Welcome, my dear readers, to my guide for Irelia! I am Vynertje and I will hope to tell you why and how you should play her!

At the moment you are reading this, the update to season 4 has just gone live and I didn't have the time to majorly update the guide yet. However, the cheat sheet has been updated to the changes. The update should be done before the beginning of the official season!


I would like to point out shortly that I am not a native English speaker and I will have made errors from time to time, please don't give me a hard time for this. Finally, please read the full guide! The cheat sheet is nowhere representative to the full guide, so please read on!

A huge shoutout to fellow Mobafire community YayaFTW for making me an awesome set of banners, line dividers, signatures etc! Thanks mate!

Feel free to skip this - I just want to give my credentials for people wondering if I am 'allowed' to tell them how to play Irelia.




I am fresh Diamond 5 player and Irelia has been my most played champion throughout season 3. While my ratio's aren't that impressive, I have played tons of games while testing around different builds and I believe I found the best build out there.




You can check my lolking for my most recent stats. If you ever have some questions, you can drop a comment, PM me on mobafire or add my secondary account (vyn3rtje) and I will get back to you as quickly as possible!

Also, check out my stream! I try to stream Irelia games regularly!

Pros [+] Relatively hard to itemize against [+] Little counters in lane [+] Will get super tanky while not losing out on damage [+] Good scaling into lategame [+] Super mobile with Phage

Cons [-] Generally weak before level 6-9 [-] Can be mana hungry when playing aggressive [-] Depends quite a bit on Hiten Style [-] Equilibrium Strike is not a reliable stun [-] Better nerf Irelia!

Irelia is a very versatile top lane champion who is really hard to beat in lane and has only few counters. Her sustain and true damage on Hiten Style allow her to be really hard to itemize against: While enemies need burst to kill you, they will get blown up if they don't build defensively themselves. The only item to **** her up in lane is a Sunfire Aegis. In late game Irelia will still keep the potential she has in lane to annihilate enemie squishies while being a tanky monster. On top of that, she is really mobile because of the combined strength with the Phage and Bladesurge refreshes.

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Sadly every great champion has downsides as well. For Irelia, her main problem is her early game weakness. Her levels 1-6 or even 1-9 are really weak and if she falls behind in this stage (for example, because of ganks), she can get ****ed up really hard. On the other side, if you get the lead in the lane, you have to be somewhat careful not to waste all your mana because Irelia can be really mana hungry because she needs all her spells for damage. Finally, her damage is not really reliable because she needs Hiten Style to be on. Meanwhile, Equilibrium Strike is not a guaranteed stun which makes it somewhat hard to use.

Attack damage marks are my standard choice. I go for these because they help last-hitting greatly and are good in early fights. They also make you less reliant on Hiten Style.

This is a suggestion some other people gave me, but I don't like them. While they work really well with Hiten Style, it makes last hitting (especially under the turret) really hard which is something I don't like. Also, they are quite useless when you don't have Hiten Style up for use.

Armor seals. No alternatives. In all seriousness, armor seals are just so good that it is not worth picking anything else, arguably on any champion but definitely for Irelia.

Magic resist glyphs are the standard glyphs of choice. This is because there are just no good alternatives that actually give good stats that benefit Irelia. In my build, I always go for scaling mr. I believe that most AP champions need time to ramp up, just like the runes; Irelia can usually sustain through their damage even without flat MR, and once the enemy gets some levels, you'll have your scaling runes overtake the flat runes in rating.

Flat magic resist could be picked if you feel like some specific AP top champs are giving you a hard time, examples might be Teemo or Elise. While I don't prefer these, they are perfectly fine if this fits your playstyle a bit more.

With the rise of lifesteal quints on AD carries, I started to play around with them on Irelia as well. I really like them because they synergize quite well with her ridiculous sustain and autoattack damage. These completely remove the need for a Vampiric Scepter which is quite nice as well because Blade of the Ruined King is not a core item anymore. I usually only go for two lifesteal quints because Irelia has quite low base AD. I fix this by adding one more AD quint.

