Hi, I'm Vapora Dark, a veteran player that's been playing since season 1. During that time I've hit Master tier as a mid lane main in season 5, as an ADC main in season 7, again as a jungle main in season 8, and once more in season 9 playing a mix of all those roles including mid and Fizz. I can play every role to a very high level and have a very good understanding of the general aspects of the game on top of that.

I've been writing guides on MOBAFire since 2011, among which my achievements include winning the MOBAFire guide contest multiple times, achieving the highest score on the site multiple times with multiple guides, achieving the most comments on a single guide of all time by a very large amount which hasn't come even close to being surpassed in the 3 years that it's been archived, and having the most collective guide views on the site by a very hefty amount. I've also written some champion guides for Riot Games on the Lolesports site.

Electrocute

Your job as an assassin is to kill a single target as fast as possible. The most consistent keystone in the game at helping facilitate that is Electrocute. More damage in combos is always useful.

Taste of Blood

Logically, Sudden Impact seems like a no-brainer as an assassin with lots of dashes and invisibility. However in reality she can do her killing job easily. The problem comes in to surviving lane without being useless after 15 minutes. Taste of Blood is a god send for Akali as it scales from both AD and AP giving you enough sustain in lane to survive until you get Hextech Gunblade and some Ravenous Hunter stacks.

Eyeball Collection

You're looking to snowball as much as you can and every kill or takedown you get will give you extra ability power. It's the most consistent of the three options so you should always take it.

Ravenous Hunter

Akali deals a lot of single target damage thanks to her passive Assassin's Mark. She is also incredibly squishy. Combining this with a Hextech Gunblade offers you an incredible amount of self-healing which is immeasurably useful in every scenario.

Inspiration Magical Footwear Minion Dematerializer

Magical Footwear: Hextech Gunblade is an expensive first item with a lot of cheap components. This means that being able to completely ignore boots and just rush straight to your most important item is paramount. The extra movement speed is nice as well. Minion Dematerializer: Akali has fairly mediocre waveclear with a pretty bad laning phase. Minion Dematerializer helps with both of these issues. Being able to consume a cannon minion early can quickly let you roam or recall safely, granting precious early pressure that you simply can't get without. Then you can also use them on the ranged minions to help with pushing as eventually you won't be able to one shot the casters without this.

Flash This summoner spell is one you should always take and the one you'll always see. Flash has a billion and one uses, from flashing in to get a kill, from flashing away from danger, flashing over walls and flashing over abilities. This is something you should be very familiar with by now and it's something you should ALWAYS have. There is never a situation where you don't take flash.

Ignite As a mid lane assassin your job is to kill champions. Ignite the best summoner spell for the job and will always be useful throughout the match. With the recent Teleport nerf and the fact you don't really need to use utility based summoner spells this is the only real option for you. Even things like Cleanse don't need to be taken as if you need to deal with heavy crowd control you can purchase Mercury's Treads.

Passive: Assassin's Mark

Assassin's Mark

Akali's passive is actually where most of her damage will be coming from. The scaling is higher than everything else except a low health target of the second dash of your ultimate which means it's the most important part of the kit to master. The ring that spawns is static, which means it doesn't follow the champion you hit to create the ring. If someone is running away from you, you do not need to turn around for a split second to trigger the mark, you can continue to chase and cross the other side of the ring. The enhanced damage has great synergy with select runes and items. Specifically Hextech Gunblade and Ravenous Hunter. This is because it scales from both your bonus attack damage and your ability power which the gunblade gives both stats and it's treated as a single target ability for the purpose of healing. With a fully stacked Ravenous Hunter and a finished Hextech Gunblade, Akali will be healing for 30% of the damage you deal with this and as she is a very squishy champion who's only survivability comes from items or becoming invisible this can very quickly stack up to some absurd levels of self-sustain. The radius of the circle is about 475 units which is almost identical to the maximum range of your Q Five Point Strike which in turn means landing a perfect range Q will instantly proc your Assassin's Mark to run in from the movement speed and get a high damage attack in.

