[ Season 8 Updated ] From Zero to Hero: Top Akali

Submitted by VicLeague (5 years 7 months ago)

GAME League Of Legends
CHAMPION Akali
LANGUAGE English

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TIPS
ABILITY
LORE

Akali

the Fist of Shadow

WITH

Akali excels at killing weaker characters. Let your team initiate and then strike at the people in the back.
Find the balance between storing Essence of Shadows, and using Shadow Dance before having max charges.

VERSUS

Akali can still be hit by area effect spells while Invisible inside Twilight Shroud.
Akali can choose where she starts within her Twilight Shroud before casting it, even if part of the shroud would extend beyond a wall.
Return to base if your Health is low and Akali has multiple charges of her ultimate.

A prodigy in the fighting arts, Akali is a member of the martial order known as the Kinkou. She succeeds her mother as the Fist of Shadow, entrusted with the sacred duty to end those who would bring imbalance to her homeland. While some find her methods extreme, Akali is judicious in maintaining harmony across Ionia.

Main Build

Situational/Defensive

Situational/Offensive

Core Items

● Hunt and eliminate prey

Domination

Electrocute
Sudden Impact
Ghost Poro
Ravenous Hunter

● Become a legend

Precision

Legend: Alacrity
Coup de Grace

+11 Attack Damage or +18 Ability Power, Adaptive

LvL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
Q	1							8		10		12	13
W		2												14	15		17	18
E			3	4	5		7		9
R						6					11					16

1Table of Contents

Summoner Spells
Abilities
Runes
Builds
Combos
Tips and Tricks

2Chapter 1: Summoner Spells

3Chapter 2: Abilities

The reason why I prefer maxing Crescent Slash

over Mark Of The Assassin

in the Top Lane is firstly because Crescent Slash's cooldown time is much lower than Mark Of The Asassins, also if you kill minions with Crescent Slash its cooldown is refunded by 60%, that helps a lot in trades. Crescent Slash is also pretty good for controlling the minion waves, you decide when to push and when to freeze.

Now, 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

4Chapter 3: Runes

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.

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 This 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.

Zombie Ward

Zombie Poro:I haven't tried it 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. It combos with Discipline of Might from Twin Disciplines

and heals you for a bunch when fully stacked. It also allows you to heal from Crescent Slash

and has no cooldown. Acutally OP!

Ingenious Hunter Akali cooldowns are already pretty low. Ingenious Hunter is not that bad, but not as good as Ravenous Hunter

Relentless Hunter

Relentless Runter: Not good unless you want to do a crazy build based on movement speed.

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.

Triumph

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.

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.

5Chapter 4: Builds

1.Chinese Akali - DPS Build
Starting Items:
Doran's Shield

Full Build:
Hextech Gunblade

Explanation: 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:
Doran's Shield

Full Build:
Hextech Gunblade

Explanation: 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:
The Dark Seal

Full Build:
Hextech Gunblade

Explanation:
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!

The starting items for this one might be a little confusing, so let me explain it:

When you're up against a favorable match up - > The Dark Seal

When you're up against a strong AD - > Cloth Armor

When you're up against too much poke in lane - > Boots of Speed

When you're up against strong ranged AP champions - > Doran's Shield

I think that's it for the builds, these are the most relevant ones! Now we will hop onto the next topic: Combos!

6Chapter 5: Combos

In this chapter, we will talk about the combos! I tried to record this part myself but it didn't go so well, so I will leave Professor Akali's video here, I learned from his guides in the past and I hope you can learn something too, there you go!

Thanks to Professor Akalifor the great explanation. Although I am suggesting a different playstyle, the combos are still the same.

7Chapter 6 : Tips and Tricks

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 Talon

'W'.

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.

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!

When playing Akali 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.

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 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!

8Conclusion

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.

Also, a huge shout out to Yamikaze whose guide helped me out a lot to have a better understanding of how you should play not only as Talon but with most assassins in the game.

Thanks again for reading and once again feel free to ask me any questions!

IMAGE(https://www.mobafire.com/images/champion/skins/landscape/akali-sashimi.jpg)