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Hybrid Bruiser Jungle/Top Akali - the most optimal way of playing her post-changes?

BluePolarizer··1 votes·679 views

Akali has always struck me as being in a wierd spot. She has high burst, but that's not her main selling point - its that her burst is low CD and sustained as long as you can refresh your energy. She has very high in-combat sustain as long as she can keep fighting. Now there's a new change on the PBE http://www.surrenderat20.net/2015/05/54-pbe-update.html where the CD on her E is lowered to 1 second. This means that with 40% CDR, you can E every 0.6 seconds, which is almost as good as ADC attack speeds (though still far weaker than Master Yi's attack speed). It is also physical damage, which compliments her magic damage from all other sources. It also makes her jungling a HELL of alot stronger thanks to sustain and low CD E's for fast clear. It also allows her to avoid lane, where she gets bullied, and only gank on her terms. She'd be a decent AP carry jungler like Diana or Fiddlesticks .

This makes me think - why not bruiser Akali - to prevent her from getting bursted down and then solo carry the fight with her now extremely high sustained damage? But then you run into the question of - how do I build CDR on her as a manaless bruiser (no Frozen heart or Morellonomicon) while complimenting her physical damage?

item 3071 solves this problem. With her autoattacks and low CD E, she can stack all instances of cleaver in 2.5 seconds with 2 autos and 3 E's at 0.8 sec CD. Core items for lane: item 3146 item 3071 .

Core items for jungle require a lower gold budget and shorter build path. Jungle Akali has cheap CDR from Magus, so she'd be more on the AP side. Then she needs 1 first core damage item, which I think is better served by item 3078 than item 3146 due to smaller components and every stat except mana being used on hybrid Akali and the Sheen procs being better on sustained damage Akali for chasing. If snowballing, of course, she can get whatever she wants. I'd also get item 3001 over item 3065 because it is cheaper by 400 gold, which you can put towards your Randuins fund in the likely case you can't farm item 1058 and need cheap damage/MR that also helps you melt squishies.

Top lane Akali: Akali summoner 12 summoner 4 item 3146 item 3078 item 3071 item 3157 item 3065 item 3020

Jungle Akali: Akali summoner 11 summoner 4 item 3078 item 3708item 3001 item 3020 item 3146 item 3143 / item 3157 replace item 3143 with item 3157 if you can afford to sit on a item 3191 until later on when you can buy a item 1058 .

9 Comments

TDubH1 votes

If you like i can try to test these on PBE see how they work....

BluePolarizer1 votes

please do! I wish I had a PBE account. I'd especially like to know if she can jungle.

TDubH1 votes

Happily Will reply at around 9:00 PM EDT which will give me some time to get home and do a few test games.

TDubH1 votes

OK, I used mobafire, I don't normally use Mobafire but i hope it gives you a clear idea as i felt it was the best medium http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/blue-polarizers-hybrid-jungle-akali-test-number-1-pbe-420975

BluePolarizer1 votes

amazing. Thanks for the test. It seems like you used AP/MPen runes. MPen is useless against jungle monsters because they have no MR. I'd suggest flat AD marks instead of MPen for better autos and more spellvamp. Also might try a pure AD/AS marks/quints to boost her autos even further with AS. AP glyphs are good.

Also, did you back after 3 camps cleared or try for a full clear?

TDubH1 votes

I went back after 3 camps, i will test again with the different runes, but i DID NOT have the sustain to complete anything further than red buff.

Lil Soybean1 votes

The thing you're neglecting is that energy costs are static at max rank regardless of CDR, meaning her E only gets a few consecutive casts in teamfights realistically - it's why CDR is wasted on her, along with the fact that assassins with resets are more rewarded for building pure burst damage to guarantee resets rather than CDR.

That does not mean your ideas aren't viable though. Just some build issues. To begin with. Cleaver would ONLY benefit her E and a small portion of her auto attack damage. The CDR is also unnecessary. So it's not a good option. Magus is also a waste because the CDR is unnecessary on her.

So to play Akali jungle, in my opinion, you'd be best just upgrading to the smite enchantment you want (purple if farming up, red if going duelist/bruiser) and then rushing her three ultra-efficient core items; Gunblade, Zhonyas, and Void Staff, in that order.

Triforce for a sustained damage bruiser akali sounds really interesting though.

But keep in mind that a Gunblade rush will not only be stronger on her, but also help her jungle sustain more than any jungle enchant would. Hence why only buying the smite upgrade is probably most efficient.

Final note: Akali is already played toplane at high ELO by some players. She goes the full standard assassin build still. She just needs to be ahead to out-duel some tanks due to her sustain, but when you can't duel, you just assassinate the ADC in teammfights.