As I mentioned, I pick one of these to make the low base AD. The reasoning behind this is that Irelia should be played defensive in the early levels, which usually forces you into last-hitting under your turret. The extra AD will help you out a little bit because otherwise you will need to spam your Q to last hit everything. If you don't have lifesteal quints for some reason, you can grab three of these instead.

For our masteries, I usually run a typical 9/21/0 setup, going for a healthy balance between offense and defense. Overall it reduces your early damage taken by quite a lot and Tenacious offers you a ton of extra tenacity to stack with Ionian Fervor and Mercury's Treads. You can also choose to take Relentless over Reinforced Armor and one point in Resistance .



You can also opt for a 21/5/4 mastery page. This page is really good for a heavy-snowball lane, in lanes you should be able to kill easily. Obviously the risk is falling behind with this page: this can shut you down really hard if you fail to snowball. I would spec it like this:

My preferred summoner spells are Flash and Ignite. This is quite standard and these are the best choice in about 90% of all matchups. Flash helps you escape or jump onto the enemy easier and will get you kills and save your life. Ignite helps supplement your burst, allowing for more kill potential. Ignite is also really good against large amounts of health regen in champions like Aatrox.

Exhaust is a good choice on Irelia but usually sub-par to Ignite. In some matchups it would be worth taking as a more defensive spell if you need to outlast your enemy in fights. In teamfights it is really strong as well to shutdown the enemy ADC (or marksman). Usually I don't take it because I don't need it and grab Ignite for the improved kill potential.

Ghost is a really neat spell and is overall a really good spell because the movement speed burst is huge. This will allow you to stick to your targets more easily which on its turn allows for higher damage output. I would not recommend taking this instead of Flash, but it could be a nice addition next to flash, instead of Ignite. This would be useful against kiting enemies like Teemo top or blue Ezreal.

Skilling priority: > > >

I personally believe W-E-Q max is the best way to level Irelia. Hiten Style is your main damage output so that should undoubtedly be maxed first. After W, I like to max Equilibrium Strike because the two second stun is really strong in a 1 versus 1 scenario. In some scenario's you could max Bladesurge first, this would be because you are afraid of getting kited too much, but the standard would always be Equilibrium Strike.

In some matchups you could choose to max Equilibrium Strike, when you really need to abuse the longer stun duration and damage. The only matchup that comes to mind would be versus Jax, to counter his Counter Strike.

Passive: Ionian Fervor

A truly awesome passive! This gives tons of tenacity based on the amount of enemies in range. This, combined with Mercury's Treads and Tenacious renders you nearly immune to any crowd control, which fits Irelia extremely well for her anti-carry role.

This passive is extremely good in team fights, because you should always hit the 40% tenacity because there are always a couple of enemies around you. A good rule of thumb to estimate the passive range, is that the range on Transcendent Blades is identical (1200 units).

Q: Bladesurge

Bladesurge is a medium range, targetted gap-closer which refreshes upon killing a unit. This also stacks with on-hit effects like Sheen, Wit's End but also Hiten Style.
While the spell seems quite straight forward, there are a few tricks that can be applied to make great use out of it.

First of all, this can aid last hitting. If you fail to last-hit a minion, you can simply dash to it and kill it. The cooldown refreshes and you regain some mana, so it is not a waste. If you lack damage to last-hit under the turret, you can also do one auto-attack followed by a Q immediately after the auto-attack.

Probably the most important trick is to use the refresh most effectively to kill your enemy. When you are both somewhat equal on HP and you want to stun him, you cannot Q onto him because then you'll be higher hp and you won't get the Equilibrium Strike stun. The trick is, to Q on a minion dying next to him to get the refresh, and THEN stun him. If he uses a spell to get away like Flash, you'll be able to use Bladesurge to dash to him again.

Some more tricks will be described in the Special tricks chapter!

W: Hiten Style

Hiten Style is pretty much what cuts your meat for you. This is what makes Irelia stand out from all other bruisers. The passive gives great sustain which is quite cool, and activating the spell doubles the sustain and makes your auto-attacks deal true damage on-hit for 6 seconds.

