Hey everyone at Mobafire! This is my guide on Akali. Akali is a very fun champ to play and it is very rewarding to learn how to play her. She can carry teams and has some amazing skills.

Akali's skills do not rely on mana, rather they rely on energy. (The only other champs who use energy are Shen, Kennen, and Lee Sin.) Energy is capped at 200 unless you have runes, but the energy regens faster than mana. Because of the cap, one must always watch their energy costs when they play Akali and not wast energy, otherwise you may not kill an opponent with your burst. Note that taking blue buff does regenerate your energy faster.

Pros
Akali has great burst damage.
Shadow Dance has a ridiculously good dash range allowing you to chase,kill, or escape.
Can kill squishies very quickly.
Very versatile moveset.
Can duo lane or mid.
SHE HAS A HIDDEN PASSIVE LOL.

Cons
You get focused down a lot.
Your Twilight Shroud isn't as handy as other stealths and people can guess where you might try to escape through.
Akali has a weak early game until she gets Shadow Dance and is prone to harassment.

GOOD SUMMONER SPELLS

This is a must on Akali. Flash allows you to escape or close the gap allowing you to Shadow Dance to an enemy and grab the kill. Most importantly, you can Flash out of your Twilight Shroud, so enemies think you're still in the shroud, but you slipped away already.


Ignite gives you more damage allowing you to grab kills with its damage over time. It also reduces healing.

DECENT SUMMONER SPELLS
Ghost is good if you haven't unlocked Flash yet.
Exhaust is good for slowing people so you can catch up to them with your Shadow Dance. take a point in Cripple if you plan on using exhasut instead of getting Deadliness .
Cleanse can be helpful to rid yourself of crowd control effects.
Teleport can be used if you are on a solo lane.
Heal i guess can be used for early game, but otherwise it's pretty damn useless.

BAD SUMMONER SPELLS
Clairvoyance belongs to your support not you. If you want to facecheck, just twlight shroud a bush and run into your shroud.
Smite is a big no. Leave the jungle to someone else.
Clarity is bad since you don't have mana....
Rally is terrible and no one uses it anyways. I mean, I see Revive more than this.
Revive is a spell for those lvl 1 noobs who can't play. 9 minute cooldown? No thanks.

I take 7 Greater Mark of Attack Damage to get my passive, Twin Disciplines going with the help of Brute Force .
Then I take 2 Greater Mark of Magic Penetration for magic penetration. Since we grab a Doran's Blade which gets the passive going anyways, you can alternatively take 9 Greater Mark of Magic Penetration but I like the extra AD for more early game spell vamp, which is important considering Akali's weak early game.

I take greater seal of vitality for more health toward late game. Greater Seal of Armor can work as well considering you'll probably solo top against an AD champ.

I take Greater Glyph of Ability Power to get the other part of my passive, Twin Disciplines working. You will only need 5 technically considering your quints, but I like more AP early game.

Finally, I take Greater Quintessence of Ability Power to increase my AP and get my passive going.

Now for some reason, the Mobafire database lacks the energy runes. Yes, there are runes to increase energy and energy regen. However, they are all expensive Tier 3 runes and the boost they give isn't worth it. Max energy obtainable is 242 with the runes giving you a mere 42 energy. 42 more energy doesn't even allow you to use any of your energy costing skills.

The regen runes aren't really great either as energy already regenerates at an astounding rate and you can just get blue buff.

The runes I recommend can be used on various champs, but energy runes would only work on 4 champs anyways, making them just about worthless in my opinion.

All in all, DON'T BUY ENERGY RUNES.

Nice passive. Truly unique. But for our purposes, we mainly build AP so we get a lot of extra magic damage.


I put a point in this first because it's your only ranged attack. However, most of the damage from this attack comes from auto attacking the marked target. As a result, early on, it's a bit dangerous as you'll have to get close. I max this because it deals really good damage.


I get a point in this at lvl 2 to allow for escapes in case you're getting hurt hard. I max this last as leveling it only decreases the cost. You are stealthed while within the area of the shroud. However, if you attack, you will reveal yourself drawing aggro from minions and allowing enemy champs to see you. Enemy champs can buy Oracle's Elixir to counter this, so watch out for anyone with a pink mark over their head. Vision Wards can see you as well. Turrets can still attack you during stealth.

