Counter Guide

How to Beat Akali

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

The worst part of an Akali game is the two seconds where she's standing right in front of you and your abilities refuse to target her.

Everybody's 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.

Matchup Snapshot Akali, the Rogue Assassin

Where You Meet HerMid Lane

Damage TypeMagic

Why She Is FrustratingShe's standing right there and you can't click her

MobilityVery high

Biggest ThreatTwilight Shroud [W]

Hardest CounterMalzahar

What a Counter Needs

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

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Akali on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Akali

Malzahar2,706 games57.0%
Twisted Fate2,479 games55.7%
Lissandra2,397 games55.4%
Vex2,347 games55.0%
Vladimir1,167 games55.0%

Picks Akali Beats

Locke3,821 games45.2%
Mel1,513 games47.2%
Viktor4,038 games48.4%
Orianna1,688 games48.9%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Akali. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 88,663 Akali games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

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, so the poke never 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] tags a target and then dashes her to it. She can tag her own shroud instead, so the same button is 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, so her position's much more predictable than it feels.
Energy runs out. A few Five Point Strikes [Q] in a row leaves her with basically 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. Every area ability you own still works inside Twilight Shroud [W].
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.

Watch her energy bar. An Akali who's 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 anyway. 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

Malzahar and Lissandra beat her more often than anyone in our games, and Vladimir still wins 54.7% of his games against her. Untargetability, suppression and invulnerability look like a strange trio of answers. All three solve the same two seconds.

Vladimir Vanishes at the Kill Moment

Sanguine Pool [W] makes Vladimir untargetable for a full 2 seconds (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, so 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. Granted, he can't target her while she's inside the shroud, so the cast has to wait for her to step out.

Void Shift [Passive] is the reason he gets to that point. When he hasn't taken damage recently he's got 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. That's a complete answer to an all-in that's 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 (Maw of Malmortius, whose shield pops mid-burst). Mercury's Treads is for the follow-up her team brings once she's landed, since she's got no crowd control of her own to shorten. 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.