Because of the on-hit damage, attack speed is one of the most valuable stats on Irelia: More attack speed means more free true damage. Just don't overdo it by stacking 2.5 attack speed.

Keep in mind that because I max this first, we are really reliable on this spell. After the spell is on cooldown, you should back off because your damage output really drops without it. The 9 seconds you won't have it available are a window for your enemy to fight you, so be weary of this.

This spell can be used to last-hit under the turret as well, this is generally better than spamming your Q for each minion because the mana costs are a bit lower.

E: Equilibrium Strike

Equilibrium Strike is your crowd control. This fits quite well with your kit because it is a single target stun: based on blowing up a single high-value champion.

It is quite simple, if you have a lower % hp than the enemy, it stuns the enemy. If you have a higher % hp, it will slow for 60%, so if you're trying to force a fight, make sure to use this as your first attack because otherwise it is a lot less likely you'll get the stun off.

Besides the stun, the spell actually deals quite good single-target damage.

A little note though: You should not tunnelvision on getting the stun. It is not worth trying to stay at low hp all the time just to guarantee the stun. A 60% slow is quite good nonetheless and will allow you to stick to your target as well: the only difference is that he will be able to attack you or flash away.

Ultimate: Transcendent Blades

Alright, so people have said to me that they feel like this ultimate is quite weak, but I feel like it is quite underestimated. I can assure you that this ultimate is really good. This spell synergizes really well with the improved Trinity Force, especially the 200% damage Sheen procs.

First of all, that this ultimate has a really short cooldown. That is why it is really versatile to use:

• When you want to base, quickly shove the minion wave by using your ultimate so you'll lose as little creeps as possible while you are basing. Generally it will be up again when you need it.
• Use it to gain an advantage in-lane against low-sustain enemies. When trading, just pop your ultimate to win the trade decisively. Most enemies won't pop their longer-cooldown ultimates which ends up in a won trade and will allow you to zone the enemies.
• Use it to get Q refreshes by hitting the minions till they are low enough for the reset: More on this later.

Since the new Trinity Force is really good, we can make great use of this spell. When fighting, make sure to use this spell to get the spellblade procs - so keep an eye on the spellblade cooldown (which is 2 seconds) - don't spam it blindly.

While Irelia is not a really hard champion to learn and all her spells are quite straight-forward, there are a couple of nice tricks that define a good Irelia player. I'll try to explain them in this chapter! Pretty much all of them are easy tricks you can do utilizing the Q refresh.

The footage I've added is from a bot game because I sadly didn't have my stream running to explain them that way- but you get the point. If I ever get some better footage on tape, I'll make sure to upload it immediately.

Using Bladesurge to a minion to get the stun

This one is really simple and is the basic of any aggression from your side. You simply use Bladesurge to a minion to get the refresh and to be in range to hit Equilibrium Strike. Now you may ask, why not Q to the target itself? Well, this is because it deals damage, and this will probably ruin the stun part.

Using Transcendent Blades to get refreshes

This trick is quite easy but not really used a lot. Basically, you're using Transcendent Blades to drop minions low enough so you can get a Bladesurge reset. This can be used when chasing someone or when there simply are no minions low enough for you to reset on. It is quite easy; you just need to keep overview

Juking enemies with Bladesurge

As a top laner, the enemy jungler will occasionally be looking to gank you. When this happens and you might find yourself without Flash, you can try to pull a nice trick using the dashes to get away. Simply put, you'll just try to move away from the minions that are close to dying - forcing the enemies to follow you in that direction - preferably move to a brush as well.

When your enemies get close and the minion is low hp, you dash to the minion to get away. You can rinse and repeat this if you cannot get to the right direction at first. A nice video of that is the following: (Warning: Not my video)

This chapter will explain you everything about item choices. I'll start by explaining the core build and starting items, and then go on by explaining all the situationals. If you'd like to see some items head-to-head (when to pick what item when the items are quite similar), check out the next chapter!

