- ABILITIES
- TIPS
- LORE
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Introduction
Akali is arguably one of the best assassins in League Of Legends and unlike many other assassins she is not a high-risk high-reward champion, if you play it right, you can snowball as much as the other assassins in a much safer way. Also, she is pretty easy to learn as you do not have any skill shots to land nor difficult mechanics.
Further, I have played a lot of Akali on this Preseason and my impression so far is: AKALI IS BUSTED! She was decent and very playable before, but with the recent changes on the meta due to the new runes and items introduced, she feels much stronger.
I managed to perform a 10-0 on the placements in a smurf account playing only Akali. This account goes by the name Akali Abuser on the BR server and I am currently trying to climb even more.
In this guide I will cover everything you need to know in order to play Akali in an advanced level. I hope you enjoy the guide and feel free to ask me any questions you have!
Table of Contents
- Summoner Spells
- Abilities
- Runes
- Builds
- Tips and Tricks
Chapter 1: Summoner Spells
If you are playing Top Lane I strongly recommend you to always take Teleport over Ignite. As Akali is an assassin she naturally has less HP than other top lane champions do, thus you are very vulnerable to ganks and if you don't have the teleport after getting ganked or dying, you are in a big trouble my friend!
Plus you can teleport around the map to get some free kills or follow up the enemy teleport.
Now, on the other hand, we have Ignite! If you are a confident player and you know you will win the match up, why not take Ignite? Although it is risky you might snowball to a point where the enemy will not be able to come back into the game for a long time!
Now let's hop onto the next topic and learn a little bit about the abilities!
Chapter 2: Abilities
- If you are playing Top Lane, most likely you will max you E first, followed by your Q and then W.
- If you are playing Akali Mid, you will max your 'Q' first, followed by 'E' and then 'W'.
And the reason is simple, Akali's 'Q' does a huge amount of damage, it will help you poke your enemy and burst them down!
Next up, we will go over runes
Chapter 3: Runes
So, the new Runes are finally here, and they are awesome. Thanks to Riot for that!
Now, in the Runes Section above I suggested taking the Domination tree followed by the Precision tree as secondary choice and I will explain why I think this is one of the best combination of runes for Akali.
Domination Tree
Electrocute Is probably a must have for Akali, you can proc it really easily and it scales much more than the previous Thunderlord's Decree. Basically since you will always proc it in one combo it is, therefore, great for bursting enemies down plus it helps a lot in lane.
Unless you want to do some crazy one-shot builds Electrocute is the best by far.
Dark Harvest seems great for doing the crazy one-shot builds, but sounds really crappy for laning phase.
Predator does not seem any good for her.
Sudden Impact rune feels extremely good not only for Akali but for many other champions, Akali, in particular benefits from both 10 lethality and 8 magic penetration because she is a hybrid champion, so the question is, why would you not take this rune?
Taste of Blood is also an option, I haven't tried it yet but feels like it has some potential.
Cheap Shot doesn't seem any good.
Ghost Poro seems really good overall, basically you have an extra ward for free. The ghost poro stays where you put it forever, unless you cast it again or it's scared out by enemies. For me it is one of the greatest runes to play with on Akali.
I haven't tried Zombie Poro yet, but seems not as good as Ghost Poro.
Eyeball Collection many people might argue that this is the best one out of the three for Akali and it might really be, but you have to be aware that it gives you Adaptive Damage and whatever rune says it gives you adaptive damage, as Akali, it will give you always AD, not AP plus Eyeball Collection takes long to stack up and I don't think the bonus AD that you get from it is that great. I still run it a lot, though it feels very underwhelming and I am pretty sure the Ghost Poro is fairly greater.
Ravenous Hunter is overpowered for Akali, I take it 100% of the games and this is by far the best out of the three.
Ingenious Hunter Akali cooldowns are already pretty low. Ingenious Hunter is not that bad, but not as good as Ravenous Hunter
Relentless Runter is not good unless you want to do a crazy build based on movement speed.
Precision Tree
Legend: Alacrity: I love this rune for Akali Top,, attack speed is really good for her as it helps you proc you passive, helps in trades especially versus tanky champions and also helps you CS under the turret.
Coup de Grace: By far my favorite rune, I personally hate when enemies live with 1HP so I run this one 99% of the time.
Triumph: Many people argue that this rune is overpowered, but I don't think it is that good for Akali unless you know you are going to tower dive your enemy a lot.
Legend: Tenacity Ok, I just love this rune, this is really useful versus tough Match Ups like Pantheon or Jax, since these two champions block your auto-attacks you don't benefit as much from the Legend:Alacrity plus both have an annoying stun which is pretty hard to deal with, thus the extra Tenacity in lane helps out for sure. What is usually do versus these two champions is getting an early Ninja Tabi 
(usually on the second back if possible), so with the Tenacity rune you have much more survivability than you normally would.
Cut Down: Honestly, this rune feels very underwhelming if you're looking for extra damage in laning phase. I realized it is awful when I was up against a Garen and I just tought "Cut down will be great!" it turned out that the Garen lived with 10hp and I died to a gank 5 seconds later. When I looked at the damage that the rune dealt I couldn't believe, but it literally did 0 damage.
Last Stand: I don't have a concise opinion on that one, it feels great sometimes but really bad for some particular situations.
Next up, we will go through builds!
