Here's my problem with Illaoi

Before you spam the downvote button and flip out, understand that several high Elo players find her to be a pain in the ass to deal with during lane phase. But she's not powerful enough currently to justify banning her but that doesn't mean that she doesn't offer incredibly frustrating gameplay elements with very little meaningful counterplay for certain champions.

Honestly, I don't even think Illaoi is overpowered simply because she gets ran over pretty hard by ranged top laners and quite frankly, because of worlds, that's what the meta has basically become excluding Rumble. But the experience of playing against her as a melee champion is so painful and you feel like you're left with almost no real options to deal with her. But in fairness to Illaoi, this isn't exclusive to her.

Many melee players feel the same about champions like and . But the big difference is, even Darius and Pantheon can be prone to losing if they manage to lose their strength (pantheons passive in an all-in or Darius' axe on his Q). But with Illaoi, as a melee champion, you're almost never in a position where you can actually fight her excluding very early levels. But once she hits about level 5, forget it, you can't fight her anymore. Trying to fight back, whether it be to protect your soul if it gets taken or to remove vessels is time where you're taking aggro you can't play around. If you fight for your soul, you likely eat some tentacles or even minion aggro and ultimately you'll lose out there. If you focus tentacles, Illaoi gets free shots at you.

Post 6 it gets worse. Yes, you can disengage from her ult but the moment you try to deny her your soul or clear a tentacle as a melee, she just all-ins you and yes, you can disengage but you can't:

A) ever fight back in this situation, which is stupid as fuck in its own right

and

B) you're gonna get chunked pretty hard. Hard enough that you can't simply just go back in and fight her. And then you sit back and are forced to deal with her spam.

and lastly

C) she is probably the best wave clearing bruiser. It's so fucking hard to push against her so she forces you to always be pushed up and eat tentacles and be in danger to fight them.

Yes, I'm aware this makes her prone to ganks. Yes I'm aware this is a predictable play pattern however, depending on ganks isn't counterplay because you can't survive on your own honestly and her predictable play leaves you with no options to fight her back. I know how to play against her, the issue is I have no real options as a melee champion.

Also, before you start pointing out that her 5v5 is easily outplayed, I know. Good Illaois in high Elo don't ever 5v5. They push non stop and eventually they get to a point where they can straight up 1v2 your top and jungler by pressing R. Even when you disengage and look to go back in, the sheer amount of uncontested pressure she provides just by existing with almost no real way to play around it as a melee makes her impossible to deal with.

I shouldn't auto lose for playing a melee champion. This game isn't fucking rock/paper/scissors. Even extreme melee lane bullies like pantheon and Darius can be played around. Pantheon is prone to dying in all-ins, especially post 6. Darius HAS to land his outer Qs to win fights. But with Illaoi, trying to fight her is a death losing effort because of the fact you're left with no real options. Ranged champions can simply click her tentacles and never be in real danger of her but melees don't have that benefit.

And lastly, her fucking comeback potential is so retarded. I've had games as Nasus, Jax and even Malphite where I've been up 2-3 kills on her through jungle pressure or early cheese where it doesn't matter post 6 because she shoves harder than I do and I still can't jump on her and kill her for being too close cuz she pops R and chunks the shit out of me.

All around she just isn't in a healthy spot. Auto losing vs ranged but auto winning vs 98% of the melee roster isn't good gameplay. I think her kit has very interesting elements and I really do love her character despite all the jokes I make but it's not being executed properly and it's become this binary as fuck kit that basically becomes a game of rock/paper/scissors at champ select and that should never be the case in general match-ups.

All in all, as I said, I don't think she's overpowered but she's not fun to play against at all as a melee champion and the experience really is so frustrating that I've considered leaving games in the past. I've never left a game in 5k+ games.