Why does Irelia have Tenacity?

Dr Poro·Aug 22, 2015·11 votes·2,011 views

I find it very frustrating that she has tenacity, because the only way too keep her from your carries is either by a flash or dash of the carries, or hard CC. However, CCing her is a complete waste because with her passive and Mercs, it barely affects her. It almost seems better to just let irelia kill your squishies and try to CC theirs instead.

However, that's from the opponent's point of view. Why does Irelia need her Tenacity? Is there a reason for this or is it just something they threw in because why not? Since Garen just lost his Tenacity, I'm curious about the situation of Irelia. Does her tenacity have another purpose than Garen's? Why is it more healthy for her to have extra tenacity, or isn't it?

36 Comments

Baby GhoulAug 22, 20157 votes

Irelia and weak should never be used in the same sentence...ever.

YfrappefortAug 22, 20156 votes

I find it funny that Singed lost his ultimate tenacity a while back and now Garen lost his tenacity on W. Those two do not have instant gap closer.

But Irelia still have her PASSIVE tenacity (read permanent and stacking with champions) and an instant gap closer + stun/slow.

If there's one thing she do not need, it's that tenacity.

Hayaishi2Aug 22, 20155 votes

Irelia deserves to be gutted tbh, that no counterplay bullshit should be eliminated from the game.

Dr PoroAug 22, 20153 votes

But if she didn't have a tenacity passive, I think there would be more counterplay, no?

SaltyKrackaAug 23, 20153 votes

Not really. Most of the shit about her is focused on her ridiculous damage, mobility, sustain, and the stun.

WalkingInACircleAug 22, 20154 votes

Because champions have abilities? Every champion should be threatening in some way.

Dr PoroAug 22, 20152 votes

my bad, shouldn't have said "free". Imo she doesn't need tenacity to be threatening. The tenacity doesn't make her threatening, her damage does. The tenacity prevents countering the threat from being effective. Atleast, that's how I see it. But I don't play Irelia myself, so I wonder if Irelia players feel that she needs to keep it. Note that she may be compensated for it, I'm not calling out for a straight out nerf, but I do think she's on the strong side.

SekunriAug 22, 20154 votes

First off I don't believe Garen ever had Tenacity. He had a speed debuff clear but if he was stunned he was still stunned. Hard CC was able to keep him down. Now onto what you're talking about with Irelia. She has a passive tenacity of 10% facing one champion, 25% against two and 40% for three or more.

**Tenacity as a Mechanic on Irelia ** Now not sure if its common knowledge but for those that don't know Tenacity is multiplicative buff over an additive one. This means that if she has Mercury Treads item 3111 which grants her "Reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds, polymorphs, and immobilizes by 35%" then her total Tenacity is 41.5% or 42% for the sake of simplicity instead of 45%. Not much of a debuff here but its important because she should never be able to reach 100% tenacity and when she faces 3 or more champions her tenacity isn't 75% but rather 61%. At max Irelia can have the highest recorded Tenacity in game at 70.7% and maybe slightly more towards specific things like slows with masteries.

This means she is able to accomplish her goal of assassination without much able to slow her down for long.

How to counter someone like Irelia Irelia's not the only champion like this however she is the only champion who is able to maintain such a high resistance for a prolonged period of time. Olaf is able to completely ignore all forms of CC with his ultimate in order to deal damage or run away without much to stop him but Irelia will still take 20-30% of the effects. Though not much it does mean that consistent application affects her. So one way to counter her Tenacity would be someone who can slow her consistently like Ashe 's new passive but without it being Ashe. So a item 3022 can help with the application but at max Tenacity will only slow her for about .4 seconds for 40% of her movement speed which means the application needs to happen twice a second to be significant meaning an attack speed of 2.0 or higher. You can see why that's not very useful right? At 2.0 she still has .2 seconds of free time to try and run off and if you're not fast enough to keep up she'll get away or stun you before wrecking your day or making her escape but the advantage her is that she only has .2 seconds if 3 champions are around. If its 2 champions or less and the application is happening twice a second she should be consistently slowed. But slowing her doesn't mean burst and in a team fight the situation is hardly that ideal.

So then what does one do to deal with her? The problem is to deal with Irelia you need someone that can eat past her defenses quickly. Its all about burst against her and an Olaf with his ult up. If you can do more damage than either of them is able to lifesteal away you've got them.

But there is one more important factor, Tenacity doesn't reduce Suppression, Knock Ups, Knock Backs or Galio 's ultimate. So if you need to CC Irelia your best bet is getting her caught in either Warwick , Malzahar , Galio , Yasuo , Nautilus , Nami , Zyra , Fizz 's ultimate's or use a knock up from Alistar , Janna , Chogath , Blitzcrank or JarvanIV .

