you mate i dont know if someone allready told you or if you noticed that your own. Look at your ult, right after it akali is about to make an autoattack but you cancle it with e. that mf would be dead even faster when yo unot cancle that aa keep an eye out for that ;) happy killing

Hi there fellow ninja.

I will start with some general advice and turn this into a wall of text as I go deeper on AAs. (Important aspect of duels)

• 1st If they have Maws you will probably not burst them in one [R Q AA E gunblade R] combo unless you went full yolo build (Gunblade, Deathcap, Nashor, Void staff)

I can hardly believe Akali would lose a 1vs1 to an adc besides vayne or draven (they do absurd damages when fed)
Meanwhile, with Riven it's possible to lose duels if played badly due to her having a stun and a knock up both of which can cancel an R from you (if timed correctly) and deni dmg and spellvamp. (The b*tch also has a shield that scales with AD)

All that being said if you were indeed ahead on gold and lost it must have been a big misplay from you.

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• 2nd If the enemy team is building a lot of Maws it means they are mostly AD.

So just get some Armor and HP to survive long enough for a 2nd combo (especially if they can stun you before you can burst them) or buy a void staff if you are very ahead on kills. (to keep one shotting)

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Don't forget to buy Elixirs.

Not being at full build doesn't mean you shouldn't buy elixirs.

As soon as I have 2 or 3 items I start buying them.

Wrath just increases your DMG and survivability by tons.

If someone is bursting you down in 1 stun you should get an iron elixir instead. (Tenacity and max HP to prevent the burst)

In general Akali is a beast in duels if you can avoid being CC-ed.

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• Lastly - if you are fighting someone with a Maw consider doing this:
  (To be noted that you must have E maxed out first for short CD)

Maw kicks in when they are about 400 HP so if you do physical dmg with 2xAA and 2xE you should burst them unless they are life stealing for a lot.

Always let Akali finish her AA cast before pressing E!

When you start an AA as soon as you see their Health bar take dmg you press E (to cancel the rest of the animation) while you are casting E your AA reset is coming off CD.

Notes: E has 0.35 sec cast time. Spells cast times are not interruptable. Meaning that even if you get CC-ed if you started the cast before that it will finish. It can be stopped only if the champion dies. Nothing else interrupts spellcasts. (That is why you see Ezreal ULT while being stunned. His ULT cast time is 1 sec but it's not a channel spell.

Things of note about AAs in general:

- Akali has a -0.1 AA delay (this is different for every champion) - This is the time the champion takes to register an Attack command once in range of the target and start the AA cast.

- Once the AA cast is started unless interrupted by CC or you issuing another command to Akali (which will overwrite the current AA cast command) you will do DMG once the AA cast finishes.
Keep in mind that AA cast finishes as soon as the target receives DMG!
Anything after that is called AA backswing (For Akali depending on your Attack speed it's somewhere after/near the end of the swing with the Kama and slightly before she pulls the kama back towards herself)
AA backswing is the useless AA cast animation part that can be canceled and you can issue other commands instead of standing and doing nothing while the AA reset is coming off CD. (Every time you successfully cancel that backswing right after DMG you earn about 0.1 sec to do something else)

- even if the target hitbox gets out of AA range (125 with Akali) during the AA cast they still take DMG if you finish AA cast. (Hence all the Flash and get killed by AA after funny moments)

- Thanks to the negative AA delay on Akali if your AA is off Cooldown and you are in range AA cast starts immediately!

- Akali AA cast is about 0.2 sec long (before it registers DMG and then another 0.1 sec backswing animation)

- 2nd AA cast from Akali is issued as soon as AA is off cooldown if Akali is in range of the target (AA cooldown depends on your Attack speed)



To sum it up:

Once an AA cast is finished and the AA goes on cooldown your champion will continue the backswing animation and after that she will just sit and not move until AA is off CD unless you have issued other commands or the AA target hitbox has left your AA range. (then the champion will follow until it can start casting another AA)
That is why attack moving is important. Especially when chasing!

Example:

If your AA cast is finished and Teemo is running away, why would you wait untill he is out of AA range to start chasing him? If you started moving in the same direction as him the moment AA did dmg to him and went on a CD you would be saving around 0.03 sec (time between him leaving AA range and your Cast finishing) where you can start moving in his direction instead of him getting out of range and then Akali moving.
That 0.03 sec when you have 350 MS (base MS) is 10 range.
Congratulations for canceling AA and not waiting for teemo to escape your AA range you gain 10 range on the chase which makes sure you will keep staying in range for your AA casts.

In duels every 0.1 sec counts. Make sure to cancel AA backswing but not interrupt your AAs! Nothing can be more painful than canceling an AA as Akali.

