Irelia guide by Irelia? Inception!

Runes
- Armor Penetration Marks/Attack Speed Marks
Armor pen is taken here in order to deal more damage with bladesurge and your auto attack when Irelia's hiten style is in cooldown. Attack speed is here is to help auto attacking when your hiten style is active.
- Armor Seals
Armor seals helps in tanking damage by your opponent harrassment during laning phase
- Magic Resist per level Glyphs. I believe there is no other seals better than armor seal now for a solo top bruiser.
The magic resist glyphs is used mid game when you are still building your trinity force. It helps taking damage during dragon fight or some small skirmishes while helping your team that got ganked.
- Attack Speed or Health Regen Quintessences
For attack speed quints its the same reason as Red marks. Health Regen here helps when your enemy harrass you a lot and you need that extra hp regen to stay longer in lane. Attack damage quints may looks nice to use but you dont need it to farm because your q is enough to be used to farm as long as you have a good mana management skill.

Masteries

9/21/0

Offensive
- Summoner's Wrath 1/1
- Brute Force 3/3
- Alacrity 4/4
- Weapon Expertise 1/1

Defensive
- Resistance 1/3
- Hardiness 3/3
- Durability 4/4
- Veteran's Scars 1/1
- Evasion 3/3
- Initiator 3/3
- Enlightenment 3/3
- Honor Guard 2/3
- Juggernaut 1/1

21/9/0 is possible for irelia too. It depends on how you wanted to play her. I prefer 9/21/0 because she can tank more damage and Juggernaut effect is just too awesome if stacked with irelia's passive


Items
1. There are few option here.. You can start with cloth and 5 red pots/regrowth pendant and 1 pots/doran shield. Start with cloth and 5 pots if your enemy is a good harrasser with a good amount of damage he can deal for example gangplank. Regrowth pendant is for a fast philosopher stone and it helps in staying lane longer. Doran shield is packed with extra hp armor and regen early game but it can be considered a waste of money since your core item will be delayed and you can't buy any pots to come into the lane. For newbie doran shield is recommended

Your core build will be different depending on your playstyle a trinity force or wits end. There are few builds on Irelia. Its either a burst playstyle of Irelia with Trinity force or an attack speed oriented with wit's end.
I personally prefer burst irelia

Summoner Spells
- Ignite
Ignite here is to help to deals more damage in your combo. Early game some kills is good for extra gold
- Flash
You don't need any explanation for this

Alternative summoner spells
- Teleport
Teleport here is good as well to help ganking your btm lane or to help in dragon's fight.
- Ghost
Ghost is a nice substitute for flash.

Skill build
1. w
2. e
3. q
4. w
5. w
6. r
7. w
8. e
9. w
10. q
11. r
12. e
13. e
14. e
15. q
16. q
17. q
18. r

For your combo it should be:
E > activate W > auto attack 2-3 times (3 times if you are using you attack speed rune) > Q. If your opponent is low use your R to finish them off.
Alternative combo:
activate W > Q > E > auto attack 2-3 times. Finish them of with R if they are low.

Why i prioritize to max e over q? Thats because every 1 level of the skill it adds 0.5s to the stun or slow that you can give to your opponents. 2s stun makes a big difference in team battle. Imagine you stun enemy's annie to prevent her from burning your whole team down or you stun xerath with your e to stop him from raping your ashe.


For laning phase it depends on who you are laning against.
Try to find an opportunity to always harrass your opponent if you think that your burst should win the enemy's burst. Or else your role will be just farming in lane. If you can't handle your opponent at top lane try to ask for a good gank from your jungler.

For mid game
Your role here is soak damage from your opponent and assassinate your opponent's team squishies. Try to always get close to enemy ad/ap carry and burst him/her down.
Always be ready for a dragon fight because dragon is one of the important objective in a game. 190 gold to the whole team is just pure loads of awesomeness.

For Late game
Your role here and in mid game is still the same. Taking damage from your opponent's team and lure them to use their skills on you so they don't have anymore skill to spam to your team. If you got the chance, burst your opponent's team squishies down.