BluePolarizer1 votes

I don't think CDR is wasted; sure, she goes OOE fast, but has huge burst while doing it. 0.75 sec CD on E is huge; you can Q, E, auto, E, auto, E, Q, auto, E in 3 seconds if you have at least 1.0 attack speed, which you should with a bit of bonus attack speed (from Triforce). That uses just about her entire energy bar, but the enemy squishy has already been deleted; that's an output of 270% AP on R+Q+Q+EEE + 3 autoattacks+18%(+1% per 6 AP) AD damage as magic damage. Not many champs can stand against that. With just a Magus and a Triforce (150 AP with runes and masteries) and 90 base AD, you're gonna be dealing 360 (3x120 on autos)+180 (2 triforce procs) physical damage + 110 magic damage from empowered autos + 405 damage from AP scaling + 72 damage from AD scaling + 825 damage from base damage. That's 1880 mixed damage before resistances at lvl 11 where the base HP of most ADCs and mages is 1200 and with 60 armor/40 MR. You can 100-0 any ADC and most mids in 3 seconds with just Magus and Triforce. Against tanks, you can't 100-0 them in 3 seconds but the difference here is you are sustaining their while they are not, and that none of this burst is tied to your cooldowns so you can keep bursting them until your energy runs out. Gunblade works out the same way except you lower your physical output and increase your magic output. This is also assuming that you only use R once to gapclose; if you use R to stick to them, your output is even higher.

I also don't think that getting Zhonyas second would be good on jungle Akali. You just don't have the money to get Zhonyas that early with jungler income unless you were snowballing super hard and could pop down 1600 gold at once, so I think the more likely case is that you'll buy a seeker's and then sit on it until late game when you get extra gold from fighting and objectives. Gunblade rush is great. Triforce is likely decent as well, if not for the Sheen proc then for even the attack speed which she uses. But Zhonya's 2nd just slows you down because you have to save for 1600 gold, which could go towards smaller items for even faster snowballing. After all, when you're still saving for 1600, you could've already gotten pieces of Gunblade/Abyssal/Triforce to snowball even harder.

Lil Soybean1 votes

{quoted}

I don't think CDR is wasted; sure, she goes OOE fast, but has huge burst while doing it. 0.75 sec CD on E is huge; you can Q, E, auto, E, auto, E, Q, auto, E in 3 seconds if you have at least 1.0 attack speed, which you should with a bit of bonus attack speed (from Triforce). That uses just about her entire energy bar, but the enemy squishy has already been deleted; that's an output of 270% AP on R+Q+Q+EEE + 3 autoattacks+18%(+1% per 6 AP) AD damage as magic damage. Not many champs can stand against that. With just a Magus and a Triforce (150 AP with runes and masteries) and 90 base AD, you're gonna be dealing 360 (3x120 on autos)+180 (2 triforce procs) physical damage + 110 magic damage from empowered autos + 405 damage from AP scaling + 72 damage from AD scaling + 825 damage from base damage. That's 1880 mixed damage before resistances at lvl 11 where the base HP of most ADCs and mages is 1200 and with 60 armor/40 MR. You can 100-0 any ADC and most mids in 3 seconds with just Magus and Triforce. Against tanks, you can't 100-0 them in 3 seconds but the difference here is you are sustaining their while they are not, and that none of this burst is tied to your cooldowns so you can keep bursting them until your energy runs out. Gunblade works out the same way except you lower your physical output and increase your magic output.

I also don't think that getting Zhonyas second would be good on jungle Akali. You just don't have the money to get Zhonyas that early with jungler income unless you were snowballing super hard and could pop down 1600 gold at once, so I think the more likely case is that you'll buy a seeker's and then sit on it until late game when you get extra gold from fighting and objectives. Gunblade rush is great. Triforce is likely decent as well, if not for the Sheen proc then for even the attack speed which she uses. But Zhonya's 2nd just slows you down because you have to save for 1600 gold, which could go towards smaller items for even faster snowballing. After all, when you're still saving for 1600, you could've already gotten pieces of Gunblade/Abyssal/Triforce to snowball even harder.

I think that the question is just the viability of bruiser/sustained damage Akali. It's two different playstyles. We already know assassin works. You're discussing a different style of build entirely, which is really interesting and I might look into. But it's hard to gauge its viability. Since we're in the tank meta right now, it's possible that a sustained damage build is better on her than a bursty one that has trouble taking out the tanks. On the other hand, it could be that her burst assassin build is even more ideal because, in the tank meta, you have less time to delete the enemy carry, and have to eliminate them ASAP before the tank(s) can stop you. It's definitely worth testing out.

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