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The big guide to Irelia






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Choose Champion Build:
Spells:
Ghost
Ignite
Ability Order
Ionian Fervor (PASSIVE)
Irelia Passive Ability
Introduction
I do not play a lot of ranked games, because I get disturbed quite a lot and because of that I'm not able to always play a game untill it ends. I don't want to bother other people by leaving a ranked game. Because I don't play ranked, I'm not sure this build is any good in ranked games, but I found this build extremely effective in normal games.
Here we go!
In my opinion, her ability to proc Sheen every time Sheen comes off cooldown is the reason why I think Irelia is the greatest champion ever. It doesn't matter if you use an AP or AS based build, a tanky or armor pen based build... if you use a Sheen, Triforce or Lich Bane, Irelia rocks your socks!
Greater Mark of Desolation. Attacks procced by sheen do physical damage, you want Irelia to ignore that tiny bit of armour the enemy carry has.
Some people would use attack speed or even magic penetration marks on Irelia. The problem with Attack speed is that it doesn't help your sheen-based damage and it's only fifteen friggin' percent (just buy a friggin' dagger if you want it so badly). Picking magic pen marks is rediculous for three reasons:
1. They're only half as strong as armor pen marks.
2. Buying magic pen items is a lot cheaper than buying armor pen items.
3. THEY DON'T SUPPORT YOUR SHEEN PROCS!
Seals:

Some other people use health or mana/5/lvl seals, or hell, even attack speed seals (lolwut? Secondary runes?). The nice thing about health runes is that they make you really beefy early game, but their effectiveness decreases as you level up. Mana/5/lvl seals are great if you're going to spam Q all the time to farm minions, but you really don't need your Q to do that properly. This build gives you enough CD reduction to use your ultimate to clear minion waves. I'm not even going to talk about attack speed seals, it's not worth my time.
Glyphs:


Other people would pick cooldown reduction or mana/5/lvl glyphs, or even more attack speed (herp-a-derp!). From my experience, Cooldown reduction is the only worthy substitute to magic resistance glyphs, for one reason. They help you get more Sheen procs! However, because smart people will harass you a lot and you're getting a Glacial Shroud in mid game, you really don't need them as much as magic res glyphs.
Quints:

If you think you're such a badass, you can take armor pen quints instead of HP quints, but we can't all be badasses, cause then nobody would be a badass.
Runes for dummies:
1. Always use primary runes. Runes are marked by the color of their 'aura', the color of the circle around the rune itself. If the color of the aura matches the color of the rune's slot, it's a primary rune. For example, the aura an armor penetration mark is red, the same color as a mark's slot, therefore, it's a primary rune. You can find the math behind primary and secondary runes here. Thank Searz for that.
2. When you're not able to buy any level three runes yet, buy a full level one rune book. Level one runes are extremely cheap, but they do have a noticable impact on your success in-game.
3. Don't use many different kinds of runes. You don't want your champions to be 1% better at everything, you want them to be 10% better at a few, more important things!

Another mastery to abuse is

I get

The first item I like to buy is a

Boots, boots, boots... every game is different. If you feel you need more DPS, get




Once you get

During mid game, you'll want to upgrade your Sheen into a

Also, I suggest you try upgrading that Chainmail into the

If your team is doing well, keep buying offensive items, I suggest


If your team is not doing well, you should anticipate on that by buying items like


Other items you want are Potions and Wards. Potions are incredibly useful to turn the tides in a teamfight, especially in mid game. I suggest getting either green or blue potions, or both. You should keep the map warded at all time and you're pretty much guaranteed a victory. Co-ordinate with your team to be sure you're not the only one buying wards.
I'm going to clarify something now. You can rely on Sheen for Irelia's damage output. On lvl 18, a Trinity Force will make her inflict 112*1.5=168 extra damage every two seconds (Sheen proc cooldown) and you can add her crit chance and true damage to that. So even when having only a Trinity Force as an offensive item, she does significant damage.




The reason I ignore Q is because it doesn't add as much to a figh as W and E do. Q is nice for farming, but it eats mana and using R for clearing a minion wave is much better. R has a low cooldown anyway.
The reason I don't focus on maxing a certain skill ASAP is because that would hurt Irelia's potential. Maxing E leaves her without proper DPS and maxing W leaves her without proper crowd control.
If you're getting dominated in your lane, you should prioritize W over E, because with W, you can regain large amounts of health in a short amount of time. You will want at least one point in E to punish players trying to dive you. If someone dives you, let him attack you once. Then run back a bit to get him closer to your turret, then Q towards him, followed up by a fast E for a nice stun. Then attack him until he dies. Now hope he ragequits.

