Unpopular Opinion: Irelia is NOT overpowered

I'm going to preface that with saying it's purely an opinion and it may or may not be objective.

Now, why I'm saying she isn't overpowered? It's because her kit is badly balanced and the idea badly executed. She wants to do damage with her basic attacks and abilities in equal measure, but does insufficient amounts of both. On top of that she isn't tanky enough to make up for it. Basically she's sitting somewhere in the undefined middle between a juggernaut and a diver, because she fails being either one or the other.

For example, Jax is a diver. His entire tankiness comes from his ultimate, and, to a lesser degree (due to being only effective against basic attackers) his E. But he compensates that with 3 offensive abilities + some mobility from his Q. And the most important part is he can activate both his E and ultimate without having his actions restricted in any way, so he can still apply his sustained damage through basic attacks while reducing (or flat out nullifying) incoming harass.

Diana is a diver. Her only form of pseudo-tankiness is her shield. But she has insane burst potential through just two abilities and some follow-up from her passive. Also has a reset to her ultimate.

Garen is a juggernaut. He has 3 damaging abilities and a W which allows him to reduce incoming harass passively while actively returning damage. His passive helps him sustain poke damage he takes in lane. And, beyond being a "spin to win" meme, he can use his E even when disabled. But he pays for that by having no engage tools.

Urgot is a juggernaut and, in fact, the closest one to Irelia. He outranges her by 150 units, but nevermind that. Urgot has all of his abilities focused on damage with W even giving him a beefy shield. As Urgot, you're doing basic attack and ability damage in more or less equal measure too, even if it leans towards abilities. The latter part being because Urgot's passive gives him % max HP damage. And even if that's not enough he can always drag his opponent back in for one last, gut-shredding hug using his chemdrill.

In conclusion, all the above examples either have a lot of one type of damage (divers) or enough durability to be able to use a mix of both types (juggernauts). And if you're not convinced about the latter - remember Darius?

Irelia has none of it. In lane she can't win trades, in teamfights she gets bursted down almost like squishy and can't do her job unless obscenely fed.

Now, you would say, but she has so much mobility and her kit is so overloaded! Is it, really? Or does it not have just the minimum for it to be able to function as one whole? Yes, she has a lot of mobility, but she's supposed to be a diver - a fighter subclass known for its mobility. If she didn't have that how do you expect her to be able to, well, dive her target(s)? If it were unconditional mobility then it would be OP because she'd become a better Yasuo. But, you see, she has to nail those resets or she's pretty much screwed.

In-lane she loses from almost everyone, fair and square. Countless times have I engaged at the perfect time to abuse a vital cooldown and still lose the trade because I lack the damage. So unless her lane opponent is a dumbo (or the matchup heavily favors her) she's not gonna win lane.

What do I suggest? Well, we can't remove resets or marks since she won't function as a champion if we did that. But we can make her scale further towards the late game. As you surely have already guessed - I don't think she's strong in lane either, but since people keep complaining about her early game - so be it.

The single biggest complaint is about her mobility I think. To tone it down I'd make it so her Q refunds the entire cooldown minus 2 seconds when a non-champion dies to it. That lockdown would be lifted post level 11, similar to Urgot's significant passive reload time reduction. It would also refund CD minus 1 second if she dashes to a marked target and still reset entirely if a champion dies to it.

Her W I would scale with ranks - something like 40/45/50/55/60% with no AP scaling and leave the cooldown the same as her current one (as of patch 8.24). And to compensate for that durability I'd halve the ability's damage.

Lastly, I'd make her E's stun duration scale with rank from 0.5 to a full second to give her a bit of time to follow up on a non-ult engage once maxed. It will also be a laning phase nerf while increasing her control over a fight later on. If you ask me the ability is nowhere near easy to land, especially on a mobile target, so that's justified, though it could be that I'm just too much of a monkey myself.

One buff, I'm unsure about. It's increasing the scaling to 5% per stack on her passive. That wouldn't make much of a difference in the laning phase, but once she gets her AD and fully stacks the passive, total bonus damage would be 20% of her bonus AD and that's a huge buff to her DPS, perhaps way too large (it might even push Rageblade builds because it's on-hit damage too and oh, boi, the mayhem).

That's what I would do. Like it, hate it, I don't think Irelia is OP and I haven't had to sit outside experience range when laning against her. Plus she gets bursted way too quickly in fights despite building like a bruiser and her W.

At the end of all this - kudos if you read the whole thing. And don't be salty, it's just an opinion on the Internet. [slayer-jinx-wink]