League of Legends is a game that is constantly evolving with every passing day but there is a term that describes the static side of that evolution, the meta. The meta refers to what is commonly accepted as the “correct” way to play League, be it champion builds or lanes that champions should or shouldn’t play. The misconception here is that the meta evolves with League constantly so the idea that there is a “correct” way is fundamentally flawed. One recent change that has occurred to the meta is the champion Akali. She has moved from an AP assassin mid to a tank top.

So why is Akali now a tank? The answer to this is actually rather complicated because it is an amalgamation of several different factors. First, we’ll take a look at what changes Akali has seen to her kit recently. Here we find our first clue. As of patch 5.2 Akali has not seen a single nerf, and as recently as 6.3 she has seen buffs. While the buffs between 5.2 and 6.3 were fairly small quality of life changes, they do trend towards something specific. With the changes on patch 5.9, her E can now be spammed on a one second cooldown, while on 6.3 her Q now refunds full energy at all ranks. These two things in combination have led to players maxing E before Q.

Akali maxes E first now. This is one of the pieces of the puzzle, but there is more. The second piece comes from the mastery changes. Keystone masteries are very strong and define a playstyle on a champion. One in particular has grown in prevalence toplane and that would be Grasp of the Undying. With Grasp of the Undying, Akali can have a very large amount of sustain in lane even before she builds any items that would take advantage of her Spell Vamp passive. With this she is able to survive the early laning and even become a bully constantly shoving her lane in with E. So we have identified why Akali top is good, but why tank?

The reason Akali succeeds as a tank is because her kit in its current state is not suited for being an assassin. Unless Akali gets very fed, it is hard for her to insta-kill people. She can still assassinate people, but there is definitely a lot of counterplay that can easily stop her. With this in mind, building her tank starts to make a bit of sense. Her ultimate can keep her stuck to the backline making it really hard to peel her and if she is tanky then more resources need to be devoted to kill her. All of this is nice in theory, but there is still the issue that if Akali does no damage, she isn’t a threat.

Here is where we find another piece of the tank Akali puzzle, itemization. The three core items on tank Akali are Sunfire Cape, Spirit Visage and Titanic Hydra. Akali’s general buildpath would go either Sunfire Cape or Spirit Visage into Titanic Hydra focusing on the defensive stat that most benefits you in lane. Then you factor in that Akali definitely sticks to targets well enough to benefit from the AD Titanic Hydra offers and it makes sense. After that, then her base damages are high enough that she would be strong enough midgame to easily stomp on the enemy squishies. Of course after those items her build path can vary widely depending on the situation.

Where Akali goes from here is almost entirely up to Riot. It has become apparent that this version of Akali is quite strong and the recent buffs to Akali have only made it stronger. What Riot needs to decide now is if this version of Akali should be encouraged, or completely disregarded. Akali is a bit too strong as a top laner in this style so I imagine nerfs to Akali will be seen within a few patches, but the content of those nerfs is still up for debate. It is possible we will see a hard nerf to her utility in favor of higher AP scaling on her abilities to move her back towards assassin, or perhaps Riot will only slightly nerf it because they like the option of building Akali tankier compared to full on assassin. I do not know the answer to this but whatever Riot chooses it will affect the meta in one way or another and contribute to the ever changing face of League of Legends. I look forward to keeping track of every change it goes through.

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