[11.23] IKeepItTaco's GrandMaster Akshan Guide - Pre-Season
Build Guide By IKeepItTaco
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639
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Akshan Build Guide By IKeepItTaco
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Akshan Build Guide By IKeepItTaco
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Recommended Items
Runes: Main Runes (all-rounder)
Precision
Resolve
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor
Spells:
1
2
3
4
Main Summoner Spells
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![LoL Summoner Spell: Flash]()
![LoL Summoner Spell: Ignite]()
Flash
Ignite
Items
On-hit or Crit? (READ NOTES)
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ON-HIT (Standard)
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Pick 1 Mythic
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Ability Order Skill Order
Dirty Fighting (PASSIVE)
Akshan Passive Ability
Akshan Guide Season 11
Table of Contents
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I'm also known as Jordanian Sniper, Jhindiana Jones, Jingle Bells, and other accounts. I dislike traditional auto-attack only carries and enjoy playing champions that mix auto-attacks with spell combos like Jhin, Aphelios, Senna, Ezreal, Samira, and now Akshan! |
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Akshan is designed to be a highly mobile assassination focused marksman for the midlane! He's yet another non-traditional adc as his kit revolves around playing off his abilities and combos ranging from trading, all-in'ing, teamfighting, and more! It's not all right-click with Akshan! I've played ALOT of him in PBE and hopefully I'm able to provide you with a lot to learn from this guide! Disclaimer: Akshan is a new champion and all my experience comes from PBE. I'm giving what I think fits him best and as the meta develops I will re-visit this guide and update it with any new builds and changes I see! |
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OP.GGs:
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There will be 2 rune pages that you can go to for Akshan. Press the Attack is the most reliable and will be the main rune page for him while if you want to try something different you can go for Hail of Blades which gives you incredibly strong laning phase power, but since your E Heroic Swing can proc it (and waste the rune) if you're not too careful then it can essentially make it a useless rune half of the time when mid-late game comes. |
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Primary Precision
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Secondary Resolve
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Secondary Domination
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Flash
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Ignite
Ignite then it will fall off harder than any other summoner spell so if you do decide to take Ignite make sure the enemy is easy for you to kill and that you're confident in the match-up. Or look to invade the enemy jungler and use Ignite to kill them as well. |
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Cleanse
Cleanse since removing their CC will be the most important thing when it comes to fighting them, killing them, or running away from them removing the need for Exhaustor Ignite. Examples: Twisted Fate, Lissandra, Veigar, Cassiopeia, etc... |
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Exhaust
Exhaustis very important to counter-act most mid lane match-ups. It'll help you 1v1, kite, escape, etc... |
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Teleport
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Skill Order
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>
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
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| Q | E | E | W | E | R | E | Q | E | Q | R | Q | Q | W | W | R | W | W |
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Dirty Fighting
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Avengerang
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Going Rogue
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Heroic Swing
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COMEUPPANCE
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Starting Items
Doran's Blade. There are viable options like Corrupting Potion, Long Sword + 3 Health Potion, but I haven't been able to play that many match-ups to learn the true viability of those items so for now we will only focus on Doran's Blade!
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Doran's blade + 1 Potion Doran's Blade is pretty standard on most AD champions that go mid these days and Akshan seems to be joining them. It provides a good balance of AD, health, and lifesteal to help in trading, fighting, and all-ing! |
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On-Hit or Crit?
Crit, however, isn't terrible. It's just not as good as on-hit at the current moment. It packs a punch in burst, but lacks sustainable dps which means in a meta where people build lots of hp and armor you'll be lacking damage compared to the on-hit build. It also lacks the skirmishing power and sustain from the on-hit build. At the start of playing Akshan I went Crit a lot and I have a decent win rate with it. If you want to go Crit then go Crit if it's what you enjoy. Crit is extremely Viable right now, it's just that on-hit is better and more reliable. |
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Core Build
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Kraken Slayer is the most optimal mythic for this build because it gives you 10% bonus attack speed after you complete each legendary making it on-hit's greatest mythic, but it also deals on-attack 60 (+45% bonus AD) true damage on-hit which means the more attack speed you have the more often you will be able to proc the Kraken Slayer passive.
