Akali Build Guide by ACE873

Akali is a very fun champ to play once you get to know her kit well enough. She has tons of dashes, great for carrying, great for snowballing, and it's very easy for her to get into the backlines and wreck havoc on an unsuspecting enemy team. However, she's hard to play and master, difficult to make a comeback with, very squishy, and if you get hit by any hard CC it's game over for you. If you put in the time to learn her and carry games with her, you'll have a lot of fun crushing anyone who comes in your way and dominating games at this champion.

Starting Items:

Doran's Ring: It's a good offensive option for any AP champ. Take this starting item when you're in a matchup against someone you counter or someone who doesn't poke a lot or try to kill you in the laning phase, like Yasuo.
Doran's Shield: This is the item you need for lane sustain against poke champs like Xerath or people that you'll just have a tough time with in general like Sett and LeBlanc.
Doran's Blade: This is the offensive option for when you're going Akali top or can be an alternative for your starting item on the Riftmaker build to harass your lane more effectively.
Long Sword: This is good for expensive AD builds, like the Divine Sunderer build that's been popping up everywhere.

Mythic Items:

Hextech Rocketbelt: This is a really good item for Akali right now, as both the dash and magic pen are really useful for her. It allows you to build more defensive items after you get your protobelt and sorc shoes like Zhonya's (altough damaging item will still be just a useful) because of its mythic passive, which gives you 5 magic penetration per legendary item, which is absolutely AMAZING.

Riftmaker: This is the best option for when you're up against tankier team comps and whenever you're going Akali top. The omnivamp is really useful for when you're making risky plays, getting in tradeoffs, or when you need the extra survivability! When crafting it, make sure to get Blasting Wand, as the AP will be more useful to you than the onmivamp from Leeching Leer in the early game.

Night Harvester This is the optimal mythic for a full damage build, although Hextech Rocketbelt is mostly better in the situation that would call for NH, but you can go this item with the rest of the magic pen build if you really need the ability haste. You'll always want to rush Lich Bane as your third item top make the most use of Night Harvester when you're running it as Akali.

Divine Sunderer: This item is broken on Akali right now. It gives you damage and healing that can be proc'd easily, a mythic passive that gives you percentage magic pen to better deal with tanks, and good base stats as well. You can pair this with some AD Fighter/Tank items, most notably Titanic Hydra and become an unstoppable killing machine.

Core Items:

Zhonya's Hourglass: This is an incredibly useful tool for Akali. It can be used to negate burst damage, perform tower dives, and even to stall time in teamfights to give you the advantage (e.g. popping the hourglass to stop taking any damage waiting for something that could secure a kill or save yourself), or give your team an easy fight by dealing as much damage to everyone as possible, and then popping Zhonya's to get the enemy team right where your team wants them for an easy kill and to wait for you team's arrival into the fight without actually getting killed. Long story short, Zhonya's Hourglass is really good on Akali.

Demonic Embrace: Demonic Embrace is an option for a Riftmaker build where you are fairly tankier and have much more sustain damage than usual. The burn can secure some kills that would othewrwise be lost and is great for after you get Zhonya's for even more survivability and ability to deal with tankier champions and builds.

Lich Bane: Lich Bane allows you to deliver a ton of burst when paired with Night Harvester, and even without NH Lich Bane is still great for other builds as well. You can never go wrong with Lich Bane whenever you need extra damage.

Rabadon's Deathcap: Rab's is a great fourth or fifth item to amp up your damage to a whole new level. As it is quite expensive, it is less prioritized than other items, but that AP's going to be very useful once you hit the late game as Akali.

Situational Items:

Void Staff: This is the item you want whenever you're going against people with high MR. It is good as a fifth item, after Rabadon's Deathcap to stack on a ton of MP so you can get even more damage with the Deathcap.

Ravenous Hydra: This is the item you want when multiple squishy champions who are building life steal of any type of vamp to match their healing.

Morellonomicon: This is for whenever the enemy team has a lot of healing on them. If you really don't want to spend all that gold on Morellonomicon, you can just get Oblivion Orb instead although it's not recommended because of the precious item slot it takes up.

Dark Seal/Mejai's Soulstealer: Get Dark Seal if you're more fed than usual. If you're REALLY fed, craft it into Mejai's Soulstealer.

Banshee's Veil: This item is great against heavy AP team comps and mages in general. The spellshield is really useful for a lot of situations and can stop someone from oneshotting you, so it's a good situational item for Akali against teams with heavy burst in general.

Titanic Hydra: This is your go to third item for a Divine Sunderer Build, giving you both damage and tankiness much like Div Sunderer itself.

Warmog's Armor: Go this after you've gotten enough damage items, and then you can see yourself making plays that you can't even dream of without this item.

Sterak's Gage: This is a great item for the Divine Sunderer build, giving you some tankiness and a bit of extra damage. However, Warmog's Armor will give you more value for what you're gonna be planning to do with this item, so it should be bought a bit later than everything else in the very late game.

Spirit Visage: It can make you much more tankier when you pair this up with Warmog's Armor, although it doesn't give as much utility as everything else in the Div Sunderer build so this would go well as a sixth item.

Electrocute:

This is my favorite keystone not just for Akali, but for almost every burst champion in the game. It will help you win trades, get you more damage when oneshotting enemy champions, and is just a really great keystone for almost all situations as an Akali. This makes for a more aggressive, bursty playstyle, where you can get more kills and take more risks.

Taste of Blood:

The healing on this rune is amazing for trading and also gives you some pretty good sustain as well. You could go Sudden Impact if you want to, but in my opinion, Taste of Blood is better.

Eyeball Collection:

This is a great rune for snowballing with, and it shouldn't be a problem to stack this as you're an assassin.