Starting items: all different optionals

Doran's Shield is my favorite starting item. It gives a huge amount of of health regen, health and passively blocked damage, which is awesome. The item itself is in terms of cost-efficiency quite broken so it really is a good investment - the only downside being the lack of wards and potions, but this can be covered up by playing defensively, which you should anyway. I would never get two of those like you do with Doran's Blade because the passive is unique.

In the occasion I face an AP-top that is not Kennen (He likes to auto-attack a lot so I go for Doran's Shield in this matchup), I like to get Crystalline Flask because this allows you to spam potions to keep sustained in lane. A really cool feature about this is that it also regens mana and allows you to get a sight ward - both things allow you to play really aggressively early game.

A really ballsy start which I only go for in one or two matchups: Kha'Zix and Zed. Basically, you just want to punish their really weak early-laning phase by just dealing as much damage as possible. You could get this item after buying a Doran's Shield as starting item as well for some extra early-game damage. As a starting items, the downside is obvious: You need to base quite quickly because you have no sustain and you'll be at risk getting ganked.

The core build explained

These are the four items that you want to be buying in... let's say 95% of your games. You don't have to get them strictly as your first items and the order in which can differ, but these items are definitely core on Irelia

Let's start off with the Trinity Force. This item is godlike, especially after the recent patch (3.11). Pretty much any stat it gives, works really well with your kit. The new Phage passive helps sticking to your target and synergizes well with Bladesurge, the new spellblade passive on Sheen works superbly with Transcendent Blades and it gives some attack speed for Hiten Style.

The item is really expensive but it really is worth it. Once you have finished the main item itself (which frankly costs 3 gold), you have a HUGE power spike which should allow you to 1v1 pretty much anyone in the game.

Moving on in the build, Mercury's Treads are a nice addition as boots of choice. The tenacity stacks with Ionian Fervor and Tenacious which pretty much renders all crowd control useless on you. Also, since the core build is quite low on magic resist, this is a really nice addition as well.

To round up the core build, we have two defensive items: Randuin's Omen and Guardian Angel. These are two more items that have really good synergy with Irelia's kit. First of all, the Randuin's Omen is a great item to shut down the enemy AD carry a bit more. Besides giving tons of armor, the passive and active are a MS/AS slow which is great. The Guardian Angel is an item that disencourages enemies to focus you and allows you to dive their backline fearless. It also gives some cool magic resist so you won't completely be without any.

Defensive optionals

Frozen Mallet is a great item that works the other way around, comparing it to a Phage. Instead of speeding you up, it slows the enemy down. Basically, it helps a lot against kite-heavy enemies. The downsides on the item would be that the item isn't good at all before you have the 3.3k item itself finished. Also, the attack damage might not be the best stat for you.

Spirit Visage is the only magic resist item I would ever recommend. You get some good magic resist and health, but the real power of the item is the 20% cooldown reduction and the 20% healing increase. Quite awesome to couple with Transcendent Blades and Hiten Style. I would not get this item early on, if you want magic resist in lane, a Wit's End is a better choice.

Sunfire Aegis is the item to get whenever you need armor in lane. The damage is really good in the early to mid game and is actually a quite good zoning tool. When having a hard lane, this is usually my first item (sometimes vs Darius, Garen or Jax. The combination of armor and health is really effective if you only have an AD lane opponent to deal with. In teamfights, a Randuin's Omen is clearly superior to this.

Frozen Heart is a great armor item as well. It is more of a team-oriented item versus multiple auto-attack reliant champions. 20% less attack speed is huge if you consider that this will come down to a huge damage reduction to pretty much all of your team. Since Irelia is not such a great champion to get team-oriented items on, I usually skip this item and let my jungler or support get it. However, when you are facing a full-ad composition and there is nobody buying the item, you can get it instead.

Thornmail is pretty much the selfish version of a Frozen Heart. Instead of reducting damage taken, you'll be a big threat considering you're dealing damage whenever they attack you. Also, the item is a lot cheaper to get (only 2.2k which is very little). It is up to you if you want selfish damage or a damage reduction aura for your team.

