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Choose Champion Build:
Spells:
Ghost
Exhaust
Ability Order
Ionian Fervor (PASSIVE)
Irelia Passive Ability
lé introduction.
This is MY take on irelia, not only how she can be built, but how i think she should be built. I am not a pro, i'm not 2100 elo, as a matter of fact i'm only 1500 this should however not affect the view of this guide.

I wrote some parts of the guide like if irelia was a corporation, and used business analysis models and stuff(which works just as good on irelia as on a wall street corporation). Hey, u might just end up learning something as well :p
Profit: Damage to enemy champions
SWOT model: A business analytics model designed for analysing a corporations current "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats".
The Boston Matrice: A model which shows wether ur products are in growth and how much u should focus on them.
Product developement analysis: What should we do to make our product better and fit the customers(enemies)
Duff-Page A page where 3-5 of the runes are filled with one stat.(Armour, MR specifically)
Comming soon
Porters Branch analysis: This is a model which analyses ur company opposed to other companies(who can do your job).
Chaox:
The Chaox mindset is looking for a fast(bursty) profit. This was how irelia was originally designed, burst profit to the degree of madness!
This style has Tri-force as core, and often rushes a Philly stone for mana sustain.
Chaox mode came to **** *****es(ad carries are often female) and that's pretty much it.
Morello got in better nerf Irelia mode and things changed!
Wickd:
The new Sustain and Sustained profit, metabot irelia! This doesn't give a **** about burst.
This mindset utilises her for sustained profit. Post-nerf irelia lost the mentally insane burst profit, Wickd accepted irelia was no longer a burst assasin and started maxing "w".
This style does NOT HAVE A CORE! only partly core attribute is Tankiness and AS, AS isn't even necessary in all cases though, all comes down to your customers.
Wickd mode came to **** *****es, and then take the rest of the team while she's at it!
What this means is, the matchup's you do win the nerfs are barely noticeable.
But on the matchup's you loose it's terror. Try facing a renekton now.. The face of true terror will appear!
**** JUST GOT REAL. Irelia's been buffed. While the buff might not seem noteworthy, it favors Tri-force AD-irelia soo much, since her basedamage will help the sheenproc. Also, who doesn't like health? This almost put irelia back with the toppicks. Also the new skin was a really huge buff! now she just needs 1 or 2 more skins, then she'll be ultra-viable again!
The Boston Matrix is used for analysing ur market share on a current market with your product mix on it.
It's divided into 4 sections.
Stars: Product which should be invested in and defended.

Cash Cows: Where u normally earn ur bucks. Should be defended against other potential newcommers.

Question Marks: The market growth is high, but our market share is low on theese products, we actually don't know how theese will turn out but we will try to get a big market share on them.

WHEN U GET FROZEN MALLET, THIS SKILL SHOULD NOT BE PUT ANYMORE POINTS INTO.
Dogs: The market growth is fairly low on theese products, so we should try and save our skillpoints for better things.

To sum it up:
R - more damage, more trading power, more sustain from it.
W - More damage, more trading power, more sustain from it.
E - More stun time, which improves your trading power(level this until you get a frozen mallet), also improves ability to stick to your target.
Q - Well it's a dash, i use it as a dash, shorter dash time is ofc nice, but sticking to your target with longer stun/slow seems superior imo.
The first thing u're gonna think about is right from the start: Am i going to play aggressive, can i play aggressive against this opponent and what runes/masteries do i counter this top-lane with?


My standard pick for irelia. It ups ur damage a lot, and armour penetration marks are not gonna do much against a 65 armour champion standing up there waiting to eat you. Also makes her lasthitting animation much more smooth.
On a side note this also enables u to sustain better than desolation(less ad more hits on minions, more health)
greater Mark of desolation
Theese marks are for killing a squishy opponent up top. U kill him early, u kill him hard!(like u see that they're gonna send a ad-carry or squishy mage top)




Usual pick, U're gonna be wishing u had theese when their renekton takes half ur health with 1 combo at level 3.
theese are primary runes so they also gives full bonus.

1 or 2 clarity runes are nice, they will keep ur mana up against an aggressive opponent lane they are primary as well so it's all good(against ap)

Ap top? might wanna take theese seals, it's gonna hurt ur ap opponent for sure. (Against heavy harrass ap-opponent)





AD opponent who's not constantly AA'ing u, nor heavy harrassing u early game, scaling mr glyphs fo sure!

Ap opponent, dis too good!

strong early ad opponent.

2-3 of theese for mana. (against ad) secondary so u need 2-3 of them instead of 1-2.

