Welcome to the League of Legends Champion Spotlight featuring Irelia, the Will of the Blades.
Bladesurge is her first ability. It’s a single-target blink strike dealing physical damage and applying on-hit effects.
If it kills the target, the full cooldown and part of the mana cost is refunded.
Hiten Style is a passive-active ability. Just by learning it, Irelia will heal after every attack she makes.
When activated, it adds bonus true damage to her attacks.
Equilibrium Strike is Irelia’s third ability. It’s a short-range single target nuke that normally slows her target, but if Irelia is more damaged than her foe, the spell will stun instead.
Irelia’s Ultimate is Transcendent Blades. After activating it, she has a few seconds to shoot four daggers which hit enemies in a line.
These daggers also return health to Irelia based on their damage dealt.
Finally Irelia’s passive is Ionian Fervor. When she is near enemy champions, crowd control effects like slows and stuns are shorter.
Our special guest designer is known as Ezreal, who was in charge of Irelia’s development.
We started off wanting a melee dps who could strive in our current ‘anti melee’ meta game. Thus, we gave her heavy defensive abilities which could transition to heavy offensive abilities.
For instance, Hiten Style used to remove her life gain when it went on cooldown so the player would have to make the choice between defense and offense,
and Transcendent Blades used to provide a flat Armor & Magic Resist boost for each blade she had so using her blades would cost her defenses.
Both of these were neat conceptually, but the costs were so high that they hindered the player’s moment to moment choices.
We decided to move her to more of a Fighter Assassin who could survive a team fight.
This is accentuated by her resilience to disabling effects provided by her passive as well as her life gain from both Hiten Style and Transcendent Blades.
Also, I’m a big fan of item choices impacting playstyle, so we made sure that Irelia had multiple build options.
For example, Irelia becomes an amazing chaser by purchasing a Frozen Mallet, a great burst assassin by going standard damage items,
and my personal favorite, Irelia can become a LifeSteal Tank by getting Spirit Visage and either Attack Speed or LifeSteal Items.
I set up Irelia as a jungler. I have attack speed everywhere except flat armor seals, with 21/0/9 masteries, Smite, and Ghost.
I open up with an Elixir of Fortitude and five Health Potions. For your jungle pattern, take out the wolf camp with Smite and use Hiten Style to clear the Golem camp as well.
Immediately run to the enemy Lizard camp, but run around the far side because it’s safer if your enemies use wards
and you have the possibility of ganking the opposing jungler depending on his pattern.
This jungle pattern should allow you to gank top lane by 3:30 with a slow from Lizard and a stun from Equilibrium Strike, with Ghost available as well.
If you’re laning with Irelia, and for the rest of your item needs, just follow the in-game Recommended Items.
Finally, for my skill build, I max Hiten Style followed by Equilibrium Strike, with one point in Bladesurge.
Irelia is a very deadly champion. I run into the enemy jungle to find Udyr, and when I do, I’m able to kill him in a direct 1v1.
However, the difficulty with ganking enemy junglers is that their teammates are closer than yours.
Though I kill Udyr and dodge Corki’s first missile, I fail against Lux’s Lucent Singularity, giving her the Golem buff.
It bears repeating that when a teammate gets ganked on your side of the map, you should immediately come to help.
While I would have been able to 1v1 Udyr, Corki’s early arrival means a death instead.
One of the strongest points to any melee champion is dueling a ranged one.
For a champion like Corki who relies on skill shots, always juke in between attacks when the skill shots come off of cooldown.
Additionally, if we rewind, note that I run away from Corki while he’s casting Gatling Gun and duck into the brush just to completely screw up his movement predictions.
Once Valkyrie is down, I know that I can jump on him and crush.
Positioning in a teamfight is extremely important. Noticing my teammates grouping up on the ramp, I take the long way around so I can hit the squishy targets in back.
One of Irelia’s main strengths is controlling and sticking to single targets, so I force Lux to flash, pick her up when she comes back in, and jump immediately to Miss Fortune for the double kill.
Let’s show off some more tricks. Bladesurge into an immediate Equilibrium Strike gives me a stun,
but the major point is how I move between attacks so that I can be in front of Lux for when she recovers from stun.
Unfortunately, Frozen Mallet Udyr just barely keeps me out of range for the follow-up, but without his help I could have taken her down even through Light Binding and Lucent Singularity.
For those times where you’re having trouble sticking to an enemy, Transcendent Blades will come in handy.
Because shooting them doesn’t affect your movement, it’s a great finishing skill. Even though Corki flashes and I’m rooted, I finish him off
and later with Miss Fortune I get her after she Flashes and uses Make it Rain as well.
Thanks for tuning into the Irelia Champion Spotlight. I encourage you to use Irelia against your enemies, because “They will not prevail.”