Illaoi gives opponents too much agency and is too easily exploitable

Title.

Illaoi is disproportionately punishing to people who fight her for the first few times or are too stubborn to learn her minigames, but once you know how she works, her ability to function at almost any level decreases massively, because her kit currently thrives on punishing sloppy play and not much else. Even doing the thing she's meant to do - be a counter engage champion - is basically negated by the fact that she's both ruined by hard CC and basically forces herself to get hard CC'd, because 3 of her spells lock her in place for an entire second.

Some examples of why too much of her power budget is out of her own hands; E duration is reduced every time Illaoi takes damage. Basically, any champion who has a DOT, a multi-hit, or attack speed can completely opt out of playing her minigame. Playing as/against this champion, you notice how many people will just let you hit the spirit in early game despite Illaoi having horrible damage before level 5. Almost any fighter who engages her and smartly avoids getting double-tapped will win. If Illaoi misses her E, she's basically out of the lane for the next 20 seconds and forced to run away lest she be all-in'd and killed. Thus, the only champions this works on is tanks, who have neither the atk speed nor the DOT nature to opt out, and are thus punished harder than they should be. **Basically, in most matchups, landing E doesn't guarantee she wins, and yet missing it is a 100% odd you'll die unless you immediately start playing as far away as possible from the enemy. **

The E minigame doesn't work for Illaoi at all. Being Vessel'd isn't a punishment unless you get popped in a teamfight and then she flash-ults onto your team, and the vessel can actually play it to their own advantage in laning and mid game. Not only can you just stand by a tentacle that's swung at you and ride out the debuff without spawning more, but a player who's aware of how her spawn ranges work can let it spawn in a bad position and fuck Illaoi out of getting a tentacle in a better position for her laning. An example of this is letting it spawn in the river, which doesn't let her use it to push or harass you in trades, but she can't spawn another in that area until you kill the original tentacle or she leaves the area for a minute.

I have a strong suspicion that Illaoi's performance is bolstered by the fact that she basically requires being one-tricked to succeed, but she's playing against people who have only a vague idea of how to counterplay her (bait ult, dodge skillshots) and are unaware of the finer details that can be abused to gain the upper hand. I'd like to address this before the meta swings back into her favor with the incoming tank resurgence; Illaoi should be a good champion on her own merits and not because she abuses sloppy players and tanks.