The only problem with carrying with Trist is when your team surrenders before you get to end game, even though you're not doing badly.

 

Akali does not need to rush Deathcap. Akali already has amazing burst and damage as is. What she needs is a slow to let her stick to a target for her 2nd or 3rd Q. Gunblade's active provides this, as does Rylai's. Which one you prefer is up to you.

 

Personally? Rylais. For a little bit of survivability as well.

Though gunblade is a perfectly viable choice, and if you're not getting focused you can go gunblade instead for the straight up destruction it brings.

 

ITT: Inferior reading comprehension.

I said Lich/Gunblade are 3rd/4th items. That implies DCap is either 1st or 2nd since boots are always assumed to be there.

Hmm, what other item shared something with DCap? Oh yeah, Rylai's shared blasting rod, which means buying the rod an an amp tome let me build depending on the situation, where I can rush revolver, Rylai's, sheen, or Dcap as needed.

 

Except Gunblade isn't a 3rd/4th item. It's usually first. And almost always before Deathcap. Akali already has amazing burst that can 100-0 you with a few Q's. Most people buy Rylai's or Gunblade to ensure those Q's. Hell, you don't even need Deathcap most of the time. 2 items in Gunblade/Rylai's and Lichbane and you're set.

Gunblade also helps those people without runes, as it let's you get more Spell Vamp from her passive.

 

Saddening defeat for my last game of the day, but I feel good (and bad) about how I played.

I played Corki with a Nunu support against Sivir/Shen bot. After a horrific first 10 minutes giving up 4 kills to 1, we managed to turn the lane around by the twenty minute mark, giving me 5 kills to 4.

My team lost all the other lanes pretty hard, but I feel good about turning around my bot lane from a loss to a win. (It helps that I had a decent support who would actually attack when I needed him)

Does anyone have any thoughts on Jungle Jax? I tried him out on a whim during a normal match, since I didn't feel like running Udyr or Malphite that game, and I did pretty well. (25-10-15 or somesuch)

His ganks seem okay, so long as you can time the E->W->Q properly to land the stun just after your Q.

Pretty good Jungle time and sustain if you start Vamp scepter.

I think Ghost or Exhaust + Smite might be stronger on him than Flash + Smite, since Jax only has the one short stun for his ganks and doesn't stick to a target too well without a Phage/TrinForce/FrMallet

I built Vamp Scepter-> Ninja Tabi (since they had no CC and only one AP) -> Madred's -> Wriggles+Bilgewater -> Sheen+Phage

And then obviously Hextech Gunblade/Trinity Force/Guinsoo's.

 

You might want to consider Phage before Sheen. Otherwise, you're looking pretty good.

You might also consider saving your Empowered Strike for after you land and auto once. It resets your autoattack timer so you can get a quick 2 hits in and build up your passive. If you just need the burst, combo it with your Leap Strike.

 

You realize that Akali's burst combo is actually amongst the weaker bursts in the game unless she has AP augmenting her?

680 base damage total off 2 Qs, 2 Rs, and 2 autos at lvl 6 is so scary. NOT. Pretty much any mage can outburst that early and mid.

What makes her lethal is that AP scales amazingly, stupidly well on her and her natural sustain via runes. Passive, Q, R, sustain. Guess what gunblade is for again? Sustain, which revolver and runes solve for 1/3 the price.

No runes? Don't play Akali, period. That's as simple as it gets. If you have no Akali runes, it means you're going to be shit with her because you're gimped out of one skill already while being forced to take inferior starting items.

 

Eh... before I got my AD Quints, I'll admit that I ran my AP Quints and started Long Sword + Pot. While it was a minor waste of gold, since at that time I was running pure AP + Gunblade Akali, and thus sold the Long Sword when I was getting my Bilgewater Cutlass, it wasn't nearly as crippling as you make it out to be.

That said, if you are lacking runes and absolutely forced to go Boots + Pots, then the lack of interim spellvamp from your passive is rather unfortunate. Having AD Runes, and missing the AP Passive early is relatively inconsequential in comparison.


p.s. For those that are curious, simply having three 2.25 AD Quints, for 6.75 AD, plus the three points in +1 AD Mastery, giving you an effective 9.75 bonus starting AD will indeed trigger your passive, as the game rounds up for that purpose(even if it gives you less than the amount of spell vamp that you would get if you had 10 AD).

 

I forgot how fun akali is. Get her twin disciples passive up at start of game, farm and harass safely for first six levels, rape at level 6+.

