Isn't akali supposed to be an assassin, why is she building tank right now? That doesn't even make sense. Should squishy assassins be encouraged to build damage instead of stacking health and armor?
At this point I've got to ask if anyone could be an effective tank if assassins can get away with stacking health and armor.
Sona Ping6 votes"why is she building tank right now?" It's a gimmick build that apparently got popular here from a reddit post talking about some guys in Korea who were trying it out.
"Should squishy assassins be encouraged to build damage instead of stacking health and armor?" They already are. Assassins have plenty of tools that serve to effectively deliver the damage that they build.
The shorthand name for this build fad, "Tank Akali", is a bit misleading. People still play Akali offensively with it. What the idea is, is that by building full tank, it mitigates Akali's poor survivability and she can stay alive longer when she dives in with no escape. How it works is that it takes advantage of Akali's stickiness and low cool-down E and new energy restoration so that she can stay on top of enemies and spam E until the enemy falls over from E's base damages and Sunfire.
So..."Why are people playing Akali building her as a tank?" Because desperate times call for desperate measures. Or to say it with less idiom and more actual usefulness: Because Akali is just that bad. Akali has not been in a good place for quite a time now. Even with this supposedly OP build, you watch a tank akali play and all you see is a champion who, as they fed as they are, should not have nearly that much trouble taking down just one squishy target. Gimmick builds, builds where you don't even build damage on damage dealing champions being the most common reason a champion is even picked is a pretty ominous sign. But that's the state where Akali is.
Linna Excel2 votesSo basically Akali is so bad people are desperate enough to try tank items on her... that is pretty sad. Since she's so bad, why isn't riot fixing her?
EcchiOtakuTM1 votesThey don't have to fix her now, the tank build is pretty fun and doesn't feel like bs when she kills someone and not oppressive at all. Akali's rework will happen during the assassin patch but for now this direction is pretty cool.
LadyRenly2 votesAkali gets wrecked pre-6, and sometimes even when she does ok she merely "brings people with her to the grave" but by building tank, she is less likely to feed, and can live to get more damage off, even though its a bit less bursty and more sustained.
WngNut1 votesTank assassins have always been a viable build, because of their high base damage they hurt even when they don't build to hurt.
Valderis Vandala1 votesIt's surprisingly fun to play, especially on ARAM, you should give it a shot.
Take full tank masteries and get "Expose Weakness" from the offense tree. Then dive into the enemy when your team is ready and watch the chaos, dive and go invisible, the enemy team will lose their shit because "OMG assasin kill it!!" while you survive and cause the back-line to run and abandon their team mates to die to your team.
It's not an amazing build but it is great fun to play. If you want more damage you can also go a bruiser build.
Skia Asteri1 votesBecause 
is not as good on her any more since the removed the reduced cool down from hitting enemy champions with auto attacks and single target abilities.
Sasogwa1 votesShe's not bad. It has nothing to do with that. Let me explain it. Champions have different kind of scalings, AD, AP scalings and base damages. It happens that Akali's base damages are very high due to E on very low cooldown, and her scalings are average. Now when you got a champion that already has a lot of damage without building offensive items, what is the best way to play? That's right , go tanky.
UF Dan1 votesGlass Cannon Melees don't exist. Rn people are just finding a way to abuse the broken AD items, and get tanked up by the two most dominant tank items to end the game by 20 minutes.