This is a guide to cover the basics of jungling as Irelia. Although most commonly played top, Irelia's kit works surprisingly well in the jungle. This guide will discuss certain builds and strategies that will allow you to maximize her potential in the jungle.

The recommended rune set is intended to supplement Irelia's strong burst damage and sustain during ganks.

Domination

The Domination runes are intended to supplement Irelia's burst damage in order to take down enemy champions before they are able to retreat.

Dark Harvest

This rune will aid to deal more damage and shorten the time it takes to successfully take down an enemy champion.

Sudden Impact

Sudden Impact complement's Irelia's takedown potential during ganks.

Eyeball Collection

This rune helps Irelia snowball if she get's a good start. As a jungler, this rune is more valuable than most due to frequently encountering enemy wards and champions.

Ravenous Hunter

Ravenous Hunter serves to aid Irelia's sustain. Especially useful during tower dives.



Inspiration

The Inspiration runes are intended to aid with closing the distance between enemy champions.

Approach Velocity

Approach Velocity is a key rune in that it will both help you save your laner and/or finish off an enemy champion. The movement speed to an impaired champion is critical during ganks.

Magical Footwear

Magical Footwear rewards players who go for early and successful ganks. Early boots will help you to roam freely and farm faster.

Flash and Smite are the standard jungle summoner spells which will be used in this guide.

These spells should be used the same way as with any other jungler.

Flash should be used as an aid to either engage an enemy champ in order to secure a kill or used as an escape in order to disengage from a fight.

Smite should be used to efficiently clear out jungle camps. A charge should be kept to last hit important monsters such as Blue Sentinel, Red Brambleback, Baron, and Dragon.

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• Ionian Fervor: Ionian Fervor is Irelia's passive which grants her Tenacity based on how outnumbered she is. Tenacity is a stat that affects the duration of crowd control effects. This passive is especially useful during counter ganks where your laner will most likely be retreating.
  
• Bladesurge (Q): Bladesurge is your main form of a gap closer. If using the skill kills its target, then the cooldown resets and mana is refunded. This is very strong because it opens up a wide range of possibilities where Irelia can dash through a wave of low health minions in order to takedown a fleeing opponent or use those minions to escape after a gank. Additionally, Transcendent Blades can be used to lower the health of an enemy lane to supplement her dashes.
  
• Hiten Style (W): Hiten Style is Irelia's main form of sustain during fights. It has both a passive and an active. Hiten Style's passive cause Irelia's basic attacks to heal her. Its active deals true damage and double's the healing gained from Hiten Style's passive.
  
• Equilibrium Strike (E): Equilibrium Strike is one of Irelia's key abilities. It deals magic damage and also slows the enemy champion. However, if the enemy champion's percentile health is greater than Irelia's, then they are stunned instead of slowed.
  
• Transcendent Blades (R): Irelia throws out spirit blades that fire in a straight line towards the cursor. The blades heal her for 25% of the damage they do to enemy champions and 10% of the damage they do to enemy minions and monsters. The ability can be cast up to 4 times. This ability can be used with Bladesurge in order to create a path of low minions to dash through.

Starting Items

Hunter's Talisman helps you in the early game to farm and gain bonus experience from the jungle. The 150% mana regen also helps you to spam skills and clear the jungle faster.

Refillable potion is better than buying 3 health pots because it allows you to utilize Hunter's Talisman's unique passive before you learn Hiten Style at level 3.

Should not have to be explained much. Use wards to grant vision and gain map control.

Early Items

Finishing your jungle item is always a priority. This item will grant you 50% Attack Speed and 225% Mana Regeneration. This is important because it helps you to clear the monsters in your jungle faster and focus on helping your laners and ganking.

A very strong early game item. Sheen provides a 10% Cooldown Reduction which is very important during early fights. Sheen's passive also contributes physical damage equal to your base Attack Damage. Builds into Trinity Force.

