Why would I ever play Illaoi when I own Darius and Garen?

Haunted Chef·Apr 7, 2016·4 votes·1,388 views

They've got more damage both earlygame and lategame, better mana costs (Garen doesn't even have mana), better waveclear when pushing, better utility when fighting, and can actually win lane instead of being out-dueled by every other toplane champion. Illaoi needs AD items to do damage, while these two just have good base damage and can build tank if they need to.

Is there any reason to play her over the other juggernauts? She brings no utility and way less damage to a team comp.

25 Comments

agbudarApr 7, 20164 votes

ilaoi when played well does way more damage then garen and darius late game what are you smoking?

QuephaApr 7, 20164 votes

{quoted}

ilaoi when played well

more like when the enemy plays bad

agbudarApr 7, 20163 votes

yea the same applies to garen and darius who can be kited to hell and back

QuephaApr 7, 20163 votes

{quoted}

yea the same applies to garen and darius who can be kited to hell and back

Not really. Kiting Darius and Garen means that the enemy is at least giving up ground to allow your team to take objectives. If you're awake and playing against an Illaoi you just have to sidestep and she does nothing while you can focus on her back line.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

The conditions for Illaoi doing that damage are really, really steep. Here's what she requires:

Massive setup from the team. She has no initiation, so she needs someone else on the team to do it for her.
Lots of items. She needs to have won lane or at least stalled for 45+ minutes with good CS to get the items she needs for the tentacles to do damage.
The enemy team to clump as 5, despite knowing the enemy team has a fed Illaoi. Even when I duo in norms with my low MMR friends, people know not to clump against her.

If you can get all that, great! She's worth playing! But otherwise, she just completely flops thanks to a poor lane phase.

ValexforApr 7, 20163 votes

They have very different roles and playstyles, you can't compare them. Also Illaoi has far better sustain and damage if played correctly, has a gap closer (might be small, but it's still a gap closer), can easily zone most top laners out of lane and can't be killed in her own range unless she's far behind. Also she's just better at teamfighting than Garen and Darius are and can easily beath them at level 6 with sheer base damages.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

Illaoi doesn't have very good base damage on the tentacles. It's all AD scaling, forcing her into the same sort of off-tank build every game. Before 6, you can literally take zero damage while she CC's herself with the Q and W by just walking slightly to the side. Everything she does is completely telegraphed and slow enough that there's no reason you should be taking damage from her.

After 6, she can fight you, provided she's built black cleaver and is ahead, which there's no way she should be unless she got jungle camp.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

I would say you were right if only she didn't have a 40% damage amp for the tentacles on her Q, didn't have a 45% damage amp on her E, didn't have a free 3 tentacle ult (which at level 6 means 396 damage with 100 ad every time the tentacles smash the ground and 15% of your missing health returned). Her damage comes from her levels, not her items.

But anyway, she has a different playstyle than Garen and Darius, it's obvious she's weak if you don't play her accordingly. Also her q is quite easy to land (gotta admit it's because of a bug, but it's still easy) and her e is enough to zone the enemy outside of his own minions if you're good since as long as you have it they can't come near you. Her gameplay revolves around her punishing the enemy with her Q and E when they try to either farm or fight back. And she's pretty good at that.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

Illaoi scales with how bad your opponents are. If they know what they're doing, they can beat her with every matchup. If she loses lane, she doesn't scale. If she doesn't scale, she's worthless.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

Not really, she also scales with how good you are. Also since her power budget comes from her levels more than her items she scales well even with few items. Remember she scales off of total ad and not bonus (only the ult scales on bonus) I also forgot to count for the 150 base damage of her ult which brings her ult damage at 546 with 100 ad, consecutive tentacle hits are 396. I see a lot of people play her wrong, she's not meant to play behind her minions, but between her minions and the enemy's or even behind the enemy's minions. She's a strong bully who can easily zone most top laners early on and can easily turn a fight with her sustain, she just needs good timing and experience.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

no. she loses toplane fights against anyone who knows how the game works. her base AD doesn't scale well at all. she requires such a perfect setup to do any damage at all that she's not worth playing over anyone with even a shred of utility.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

Let's jsut stop here, you aren't even in the least open about discussion, you're just trying to push your opinion on me saying she's bad with no actual proof nor reasoning behind that, just some thoughts, I provided you with proof that she's got extremely good base and a strong pattern. If you think she's bad think it like that, but she's not, you are probably only seeying people play her the wrong way or you yourself are. Her playstyle counters most top laners and gets coutnered by either high mobility champs or ranged champs (most toplaners don't have either of those). Also she's gott all the tools she need to fight melee champs (the ones she's supposed to be fighting against) and it's not that hard to use them effectively. She might not be the perfet champ but she's indeed strong, if you pretend her tto be weak because she has weaknesses then it's not worth wasting time.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

go look at her win statistics all the way up through diamond and challenger. her winrate drops the higher you get. it's just too easy to dodge all of her damage.

