Illaoi Build Guide by Rymdskora

Who am I? Rymdskora, THE Backwater Genius. Everything else is irrelevant, but of course I will continue.

This guide will NOT contain any pros/cons, matchup information (for the time being), or anything related to team compositions.

Why? I don't believe they are necessary to a guide, or even needed. These are things you learn from playing League of Legends, and learning them yourself will make you a better player. Not to mention, certain aspects of the game aren't information you have to know unless you're high elo.

Lastly, I must pay homage to the one true Illaoi god DirtyMobs. Without his guidance, I wouldn't be the tentacle hentai lover I am today.

Conqueror - Healing on max stacks, bonus damage.

Presence of Mind - Mana restoration, we use a lot of mana.

Legend: Tenacity - CC resistance, good for frontliners.

Last Stand - Bonus damage at low HP, excellent for us.

Taste of Blood - Bonus healing to keep us alive.

Ravenous Hunter - Extra bonus healing to keep us even more alive.

Ability Haste is self explanatory, abilities are up faster so we can kill QUICKER!

Adapative damage is good, kill people quicker. Always a slaughter.

Armor is generally good toplane, you can swap to Magic Resist for AP users.

Prophet of an Elder God - Illaoi spawns a tentacle near her every 20-7.25 seconds. Harsh lesson and Test of Spirit will activate tentacles when in range, they will slap the enemy. It makes a satisfying sound. You should be moving your tentacle line forward or backward based on what's happening in lane. Pushing? move your tentacles forward. Being pushed in? move them back. (Tentacle slaps also heal you!)

Tentacle smash - is great for amping your tentacle damage, as well as waveclearing. Don't overuse it, as you can quickly drain your mana. Try to throw your Q across one of your low HP minions at the enemy champion as they go to hit it. It'll almost always net you a landed Q.

Harsh Lesson - This ability causes you to leap to the target, and do percent max HP damage. As well as, any tentacles in range will attack said target. You can also use this ability to guarantee kill. If you W onto someone and they flash, they will still die. The damage always goes through.

Test of Spirit - is your bread and butter ability, try to position yourself near a spawned tentacle, and throw your E towards the enemy champion when one of your minions is about to die. You'll almost always guarantee a hit.

Leap of Faith - spawns a tentacle per enemy hit, makes Harsh lesson a flat 2s cooldown, and makes tentacles swing 50% faster. Try to use this after you pull vessel & the enemy jumps on you. Then you can go to poundtown. As well, when you initially cast R, you're unstoppable. So you can buffer CC, and be relatively unaffected by it.

But Rymdskora, how do I hit my abilities?! They key is to use your minions to your advantage, especially in lanephase. Whenever one of your minions is low, the enemy wants to kill it for gold. You can use this to your advantage by throwing your abilities last second, over and past your creeps to have insane skillshot accuracy.

Best item in the game, hands down. Use it for long trades / healing up vs inbreds who pick ranged tops.

If this isn't self explanatory, please NEVER queue for ranked. Ward when pushing, or before being shoved in.

Good in general, and versus melee. You can also heal off vessels with it.

An alternative to Goredrinker, extremely useful versus ranged matchups, and comps. If you build it, you're either crying or about to mental boom.

Second best item in the game, once you have Sterak's you can begin teamfighting and WINNING.

Extremely useful for burst heavy comps, and teamfighting alike. Pop it when everyone turns on you, and bathe in the blood of your enemies.

Great for amping your damage, healing, and slowing down your eventual death. A welcome item into burst, or poke heavy comps.

When you need magic resist, and to amp your heals this is THE go-to item. Build it and reap the rewards. Also, Grievous Wounds hates you.

When in doubt, buy bramble vest and make anyone hitting you and healing cry. Executioners is a good alternative to bramble.

If the Crit hurts too much, buy Randuins. You'll know if the crit hurts too much.

Kog'Maw attacking you too fast? No problem, slow that sucker down.

Can't close the gap between you and the enemy AD? buy Deadman's and run them down at the speed of sound, and then CTRL+3 spam.

So glad Riot brought this baby back. Casters? buy this baby and RUN at 'em, yell at them in all-chat too. Cause they're going DOWN.

Mordekaiser? BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS, BUY QSS.

Buy it, and forget about it. Until you need to upgrade it, of course. All Vladimir top players can burn in hell.

I usually buy these after phage, or if I'm just short of it. If you can buy a longsword, ruby crystal, and boots, JUST DO IT.

If they have a lot of CC, go treads. (You can also go treads if they have a really annoying AP threat toplane, but steelcaps might be better.)

If they have multiple AD threats, go steelcaps (It's actually Tabi's, don't tell Riot.)

