Heyo! I am Adynimis, and this is my S6 Irelia Guide. In here i would like to show you the tips, tricks and methods to playing Irelia as to my knowlage. Please vote and share as it really helps me and this guide move forward.

Going toplane with Irelia, you are going to use Teleport of course, and Flash. Teleport is so neccissary for toplaners. Toplane being called an island isnt far from the truth, so being able to be anywhere on the map in 3.5 seconds is not only cruicial to positioning, but extremely helpful when you need to go back in lane, or suprising the enemy botlane, then ganking mid as you work your way back to your lane.

Flash is so neccissary for Irelia. Sure she has a gap-closer, but not an escape. And when that enemy champ has super low life, you can Flash -> 'Q' for an insane amount of reach, giving you the possible Ace that wins you the game.

Ignite is one you can choose, but i would avoid it. You are going to need Teleport 100% of the time. Soon after that you have flash. You cannnnn use it. but you will win your top lane as long as you ward your bushes, and know how to trade with Irelia, which i will explain later.

With this rune build, you will be able to win most every trade mid-game, and about 90% of the trades lategame. Irelia is a Fighter first, and an Assassin second. She relies on auto attacks to deal the larger portion of her damage. Because of this, and her 'W' Hiten Style you build strait attack speed. The amount of true damage you do at a maxed out Hiten Style more than makes up for not having any attack damage runes. In terms of damage per second, or DPS, building attack speed deals more damage a second, than attack damage.

For the seals i used flat armor, because irelia has a fairly so-so early game. Mid - Lategame is where you start entering into the better portion of your power.

And the same goes for the Glyphs, i put flat MR runes so that you are still able to be versitle early game. you dont want that Vlad who was mid, come and gank you top, and what are you gonna do if you have no MR?

And just to clarify, the Quits for the same reason as i described earlier in terms of attack speed.

This Build is meant to mesh well with with Irelia, focusing on doing sustainable burst damage. So i will explain items that match this ideology, and items that do not.

: This wonderful item is a must have. The crit, health, CD, and Spellblade Passive allows for a strong, and adjustable early game. You are going to buy this first no matter what. Having a hard matchup so far? Buy Phage. Doing fine? Build Zeal. Feeling cocky? Build Sheen. This is a great item that allows you to adjust early on the fly, added that the spellblade passive allows for you to increase the amount of burst you do. timed correctly, you can use this ability multiple times during a combo.

: If you are already ahead by this point, got a few kills under your belt, go ahead and build this. If you are having trouble, though, dont be afraid to buy Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi. Regardless, you need movement speed.

: This is also an essential item to irelia. it grants you tankiness, movement speed, and damage on your next auto attack at full stacks. The Movement passive allows for you to be more mobile on the map as well as closing the gap untill you can use Bladesurge to initiate.

: This item is so great on Irelia. It's wat makes her so OP. I mean ts great that you have CD, health and regeneration, but the passive is best. It increases all healing onto you by 20%. Hiten Style, when activated doubles all healing done unto you. Added on with the 20% from Spirit Visage, then ulting onto someone ( Transcendent Blades), is a **** ton of healing. You build this as your MR item, unless you need the passive from Banshee's Veil.

: This will not only help you win trades lategame, but the active is great for chasing down enemies. It also makes it helpful in teamfights, where you need to chase or just provide some CC.

: Warmog's is just a Tank staple. Allows you to stay out of base for a longer amount of timme, and helps you stay in fights with it's 200% Health regen.

: This iten allows you to say, bye bye Veigar. No 'E' for you! It blocks the next Champion ability after not taking damage for 40 seconds. This passive is the trade-off for Spirit Visage's passive.

: This is a great offensive item that allows you to push past the 1v1's. I dont take this often, even if im ahead, because i like to get tankier, or get to my ideal build faster. Additionally, you will be ganking mid a lot, so you want to have a decent defense when helping out in a 2v3.

: This item is so good on Irelia or any AD heavy fighter. This gives you a decent amount of health, AD and 20% CDR. So helpful when your chasing and you need to get Bladesurge 'Q' back off CD. Additionally, Black Cleaver has the passive that shreds armor, making it so that you are dealing exponentially more damage on every consecutive hit. With this you will annihilate the opponent squishies. The second passive on Black Cleaver makes it so much easier to chase, or to keep up. It grants movement speed for dealing AD. Incredible.

: This item is great when you are ahead VS. AD. If you are vsing an AP toplaner like vladmir or Ekko, then you are going to want to start out with Hexdrinker on your first back. It provides a steady MR and passive that will help you in those clutch moments.

