Akshan, the Rogue Sentinel In-lore, Akshan is a new League of Legends champion introduced in it's Sentinels storyline. He parted ways with the Sentinels initially after his mentor, Shadya, died. Now he hopes to avenge her and put her training to good use. He is a morally grey character, kind of a goofball and gives me strong Han Solo Vibes. In-game, Akshan is a Marksman Assassin, primarily intended to be put into the middle lane. However, due to the overall freedom of his kit, Akshan can be played just about anywhere. No, really. Akshan's kit mostly revolves around his passive and his Heroic Swing getting him around the Rift, allowing him to be played mostly anywhere. And that is exactly what I will be showing you today

PROS + Overall, a easy to understand set of abilities. + A revival mechanic that can be tremendously useful. + Very mobile, especially in the jungle. + In terms of build options, very adaptable. + Looks very cool. + Execution ultimate. With how versatile his kit is, Akshan can be played just about anywhere. Luckily, it's also easy to understand and not that tough to grasp. On top of that, once you've started to learn how to use it, his ultimate can be a fun execution ability. Not only that, with how your build starts, it's not even the worst idea to help pass up kills to a laner if you're jungling.

CONS - Initial clear is a bit rough. - If you don't know how to heroic swing, uh-oh. - His Q is incredibly weak damage wise. - His W restoration and movement requires dead teammates. - Relatively typical backstory and attitude. - Potentially the worst ultimate in the game. You might be thinking to yourself, hey. You just mentioned that Akshan has an execution ultimate. Now it's supposed to potentially be the worst ultimate in the game? Yes. Because other ultimates that have a similar idea are like Caitlyn's or Jhin's ultimates; Long range shot to execute. Caitlyn and Jhin's ultimates pass through towers, minions, monsters, structures, and can be blocked by champions. Akshan's is blocked by all of those, including champions.

PASSIVE ABILITY

DIRTY FIGHTING (Passive): You fire 2 auto attacks instead of one, and you can cancel the 2nd shot for movement speed. The 2nd shot deals less damage. Each shot applies a stack. Upon hitting 3 stacks, they are consumed and you deal bonus magic damage. If it's on a champion, you gain a shield for 2 seconds that is on a cooldown. Very important: The shots from Heroic Swing will prioritize enemy champions with these stacks on them.

Q

AVENGERANG (Q): Akshan throws a short range boomerang that extends it's range with each enemy creature hit, be it minions or champions. If a champion is hit, Akshan gains a burst of movement speed. The boomerang also applies the stacks from his Dirty Fighting passive. It is useful to throw this at the enemy laner to get a stack going, then swinging in with Heroic Swing for strong damage.

W

GOING ROGUE (W): Passively, Akshan marks (alive) enemy champions that have killed allied champions as Scoundrels for 60 seconds, refreshing if they kill another. If Akshan kills marked enemy champions while alive himself, the marks are consumed, Akshan gains 100 gold for each mark, and all of the allied champions killed by that enemy champion are revived. Actively, Akshan enters stealth for 2 seconds. If Akshan is inside of a brush or near terrain (turrets, inhibs, walls) the countdown is paused. In this stealth, Akshan can see trails leading to marked Scoundrels, gaining movement speed and missing mana regeneration if on the path. Attacking, casting or being attacked breaks this stealth.

E

HEROIC SWING (E): On cast, Akshan attaches his hook to terrain. CC breaks the hook. Once moving in a direction while hooked, Akshan swings along the wall. While swinging, Akshan fires shots at visible enemies while prioritizng enemy champions marked with Dirty Fighting stacks. If movement is clicked WHILE Akshan is winging, he will roll into that direction and fires one last shot. This ability resets on kill. Shots can crit and apply lifesteal, and apply other on-hit effects at 25% effectiveness. The amount of shots goes up with bonus attack speed.

