Hey guys I'm Shok, multi rank 1 challenger mid laner for LCO team Dire Wolves. I've played League professionally since 2017 and have been rank 1 in multiple seasons, as well as rank 13 on the NA ladder in season 9. Akshan is really strong in solo queue, especially as a counterpick because he snowballs the map so hard.

I upload regularly on YouTube, and stream everyday on Twitch so feel free to follow me on either of those platforms :)

Season 10Season 9
Season 9 NA

PROS:

+ Snowballs well
+ Farms really quickly mid game
+ Game changing revive
+ Strong roaming
+ Insane teamfighter

CONS:

- Short range
- Easily countered
- Feast or famine
- High skill cap
- Weak from behind

When playing Akshan you will always take the precision tree primary, however, your secondary tree may differ. Press the Attack is by far the best keystone on Akshan since you can proc it easily and it adds a lot of strength to your laning phase.

Presence of Mind is pretty essential on Akshan because you will use a fair amount of mana in lane as well as teamfights. This will allow you to always have mana to abuse your resets.

Here you will choose between Legend: Bloodline and Legend: Alacrity. The simple way to make the choice is dependent on what mythic you're going to build. If you are going to build Immortal Shieldbow then taking Legend: Alacrity will be better. If you're going a different mythic without lifesteal then you probably want to pick up Legend: Bloodline.

Even when the enemy team doesn't have tanks, you will often find that Cut Down does more damage over the game than Coup de Grace, however the difference is fairly small so this can be personal preference unless you're vs a ton of tanks in which case Cut Down will be by far the better choice.

Most of the time resolve will be the best secondary tree for you and you have several options. However, you should always be picking up one of Bone Plating or Second Wind. Bone Plating is very effective against melee champs or champions that don't have an easy way to proc it, so you can just E aggressively whenever it's up. Against ranged or poke champions that can proc Bone Plating easily, Second Wind will be much better.

Overgrowth adds up to around 400 gold worth of extra health in the mid to late game which is pretty sizable. If you prefer to take something for a stronger early game, you can consider Shield Bash or Demolish instead.

If you take inspiration secondary you have a few options. You can take the Biscuit Delivery Time Warp Tonic Corrupting Potion combination which is especially strong against skillshot mages like Syndra. Alternatively you can go ultra greedy with Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight, or somewhere in between.

Time Warp Tonic is very strong if you are planning on taking Corrupting Potion and Biscuit Delivery to provide early game movespeed. If you aren't taking this, take Cosmic Insight instead.

Akshan has several viable starting items. If you are facing a lot of poke in lane, then I recommend taking Corrupting Potion with Time Warp Tonic and Biscuit Delivery. This makes you very resistant to skillshot poke and makes the early game a lot easier.

If you're in a lane where it's likely you will be all inned, Doran's Blade provides you with both max HP and some sustain which is particularly useful against assassins.

Long Sword with 3 Health Potions is a greedy start that you can get away with in pretty much all easy lanes and a lot of the skill matchups. This accelerates you towards your first base much quicker and really isn't all that much weaker early game.

If you are against a champion that is going to poke you down a lot in lane then rushing Vampiric Scepter can make the lane a lot easier for you.

Tier 1 Boots are also very useful for a variety of things in the early game such as dodging skillshots, trading and roaming. You should try get these pretty early in the game but not at the cost of a better item.

If you didn't start Corrupting Potion I would highly recommend picking up a Refillable Potion on your first base to help sustain you through lane.

Ideally you want to buy one of these every base, but if you can't get an important item because of it don't do it. Control Wards help a lot with surviving ganks early, as well as controlling vision for your jungle to gank.

Noonquiver is the item that will allow you to snowball the most but you normally won't be able to afford it outright. However if you can, you should buy it almost immediately.

Berserker's Greaves are pretty nice on Akshan but they aren't 100% required. They should be seen as the best DPS option and overall a greedy choice which you can get away with a lot of the time.

If you're against a heavy AD team you can itemize Plated Steelcaps. They can be especially effective combined with the Immortal Shieldbow's extra HP.

It's important to buy Mercury's Treads if you're vs double AP mid jungle or if they have a lot of CC. Playing against a double AP mid jungle like LeBlanc and Diana will make you much harder to kill. If you're vs double AP but low CC you can instead just sit on a Null-Magic Mantle and build different boots, and work towards a Wit's End instead.

After your items in the early game section you will want to complete Immortal Shieldbow and your tier two boot option as soon as your gold allows it. Most of the time you will want to go with Immortal Shieldbow over the other competing mythics because of the increased tankiness and lifesteal with only a small damage sacrifice. However, sometimes you will want Kraken Slayer or Galeforce which will be covered in the situational items section.

Complete your tier two boot option either before or after your Immortal Shieldbow, it mainly depends on what gold you base on but both are really good items.

If you are going for the crit build, you will want to pick up either The Collector or Lord Dominik's Regards depending on a few factors. In general, once completed Lord Dominik's Regards is going to be much better once completed, however it has a much worse build path which can really slowdown a snowballing champion like Akshan. I'd recommend building The Collector if the enemy team has no tanksm which is actually fairly often in solo queue. The rest of the time just go Lord Dominik's Regards.

Infinity Edge is an absolutely huge spike so if you're going the crit build you want to pick this up as your third item basically every single time. Once you've gotten this far in the build you will want to refer to situational items to fill out your last two items.