Ninja Tabi are a great choice to get, even though I get Mercury's Treads in 90% of my games. Ninja Tabi are ******edly cheap boots and give incredible stats. 10% damage reduction from auto-attacks and 25 armor is super good when you are facing little crowd control or when you are having a hard lane. When I get this, I usually get Zephyr to make up for the lack of tenacity.

Offensive optionals

There are only little items that I mention in this part - that is because there are only little offensive items that give attack speed for Hiten Style while not giving useless stats like crit chance. Anyway, the offensive items that I consider as worth considering are the following:


Blade of the Ruined King used to be a great first item on Irelia, but has been nerfed a couple of times so it definitely is not core anymore. It is still really good nonetheless, it gives a nice balance of attack damage and attack speed, and lifesteal. On top of that, the active is cool to prevent enemies from kiting me. Because of all of these niceties, I usually get this as my second offensive item of choice.

Wit's End is a good item when you are facing heavy AP teams, or when you are having a hard time versus an enemy AP top. The item is really good, the on-hit damage and the attack speed combine really well with Hiten Style because this is on-hit as well (again, this gets applied on Bladesurge). The best thing about this item is the price: for 2.4k you get a decent power spike versus AP's.

Zephyr is an odd choice, I barely ever see this being built but it is really good. The item is somewhat similar to Blade of the Ruined King in that it both gives attack speed and AD. However, instead of on-hit damage and lifesteal, you get tenacity, movement speed and cooldown reduction. All these stats are really powerful, so get it if you like the added MS and CDR. I would always get this as offensive item if you choose to go for Ninja Tabi.

Ravenous Hydra is a relatively rare item for Irelia, I myself didn't use it until recently. Basically, the item is surprisingly good if you want to split push a lot. Since Irelia lacks waveclear except from her ultimate, you can use this to clear waves a lot faster and the extra AD is good as well to take down turrets - keep in mind that on-hit effects like Wit's End and Blade of the Ruined King do not work on turrets so flat AD is the way to go if you want to splitpush.

So now you know about the ins and outs of all the item optionals, but what if you don't know when to get what item, and why? Well, this chapter is the solution for you: I present to you a couple of dilemma's in which I will explain what item you should grab in what scenario!

The first dilemma: What defensive item to get?

Defensive itemization is one of the most important aspects into building your character. Below is a flow-chart of a couple of defensive items. Even though it might be really basic, for people who have little idea of this subject it can be of great help!

In short:

• Guardian Angel if you need both Mr and armor
• Spirit Visage is the only and best Mr-only item for Irelia
• Thornmail against auto-attack oriented teams ( Tryndamere top, Xin Zhao jungle, Zed mid, Caitlyn ad etc)
• Sunfire Aegis is best bought in lane phase for the extra damage - it doesn't scale at all
• Randuin's Omen outclasses Sunfire Aegis in teamfights and should be bought in mid to late game.

I did not mention Frozen Heart for simplicity's sake: I'm only buying it in about 1% of my total games anyway.

The second dilemma: What offensive item do I get second?

This is a less complicated one, so I am going to keep it a bit shorter.

Standard choice: This would be Blade of the Ruined King, just because it is such a well-rounded item and because the active is just really good.

Only swap this out for something else if you have to change your defensive itemization if:

• You are facing a heavy AD top and decided to get Ninja Tabi - then get Zephyr
• You have to itemize more strongly to counter magic damage, then get Wit's End

Lane phase is really important for Irelia and that is why I decided to dedicate a chapter to this. Irelia depends quite a lot on items, and lane phase can make or break your game.

So, first of all, it is really important to farm a lot. In most matchups, you want to play defensively and let the enemy push till at least level 5, in some you will want to wait till level 6-9. This is because Irelia's damage scales on levels, so you'll need some levels in Hiten Style before it deals good damage.

