i think irelia's actually the best vgu so far and I like her hard-scaling power curve

best VGU because she's like old irelia but better. she's still very clearly an anti-ranged champ with the added benefit of being doubly effective at fighting ADC+enchanter combos, but Riot managed to take that "hard counter" intent and funnel it into a way that required her to outplay people, compared to, say, Galio, who is only 'anti mage' through stat checking you with a passive shield and MR scaling. feels good to play, even if I probably won't play her too much, i think they got her kit down perfect.

as for recent balance changes, i actually think it's much more interesting that she have such a steep power curve. it's rare we get a true melee hard carry, and it reminds me of a time when really hard-scaling champs had piss weak early games, but they'd wreck you once they started getting big, and vice versa, in the good ol' days when we had renekton bar and pre-rework Darius who would tear you apart for the first 20 minutes and then cease to exist if he didn't end with his lead. that's a direction I'd actually like to head back to, 'cos champions just being always 'good' inhibits a lot of reason to ever change your roster or adjust picks, if X early game beast is still relevant late game, or if a really strong late game can pretty much guarantee at least some safe scaling if not an outright snowball with their fantastic gank assist camille, it just kinda muddies a lot of value that champions should inherently have, and makes champ select not nearly as interesting. a champion like Irelia shakes things up in a way that i'm pretty cool with.

i'm still not all too sold on reworks or VGUs, and i'm probably never gonna be, but irelia gets an A grade from me. gj