustain and a damaging ability on a low cooldown, but I don't think his innate would be that OP in lane. I specifically put a cap on how many stacks Akrai can accrue at a time, and he needs to be dealing continuous damage for at least 2.5 seconds to reach maximum stacks. By contrast, can instantly get 15% damage reduction and increased basic attack damage by spamming all of his basic abilities, with no theoretical cap on his own passive (though it can go up to 25% with 40% CDR).