Especially important is, when you did not start with a ward, to strictly last hit minions. In the current meta, junglers start on their bottom-side buff, take their second buff and gank top (sometimes mid but usually top) immediately after hitting level 3. At this point you will usually only be level 2, so if you are overextended at this point, you are usually dead. Dying at this point of the game can set you really far back, especially in experience.

When farming is concerned, your goal should be to get 100 cs in 12 minutes, and 200 in 25. Farming with Irelia is quite easy because you can use both Bladesurge and Hiten Style to aid your last-hitting.

A second important thing is to be flexible with your build. Don't go full damage when you are having a hard lane, grab a Sunfire Aegis if you are having a hard time versus someone like Garen or Darius, you can also grab Ninja Tabi against some to aid your defense early game, whilst not committing to a really expensive item.

After lane phase has ended, you have a choice to make: Do I go and play as a splitpush champion, or do I help out my team?

Both have their advantages and disadvantages so it is important to know what you are doing.

Splitpushing is pretty much keeping pressure on a lane (usually top lane since that is the lane you start in) at all times, forcing someone to come to your lane to stop you. Now this is nothing special. However, imagine you can one versus one anyone in the game and come out on top: now they cannot only send one guy top, they need to send someone else top to help out - if they won't, you can kill your enemy, take a turret or both.

This allows your team to grab objectives because they are 4 verus 3 (or less) - ranging from a free dragon to baron or inhibitors.

Really important is, when split pushing, to buy wards to make sure you won't die when they gank you and then fight your team 5v4 anyway.


On the other side, you can help out your team by teamfighting 5 versus 5 - you might prefer this when:

• Your team cannot handle 4 verus 4
• You cannot 1v1 everyone on the enemy team
• You are so clearly ahead that it doesn't make sense bothering to splitpush
• You cannot rely on your team to force objectives when they send 2 man top, or to hold their line in 4 versus 5.

For teamfights, your role is to kill the enemy back line, preferably with the help of a tank among the likes of Vi or Jarvan IV. In teamfights, just combine your damage with theirs and blow up some really important targets like the enemy marksman.

Important is to choose your targets correctly. Ezreal is really hard to catch so you might prefer killing a squishy Brand, but if the Ez has 20 kills, you do want to prioritize him.

This chapter will explain some of the most common top-lane matchups for Irelia and explain how you should play them, things you should be aware of.

The chapter will be finished soon™ (when I am not as lazy as I am right now). Uploaded the first part already so you guys can give me some feedback on the layout :)

Difficulty:6

Aatrox is an annoying matchup because of his revive passive, but overall you should deal more damage than him. His sustain is a bit stronger than yours so try not to trade too much. Overall he is really weak without his passive so if you can get his passive down, you should have his number for a couple of minutes. Make sure to not battle him when you don't have ignite - even though you have superb damage, he might sustain through it and turn the fight. Get Ninja Tabi as well, it counters a huge chunk of his damage!

Difficulty:5

Darius is an annoying matchup as well but he is quite easy to beat. First of all, never let him refresh his passive stacks: If he gets one or two stacks onto you, just back out because if he refreshes those, the damage starts being ******ed. Secondly, Darius is really easy to babysit. He has no escapes and usually auto-pushes a lane. If you can survive the first levels (up to level 7 or 9) you can usually beat him by winning trades: he has 0 sustain. If you're having a hard lane versus him, I recommend getting a mix between health and armor - preferably a Sunfire Aegis, but Warden's Mail into Randuin's Omen works as well.

Difficulty:6

Elise is a really even matchup and can go both ways. Basically, if one sides starts snowballing, there is no way the other can do anything to stop it. I would say that if you manage to stay equal with her, you should be able to beat her after level 6. Basically, you have more all-out damage and she has poke. You want to stay as safe as you can and once you get a few levels and/or items, you can try to fight her in an all-out fight. Just keep in mind that elise spikes really hard when she gets Haunting Guise and Sorcerer's Shoes - so it might be recommendable to get double Null-Magic Mantles: you can build one into a Wit's End and the other into Mercury's Treads later on.