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Next, we'll be talking about
Blade of the Ruined King! Blade of the Ruined King gives nice all-round stats of +40 AD, +25% attack speed, and +10% lifesteal. The Lifesteal from this item in combination with bloodline will allow you to stay healthy at all stages of the game allowing you to play aggressively without worrying when you get poked or take some damage in a small skirmish while the AD and attack speed combination just helps further amplify the on-hit synergy. Your auto attacks will deal 6% of the target's current health as physical on-hit damage which means your first few autos with Dirty Fighting will pack a big punch with Blade of the Ruined King allowing you to quickly get burst damage off then finish them. Also, it applies a stack per auto for 6 seconds and once it reaches 3 it will deal 40-150 (based on level) magic damage and slow them for 25% and speed you for 25% for 2 seconds making it a nice item to stick on your target and endlessly chase them down.
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The last, but not least, the final piece of the trio will be
Wit's End! This item will give you +40 AD, +40% attack speed, and +50 magic resistance. We again have the nice AD and attack speed combo stats to further boost the on-hit playstyle revolving around attackspeed and AD/on-hit. The 50 magic resistance is extremely vital to bullying and beating mages or magic damage based champions in the midlane. It also gives you 15-80 (based on level) bonus magic damage on-hit and gives you 20 bonus movement speed for 2 seconds allowing you to dish out extra on-hit damage with your passive Dirty Fighting since you'll proc it twice and giving you extra kiting potential with the movement speed!
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Now that I've explained all 3 core items it's time I explain the item order in which you'll build it because you'll be rushing one of these items depending on the situation!
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Wit's End is powerful against magic damage champions. Blade of the Ruined King is key to shredding and destroying high HP targets which will generally be tanks, bruisers, or if you need extra sustain to stay in lane. While, Kraken Slayer is for when you want a very high AD powerspike mixed with true damage. You'll be buying what you need depending on your mid lane match-up as well as the enemy comp! PLEASE KNOW THAT AKSHAN IS A NEW CHAMPION AND HIS ITEM BUILDS ARE CHANGING LEFT AND RIGHT ON A WEEKLY BASIS. I WILL DO MY BEST TO UPDATE IT ASAP WHENEVER THERE'S A CHANGE o7 | ||||||||||||||||
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Situational Items
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Bloodthirster This is a solid damage item at 55 AD and 20% Crit chance with 20% Lifesteal. When you buy this item you're buying it for the massive amount of lifesteal and the nice shield that plays off overhealing on lifesteal. Buy this item if you want raw damage + sustain and find no use for other items like Lord Dominik's Regards, Guardian Angel, etc... |
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Lord Dominik's Regards This will give you 35% Armor penetration, 30 AD, and 20% Crit chance. The passive gives you an extra 0-15% bonus physical damage depending on the health difference between you and your target. This item is extremely important to buy if you're playing against tanks or tanky-ish champions. The general rule of thumb is if multiple champions go above the value of 150 Armor then you should buy this item, that's when it becomes worth it! |
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Mercurial Scimitar You'll get 40 AD, 20% Crit chance, and 30 Magic Resistance. This item has a bit of everything an ADC can want, but it's especially good vs magic damage champions and/or champions that have CC you want to remove because it's active will remove all CC except for Airborn Knockups AND it gives you +50% movement speed for 1 second! Great playmaking item for mid-late game. |
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Guardian Angel You'll get 40 Armor, 40 AD, and a passive which allows you to come back to life with 50% hp and 30% mana after 4 seconds. This item is really good for you late game as a 5th or 6th item. Only buy this when the enemy has lots of AD or there's an AD assassin that you can't seem to stay alive against then this is the best way to counter them. Example: Rengar, Talon, Zed, Qiyana, etc…. |
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Boots
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Berserker's Greaves Gives you 35% attack speed and since Akshan has an incredibly low base attack speed then this will give you a very nice spike to work with as it'll allow you to better use your Passive Dirty Fighting since the autos will come out MUCH faster! |
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Plated Steelcaps It provides 20 Armor and reduces damage from auto attacks by 12% making it the perfect item to build if you're playing against an AD Assassin and you feel they might kill you very easily. It will also make the laning phase a lot more playable against AD Assassins. |
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Mercury's Treads It gives 25 Magic Resistance with 30 Tenacity and it has the same goal as Plated Steelcaps except instead of AD Assassins this is extremely good at countering AP Assassins. |
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Crit Build
Galeforce and that's because it offers you a lot of different perks that will benefit you alot. Akshan has burst, but a lot of scaling through AD ratios and his kit in-general from his Passive Dirty Fighting all the way to his ultimate Comeuppance. So, you want to be building AD Crit items to maximize your damage potential. Galeforce gives you 60 AD, 20% attack speed, and 20% crit chance so the stats are all amazing. However, the biggest kicker is the unique active cloudburst which is a dash and it has defensive as well as offensive capabilities. It'll help you chase and finish people off as you assassinate them or if you find yourself in a pickle and your E Heroic Swing is on cooldown then you have an extra escape under your sleeve!The second item we'll be going for is The Collector. It's essentially just a big ball of stats and it packs raw power. 55 AD, 20% Crit, 12 Lethality, and an execution if they reach below 5% hp and it grants you 25 extra gold on kill. This is your “omph” item and from here on out you should be able to deal threatening damage and look for assassinations and burst pick offs. Actively look for fights or use your W Going Rogue to sneak up on people to kill.The third and final piece of the core build is Infinity Edge. This is yet again another raw damage item with only aggressive stats to it! 70 AD and 20% Crit chance in which after completing Infinity Edge you'll be at a total of 60% Crit chance and be able to use it's passive which gives you 35% bonus critical strike damage when you reach atleast 60% crit chance!Since you've now completed the core build you're extremely powerful in the assassinate department and you should be continuously looking around for pick-offs (still make sure to be farming you're not a primitive like Talon or wait for the perfect moment in a busy teamfight to clean up 1 target, get the resets on your E - Heroic Swing, and continue killing them 1 by 1 reset after reset! Your options are limitless at this point and onward.
