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style="font-style: italic;">If you have to give credit to
Irelia, she looks amazing, both in her concept art and in-game
especially.
In a season of mage heroes, and AOE
metagame shenanigans,
Riot has responded by creating Irelia, the Will of the Blades.
style=""> Focusing on strong direct
damage, self
healing, and a powerful skillshot ultimate, she is a delightful package
of
things in one hero that can even jungle as needed.
Pros
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Many
ways to heal oneself, can effectively
restore health before, after, and during a fight.
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Amazingly
good farmer with Bladesurge, which can
be used creatively to escape or cover ground and engage faster.
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Ultimate
has a whopping 2.4 AD ratio if all four
blades connect with a target.
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Equilibrium
Strike comes out near instantly,
giving Irelia fairly good burst for a melee hero.
Cons
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Hiten
Style does not scale, and Equilibrium Strike
scales off AP, where her other two skills scale with AD most
effectively,
leaving her feeling weaker than most melees that are fully decked out.
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Passive
only functions off visible heroes, so if
you get disabled by someone in the bushes, you are eating the full
duration.
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Ultimate
can be very hard to aim well while
engaging multiple targets in a melee team fight.
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Bladesurge
can only target enemies and not
allies or the ground, making it inferior to other blink strikes in the
game.
Skills
style="">Passive : Ionian Fervor
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Passively reduces disables by 10, 25, or 40% based on the number of
enemy
heroes nearby.
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This basically functions as
a free Mercurys Treads passive in a team fight, and is barely
noticeable
otherwise. While
not a bad passive, it
does suffer because unlike a lot of other enemy radar abilities, it
only goes
off visibile heroes. Unfortunately,
Tryndameres stealth radar functionality on Mocking Shout does not
apply here.
Bladesurge:
Irelia dashes forward to
strike her target.
If it kills the target, Bladesurge's cooldown refreshes and half the
mana cost
is refunded. Deals
purely physical
damage.
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Bladesurge costs 70 mana,
meaning if it kills a target it only costs 35 to use.
However, you cannot use it to last hit an
entire wave or youre out 200 mana each wave!
You can still use this if you want to farm in a hurry
without using your
ultimate, but youre much better off using Hiten Style or just plain
timing to
get the kills in a wave.
Note
that Irelia is a decent solo hero due to this ability.
She can blink to a wounded ranged minion,
kill it, and immediately blink to the enemy hero in under a second.
style=""> This gives her some of the
same threat style
of Miss Fortune once you get the upper hand in a 1v1 lane.
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If
you want to get really creative,
you can use wards in the jungle youre attacking in to blink across
walls to
escape pursuers or cut off people.
Hiten
Style: Irelia is skilled
in the art of Hiten,
passively giving her physical attacks health restoration. Activating
Hiten
Style adds true damage to her physical attacks for a short duration.
Hiten
Style is almost Xin Zhao-esque, in that Irelia scales very well with
attack
speed. Activating
it at level 5 adds 75 unavoidable
damage to each attack, which can put the hurt on anyone.
style=""> Note that the passive
portion does not go
away when active or in cooldown, and with a low 40 mana cost, you can
pop this
constantly throughout the brawl or jungle.
Just
dont overdo this if you are jungling.
Ganking out of the jungle is about burst and slows, and
this provides
neither. Two
points is enough if youre
going Wriggles, otherwise try 3.
Equilibrium
Strike:
Irelia's attack balances
the
scales, dealing damage and slowing the target. However, if the target
has a
higher Health % than Irelia, then the blow stuns the target instead.
style=""> The slow is a flat 60% at
all levels, and the
duration of either goes up from 1 to 2 seconds as you level it.
Equilibrium
strike adds a big risk-> reward style of aggression with Irelia.
style=""> She has good burst
potential, so engaging
someone while wounded and immediately popping this to stun, then your
other
skills, can lead to a kill not otherwise possible.
The cooldown is rather short for a disable
attack at 9 seconds, but it only scales from AP.
Dont expect this to do a lot late game.
Transcendent
Blades
(Ultimate): Irelia
summons four
spirit blades which she can fling at her enemies. These blades deal
magic
damage to enemies that they pass through, siphoning life from them and
healing
Irelia.
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Controlling these is
tricky. They are
fired off much like
Karthuss Lay Waste, meaning that the moment you press the button after
summoning them, it will fire a blade in that direction your mouse is
pointed in
every time you press it until you fire 4 blades or 10 seconds pass.
style=""> This can be difficult in
the middle of a big
melee, so focus on making these blades count.
If youre untouched, aim directly at wounded heroes.
style=""> If youre being focused,
aim at as many
creeps as you can hit for
a big life
boost. If you hit
with all 4, this does
very good damage for an ultimate.
Note
that the cooldown does not start until the final blade is thrown, so
theres
little point to priming these before youre ready to fire them.
style=""> Be patient and make them
count, these are
Irelias only way to contribute AOE damage!
Key Items
Youmus
Ghostblade Irelia
is very cooldown dependant, and attack speed gives her more than other
heroes, while also
having a physical
damage based skill. All
of these
combined make the Ghostblade a no-brainer.
Starks
Fervor Much
like the Ghostblade, this provides a big attack speed and physical
damage
boosting negative armor aura, which benefit Irelia greatly over time.
Situational
Items
Sunfire
Capes / Tank
Builds Irelia is one of those melee characters that has
such good
mobility and base skills that she can function like Garen a massive
annoyance
to kill with skills that can win a fight regardless of her basic
attacks. So many
people expect her to crumble under
burst fire that this may win some games for you.
Masteries
21/9/0 is
generally the way to go for Irelia.
The
bonus damage contributes to both her magical skills and physical
skills, and
makes her physical skills hit that much harder.
Since shes going to be in the thick of it a lot, the
improved
dodge/speed on dodge will go a long way towards saving your bacon.
Runes
Running Armor Penetration reds will
make you a much bigger
early game threat, Dodge yellows will give you some life-saving dodges
in a
pinch, and scaling magic resist blues or cooldown reduction blues are
your call
for the final slot. Irelia
doesnt
function very well with mixed items, so going full DPS with resist and
dodge
runes will give you more survivability than most.
Summoner
Spells
Irelia is an excellent candidate for
Exhaust due to her low
cooldowns. This
will basically give you
two rounds of Bladesurge and more than likely, a second Equilibrium
strike to
finish your target off before they get to safety.
Cleanse is questionable due to her passive,
but Irelia lacks a true escape move.
Shes
excellent at getting in, but terrible at getting out.
Flash is a solid second spell.
Conclusion
The self-styled Queen of Blades is in
a rough spot from a
melee DPS standpoint. Irelia
is
difficult to carry with, but much more balanced than the other heavy
attackers
like Yi and Tryndamere to compensate.
She has good mobility in combat and a varied arsenal which
excels at keeping
her alive in a firefight. While
she
costs a mighty 6300 IP and seems weak due to her cons and low sustained
damage,
mastering her will make you a better player overall with her
complicated skill
set to manage.
And come onyou throw swords. How can
you resist?
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