Hey there, I'm D3aN0 Supr33mo and this is my Irelia guide. Please make sure to read the Chapters below before down grading this guide. Who knows, I might have some good points.

It has come to my attention that a lot of people believe that Irelia is a difficult champion to play and to master. I agree that she is hard to master but she can be extremely overpowered (even after the nerf.) Above I have two different builds for Irelia, the first is more of a DPS if your team is fairly tanky already and you need to be able to destroy the enemies carries, and the second build is a tanky one. With both of them, you should be able to survive and deal a lot of damage, but really it depends on the skill level of both teams and your positioning in general.

For Runes, I have used the same runes for both the DPS and the more tanky builds because these runes benefit Irelia a lot.

The Armor Penetration is great for all attack damage champions especially later on in the game. I believe this is a good choice because for both builds I have also added armor penetration or shredding items in the build such as Black Cleaver on the DPS and Last Whisper on the Tanky build. The combination will shred through any ap or ad carry and will give you an advantage towards other tanks or offtanks.

The Health per level Seals offer 180 extra health at lvl 18. This is beneficial for any offtank especially for the DPS build that has the Atma's Impaler. This will result in being more tanky and dealing slightly more damage. I think this is a better choice over the flat health because already at early levels you have a tanky advantage over your solo lane partner as you have a Doran's Shield. Usually the top laner will be an attack damage champion meaning you have a great advantage in tankiness.

Cooldown Reduction Glyphs I personally believe are a good choice on Irelia. The glyphs are mainly preference based for Irelia, if you find some that you think are better suited go ahead, but I don't think Magic Resist glyphs will do a lot for Irelia when your solo top, probably against an ad champ. Cooldown reduction will be beneficial to Irelia because the builds don't have much cooldown reduction and it's useful to get the stun up more often.

The Quintessences are also personal preference, but I think that Movement Speed Quints are good for Irelia. Other viable options would be Health per level, Flat Armor quints, Armor Penetration Quints or even gold / 5 quints. Up to you.

For the Masteries, I've made sure to have damage and defense in both situational builds. Obviously if you are looking for the damage, then by all means, get the 21/9/0 but if you need the extra tankiness 9/21/0 would be better. The benefits of having the 21 in defense is having more health, taking less damage from AoE abilities, which I think would be useful and coherent with Irelia's passive ability, whereas the benefits from having 21 in offense is having more damage early on, life steal, armor penetration and doing more damage to target's on low health. I think that 21/9/0 is better if your team doesn't need the tankiness because it allows you to be better at the role of assassin and anti-carry.

Items are very malleable as you can change the item build depending on what your team needs and what the enemy team has chosen. For some circumstances for example, such as you versing a Vladimir or Kennen in solo top, then you may want to rush your Merc Treads faster, for the magic res. You may even want to get an early Hexdrinker / Phage combo if they are getting too ouchy. If you feel like you are getting zoned out of exp and creep range, then you may want to get a Phage before your Sheen. You know, endless possibilities of what could happen and how you can counter this. I think the tanky build is quite good for most circumstances as you have a lot of movement speed and the Randuin's Omen for the AoE slow. Your choice for Item Builds.

In the category of Summoner Spells, there are many options:

Ghost, Exhaust, Ignite, Flash, Teleport, Cleanse

This comes down to personal preference or evaluation of what you need:

If the enemy team has a lot of stuns and disables etc, cleanse may be the way to go, but there are some things you cant cleanse out of such as knock ups, knock backs, Anivia wall, etc. This may lead to Flash being a better option, the only thing with that is that flash has 3 times the cooldown of cleanse.

Ghost is beneficial for mostly 1v1 cases or escaping after back dooring or engaging a teamfight. Many possibilities.

Exhaust is great for 1v1 battles, which is great for solo top. It gives a great advantage if you have exhaust and the other person doesn't. It can also be used to escape tricky situations or dampen a threat in a teamfight.

Teleport is useful for backdooring as you can backdoor while your team starts a 4v5 fight, you can then teleport in and have a 5v5 battle where you've already pushed up the lane. This is seen in a lot of Counter Logic Gamer (CLG) games in tournaments, extremely well used by HotShotGG.

Very much up to you and your preferences.

Okay, so pretty much, Irelia is an extremely dangerous solo top lane champion that scales well into late game. There are two great builds up above, for different situations. If you need an in between point of the two, mix the items up, go for it. Every single game is situational on what your team has, needs and the other team. It depends on who gets fed, who gets farmed, how you counter them etc. Have fun with Irelia.

Feel free to +1 if you think it's worth it. :)