Why is illaoi rarely played but so strong?

Imbetterthanmoe·Jan 7, 2019·2 votes·2,781 views

i recently played against an illaoi and because of this it brought back the hatred i have for the champ, but why is she rarely played? She has healing from tentacles, good poke with her e, massive damage from q and tenticles, and her ult is not only good for team fights but she can also 2v1 with it. yeh yeh "Just walk away when she ults" even when you do this she atleast gets one with her. She just has to target one person when 2v1ing and she will kill them almost easily because of her e slow. So does anyone know why she is so over tuned yet rarely played?

9 Comments

Moody PJan 7, 20194 votes

illaoi is a dedicated anti-tank and there's not a lot of tanks so usually you'll only see OTPs playing her right now

Hexs FortuneJan 7, 20192 votes

My experience playing Illaoi was a frustrating one.

I had a hard time pushing lanes safely with her lacking escapes. Other juggernauts have more tools for the job. walls, dash through walls/ ultimate speed boost, q speed boost slow removal/ w cc reduction
Her tentacles encourage setting up a zone rather than pushing down a lane. Pushing to tower I found myself often unable to duel with my uncontrollable tentacle spawn on cd, having popped mid way back up the lane a few seconds earlier.
Her combat damage is largely tied to her tentacles and can be reliably avoided just by walking, let alone the tons of champs with burst mobility in this meta.
Illaoi has no defensive steroids outside of her 5 percent tentacle heal. The heal really needs multiple targets to be effective and grievous wounds shuts it down completely.
Ultimately Illaoi just felt too team dependent. She exists to flash ult while her team aoe cc's. With no self imposed cc or hard engage, she is utterly reliant on others to be able to do her job. Mobile juggernauts like , and even fellow immobile juggernauts like / are more self sufficient, better at finishing off low targets and have defensive abilities that can't be shut down for 900g .

Moody PJan 7, 20193 votes

just to clarify, Illaoi's tentacles don't depend on multiple champions; one tentacle hitting 1 champ is the same heal as hitting 5. Illaoi gets big healing from multiple tentacles being put into play.

Hexs FortuneJan 7, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moody P,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5KZnGAxt,comment-id=00030000,timestamp=2019-01-07T01:52:48.895+0000)

just to clarify, Illaoi's tentacles don't depend on multiple champions; one tentacle hitting 1 champ is the same heal as hitting 5. Illaoi gets big healing from multiple tentacles being put into play.

Thanks for the clarification!

WukongMainJan 7, 20191 votes

Why is illaoi rarely played but so strong?

It is because those that are strong are rarely played.

This is because, Those that are played are the focus of nerfs due to being heavily abused. If they are rarely played it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly to change about the champion/ Or even care to nerf them since not many people play them.

Noor SakataJan 7, 20191 votes

Because there are better options , simply But I do see her from time to time in challenger elo in while watching NA streamers and people call her broken there, so she's not exactly weak

Moody PJan 7, 20191 votes

DirtyMobs is afaik the only illaoi OTP in challenger NA right now and you can see that even in challenger people misplay super hard into her. lack of experience is a big strength for Illaoi especially in the current burst or die meta

https://clips.twitch.tv/CleverCleverLEDFrankerZ

they all walk in 1 by 1 instead of dogpiling and bursting asap giving her enough time to sustain the damage and turn it around on them. illaoi success in very high elo comes from being very good at getting people to be where you want them to be and knowing how to assess your chances of success

FOR JUSTICEJan 7, 20191 votes

i mean its like trundle. if tanks arent meta, they wont be either.

PhieldworkerJan 7, 20191 votes

She is really good in solo queue especially lower tiers. She is really good at beating dive comps because she disrupts their combos. But a poke team can kite her so well. She doesn’t really have a gap closer (besides the few inches her w goes) and she has no hard cc so instead she has damage instead of utility.