Key Item

This is probably the most important item in Irelia's jungle build. Trinity Force provides everything you need for ganks. It gives you attack damage and speed, cooldown reduction, health, mana, and movement speed. You want to build this item as early as possible.

End Game Build

See above.

Titanic Hydra provides Irelia with strong sustain and wave clear while still providing a large hp boost. It damages multiple enemies in a cone shaped area which enhances Irelia's Hiten Style healing and also provides her with a way to engage or disengage using Bladesurge on the lower health minions.

Sterak's Gage is useful to start building health while not skimping on damage. This item has a strong passive in that upon taking a large amount of damage within 5 seconds, it will provide 30% Tenacity and a shield which helps Irelia finish off low health enemies or survive an engagement.

Irelia's main protection against AD champions. Randuin's Omen is a very strong defensive item, providing 400 health and 60 armor. The item also reduces damage from critical strikes and slows attacker's attack speed if they hit you with a basic attack.Finally, Randuin's Omen has a unique active that allows you to slow enemy unit's movement speed by 55% for 2 seconds. This is a very strong ability because it helps Irelia catch up to fleeing enemies or slow chasing enemies to allow her to escape. Randiun's Omen can be built before Sterak's Gage if you are struggling against enemy AD champions.

Irelia's main protection against AP champions. Spirit Visage is very useful to sustain Irelia during combat. It provides 450 health and 55 magic resists - making it very handy when taking damage from AP champions. Spirit Visage also gives Irelia with 100% Base Health Regen and a 10% Cooldown Reduction which grants her a strong sustain.

Blade of the Ruined King is a strong item to provide Irelia with additional tools to deal damage and sustain herself. BOTRK gives her more attack speed and damage while also providing a lifesteal effect. The lifesteal effect from BOTRK combined with Irelia's Hiten Style and Spirit Visage will ensure excellent sustain for her. Blade of the Ruined King also has an active that deals magic damage and slows an enemy champion for 3 seconds. In addition to Randuin's Omen's active, it provides Irelia with many tools to engage and disengage from fights.

Pros + Strong engage + Strong sustain + Crowd control + Gap closer + Stronger when outnumbered + Flexible build Irelia is a strong an flexible champ. She is able to be built according to what her team needs, whether she needs to tank more damage or deal more damage. She is somewhat of a jack of all trades. She has a strong engage, stun/slow, and sustain during a fight - making her an excellent choice to start a fight with.

Cons - Weak to early invades - Susceptible to crowd control - Requires lower health to stun - Only gains tenacity in unfavorable fights - Weak early game - Expensive itemization As strong as Irelia appears to be, a lot of her advantages require her to be at a disadvantage. Her passive only scales tenacity based on how outnumbered she is. In ganks where she has an advantage, she is very susceptible to crowd control. She also requires her health percentage to be less than then enemy's in order to stun them. In addition to that, her item build is very expensive, so without lots of farm or kills, she scales very slowly.

How to start?

At level 1, you want to pick Irelia's Equilibrium Strike as it will provide a very useful stun and prevent you from taking as much damage from the jungle monsters early on.

Starting Blue

Full Clear:

It is generally optimal to get a leash from your outside laner in order to progress to level 2 quickly. After killing the Blue Sentinel, you should clear Gromp and then move on to Wolves. Move on to clear the Red Brambleback, the Raptors, and then the Krugs in that specific order. Once you finish clearing your jungle, you should then recall and start building your main jungle item.

Invade (Vision Control)

This route is useful if you want to gain early vision into your opponent's jungle. The route is the same as the full clear route up until the Red Brambleback. Once you get the red buff, instead of progressing to the wolves, you should head up and kill the Rift Scuttler. After doing this, use the Scryer's Bloom to gain vision and place wards safely.

Starting Red

Full Clear:

Starting red, you want to get a hard leash from your outside laners. This means that they will attack the Red Brambleback until you can finish it. Once you get the red buff, move on to the Krugs. You will definitely need to use smite here. After clearing Krugs, you should move on and clear the raptor camp. Move on to clear the Wolves, Blue Sentinel, and finally Gromp.