Difficulty:3

Fiora is a somewhat worthless champion but don't underestimate her. Fiora will usually try to counter your aggression by using Riposte so try to bait her to use it and then quickly stop attacking - it only lasts a second or two (You can use Equilibrium Strike to back off safely - but it does reflect Bladesurge). But since most people max this first, this really drops her damage output. Get Ninja Tabi and outburst her because she is super squishy. Be wary of her ultimate though: Don't dive!

Difficulty:2

Gangplank is quite an easy matchup. I could summarize this matchup in one sentence: He can't kill you, you can kill him. Just outsustain his poke damage and all-out him all the time (obviously, as goes for all matchups, after a few levels). His oranges have a quite lengthy cooldown, so try to abuse that as well. Just go HAM on this guy.

Difficulty:7

Garen is probably the most annoying matchup because there is little you can do against him in lane. He is super tanky, has some sustain through his passive and deals quite a lot of damage early on. Basically, against a Garen you just want to keep farming as much as you can and hope the jungler will come to help you. If you stay even with him throughout the lane, you have practically won because his late game is just plain bad. It would be recommendable that when you are having a hard time, you build a bit more defensive, preferably through a Sunfire Aegis.

Difficulty:8

**** this *****. **** him. You can beat him early on through outplays (stun him when he activates Counter Strike, back off to evade the stun and when that is on cooldown, fight him), but if he stays equal with you for 15 minutes he has practically won. At this point, he can 1v1 you easily. Simply put: don't pick Irelia in this matchup. If you end up facing him anyway, keep in mind that a Warden's Mail is really effective because a lot of his damage comes from attack speed.

Difficulty:5

Jayce is really annoying but if you play this by the book, you can easily beat him. He will try to stay at range and poke you down, but he is really squishy so he is easy to beat once you get up to level 6 and have a couple of items. When you want to battle him, it is really important to use the Bladesurge refresh to get in range to stun him, because otherwise he will just combo you and knock you back with no return. Also, keep in mind that his transform has a cooldown, and this renders him vulnerable if he is stuck in ranged form when you jump him.

Difficulty:5

Kennen versus Irelia is the same as against Jayce. He mainly is annoying to play against but if you stay safe early on you can blow him up really easily. The only difference is that Kennen has a really powerful ultimate which can kill you if you engage at the wrong moment, so make sure to stay healthy. If he doesn't go for any defense, you can one-shot him after some levels. The only problem is that he can get away really easily with Lightning Rush. Mind one thing: even though he is a magic damage champion, he will be autoattacking a lot early game - so start with Doran's Shield.

Difficulty:7

Lee Sin is a hard matchup in the meaning that you usually cannot beat him one-on-one. His attack speed slow on Tempest / Cripple means that your damage output will drop to a level that you cannot one shot him - meanwhile, he will outsustain you if he builds the way he is supposed to ( Ravenous Hydra). Anyway, he usually won't be able to kill you unless you misplay it and he falls off quite hard going into late game. The only risk is him shoving the wave and roaming to mid,

Difficulty:6

The Lissandra matchup is relatively rare but one of the most annoying to face. Annoying, but not particularly hard. Basically, she will be a ***** because you cannot all-out her early on and she will poke you down really hard, but once you get level 6 you can easily fight her. The problem usually is that she can disengage really easily and can put herself in stasis through Frozen Tomb which is annoying. Make sure to only use Bladesurge on her when she uses Glacial Path to escape. Mercury's Treads early game are good too.

Thanks to my dear readers for checking out the guide! I hope you all have a great time playing Irelia with my build! Constructive criticism is always nice to get, and I try to reply to comments asap.

I'd like to give credit again to YayaFTW for making me an awesome set of banners and signatures, also credit to anyone who has given me advice over the past amount of time!

Have a nice day and good luck on the Fields of Justice

2013-09-25: Uploaded the guide
2013-09-28: Added the first part of the matchups
2013-11-11: Updated some matchups and added Ravenous Hydra to the build.