TENATAKILL! A Guide to Illaoi.
Greetings fellow summoners! I previously wrote up a short guide for urgot (will post link at the bottom for those who are interested) and I'm back again with another guide. This one is to keep everyone in motion, to avoid stagnation. I'm of course talking about 
.
The general purpose of this thread is not only to help out those who might be interested in her but struggle to play her, but also to increase player knowledge when fighting against her. All too often I see players complain about her but they don't even know what her abilities do! So let's try to fix that!
Let's focus on her abilities first, then we will move on to strategy, items, masteries, and runes.
Illaoi's damage is all front loaded into her tentacles. Her passive reinforces this the most. She spawns tentacles periodically whenever she is near a wall. These tentacles will attack in a line at any nearby target she Ws or if a champion has their spirit pulled out near by. All tentacles also have 2 health and give 5 gold on death. These are some of the most important things to protect as an illaoi player. They are your damage, your bread and butter.
Q is a straight forward line shot, that heals you a bit if you hit an enemy champion. Good for wave clear and early game use.
W not only resets your autos, it enhances your next one to do a small jump to the enemy, do more damage, and force near by tentaclds to attack your target. This can also be used for wave clear in the right positions and will cost less mana than Q.
The more complex parts of her kit which I see a lot of misunderstanding on are her E and R. Her E is crucial to land. This is how she will not only win trades, but also full on fights post 6. At rank 1 25% (+8% per 100 ad) of all damage done to the spirit is dealt back to the enemy champion. If they out run the zone or let you destroy it, they will start spawning tentacles for you for a whole minute, and they will automatically target the enemy! Velkoz would be jealous guys! They can stop spawning tentacles if they kill three of them however, so defending these new tentacles is still important.
Her real threat in her E though is her synergy with her R. The spirit lasts 1 second less (starts at 10 seconds, you get damaged as illaoi subtract one second from the total time remaining.) every time the champion who had their spirit pulled damages illaoi, which encourages people to fight her. But as an Illaoi post six, you want people to engage on you due to your lo mobility and lack of CC. An enemy spirit counts as an extra champion when in the range of your ult.
Illaoi's ult spawns tentacles around her for every enemy champion hit, they attack faster, and reduce her W cd to two seconds. During her ult, Illaoi wants to spam W as much as possible. These tentacles will die when the ult ends and they can't be targeted.
Phew, that is A LOT to read, and I haven't really gotten into detail about what this all means! But you can bet I'm going to try my best to explain it!
Essentially, pre level 3 illaoi isn't too dangerous because she does not have access to all her spells, name she won't have her E yet. If she grabs your soul pre six, do not be afraid to fight her. She will have the advantage, however not fighting her will almost certainly lead Illaoi to an easy lane phase as you take free damage and spawn tentacles for her.
Post six the strategy changes. You want to try to conest spirit grabs but never all in her. She wants you to all in, and she honestly handles ganks really well. She can't run, but the more champions around her when she ults, the better for illaoi. If you are fighting her and she grabs your soul, fight her but be ready to run. Bait out her ult, because once it is gone she is at a serious disadvantage.
As an illaoi player, make sure to have good ward coverage. If you have your E and ult both ready and you see the enemy jungler about to gank you, it is often wiser to not run, but fight. Grab a soul and ult as they close in on you followed by an immediate W. Not only will you get heales a lot, but you will do massive damage to your enemies and likely kill them. Illaoi is almost impossible to gank without heavy amounts of CC or range due her insane damage from hitting multiple enemies with her ult.
With this in mind, as an Illaoi player I often split push most of the game. I get tons of CS, and the enemy laner will need either two or more people to help them out, or they have to be able to fight me alone and win. Having only one person gank (especially if they lack a lot of CC) often just means another free kill for her. Your W can also be used as an extra auto against turrets to make them die faster. The main thing to keep in mind, as long as you get a kill, you are doing your team well. Sending a single person to help often means they will be too low and need to base, or one (or both) of them will die. This allows your team to get objectives for free since the enemy will be down a player to contest (4vs3).