Q: Five Point Strike

Five Point Strike

The most simple part of Akali's kit is her first ability. This is a very basic wave clear/harassment tool that also has some sustain built into it in order to help with early laning against tough matchups. The damage it deals early is fairly low but it scales with both your total attack damage and your ability power again making Hextech Gunblade a great item. An important thing to note about this ability is both the cooldown and the energy cost. As with most other energy users, Akali has 200 energy which regenerates quickly but cannot be increased. This ability costs 100 energy at rank 1 and has a 1.5s cooldown before cooldown reduction. That means if you cast this ability a lot you will run out of energy incredibly quickly and if you miss you'll be unable to trigger your Assassin's Mark which is most of your damage. Another thing to focus on is the innate healing you get can be triggered on minions and monsters, so if you have nothing to hit but need some quick healing you can Q into a jungle camp for some fast heals. However once you get your gunblade and a few stacks of ravenous hunter the extra healing really won't mean a whole lot in comparison to those 2. I max this ability first as it's your waveclear tool and the energy cost decreases with levels. At max rank it'll again deal even more damage to minions and monsters making it a must to rank this ability asap.

W: Twilight Shroud

Twilight Shroud

Twilight Shroud is what enables Akali to dive deep into the enemy team. Instantly putting her into a long stealth as long as she remains in the smoke and getting a burst of energy makes this ability powerful. The ability also doesn't have a set shape/hitbox. You throw a small circle slightly tilted towards your cursor that expands into a doughnut shape. This means that you can actually leave stealth by entering the center. However it's affected by terrain. If you cast it in the middle of a lane it'll expand evenly like said doughnut, but if you cast it in a choke in the jungle or player-made terrain like Crystallize it won't expand past it. You can actually squash it into practically a line if you place it at certain points. This is invaluable to master as it can alter exactly where and how you'll be invisible. It also has no energy cost and in fact restores your energy upon cast. Using it after you cast an ability allows you to get more Five Point Strike's off which in turn means more Assassin's Mark's which means a lot more damage. Whilst it is your defence/utility spell do keep in mind the energy generation for offensive use too. I max this ability second as it gives a huge amount of energy regen based on its ability rank, which in turn makes you able to use more Five Point Strike's which means a lot more damage. The integral part of Akali's kit is being able to duck in and out of fights consistently so the lower cooldown on Twilight Shroud also helps a lot with this.

E: Shuriken Flip

Shuriken Flip

As with any melee assassin, it's vitally important to get into melee range one way or another. Akali's version of a gap closer is actually incredibly unique as it starts by creating more distance from you and your target. This serves 2 purposes. The first is quite simply to make it harder to counter attack, as it's a dash it can be used over walls and can create time to set up or escape. It's style of escape is similar to 90 Caliber Net. However as it's your main way of getting onto a target to kill them, you'll usually only cast it to escape if you can't kill anything or get ganked. I should also mention how high the base damage of this ability is. Whilst you'll max it second because you need your Q to wave clear, hitting someone with the follow up dash will deal well over 300 base physical damage at rank 5. The second use is that it's almost always going to proc Assassin's Mark. It will trigger the swinging kama effect every time regardless of the range at which you cast it. The only time it will not trigger your passive is if you're against terrain that you cannot dash over (like the edge of the map). This means your most basic way to deal high damage to someone if you have low energy or they're keeping outside your Q range is to simply hit them with this then instantly dash into them and basic attack for massive damage. It also has the niche use of connecting to your Twilight Shroud. If the shuriken hits nothing but lands in some smoke, you can actually dash into your shroud. This can create some incredible mobility and outplay potential if you set things up properly. I max this ability last as it deals pure physical damage and outside of your Hextech Gunblade you get no attack damage.