The On-hit Akshan build is situationally very powerful and is best against teams that are heavy on AP or have a lot of tanks (or both). The On-hit build is also very flexible, in that if you are against a lot of AP champions early game you can buy Wit's End as your first item and delay your mythic to second item.

Again, complete your tier two boots of choice before your second item.

If you didn't rush Wit's End make sure to pick it up here second. If you did rush Wit's End then now you should complete your mythic item, most likely Immortal Shieldbow or Kraken Slayer

Third item pick up your Guinsoo's Rageblade which will give you a massive spike, similar to Infinity Edge for the crit build. At this point you will want to grab a couple situational items to finish off your build.

As discussed before, if you are building crit and you are against 1 or more tanks I'd really recommend buying this item.

While Wit's End is a mandatory part of the On-hit build, it can also be good situationally for the crit build as it's the most effective way for you to get magic resist in the late game. Consider building this if they have a really strong AP threat, or multiple sources of magic damage.

Stopwatch can be a really good item, even if you don't plan on building it into a Guardian Angel. If you use Stopwatch well it can make a huge difference in a mid to late game fight which often snowballs into major objectives. I'd recommend buying one of these almost every single game, especially after 3 items.

Bloodthirster can be a good fourth item for either build, especially if you didn't go Immortal Shieldbow as your mythic. It gives you more lifesteal and a shield and generally makes you harder to kill in teamfights.

Guardian Angel like Stopwatch can turn around a single major fight in the mid to late game which can make a huge difference. It's also one of the only sources of armor that you can get as Akshan so consider it against champions like Zed that are AD and only have one round of damage.

Sometimes you will need healing cut, in which case a Mortal Reminder will be your best bet. However, you generally don't want to build this unless no one else on your team has healing cut already which is pretty unlikely by the time you are looking to pick this up.

Since Akshan is short ranged there are some games where you will need a Quicksilver Sash. Most of the time Mercury's Treads will be enough to deal with crowd control, but if you vs Malzahar, Mordekaiser or Warwick then a Quicksilver Sash will come in handy.

If you want pure damage, Phantom Dancer is probably the highest damage fourth item for both the On-hit build and the crit build. If you aren't really threatened in teamfights then feel free to buy this.

Most of the combos on Akshan are pretty simple but there are a few that you will use often. Most common is using your Q through the creeps and hitting both parts on the enemy champion, then moving in to proc the 3 hit passive with either an auto attack or by Eing onto them.

Another thing that may come in use is that you can use your ult before using your E, meaning your ult with fire while you're still on the grapple which can be useful for getting a kill with your ult as you escape a teamfight, or making it harder for them to block your ulti shots with a tower/minions.

Remember that your ult does much more damage when people are low on HP, so try use it to clean up kills and start getting your resets going.

Akshan is pretty unique in that he has two viable skill orders, E max and Q max.

Generally, the best way to decide which to max is if you are in a lane where you can safely E into your opponent, either when they use a key cooldown or just all the time because you're much stronger then that will usually be best.

On the other hand if you are in a tough matchup, where your E is easily cancelled or it's not really safe to E into your opponent it will probably be better to max Q for waveclear instead. Akshan has a lot of options, and you can even take it a step further by choosing to do 3 points Q into E max, not putting a point in W until level 8, there's a lot of personal preference. If you want a standardized option I would say don't put a point in W until level 8 and just max E and then Q.

For specifics, take a look at the threat section and it will tell you which ability to max in case you aren't sure.

Akshan's lane phase will vary a lot depending on your matchup. In some games it can be good to start E and cheese them level 1 as with PTA the trade should be very one sided. In more even matchups you can start Q and just look to spam auto the wave with your passive autos onto the creeps marked by the Q. This gives you really insane push early game. Look for short trades by Qing the enemy mid through the creeps and moving in for a quick double auto to get the shield.

It can be really easy to find solokills with ignite and PTA to all in, but if your opponent is playing too safe you may want to look to roam instead. If you choose to put points in Q you will have really high waveclear and should be able to roam fairly often. E max can also help you a lot with river skirmishes, though you'll have to be prepared to give up creeps to get to them without your Q waveclear. Picking up boots early will allow you to move down the river quicker. Most of the time you will want to roam bot lane and try cheese some double kills.

Make sure to balance farming with grouping with objectives. People will fight at an objective in solo queue whether you are there or not so you will need to be there or risk them losing 4v5. Learning when you can farm and when you need to group will take some time, but by far the most important thing is not to fall behind in the first place otherwise it will take you forever to clear waves in the side lane on Akshan.

You can use your stealth to help create picks before key objectives, but most of the time you will just want to be in a spot where you can help your team have a good 5v5 and then cleanup the kills with your E.

In teamfights and skirmishes as Akshan you're really looking to capitalize on your teammates engage and start getting some resets for your E. If you just try play front to back with auto attacks you will generally be outperformed by other ADCs. Try get value out of either your E or your W to get into the enemy backline and start blowing up their squishy targets. Sometimes you will have to wait for key cooldowns to be used before you can safely go in, so make sure you think about that.

Thank you for reading my Akshan guide, I hope you learned something from it. If you have any questions you can ask here or message me directly.

I upload regularly on YouTube, and stream most days on Twitch so feel free to follow me on either of those platforms :)

If you're interested in individual coaching contact me on discord Shok#8163.