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Alternative Mythic
Immortal Shieldbow: This gives the least amount of damage from all ADC mythics, but that's because it has a little bit of every stat! 55 AD, 20% attack speed, 20% Crit chance, and 10% lifesteal. This item focuses on giving you sustain to stay at full hp at all times as well as it's unique passive which gives you a 300-800 damage shield (based on level) for 3 seconds then 13-35 AD (based on level) for 8 seconds once you fall below 30% hp. The sustain and shield are the main reasons you're going to get this mythic. You should buy this if you're against a heavy burst assassin because this item will allow you to safely farm up and scale without getting one-shot left and right. Beware that you'll do less damage going this route cause you're exchanging offense for defense!
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Situational Items
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Bloodthirster This is a solid damage item at 55 AD and 20% Crit chance with 20% Lifesteal. When you buy this item you're buying it for the massive amount of lifesteal and the nice shield that plays off overhealing on lifesteal. Buy this item if you want raw damage + sustain and find no use for other items like Lord Dominik's Regards, Guardian Angel, etc... |
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Lord Dominik's Regards This will give you 35% Armor penetration, 30 AD, and 20% Crit chance. The passive gives you an extra 0-15% bonus physical damage depending on the health difference between you and your target. This item is extremely important to buy if you're playing against tanks or tanky-ish champions. The general rule of thumb is if multiple champions go above the value of 150 Armor then you should buy this item, that's when it becomes worth it! |
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Mercurial Scimitar You'll get 40 AD, 20% Crit chance, and 30 Magic Resistance. This item has a bit of everything an ADC can want, but it's especially good vs magic damage champions and/or champions that have CC you want to remove because it's active will remove all CC except for Airborn Knockups AND it gives you +50% movement speed for 1 second! Great playmaking item for mid-late game. |
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Guardian Angel You'll get 40 Armor, 40 AD, and a passive which allows you to come back to life with 50% hp and 30% mana after 4 seconds. This item is really good for you late game as a 5th or 6th item. Only buy this when the enemy has lots of AD or there's an AD assassin that you can't seem to stay alive against then this is the best way to counter them. Example: Rengar, Talon, Zed, Qiyana, etc…. |
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Mortal Reminder This is the only zeal/attack speed item that gets an exception and it's because if your team refuses to buy anti-heal then it'll end up being your job. It's best to avoid buying anti-heal as an ADC as the stats from this item are really bad compared to the other roles, however, if NO one buys anti-heal and you need it then buy this cause you won't have any other choice. |
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Boots
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Berserker's Greaves Gives you 35% attack speed and since Akshan has an incredibly low base attack speed then this will give you a very nice spike to work with as it'll allow you to better use your Passive Dirty Fighting since the autos will come out MUCH faster! |
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Plated Steelcaps It provides 20 Armor and reduces damage from auto attacks by 12% making it the perfect item to build if you're playing against an AD Assassin and you feel they might kill you very easily. It will also make the laning phase a lot more playable against AD Assassins. |
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Mercury's Treads It gives 25 Magic Resistance with 30 Tenacity and it has the same goal as Plated Steelcaps except instead of AD Assassins this is extremely good at countering AP Assassins. |
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Boots of Swiftness Gives an extra 15 movement speed compared to the other boot choices and reduces the effectiveness of slows by 25%! Buy these if you don't need defensive stats, but need more mobility to work with and don't want to buy mobility boots for it. |
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Laning Phase
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So the laning phase with Akshan isn't too hard to follow in terms of what your goals are, how to play the lane out, and what you should know coming into the lane. Riot hyped him up to be a super hyper roaming assassin ADC and only some of it is true. Akshan is an ADC and he is an assassin when he reaches his powerspikes, but he is NOT a super hyper roamer like Talon or Katarina. If he roams once or twice it's game over for the rest of the game because you'll be too behind as a champion since as we've mentioned before you're still an ADC at the end of the day. Champions like Talon and Katarina can get away with reckless roaming and leaving lane 10 times because they're designed as melee assassins and have so much base damage that they don't need to scale or farm up a lot compared to Akshan. With that being said, when you play the lane you're going to be wanting to look for short quick trades and avoid long trades because you