Both are quite obvious.
If u have neither;

Why don't u always take primary runes, i thought thoose were better?
In theory yes. But runes matter early game and falls of later. If u can completely counter ur opponent, ur mid-lategame is gonna be muuuch stronger regardless of loosing 5-10 mr/armour through the laning phase.
1/21/8
This is my primary mastery tree, it gives me everything i need, and the added bonusses down in the defence tree.
Offense tree
Improved ghost/exhaust - nuff said.
Defence tree
You get sooo much out of the defence tree, and even with the diminishing returns on tenacity it's still very much worth it.
Utility tree
I just loooove this tree.
Mana is sooo good, and so is the reduced "Blue-pill" time.
MS is also a very nice and important stat in the lanephase, both for ganks, zoning and getting zoned.
21/9/0
I actually didn't think this tree-setup was very good on Irelia, and i don't think it is really that strong on anything but AD irelia.
Offense tree
This is the primary tree of this spec, the reason we go for it in build 2 is; IF WE DON'T KILL THE ENEMY CARRY, WE HAVE FAILED. We have to kill the carry, and we have to do it fast. Thus offense is the weapon of choice. Also with the sustain nerfs, lifesteal too good.
Defence tree
The health mastery is just too op to not get on any tanky char...
Utility tree
I'm really sad about missing out on the MS in this tree, mana is not too much of a problem because since we're building a meki pendant at some point(get it if u only have 180 gold) mana isn't too much of a problem.
For summoners there are sooo many viable options.
On AS irelia,




So for the second spell we have a lot of choices.





We take theese if we're gonna win the lane from early on(lvl 4-6) and we can zone our opponent to death(maybe even kill him) also against low-damage opponents. A third mention are characters who are just beastmode with no gap-closer that u just wanna avoid. Last but not least against AP opponents.
example where boots are always superior:




Example where armour is always superior:







We're going to be building a "phage" item All-day erryday. The question is just which one?
Generally we have two versions of irelia: Anti-carrying, And the one which just kills everything.
If we want to anti-carry. We're gonna need a tri-force, it offers soooooooo terribly much burst and utility that it's not even funny.
If we want to kill everything, we're going to need attackspeed and a way of sticking to the target so we can really utilise the attackspeed therefore

With this build it's VERY important that you HAVE TO DESTROY THE ENEMY AD-CARRY! If you do destroy the AD carry, you're gonna have very much pressence in the teamfight because of your massive amounts of MR and the hexdrinker.
Remember to abuse your sheen proc's from your ulty to full potential, this(with the maw) drastically improves your damage output. But i can't stress enough how important it is WHAT team-comp you use this against. Double-ap with either support or AP jungler.





























OMG you left out:
This section is oriented towards the items i'm not mentioning, i never/rarely get theese items and here is some reasoning for thoose.

This seems nice, the main problem with this item is: It's a item you buy to counter an ad-carry(which shines at lategame) but it's a midgame oriented item(randuin's counters ad-carries waaaaay more effective than thornmail.)

Well this item is a noobtrap, single highest MR item in the game but we don't have enough health, nor does irelia scale well enough with movespeed to make it worthwhile.
#1 At your own tower.
#2 At your side of the river, but not in tower range
#3Under enemy's tower.

When to be where?
#1 Towerhugging
You want to be here when you're loosing, also against strong laners like garen, renekton and riven it's nice to be here. Due to your "q" it's easy to last hit under tower, so this position suits you just fine in most situations.
#2 Lane frozen at your side of river.
You want to be here when you're winning/equal in lane, this gives excellent zoning opportunities, and nice ganks if jungler tries to gank.
#3 under enemies tower.
YOU do not ever want to be here, having your minions there is another case though.
Whenever your enemy is out of lane;
- He just went towards mid.
- You just killed him
- You almost killed him and he's going back.
- You need to b for a new item/mana/health
- make him loose creeps
- make him loose exp
- give you an opportunity to go back without being affraid of loosing exp/gold(minions are hitting his tower)
- Make his minions push towards your tower, giving you the possibility of freezing the lane in #2 when you come back to lane.
How to(champion specific):
All graphs are a mild view, they are a wide span. Post 12 it's calculated by team-fiht pressence.

I normally start with boots and try to avoid him, forcing his e to push me to position #1 and last hit under the turret.









Buy cloth armour

Both boots, and cloth armour are viable. I prefer boots.
Matchup is even.
Try not to let him push you to position #1, #2 is much more ideal. Try only to engage him when his Flamethrower is on CD, in any other scenario he's very hard to trade with. Not a matchup i run alot though.
boots start
This guy wins pre-3 try not to let him hard engage before that and just mana-starve him. On 4 you can win a trade with him and at level 5 you can win a straight up 1v1, after level 6 it's almost a free win.
Cloth armour start.
Same amount of AS like wits end so that's the same.
Against a 2000 hp enemy champion madreds does 120 damage. that's 3 times the damage a wits end does. we're missing out on between 5-25 resist. I'm gonna make the equation of armour/value from a cloth armor the least cost effective armor item in the game. so each resist point is worth 16,5 gold
This means around 83,33333333-416,6666667 worth of resist stats.
So to outline it comparing madreds to one of the considered most cost effective items in the game.
It costs double the price.
3870
It does 3 times as much damage(worst case scenario).
Wits end=2000, 2000*3=6000
It lacks 400 gold of resist.
6000-400=5600
It gives immensely fast barons.
U can't put a price on this
So this bad item, if we compare the stats to one of the considered best items in the game, it's much more cost effective. Keep in mind though that this is without taking True-damage onhits into consideration.
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