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Laning against Illaoi: My take

Toby Von Toby·11/29/2015, 10:01:49 AM·1 votes·663 views

The boards are getting flooded with discussions about the new champ right, and they generally amount to "plx nerf" or "lol lern 2 dodge, nub," neither of which seems particularly helpful to me. For my own part, as much fun as I have playing her, her AD ratios probably need to be lowered a bit, and I think either her passive or her ult needs to be limited (but not both). Anyways, I've been playing as her a lot, and figured I'd take a page out of her book and tell you how to beat me (at least in the silver division, I'm not exactly a pro).

As far as your picks go, it's no secret that she struggles against ranged champions, but she's also got a pretty weak level 1 game. she can q you in a trade, and that's about it. I've had luck beating her by choosing a champion who can outrade her at level 1, going for the hard engage, and then not letting her recover from it. Shen has worked well for me. The key here is that you have to be ahead of her by the time she gets to level 2, because once she picks up her W and can bring her tentacles to bear against you, you're going to have a bad time in trades if you've been going even.

Dodging her Q gets mentioned a lot, but more noteworthy is its mana cost. If she's spamming it in lane, just let her. Focus on dodging, even at the expensive of farming, and let her run dry. She is very vulnerable to harass at this point. Don't let her stand back and recover her mana, get in there and bully here away from her farm. As far as her E goes, it does NOTHING to minions, and if you can keep them between you and her, it's no threat. Even better, it starts with a fairly long cooldown, and you will have an easier time winning trades against her when you if you go in immediately after she botches one.

Now, if you DO get grabbed, you have to make a quick decision, and which one is correct is going to depend on both who your playing and where the spirit is laying at. If you are a tanky champion with high health and a lot of armor, it is actually best sometimes to just let her wail on you and keep farming out of range of her abilities. She cannot, for example, make a full health Malphite into a vessel on her own, even with the help of a tentacle. If you are not a champion who can take the hits, now is the time to use whatever CC you have. The big thing is don't just run away, unless you are already at low health (and will probably have to back). Find a way to hit her back, and do NOT position yourself in such a way that she can strike both you and your spirit with her tentacles.

Speaking of tentacles, there is a right time and a wrong time to clear them. One of the most delicious things for Illaoi is a meleer going to clear a tentacle that is set apart from minion waves. If she knows what she's doing, she is going to E you as soon as you approach it, and then hit both you and your spirit with her W and then her Q. Clear them when she's preoccupied with farming somewhere else in the lane, or if you have a cluster of minions to block her E.

One of the quickest ways to lose lane to Illaoi is to gank her. It's dangerous. Not impossible, but it's risky after level 6. She excels at 1v2 fights, and junglers who gank solo lanes generally expect their victim to try and flee and make a hard commit to the engage. A good Illaoi can just stand her ground and fight you both, and if she catches 2 people and a spirit in her ult, an attempted gank can quickly turn into a double kill in her favor. You have to approach her more carefully if you're going to gank her and be prepared to use whatever skills or even summoner spells you need to to avoid her ult when she jumps up. You do that, and you've got her. If she hits you both with it, it's time to break off before she can kill you.

Finally, in teamfights, don't play to her strength. She loves it when champions cluster around her. Just google "Illaoi Pentakill" to see why - it's ridiculous. She doesn't need to be any kind of ahead to guarantee a victorious fight for her team if she can catch more than a couple peopel in her ult. It's something that a lot of people don't seem to realize. At the same time, her team often doesn't realize it as well, and they may flee from what would be a losing fight with any other champion on the field and leave her to fight you all on her own. If this happens, just CC the crap out of her and mop up the runners.

Anyways, that's what I've figured out so far, on both sides of the lane. Just wanted to get something up here that was a little more substantial than "dodge her attacks" or "dodge the game."

4 Comments

Clint Orris11/29/2015, 10:37:32 AM1 votes

Also, people don't realize that she has little mobility, no CC and that her ult can get interrupted as well haha.

Trash MammaI11/29/2015, 11:16:11 AM1 votes

Life is a motion...move or die item 1001

She literally tells you how to beat her. Her job is to do exactly what she babbles about, to teach you to keep moving or suffer. In lane she's a bully, she constantly harasses you and this is where you're suppose to move(dodge) in which case it's really friggin easy to do, or die because you aren't able to stay in motion

In teamfights I feel like they needed to make her useful so they gave her that ult. Just splitpush or don't cluster up and ezpz

People are just too stupid/lazy to find out how to beat new champs happens all the time. "Muh kindred so OP she doo % damages on passive" well, instead of being a retard and letting her get her stacks go take them from her she's weak as crap early on.

"muh ekko ult do too mach damages and healz" stop standing on top of his afterimage when it blatantly shows you where it is/will be and you won't take that damage summoner 14 "muh heelz"

TyroneWatermelon11/29/2015, 11:47:51 AM1 votes

As much as her ad rations and base ad high,as a juggernaut she shouldn't have 2.4 sec dash,going to 2 sec if you press R

shark music11/29/2015, 2:15:19 PM1 votes

What I find fascinating about Illaoi is that she's only "overpowered" because of the chickenhead meets jitterbug style so many LoL players have cultivated to the point of obsession.

If you try to win a long series of micro-exchanges with me, yes, I'm probably going to tentacle you into oblivion. If you just go all in, my world changes. I have no offensive sustain. Every champion I've met who was willing to just commit to the attack and come at me full force has barreled right over me and either killed me outright, or sent me limping back to my base. Luckily for me, actually committing to an attack is pure anathema to most League players, so mostly I get to dance around as a lane bully doing whatever the heck I want... for the moment!

But look... my Q has a long cool down. I'm only going to get you once with that. My W is 1) not difficult to dodge and 2) not terribly damaging. My E only works if you're running away and I can flog your soul without interruption, so the E key might as well not even exist if you're pressing me. My ult does fairly low damage and only spawns one extra tentacle if we're 1v1, which is NOTHING compared to most ults in 1v1 situations. Yes, in team fights my R stands for Rampage, but it's an ult, it's supposed to be awesome and powerful in some situations, just like very other ult in the game.

Anyone having issues with Illaoi should just go play ARAM for a while, because while the Rift may be mostly about the art of knowing when NOT to engage, ARAM is just the opposite. It will get you over your Rift-centric phobia of the offensive plunge.

On a side note: having played a bunch of Illaoi this week (HAIL MIGHTY CTHULHU!!!), I can tell you that while she's fun in top lane, she is a true powerhouse as a support, on the level of Thresh and Blitz. A month from now, that's where you'll be seeing her most often, so that's probably what you should be preparing for, tactically speaking.