Leap of Faith can be used to buffer CC, this is extremely useful when dueling, getting ganked, teamfighting, and any other time you can think about being CC'd. You can watch a video of CC buffering with Illaoi's ultimate HERE. Notice how I completely negate Oriana's ultimate with my ultimate.

Surviving ganks is relatively simple given you land your E. When getting ganked, it's usually easier to angle yourself at the enemy laner and then throw your E at the jungler. This should usually guarantee you a landed E, then you can fight 1v2 with R.

Harsh Lesson can be used as a gap-closer, and to hop walls. You will jump onto whatever enemy you hit with W. If you have vision over a wall, you can simply W(Given you're in range)over the wall to said target. Although, I've found it to only be useful in niche cases.

Harsh Lesson also has a built-in-ish? bug where you can use it when you're out of mana. If you Q, you can queue up your W for free and be OOM after using Q. Although since you've already queued up your W, you'll be able to use Harsh Lesson for free.

You can also ult flash to quickly reposition yourself in fights, you can watch that HERE. I'm up in the air for awhile, but after I flash Leap of Faith slams where I am, not where I was.

Use corrupting pot before you hit the vessel from Test of Spirit. This will apply the burn from corrupting pot without having to be in melee range.

Level 1 & 2, you are NOT a champion. Let me reiterate, there is no one you will beat level 1 & 2. You want to play back and give up CS & ground, use your Q to farm and let the wave come to you.

Once we're 3, we can start trading. Don't get overzealous though, if you miss Test of Spirit, you're in for a rough trade. Try to position yourself between two tentacles, and hit them with E. Then you can transfer massive damage through the vessel, and heal up any missing HP.

Once we're 6 we can begin to truly rain down hellfire toplane. Push your wave to the enemy tower, and move your tentacle line forwards. Throw E's at your enemy when they go to last hit creeps. Make sure to have adequate ward coverage as well, you can 1v2 just make sure to land E!

Lastly, I quickly want to go over foresight when laning. Anytime you are playing, you should be thinking ahead. Illaoi is a champion who reaps enormous benefits from having a plan ahead of time. If you are getting ganked by a Lee Sin, and your Laner is Maokai, who is better to E here? This kind of critical thinking can make or break you as a player, apply and practice it.

Teleport is extremely useful for moving around the map, and quickly rotating to objectives from sidelanes. Allow me to give you vision, haha, get the joke?

Anytime after lanephase has ended, if you have teleport available, you should be on the opposite side of the map from the objective. (Ex. Baron is up, you have TP. You should be splitting botlane.)

In conjunction with the point above, you should be using TP to join fights, or to force objectives. You can split Botlane when Baron is up, let your team force Baron, and either TP to help them or continue taking objectives in the sidelane.

Lastly, Teleport can be used after you back before dragon (30s, so you can walk to Dragon) and help your team take dragon. Then TP back toplane so you can still absorb gold & XP from the wave.

Mid and Lategame - TBA [As of 1/22/21 I will be working on this section!]

Starting midgame we want to be opposite of the objective that's up, and or coming up. If Baron is up, we want to be botlane provided we have Teleport available to us. If we don't, then we want to be toplane, and vice versa.

Rymdskora, how do I properly split? Don't worry chief, the basics are simple. The main things you need to keep track of, is how many people are on the map, and where your team is. Your team should be pushed just as far as you in another lane, if they are not then you are too far forward. The only time you can play that far forward, is if your team is forcing an objective while you're creating pressure for them to do so.

For Dragons, you generally want to be there with the team. Not only can this net you objectives that help you win, but you can also generate gold leads by securing kills around Dragon fights.

How do I teamfight? In fights you want to be in front of your team, be careful if you haven't hit Sterak's Yet. Play slowly, and try to land E's before the fight truly begins, your team can kill the vessel near instantly for most enemies. This should give you an opportunity to either catch, fight, or have a health/numbers advantage. When the fight starts you can also quickly R->Flash onto the enemy carries for massive damage, or even kills.

I'm moving this to the bottom, as it does not pertain to the guide (It does, but not in the sense of having anything to do with champion, or game specifics!). Nor do I think a majority of people care to read it, but I'd like to keep it within the guide. As well as, any other thoughts I have I will put them here.

Moved from Info Section - To add, I believe my Illaoi guide is the best Illaoi guide on Mobafire, allow me to explain why. All the highly viewed Illaoi guides are made by players who have streams, multiple guides for different champions, and seem to mainly push said streams. I won't speculate if they're truly trying to help people play / learn the champion or not. Although, I think it's fair to infer that their guides are mainly a way to draw people to their streams. I have nothing against these people, but I do think that puts my guide above the rest. Even though I'm just a random solo queue player who loves tentacles, and big **** action in toplane.