this is not opinion. this is just the state of illaoi right now.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

The thing is: winrate doesn't mean almost anything. It's obvious that the better the enemy is the harder it is to win with an immobile champ. Does that make the champ weak? No. A champion is weak when he has low stats for its class, she desn't have low stats for her class. It's like saying fiddle gets harder the more you climb: it's normal, the more you climb the better people's mechanics are, meaning it's harded to both hit and dodge, but a champion stats don't change from bronze to challenger. Does that mean champions are "bad" in some elos? Nope, you can climb to challenger with any champion. Winrates are th worst excuse someone can find to say that a champ is weak or strong in a game with 10 palyer per game...

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

no, statistics mean quite a bit, actually. if illaoi was good, her winrate would be pretty stationary through all divisions, because as you go up, the skill level of all players goes up. the reason her winrate is bad as you go up is the fact that her skill cap is set really low and her damage is easy to dodge. everyone who's playing other champions is learning new mechanics and playstyles and surpassing illaoi players, while the illaoi players are stuck at skill cap. she's not a complex champion.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

Statistic don't tell you if a champ is strong or not, they can tell you only it's skill floor and skill cap. Lee sin also has bad winrates (50.84% on 125+ games played in plat+) but he's incredibly strong. 50.84 should mean average, not incredibly strong by your reasoning, so why doesn't lee sin have 60% or even 70%?. They won't tell you if a champ is strong or weak, and that's exactly why your reasoning doesn't make sense. You are arguing with me that a champ is weak basing that on winrate, which can't tell you if a champ is strong or weak, the max it can tell you is how complex a champion is, which is far from telling it's strenght. Also remember that there are other 9 people in a game, so it's not totally accurate. Illaoi is strong, she's by no means weak, she's just easy to play, if she was weak she would lose every game in the first place. Now if you are asking if she's viable in higher elos, then you can say she struggles hard in higher elo because people have good knowledge and understanding of the game and theyr mechanics are good enough to dodge her skillshots, still doesn't mean she's weak,

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

if you're going to play an immobile champion with tricky telegraphed skillshots, cho'gath has a knockup, a silence, free lane sustain for mana and HP, and a true damage ult that also gives him free tank stats.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

They are different champs, one is a tank-mage, the other a bruiser. Cho has reasonable cd and has to burst you down, Illaoi has sustained AND burst damage. Cho needs to kill a unit for his sustain, Illaoi need to hit you for (usually) more sustain. Cho can't fight head on, Illaoi HAS to fight head on. Cho has range and his CC is easy to avoid, Illaoi is melee but her skills are hard to avoid in melee range. Cho's damage is just the one you see, Illaoi's damage comes from her tentacles so it's hard to gauge. They're both "bully" but have a different playstyle but if you jsut need a tank with damage they're pretty much the same, cho might have a bit more damage early on but illaoi gets far stronger later.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

look, you can keep denying it all you want, but all statistics show that illaoi is in a bad spot. the meta counters her, her build path got repeatedly nerfed, and she's too unreliable to play.

why can't you just stop trying to justify playing her and accept buffs?

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20162 votes

to add to that:

Illaoi is a classic case of champions with high potential damage but low practical damage.

ValexforApr 7, 20161 votes

Yep, you are right.

OverpoweredSoapApr 7, 20162 votes

She's getting changes anyway.

Riot realizes that she kind of "eh" right now outside of lane and needs some help of some kind.

Haunted ChefApr 7, 20161 votes

nice. what are they planning?

Illâoi Evê SiônApr 7, 20161 votes

(raises eyebrow)

Mr KonijnNov 7, 20161 votes

As someone playing Illaoi for the majority of my games, I would say she isn't mastered as easy as everybody seems too think. It's very easy to screw up your game if you do it wrong. Also, her most common build paths are just wrong in my opinion. I tried the Black Cleaver build a few times, but it leaves her way too squishy. Her core build path should be: Jaurims Fist, iceborn gauntlet or spirit visage depending on matchup, merc treads, finishing steraks, then the iceborn or spirit (depending what was build earlier). From there, it depends on what to build. If ahead and you want damage, build death's dance. This item is soooo good on her. As illaoi, you want to be as long as possible in the middle of the enemy team, with Black Cleaver this isn't possible, with death's dance it is possible. The rest of the items depends on what the enemy team comp is. I find build banshee's against ap comps, dead man's against ad comp and zz'rot or guardian angel against balanced comps. All in all, I find her way more usefull as a tank, as she already has high base dmg on her own, then build her more ad en squishy, cause the enemy will just melt her down with a squishy build. She has also one important thing: NEVER use your ult if you havent pulled a spirit. If you do this, you will be dead, cause the extra tentacle from the spirit is the extra dmg you need.