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Jungle Items:
Skirmishers saber - devourer: This gives you actually more attack speed than taking Trinity Force. Also Irelia is very much a melee champion, so Skirmishers saber - Sated devourer would really help to proct her Hiten Style passive.

So since we all know that Irelia is a melee Fighter/Assassin, we are going to assume that CC, or crowd control, shuts her down. And that is correct. However, her passive, Ionian Fervor grants her resistance to that. This makes her a very prevolent combatant in a teamfight. Up to 3-4 allies will give her 40% resistance, added on to any she might recieve from outlying sources like items or other champions.


Bladesurge is Irelia's gap-closer. You can dash to any enemy Minion, Champion, or neutral Monster. This Skill scales with 100% of your AD. Incredibly strong, this is just a more powerful auto attack. Also, if you land the final blow on any enemy or neutral living being, you will, rest its cooldown, and it will refund 35 mana. A trick to using this in lane against minons is to focus a different minion, usually the cannon minion, and when one gets low, Q it, then return to what you are diong. This is also great as an escape in the river if you target the rift scuttler . Max this skill Second.


Hiten Style is Irelia's 'W'. This is what makes her so good at trading, and sustain toplane. At max rank, Hiten Style heals for 13 health on every auto attack. Additionally at max rank, it deals a bouns 75 true damage when activated, and all healing recieved is doubled, including the healing from Hiten Style. Combo this off with Spirit Visage's passive and Transcendent Blades' passive, that is a lot of passive healing just from auto attacking. Are we allowed to do math...? Okay, say you have 100 flat AD at max rank and you have no AP. Nevermind, math is too long and boring to draw it out. instead heres the short answer. With Hiten Style activated at max rank, and with Spirit Visage built, your basic attacks heal you for 31.2 health on every auto. at full build you hit about 1.5 times a second. Transcendent Blades at max rank, Hiten Style, and Spirit Visage, every blade will heal you for 256 life each. Thats a lot. So if you have your ult and hiten style up your gonna win most trades. Now the 4 blades you shoot out trigger the healing on each champion struck. soooooo. git gud.


Next up is Equilibrium Strike 'E'. This is a neat little spell that takes a little skill to use. Just a little... So it deals damage, scales off of AP, and slows the enemy for 2 seconds at max rank. If Irelia has lower PERCENT HEALTH, than the enemy, it stuns them for the duration instead. I find it increadibly useful when getting jumped or ganked. You are going to be taking damage, and when you activte Equilibrium Strike, you stun them, giving you time to escape.

However, when Jungleing with Irelia, i reccomend you Max this skill second due to the fact that your ganks will be more successeful the longer your CC is up.


Transcendent Blades is Irelia's Ult, once activated, shoots up to 4 ranged blade each dealing damage, scaling with 50% AP, and heals you for 25% of the damage dealt per each chenmy champion hit(10% for monsters). Great for winning trades, killing the runner, or killing the guy near their tower, but your over the wall, so you just kill them. You can use this skill while moving, so if your running from a fight you can ult, deal damage to them, and heal yourself, allowing you to gain a buffer in case they try to come back at you. There is a lot of utility to this skill.

So with Irelia, you want to kill them fast. Really fast. You arent dealing any Crits, you arent meant for sustain, although you can. So for that matter, i reccomend using the Cunning Tree with Thunderlord's Decree . OMG thunderlords, so boring.... Ya well it gets the job done. You have with thunderlordsclose to 1k damage midgame, with this skill. In lane its an incredible bully. go in at LvL 3, win the trade with thunderlords, go back, farm/heal( Hiten Style), make them use their health pots, and do it again in 20 Seconds. By doing this ;however, you will attract a lot of attention toplane, so be careful to ward the appropriate bushes.


More on the Cunning tree, i choose Wanderer for the movement between lanes, Assassin for toplane (your an island remember), Dangerous Game for obvious purposes, Precision for again obvious reasons, and Thunderlord's Decree as explained above.


On the Ferocity tree i go Fury for attack speed, Double edged sword to win trades, Vampirism moar life steal, and Oppressor to proc off of your 'E', However, lategame and ganks also make good use of this with combined CC.


Overall i go 12-18-0

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Jungling as Irelia is a bit different in terms of Masteries. You are going to be taking Strength of the Ages as your key stone. Reason for this are a few things. 1) Thunderlords decree got nerfed, having the window of opportunity 3 seconds instead of 5. 2) Because you are going Skirmishers sabre - devourer, you will spend a lot of time in your Jungle. This is a "Forced Synergy", Because you do have to take camps to get devourer stacks, at the same time, you gain permanent health from Strength of the Ages . And lastly, look at it from this perspetive. You gain 300 health from your mastery at around 12-15 miniates. That's 2 Ruby Crystals worth of gold. That is 800 gold that you didnt need to to spend, just for doing your job.

