Experienced Illaoi player's thoughts on her current state, and suggested changes for Illaoi

Hi everyone my name is Marshian, i'm a Gold 3 Illaoi main with 133k mastery points with her and after playing her so much I've really gotten a feel on why she is struggling so much right now. Now before you just comment that my rank is trash and i have no idea what i'm talking about let me at least say that while that maybe my rank is trash, i at least have a good sense of game balance, and if there is one thing i know about league of Legends it's Illaoi. Illaoi is by far my favorite champion and if it weren't for her release last year, i defiantly would have already uninstalled League a long time ago. My arguments in this post is that currently, Illaoi needs too perfect a circumstance for her to be successful, which will be my main point through out this argument. Now let me throw out there that this post is not a cry for buffs because i think she's too weak or something. I think she's in an OK spot right now, but really struggles to do her thing past laning phase if she's not fed. This post is more about highlighting Illaoi's strengths and weaknesses and suggesting some shifts in her power that would better complete her fantasy as a character, stop her from being such a lane bully early, and then help her from being about as useful as a potato later on.

For starters i'm going to go through illaoi's abilities one by one, and argue some changes that will be centered around these 3 points

1. Lower the damage on each singular tentacle, but in turn increase the amount of tentacles that Illaoi has at her disposal
2. Give Illaoi some breathing room in turns of the windows of opportunity she has to pull off great plays.
3. Increase the fantasy of Illaoi bringing a God to smack the crap out of the enemy.

Illaoi's passive, Prophet of an Elder God is fine how it is, Sometimes i wish the player had a little more control over the tentacle spawn as sometimes in laning phase a tentacle spawns in an awkward spot, and you are stuck with it until it's destroyed. Maybe have it where Illaoi can stand over it for a good amount of time (like a Rek'Sai tunnel) to destroy them if she wants to or maybe channeling on them for a few seconds, but that's just me nitpicking. What i do want to look at in this passive is the tentacles themselves, currently i think its the raw damage in the tentacles that keeps Riot from increasing the amount you have access to, or how easy it is to get them to swing. So if they lowered the damage of the tentacles individually, i think this will give riot some room to implement some of the changes that will make her a lot better mid and late game, and increase the fantasy that Illaoi brings. TL;DR Tentacles do less damage individually, Illaoi can destroy them if she wants

Illaoi's Q, Tentacle Smash is a pretty basic trading ability that doesn't need much tuning. However, there is something about it that i find pretty lackluster and that is its effectiveness when you ult. By far illaoi's prime time to fight is when she Ults, and any experienced Illaoi player will tell you that there is really only two buttons you wanna be pressing after you ult and that's E to get spirits out, and then after that it's all about spamming that W. You only really use your Q to snag off any low health stranglers, but for the most part if you're trying to Q while your Ult is active, more than likely your're actually lowering your damage output and your healing dramatically. So i suggest that while your Ult is active, make it that hitting an enemy champion with your Q also commands your tentacles to swing. This may need some tuning, like making it where it only works against vesseled champions, or only on spirits or something like that but i don't think its too drastic a change especially if you remember my proposition to lower the damages of the tentacles. This Q change might be too much even with the tentacle changes, so it's OK if they weren't implemented i was just brainstorming ideas to make it more interactive with the rest of her kit. **TL;DR Fine the way it is, maybe have it cause her tentacles to swing at champions during her ultimate **

Illaoi's W, Harsh Lesson is a perfectly fine ability and i don't think it needs any significant changes. Maybe some nerfing or buffing depending on how these other suggested changes affect her. TL;DR Fine the way it is, maybe some slight tweaks with these other changes

