Here’s the best build for the Rogue Assassin.
Akali is one of League of Legends’ swiftest champions in the game. She can take over games easily in season 10 with a small lead. Her core items are quite cheap and her early game is great as well, even though she is melee and doesn’t have a lot of options to farm safely. While her range can be exploited by enemies during the laning phase, the combination of runes and items below should help you get past that point.
As with all League champions, specific items are going to be more effective depending on the circumstance in-game. But there are certain items that are most effective on Akali regardless of the situation. These core items are going to give you the best chances of success with the Rogue Assassin.
Runes
Precision
Fleet Footwork: As a melee champion, you’re going to be punished a lot in the early game, especially since most popular champions in the mid lane are ranged. As a result, you need to double down and take all sustain possible through items and runes. This keystone will ensure that you get some health back in the laning phase and get more time to stay in lane until you reach your core items. In teamfights, the added movement speed buff can be the difference between life and death as well, which is very valuable.
Presence of Mind: This rune is going to resolve all your energy issues, especially during a hectic teamfight which may take some time. With a small assist or kill you’ll regain a big chunk of your energy pool, allowing you to use your abilities once again to get another kill.
Legend: Tenacity This is a pretty basic rune to make you less susceptible to crowd control. If you’re not facing a lot of crowd control, feel free to take Legend: Alacrity instead to make your auto attacks feel smother.
Coup de Grace: This rune acts as a finisher. It allows you to deliver even more damage to low-health targets, ensuring you execute them with your combo and get your energy back with Presence of Mind.
Domination
Taste of Blood: Taste of Blood is a simple sustain rune. It gives you some health back during short trades during the laning phase. You want all the sustain you can get to survive the early game.
Ravenous Hunter: As one of the most powerful healing runes in the game, Ravenous Hunter allows you to heal back up based on damage dealt from spells. While in the early game the impact might not be that high compared to other runes, once the match gets to the later points of the game, you’ll heal back up from 10 percent to 100 percent in a matter of seconds, which is crucial if you want to win teamfights and be as slippery as possible.
Bonuses: +9 adaptive force, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor
Starting items
Doran’s Shield
Having early durability is important for Akali since she’s a melee assassin who will take a lot of poke damage during the laning phase. Doran’s Shield will help by granting the mid laner 80 bonus health, extra health regeneration, and bonus damage to minions to ensure that you can easily last-hit. This item is going to make farming much safer for the champion early on.
Health Potion
During the farming phase, you are most likely going to take damage from enemy champions. Health potions heal back 150 health over 15 seconds and will give you extra time before having to base.
Core items
Hextech Gunblade
Hextech Gunblade is one of the best items in the game, granting you everything you need to be able to execute your enemies while also regaining health. It has an active movement speed slow effect with a small damage bonus and a great stat line with attack damage and ability power. The healing passive combined with your runes will ensure that your effective health is much higher since you’ll heal back up a lot.
Sorcerer’s Shoes
Sorcerer’s Shoes are a straightforward choice for boots with magic penetration to increase your damage potential. The item should be purchased after Hextech Gunblade to increase your burst damage output as soon as possible.
Oblivion Orb
Oblivion Orb is a great item to complement your Sorcerer’s Shoes. With the Orb and Shoes combined, you’ll have 33 magic penetration, enough to ignore the base magic resist of multiple champions. The health and ability power stats are great as well on the item, making you tankier and also directly increasing your damage from your abilities.
Late-game items
Zhonya’s Hourglass
Zhonya’s is a great item, especially against heavy attack damage-focused teams or against champions who rely on combos to kill you. One thing which helps this item be great is Seeker’s Armguard, which is one of the most gold-efficient items. If you rush it early on, you can sit on it for 20 minutes without issues since the stats it gives are insane for the gold cost.
In teamfights Zhonya’s Hourglass allows you to deceive opponents. You can force them to use all of their spells and engage tools on you, then use Zhonya’s to give your team some crucial seconds to unleash devastation on the enemy team while you’re untargetable.
Liandry’s Torment
The anti-tank item, Liandry’s is a must-have on Akali in most games. It grants you ability power, health, a passive to increase your overall damage while in combat, and a great damage-over-time effect that is increased against champions affected by movement impairing effects. While it’s effect is not ideal against squishy champions, it’s a requirement against tanks if you want a shot at killing them.
Rabadon’s Deathcap
There’s no better item for mages than Rabadon’s Deathcap. It amplifies all your power. Although some players might rush it if they’re winning the lane, it’s quite a suboptimal path. It’s best to rush it if you already have other core AP items. If you have an Ornn on your team who can upgrade it, then make this item a priority. You will get even more ability power from Rabadon’s Deathcrown, the upgraded Ornn version.
If you’re ahead in lane and have plenty of gold, then feel free to get this item, especially if enemies are stacking magic resist early on and the Oblivion Orb’s effectiveness might be diminished.
Void Staff
If enemies are stacking magic resist then you need to invest into a Void Staff. Sometimes it’s worth more to purchase a Void Staff instead of a Rabadon’s Deathcap if the enemy has a lot of magic resist. Prioritize this item after your core items if enemy has a lot of tanks. However, if the enemy doesn’t have magic resist items, then skip this item and get other pure ability power items to increase your damage instead.
Situational items
Mercury’s Treads
If you’re facing a heavy ability power-focused composition or a composition that has too much crowd control, then Mercury’s Treads is a must. It gives you much-needed early magic resist and reduces duration from any crowd control landed on you.
Ninja Tabi
If you’re facing a heavy auto-attack focused composition, then you can focus on getting this item early on. It will heavily diminish the damage done by them and give you more effective health. Due to the lack of magic penetration from the Sorcerer’s Shoes, however, you will also be dealing less damage to these champions.
Morellonomicon
The forbidden book is a requirement against healing-based champions. If your team doesn’t invest into an anti-healing mechanism, then you might be the victim of this and need to purchase it instead. It’s heavily gold-inefficient, but if the enemy team is running you down due to how much healing they have, then you need to prioritize and acquire this item.
It won’t cost that much if you go for the core item of Oblivion Orb and later need to convert to Morellonomicon.
Rylai’s Crystal Scepter
Rylai’s is a decent item, especially when coupled with Liandry’s Torment. You will be very tanky due to the health gained, while also dealing max health percent damage due to the effect from Liandry’s Torment.
Banshee’s Veil
What was once a rush item became an optional item against crowd control. Use it against heavy-pick compositions which rely on getting an engage to dismantle you. By having a spell shield to protect you from that Nocturne Paranoia or Ashe Arrow, you can increase your chances of winning such games.
But be wary not to waste the spellshield before a teamfight begins since it needs quite a bit of time to recharge. If you waste it, then ask your team to wait a couple of seconds before engaging to ensure success or victory.
Quicksilver Sash
A great item if you’re facing champions who can lock you down and ruin your day. It’s cheaper than Banshee’s Veil and can be activated at will to cleanse crowd control, making it much more flexible. Building it against champions like Leona, Nautilus, Braum, or Syndra is a must if you don’t want to be blown up in a teamfight before you can react.