SOOO nasty.

 

I decided to derp around as her and still rolled people. Didn't hurt that I fought an LB when I walked into lane with 69 Mres, 2 pots, and both passives triggered. Probably could have had more MRes too if I tweaked my masteries a bit to free up 3 more glyph slots.

As for a rune page, it's really freaking easy on Akali now at level 30.

7 Flat AD Marks
3 Flat AP Quints

That's all you need to trigger both passives if you use your masteries properly. 3 points into the Flat AD booster. 4 points into the Flat AP booster. 4 points into the percentage AP booster.

Considering most people already have flat AP quints for their other AP casters and 3 flat AD marks from their jungler rune set, you only really need about 4 more AD marks, which costs all of 900~ IP.

If you're buying the entire rune set, then that's 4.5k IP you'll pay for Akali's needs and the other runes you can cobble together from whatever you have left.

 

Has anyone come across the mastery page exploit in-game? Apparently it's starting to spread to the EU and US servers.

 

How does Swain play in mid? I'be watched a few games with him, and played a few games ages ago, but nerfs happens, etc....

I need an AP mid, and an AD carry to round out my collection so I can play all roles. I'm terribad at AD carry, because I'm too aggressive, and I basically dislike all of the best note except Greaves, who I don't own. Wait, can you to Teemo bot? I could use him if that fits the meta.

Anyway, back to Swain. What kind of runes/stats should I be stacking? Obviously AP and mana's, because his ult will eat that that a glutton, but should I rush Tears to compensate, or start with blue crystal then build it up to RoA? I've always liked AA because I used to mid Kassadin, who loves that item, but I'm not good enough in mid to okay a melee hero. I'll have to go through the list of AP heroes to see if I like any others, but with the exception of Veigar, I can't think of any others that interest me. Poor Heimerdinger, y u no viable?

 

... what?

Also, apparently I'm really good at Talon. This is my second actual pvp game with him.

Observe.

 

I was wondering who that was. I added almost all of the group to my friends list, but InariOfRaith was already on it. I thought to myself "Who the Fuck is this? Well, it seems like they have good taste, i'll add them to the DLP group."

Also, I did not know you could look at people's pages when they were offline. Interesting.

I wish if your friends were spectating a game, you could spectate with them through right click. Also, when spectating, I can't get the chat interface to show up. It would be nice to be able to talk with the other spectaters about plays and item builds.

 

I really don't want to get into a quote war. I admit I haven't played Akali in ages, but you're definitely missing her play-style.

She does not scale amazingly well with AP. What made you think that? This is purely numbers, and the numbers say Akali has 3 abilities that scale with AP. A .8 Ratio (Q proc'd), a .3 Ratio, and a .5 Ratio ultimate. Why would you quantify that as amazingly well? It's not even close to Orianna, who does scale amazingly well with AP with all 5 abilities.

A lot of Akali's surprise burst comes from the fact that Q lasts for a long ass time. Enough for your Q to come off cooldown again. You can then R in and proc the first Q before applying another Q and another autoattack to deal effectively double damage.

Not only is that double Q proc unique to Akali, her ultimate basically defines her play. Such high mobility and such a powerful chasing tool is very strong. But it's not foolproof and enemy champions can still escape. And then you've lost half your damage as you can't proc your Q.

What this means is that building Deathcap for straight AP just isn't optimal. I would highly recommend building Gunblade or Rylai's first. And quite honestly, I don't care what you build. Different strokes for different folks amirite? Just please don't disregard items just because it doesn't fit into your view.

 

For anyone who doesn't know, there's currently an exploit you can use to put extra points into masteries, through memory editing or some bullshit like that. You still only get 30 points total and you still have to put 4 points in a row to access the next tier, but you can put as many of those points as you like into a single mastery. The most visible one, and the one that people are raging about the most, is putting 7 points into Mastermind to reduce the cooldown of all summoner spells by 105%. Spam Clairvoyance all day for true map hacks. Spam Smite all day to insta-clear the jungle. Spam Flash all day to fly across the map. Or just spam Heal all day while you right click turrets and win the game in under 5 minutes.

Haven't been unfortunate enough to come across it in a game yet, but I've seen the videos and... it's pretty bad.

 

They're talking about this bullshit.




Now with 2 videos.

 

Wow, as hilarious as that is, I wouldn't do it, because riot is likely to ban anyone they can catch who did.

Permanently.

And honestly, they should. It's total BS.

Edit: Apparently they're working on a hotfix. Good.