my guide to Illaoi
This champion is fun and unique. I bought her immediately on release and played with her a few times, so here is my guide!
We will cover her basic kit / spells.
** Q - Tentacle Smash, aka "Please don't punish me for this, I was just kidding"** You throw out a slam in slow motion, that freezes you in place. You will probably miss because Illaoi likes to take her time doing things. At which point your opponent will walk up to you and slap you for even trying this.
W - Harsh Lesson, aka "Hey tentacles stop afking and attack this one!" Actually decent spell except that tentacles fall down to the earth at the same speed as a feather.
E - Test of Spirit, aka "I'm going to test you, don't worry, this hurts me more than it hurts you" With it's long cast animation, and long successful cast animation, this unique ability allows you to self stun yourself if you manage to land it. It is a test of your spirit after all and if you didn't just blow up while you were waiting for all the animations to finish, then success! You officially have annoyed your opponent.
** R - Leap of Faith, aka "I hope I still have HP left after this leap"** This ability gives you more hang time than Michael Jordan, in fact it looks like you're about to dunk too. During this process you have to have faith. Faith that your ultimate ability is not worthless. Faith that you are this deep to get a good ultimate off that you won't instantly be dead while you leap for days. Faith that even after getting it off that you can heal back up enough or else all these tentacles you have instantly just disappear just as you did.
Passive - Prophet of a Elder God, aka "Formerly known as Avarice Blade" This passive turns you into a ninja, because you begin to dodge walls and structures as best as you can so you can somehow control where the tentacle spawns. Otherwise take 20 seconds to relax and reflect on why you spent 975RP on this champion.
When that is over, a tentacle spawns! Wait, no... it takes about 1 second to finish it's spawn animation, so as your opponent ignores this or goes to the other side of the lane, you have more time to reflect and meditate again.
Once that is over and it's time to strike! But relax, take a deep breath because your opponent can just walk out of the tentacle since these giant tentacles are actually gravity resistant and take time when falling down on someone.
And if you begin falling behind, no worries, Illaoi is nothing if not charitable. Because each tentacle that she has no real control over where or if you want them to spawn, they spawn regardless, and it's a free 5 gold every tentacle. So if you fall behind in lane, rest assured that you are helping your opponent a little bit more each time you show up.
Sure some champions decide and choose where they offer their 5 gold abilities, or some even require the enemy team to have vision over invisible units for them to earn 5 gold. But not you, you are much better than that.
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Team fights
You practice more meditation and patience that you can setup a good tentacle after 20 seconds. At which point the enemy team will rotate away from anything you bothered setting up, or you are so far behind that you do not matter. After all you have been generous with your 5 gold donations so far.
In the advent that you want to be a juggernaut (where did you get this idea?) and you dive in, well have some faith, not whether you survive, but it is certain that you will die. But have faith so that maybe you can do something or even get an ultimate off before you do, or that these tentacles will actually fall fast enough to hit something before you die.