R

COMEUPPANCE (R):Akshan channels for 2.5 seconds, storing (increasing per-ultimate-level) bullets. This can also be recast to finish the channel early for reduced bullets stored. Each bullet deals increasing damage based on missing HP and shots fired. You can Heroic Swing during it, move normally, and otherwise. However, Comeuppance can be blocked if while firing minions, structures, monsters or enemy champions stand in the way between you and your target. Each shot applies a stack of Dirty Fighting.

Alright, let's talk about this for a second. His passive is neat, and a nice unique feature. It's another 3-hit passive but whatever. His Q's damage is pretty low, it's not like a Sivir Q that shreds the enemy. Mostly, I use it to apply Dirty Fighting stacks to Heroic Swing into. Speaking of, his E is his strongest ability, hands down. His team reviving W passive is the topic of a lot of controversy but for us, is a nice bit of extra gold. And his ultimate is, by far, the worst one in the game.

I said it up top, but Jhin's Curtain Call is only stopped by champions. So is Caitlyn's Ace in the Hole. And I'm sure there's more. But Akshan's Comeuppance can be blocked by just about everything. Yes, of course you can get kills with it. I'm not denying that. But it feels so abyssmal in comparison. Not that Akshan needed more wonky stuff in his kit, considering he's already loaded with passives as is. But still. Also, his W active with the movement and stealth is a monkey's paw. "I want more movement and mana", granted, but your team has to be dead first.

KEYSTONE Grasp of the Undying: Okay, you're used to seeing Press the Attack on Akshan builds. You even see it on my jungle runes. But why in lane? Well, I weighed the options. Grasp provides sustain, health, and bonus magic damage on-hit. Those first two are important. See, Akshan lacks lane sustain. This helps this, especially in early trades. On top of this, it aids your damage a bit without having to over commit. Getting 3 autos on an enemy is quite the commitment with Akshan while with Grasp you can just hit minions and quickly hit Grasp, cancel the 2nd auto of Dirty Fighting and get out of minion range. MAJOR RUNE Shield Bash: So you procced Grasp and the enemy is jumping in on you. After your passive is procced and your shield goes up, along with the additional Grasp damage, Shield Bash provides you with a bit of additional damage as well as more resistance. Fantastic. MINOR RUNE Bone Plating: You can find yourself trading too often to see much use out of Second Wind, Conditioning ain't for you. So instead, and it was already the best option regardless, we go Bone Plating. Enemies try to chip away at you while you proc Grasp and maybe Shield Bash, they deal reduced damage. Hurray. MINOR RUNE Revitalize: But this one could also be Overgrowth. Adding additional max HP, on top of the max HP gained from Grasp is strong. Buffing your Dirty Fighting shield is good, sure. And so is buffing the Grasp heal. But I prefer the raw stats sometimes. It depends on how passive the enemy laner is. Both are good SECONDARY RUNE Presence of Mind: Sustain is important to Akshan, and giving Akshan more mana regen through hitting an enemy laner, which you should be doing on occassion anyway because of Grasp of the Undying, just strikes me as a good additional benefit. SECONDARY RUNE Legend: Bloodline: Through your build, you won't be getting a tonne of lifesteal or omnivamp. So this will help us sustain a bit better in the late game. You could opt for Coup de Grace, but I find more use in Bloodline than I do with Coup

KEYSTONE Press the Attack: It's a very simple choice. I look at the other available runes, and what they provide, and Press The Attack wins out for jungle Akshan. What you want to do is get a hit in before swinging, then swing. PTA increases damage dealt by ALL sources, so it's beneficial for everyone. MAJOR RUNE Triumph: In lanes, you want mana. In the jungle while ganking, you want gold and HP. You get 30 extra gold if the target was a Scoundrel, too. And another big reason is you want to be able to fight that pesky enemy jungler should they show their ugly face. MINOR RUNE Legend: Bloodline: This one's a little up in the air. I choose lifesteal for the sustain later. You could very well go for Legend: Alacrity but I always see more value in Lifesteal. MINOR RUNE Coup de Grace: It's not like it's the best thing in the world, but it just happens to be the best thing on you. People might go OMG YES GOOD CUS EXECUTE ULT but you don't want to play around your ult too much. It's unreliable. SECONDARY RUNE Shield Bash: Bonus damage because you procced your Dirty Fighting passive, some resistances, and it's up often? Cool beans. SECONDARY RUNE Bone Plating: Process of elimination. 2nd in line would be Revitalize, but it doesn't provide enough defense to make it worth picking over Bone Plating.

