Akshan, the Rogue Sentinel, is the newest League of Legends champion, set to arrive in patch 11.15. Ahead of his arrival, Riot Games has given us a sneak peek at his abilities along with some in-depth champion insights.
Akshan is a “new kind of assassin.” He’s a midlane marksman with a grappling gun, stealth, and revive. While we’ve seen marksman starting to be played mid, he is probably the first to be designed with that position in mind.
Let’s first take a look at his abilities:
Passive – Dirty Fighting
Every three hits from Akshan’s attacks and damaging abilities deal a burst of physical damage. If the target was a champion, Akshan also gains a shield.
After attacking, Akshan fires a second attack that deals reduced physical damage. The second shot can be canceled like a regular basic attack. If Akshan cancels the second shot he gains a burst of move speed.
Q – Avengerang
Akshan throws a boomerang that deals physical damage and reveals enemies hit, extending its range each time it hits an enemy. Enemies can be hit once as the boomerang goes out and once as it returns.
W – Going Rogue
Passive: When enemy champions kill one of Akshan’s allies, they are marked as Scoundrels. When Akshan gets a takedown on a Scoundrel he gains bonus gold, all allies killed by the Scoundrel are resurrected at their base, and Scoundrel status is removed from all other enemies.
Active: Akshan becomes camouflaged for a short duration, or indefinitely while near terrain. During this time, Akshan can see trails leading toward Scoundrels and gains move speed and mana regeneration while moving toward them.
E – Heroic Swing
Akshan fires a hookshot that embeds in the first terrain hit. While embedded, he can recast to swing around the terrain in the cast direction, firing physical damage bullets at the nearest enemy while swinging. While swinging, he can recast again to jump off in the direction of the cursor and fire a final shot.
Heroic Swing‘s cooldown resets when Akshan earns a takedown on an enemy champion.
R – Comeuppance
Akshan locks onto an enemy champion and begins channeling power into his gun to store bullets. At the end of the duration or after recasting Akshan unleashes the stored bullets, each dealing physical damage based on missing health to the first minion, champion, or structure hit.
Akshan can move normally and cast Heroic Swing while channeling and firing Comeuppance.
Obliviously the most intriguing ability for Akshan is his W, which can revive every ally champion who was killed by the enemy marked as a Scoundrel. This can be a game-changer and easily swing the momentum of a game during a team fight if Akshan can manage to take out a champion who has killed a few of his teammates.
The rest of his abilities seem to compliment the rogueish assassin, guerilla-style attacks that Riot was aiming for when creating this new champion. He’s a combination of assassin/markman — able to melt squishy carries but also somewhat squishy himself — so his positioning during team engagements will be crucial.
His Q, Avengerang, ability gives him range to poke, while his W, Going Rogue, allows him to stealth and hunt down his target. His E, Heroic Swing, gives him decent enough mobility to swing into action quickly and, if successfully killing an enemy, swing back out to safety. And his R, Comeuppance, is just a straight-up bulletstorm that can melt squishy carries.
Overall, Akshan looks like a fun new addition to the League of Legends roster. He fills a role that was essentially created by players defining the meta.