Illaois E, Test of Spirit is the most imporant ability in Illaoi's kit when it comes to failing or succeeding with her in games. This ability is the difference between laying a tentacle smack down on people and making them regret the decision to ever gank you, or you just ulting and dying without having accomplished anything. You NEED to land this ability before you ult to make vessels out of the enemy and so your tentacles that spawn from your ult have a guaranteed swing before you even start using W. For such an important ability, the ability is very easy to miss, and if you do miss it you almost make your ult useless. I can't tell you how many times i've started to get surrounded by enemies excited to lay down the tentacles, only to miss my E and then sigh knowing that there was now no chance in hell of me doing my Illaoi thing after that, so maybe a LITTLE increase in the width or range of it would make it a lot more forgiving. I see how this may make her laning phase even more oppresive so maybe, have the E range get bigger as you level it up. Next, lets talk about the vessel portion of the E. After the patch 6.9 changes to it, it has indeed become a more useful debuff. I've found way more people get hit by it now as they don't get such a big warning in between tentacles. However, what riot did not think about when they made these changes was the big nerf this was to her already weak late game team fights (and how it removed her cool voice lines that she had for her vessel :( ). Illaoi already has a hard enough time making big plays late game, but at least with the old vessel duration, you could get 2, 3 people into a vessel and then get a good flash ult play to really destroy their team. Now, because the duration is only 12 seconds, it is incredibly hard to make use of the vessel in terms of getting big ultimates off. I think the vessel duration should be increased to maybe 30 seconds at least to give Illaoi a window of opportunity to actually make use of the debuff. TL;DR make her E a little easier to hit later in the game, make the vessel duration longer again

Illaoi's R, Leap of Faith is where she gets to shine the most. It is what allows her to 1v3 people and get away with a triple kill and a good amount of health, but here's the problem with it. For your ult to be effective especially outside laning phase, the PERFECT set of circumstances must present themselves. You need to have a few people vesseled if possible (which the 6.9 changes made even harder), land your e before the ult to get another tentacle to spawn, and count on the ensuing fights to take place around wherever the tentacles spawn. Here are some changes that i think will lessen the burden of Illaoi having to get the perfect set of circumstances (which most are out of her control) to be successful. My suggestion is that as you level your ult the number of tentacles that spawn per person should increase, and cover a bigger area than it does right now. This would reward good illaoi ults that manage to get multiple people late game, because unless the enemy team really screws up and stays grouped up around Illaoi's tentacles zone of death, all they have to do is get away from her tentacles and just kit her to death. Also, as far as her fantasy goes, the coolest part of playing Illaoi is managing to get like 5 tentacles around you murdering everything in sight, imagine if you could get 10 tentacles all around the river to have at your disposal. Not only would this look likes she's bringing this ancient god on the rift to fight with her, but would compensate for the fact that Illaoi has 0 opportunity to set up a bunch of tentacles later in the game, leaving you only with the few tentacles that spawned when you ulted. TL;DR Make more tentacles spawn in a bigger area late game

Now that i've discussed her abilities individually, lets talk about her very weak late game team fights and how these changes would help with her current problems. Right now Illaoi has two choices later in the game: Look for a good flash engage on a grouped up enemy team (which more often than not just leads to you dying unless you're fed af), or try to stay in the back with your squishies to protect them and wait to get engaged on ( which is the ideal thing to happen). Here's the problem with that, when the enemy's Zeds, Yis, and Malphites come diving at your back line, they're not thinking "Oh let me stay by my Illaoi so she can keep the enemies in her Ulted tentacles zone." They're just running away trying to gtfo of their, when fights move around like this (which they always do) Illaoi can't keep up. She needs the fight to take place in one exact spot, but that's just an unrealistic thing to expect in late game team fights. In her Champion Spotlight, they say that Illaoi "dominates huge areas of the map," but that's just not true right now. Right now she really only excels at being a big lane bully, and then dominating an area about the size of raptor camp. Illaoi currently, is a champ that sort of relies on her enemies not knowing what to do against her, or not knowing what she is capable of doing if given the right circumstances, and now that shes been out for almost half a year most people know how to handle her outside of laning phase. TL;DR Illaoi's job in late game teamfights is currently very awkward, giving her access to more tentacles would help fix this problem

Please respond with any questions, comments, or criticism that you may have. I believe these changes will help Illaoi better embody the fantasy of bringing a Kraken God to the rift, and better balance her to be less oppressive in lane, but way more useful later in the game since she will no longer have to wait for the perfect set of circumstances to do her damage.