Irelia is a melee assasin mostly played in top lane.
She's extremely powerful and has great sustain with her passive and abilities.


I believe you've all heard the phrase "Better nerf Irelia" xD
If played correctly she can actually ace a team on her own!

About Irelia's passive:
Her passive reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, snares, and roots for each nearby
enemy champion. When she's around 3 champions, Irelia has 40% Tenacity.
You can make the most of it using the Tenacious Mastery at rank 3 (which gives you 15% more).
You can also buy Mercury's Treads (35%) or Zephyr (35%)
You can't stack Tenacity in your build,, but, her passive plus the mastery plus one item with Tenacity gives you maximum 90%, which means that Irelia is almost immune to any disables and that makes her an excellent front line for a teamfight.

You always want to max W first.
Dealing true damage and restoring hp is a great thing and by maxing this ability first you deal even more true damage and restore even more health. So, they die, and you go away with more hp than before the fight :)

After W, max E. Irelia slows target enemy champion if she has more % hp and makes it easier to reach and kill them, or stuns them if they have more % hp than her. Max it right after W to have a higher duration of slow or stun.

Then you can max your Q which refreshes everytime it kills a unit and refunds most of the mana it used as well.

Of course, get max R every time it's available (lvl 6, 11, 16). Not only does her ultimate deal a lot of damage and has a low cooldown, it also heals Irelia for 25% dammage it deals. Don't forget you can use it 4 times. Use it freely to farm waves of minions especially if u want to push or save a turret.

I take standard AD runes when I play Irelia for maximum damage output.
AD quints, AD marks, Armor seals and Magic Resist glyphs.
If you prefer MRes per level by all means go for it!
Irelia doesn't need tanky Runes. All she needs is some decent damage output early game and after Trinity you can go tankier. Irelia deals tons of damage anyway (God Bless True Damage) so these runes work best for early and late game too.

Pros

Great damage output

Can shut down carries easily

Amazing sustain

Hard to run away from

Cons

Item dependant

Not much to do when oom

Can be countered easily

HP counters her true damage