R: Perfect Execution

Perfect Execution

Akali's ultimate is a 2 part double dash. The first cast is a dash that deals a small amount of physical damage that scales with your bonus attack damage and the second cast is a longer dash that deals decent magic damage scaling with both your ability power and the missing health of enemies hit. The second dash is an execute through and through and should be treated as such. You'll usually use the first dash to re-position yourself, as the damage is low enough that it's not a must hit. The second dash however will be very important to connect with to kill someone. The range is long and the hitbox is decent so it shouldn't be hard to land, but if the target isn't low on health then it will deal very little damage. I put points into this ability at 6/11/16

Laning Phase

In the midlane as a melee assassin you'll most likely only be able to farm up and try to not fall behind champions who can shove you in. Against other melee champions however you can easily use your Five Point Strike to push the wave and tag them with the tip, triggering both the slow and the Assassin's Mark buff which in turn will let you walk up and attack them for high damage. However they too can return high damage back to you if you're not careful so your priority is to survive until you get some components and levels before you look to kill. You should also keep an eye on your jungler. If your jungler is able to contest scuttle crabs make sure you'll not be far behind them in order to secure it. After you get a few levels, maybe level 6, a Hextech Revolver and some attack damage you can start to look to roam or assist your jungler in invades. With your high single target damage, you can very easily kill most targets in the early game if they get hit by some allied crowd control, or just simply run them down thanks to your movement speed and kit of mobility/slows.

Mid Game

After you finish your Hextech Gunblade you'll be very hard to poke out. This means at this point you'll want to look aggressively to advance your snowball. Skirmishes and picks are your best bet to kill players over and over whilst you become more and more fed. Your high mobility is also very important to remember as it's not just a way to close the distance, but also create distance and unique gank paths to avoid wards. Using your Shuriken Flip backwards can help cross walls like the baron/dragon pit to avoid common river wards. It's situationally a good investment to purchase an Oracle Lens to clear vision which helps with getting into position to assassinate targets. I wouldn't swap to this until level 8 at the earliest however.

Late Game

At this point you should have several items and be the biggest threat to the enemy carry if they're ever caught out of position. Your job is to continue what you did in the mid game but also to take as much as you can from any mistakes the enemy team make or any plays your team makes. Getting a kill or 2 without anyone on your team dying can be the end of the game with things like Baron Nashor or having multiple elemental dragons. However, even though you're incredibly strong at this point so will your targets. Items like Guardian Angel or Zhonya's Hourglass and the general power of support champions can thwart assassinations or make them bad things to do. It's very important to always check your enemy's items as even a stopwatch can ruin the best laid plans. Death's are very long at late game so make sure that if you do die (and as an assassin, it's not uncommon to do so as part of your job) that you caused fight winning damage or takedowns before you do. Getting off the second dash in Perfect Execution can be the difference between wiping a team or getting wiped. Whilst tower diving is never totally safe, late game is when it's the most risky unless you have a pure tank. You'll want to focus on using your Twilight Shroud as more of a area denial tool rather than just a pure utility skill. Just being invisible in a large area can be enough to buy your team time to finish what they're doing and create an opportune fight. Keep in mind though that an Oracle Lens can give your position away. Whilst you'll never be able to be targete Offense: 10% Attack Speed Flex: 9 Adaptive Force Defense: 6 Armour d inside your shroud whilst obscured, the trinket will cause a red silhouette to pulse your location which means you can be hit by deadly skillshots. You're invisible not invulnerable.

Akali is a high skill cap assassin who has a toolkit with limitless potential. Having the unique mechanic obscure alone can create so many opportunities no other champion can do and along with her myriad of dashes you'll be very hard to pin down. This comes at the downside of damage being gated behind not only your passive needing perfect spacing but also the second half of your ultimate Perfect Execution making your highest damaging ability not be usable on demand. Her skill floor is fairly high, but once you cross that barrier and understand her limits you'll be an assassin everyone will fear. Special thanks to Hopper for banners and coding. This guide was a collaboration with Vicious Skittle, who wrote the majority of the guide.