Is Irelia Jungle Viable Again?

sb2dai·1/16/2015, 11:17:27 PM·1 votes·318 views

Since Irelia is free this week, i decided to try jungling her again. Keep in mind I haven't really played Irelia since the beginning of S2, when i started playing, played her once, and fed so hard i promptly gave up. With the S4 jungle/itemization changes, I feel that she should be a top tier jungler. Here are my reasons:

  1. Safe clear w/ good sustain and clear speed I run AS quints and reds, armor yellows and mr/lvl blues on most of my atkspd junglers. With the buff you gain upon smiting krugs, along with your w (I believe w max is better than w max in the jungle, but not lane), the only junglers who clear with more hp are the likes of ww/fid/panth

  2. Strong early ganks When you jungle, try to keep yourself slightly below the hp of the enemy laners. This allows you to gank with a relatively strong stun, which is targeted.

  3. Decent duelist As far as I know, Irelia can hold her own in a duel vs the current FotM junglers like Lee

  4. Insane scaling with Devourer enchantment Last game, I managed to rack up over 70 on hit magic damage off that item. Coupled with bork and w active, Irelia deals a good amount of all 3 types of damage, making her extremely hard to itemize against when she's ahead, while true damage keeps her damage up when behind

  5. Elixir of Iron Irelia's passive with Merc Treads and Elixir of Iron comes out to 0.60.650.75=0.2925 of cc taken, giving you 70.75% tenacity with 21/9/0 masteries and 75.1375 with 9/21/0. This makes her lategame teamfighting insane, as it means she's extremely hard to lock down or peel

I've experimented in a few games in teambuilder (so I don't get raged at by teammates if I fail) and have gotten extremely good results (http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-history/NA1/209163095, the most recent game had a rather uncooperative mid laner).

As for build, I prefer mercs + hunter's w/ devourer + triforce as my core. If I'm ahead, I can get bork for more damage or maw vs ap based teams. Then with the remaining 2/3 slots, I build tank: pick and choose between banshees/sv/randuins/fh/ga.

What do you guys think?

P.S. When you take smite on Irelia hunter's machete is shown as the recommended item. I'm assuming that's Riot's seal of approval?

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