League-of-legends – Face of the Mountain’s best strategic use

Akali has huge advantages in her skill set that allow her to excel in Dominion.

1. Dominion involves a lot of 1v1 fights

   Akali is one of the best 1v1 champions in the game. Her mark of the assassin just gives her enormous burst, even at early levels.

2. She has an amazing escape mechanism using Twilight shroud

   This is perfect for juking in the middle of the map, and perfect for protecting her when she is defending a turret.

3. Her mobility using via Shadow Dance

   You are never going to escape from her, especially if she has a slow. She can also use it to bink to escape by targeting minions. This, along with her Twilight shroud make her a very tricky champion to kill and a champion almost impossible to escape from.

4. Her damage is hybrid

   Is is pretty hard to counter Akali because of her different damage types. Getting the balance of defense, mobility and offensive items is hard enough.

5. She has innate spell vamp through her passive Twin Disciplines

   Her spell vamp combined with the high burst makes her very hard to kill quickly. This also gives her a lot of sustainability through leeching health from minions. Without the ability to nuke her down easily, she can try to escape using her shroud/ult/summoner spells.

6. More champions play 'glass cannon' builds than on Summoners Rift

   Glass cannon champions tend to be easy prey for Akali. A lot of builds are base around kiting and mobility. Kiting just doesn't work on her because of her ultimate and she has HUGE burst which will bring down any squishy champions pretty rapidly.

7. The Dominion is map is designed to be played offensively

   Akali can gank pretty freely as there aren't really any 'safe zones' you can run to, i.e. behind your tower line on normal matches. This leads up to her snowballing pretty quickly as she is just fantastic at picking off roaming enemies.

8. She snowballs rapidly

   Her burst gets insane if she is fed, combine this with the inability to escape from her and your team are in for some big trouble.

9. Akali is based on energy

   She is not the only manaless champ, however manaless champs have always had the advantage of being able to spam skills at no cost. This means Akali can constantly push lanes and leech health through her passive, without having to worry too much about going back to base to heal up.

Each support champion plays a different role (e.g Teemo would play differently than Sona, Soraka would play differently than Fiddlesticks). If you're looking at a specific support, perhaps you should ask "How do you play Sona as support effectively?".

In general, if you're claiming the role of support your biggest responsibility is do cater to the whims of the range AD you will roll with bottom lane. Often times when I play support I'll ask the range AD which he/she would prefer (Some like having the auras and diversity Sona can provide, while some like the extra control Janna can offer, and others like the extra mana from Soraka).

Regardless of the support champion you end up with there are a few important jobs you have:

• Ward: Vision is key to preventing ganks and following enemey movements, as you're support and $$ is less important to you than other roles, spend it on wards (here is a guide on it Where/How to ward
• Clairvoyence(CV): Get the ability it'll help with finding junglers, keeping up with dragon/blue/red/baron spawns, and also is useful to toss in Top's river every once in awhile(saves him from being ganked)
• Let your partner get last hits, in fact unless necessary don't even bother hitting minions unless you're pushing. If you're doing damage and your partner is trying to last hit, your damage may mess up their timing.
• Be map aware: This ties in with Ward and cv, but keep an eye on where champions are in case you need to alert your partner to back off. Also, you may get pings to cv certain locations, so pay attention.
• When possible buy an oracles elixer to help kill enemy wards. This will prevent them from being map aware!
• Do what your class is made to do. As this is class specific, I'm not going to elaborate but if your skills can benefit your lane partner use them when needed.

Playing support will take some getting used to, but they can be fun. Don't expect to be the highest level on your team, don't expect to have a full set of items quickly, don't expect to be rich. Unless your character can handle it, you shouldn't be near the front of team fights.

This is only some basic tips, and I'm sure I'm missing some, but it will get you going.