[line]

Back to fighting Maw shielded enemies:

Generally, you can sneak an R (takes about 0.3 sec at melee range and you can buffer skills mid air) after the E (0.35sec) if you want to reposition or vamp. (This is based on a 1.5AA/sec attack speed or 0.66 sec Attack ~ 0.45 AA reset/CD.) but you want to be doing physical dmg once the enemy has Maw proc-ed and not magic so don't R unless you want to reposition (or vamp) as it will delay an AA (with about 0.1 sec).




Watch this fight:
(akali vs leona and then akali vs akali)
I want you to watch the video at 27:25 (can't embed it in the post with the timecode link for some reason)
IMPORTANT! before watching that click on the cog (settings) of the youtube player and select 0.25 Speed (4 times slower) to see what they are doing. Akali (Silver Fang one) does dmg with her Kama the moment she finishes the hit and you can then cancel the animation of her pulling the kama back close to her body (backswing).
Play Video
That Pie guy is doing a pretty good job at it considering his AS is quite fast. (It's harder to do backswing cancel when your AS is bigger but the benefits are the same. I don't want to explain that as it will take me an hour of typing and it matters less on Akali thanks to her negative AA delay.)

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Generally keep in mind this:

Q - Cast time animation is about 0.2 sec. Projectile leaving your model is basically the cast time or wind up. If you get stunned before the first 0.05 sec (wind up) it does not happen. The rest 0.15 sec is actually useless animation.
It can be fully buffered (thrown) in the middle of R and does not interrupt AA autocue if cast mid air but if you cast it from max range it will travel and mark the target slower than you would land and AA (because of that slow projectile speed) So make sure to cast Q when you are very near the target
W - Cast time is about 0.2 sec ( can be mostly buffered in the middle of R but don't do that ****. You need dmg not smoke)

E - Cast time is about 0.35 sec ( You can cancel the last ~0.15 sec with a R but nothing else (this is a proper spellcast that completely ignores CC and any commands from you once started. It will interrupt an AA cast if you press it in the middle of attacking so be careful.) If you buffered it during an R you cancel about 0.15 of it as well by issuing a different command in the middle of it's animation.) I am not a 100% sure how exactly this works but the game considers that Akali is immobile and casting even if she is in the middle of her dash but there is some minimum limit of being fixed in a point for the spell to finish cast. (You can buffer E while being knock backed as well so I guess it's a displacement imunity of the cast time thing or something.)

R - Cast time is the travel time (It's coded as movement dash and not a spell cast time. It can be interrupted with CC and the DMG won't be calculated if this happens.
For instance if Riven knock you up with her 3rd Q while running away from you. (You ulted her from behind) Even if you passed by her model no DMG from your dash will be registered if you get CC-ed before completely finishing the dash. (even if you were 1 range away from landing point)
You can buffer other skills or AAs in the air but you can't actually finish them mid air as they require your champion to be anchored at a location for a moment except for your Q.
Any buffered abilities will cast as usual upon landing (W and E will interrupt AA que) but will actually have interuptable useless animation a bit sooner and you can cancel it with a new command saving some time. This is best felt on her E since it shaves off a lot of the cast time but is not as efficient as simply Q buffer + instant AA. So you do that **** only if you are aiming at physical dmg.

A very good use of the buffer is the hydra active - It can be done mid-air like your Q and it won't delay AA on landing (it interrupts AAs otherwise).

I hope this advice helps in future duels.

The thing about Wit's End is that it gives you no AP which is bad, it also scales worse than nashor and has a warming up time for the MR steal which essentially means it's only viable if you are going tank. Then you have the problem of it being heavily outclassed by other defensive offensive items. Abyss, Zhonya, Rylai, Titan hydra....

So, in the end it's not a good item for Akali unless you are facing Corki + 4 AP champions and building it, Maw, Visage and Veil for the 300 MR negating all their damage.

Just look at them:

Nashor has no warm up and 4200 gold in stats that scales further with AP.

Wit's end has a 5 hit Warm up and starts from 2720 to end at 4100.

Trust me it's not viable. Saving that 500 gold from the cheaper Wit's you can only buy 20 AP and it will still be glaringly behind Nashor especially as a 2nd item. (you will already have 100 AP with gunblade + runes so nashor value from buying it will be 4600 gold in stats which means it will already be better than fully stacked wit's end in gold value and left over gold)

Wit's end is a WarWick item and some range champions that max attack speed for on hit effects can also use it (teemo, kog and etc.)

I was hoping for an Illaoi too, But I'm assuming it's sort of like fighting a Mundo, get shroud second, stay in it, poke at her with Q, hextech and nashors first - or armguard, then get a gank at level 6