The stealth comes with a slow for escaping or slowing an enemy so you can dash to them and burst them down. When escaping, you can Flash out of your shroud or walk to a nearby bush to escape. Putting this in a bush allows you to walk into a bush safely.


This is an AoE attack perfect for farming minions. I max this second for more farms.


This is what makes Akali such a great champ. This spell has no cost and a low CD but can essentially be used only 3 times in a row. This skill has a great dash range to kill enemies. After marking someone, you can dash to them to auto attack them.

Shadow Dance is great for escaping too. For example, if you're being chased by an enemy champ you can dash to an enemy minion to escape. Most of the time try to dash to a minion in front of you to increase the distance between you and the enemy.HOWEVER, you can surprise enemies by dashing toward a minion BEHIND them. Sometimes they won't notice and will keep going straight for a while. (It's pretty funny) I would only do this if there were no minions in front of me. In the jungle, you can dash to jungle creeps for an escape.
Play Video Watch 3:00 - 3:07 and 3:12-3:18. I know it's Twisted treeline and most people play SR but this video is to give you an idea on how to use minions to escape.

Starting at level 6, Akali can start bursting hardcore. Here's your burst combo pretty much. Q - R- Auto attack- Q - R- auto attack. You can mix in Crescent Slash too, but watch your energy if you do this. The idea is that after you mark them, the enemy will try to get out of your range, so you dash and auto attack.

You can also use Twilight Shroud before the burst to slow enemies to prevent escapes and it also gives an element of surprise as to when/where you'll hit them. This does consume energy, so again, watch your energy bar.

Now, in case you didn't know, the game has hidden passives (kinda like easter eggs). Only 5 champs have known hidden passives. One of them is Akali. These passives are really for humor and practically have no effect on gameplay whatsoever. Akali's hidden passive is the Law of Inverse Ninja Strength. She shares this passive with Kennen and Shen. Ninjas work better alone, so for every allied ninja, Akali has one less max hp. Not that 2 HP makes a difference. I just thought it was funny.

Core build:



Item Sequence


I take this and 3 hp pots for movement speed and survival since you're prone to harassment early game. If you don't have enough runes to get your AD passive working, then use Doran's Blade.


Get more AP and more sustain. Build into Hextech Gunblade later.


More speed= better escape and better chasing. You can also use Sorcerer's Shoes.


I get this before the other powerful AP items for the extra health. This allows Akali to participate in more fights. The slow is very helpful too.


Great item. Lets you auto attack for more damage after your mark. It also gives more movement speed. This, your Boots of Swiftness, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter mean that no one can escape you. It also gives magic resist.


SO MUCH AP. SO MUCH BURST. SO MANY KILLS.


This gives AD and AP helping Twin Disciplines out. It also gives spell vamp and lifesteal. Remember to use its awesome active.


AP for more burst and less squishy. Cool active for turret aggro too.

ALTERNATIVE BOOTS
You can try Sorcerer's Shoes as they give nice Magic Pen allowing for more damage. Mercury's Treads are viable as well as they reduce CC times. Otherwise, I wouldn't use the other shoes.

OTHER OPTIONAL ITEMS
As I mentioned before, you can replace the Void Staff with one of these items.


Nice item if they stack MR.


Nice item with Mr and nice aura. Unfortunately, it warns your enemies with the debuff so you can't ambush as well.


Unreliable item, but great stats. It's a gamble to take this.


You can simply stack these items. Having two of them is completely viable.

Play Video /league-of-legends/champion/akali-50 Play Video /league-of-legends/champion/akali-50 Play Video /league-of-legends/champion/jarvan-iv-71

Time to prove this build works. Sorry, I've only been taking screenshots recently as I've worked on this build, but fear not, I shall constantly update it with more awesome scores.

All in all, I hope this guide helped you on learning how to play Akali. Make sure you strike fast and your enemies will never know what hit them!