Laning with Irelia is a little tricky for those who may not have experience with fighters like Volibear or Diana, but if you do have evperience playing both fighters and Assassins, then you should have no problem picking her up.


Initiating: The main thing you nedd to have down is when to initiate with her and when not to. With this build, you can start poking them with your combo (Q-E-W), at level 3, but only if you have Thunderlord's Decree up. Then just go back and farm. A lot of champions may have weak early-games like Riven, but so do you so you have to keep that in mind. If you are able to catch them off guard, go ahead, get the kill if you can do it safely.


Farming: You can farm easier and push easier because of your base Attack Speed with runes and masteries. So just last hit minions, and is them to your advantage to heal using Hiten Style. If you see a minion nearby the is low use Bladesurge to CS. Dont worry though, if you do it right you will get the CD refunded + 35 mana.


Roaming: Generally you want to roam when You have your lane pushed up to the tower. You will have the other Top-Laner focused on taking out your minions, but at the same time you could be taking enemy Jungle Camps, or ganking Mid. If you see your lane going back to middle way, or you succeeded in your gank go back to your lane and continue in-lane play.

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Jungling as Irelia:

Clears: You have decent clears with your lifesteal, and you have cc so thats good.
I generally start gromp, and go Blue. If not i start at red, and continue farming my Jungle.


Ganking: You have a weak early game, so unless you are super-confident,(but not arrogent) with your Irelia, wait for your first back to grab Skirmisher's Sabre. This item allows all autos on the target champion to deal true damage to them for 3 seconds, and reduces the damage you take from the champion smited. At this point your pretty set up to gank.

When Ganking top lane make sure to communicate with your toplaner if vision was placed in the river bush or tri-bush. If you cant then go and sweep it or drop a Vision Ward into the bush. you want to do the engage, because you should be full health when you gank.

When Ganking Midlane DO NOT GO THROUGH THE BUSHES. Go from behind the walls, behind the eneby champion so that you can avoid getting spotted by wards.

When Ganking Bot Lane, follow the same guidelines as i said for toplane, since they are a mirror image.



Counter-Jungling: The best way for you to counter JG is for you to get to your midgame, and start taking their camps. Even though This wont impact the game much, its free gold for you, and the enemy jungler cannot contest it, bucase you can just 1v1 them. But as always, ward the jungle, or sweep in advance of taking camps.

When working with this champion in a team fight, as in any teamfight, you need to know your role. As a tanky Assassin, your job is to take out the squishies. ADCs, midlaners, or the carry. Unless its Tahm Kench in which case, why did you feed a Kench?! Use your Q to initiate and try to back-door them if possible. They wont expect it and the recation time between you hitting them and them reacting will be enought time for you to take out that squishy, and continue in with the rest of the team.


When fighting in jungle i suggest always having wards on you. You can dash to enemies using Bladesurge if they are in close enough rage to you. <-- This being another form of back-dooring the enemy. Bladesurge and Transcendent Blades make great post game chasers, that can easily rack up triple kills if the the afore-mentioned teamfight went well.

This section is viable in both Draft and Ranked play. With the additions of the new champ select, you can make your intended choice so that you guys can better counter pick against the enemy team. ireia Should be picked if you Already have one Tank on your team. Reason being is that this Season 6 is a tank meta. The more tanks the better, but that is hardly the case of having a 5-man Tank team in ranked play. Is your other toplaner Illaoi? Pick Irelia. Are they Riven? Pick Irelia. Are they, Jax, Dr. Mundo, Poppy, or anything besides Darius (<---needs to get nerfed-), pick Irelia. She has very few counters in the toplane surprisingly.

Pros:

Good initiator
Good burst/sustain dmg
kit has "lifesteal"
can 1v1 most champs mid-lategame.
relivant assassin in teamfights

Cons:

No escape skills
counterd by any CC

Overall, i really like this champion. She is really great and i wish people would play her as much as they play miss fourtune, caitlen, and Garen. She is such a rewarding champion that can play multiple roles. I will add a Jungle Irelia guide soon after this guide is published. Thank you all for reading this guide and i hope that you all learned from this. Please vote for me and share as it really helps me move forward. If you have any questions or comment dont be afraid to post in the disscussion section below. I will answer back if you ask me something. Thank you come again!