Now, sometimes you can't always split push. This does happen, and it makes things more difficult but it is still possible to win in this situation.
As illaoi, I almost always use flash as a way to get ito the fray, rather than escape. If we have another tank who engages, and I follow up with flash ult on multiple enemies, we will very likely win that fight. For this reason, I always try to upgrade my boots with the distortion enchantment for reduced teleport and flash CDs, as well as movement speed.
One of the main misconceptions I've noticed about her is people believe she is a tank. This is not true. Illaoi is a Juggernaut and is there to soak up some damage while dishing it out. She has less utility than Darius as far as tanking goes due to no real way to engage and no CC. You will become tanky, but you are never a purely a tank as her. Keep this in mind when you play her, that you will often have to rely on others to start team fights for you.
"Okay Lazy, if she isn't a tank how come she can soak up do much damage?!" I hear your hypothetical question. Much of that comes from the sustain her tentacles bring (each hit on an enemy champion goves her 5% of her health back) as well as her items, so let's move on to that!
A full build Illaoi is a scary force to be reckoned with. Here are my usual items of choice.
,
or 
,
or 
,
,
, and finally either 
or 
.
The main issue I've come to understand with his build is gold costs. If you ever fall behind too much, it can be daunting to come back and be relevant to the game. I stand by these choices as working best on her however, especially . This item reduces how fast you are taking incoming damage (giving your tentacles times to smack your enemy and heal you) as well as giving you sustain in everything you do, cdr, and raw AD so you simply hit harder.
The rest of the build helps you become tanky, gets you to a perfect 40% cdr, and helps you stick to the enemy when it is time to slam down on them.
As for her Masteries, I am the black sheep of the community and I go 12/18/0 for Stormraider's Surge (not thunderlords!!!).
I'll give you a moment to laugh at me before I continue.
Okay. Now that that's out of the way, I have a very specific reason as to why I choose that mastery over any of the others. Fervor of battle just feels meh on her due to her very low auto rate (thus low on hit damage) outside of her ult W spam. Deathfire touch you would need a lot more AD and to hit spells almost all the time to make this a choice worth considering in the first place.
I don't go into the tenacity tree because I lose out on too much damage (at which point, while it might work, why play her instead of another champion?).
The real kicker is why I don't use Thunderlords. "Lazy, you're dumb! It adds more to your burst!" Well random person who thinks I'm dumb, the reason why I don't use it is because in reality it doesn't help much for her. Often, most champs are going to die whether you have it or not if you pull off your ult properly, and the other major reason is because it can proc on spirits. This is bad because for most of the game, champs who's spirits you have pulled will only take about a 3rd of the damage you do to the spirit. Thunderlords damage isn't exactly the highest on her anyway due to her most optimal builds. Let's say at level 3 you grab a soul. You wail on it with your 100 or so AD to make the math easy (you will likely have less). Thunder lords procs and you do almost 33% of that damage back to the enemy champion.
30 + 30% of of 100 is 60 magic damage. Quite a bit at level 3! But they only take 33% of the damage cause you happened to proc it on a spirit. The enemy takes only 19.8 damage, so essentially 20 extra damage and thunderlords is now on CD. This really doesn't get much better as the game goes on either, the damage becomes almost negligible in a lot of situations unless you are very lucky.
I choose due to the low cd (10 seconds) and how easy it is to proc during your ult or any other trade. It gives you sticking potential with 40% more move speed and 75% slow resist. I've found this to be much more useful than any of the other options honestly.
Lastly, runes. I go 9 ad marks, scaling armor seals, scaling mr, and flat armor quints. There are plenty of options that work here such as flat armor seals and AD quints. I leave that up to personal preference, I like the extra late game tankiness to stay in frays longer.
I hope this guide is helpful to everyone. I'll elaborate more on any questions that are asked. Currently on phone about to head home, but I'll be around.
As promised at the start, a link to my 
guide for those who are interested.
See you on the Summoner's Rift everyone!
