Akali excels at killing fragile champions. Let your team initiate and then strike at the people in the back.
Twilight Shroud offers safety in even the most dangerous situations. Use that time to save up energy for a quick strike later.
Buying an item with Grievous Wounds will make Swain much easier to kill during his Demonic Ascension.
Swain's passive is very potent if you are immobilized. Make sure to be extra careful around enemies who have immobilizing effects.
High mobility counters all of Swain's basic abilities: Death's Hand does more damage the closer he is, Vision of Empire has a very long delay and Nevermove must start returning back to him to be dangerous.
The stat comparisons provided here clarify several significant Akali vs. Swain counter stats that may help you distinguish the differences and similarities between the two. For instance, Akali’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Swain’s KDA ratio of NaN, showing that Akali may be more central to her team's team fighting capability than Swain. This observation is in large part a result of the difference in kills.
Akali usually has a much larger longest killing spree than her counter does. On average, she takes less damage than Swain. This typically indicates different amounts of tankyness; however, it can also imply that the one champ has less agility and thus is not able to kite away from further harm when poked or engaged.
Both League champs are great. Both have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Akali usually loses when trying to fight Swain, with a 46.7% win rate. Thus, Akali makes a poor counter for Swain.
While Akali does have a lower winrate than Swain, when on opposite teams, Akali also has a lower learning curve that makes her a less complex champion to develop with. You should be very concerned when picking Akali into Swainas her relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash her full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Akali also has only a small amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Swain. This often makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when fighting champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Akali vs Swain matchups, Swain is the better champion with a much lower win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during team fights.
Akali is a bad counter for Swain. Focus your actions on keeping up your CS and destroying objectives. If you do that, you should hold your own as Akali against Swain.
If you would like to truly master Akali in order to counter Swain during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra tricks and insights into this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and suggestions displayed here, you will grow your win rate by a lot and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Akali most often gets more CS compared to Swain. Champs who typically don't take much CS typically don't need much CS to be effective, such as supports. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling well off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champs with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often have to have several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to surpass the values displayed on this page to do well.
The ideal items to have in your Akali versus Swain build include Rabadon's Deathcap, Lich Bane, and Stormsurge. When Akali incorporated at least these three items in her build, she did significantly better vs. Swain than with many other commonly used counter builds. In fact, Akali had an average winrate of 46.7% battling Swain with this build.
To have the best chance of defeating Swain as Akali, you should equip the Electrocute, Sudden Impact, Eyeball Collection, Ultimate Hunter, Second Wind, and Overgrowth runes from the Domination and Resolve rune sets. Out of all the rune builds that we analyzed for Akali vs Swain face-offs, this composite of runes resulted in the greatest win rate. Notably, these runes provided a 46.7% win rate overall.
If you want to get Akali versus Swain tips and counter builds for a a specific division, please choose one from the selection menu above. By default, the stats and build suggestions displayed are computed using all rounds run with both champions.