Introduced as an unconventional marksman suitable for solo lane positions, Akshan has always proven to be a strong champion since his release, boasting an extremely high win rate. Even with the recent buff to the Galeforce, Akshan’s power in League of Legends has increased as this champion can effectively take advantage of all the stats from that powerful item.
Normally, when building Akshan, players would choose the Conqueror rune to maximize damage output in the early to mid-game. However, in recent days, a new playstyle has emerged where Akshan uses the Lethal Tempo rune, which has even higher win rates than Conqueror.
So why has this seemingly unsuitable playstyle for Akshan become so strong? The reason lies in a bug with the Akshan champion that allows him to stack Lethal Tempo twice as fast as other champions with his passive attacks. Specifically, when attacking normally, Akshan’s basic attack still grants 1 stack as usual. However, somehow the additional hit from Akshan’s passive grants 2 stacks of Lethal Tempo.
The interesting part here is that for runes with a similar stacking mechanism, Akshan’s passive attacks do not increase stacks. This only occurs when Akshan uses the Lethal Tempo rune. As a result, with just 2 successful combos of normal and passive attacks on the opponent, Akshan can stack enough Lethal Tempo to reach 6 stacks. This is clearly too powerful, enabling Akshan to have a significant amount of attack speed and range with extremely easy activation conditions.
Hopefully, Riot Games will soon find a fix for the above bug before players exploit it to climb ranks rapidly. While waiting for Riot to address this issue, players are best advised to ban Akshan in the current meta.
