Hey guys :P

So this is my first build ever and I thought I would make one for my favorite champion Irelia, so please be nice when you rate and any helpful information will be much appreciated. I build Irelia the way I do because as a fighter your biggest con is the fact that your right up in your opponents face and your defenses are not the best in the game. So the best way to deal with that is to make yourself able to hang around for as long as possible and easily pick up the stragglers. So to summarize this build will not make Irelia the biggest carry or the biggest tank but I have found that an efficient middle is the your best bet with her.

Runes I find are tricky and very much personal preference and play style, but below I will explain why I picked the runes that I did.

Greater Mark of Desolation - This should be obvious and I am really not sure why anyone would put anything thing else here :P

Greater Seal of Evasion - I have recently started to play with these and found the synergy between this and the mastery bonus to be very effective early game. Other option for more late game would be the Greater Seal of Defense or Greater Seal of Vitality.

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist - Ever since I got these glyphs I have fallen in love, these glyphs make it harder for lame casters to harass you early game, which is perfect since to hit creeps you need to be right beside it (which is usually closer to that same lame caster). If you do not get boots of liquidity you should replace these with CD reduction glyphs, though from what I have found these glyphs are better.

Greater Quintessence of Health - I run HP quints because with these harassing early game against you will be really hard and with these you can very easily solo a lane and with the skill blade surge last hitting creeps will be a breeze. Other quints that I have found to be good are the armor pen ones.

Masteries are once again personal preference. I tend to go defensive since reduction in damage is great on fighters. The rest I fill into offence to get a decent amount of magic penetration. This is mainly just so your Ult can hit harder and give you more better healing.

All right the skill sequence was hard for me to do since I never run the same order every game since games change and each ability can help you out in so many different ways. So what I am going to do is just talk about the skills and when you should be leveling them up. (Though my skill order changes its usually resembles something like what was at the top.)

Bladesurge - This is my favorite Ir skill, mainly because of the low CD later and amazing chasing potential of this skill. This ability should be mainly to last hit minions and catch up with enemies. This is almost always my first skill since last hitting minions is so important to get the cash flow going. But when do you want to level this up??? Well having it at at-least 2 is a must because at rank 1 you will have to be paying very close attention to last hit minions. After that though this skill should be only taken if you are controlling your lane and not taking lots of damage. (note - this may be a leap but do not think you can jump through walls with it, you will just look stupid)

Hiten Style - This is the bread and butter of Ir and comes with an amazing passive. This skill should be learned at level 2 so you can start healing off some of that damage you took at level 1. This ability is also the reason I play her tank/melee since you can do some harassing with blade surge, then run back and heal up on minions. This ability should be learned when you are taking more damage than you really want. (note - since this life steal procs of your swing and not damage you still heal of turrets and buildings.)

Equilibrium Strike - Now this ability is what separates good Ir's from the bad ones. This ability is not spamable and should only be used when the right time presents itself. Whens that you ask, well since its a slow or stun you wanna try and make sure your opponent has more health than you but not much. This move hurts fiddle quite a bit since he will life drain you, but just smack him as soon as he's just above you, then hit him again :P. This ability with the build we are going will not be doing much damage but thats ok since we really only want it for the sun or slow, so we will want to get this at level 3 and not level it for a while. (but don't forget it) Also something to note that if you and your opponent are both at 100% hp the stun will proc.

Transcendent Blades - Now this Ult is amazing it can turn tides of battles (for you), pick of some one who flashed away, and save you from dying. You should be getting this when ever you can as its just pure awesome. With this skill I have found that you can easily engage champions with there full minion wave (in fact its better if you do) because you blade surge in stun/slow, pop w and when your health is low pop Ult and kill the whole wave of minions and get a huge amount of HP, this trick has worked for me countless times.

Doran's Shield - With this you can easily stay in your lane till you have enough money to buy your full boots. Find this gives me just enough armor and health regeneration to easily laugh off any hit at level 1 (from one source not talking about being ganked).

Boots of liquidity - This amount of CD reduction is awesome and have found early game this is very useful just because it allows you to stun more so running away is easier, same goes for chasing. More Bladesurges FTW.

Randuin's Omen - I love this item as the active is just amazing and wrecks champions like Yi, and trynd who will not be able to 1v1 you with this and exhaust. I have found that this item is a lot stronger than Frost Mallet mainly because of the fact that it gives armor, the slow is almost the same, better when its up but not as reliable since it has a CD

Though I have found that against heavy Magic teams Force of Nature should be used since the magic resist and HP regen should keep you always at full life when not in combat and the movement speed buff is perfect for getting closer to those glass cannons.

Youmuu's Ghostblade - Now this item, is perfect for Ir (**always get this item**) and here is why. This item gives lots of attack damage and armor pen for money which is excellent bacuse blade surge has a 1 to 1 ratio for its damage, plus when activated it makes hilten style to tons of damage since its not just a nuke but does more damage the more you swing. You will want to make sure you pop both at the same time. (don't be afraid to pop it for the movement speed buff to either catch or run away)

With all of these items you should be at max CD reduction, be able to laugh of hits and in my opinion one of the best chasers in the game. The rest of the items from here are picked by how the game is going how my team needs me to play. Though from here I try and grab a B.F. Sword then go guardian angle.

Early Game
This part of the game you want to focus on creep killing since you are very gear dependent. Don't focus on killing everyone you see because you cant, your damage isn't good enough, though that doesn't mean they can kill you, play safe and try not to die.

Mid Game
This is when you shine, this is when you want to gank. You should be able to take a few and deal out some significant damage especially to casters.

Late Game
Your goal now is support, chase enemies who think they can get away, help off tank and mainly focus on killing there last few towers and helping your carries stay alive.

Overall Focus
This build here is not a spam build, you are going to need to be able to watch your mana and do lots of basic hitting, though it should defiantly be enough. I do this because Ir can burn her whole mana bar really quickly and you don't want to have no mana and start team fight. As well during team fights your main focus are the enimies carries, with blade surege getting to them should be easy and try to take at least 1 hit before so you are able to stun them.

Pro
-Great Chaser
-Able to hang around and lane for a long time
-Great at soloing a lane
-Great Farmer

Cons
-Damage isn't as strong late game
-Succeptible to CC
-Sometimes I think I am more tanky than I actually am

Ok to summarize this whole build up;

This build is designed to just mainly to deal with fighters biggest Cons, the fact that they aren't able to just obliterate people in 2 shots and the fact that they take significant damage. To be able to play this Ir, you must play safe (just harass, don't try for a kill when they have full HP) and positioning in lane is very important. So you must make sure in every situation you have an out, or you find you die a lot. Make sure you use your active on abilities, there has been plenty of times where I have died and not activated my items :(. But with this in mind feel free to use your active on your items lots since the CD is relatively short.

Thanks for reading my guide and I hope this guide was here for you not to steal ideas but to make you look at other types of strategies and grow as a player because as Day9 says here we learn to be a better gamer.