Akali is one of the champions I like the most, and that is because she is a great assassin, great burst but very squishy. I see a lot of people playing her too, but I never see anyone using her to her fullest, I'm gonna teach you how to do that in this guide.

The runes we start with, are runes for Akali only, they enable both her parts of her passive, when we buy the Amplifying Tome in the start, so she gets extra damage on auto-attacks, and spell-vamp from this rune setup and giving her a little survivability.

The masteries are 9/21/0
I go 9 in offense, to get the magic penetration, most of your damage is gonna come from lichbane and your Q ability, they are both magic damage, so magic penetration is great, the rest is put into defense, because she is very squishe, especially early game, so we want that extra health and damage reduction early on. Utility is mostly a waste for Akali, since a lot of it powers up your mana, which she does not use.

Items, is creating a little more survivability in the start, with the extra spell-vamp, else its just going full burst items, with the little help of some more health in the end with Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Because early and mid game your gonna be roaming the battlefield, and earn kills, but later on when the enemy team have farmed minions all game long, and gotten strong, they are gonna kill you quickly, if you don't have either Flash or Twilight Shroud ready.

You definitely want to max out Q first, because in rank one, with no ability power it deals 100 damage, it is bye far the most powerful ability Akali got, and it returns energy when you attack the targets, with the first part of it applied, so you want get out of energy in the middle of the fight, if you return 66% or the energy at the first hit, and it has so little cool-down in rank 5, and you want a skill in W in level 2 because, you are a very squishy target early on, but you still need to minion farm, just put down Twilight shroud and attack or use your Q to last hit minions.

When you want to assassinate someone, you use your Q first, then Ultimate to get in range of them, put down a Twilight Shroud for the slow, and use a Q again, and a E and then use your ultimate again, and if they ain't dead yet, use a Q more (and a ultimate if they run faster than you)

Pros:
Heavy burst
Very good chaser

Cons:
Squishy
Doesn't farm too well in the start

You ain't gonne go for a lot of kills in the beginning you want to atleast have small boots and Hextech Revolver. Otherwise you are just too squishy early on, with not quite enough burst to win a duel. So you want to just farm for the first 5-10 minutes.