Illaoi, curious on riot's thoughts of her
Illaoi has been out for some time now and while I love her design, character, and visuals whenever I play her lately I feel more worthless than yorik after lane phase. Yes she can win lane or go even in almost any matchup and if the enemy doesnt know how to deal with her you will feel like a god and 1v2 or 3. But if the enemy knows what they are doing you feel useless. In higher elo her winrate is abyssmal (less than 40% often when I check probuilds.net, a great website btw for seeing what masteries/runes/builds to do). As I play her more i ultimately feel she has a serious design flaw. She is a "minion caster" with no means of locking enemies in place where her minions are, and is also unable to place new minions near enemies on command.
I'll try to compare every other what I call "minion caster" by which I mean champs who place or create other things to do their dps for them. Zyra and heimerdinger are primary examples, all of which have an immobilizing cc ability that is balanced by its slow moving nature. They also get the benefit of their minions attacking by themselves and the ability to place them on command. Other casters include azir, zed, or orianna who directly place and position their "minion(s)" wherever they want so as to have their damage sources near enemies. Two other minion casters include yorik who while he can't do much with them after casting he at least can create them at will, and malzahar who almost seems to have these minions as a small dps cherry on top and is relatively functioning without them. As one can see, almost all of these champions can either reposition or recreate their "minions" and/or have some cc to hold them their. Illaoi can only somewhat do this with her ultimate and soul stealing, each of which are quite avoidable (dodge e or just walk away after ult, seriously ur almost out of range by the time the epic but long animation ends) and this makes her seem excessively unreliable, with me even getting bursted during ult cast before i can once make my tentacles attack.
While I know juggernauts are meant to be kited, illaoi suffers because all of her damage seems to have too much counterplay in order to make up for her potentially team destroying damage. All other juggernauts either have decent chase abilities (olaf ult (and axe slow), shyvanna speed boosts, garen speed boosts) or can get around them through cc (skarner almost feels like a tank with his cc, darius has a pull and 90% slow, and mordekaiser has surprising range on his ult and e while being able to build rylais to keep enemies nearby) . Also the other juggernauts bring their damage with them as they walk around where as illaoi almost needs your team to commit to an extended seige down a lane in order for tentacles to set up, as well as to benefit from their cc, and also lacks enough damage reduction to not be bursted during her ult animation before she becomes "tanky" through sustain.
The only times I feel I do well with illaoi is because my enemies are primarily melee and dont fight illaoi correctly (aka they dont just walk away when i ult and just dive me without ccing me ) or when I'm playing normals with friends and all of them brought aoe cc for wombo comboing. I just feel like I do not decide how successful I am as illaoi due to my lack of cc to keep anything in my dps god moments (ult) combined with having to wait for additional tentacles to spawn from my passive that I can't do anything unless my team plays around me like a protect the kog/mf/jinx comp (a set up the illaoi comp if you will).
Was wondering if her excessive reliance on her team for any cc and help was intended (due to the damage not moving with you this seems more prevelant than for other juggernauts) since otherwise she relies on bad enemy play (whom quickly receive harsh lessons) , and also what riot thinks of her post release.
sorry for long post, may you all remain in motion!
