Hey there guys, Qfish here bringing you a guide for irelia, you at this point in time is currently my main champion. I have played her from almost the time she was released to now. (;-;) I rate Gold in season 2 and bronze 4 in season 3 (Please don't disregard the guide because of this. {the main reason i hit that rank is because i only did my promos in season 3 and didn't really bother playing after finishing my ranked games promotional 5/5 with a bronze 4 rating, so i went of and played normal's}), anyways in season 4 i started bronze 3 and finished gold 1 by basically maining irelia for the entire time. I currently play on the Oceanic servers with a group of friends in a low gold rated team.
Anyways enough about me, lets get on with the guide.

Pros / cons
Pros



+ W gives Amazing sustain
+ True damage from W is really good against killing high damage resistant people
+ Really powerful during mid game
+ Stun is really good for killing carries

Cons



- Can have a weak early game against some match ups
- Not a lot of damage without sheen/triforce
- high skill cap (you will almost always be improving your irelia)

League of Legends Rune Seal of Health
Seal of Health
5x
So the reason why you take the seal of health of 5 amour is generally because of the fact that when armour seals were nerfed, every champ gained 4 bonus armour, so Rather then having 13 armour, with these runes you can have 8 armour and 40 health, which in my opion, is generally better.

League of Legends Rune Seal of Armor
Seal of Armor
4x
Discussed above :P

League of Legends Rune Mark of Attack Speed
Mark of Attack Speed
9x
The reason why i take attack speed runes over attack damage runes is simple, After 5 hits you out damage due to the quints and these, which means more total damage, plus you also get of more of your W procs, which means more sustain and more true damage.
League of Legends Rune Glyph of Magic Resist

Glyph of Magic Resist
3x
3 mr runes gives you just a bit more tankieness so you reach the 25% damage reduction from magic damage.

League of Legends Rune Glyph of CD Reduction
Glyph of CD Reduction
6x
Take Cdr runes because you want to have your abilities up as often as possible, especially your W and Ult, these runes just help you maintain your all ins and trades. (you still have to be mana conscious)

League of Legends Rune Quintessence of Attack Speed
Quint of Attack Speed
2x
More attack speed to help with you W damage and total damage per 5 hits.
League of Legends Rune Quintessence of Armor
Quint of Armor
1x
Take an armour seal because most top laners that you will face will be ad so this armour will help a fair bit. (this rune can be switched for another attack speed or a movespeed quint at any time)

Fury give attack speed, helps get off more W procs.
Sorcery Help with cdr and combined with your runes give you 10% starting cdr which is amazing for trading.
General last hitting mastery (take this because you aren't taking any ad runes)

Masteries not to take on irelia that you may question.
Don't take this mastery because it can cause your early trading to be horrible, especially if someone else has taken it as they get 3% more damage on you and that's not what you want when your trying to play passive.
This mastery just doesn't give out enough Armour or magic resist at 100 of each stat (its like 3 bonus Armour and mr at 100) and since you will probably only get to 150 armor and mr. is just better in my opinion as it does more early and helps you get your stats, so that's why you should take over enchanted Armour.

SPACESPACE SPACESPACE SPACE SPACE PS
This guy is pretty much essential right now on anyone and i always take it on who ever i play as, as it can be used to hop a wall or get away from a gank. I would say that you should always take flash on irelia so long as you own it and aren't sub level 7 or something.

This helps massively with pressure round the map and can help you start snowballing or recover from an early lost trade, as it stands now, this summoner spell it probably the second most key one that you can take and can make your team fight around dragon go from a 4v4 to a 5v4 because you tp'd down. However i would not recommend this summoner spell to anyone below silver 2-3 (unless you have someone you can trust to put wards down relaibly near where fights will start) because people won't generally jump on the opportunity to have you split pushing but still being able to enter a fight.

Ignite is a great summoner for lanes like fiora where once you get an advantage you can kill them over and over again, as it gives you that little bit of help early to start snowballing. Other than that, if your in silver 4 or below, take it as taking tp probably won't be very effective as you team needs to ward for your tp to have any pressure.

Don't see any reason to take this spell to top lane, as it really doesn't help much as your sustain makes it a escape spell and tp or ignite will do you better in top lane.

exuast This spell is great for going up against tryndamere or kayle as it really kills their damage out put, sop this spell is plausible, but not for any non aa based matchups.

