Can we define her identity? Her kit is all over the place, tanky, dps, fighter, burst assasin or something? Is she supposed to be early game champion or late, because neither seems particularly impressive to me. Even her core items (trinity), does not seem to fit her that well, attack speeds nice, but relatively long cds compared to other triforce users like jax or udyr. She seems like a weaker fiora in almost every sense, no matter how I look at it.
RenanRein3 votesShe's a diver with dueling potential. Unlike xin, wk or camille who dives in the enemy team and isolate targets or disrupts the enemy team with Cc, Irelia is a more single damage champion who need windows of opportunities to enter in the fight. Everyone who plays Irelia enjoy her playstyle with single target damage and dueling potential. Her main gameplay characteristics are her dash reset, her equilibrium mechanic (skill has a bonus effect if used on someone with more hp than her) and her synergy with attack speed (heal and true damage on hit). She's very versatile, can be builded more tank or damage (which is a good thing, because makes her very flexible). She's more early/mid game because her true damage doesn't scale with level, only with the skill level. And trinity is perfect for her. Procs her Q, more attack speed for the true damage and her ult allows her to use the sheen passive 4 times.
Ralanr1 votesA pain in my ass.
ProtestantCaesar1 votesIrelia is supposed to be a Diver. Divers, like Assassins, try to kill the enemy team's squishy targets, but Divers are tankier than Assassins and don't have as much ability to escape as Assassins do.
She may have longer cooldowns than Jax or Udyr, but one of her abilities has 4 casts, each of which can give her the Spellblade buff, and one of her abilities resets each time it kills a minion.
Trinity Force is also core on her because of what it does. Some people have complained that Trinity Force as a single damage item makes champions deal too much damage. That's what it's supposed to do, though. Trinity Force gives a lot of damage that doesn't scale well with anything else. That's great for a Diver whose only defensive abilities are a bit of healing and a conditional stun. She'll want to build Trinity Force, maybe one other offensive item like a Blade of the Ruined King, and then defensive items.
Vęrtęx1 votesYes she is a weaker fiora, but you could argue she is better against ranged because she was designed to counter them.
Asayake 5150glow1 votesShe is definitely not a weaker Fiora.
Irelia is a Diver. What are Divers, you ask? Champions who like to dive onto the backline and do a shit ton of burst, then sticking around to tank and DPS off a kill or two.
Irelia in particular is a heavily single target diver. Almost all her damage is single target, meaning she's very good at eliminating that carry early on in a fight. There are other divers like Wukong and Jarvan who are AoE, and when not build heavy damage, often cannot kill a target as quickly, however the majority of their damage is also AoE or multitarget.
Irelia also has decently high DPS with ult and W, as well as a fairly low cooldown E. This makes her into an above average duelist, allowing her to splitpush decently (although not amazingly due to lack of waveclear without Titanic) and go head to head with tanks. However, this is not Irelia's main purpose - she's an above average duelist, but not an amazing one. She lacks the tools to fight skirmishers when on an even gold and XP level (although when ahead she can definitely fight them), or even some other divers, who are the ones she'll usually be up against.
Now Fiora is very, very different. She is primarily a splitpusher and is a terrible teamfighter. Trying to get onto a carry with that low range of a dash is absolutely impossible unless facing a terrible team, or unless flanking against a slightly less terrible team.
Even if Fiora gets into a teamfight, she's not looking to tank up any damage, like a Diver is. Her main priority is dealing damage, and her survivability is pretty shit. Putting Irelia and Fiora both in the middle of a teamfight - not only does Fiora have a harder time getting there, and will probably already be half health, she also lacks the defensive stats to survive more than a second.
Fiora is an amazing duelist who can go head to head with almost the entire champion pool. She also wins via statcheck over a large amount of bruisers and tanks, similar to Irelia, although Fiora generally outstatchecks a wider range of enemies. Fiora, however, also does have the tools to fight other skirmishers.
55976771DEL21 votesShe's a fighter. I don't like using new diver class but whatever. Her best scale is mid game and after that she falls hard if she doesn't build more ad.
Nowdays you need to go more damage with her, trinity > full tank isn't working anymore.
