Best way to play Akali?

It really depends who you're vsing as akali. I personally prefer to take her midlane, because if you go top, you need to go tanky to actually be able to trade. I like to usually start boots, however only go them if the enemy is a skillshot champ. . It's a weird choice, but I always go undying with her, before 6 it's really rough to survive, but after 6 you trade so well because of the undying, if you want straight damage go thunderlords. My akali build is usually this. . . , however you can replace the last item with a void staff, which is usually what I do anyway. You can build abyssal scepter if you're against ap early, to handle the harass. For laning phase, DO NOT go for a minion if you know you will take a ton of damage. All the lane is, is just be passive until 6, then start to trade. I'll usually pop my smoke screen down always when it's up so I can CS with ease. Try roaming at 6, because if you get fed as akali, you're basically unstoppable.

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I think what I least understand about her is the builds people use. Is she just so squishy you HAVE to build some defensive items for her to be viable? Hextech I get because of her passive, she scales well with that. What's with the RoA though? Does having a slow on your Q make that big of a difference? Why are you building armor with dead man's plate, but not MR? She has such strange builds, it's what always put me off from seriously trying her. If I were to play her now, my dumb ass would use the following build, please criticize it harshly so I can understand.

You don't have to build any defensive items if you don't want to. But The build that I linked, makes it so you have enough hp to jump in, pop their adc, and get out alive. If you're full glass cannon, go hourglass atleast. Rylas is SUPER important, because you stick to your enemy so well, every time you e, q, or even r, your enemy is slowed, making it super difficult for them to escape you, which is amazing on an assassin. It also gives good ap, and good hp, making it very viable.

Dead mans plate isn't a must, but the enemy team usually never has more than 1 ap, so I go armor. But I'll link my build, then discuss yours.

Against AP team:

Against AD team:

The build I almost always use, no matter who I'm vsing:

Your build isn't that bad, but your don't have rylas. As akali, it's important that you get this item, because you don't want to have to use all 3 R's to actually kill an enemy, because what if someone else comes? You have nothing to jump them. If you like that build, i'd personally take out ludens and replace it with rylas, ludens is good, but rylas is 100x better in most cases.

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Voyboy goes , I suppose the Phage passive causes a similar effect to the Ryali's. Not sure why he does this though, the Rylai's would give you better value for gold spent. He also seems to use Akali as a type of counter pick against other melee assassins or champions, like Fizz and Zed, so it might have something to do with that.

I prefer playing top and so do winrates. For build i go ap which is the highest winrate and usually looks like this but and are good buys to. in lane you want to play safe pre 6, but if they come in melee range use q aa e and you should come about even. Use w to creep safely against bullys and q to get far away creeps when w is down. Once you hit 6 you outdo just about everyone except stuff like riven and and any time you have all your ult charges and thunder lords up you should q wait till q is about 1sec cooldown left ult aa e q aa and keep ulting if you think its worth it you can do the same with less charges for one reason or another. Maxing order i get q>w>e and then max r>q>e>W. also pro tips don't w or for that matter use any invisibility near enemy turret they will still see you, and if your fighting some one and a is healing them just jump to she just dies and and you probaly won't kill the other person till shes dead. if you want to know just more ask something specific

i used to go devoure rageblade gunblade into tank when devoure was a thing. i actually did it a cpl times. soloed baron with it no joke