@Riot: Illaoi's E Changes Discussion

So... Long story short, her E debuff duration was changed from 60 seconds to 12 seconds (-80% duration). The tentacle spawn time-gap was changed from every 10 seconds to every 5/4/3 seconds (2 spawns/3 spawns/4 spawns). The ability to remove the debuff by killing tentacles was removed. The bug in the past where one could recall while they had the debuff was fixed (thank god). And some other FoW changes with the tentacle spawns.

At first, it sounds fine and dandy, because 60 seconds is incredibly long. For the Illaoi player, destroying the tentacles made it too easy to get rid of the buff. And the tentacles used to spawn so far apart they were essentially worthless. And...

Right now, it's basically just a 12 second long slow, just like it was before, except 80% shorter, and a guaranteed slow, as compared to being able to remove it in the earlier version(s). Why? Because the tentacles that are spawned as a result of the debuff, as well as every other tentacle (including the one on her Q) swing so slow that anyone with half a mind could side-step them easily. It's practically a joke that the way to counter Illaoi is to start boots if laning against her, or just at all in general.

And thanks to said changes on the E, her winrate, which was already quite subpar, has now dropped 5% further. I really don't think this is a good change on her. The concept of the shorter debuff in itself is fine, but at least with the previous one, they've had more to worry about with a 60 second long slow (which was yes, ridiculous, but still useless past that). This just makes Illaoi even more of a joke than before. And with the new mage update, she's literally laughable.

CC pretty much ruins her, and someone like Malzahar will absolutely annihilate her, between his Q silence and R suppress/% health damage. Her existence is pretty much limited to strong zoning in laning phase and ult jump + W hitting in a teamfight, except she can't even do either that well now. With the former, literally just stepping to the side with a single click is all it takes to avoid her, or standing behind minions for the E shot (or, just dodging that too). In a teamfight, just CC her or don't group up or just step away and that also finishes that.

So @ Riot, could you please actually do something at least the E to make it more viable, if not Illaoi as a whole?

Two possible ideas I had are below:

1. Faster tentacle swinging. Right now, it's literally one of the easiest things to avoid the tentacles that swing so slow literally someone who DC'd and auto-walks away could avoid getting hit by them. I think that's an issue. Not to mention, in just general gameplay, it basically makes even minions more threatening than her, because at least they have tracking shots.

2. Predictive tentacle spawning (for the Vessel thing) + slower pre-alert animation (detailed below) If you're not going to touch the tentacle swing speed, then at least make it predict the direction a Vessel is going in, and spawn in that direction, then swing backwards or such so it would actually reasonably hit the Vessel player if they don't use a GOOD BIT OF EFFORT to try and avoid the hit. Right now, they literally just walk around, the tentacle fizzing appears for several seconds, alerting them, and they just sit and wait for it to appear before it swings, to which they sidestep out. Which is where the second part would come in. The pre-animation for the tentacle spawning also takes far too long, making it ridiculously easy to avoid the tentacle that spawns thereafter.

Test of Spirit? More like "Test of Pointlessness".