Ravenous Hunter:

Any omnivamp is AMAZING as Akali, so this is a no brainer. If you are able to get enough stacks, this will make for some great healing in the late game. This will be the only omnivamp you'll have when running a non-fighter Akali build, so this is why it is so important for especially the Electrocute rune.

Triumph:

Triumph is better for Electrocute, as it helps you be more aggressive by rewarding you by giving you health when you get a kill, allowing you to perform some more risky turret dives and go for multi kills more often. The gold you also get can help your snowball faster, and allows you to keep a gold advantage over your enemy. It is an overall good pick for aggressive runes, but it doesn't offer as much lane sustain as Presence of Mind, which we will get to later.

Coup de Grace:

Coup de Grace is great for finishing off low health players and securing kills. Compared to Last Stand, it's a more solid option as Last Stand forces you to put yourself in danger to get yourself low, which is never a good idea.

Conqueror:

Conqueror is best for a Fighter Akali build where you have lots of teamfight sustain and of course, healing. Healing is what Conqueror does best at, but you need to make sure to use your most damaging abilities, like Perfect Execution over your less damaging spells to make the most of it, which can be hard sometimes.

Presence of Mind:

Presence of Mind is great for sustain all game. It mainly helps you get your Q faster in the early game where it costs a ton, and also helps you be able to deal more sustain damage with you abilities without having to worry running out of energy during a fight.

Legend: Tenacity:

Akali, like I explained in the Pros and Cons section, is extremely weak to CC of any kind. With Legend: Tenacity however, you'll be able to somewhat fix that weakness by getting tenacity with this rune. It's easy to stack as Akali as well with you being able to max it out at the mid game, so it's perfect for Akali.

Coup de Grace:

Even with Conqueror, Coup de Grace is still a better option than Last Stand. The thing that Conqueror is good at is keeping your health high with it's amazing healing. For you to make the most of Last Stand, you'll need to get your health pretty low, and it's hard top get your health low when you are healing for all the damage you deal, and you can't just stop dealing damage, so it's even harder and more of a bad idea to try and proc it. Coup de Grace, on the other hand, will actually reward you for dealing damage and help you get more value out of Conqueror, so it is still the better option here.

Taste of Blood:

This paired with conqueror can get you some absolutely ridiculous healing. With this and the rest of your Conqueror runes you can heal as fast as an ADC who built full life steal, but better.

Ravenous Hunter:

*see above*


or

Switch these out based on what team comp you're up against. When you're in Blind pick, use MR if you're mid and Armor if you're top.

There are a a lot of combos that you can learn as Akali, and there are always some tweaks to set combos you'll need to make for whatever situation you're in during any game, so I'm going to go over the basic combos that any Akali player should have at least some variation of at their disposal. (Note: P = passive proc)

Trading Combo:

Q+P+W+Q+P

You can use the W later as you upgrade your Q.

<6 All In:

E+E2+Q+ IgniteP+Q

This is to score some kills if you can in the laning phase before you reach 6. Remember, about half of your damage revolves around your R, so be careful!

Full Damage Combo:

R+E+E2+Q+ Ignite if needed+W+P

This is the combo you'll be using the most in the entire game, so as I said earlier, this combo along with every other Akali combo varies according to your situation, and this is just something basic that works with most situations. Maybe you have Hextech Rocketbelt to chase your target and oneshot them, deal some extra damage, or to get away if you gotten yourself in a bad situation after you executed the combo. Maybe they're just outside from your R's range, so you E them first, making use of your E's longer range, and then R to properly execute the combo and kill them. Do whatever you can to do whatever's best for your situation to make the enemy team crumble before you.

Ever since the 11.6 mini rework on Akali, the playstyle for the laning phase is to play passively and just farm until you reach lvl6, where you can then start killing people with your ulti. You'll farm and maybe poke depending on your matchup until 3, where you have to make a decision. You can either choose to stay passive and keep farming until level 6 if you're in a situation where you can't win tradeoffs and you'll die if you go all in on them, or, you can start fighting and when you're in a favorable situation to start doing so. The laning phase is the most important part of the game for Akali, and if you end up getting at least 1 or 2 solo kills before 10, you'll snowball and carry the game. If you die multiple times during the laning phase though, it's likely you're not going to have a good game.

In the mid game, where you're strongest, you can start roaming and amassing even more kills if you've started snowballing in the laning phase, and if you've not started snowballing yet, remember you're still an Akali, so you can still oneshot most squishies. Either way, try to focus on getting kills and helping your team by being there when they most need you. You can get very fed become seemingly unstoppable as Akali, but one bad fight can ruin you, as Akali is very hard to make a comeback with. If you do end up getting shut down in this phase, try to be less aggressive then when you were when you got killed, and then try to CS a lot to try and maintain your gold advantage.

For the Late Game, you'll have to play a bit less aggressively that in the mid game, as now you can get oneshot more easily, people are starting to stick together more often, and tanks are build more MR. When you go into a teamfight, always be mindful of all the cooldowns of your abilities and active items so you can play accordingly. Nobody wants to get oneshot and realize they had their hourglass off cooldown the entire time. Csing is still very important even in the late game as your only reliable source of gold and XP, and before a team fight, just farm whatever you can at the moment so you can get an EXP and gold advantage over the enemy team before the fight. You need to play the objective whenever you can, because even if you're 10/0 and want to get kills, playing the objective is how you win games and should always be your first priority in any game.

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to go through my guide, hope this was worth it.
I decided about a week ago that making a mobafire guide for my main, Akali would be fun so here I am now, finishing this up. Feedback is important, so feel free to comment and give some constructive criticism, and have a nice rest of your day!