I wrapped my Akali Champ of the Week with four losses, none of which made me particularly happy. Two of the games featured serious trolling by my teammates, once in the form of AP Pantheon, once a Singed who intentionally fed. In another, the enemy team had Orianna, Janna, and a hugely farmed Irelia, not to mention a very farmed Gangplank. If I remember correctly, the final game my team had a leaver. In short, it was not a fun way to wrap what had been a mostly enjoyable week, but it did highlight some of Akali’s weaknesses.

I’ll start by saying that I think Akali is almost always a strong pick for a team. She has incredible burst and, provided your teammates can provide a little initiation, she can bring down a carry faster than anyone else in the game. She has a very strong laning phase, thanks to the cover provided by Twilight Shroud and the burst from Mark of the Assassin. With boots at level one, she can almost always get in range to nuke off some enemy health while staying healthy in the cover of Shroud.

That said, she can be countered, but that counter often leaves a team vulnerable to their own counter strategy. Akali does struggle against teams that can mitigate her burst. It isn’t healers – it’s the shielders that give her trouble. Orianna, Lux, Janna and Jarvan can all eat a significant chunk of her burst up front, which means she needs to slowly wear them down over the course of a fight. That’s okay in lane, where there’s plenty of time to set up a kill, but in a teamfight someone else needs to nuke those shields so that Akali can get down to business. If your team can’t do that for you, it’s going to be a tough game.

In my game against Janna, Orianna, and Irelia, there was so much shielding on their melee carry that it was impossible to burn her down. Also, Orianna does quite well against Akali, thanks to the combination of her shields and the AoEs she can use in Twilight Shroud. It takes some very careful play to outlane Orianna.

On the whole, though, I think Akali is among the strongest champions in the game. Once farmed, she absolutely melts anyone with less than 3000 health, and even those targets drop alarmingly fast. If I could change one thing about her, it would be to limit the refresh mechanic on Shadow Dance. As it stands, Akali refreshes her Essence of Shadow every time she gets a kill. I’d like to see it have some sort of activate, something like Master Yi’s Highlander. The skill could refresh Essences only while active, maybe for a period of 15-20 seconds. It would force Akali players to carefully plan an attack, instead of freely dashing all over the map. It would also limit situations in which Akali can get a kill, duck into brush to wait on a Shroud cooldown, and then blow anyone up that comes to find her. She wouldn’t snowball nearly as hard, which I think is exactly the kind of thing she needs.