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Who's a REALLY hard counter to Irelia

WutsKraken·5/7/2016, 5:15:30 AM·2 votes·5,738 views

By really hard I mean REALLY FREAKIN HARD

As in hard enough to the point it's possible for a gold player to actually win or go even in lane and still do well against her later in the game if she gets ahead

Why? I've got tournament game against a Diamond 2 Irelia/Riven main tomorrow. Scouting shows 300+ Irelia games this season and 400+ Riven games

The guy's Riven? Couldn't care less about, my team's decided to instaban her every game but leave Irelia open to try to shut down their ADC's champ pool to make sure our ADC wins his lane

I'm Gold, former Plat...I've always struggled vs Irelia anyway. Lose and she snowballs. Win lane, she gets fed on cleanup kills unless literally every lane snowballs to hell

Even when playing "counters" like Volibear or Darius I can win lane but be useless against her lategame as she tears me apart despite my tank stats. Nasus? In Soloque maybe I can do that. Against a coordinated team, I'll never get the farm needed to finally shut her down. And this is against Irelias my skill level

A 300+ game Irelia MAIN 2 rank above me? Jesus...what do?

19 Comments

Zane Zephyr5/7/2016, 6:21:56 AM2 votes

Nasus, rush ninja tabi and go grasp and she can't fuck with you at all

Serika Zero5/7/2016, 5:17:30 AM1 votes

ban irelia, leave riven open, play garen/echo/poppy top

u can try ryze vs irelia and zone off farm, but she is decent vs everyone or lissandra and focus on teamfights and flanks

Akali is SO HOT5/7/2016, 5:39:25 AM1 votes

Chogath Darius Garen Malphite Nasus Nautilus Olaf Olaf Olaf Olaf Pantheon

Defended5/7/2016, 5:45:55 AM1 votes

You pick Renekton... easy

The Bíg Ticket5/7/2016, 5:46:43 AM1 votes

Garen, Cho Gath, Pantheon, Nasus, Darius, Volibear, Olaf, Tryndamere.

dannykun5/7/2016, 5:54:32 AM1 votes

One thing that you might want to try doing is backing off when irelia activates her w. She only gets a short window with the true damage, and it's on a fairly long CD. Backing off is one of the best ways I've seen to stop her from winning her lane. From there just punish her for using her W with a champ who can dish a ton of damage in a relatively short area. If you know he'll chase you once he's activated W, grab someone who can kite well, and turn around and punish the chase. Darius, Nasus, and Olaf are the usual suspects, but if you need to be Magic based Lissy, Malph, and Mao punish her really well if she pursues too far.

Your only real hard counter is gonna be someone that has more teamfight presence than her, or More all in damage than her. Irelia's laning is about outlasting opponents, and her mid-late game is about taking out primary assassination targets while soaking up CC for her team. The Bigger your presence is, even if you don't win lane, the harder it will be for her to carry the rest of her team. If you have less confidence grab malph or Naut for the teamfights and just focus on not losing lane and getting as tanky as possible, if you have some confidence grab nasus or olaf and try to outscale her for impact.

LongHair Fox5/7/2016, 6:03:10 AM1 votes

You guys could laneswap since irelia needs a lot of gold. This also ensures that your adc gets farm. Beside this I find Darius Garen Lulu Malphite Maokai Nunu TahmKench Tryndamere Udyr to be good picks. A lot of them depends on how your team wants to win though (siege, splitpush etc.). Also yes that is a nunu. You won't scale well, but it buffs your adc which it sounds like is your best player and it demolishes irelia in lane very easily as long as you dont overextend and get ganked. Just build sunfire+iceborn and snowball her all the time and you should be fine. Also.... prepare for her to tilt and flame you so if this is between friends don't do it.

LiveYiOrDieHard5/7/2016, 6:06:59 AM1 votes

Probably the only champs you could use to win lane against an Irelia that far above you is with Darius or Rumble. But both of those will make you free food if their jungler is decent. So you should probably pick Nasus or Malphite or something that scales really well and doesn't lose horribly to Irelia and hope the rest of your team can carry you.

BluePolarizer5/7/2016, 6:08:09 AM1 votes

Just play Maokai or Malphite and be more useful. Or lane swap while playing super defensive long range farmers.

Baby Ghoul5/7/2016, 6:23:32 AM1 votes

I wouldn't pick Nasus. People say that's a popular counter, but Irelia can do poorly in lane and still go on dominate mid game. She's less oppressive than she once was, but a good Irelia is still deadly. While you're tied up playing farming simulator top, your team will most likely feed her while she helps her team capture towers and objectives. The damage she can do to your team mid game can easily eclipse the short power spike Nasus hits late game.

You don't want to choose Renketon because again, his early game is so oppressive, but Irelia's power spike mid game can erase everything that happened early game. Now you're stuck with a champion that isn't that great late game, and a roaming Irelia that is slaughtering everyone. Where Nasus has some hope, Renekton has none unless you're more skilled than the Irelia.

Another one I see people mentioning is Olaf, and the truth is that Olaf loses more matchups against Irelia than he wins by a big margin. I wouldn't say the lane favors him, but maybe if you're good with him.

Darius is a pick some people like to choose, but I would say avoid it unless you're good with him. You can keep her in check if you're good with Darius. Darius is one of those champions that gives almost every top laner a difficult time and isn't so restricted to the lane. He's one of those so-so matchups for Irelia. She has a lot of them that are just skill matchups.

Good picks against Irelia right now are Ekko, Trundle, Volibear, Malphite and Garen. The meta is changing rapidly from one patch to another, so these same champions might not be the best picks against her in the future. It would be better to pick a few tanky champions you're good with, and monitor her mid game power spike and dueling potential. I'm sure you know that though.

The problem with Irelia is you can win lane against her, but that does not matter. The laning phase does not impact Irelia as hard as other champions, so I try to always keep that in mind. In the age of OP releases and reworks, that's still something that is pretty unique to Irelia. It's pretty lame but good luck in your tournament.

EndlessSorcerer5/7/2016, 5:16:11 AM1 votes

Nasus.

While you may have already discounted him, you can generally just freeze the wave near your tower to safely farm up. Wither tends to cripple her ability to fight, chase or escape.

Once you have 200 stacks and Sheen (roughly 12 minutes), every Q chunks her significantly.

Olaf can be a fairly brutal match-up if the Olaf player is good. She also has issues against many tanks who rush Sunfire Cape.

TyroneWatermelon5/7/2016, 8:31:11 AM1 votes

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