Feel free to comment and ask questions. IF there is anything wrong my apology since we are all still learning here

Special thanks to Kadamode because i used his guide structure since i'm too lazy to do this

This is a good guide on how to play Irelia. The only thing I would disagree is maxing e over q. Yeah, the stun would be longer, but to me, maxing q over e is better since it would lower your q cooldown, which give Irelia the mobility she needs during teamfight. Having 2 secs stun sound good in paper, but its only a single target, conditional 2 sec stun,which would be shorter against champ that build merc threads. Plus, Irelia Q resets her auto-attack timer. Thus having a lower cooldown of Q would maximize both her mobility and overall damage output.

Thanks for your reply... I still personally prefer maxing e over q
with the mastery enlightenment it already reduce my cd by 8% which is a lot for irelia so reduced cd for blade surge is not really needed. Q cannot turn the tide of the battle but E can. And E is good in 1v1 as well.
And also dont forget that early game most champ will get armor first instead of mr
E is dealing magic damage while Q is dealing physical damage which is reduced by armor.
E per level increase its damage by 50 while Q only increase by 30.

Irelia wrote:

Thanks for your reply... I still personally prefer maxing e over q
with the mastery enlightenment it already reduce my cd by 8% which is a lot for irelia so reduced cd for blade surge is not really needed. Q cannot turn the tide of the battle but E can. And E is good in 1v1 as well.
And also dont forget that early game most champ will get armor first instead of mr
E is dealing magic damage while Q is dealing physical damage which is reduced by armor.
E per level increase its damage by 50 while Q only increase by 30.

Well I see your point there. But hear me first. First of all, enlightenment mastery is per lvl cdr reduction ,its not flat, so you wont get that 8% cdr until you reach lvl 18. Anyway, having 8% cdr is like, only reduce your Q cd by 1.3 sec if you only take your Q at rank 1. Having a rank 5 Q will give you like, a 8 sec cdr. Secondly, when you need to decide whether you need to max E or Q first, it will be during the mid-late game phase. During the early game, you will max W over anything. Thirdly, yeah, E deal magic damage, but don't forget that you don't have any magic penetration to make sure the damage from E is at its max. While its true that most peole will buy more armor than mr, but in the masteries and runes that you use, you have flat armor penetration and % armor penetration, which would negate some of the armor enemy have. As I said earlier, Q resets your auto-attack timer. if the situation is right, after every auto-attack, if you use Q, you would probably have 3 auto-attack+damage from Q in your damage output. Add to that, you will be able to use your Q every 6 secs without cdr, thus maximizing your mobility and teamfight presence.

Each people's oppinion about team presence are different. For me with my build im already dealing enough damage and CC is good to turn around a losing battle into a winning battle. Can you possibly stop an annie from raping your team by bursting her to death in 1s or below 1s? The answer is no... You need to do some AA in order to burst her and that gives her enough time to do her job... So yeah 2s CC is more important. It is simply not situational since when you dived into enemy's formation you already taken some damage and your hp will surely be lower than your target. And by doing that enemy already wasted some skills on you which they will regret it later. Q is simply needed to dive into enemy formation. You wont be moving that much in a battle... It is not a 1v5 skirmish. It is 5v5... One does not simply care about just doing damage... Having a good 2s CC contributes more imo...

let's see the pros and cons of Q VS E first.

Q First

Pros:

- Free Flash (?)
- Makes you a very sticky champ, as in you will seriously stick to them like glue
- Awesome farming speed (refreshes on kill! Umad, slow farming enemy?)

Cons:

-lower damage output than E in terms of burst and DPS
to help illustrate this, lemme take a standard Irelia stats:

Q scales of Irelia's attack at a rate of 1:1. I'ma use a standard lvl 6 Irelia stats. se starts off with 53.3 attack damage and +3.3 every level. This will bring her to a total of 69.8 attack damage. Provided you max Q first, which will lead you to something like so: Q - W/E - Q - W/E - Q - R. This means, at lvl 6 u will have 3 levels at Q. This will bring your Q stats to around 10 secs cd, 80 (+ 69.8 + 18 (if you take phage and didn't take sheen or any other ad items) damage. This means, a standard harrass will lead you (provided you only use Q) with a total of 87 (auto attack) + 167 (Q) + 87 (auto attack) + (if you got the time and life) 87 (auto attack). This brings you down to a grand total of 428 gross damage (without armor penetration or armor taking into account) over the span of 2 seconds. However, bear in mind that this will expose you to a few hits yourself and with champs like GP, Talon and WK that are kinda crafty and like's to run everywhere or blink here and there, it's not certain you can land the subsequent 2 hits.

