Hey guys, RTO here and welcome to our Challenger Illaoi guide.
This is everything you need to know to start playing Illaoi in your own games!
Illaoi is a lane dominant powerhouse, who also excels at teamfights.
She can be rather complex to learn, but the effort is worth it.
She has decent sustain, insane 1v1 potential early game and can easily outplay 1v2 - or
more - scenarios.
Before we get in to playing Illaoi, I just want to offer my view of the pros, and cons,
of playing her.
PROS Illaoi has a very strong laning phase
She offers amazing sustain She’s extremely good at split pushing
Her AoE damage is very potent Can easy 1v9 when fed
CONS Illaoi has a distinct lack of engage outside
of Harsh Lesson (which isn’t even high range) She also has low mobility, once she’s in
the fight, she’s in for good Unfortunately, even as a melee, she has ability
cast times, giving people time to run Other than a slow, she has no hard CC, allowing
enemies to escape easier Her early levels are abusable by high elo
players.
Her pro’s massively outweigh his cons, but it is worth thinking about depending on what
match up you’re going to be going into, especially vs ranged, high mobility champions.
Now, what do we do to really play Illaoi?
Summoner Spells First off, we need to talk about her Summoner
Spells - a lot of toplaners, choose Teleport, for the map pressure it provides in split
pushing or turning team fights,.
If you’re not clued up on how to properly utilize teleport, take Ignite for lane pressure
and grievous wounds, if the enemy has heavy self healing in their comp such as - Vladimir
and Dr. Mundo.
Never forget FLASH!!
Now we have the core of Illaoi sorted, you want to be deciding what items you’re going
to be building.
You need to make conscious choices, depending on what match up and enemy team you are going
against.
Core, no question - sterak’s gage, Black Cleaver,
VS AD - Ninja Tabis, Guardian Angel, dead man’s plate
VS AP - Merc Treads, Mercurial Scimitar (also vs hard CC), Spirit visage (also for extra
healing) Situational?
death’s dance, trinity force, thornmail Make sure to check this and my many other
mobafire guides to stay up to date with the best runes and builds for her and others.
Items, Runes and Summoner Spells change often.
So we’ve sorted out what to choose as Illaoi, but..
How do we play as Illaoi?!
Illaoi’s main damage comes from her tentacles that spawn periodically.
Early laning phase, you should let your opponent push as your first two levels are rather weak.
Don’t use Harsh Lesson if it’s going to place you in a bad spot, you can easily get
chunked out like this.
Level 3 and onwards is easier, and you can start proccing your runes, and farming up
for your first item.
Let’s go over how to max our abilities - Tentacle Smash is your level 1 ability, allowing
you to farm safely from range and drop a bit of poke damage down onto the enemy, if they
stay in the hitbox.
Tentacle Smash’s passive also increases all your tentacles damage, helping you with
poke.
Keep a ward in your river so you don’t get surprised ganked.
You can use Harsh Lesson to hop over thin terrain, such as the wall separating toplane
and Gromp At level 6, you will be able to win a lot
of trades vs your opponents, and more often than not you can easily 1v2 with your ultimate,
especially in lower elo’s where enemies just stand in your ultimate.
Illaoi has two main combos to learn The first one is using test of spirit, before
leap of faith.
The spirit that spawns, counts as an additional champion and it will spawn an extra tentacle
- increasing your damage and healing.
This combo is very good in a 1v1 situation, as you’re essentially a 1v2..
Without the incoming damage.
If you’re in a 1v2 situation, this combo can help you come out successful as you have
the 2 champions, and the 3rd spirit.
The second combo is a bit more complex.
Leap of faith (Illaoi’s ultimate) has two parts to the animation.
The first half, is where she leaps into the air.
The second half is where she begins to fall back to the ground.
Between the parts of this animation, there is a half second where Illaoi is suspended
mid air.
You can Flash during this half second - only the end location matters.
You want to be able to use this combo as a teamfight starts, aiming to flash into the
enemy backline, and hitting maximum amount of enemies.
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There’s also knowing how to do as much possible damage to kill a spirit after landing your
E, and hopefully killing it.
As soon as you have the spirit, you want to instantly W the spirit.
If your spawned tentacle hasn’t slammed the spirit yet, it will queue another one,
causing two quick back to back tentacle slams.
After laning phase is over, you can choose to Splitpush or teamfight.
Illaoi is a fantastic split pusher because she can unleash a ton of damage onto multiple
enemies once she has her tentacles set.
If you are fed and use proper warding, then the enemy team is going to have to send multiple
players to try to stop you which will allow the rest of your team to take objectives across
the map.
Teamfighting as Illaoi is generally pretty easy, you just want to pop your ultimate on
as many enemies as you can, throwing out tentacle smashes and trying to get off as much damage
while increasing your healing, and if you can pop off the split second combo we spoke
about earlier, you’re going to come out on top.
Hopefully this short intro video has helped explain anything you were unsure about, as
well as being able to read the guide along with me.
We have plenty of other mobafire guides for top lane, plenty more to come and you are
welcome to catch me over on stream on facebook, and also check out some of my gameplay videos
on Youtube.
On the screen is a brand new series where I give you 60 tips that EVERY TOP laner needs
to know to climb in elo.
This is an incredible series that is extremely high quality that I believe that everyone
should watch.
Click there next!
I’m RTO, your guide through guides and I will see you in the next video!