@Beat Punchbeef Illaoi needs some serious love

Hey guys, I've been giving Illaoi a good bit of play top, and thinking a lot about the successes and failures of her design, and I think I've pinpointed why she's the least-played champion since RekSai.

It boils down to this: Illaoi's design is entirely about how Illaoi can be counterplayed, and not about Illaoi actually playing.

This is a hard problem to get around with a zone-based champion such as Illaoi, but I also think that it's a product of the times when she was created. At that time, the whole juggernaut rework was going on, and the main question being asked was "How can we make these character's conditionally strong, without just making them outstat people." And on that level, Illaoi works; she's conditionally strong, and doesn't just outstat people. But, at the same time, Illaoi falls into a big trap.

Rather than being rewarded for playing well, Illaoi merely punishes others for playing poorly.

For instance, my best play with Illaoi recently really was a game changer. My team was pretty much neck-and-neck with the enemy, and one last teamfight was really going to determine the victor here. As Illaoi, I was walking around in front of my team, trying to get in a few Q whacks and set up tentacles. And then Blitz pulled me into his whole enemy team, under tower. I had ult up, I got a 6-person ult off (yay, spirits!), and I just tanked their whole team while dealing tons of damage and letting my team completely destroy them.

And that's good: that's what Illaoi is supposed to do. She's supposed to be strong when she ends up in the middle of the enemy team with a whole ton of tentacles, and the enemy team can't burst her down.

The problem is, this play had nothing to do with my skill. Anyone playing Illaoi can press R and then randomly smash people with her W. The whole reason that that play happened was because Blitz derped and pulled me into his whole team. We thanked him profusely in /all chat.

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs] Thanks Blitz!

That little story is anecdotal for Illaoi's whole play experience, though. She's based entirely on punishing an enemy who stupidly attacks her where Illaoi will be strong.

And that leads her to be undertuned and not very much fun to play. If Illaoi were strong enough to work well when enemies _don't _make mistakes, she'd be too strong when they do. And, every instance of decision making is on the enemy playing against Illaoi, and that makes her boring/passive/unsatisfying to play.

The tuning thing explains itself, I think. Being caught out in places where she's not set up is supposed to be Illaoi's weakness, so if shes strong even then, then of course she'll be overbearing. But since she's supposed to be strong only when the enemy decides to attack her in her fortress, she feels weak most of the time.

It's the second part that's a bit more nuanced. Illaoi plays entirely around the enemy making mistakes, but it's not like she's the only champion to do that; Nidalee and Blitz and Darius all live in the same sort of space, to an extent. In fact, every champion is supposed to be built around this in some amount. But the difference between a Darius and a Nid and a Blitz vs Illaoi is that they can all force the enemy to make mistakes. Illaoi can't.

Blitz can run up to the enemy, forcing them to make guesses about how he's going to try to grab them. If you guess wrong, Blitz grabs you and you get murdered.

Nidalee can run up to you and spear you in your face in much the same way. Get hit by a spear, and get punished.

Darius will destroy you if you let him get in range, but he can use positioning and flash and itemization to mitigate that and make it easier for you to pick you out.

Illaoi will crush you if you attack her in her tentacles, but she has no way of forcing that to happen.

As long as you don't engage Illaoi, she can't engage you. The person playing against Illaoi completely controls the pace of the fight.

This is because she's so weak without a bunch of tentacles around her. It's because she has no way of slowing or stunning or stopping you from just running away from her if she does engage. It's because even her super-short-skillshot grab is guaranteed not to kill whomever she grabs, and the grabbee is the one who makes a decision whether to get slowed (oh boohoo) or to stand there and take the non-lethal damage. It's because Illaoi's range and mobility are so bad that even if she catches you out with her ult, you can just walk out of her range ez pz.

And I'm not sure how to fix it. I know some things that I'd try:

1. Tweaking E so that it's possible to deal lethal damage with it, making grabs far more important and making defending your spirit more imperative.
2. Changing her tentacle damage so that it's more powerful when Illaoi only has access to one tentacle (for instance, her Q or her W when she grabs your spirit)

I'm not sure if that would fix anything for her, but I do know one thing. Illaoi is in need of some loving changes, because as she stands, she's a boring, underwhelming champion who can't succeed against skillful opponents.