E scales of Irelia's AP at a rate of 0.5. By right, unless building a sheen, irelia's 0.5 ap will usually be unoticable. HOWEVER. let me do the same maths as above: MAx E first till lvl 6 = E - Q/w - E - Q/w - E - R. This will lead you to an E that has around 180 magical damage with a 1.5 sec stun and a 8 sec cd. So.... provided u build Phage and yada yada yada as per above: your damage output shall be as so: 87 (auto Attack) + 180 (e) + 87 (auto Attack) + 87 (auto attack). This brings you a grand total of 441 gross damage (without armor pen, magic resist and armor taking into account).

First of all, you will notice that Maxing E over Q is a slightly better damage output option (did i mention E reset's the attack timer too? ZOMG!!) by 13 damage (imagine a free long sword damage). Not to mention they will be stunned or slow for the duration of the skill giving you a pretty safe chance of not getting any hits while harassing. In the short run, you'd be saying "Pft!! Bitch Please... 13 damage aint worth shit!" but in the long run (of about 5 mins or more) You will get an extra 10 (because standard harass is 2 times per minute) x13 = 130 damage with little to no retaliation!! Which means they won't be attacking you back while you get some free auto attacks in. This means, you get 'safe' attacks in when you harrass. Now imagine you take your W first instead of E, this means a few more extra true damage while they are standing there doing the trollface herp derp cause they are stunned.

- Puts you in danger cause the enemy may retaliate by blinking, or using other skills to avoid being continuously attacked.
- Q is only the best choice if you are building a pure ad irelia.

E first

Pros:

- higher burst or dps damage
- more utility in it's stun/slow giving you more freedom to run, or extra hit without receiving any hits in return.
- Low mana cost and CD than Q

Cons:

- you need to know when to use it properly, else it will be a waste.
- somehow some people tend to use it on minions by mistake. MINIONS I TELL YOU!!
- scales off of AP which kinda is lame considering you won't build AP irelia.
- unless you attack after skilling, the skill is wasted horribly.

So yeah.... that is my take on why you should take E over Q unless you are building an insane AD build.

Irelia wrote:

Each people's oppinion about team presence are different. For me with my build im already dealing enough damage and CC is good to turn around a losing battle into a winning battle. Can you possibly stop an annie from raping your team by bursting her to death in 1s or below 1s? The answer is no... You need to do some AA in order to burst her and that gives her enough time to do her job... So yeah 2s CC is more important. It is simply not situational since when you dived into enemy's formation you already taken some damage and your hp will surely be lower than your target. And by doing that enemy already wasted some skills on you which they will regret it later. Q is simply needed to dive into enemy formation. You wont be moving that much in a battle... It is not a 1v5 skirmish. It is 5v5... One does not simply care about just doing damage... Having a good 2s CC contributes more imo...

While what you say is true about having 2 sec CC, what do you think if the enemy team just ignore you, since you won't be delivering enough damage to actually kill Annie or they will just simply, peel you off Annie. Since your Q will be in 13 sec cd after that, you won't be able to stick with Annie like you would have been if you have rank 5 Q. You also need to factor that it's really hard to actually stun a good AD and AP carries since in teamfight, they will be practically unreachable, and try to kite you around. Without having a rank 5 Q, you won't be able to stick to any enemy carries to actually be a presence. Irelia specialty isn't in the amount of CC you can get from her E, rather the ability to stick to carries and being so hard to be peeled off the carries. Her passive and her Q give you that presence during teamfight. To me, duration of CC is actually pretty overrated. The only thing that you need from hard CC during teamfight, is just the instance where you stop the enemy champ from moving so that your team can focus that champ. If you aren't putting enough overall damage output alone, no matter how long that CC will last, that Annie will never die, since when you dive into the enemy team formation, both of their carries should be way behind their jungler for your team to actually make use of that 2 sec CC. And to me, solo top job is to have the maximum damage output while being tanky, since the job of initiating and giving CC to the enemy carries should be the main job of your jungler. Your job as Irelia should be engaging after that, dealing a lot of damage while being tanky and hard to be peel off their carries. Which is what mobility in teamfight means as Irelia. I guess the way we play Irelia is different, in what we define Irelia role to be. So I will rest my case here. Have fun playing Irelia,she is a great champ ^^ . It's have been a long time since the last time I played her. Been to busy learning how to support jungle, which is the role if you are doing it right, you will get 100 cs, 2 or 3 kills in 30 minutes.