Just remember if you use JarvanIV 's ultimate support him by either being in his ring or firing outside her range because if you're too close she'll escape and probably wreck your ADC. As an ADC however... you're unfortunately at the mercy of your team to protect you as there is little you can do to deal with an Irelia once she's jumped on you.

The last thing I can think to add is that persistent slow fields should reapply fast enough to affect her despite her Tenacity but those only work until she walks off of them which doesn't take much effort with her Q.

I understand she's infuriating, but remember she's not the only champion that can go straight for your carry in a fight. A Fizz or Leblanc to some extent are able to bypass the team and go straight for the carry as well. It all depends on positioning and if you play the carry i suggest keeping an eye on Irelia and asking your team to prioritize her if she's become that much of a threat.

ElJanitorFrankAug 23, 20155 votes

Your simply wrong about Garen, he had I believe 30% Tenacity on his W at all ranks. This was removed with the rework, I'm very surprised you haven't heard the outcry.

The OP isn't talking about the slow removal component of his Q.

Dr PoroAug 23, 20152 votes

Olaf loses tankiness when he ults so that it becomes easier to burst him down. Irelia, however, is usually pretty tanky and really hard to burst down.

Fizz and Leblanc are designed to do that and nothing else. Also, they don't passively ignore your team, they have to play correctly and time their skills right. If they get hit by CC, they'll die rather than standing still for half a second while soaking the damage with 3k+ hp.

I think that "immune to CC, have to burst" is a good approach IF they're easy to burst, like Olaf during his ult. But Irelia is neither. As you say, knock ups/surpressions seem to be the only effective tools against her, but I don't think that certain champs should be allowed to deal with her, while others have no option at all.

LankPantsAug 23, 20153 votes

Olaf loses tankiness when he ults so that it becomes easier to burst him down. Irelia, however, is usually pretty tanky and really hard to burst down.

She's tanky because of the way she itemises. If you buy a Rands and a BV on Ashe you'll be fairly tanky. In terms of base stats Irelia's only a tiny bit tankier than Olaf.

I think that "immune to CC, have to burst" is a good approach IF they're easy to burst, like Olaf during his ult.

That's pretty much BS. Olaf isn't easy to burst even with his ult running. He builds into items like Deadman's, SV and Rand's which make him super tanky even when he losses the 10-30 armour on his ult.

ThePurpleKnightAug 22, 20152 votes

Honestly I think it makes perfect sense, there is a type of champion in this game, they build lifesteal and as long as they hit you, they can't die. There are two ways to beat a champion like this, CC and burst.

Old Sion, Olaf, and Irelia (potentially) are the main 3.

Sion has an anti burst passive, 40% chance your attacks do no damage, if you're an Annie trying to burst Sion with an R Q W combo, chances are he ignores damage from 1 of those 3 abilities, killing your burst and then life stealing to full in like 1 or 2 hits. Wanna beat Sion, you gotta CC him.

Olaf ultimate allows him to ignore CC, this means you wanna beat Olaf, you burst him, cause if not, he will just heal more than you can do.

Irelia is the weakest of the three and is not really played that way even though it seems she was designed that way, her Tenacity makes it hard to CC her, and her W and R + Lifesteal if she builds it will keep her alive, if you wanna beat Irelia build like that, you gotta burst her.

Dr PoroAug 22, 20155 votes

Irelia is the weakest of the three

wut?

ElJanitorFrankAug 23, 20151 votes

In the champions' hay-days, yes, she was the weakest of the 3.

KarKzzAug 22, 20151 votes

"Passive: Feel no Pain : Sion has a 40% chance to ignore up to30/40/50 damage each time he is attacked"

Unless that annie have VERY low damage, he would ignore around 2-3% of a 1500 damage burst.

Olaf doesn't have a dash, or nearly as much damage as irelia. He also doesn't have a targeted 2 second stun.

ThePurpleKnightAug 24, 20151 votes

{quoted}

"Passive: Feel no Pain : Sion has a 40% chance to ignore up to30/40/50 damage each time he is attacked"

Unless that annie have VERY low damage, he would ignore around 2-3% of a 1500 damage burst.

Olaf doesn't have a dash, or nearly as much damage as irelia. He also doesn't have a targeted 2 second stun.

Damn that's not how I remember it, but I think your right, I know I'd unload full combos on him and he'd seem to take nothing so it seemed like a whole ability was canceled. Either way he mitigated burst greatly.

Every champion has strengths and weaknesses, (except Nasus/Yasuo) Olaf doesn't have a dash, or hard CC, but he's much better at healing himself.

IcyPepperAug 23, 20152 votes

Well, what would you recommend for a different passive then?

