I find her kit and stuff about her cool so I play her when I can top lane, I dominate my lane but just don't get she like does nothing in teammates besides help disengage safely.
What makes players think she is some broken champion because I don't get it.
It's mainly due to her ult. You cannot fight her when she ults not matter who you are. If you 3v1 her and she ults, she is pretty much guaranteed to get 1 kill, very likely to get 2 kills, and has a decent chance of killing all 3 of you. So trying to gank her is a nightmare. If she lands a 4-5 man ult, the fight is literally over right then and there since you have to retreat or get aced.
When she uses E, you can't even farm. You're too busy dodging tentacles and you get forced even away from your turret. Recalling isn't an option either.
She's not at all fun to play against. Pretty much every game I win against Illaoi results in her getting ridiculously fed before ten minutes and spending the first twenty minutes of the game as basically an unstoppable monster that will kill anything in her path. She typically pushes to the inhib extremely quickly.
Then she loses anyway because all I see her do after 30 minutes is randomly flash ult, usually not killing anyone and eventually dying. It's not fun just letting her do what she wants for the first 30 minutes of the game because she cannot be fought by anyone at that point, then watching her do nothing after it. And it sucks as the jungler or anyone who has roaming potential to see your laner losing to her and knowing you can't gank because that's much more likely to be a double kill for her than anything useful for your ally.
She is to fit the "juggernaut" role, which is to be a strong melee champion with low mobility. But instead, she is a lane bully as mentioned before. Her E is just very crippling and lasts too long, which by itself makes you miss at least 3-5 creeps while waiting it out killing tentacles at your turret every time she hits it. So essentially every 20 seconds she can force you out of lane, slows you to 80% and does % damage when your spirit is killed. If her E wasn't so oppressive in lane, she wouldn't be nearly as OP as people claim. For the most part though, I've only played with a few good Illaoi, and she usually gets destroyed if her ult isn't up in a team fight.
Shes a safe pick being able to farm from ranged with her one ability. She can also 1v3 when being ganked and heal a shit ton. She also has mobility even tho people say shes immobile.
They didn't have an exhaust in their team L:
That's my Fault. I take her botlane, build her tanky as crap, and starting at level two, Grab the enemy's soul and the carry and I pound the crap out of it.
No, seriously.
I wouldn't say she is broken more so than she is just not fun to play against. As others have said, it is a lot of work paying attention to her, her tentacles, lane minions, and possible ganks against you.
One thing I will say about her ult though, is with all the colors and tentacle smashing, it can feel overwhelming with all the stuff going on at the same time. Most champs have their attacks generated out of body and are easy to focus, not coming from various random angles as tentacles feel like they are every sometimes.
Edit: Her healing is deceptive with how much it can be. I think most people underestimate this.
Probably because she dominates in lane very easily and the only way to go even vs her involved an obnoxious amount of moving around and killing tentacles.
A lot of people confuse annoying or frustrating with 'over powered'.
They hate the tentacle mini-game. I personally find it really fun! If you dodge her tentacles, she tends to be much weaker than people believe.
They literally just stand there in the middle of her ult and get pounded by multiple tentacles over and over.
They only need to nerf 2 things about her
1- the delay I tenticals spawn should increase when you move farther away from her (if you are to far away for normal tentacles to be active from her the delay should be 12 seconds)
2- if she leaves the "run zone" for her E before the chosen "vessel" the spirit should vanish with no consequences to the vessel (no more E and run for the slow and vessel effect)
After that she would be fine
When she succeeds it's incredibly noticeable and flashy.
When she fails, which is more often than her successes, she still has the potential to be annoying even if she doesn't accomplish anything. Being a vessel is still annoying even if you're dealt no damage in the process.
She is really fun to play, and has potential as she's the only multiplicatively scaling champ that doesn't build crit, but she's not the best at the moment.
Well, it's a lot of things. For one, she has sustain for absolute centuries. As long as she can land her skill shots, she's going to just heal herself back up, so that's one problem people have with her kit.
Next, is her ability to rip your soul out. No matter what you do, half the time you can't stop her from slowing you and making you a vessel, so if you do survive it, you have to kill tentacles while they smack you in the mouth, that or wait out the full SIXTY SECOND DURATION, or Kill Illaoi.
Most people also underestimate the range of her tentacles when she uses harsh lesson; some people don't really realize just how far from the wall they have to be, and it can lead to some heavy chunk damage if you're not careful.
Her ult also deals way too much damage in team fights, at least for how tanky Illaoi gets. Basically a lot of her mechanics can't really be countered. What, are you just supposed to not group up for team fights and let them take your shit for free? Are you supposed to 3v5 just because if you don't her ult is going to destroy you if there are 5 enemy champions in the same general area as Illaoi? I mean, you can try to stand back, but its got a huge range. Not to mention it makes her damn near unkillable because all of the untargetable tentacles will still heal her for a percent of her missing health anyway. Also, when your soul is ripped out, what do you do??? Enage? Well, that's stupid because it does percent health damage whether she kills it or not, and is going to out trade you, if not outright kill you. If she falls behind she doesn't do very well, but usually she stays ahead if you don't camp her.
I think her rewards greatly outweigh her risks, the amount of champions that can actually zone illaoi when she lands vessel on you for more than just a second is very small. Also, she is not controlling her tentacles. She deals a shit ton of damage from something she simply does not control whatsoever. That very thing is what makes her unbelievably frustrating for me personally to play against her unless I play nasus
Her e is cancer.
Her E makes farming a LOT harder and people just aren't up to the challenge of focusing on both her E effects AND Illaoi AND the minions. She isn't too broken at all nor is she OP. People just hate the stress and focus that comes with playing against her.
They don't know how to trade. Illaoi is a terrible champion at high elo due to this since her kit relies on the opponent to not be good at trading/basic dodging.
Alright maybe it was because I build her tank but actually went an AD build with tank mixed in and holy mother of god her tentacles do a shit load of damage.