have very low attack speed and you want to go in and out with your Auto + Passive Dirty Fighting + Q Avengerang combo. ALSO KEEP IN MIND, it is important to remember in case you've forgotten that if you Auto once and move before the Passive Dirty Fighting auto comes in then you will get extra movement speed for 1 second which can help close the gap if the enemy is trying to stay out of range from your autos. You can Auto > Move > Auto > Passive Dirty Fighting Auto or Auto > Move > Q Avengerang > Auto > Passive Dirty Fighting Auto. Double Autos with the Passive Dirty Fighting take longer than the short 1 auto and doesn't give you the movement speed, but it does more damage so figure out if you want the MS or the extra damage when going into these trades! Short trades is the plan and there's multiple ways to do short trades with Akshan! Here are some clips to show you them. |
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(Q
Avengerang + Auto )
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Just a simple example to give you an idea of the kind of trades to look for.
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(E
Heroic Swing + Auto)
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Make sure to punish people who come close to your tower like that by instantly jumping near them with E, do a quick trade, then back off. Repeat whenever they make this mistake.
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(Q
Avengerang + Auto & Passive Dirty Fighting + E Heroic Swing)
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If you take a trade and know you're going to lose it if it continues to go longer then use your E to bail out of the trade and keep your won trade.
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(Q
Avengerang)
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The way his Q
Avengerang works is that each time it collides with a target it will reset it's range and go further. So, if you hit 3 minions grouped together it'll have the same distance as 1, but if you hit 3 minions spread apart it will reset the range after each hit and go further and further. This can be go on and on as long as it keeps hitting new targets and they're apart from each other. This is important to know because you'll have to pay attention to the minion wave so you can get far Q Avengerang poke on your enemies or maybe even a sick snipe!
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(
Lux)
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This is just to give you an idea of how you'd want to use your abilities to 1v1 your opponent
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Lucian)
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This is just to give you an idea of how you'd want to use your abilities to 1v1 your opponent
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Summary: Stay healthy, Trade, Poke, Kill, Repeat. Roam or Jungle invade if you see the opportunity, but do not feel the need to force it!
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Roaming
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Here's the tricky part, from all the games I've played with him I learned that trying to hyper roam like it was suggested similarly to Talon is actually really bad for you because if you don't get anything after 1-2 roam attempts then you're massively behind for the rest of the laning phase. Like I mentioned earlier, champions like Talon or Katarina have so much base damage that they don't care if they lose a lot of gold or some exp early. Eventually one of their ganks will work and it'll pay off. That doesn't apply to Akshan. What Akshan DOES excel at is lane priority to assist your jungler in securing crabs, camps, or perhaps taking early fights in the river with the enemy jungler or both their jungler and mid laner. You'll be strong and mobile in these fights and should win them most of the time if you kite and play it properly. |
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This happened at level 5 which isn't as early as a level 3 fight, but it gives you an idea of how it'll go. Note:
Flash was unnecessary, but it's from one of the earlier footage I have.
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| Now that we've talked about Jungle priority and how roaming is not something you want to spam. We'll talk about when you should actually roam and what you should be looking out for in a roam. If you and your team are setting up a 3 man dive top or a 3-4 man dive bot then that's when you want to go ahead and roam because you have an extremely high chance of success. Also, pay attention to the map because if one of the lanes are fighting each other and the enemy is over-extending massively then you might be able to get there in time to capitalize on it. Always be paying attention to the state of waves, enemy positioning, and number advantage (when your team outnumbers the enemy. Ex: 5v4, 3v2, 4v2, etc..) as this will help you when deciding when to go for a roam or not. |
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Over here I notice we can 3 man dive
Aatrox so we decide to do just that. I will point out though that in the video I did not use my W Going Rogue early when you should be using it early as it has an insanely low cooldown, mana cost, and it's essentially a free perma invis until someone gets too close! You'll be able to go past wards undetected, but the enemy mid laner can always call you're missing so don't rely on it too much.