Dr PoroAug 23, 20152 votes

First coming to mind would be transferring the passive of her W. The numbers will have to be adjusted because it'll grow with each level, but I think this will actually make the healing better spread across the game. She would no longer have insane healing around lvl 5-9 but her healing would probably be better lategame. Also, she'd have some healing at lvl 1 and 2 already (E isn't lvled until lvl 3).

LankPantsAug 24, 20151 votes

Also, she'd have some healing at lvl 1 and 2 already (E isn't lvled until lvl 3).

Her healing's on her W, guess that shows how little you actually know about the champ you're suggesting changes for.

LankPantsAug 23, 20152 votes

There's a good reason.

Irelia at her core relies on sustained damage output a lot more than other back-line divers. She needs to be able to auto you more than someone like Riven. As such she requires some way to get those AAs off, in Irelia's case that's her tenacity.

There are other sustained damage based divers who have other mechanics to allow them to get off there autos, for example Olaf has his ult, Nocturne has his spell-shield, Shyvana's just borderline indestructible and outlasts the CC. Just as a final note there's another sustained damage back-line diver? who has tenacity on his kit to allow him to do his job, Trundle has tenacity on his W.

If these champs didn't have some way to allow them to continue dealing their damage they'd become more or less unusable. That's not to say you couldn't remove her passive, but if you did you'd need to give her some other way to be able to continue to AA.

Dr PoroAug 23, 20151 votes

If her W passive would be her passive, it'd give more healing in the lategame. With that and her big stats, I'm sure she can outlast the CC like Shyvanna does. Olaf trades tankiness for the anti-CC. Nocturne's anti CC is temporary. I think Irelia's passive outclasses these abilities.

LankPantsAug 23, 20151 votes

If her W passive would be her passive, it'd give more healing in the lategame. With that and her big stats

There's a few problems with this, You just gave E max Irelia her full sustain, disincentivizing W max and rewarding E max. Also this would probably just shit on her late game, you just removed an aspect of her kit without actually giving her something.

I'm sure she can outlast the CC like Shyvanna does.

She's just not that tanky. Shyvana gets 40 bonus to both resists and can afford to build straight tank, whether she does or not is a different story, but she should. In contrast Irelia needs a Tri rush to function at all. She probably needs two offensive items in her full item set, Shyvana can actually function with just a Titanic.

Olaf trades tankiness for the anti-CC.

Not really. He trades a small amount, he tends to build tanky though, probably even more so than Irelia so he winds up being tanky even when ulting. It's more like a bonus when not ulting rather than a penalty when he ults.

JbelsAug 22, 20151 votes

Fuck you, that's why

LuggAug 22, 20151 votes

Agreed. It's like she has a built in Olaf ult.

NarasimhaAug 23, 20151 votes

Because of Ashe.

No really, same as Xin. They were made to counter Ashe's ability to evade anyone who didn't have gap closers AND hard cc. In a sense, Ashe was a pretty big reason for mobility creep in the first place.

SaltyKrackaAug 23, 20151 votes

Teamfights.

TyroneWatermelonAug 23, 20151 votes

Even more sustain by pressing a button 4 times and aiming your mouse

Count BuffonAug 23, 20151 votes

Oranges IV drip.

TyroneWatermelonAug 23, 20151 votes

I'll answer your title with Riot Logic; Irelia already has sustain,mobility,physical damage,magic damage and true damage,which most are point and click,high base movement speed,making itemization on her really easy. So why don't we finish by giving her complete set?

VaralessiaAug 23, 20151 votes

Well, I'm gonna say this as someone with 300+ games on Irelia, she used to be balanced way back when, but with how League has evolved it's made her completely broken if she gets ahead and strong if she goes even. Her only hope at this point a complete rework, even as it currently stands theres little satisfaction in playing her aside from rolling over your opponent, which eventually gets old. Sorta like old Fiora, she jumps in, does her thing, people either die or she dies. Theres no real diversity.

SyndrarellaAug 23, 20151 votes

[deleted]

MelledoneusAug 23, 20151 votes

Aatrox RekSai What knock-up?

SyndrarellaAug 23, 20151 votes

[deleted]

MelledoneusAug 23, 20151 votes

(The joke was that Riot nerfed the area of their knock-ups they are very hard to land. You're better off with a Malphite top.)

BeoridasAug 23, 20151 votes

irelia is a good duelist. but her fantasy is that she excels against the odds. Hence the % stun and tenacity depending on enemies.

RenailleAug 23, 20151 votes

If Irelia didn't have tenacity she would be useless in teamfights. She would get cc'd and die because she has no innate tankiness, she needs to be slippery to be useful.

If Irelia had no tenacity, she'd be pointless to play.