Chapter 4: Builds
"Now, as for the builds for Akali, well...there's quite a lot, but I will cover only the most relevant ones!"
1.Chinese Akali - DPS Build
Starting Items:
+ 
Full Build:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
This build was originally created by players on the Chinese server and has become the most popular build for Akali. You can (and should) make a few changes to it depending on the game. I would recommend to change the Mercury Treads to a Ninja Tabi if you're against a full AD team, you can also change the Guardian Angel to a Spirit Visage if you feel like you need more sustain or you are taking way too much AP damage. Also, feel free to change the order of the items. (Except the gunblade, you must build it first no matter what.)
2.Miracle Blue Sky Akali - Mixed damage and tankiness
Starting Items: +
Full Build: > > > > 
> 
Miracle Blue Sky (or j푸른하늘 in the Korean Server) is the inventor of this one, he is a Challenger tier Korean player that literally plays ONLY Akali in ranked. Just like the "Chinese Akali" build you can make a few changes if needed. Just ask yourself "What do I need?".
3.The Classic - Full AP
Starting Items:
When you're up against a favorable match up
+ +
When you're up against too much poke in lane
+ +
When you're up against strong ranged AP +
Full Build: > > 
> 
> 
>
This build is not so popular anymore, but it's still strong anyway. Although it's pretty risk to go for this build, if you're lucky you can get some cool one-shots on the AD Carry!
I think that's it for the builds, these are the most relevant ones! Now we will hop onto the next topic: Combos!
Chapter 5 : Tips and Tricks
EARLY GAME
Laning phase is something that many people struggle a lot to learn, there's a lot of different situations that might cause you to lose the lane, but don't you worry, I'll help you with that!
Firstly, Akali loses level 1 trades for most champions in League, so at level 1 farm with your 'Q' let them push the wave to your turret. From level 2 on you can start trading, but usually you want them to start the trade, so you can use your W and try to outplay
Secondly, you gotta be aware of your power spikes, I will try to list some of Akali's power spikes:
- Your first power spike is at level 6, you have 3 dashes and you should use them! Try to force trades, try to do the poke combo, in short: be a little more agressive
- Your second power spike is going to be when you buy the Hextec Gunblade, depending on how fast you get this item, you can 1v2 the enemy jungler and Top Laner. The second power spike is the best power spike for Akali, so you usually WANT to pick fights around the map as well.
When do you want to force a fight in lane after level 6?
A: Well, Akali is such a squishy champion so when you are up against a champion that is hard to outplay like a 
Nasus or a 
Trundle you usually want to wait for them to use one of their abilities only then you should force a trade and leave using your 
Twilight Shroud.
On the other hand if you are up an outplayable champion, you can either force trades after they use their abilities or force a trade, use your Shroud to outplay one of their abilities and then try to all-in. An example is using your Twilight Shroud to dodge 
Talon's 'W'.
MID GAME
Let's say that you won the lane and destroyed the enemy turret; At this point you already have a Hextec Gunblade and a Ninja Tabi on your bag, so what to do next?
You can use two strategies:
First: Swap lanes with your bot lane if you are sure you can 2v1 the enemy bot lane so that you can snowball even more. (be really careful not to die and give them a Shut Down though.)
Second: Follow your jungler and really become the shotcaller, as I said above, the sooner you buy the Gunblade the better it is for you and your team so don't be afraid of picking fights on the enemy jungle. Just be careful to not overextend the fights to a point where you can't stand the enemy damage.
TEAM FIGHTS
Due to her nature as an assassin you have to be really careful on fighting, essentially you always want to flank and wait out for the enemy to waste their CC's and then join the fight, always go for the AD or someone that doesn't have as much resistance.
If they don't have any hard CC to stop you, just join the fight and try to go for anyone without too much resistance, kill them as quickly as possible, use your shroud and wait for the next target. As long as you are getting ult resets you are gucci!
LATE GAME
When playing Akali or any other assassin you never want the game to drag on until this point. However if this happens what can you do?
If you can split-push you should do that. If not you can group with your team kill and their carry if it's an easy pray.However if their carry is not easy to catch you can wait out until they use all their CCs and try to get a good flank and clean up.
HOW TO PLAY FROM BEHIND
Now let's say that you were up against a counter or you messed up in lane, how do you play from behind as Akali?
Ideally when you are behind in experience and gold you just don't want to pick fights until you are back into the game. As Akali you can become a "Split Pusher", the reason why I put it in quotes is because you won't really split-push like a Tryndamere (AFK Farm and push turrets), the kind of split push I am proposing here is a bit different, it consists on shoving the wave as much as you can until someone that is stronger than you comes in, then you just walk away, wait out for them to push and restart the process.
After catching up the experience you likely want to go for their weakest carry and try to kill them, so tell your team to group up and try to focus this person.
On the other hand, if the enemy carries are all doing well you can go back to the side-lane and pretend to be a Nasus, AFK farm and try to come late to a fight to clean up the low HP enemies.
And that concludes this section and pretty much the whole guide, thank you for reading!
Conclusion
Well guys, that's it! I hope you enjoyed the guide as much as I enjoyed making it.
Thank you so much for reading, now go practice! Haha. Anyway, I would like to dedicate some special thanks to Miracle BlueSky, Professor Akali and MLGB Blade, I learned a lot from them, and I really recommend you to check them out if you want to see some high-quality Akali gameplay.
Thanks again for reading and once again feel free to ask me any questions!
