Irelia - True Ninja

Champion Description

Irelia is a tactical type of assassin. She has to be cautious in which direction to engage, when to engage, and utilizing her skills and surrounding to the max. If all that is listed are fulfilled, she can be very deadly.

Pros:

~Item dependent.
~Her Q skill dashes at a single target
~Excellent carry
~Challenging
~Pretty flexible

Cons:

~Requires extensive micro and time to get use to her
~Her Q skill doesn't go through walls (but can be exploited for safety reasons)
~Being an up-close champion, she may be targeted
~Quite team dependent

Runes:

9 Greater Seal of Vitality
3 Greater Quintessence of Fortitude
9 Greater Glyph of Warding
9 Greater Mark of Desolation

Grants a total of +13 Magic Resist, +15 Armor Penetration, +272 Health at level 18.
With these runes, it gives you great survivability early game and allows you to be
offensive, which is what Irelia is all about.

Items:

By the end of the build, you should have the following:

Mercury Treads are very useful in adding onto Irelia's passive, lowering CC duration so that you won't really need cleanse for a summoner skill.

Guinsoos Rageblade is probably one of the best item for Irelia, with a burst of ap and aspeed. Also note that because Irelia utilizes all of her skills, the counters for Guinsoos Rageblade can reach
to 8 in a flash of a second.

Last Whisper is
undoubtly the weapon of choice for anti-armor champions opposed to Madred's Bloodrazor
because it is much cheaper.

Trinity Force is overall the dominant item for Irelia because of all the features it includes: slow movement speed by Phage, burst damage by Sheen (which stacks with the Q skill), and
faster aspeed/mspeed by Zeal.

For an underused item, Hextech Revolver is by far a special item made just for Irelia, with life leech by both physical and spell damage. In addition to that, it has an active range spell that
slows the enemy which can come in handy for Irelia since she has moderately low range.

Randuins-omen is the ultimate shield for Irelia. It builds her so that she can feel like a tank and kills at
her will. With the additional active slow movement speed skill, it will make it 5 folds
easier for Irelia to assassinate.

An optional item
to replace the Randuins-omen would be the Abyssal Scepter. In the case that the majority
of the other team's damage is ability power, this is the suggested replacement for
Randuins-omen. It has magic resist and supplies Irelia with a -20 magic resist aura.

Mastery:

Most DPS probably prefers the offense tree over the other two, but in my opinion,
because DPS champions are squishy, the defensive tree is much more valuable for Irelia.
It adds armor, magic resist, health, etc.

Summoner Spells:

Recommended:

Ghost and Exhaust is a combination that I have adored for DPS champions.
It allows you to be offensive or defensive; ghost to run/chase and exhaust to run/chase.
Additionally, with the mastery, exhaust gets a bonus -10 armor and magic resist.

Jungle vs. Laning Irelia:

The problem with jungle Irelia is that in order to jungle efficiently, you have to
sacrifice 1 summoner spell for smite, and I think that is risky since ghost and exhaust
works together so that Irelia can get away with her assassination.

Tactics:

The fun thing about Irelia is that all of her skills work well with each other, which
creates what is called a combo. It doesn't really matter how you use it, but to
utilize her skills with full potential, it is better to use it in such order when
approaching an enemy.


My combo for Irelia is Q > E > W because if you read it as a word, it spells QEW,
which sounds like kill :)
Q dashes towards the enemy, E stuns/slows the enemy, and W activated gives you true damage added with your physical attacks.


Apart from her combo using QEW, her ult is very important as an additional skill.
Her ult pierces through units in a straight line and leeches hp 20% of total damage,
which can be a lifesaver for Irelia.

Because her ult at level 3 has a really short cooldown, estimate of 30 seconds, it is
disposable and can be used for multiple purposes.

It can be used to clear creeps, leech hp, and like a shuriken (ninja star), it can scare
your enemies away or deal damage with range especially when Irelia is an up-close
champion.

Tips:

Since Irelia is an up-close champion, if she is laning with opponents who are ranged or
intimidating, farming can be difficult. So, one way to at least make an attempt to farm
is to use her Q skill and last hit the enemy creep and immediately move back, which is
one of the reason why Sapphire Crystal (+200 mana) is the first item of purchase.

Irelia is dependable on her E skill to survive and deal damage or make a kill because
of its stun/slow, which is why it is the skill to be maxed first, giving the slow/stun
a maximum of 2 seconds duration. When under attack and you want to get away, you can
just use the E skill to stun/slow them. It can also be exploited to deal damage by
hiding in the bush and using it whenever your enemy walks into the bush.