Papa Norren wrote:

let's see the pros and cons of Q VS E first.

Q First

Pros:

- Free Flash (?)
- Makes you a very sticky champ, as in you will seriously stick to them like glue
- Awesome farming speed (refreshes on kill! Umad, slow farming enemy?)

Cons:

-lower damage output than E in terms of burst and DPS
to help illustrate this, lemme take a standard Irelia stats:

Q scales of Irelia's attack at a rate of 1:1. I'ma use a standard lvl 6 Irelia stats. se starts off with 53.3 attack damage and +3.3 every level. This will bring her to a total of 69.8 attack damage. Provided you max Q first, which will lead you to something like so: Q - W/E - Q - W/E - Q - R. This means, at lvl 6 u will have 3 levels at Q. This will bring your Q stats to around 10 secs cd, 80 (+ 69.8 + 18 (if you take phage and didn't take sheen or any other ad items) damage. This means, a standard harrass will lead you (provided you only use Q) with a total of 87 (auto attack) + 167 (Q) + 87 (auto attack) + (if you got the time and life) 87 (auto attack). This brings you down to a grand total of 428 gross damage (without armor penetration or armor taking into account) over the span of 2 seconds. However, bear in mind that this will expose you to a few hits yourself and with champs like GP, Talon and WK that are kinda crafty and like's to run everywhere or blink here and there, it's not certain you can land the subsequent 2 hits.

E scales of Irelia's AP at a rate of 0.5. By right, unless building a sheen, irelia's 0.5 ap will usually be unoticable. HOWEVER. let me do the same maths as above: MAx E first till lvl 6 = E - Q/w - E - Q/w - E - R. This will lead you to an E that has around 180 magical damage with a 1.5 sec stun and a 8 sec cd. So.... provided u build Phage and yada yada yada as per above: your damage output shall be as so: 87 (auto Attack) + 180 (e) + 87 (auto Attack) + 87 (auto attack). This brings you a grand total of 441 gross damage (without armor pen, magic resist and armor taking into account).

First of all, you will notice that Maxing E over Q is a slightly better damage output option (did i mention E reset's the attack timer too? ZOMG!!) by 13 damage (imagine a free long sword damage). Not to mention they will be stunned or slow for the duration of the skill giving you a pretty safe chance of not getting any hits while harassing. In the short run, you'd be saying "Pft!! Bitch Please... 13 damage aint worth shit!" but in the long run (of about 5 mins or more) You will get an extra 10 (because standard harass is 2 times per minute) x13 = 130 damage with little to no retaliation!! Which means they won't be attacking you back while you get some free auto attacks in. This means, you get 'safe' attacks in when you harrass. Now imagine you take your W first instead of E, this means a few more extra true damage while they are standing there doing the trollface herp derp cause they are stunned.

- Puts you in danger cause the enemy may retaliate by blinking, or using other skills to avoid being continuously attacked.
- Q is only the best choice if you are building a pure ad irelia.

E first

Pros:

- higher burst or dps damage
- more utility in it's stun/slow giving you more freedom to run, or extra hit without receiving any hits in return.
- Low mana cost and CD than Q

Cons:

- you need to know when to use it properly, else it will be a waste.
- somehow some people tend to use it on minions by mistake. MINIONS I TELL YOU!!
- scales off of AP which kinda is lame considering you won't build AP irelia.
- unless you attack after skilling, the skill is wasted horribly.

So yeah.... that is my take on why you should take E over Q unless you are building an insane AD build.

