darius vs akali

This is an absolutely horrible matchup for Darius in my opinion. She can basically always dodge your Q, either with her ult or her E backflip. On top of that when she shrouds the only way you can deal damage to her is by throwing out a blind Q if you even still have it and you can't stack up, all while she can just quickly pop out to do a Q+auto and slowly chip you down, then go for a hard all in. When she has Ignite it's even worse as her all in range becomes much higher. Build order is extremely important here. A lot of people go Hexdrinker, but I think if you can't catch Akali reliably and she just waits out the shield it's not ideal, so instead I go for a Negatron Cloak early and sit on it until I complete Titanic Hydra. The auto attack reset Titanic provides ensures that even if she were to shroud after you pull her you have 3 guaranteed stacks on her every time. If you can also land Q after she shrouds it means one more autos gives you passive pretty quick. You can also just walk away after doing E+auto+W+Titanic as you will win out that short trade, and because of Stormraider's Surge she would have to chase you really far to get an equal trade, and once you get your Swifts you can just outrun her. The toughest part of this lane is until Titanic Hydra. It can still be tough even after it, but that one is the toughest by far. You might still struggle until you have the full Kaenic Rookern, but if you play your trades smarty it will not be nowhere near as horrible. You can pull her out of her second ult dash damage, but it's extremely unreliable. It is usually much easier to pull her as she is dashing towards you with her E backflip when she reactivates it. Before Titanic all you want to do is auto+W+Q and then walk away. You can also do E+auto+W+Q and walk away, the only issue is that you will eventually run out of mana, which is why I take Manaflow Band here, to ensure I can do these trades a few more times. Ideally just look to sit on side lane and pressure down turrets. You're never gonna catch her in a teamfight, like ever, and unless you know for a fact that you can get resets and kill multiple people, it's better to just sit and pressure side lane.