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Mid Game + Teamfighting
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When the mid game comes over then you'll want to leave the midlane and allow your bot laner to farm it because botlaners will be the easiest people to kill and they need the shortness of midlane to farm safely. You'll be farming one of the sidewaves top or bot until you're needed for objectives, grouping, invading, etc… Be ready on standby for anything that might happen, but be farming while you wait so you're constantly getting stronger. If you see a free solo assassination then feel free to go for that too if you're confident. Teamfighting will come down to you either making a quick assassination to start it off or kiting it out like a normal ADC until they get lower or you get a number advantage (when your team outnumbers the enemy. Ex: 5v4, 3v2, 4v2, etc..) in which you can start to pick them off one by one and use your E Heroic Swing to get resets and keep chasing them. It's pretty hard to explain how you should use your abilities in teamfights to kite properly so I have a couple clips here so you can watch and hopefully you get the idea on how you're supposed to use this champion in teamfights! Note: Sadly these are PBE games so it's usually one-sided, but hopefully you can learn from it until I can replace it with non-PBE footage in the future! |
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Tips & Tricks
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| These clips and explanations will more-so teach and explain the mechanical parts of Akshan that you'll want to know to fully use his kit to the fullest and excell! |
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SIMPLE
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(Q
Avengerang + Flash)
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If you're chasing down a low hp enemy and you need to flash for it then you might as well Q
Avengerang before Flash since you'll be able to do surprise damage and it'll catch them off guard especially if they have some sort of heal or escape. You can also fit an auto after it.
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(Q
Avengerang + E Heroic Swing)
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So, this is a little detail I feel most people will miss, but if you park someone with your Passive
Dirty Fighting with either your Q or Auto attack then your E Heroic Swing will always focus the enemy champion no matter how many minions are around. You can catch them off guard by bouncing a Q and instantly using your E Heroic Swing to do a quick burst and you can either back off after the trade or go all-in and kill them!
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(W
Going Rogue)
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(E
Heroic Swing)
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You're similar to Samira in terms of resets. After each takedown you'll get your E
Heroic Swing off cooldown and you'll usually want to continue and chase and hunt them 1 by 1 so always keep the resets in mind as it's crucial that you use them to win teamfights, duels, or chase any remaining cowards.
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ADVANCED
Heroic Swing is the most vital and mechanical part of Akshan. You'll be using it for so many different reasons and you can easily mess it up each time. So, let's begin
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(Q
Avengerang + E Heroic Swing)
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When you throw out your Q it takes awhile to come back to you and if you use your E
Heroic Swing right after you throw it you can use it as a opportunity for it to pass through multiple targets as you go back! It's situational, but you'll be able to use this from time to time to do some nice AoE damage.
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(R
Comeuppance + E Heroic Swing)
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This one is VITAL if you want your ultimate to actually kill anyone. Almost everything in the game blocks your ultimate. Monsters, Minions, Epic Monsters, Towers, and Enemy Champions so if you want your R
Comeuppance to connect then you need to be able to move yourself with E Heroic Swing as soon as you notice something or someone blocking your shot!
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(E
Heroic Swing + Enemy Champions)
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This is one of the situations where you might find yourself between a whole lot of enemies so the only way to get out or if you decide to fight and outplay them is to weave through them and look for that PERFECT angle to start your E
Heroic Swing from! First example is using dummies and the second is a live game. I imagine this won't happen often, but it's good to keep it in mind cause you never know when an opportunity might show up to style on your enemies :D
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If you made it this far congrats! I hope this guide was able to help you out! Akshan is unique in the sense that he's the first ever ADC created specifically for the mid lane compared to Lucian and Tristana that sorta just decided to go mid. I'm excited to see all the plays this champion will be able to pull off in the future as we all gain more experience with him. I didn't get a chance to work on match-ups because there's many different matchups and PBE wasn't really a good place to practice match-ups skill-wise so I'll be adding that section and going more into detail as we get more time to play him in LIVE. Hope you do well in your Akshan games and thanks for reading! Special thanks to Hopper for banners and coding as always! |
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