KRAKEN SLAYER

VS

GALEFORCE

Kraken Slayer procs off of your Heroic Swing. Let's get that out of the way. Thus, it is easily one of the strongest choices you could make. Speed from other items, it's own speed and damage, that's where it has Galeforce beat. True damage, too. Like I said, hard to beat. So, why do we even consider Galeforce?

Galeforce brings a few benefits with it. It has some lower stats, sure. But Akshan wants to be mobile in more ways than one. Moving around the map, swinging, or with this item, dashing. See, this item gives movement speed for every other completed item. That's pretty nuts. It's active is a strong dash that deals additional damage. This additional damage might just be what you need to kill a unit. Since you cannot cash it before your ult, it might also serve as a quick reposition before charging it you would've otherwise not had. The mobility it provides is not to be scoffed at, trust me.

Kraken Slayer

Wit's End

Guinsoo's Rageblade

Hey, wow. If you were here a couple of weeks ago? You'd have seen Wit's End up there and Collector. Wouldn't that have been funky? Yeah... So what's changed? Well, first off, the meta has a little bit. These days it's all about that Sustain vs. Anti-sustain. And while Akshan can get past defenses pretty easily with Kraken Slayer, it does nothing to sustain him. You might say that Immortal Shieldbow would be better on him then. No, it's not. Akshan gets too much out of Kraken + Dirty Fighting. Blade of the Ruined King has also moved up. Ironic, sentinel building that. Anyway, it's sustain, HP shred damage on hit, attack speed, and it gives you movement speed if you hit someone 3 times with it. In the past, I wasn't a huge advocate for early Bork. And I'll be honest, I still don't entirely feel it. But logically speaking, this is still the best you can get after Kraken. It makes up for your lacking sustain, gives you another on-hit passive to deal with most things. And a bit of movement speed. Lastly, Guinsoo's Rageblade. If you look at the other two items I told you to build, this one should come as a no-brainer. Akshan does like his critical strike chance, but the moment this item comes online, It's like going from 10/10 to a 15/10. Your passive, Kraken, Blade all proc faster. It's incredible. Again, shout out to Berserker's Greaves. You're an MVP, but these take the cake.

So what is it about Akshan jungle that makes him viable? Well, bluntly put, it's his extremely basic kit. There's no fancy dingle dangle stuff. In fact, his early clear is a little sketchy. However, get past that, and you have yourself someone who can be a lot of places very quickly, provide a lot of damage very quickly, and with Press the Attack and Chilling Smite provide both a slow and increased damage. You want to help out your teammates, so they can help you win. This is not a solo game, and Akshan teaches you that. Hell, you can try to solo drake. And I'm sure you will get far. But it'll be slower than what other junglers do it at. And for you, it takes so little to assist your team. Your Going Rogue allows stealthy entry (although Vision Wards still reveal you. But get past those, you Heroic Swing in for a tonne of damage and finish it off together. It's hard to go wrong.


For your path, start at whatever side your botlane is on. Then, go on over to Gromp, kite him or just smack him around, and then take your other buff. For now, ignore raptors and krugs. Wolves is optional after both buffs but this is where I start looking for lanes to gank. The early bird gets the worm, after all. So;
Botlane Buff > Gromp/Frog > Other Buff > Gank

A thank you to jhoijhoi for providing coding formats.