Boards›Gameplay

My issues with Illaoi

LuluInWonderland·12/2/2015, 2:27:02 AM·2 votes·893 views

First things first: I do think she is a bit too strong right now, but the plus side is she's unable to convert that into wins. She's also fun to play and "feels" rewarding.

Now, on to the problems I see with her:

Everything about her feels like she should be an AP champ instead of AD. Only her 2 dunks (W and first part of her ult), and her slow autos, look like they should do AD damage. Everything else - her passive, tentacles, soul pulling, summoning of more tentacles after a dunk - visually look like they should be AP damage. They even feel like they should be AP IMHO. I understand Riot's decision to make her an AD champ, but it just doesn't match with her kit and VFX.
Related to item #1, one of the stated goals for Riot is clarity. I shouldn't have to lookup the details of a champ to understand the basics of how they work and what their primary strengths and weaknesses are. They failed in this with Illaoi. You need to lookup what her abilities do in order to know how to play as her or against her effectively.
The time on her curse/vessel mechanic is too long for how often the tentacles spawn. The only other alternative is to back off for a bit and kill 3 tentacles to make it end. How does one know to do this? Look for and find a debuff icon, hover over it, and then read the (somewhat) lengthy description to see that it can be broken by killing tentacles. This is not intuitive at all, and presents an unclear method to fight back against her without having played numerous matches against her.
Like most other champs in that role, each additional hit with her tentacles should do decreasing damage. There's way too much team burst potential for somebody that is fairly tanky without it. It's still rewarding to hit multiple champs, but isn't as ori-ult devastating to do so. Some buffs to other aspects (i.e. her q or e reflection damage, or mana costs or cds) may be needed to balance around this, but it really rounds her out.

Edit: Thanks everybody for the feedback so far. I appreciate all feedback and discussions!

7 Comments

Mellow Rush12/2/2015, 3:52:57 AM3 votes

My issue with Illaoi is that she doesn't really have any clear counter play, especially her E, which presents two options in which both are wrong in different infuriating ways: Stay and fight = get fucked up by ALL OF HER OTHER ABILITIES, or conversely, run away and still get fucked up to a lesser degree until you break the tether and then are slowed and constantly harassed by tentacles. Sure you can just kill three of them and be done with it but it's a bit counter-intuitive to run out of range of an ability only to still get fucked over by it (via a more frustrating mini-game).

I also quarrel with the "enter my domain" sort of gameplay style best exemplified by Heimer, where staying away from the champion is the counter-play except it's not as obvious as his tower-defense game and it sneaks up on you followed by a greyed out screen and a sense of being ripped off.

The TL;DR is that when the counter-play of a champ is "don't get hit by their abilities" it's a bit of the old AP Mid Q-nuke Nidalee syndrome. Sure it may be fun to play but when one person's fun is the bane of 5 people's existence for at least 20 minutes it doesn't take philosophical follower of 'Utilitarian Hedonism' to realize that something is wrong

Erockandroll12/2/2015, 3:14:05 AM2 votes

in my opinion.

Meh, they could have gone either way. But I Wouldn't describe her as a summoning mage like Azir or Heimer, since they act more passively that either of the two. Her R and E feel like more utility, while her W is obvious an AA reset. Even with her Tentacles, she would probably be more AA reliant than most AP. (except for AP/AS)
You really only need to look up ratios really, and that holds true for any champ. But on the most basic level, they actually to meet that. (She uses tentacles, use them with your spells when playing her, kill the tentacles if your against her.)
Theirs probably a balancing point here. The Vessel length time needs to be long enough to allow Illaoi to pick a fight, cause that's the best time to do so outside of her ult. I do agree however that the "kill 3 tentacles isn't clear enough" but again, people should be trying to kill the tentacles in the first place. Perhaps Riot should make the health bars more prevalent. Or maybe increase their gold value.
This I actually Agree with, but not to as a Great extent as say, Azir. Azir can easily put multiple soldiers on you at a time. While Illaoi is more is more reliant on enemy positioning, or using their ult, or vessel. I'm thinking, Half, for each additional tentacle.

Brendy Bear12/2/2015, 3:09:23 AM1 votes

She's meant to be an AD Bruiser. Of Course she looks like she should be dealing AP damage, but then by the logic, Alistar should look like he's dealing physical damage not magic damage.

I shouldn't have to lookup the details of a champ to understand the basics of how they work and what their primary strengths and weaknesses are.

lol really dude?.... I shouldn't have to explain why you should always look at what a new champion can and cant do when you play as or against him/her

Like i said earlier, if you keep up with what happens in the game, you shouldn't have to read an icon of what a buff or debuff does.
No. If someone can't properly destroy tentacles and kite them, (they're pretty easy to dodge), they deserve to get penalized for not being able to.

All you've managed to say was "I don't read on how to play or play against a new champion and Riot should make things easier for me".

Big Lincoln12/2/2015, 3:23:12 AM1 votes

illaoi would be fucking abominable if she was AP. item 3116 is a broken item and she'd be ridiculously oppressive if allowed to buy it

2-) this has been true for just about every recent champion, i think. a burden of knowledge is a good thing to an extent. illaoi doesn't cross that border; she isn't too terribly complex.

4-) this is not true for any of the juggernauts bar Garen. she's oriented as a teamfight monster; it's what she's supposed to excel at if she's allowed to set up enough passive tentacles or get a good ult off. All she brings to the table is raw damage and the soul mechanic; I think it's expected that she should hard carry a fight if the situation favors her, especially considering how vulnerable she is to strong disengage with no CC to force the enemy back into the fight on her own.