The worst part of an Akali game isn't the damage. It's the two seconds where she's standing right in front of you and your abilities refuse to target her.
Everybody has lost a fight they were winning because an Akali dropped a smoke cloud in the middle of it. The shroud is the ability that makes her feel unfair, and the frustration is completely legitimate, because being unable to click on the champion killing you isn't a skill issue. It's also the ability her counters are built around.
Check out our top Akali counters below for more information on how to beat her!
Counter Guide
How to Beat Akali
The worst part of an Akali game isn't the damage. It's the two seconds where she's standing right in front of you and your abilities refuse to target her.
Everybody has lost a fight they were winning because an Akali dropped a smoke cloud in the middle of it. The shroud is the ability that makes her feel unfair, and that frustration is completely legitimate, because being unable to click the champion who's killing you isn't a skill issue. She's a standing threat in mid on our solo queue tier list and a real pick top lane, and she deserves the ban. The useful part is that the shroud is also the thing every good answer to her is built around.
Vladimir- Damage that doesn't need a target, since area damage still lands inside the shroud
- A way to survive or invalidate Perfect Execution [R]'s second cast
- Enough early magic resist that her pre-6 poke stops paying for itself
Akali Overview
Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous
- Twilight Shroud [W] makes her invisible and unable to be selected by enemy spells or attacks while she's inside it. Acting reveals her, but only briefly.
- Perfect Execution [R] is two casts. The first is a leap, and the second executes everything it passes through, so it's both a gap closer and a finisher.
- Five Point Strike [Q] is on a 1.5 second cooldown and costs energy rather than mana, which is why the poke never actually stops.
- Assassin's Mark [Passive] gives her bonus attack range and damage for leaving the ring her spells create, so she resets her own trade window for free.
- Shuriken Flip [E] marks a target and then dashes her to it, and she can mark her own shroud instead, which makes the same button an engage and an escape.
Weaknesses: Where You Get In
- Area damage ignores the shroud. Unselectable isn't invulnerable. Anything that damages a location rather than a champion still hits her while she's in there.
- The shroud doesn't move. It's placed on the ground and she has to keep coming back to it, which makes her position much more predictable than it feels.
- Energy runs out. A few Five Point Strikes [Q] in a row leaves her with nothing for the all-in that was supposed to follow.
- She's very weak before level 6. Without Perfect Execution [R] she has no way to finish a trade she started.
- She has no crowd control at all. Nothing in her kit stops you walking away, or walking at her, once you've decided to.
Countering Akali
Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Akali comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:
- Damage the ground, not the champion. Every area ability you own still works inside Twilight Shroud [W], and that's the entire trick to fighting her in it.
- Hold your escape for the second R cast. The first cast is the leap. The second one is the one that kills, and the gap between them is your window.
- Buy magic resist on the first back. Her damage is all magic, and the shape of her poke means an early Null-Magic Mantle removes a surprising amount of it.
- Punish her before 6. The two levels where she has poke and no finisher are the two levels where the lane is actually yours.
If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:
Playing a Bad Akali Matchup
Stand where the shroud can't cover both of you. She wants a fight in a small space, so stepping wide before you commit costs her most of the value.
Track the energy bar, not the health bar. An Akali who has just spent three Five Point Strikes [Q] clearing has nothing left for the all-in, and that's the moment to walk at her.
Save your summoner spells for the ultimate rather than the engage. Her opening is survivable. The re-cast is what turns a bad trade into a death.
Ask for help under tower rather than trying to win the 1v1 back. She's one of the hardest champions in the game to punish alone and one of the easiest to punish with a second person present.
Best Akali Counters
The three answers here are untargetability, suppression, and invulnerability, which is a strange list until you notice they all solve the same two seconds.
Vladimir Vanishes at the Kill Moment
Sanguine Pool [W] makes Vladimir untargetable for a full 2 seconds, which is longer than the window Akali needs to convert Perfect Execution [R] into a kill. She commits the ultimate, he sinks, and the execute lands on nobody.
The lane before that goes his way too. Transfusion [Q] heals him on a short cooldown, so her Five Point Strike [Q] poke war simply doesn't accumulate, and Crimson Pact [Passive] converts his health into ability power and back again, which means the defensive build that beats her also makes him stronger. Hemoplague [R] then amplifies everything his team does to her afterward.
Malzahar Locks Her in Place
Nether Grasp [R] is a suppression, and suppression is the one category of crowd control that a dash, a shroud, and a re-cast ultimate all fail to answer. If Malzahar lands it, Akali's mobility stops being relevant for the duration and she usually doesn't survive it.
Void Shift [Passive] is the reason he gets to that point. When he hasn't taken damage recently he holds massive damage reduction and crowd control immunity, which blunts exactly the burst opening she's trying to land. Call of the Void [Q] also silences, and an Akali who can't cast is an Akali standing in melee range of a mage with Voidlings.
Lissandra Freezes the Dive
Frozen Tomb [R] cast on herself makes Lissandra untargetable and invulnerable while it heals her, which is a complete answer to a dive that has already committed. Akali spends her ultimate, her energy and her position, and gets nothing for any of it.
Ring of Frost [W] is the other half. It's an area root around Lissandra rather than a targeted spell, so it still catches Akali inside her own shroud. Between that and Ice Shard [Q]'s slow, the champion whose entire identity is repositioning spends the fight exactly where Lissandra left her.
Itemizing Against Akali
Akali deals magic damage exclusively, and she deals it in one committed burst rather than over a long fight:
Hexdrinker is the single most efficient early buy in the matchup and it upgrades into a lifeline later. Mercury's Treads is less about her own crowd control and more about the follow-up her team brings once she's landed. Zhonya's Hourglass is the direct answer to Perfect Execution [R]'s second cast, and Kaenic Rookern gives a frontliner a magic shield that absorbs the whole opening.
Where Akali Actually Sits Right Now
Counter picks age with the patch, so check the current numbers before you trust a matchup:
- League of Legends Solo Queue Tier List, updated every patch
- Tier List Changelog, for what moved and why
- How to Beat or Counter Series, for every other matchup guide
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