ILLAOI and things that could be considered in the mid-season Tank Update!

Hello, as an Illaoi main i have played her many games in high plat to low diamond and I have made some observations that I would like to bring Riot's team attention to.

I feel that illaoi is a bit inconsistent, and not because of balance issues or her skill floor, but rather due to "RNG" issues and some small mechanics in her kit that I feel they are a bit counter intuitive.

1. Many would think that wave clear on illaoi is no issue, but I feel that it is a bit clunky early on.

• My biggest problem is with her passive.

• Her passive states that "if an enemy champion is hit by another tentacle with in 0.5 seconds they will take 50% reduced damage".

• Even though it says enemy champions, her passive seems to work on minions too.

• If you have a spawned tentacle on a terrain and you command it to attack a minion wave using W then you Q that minion wave right after, the tentacle from the Q will barely do any damage to the minion wave.

• My guess is that the minion wave take also 50% reduced damage from the second tentacle it got hit by from the Q right after the W.

• Early game where you are already very limited on mana, you end up wasting mana as you don't get the full value from the Q.

• You might think why not just W the wave, wait a second then Q the wave again to avoid this. In reality this isn't practical, with illaoi you try to get as many animations canceled since each ability is almost a self stun if use it individually making you a sitting duck and more predictable. So it is almost always more rewarding to try and clear the minion wave in one swift attack that blends two animations together rather than two attacks each with their own animation.

2. Having many tentacles already spawned before you use your ultimate often does more harm than good on the contrary of what you might believe!

• Many cases you spawn two tentacles or more on nearby terrain creating your tentacle zone and you play around that zone thinking that you will probably just annihilate anyone that enters 1v2 or even 1v3. Just as you are thinking that you get ganked by 2 people and run to your Tentacle zone smirking and smiling and thinking to yourself her comes my montage highlight and here comes the triple. All 3 run at you not knowing how illaoi works, running right into your trap zone, you side step a CC and you turn around, land your E and you ulti thinking that this is it ! a free triple. In reality you E, ulti and manage to get one W off but only to realize that you are almost dead and you barely got them 1/3 HP and you die.

• This happened often and I was confused to why that happens until I started recording the game.

• What happens is that when you E, you pull their soul and the tentacle you already had spawned on the terrain attacks it, then you ulti and all the tentacles spawning from your ulti then attack a second time then you W for a 3rd tentacle round of attack.

• What happened was that since the previously spawned tentacles on the terrain were commanded to attack by your E, all the tentacles that attack after that point from your Ulti and W do 50% less damage. as a result your BIG BURST that you are waiting for from your ulti never really happens.

• Looking at the recorded game play I noticed that almost NEVER my tentacles are in SYNC if I have a tentacle already spawned on a terrain.

• This seems to be counter intuitive as it takes a couple rounds of tentacle command attacks for your tentacles to fall in SYNC and slam all at once together to avoid the 50% penalty which almost NEVER happens since everyone just walks out of ulti range after the first round of tentacle command attack is over.

• Theoretically speaking a 1v3 with no tentacles previously spawned could go way better INITIALLY than a 1v3 around previously spawned tentacles.

• This might sound less taxing late game since you have high enough base damage to still do damage with 50% reduced damage, but early on WHERE IT MATTERS THE MOST for illaoi since her game is decided by her lanning phase it feels a bit too much.

• So in short, tentacles are rarely ever in SYNC with one another (at the start of an ultimate where it matters the most) instead they just attack individually but FAST (with in the 0.5 debuff window) which constantly applies the 50% damage reduction debuff.

These two points I personally feel they are critical to illaoi's early game where it matters the most and I would love to hear Riot's opinion about it especially with the tank update coming up so it seems as the most appropriate time for her as I feel she falls under the category of a "diver" Riot was referring to.

Also, perhaps any other illaoi players have noticed these concerns and managed to work around them and I am curious to get any feedback!