[Zito]

FOTM Report: How to Play Tank Akali Top
Feb 18, 2016 11:37 PM

Introduction
"Assassin Akali" has a nice ring to it. It has alliteration and great flow. "Tank Akali" is weird. It doesn't sound good. Unfortunately for the poets among us, people in Asia speak a different language and don't care about your word artistry.

They brought Tank Akali to life in divisions as high as Master and Challenger, and it looks like it's here to stay.

By maxing Akali's Crescent Slash (E) first, you end up with an extremely spammable champion, playing somewhat like Hecarim with melee range AOE burst. Check out the full details below!

How to Play
Runes: Ability Power Quints, Attack Damage Reds, Flat Armor Yellows, Flat/Scaling Magic Resist Blues
Masteries: 0-12-18, Grasp of the Undying Masteries
Abilities: Q, E, E, W, then prioritize R > E > W > Q
Core Items: Boots, Sunfire Cape, Titanic Hydra, Spirit Visage, Thornmail, Zhonyas/Rylai,

Why It Works
One Second Cooldown on Max Rank E
At a mere one second cooldown for Rank Five Crescent Slash (E), Akali is able to spam her moves as fast as her energy will allow her, sporting a 130 AOE damage per hit along with her standard auto attacks and sunfire cape burn damage.

Energy Restore Buff on Akali's Mark of the Assassin (Q)
The latest patch 6.3 allows Akali to return 40 energy at all levels on mark of the assassin. This allows Akali to mark her target, wait a bit, and then dash to them to triple E in rapid succession if executed correctly.

High Regeneration
Although her spell vamp and lifesteal are reduced in tank form, she does have ways of regenerating life in lane, allowing her to stay almost indefinitely against any poke based laners. The same passive also allows her to survive surprisingly long after diving 1v5 into the middle of an enemy team (although that's not recommended).

Easy Triple Gap Closer
As a champion with three initial gap closers and more if she's successful on the first target, Akali is extremely skilled at diving the back line. So long as she has enough damage to take down squishies, she can quickly snowball team fights. In the current patch, it appears she does indeed have quite enough damage even as a tank to take down back lines and even deal with mobile champions like Lucian and Ezreal.

Potential Pitfalls
Low CC/Utility
With the only crowd-control Akali packs being her Twighlight Shroud (W)'s slow, Akali gives relatively little incentive to look at her if she starts falling behind. Although she can engage on the enemy squishies very easily with point and click dashes, if she's too far behind she suffers from Olaf syndrome. Running at the enemy team until she dies only works if they don't kill her instantly.

Prone to Camping
As a melee based champion with little in the way of pre-6 escape mechanisms, Akali is very likely to get camped top lane. While she can still CS via her long range Mark of the Assassin (Q), maxing E first makes it more difficult for her to spam her spells without pushing lane.

Conclusions
Tank Akali is extremely fun as long as the enemy team doesn't play out too many pink wards. However, her suvivability and burst damage is surprisingly high and effective. I'm personally not quite sold on the build being "overpowered", but if Master and Challenger players overseas are playing it...it's worth a try!

Suggested Rating: Tier 2/Tier 1?

[Zito]

So basically the Flavor of the Month in League is the funny things that people are loving to play at the time. This month is Tank Akali. Akali is usually an assassin. Do the math .

[JudgeCrane]

Not really flavor of the month but I think Mid Jhin may show up, I think hes better suited mid than adc because hes more burst than sustain damage until late in the game. Although if you want an AD mid you can flex with adc you could probably pick Varus instead.

Think its totally viable for soloq. Its probably a niche or cheese pick for lcs.

[Zito]

Yeah the Mid Jhin I feel is going to be popular. Especially if he gets more buffs next patch. I think Tank Akali is really good in Solo Queue and as you said LCS probably not so much. Even Challenger players are playing Akali tank now though. I saw it banned last night on Meteos' Stream.