You aren't move speed hecarim and you don't plan to die. Thats all that needs to be said about revive.

Siv Hd are you there? seriously don't take this, you don't have anything ranged enough to make this beneficial.

So this starting item is pretty good if you can get a level two cheese off(this is when when you start W and then go to the wolf camp with your dorans blade and kill it, recall back and buy some potions, before teleporting back to lane, allowing you to start with massive sustain and damage) anyways it can be a great item and i highly reccomend it if you think you can cheese a level two.

So this item is your key to victory, it gives everything you need and more - health, mana, attack speed, damage and a sheen proc (not to mention 10% crit chance). Once you get it you will have a lot more kill potential so long as you abuse its sheen proc.

General All round great item due to the health and armour it gives. This items slow is great for helping you to stick onto targets with ease as well as tank out some of the more popular top laners right now.

Ever since the spirit visage nerf, this item has been easily the best item to use against any spell caster and i have no idea how many times it has saved my life by blocking that blind skill shout or targeted ability from locking me down. Generally my 3rd or forth item buy (not including boots).

% health damage... Yes please! This item, while it may not have been as cool as

, its overall better in terms of build paths and total effectiveness and damage, as well as giving a speed boost and a slow to your kit, which makes the item ever so helpful for killing tanks. (high five if you remember madred's bloodrazor teemo)

How can you go wrong with an extra LIFE!!!!!!???

Great for when your ahead and their team is stacking armour but not as much damage so they aren't as a big of a threat as normal, as it gives you quite the bit of damage against those kinds of teams.

Pick this item against high attack speed carries as it really hurt their damage output if they start hitting you.

This item is great against double ap comps or other comps where you are going to be taking a lot more ap damage then usual, it also improves healing which is nice, however banshee's veil is better at the moment against ap as irelia

With the rune page that you have set up, maxing Hiten Style first give the best damage out put, following this with Equilibrium Strike gives a huge helper to you mid game damage by give you a 2 second slow. there is no real point in maxing Bladesurge as it already gets improved by triforce and the only real thing it gives you is a lower cd on it.

You can max Equilibrium Strike first but its only good if your going up against high mobility people like Quinn or Lissandra as the 2 second stun can allow you to put out more damage then maxing w will do as you won't be able to land enough autos.

As always, maxing your Transcendent Blades when you can is highly beneficial because its damage and importance to your kill potential on some champs makes it key.

this is just a long gap so that the words in the brackets When in lane with irelia, you should try to not waste your q unless you have to, because it doesn't refund mana it cost entirely, which means that you will slowly be draining your mana pool and also opening yourself up for free harass. Basically, the rule of thumb is to make sure that you are getting the last hits and when your enemy laner gets to close, stun him with your e, follow by an auto, then back of - this will give you reasonably free harass against most laners, but be careful, your mana costs are high early so trading to often can leave you in a pretty bad position.

this is just a long gap so that the words in the brackets don't start next to {video will be here shortly(hopefully)}
Basically, use your Bladesurge to go to a low health minion, then follow this be landing your Equilibrium Strike on them to get off a stun, activate your Hiten Style and start auto attacking to get off as many procs as possible, use your first charge of your Transcendent Blades and proc your sheen/triforce, from here you have 2 choices, 1. if they are almost dead and running away, use your next two ult charge consecutively, then you auto followed by your Q then the last charge of your ult followed by one more auto. 2. This one implies that they aren't running away after you have activated your ult, so where you use your next two ult charges, leave a gap from sheen/trinity force procs.

If your think at the moment "Woah, that's a lot to take in!"
I would highly recommend going to ICU's (irelia carries u) youtube channel, as he is probably one of the better irelias at the moment.

this is just a long gap so that the words in the brackets don't start next to the brackets So for irelia in team fights, i like to q onto a tank or the support so i can get right up close to their adc to stun them, as the 2 second stun on your kit is great for taking out adc on the enemy team. However, if you have a carry with no escape on your team, E.g. or it is probably better if you try to give them some peel by stunning the fighters that jump onto them as it will give them some breathing room and they will probably more helpful as killing tanks then you are.

I would love some feed back on my guide or how to improve it or anything that you guys want changed or described better so that the guide can improve to a better standard :P/