Welcome to my Irelia build. I tend to do quite well with her, and because she is currently free on the week I am writing this guide. I intend to make a short guide that is easily readable for people trying out the champ this week, but it will still have enough information that a veteran Irelia might pick up something.

First, let me start by explaining what kind of role Irelia has in the game. She is a solo-top off-tank character. Her goal in team fights is to find, suppress, and kill the enemy carries. Other than team fighting and helping with global objectives, you should be farming your lane. Using her abilities, which I will get to later, you should have 150+ farm by the 20 minute mark. For you newer players, this may seem like a lot, but it is quite easy to get with a little bit of practice and concentration.

With that being said... Have fun with her! Irelia really does make the game seem easy if played right, so enjoy it. That is, after all, what league is all about.

These runes are pretty standard on most solo top champions, but here is my explanation for them:

-9 marks of desolation. When I build tank, I usually do not build any armor penetration, so this is quite useful.

-9 seals of resilience. It is either these or mana regeneration runes, but with the early philosopher's stone, that isn't really necessary.

-9 glyphs of shielding. Great magic resistance and are really the only viable option in this slot for Irelia.

-3 Quints of Fortitude. The early health in lane is fantastic. Armor penetration or flat armor quints also work well.

Start with:

Then rush your gp10's and boots for early laning:


Mid-game items:


Final build:


You can replace the warmog's/atma's combination with these if you are going main tank:



However, I have found that stacking health tends to be better than building a ton of MR/Armor
This chart is a good example of the trade off of building a lot of resistances. The 150-200 range is generally where you want to get in each stat before you stack health. Keeping this in mind, some teams require you to build a ton of armor, while lack a need of MR (or vise-verse). This is fine, but you can still see the negative side of this by the graph.

Q: Bladesurge - Irelia dashes forward to strike her target. If it kills the target, Bladesurge's cooldown refreshes and refunds 35 Mana.
Irelia dashes forward to strike her target, dealing 20/50/80/110/140 (+) physical damage.

If it kills the target, Bladesurge's cooldown refreshes and refunds 35 Mana.

Use this ability to farm and harass. It's pretty simple. Max this ASAP.

W: Hiten Style - Irelia is skilled in the art of Hiten, passively giving her physical attacks health restoration. Activating Hiten Style gives her basic attacks true damage for a short period.
Passive: Physical attacks restore 10/14/18/22/26 health.

Active: Irelia's basic attacks deal 15/30/45/60/75 true damage for 6 seconds.

This ability is both a tank shredding skill and a way of sustaining in lane. You can get more points in this if you are getting harassed in lane a bunch or if your opponent is very tanky. Max this last though.

E: Equilibrium Strike - Irelia's attack balances the scales, dealing damage and slowing the target. However, if the target has a higher Health % than Irelia, then the blow stuns the target instead.
Irelia pierces her target, dealing 80/130/180/230/280 (+0.5) magic damage and slowing the target by 60% for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 second(s).

If the target has a higher Health % than Irelia, she stuns the target for the duration instead.

This ability is your CC and chasing tool. If possible, try to use this as a stun, meaning your opponent has more health than you, but the slow is still extremely good.

R: Transcendent Blades - Irelia summons 4 spirit blades that she can fling to deal physical damage and siphon life from enemies they pass through.
Irelia summons 4 spirit blades that she can fling to deal 80/120/160 (+ ) (+0.5) physical damage to enemies they pass through. She heals for 25% of the damage dealt against champions and 10% against minions.

This ult is not very useful in team fights due to its relatively low damage on a single target, which is not what your goal is as an off-tank. Read the introduction if you missed that "wisdom" of mine. It is, however, great for farming and sustaining due to its massive heal and low cool down.

Flash- It's the current meta. Just deal with it ;D

Teleport- You can argue this all you want, but it is a must for solo-top in my humble opinion. It turns what would be a 4v4 dragon fight into a 5v4. Also, it doesn't burden your jungler with such a far away lane cover should the need arise.

Combo:

w->q->e->auto attack: the q procs your sheen from the w and then the last auto attack procs the sheen again, giving you 2 sheen procs in about 4-5 seconds.


FARM:

Off-tanks DOMINATE late game, so get there faster by farming more!

Irelia WINS games.
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Notice the period