Invade (Vision Control)

After killing the Red Brambleback, you should skip the Krugs and Raptors and move to the wolves on the blue side. After killing them, clear Gromp and then the Blue Sentinel]]. Move up to the river and kill the Rift Scuttler. After doing this, use the Scryer's Bloom to gain vision and place wards safely.

Early Ganks

One of the most important things to be aware of as a jungler is the map. You have to be consistently paying attention to how the lanes are performing and where enemy and friendly champions are. In exchange for not having to worry about last hitting minions, the jungler has to worry about positioning, vision control, objectives, and champion stats.

For positioning, the jungler has to worry about how the lanes are pushed. Is bot tower getting pushed? Is our mid laner pushed up super far? Recognizing small details like these will help your team massively. For example, if the enemy bot lane is pushing your bot lane all the way back, you can show presence near them to force them to back off - allowing your adc to farm more freely. Conversely, you can gank them with the help of your bot lane and potentially kill them or force them to recall. Remember during early ganks that tower diving carries a high risk. Towers take out large chunks of your health and a greedy play could set the enemy lane up far ahead than before you came to help.

Another thing that junglers have to worry about is vision control. Knowing when enemies are missing and what they are most likely doing. Warding key objectives and chokes. All these are things that the jungler has to worry about. How long has the mid laner been missing? Were they low health before disappearing? They must have recalled to buy items and heal. Were they pushing your mid laner back? They might have left to gank another lane. Where is the enemy jungler? Do I have to counter gank a lane? All of these questions have to consistently be asked while farming and placing wards. Has bot lane been getting ganked a lot? Maybe I need to put down deep wards so that they can see a gank coming from further away. Knowing where the enemy has vision is also as important, if not more important than your team's vision. Sweeping lens and control wards are your best friends to clearing out enemy wards and vision. Communicate with your team to figure out where the enemy team has their vision. This will also help you when you gank so that you can avoid their wards for a better gank or as another way of showing your presence near their lane.

Objectives are another thing you have to pay attention to. Having vision near the Dragon and Baron pits will allow you and your team to recognize if the enemy team is trying to capture an objective. Killing the Rift Scuttler also grants vision of the river and will help control that area. Objectives are very important and contribute a lot to a team's strengths. Maintaining control over these areas of the map is crucial to a team's success.

Finally, champion stats are something you have to pay attention to. Keep checking what items people are buying and how well they are doing in lane. Is your ADC 50 CS behind the enemy ADC? You might have to build Randuin's Omen earlier and gank bot more often to get your ADC back in the game.

Your role during teamfights will vary a lot depending on your team's composition. However, Irelia inherently has a strong kit that is well suited to starting teamfights, with a strong engage and disengage tools. Irelia's passive also grants her tenacity which helps counter strong crowd control teams. In a winning fight, it grants no bonus, but since your team is already winning the fight it doesn't matter. In an even fight, it grants 10% tenacity which greatly helps her sustainability. In losing team fights, her passive is key to helping her teammates escape safely. With up to 40% increased tenacity, this allows Irelia to peel for her retreating teammates while still being in a position to stay alive.

With Irelia's strong sustain and crowd control, another way to use her during teamfights is to go straight for the AD carry to CC them and quickly take them out of the fight. Since you are playing Irelia as a jungler, you are most likely not the team's main tank, and are filling in a bruiser-type role. Using Irelia's strong gap closer and accounting for her strong sustain, you can quickly stun the enemy carry and allow your team to significantly lower the enemy team's potential damage output. Doing this will wreak havoc on the enemy's back line because of how mobile Irelia is and how difficult it will be for the tanks to help while still maintaining a strong front line. (*Make sure your team is ready to engage with you! Otherwise you're just dead. )

That's it for my Jungle Irelia Guide!

Thank you for taking the time to read this and any feedback or criticisms are welcome.
I hope this guide was informative.