Oh lol papa norren. The cons about Irelia Q that you talk about only applies IF you are maxing E over both Q and W. We are talking about what to max after W, which will happen during the mid-late game phase, where those crafty champ you mentioned won't be able to be as crafty during laning phase. And the pros of E having lower cooldown than Q. The fact is, at max rank, Q have 6 sec cooldown, while E having 8 sec cooldown. Plus, using E also have a long animation to perform, at least longer than Q. Anyhow, you talk about E having more burst damage than Q. You do know that Irelia doesnt have any magic penetration to make use of that damage. While with Q, you will have your armor penetration AND % armor penetration from your masteries and runes. And E 'doesn't' reset your auto-attack timer. Your auto-attack timer will just be reset naturally during the stun duration, while Q, after you perform an auto-attack, use Q, you will be able to auto-attack once again without any delay. With a rank 1 E, you will still be able to perform combo that you mention. It just that when you are maxing Q over E, you will be able to do that AND stick to their carries. How many times do you think you will be able to freely auto-attack someone after using your E for 2 secs in teamfight? That is why to me, maxing Q is better than E since it will give you the ability to stick to that carries and deliver more burst and instant damage. If you force them to flash,and the enemy team focus fire you, you will also complete the other role of tanky dps. Which is to soak alot of damage and take attention away from your carries so they can do their job. It will still be good if they didnt,since your Q will be available again in 6 secs so you can still stick to that carries as fast as your Q is off cooldown, as opposed to having a 13 sec Q at rank 1. Again, to me, Irelia specialty is to be able to stick to their carries while not dying too easily and being so hard to peel her off since you have her passive and Q. That is why its better to max Q than E.

Ah... In the later parts of the game, Q will always be superior than E, cause E is a utility device. However early games, i'd suggest W>E>Q

Just explaining.

Of course maxing E first!

i always uses Q for farming and getting close to enemy to cast E..

actually u just need to reach enemy onces... ur E have very fast cooldowns. means u can keep casting E over and over again.

And of course, lower mana cost!..

I max Q last! lol..

oh.. forgot to mention that

This is a extremely good guide for irelia.. ^^

Good job irelia! ^^

anyone who doesnt trust in this guide.. should go play against Irelia using Irelia then u will know

I have played against her Irelia. Super aggresive solo top Irelia during laning phase o.o . Got ganked alot by my jungler

hahahahhah...
when did u played against me?
i never even rmb you
i stop playing irelia long time ago and someone said he played against my irelia before
no joke

Irelia wrote:

hahahahhah...
when did u played against me?
i never even rmb you
i stop playing irelia long time ago and someone said he played against my irelia before
no joke

Maybe a month ago, dont remember since I rarely go top nowadays, but yeah I have played against and with you. I played Jax at that time. And the 2nd time I dont really remember, but you rage alot. Oh yeah, and you also duoing with 1 more Sanct player.

lol? a months ago i didnt play irelia solo top anymore
and fyi ur irelia win rate is 41%
so we know which one is better
and fyi again
i never duo with another sanct
are you sure you meet me in ranked?
there is not even a jax player anymore that i see

Irelia wrote:

lol? a months ago i didnt play irelia solo top anymore
and fyi ur irelia win rate is 41%
so we know which one is better
and fyi again
i never duo with another sanct
are you sure you meet me in ranked?
there is not even a jax player anymore that i see

Oh lol, what I do remember is that it was a few days after Jax remake, since that is the only time I played solo top Jax. And yeah, I remember your name as Sanct.Irelia since you use Irelia. And haha, looking at win rate is really funny. Irelia was actually my first champ that I use for ranked, where I didnt even play more than 3 games with her in normal before I start. I just straight use her and learning at the same time. The half of the game I played with her was fun. Then the 2nd half began, where I actually starting to meet trolls in ranked. Anyhow, Im not sure if you duo Q with him or not, but yeah, there is the same Sanct player in both game.

hahahhahah... idk... i can only rmb good player
dont rmb seeing ur name around
no offense

Irelia wrote:

hahahhahah... idk... i can only rmb good player
dont rmb seeing ur name around
no offense

Ah nah, it's okay. I wont remember you either if your name isn't Sanct.Irelia that plays Irelia while that champ being 1 of my strong champ. And also,that time is the one and only time I use Jax solo top in ranked, so it sticks somehow. I rarely play more than 3 games straight a day, so people will rarely see me =-=. Irelia is probably champion that I played the most in ranked. I stop using her once I start learning how to jungle and the release of Riven. Those hp pot and minion caster nerf, really shift the meta from farming lane ( Which is how I used to play her as) to a more aggresive lane meta. Don't know if its always aggresive in the higher elo at that time, but yeah, I used to just play passively with Irelia, farm, farm,farm, I hit 9, have TF, and start roaming. Well that is when I start learning about the real meta and top lane role. Maybe I will start playing her again after I finish trying all the God-tier, Tier 1 and Tier 2 jungler. LOL.

ohooooo
thats good to hear