During the laning phase, you should use this skill to last hit minions you can't last hit with a normal attack. When two minions have low health and you can't last hit both of them, kill one with a normal attack and quickly use Q to last hit the other one. When farming, make sure Q is never on cooldown, since it refunds 35 mana if you get a kill using Q.
To start a gank, use Q to initiate.
In teamfights, you can use Q to increase your mobility. For example, when the enemy team has a Nunu and he uses his ultimate




In the laning phase, when you only have 1 or two points in this, it's only good for proccing Sheen and dealing a bit of bonus damage (which isn't bad). Only use this skill on enemy champions and for healing.
In teamfights, when this skill is at a higher level, you want to save this skill for taking out armor stackers like Malphite and Rammus. Although it's also nice to kill squishies faster, I feel it's better used against tanks, because killing squishies shouldn't be a problem anyway.

In the laning phase, use this skill to turn fights for first blood in your favor. This skill is best saved for when you have lower health than the enemy, because then it will stun instead of slow. If you feel the health gap between you and your enemy is too large, feel free to use Q to dash towards him, use E so he gets stunned, then run back. Repeat if necessary. Equilibrium Strike is also great for stopping people from ganking you. Because of this skill, it's pretty safe for Irelia to scout and to facecheck bushes.
In teamfights, use this skill to disable the enemy carry as much as you can (if you didn't kill him already). Another, more defensive way to use this skill is to disable the enemy attacking your carry/supporter.
Because of Equilibrium Strike, Irelia is one of the few characters who is comfortable when having low health. It's a great way to turn 1 v 1 fights and tower dives around, in your favor.

Your ultimate can be used for many different purposes. Since it has a very low cooldown, I like to use it to clear minion waves fast.
Secondly, I use this skill to regain health even faster than Mundo does. Just stand in front of a minion wave and fire all charges at the minions. Because I focus on resistance instead of health in my item build, I'm able to restore more than half of Irelia's HP in a couple of seconds.
Another way is to kill low-health enemies who are trying to run away. R has a large range and it doesn't interrupt your movement, so you can use it while attacking someone else.
My favorite way of using Irelia's ultimate is to activate it and shooting a blade every two/three seconds to proc Sheen. This way of using her ultimate is the reason why even an Irelia with 4 out of 6 tanking items still does a large amount of damage.


I define two groups of summoner spells, ego spells and team spells.
Ego spells:





Team spells:








Ego spells are spells that mainly benefit yourself and therefore don't have a large impact on the game. Team spells benefits both you and your team and tend to have a huge impact on the game if used right. Idealistic as I am, I want to pick what my team needs. I suggest you do the same. ;D
Irelia is classified as an assassin, I think that means she can burst down an enemy really fast.
The way to optimize her burst damage is by using an AP build on her. Again, Sheen is her core damage item. Upgrading Sheen to Lich bane will have her do mindblowing burst damage.
EDIT: Since patch v1.0.0.113

Greater Mark of Desolation. You might be building an AP build, but auto attacks enhanced by Lich Bane still do physical damage.
Seals:

Glyphs:

Quints:



In the utility tree, the most important masteries I pick are






The next item is, of course,

Back when

If you have over 1600 gold at this point, see if you have more than 5 stacks on your Mejai's. If you do, go ahead and save up for (or buy) your Lich Bane. If you don't, buy the Needlessly Large Rod first. The reason you should do this is the following: it's useless to upgrade Sheen to Lich Bane if you don't have AP. When you don't get AP before buying a Lich Bane, chances are you're doing the same amount of damage as you would with a Sheen.
Now you have a nice amount of AP, we're going to utilize that even more by getting a

Next, we upgrade that Needlessly Large rod you got earlier into a

If your enemies managed to survive long enough to make it to late game, you are now about to finish the game. After you got your

The last item I used to get was a


I use this item build to maximize Irelia's damage output. I don't get any survivability items because you really shouldn't need them. With Flash, Irelia's speed, passive and lifesteal (ultimate) you should be able to get out of just about anything. If you fail at this, sell your Mejai's and get a







As you could have seen before, I choose


Another useful spell to escape from a gank is

When destroying towers, use your ulti, E and W to proc Sheen to make towers melt, this works incredibly well with AP Irelia.
You can use a low health creep to cross a large distance in a fraction of a second by using your Q skill, use this to gank or to escape a gank.
When you're in a teamfight, stop the enemy from killing your squishies by using E.
When you're in a teamfight, kill the enemy squishies first.
When you're in a teamfight, prioritize killing squishy carries over killing squishy supporters.
When someone in the enemy team is legendary, kill him.
When someone in your team is legendary, protect him with your life.
Keep enemies from farming.
Farm whenever you can.
Don't get ganked.
Gank.
Updates (dd/mm/yy):
05/03/11: Added AP Irelia build, updated Other Hints&Tips and Summoner Spells for AP Irelia (how to use CV).
16/03/11: patch v1.0.0.113.

18/03/11: Switched the item order on AP Irelia. Mejai's can now be bought earlier because the AP ratio on

06/04/11: Switched back to comment-to-vote. I noticed too much downvotes and none of them actually felt the need to say why. This should fix things.
23/04/11: Switched from Long Sword to Doran's Shield as a starting item. Updated several general things because of recent patches.
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