Can we have an honest conversation about Illaoi?

It's time Illaoi got the desperate attention she needs. Illaoi is the perfect example of a champion whose thematics took priority over gameplay health. On paper, Illaoi sounds fun, engaging, the cohesive and seemingly engaging kit should make her game play vastly appealing, right? Wrong. Let's go over each of Illaoi's abilities and why none of it makes sense.

Prophet of an Elder God - Passive Illaoi and theVessels she creates spawn Tentacles on nearby impassible terrain. Tentacles swing at Spirits, Vessels, and victims of Illaoi's Harsh lesson. Tentacles deal physical damage to enemies hit.

-This passive is either fantastic to the point where it's overly oppressive in the laning phase, or it feels and preforms like complete garbage against certain champions. It's very hit or miss, there's never any middle ground to the effectiveness of this ability. It also feels pretty bad when you're walking back to lane or walking to help with objectives and a tentacle spawns on a wall in a place that you will get absolutely no use out of it and then you're just kind of stuck there waiting for the CD. Making it so the tentacles disappear with 2 auto attacks makes sense in the laning phase, anymore and it would just be too frustrating for the other player to try and manage. But that same number also makes them feel quite useless outside of the laning phase because if you're attempting to siege or set up dragons/barons, it's simply too easy for the enemy team to take them out, especially given their random nature, which puts an over reliance on landing your ult on 3+ members. More on the ult later.

** Tentacle Smash** - Q Illaoi is healed for a percentage of her missing health whenever a Tentacle damages an enemy champion. When activated, Illaoi smashes down a Tentacle that deals physical damage. Passive: Illaoi is healed for 5% of her missing health whenever a Tentacle damages a champion.

-Fairly straightforward. However, there's glaring issue with this ability in its inability to clear waves efficiently. The AD ratio on this ability is just absolutely absurd to the point where you're kind of just asking, why? Rarely will you ever build more than 2 damage items on Illaoi, meaning the ratio largely goes underutilized. Even with a black Cleaver rush and a strong farming laning phase, this ability fails to kill the caster minions in one swing. It leaves them so low that a single attack from your caster minions will kill it. This may seem like a small issue, but if you're relying on your ability to farm to become the late game behemoth that Riot wants you to be, one would think you would have the tools to do so. A simple fix of adding a higher base damage growth with a smaller AD ratio would go a long way in making this ability feel better. Also a very small tweak between the time that she swings and the time that this ability lands is a QoL change she should have gotten a long time ago. It's too easy to dodge. By the time she's finished swinging at a melee champion in front of her, granted they are in melee range, they can be BEHIND her by the time she's finished casting, granted they have tier 1 boots. I think the healing on this ability is in a pretty good place. It doesn't feel oppressive in the laning phase and feels impactful in late game teamfights.

Harsh Lesson - W Illaoi leaps to her target, dealing physical damage and causing nearby Tentacles to also swing at the target. For her next basic attack, Illaoi leaps to her target dealing 15/35/55/75/95 (+110% Attack Damage) physical damage. When she strikes, nearby Tentacles will also swing at the target.

-Talk about clunky. This ability just feels like garbage to use. It's basically the main enabler of your tentacles. It's Illaoi's only gap closer and a pretty bad one at that. The range is short for being so imperative to Illaoi's kit. But then again that seems to be a resounding theme of Illaoi. No matter how much you play her, the range of all your abilities seems just slightly lower than it they should be, making for a very confusing game play pattern, and this ability is certainly no exception. in the upcoming patch, 6.10, they are reducing the cooldown to 6 seconds flat at all ranks which helps due to usually being maxed last but that's all the changes she's receiving.

Test of Spirit - E Illaoi rips the Spirit from a foe's body, forcing it to stand before her. Spirits echo a percentage of the damage they take to the original target. If killed, or if the target gets too far from the Spirit, the target will become a Vessel and begin spawning Tentacles. Illaoi pulls the Spirit from an enemy champion for 10 seconds that echoes 25/30/35/40/45% (+[0]%) of the damage it takes from Illaoi and her allies back to its owner. The Spirit's lifetime will be reduced every time Illaoi is attacked by the target.If the Spirit dies or the target leaves its range, the target becomes a Vessel for 12 seconds. Vessels spawn a Tentacle every 0 seconds (scale down with Illaoi's level) and have their movement speed slowed by 80%, decaying over 2 seconds.Tentacles swing at Spirits and Vessels dealing 0 (+0) physical damage.

-This ability got changed recently. if you were able to successfully punish the enemy, they were basically forced into a silly and frustrating minigame for a minute, which admittedly felt like forever. This is a great example of an ability that was so beyond broken but flew so far under the radar due to how terrible the champions feels to play. This was, in my opinion, the single most oppressive, annoying, and frustrating ability to play against in the entire game. It's duration was recently reduced from a minute to 12 seconds. It's a very understandable change, but Illaoi got very little in the way of compensation. Part of what made her laning phase so strong was that if she managed to pull your spirit, you were almost forced to fight her off of it in order to avoid the seemingly infinite spamming of tentacles. It let Illaoi set up favorable situations in order to gain an edge in the laning phase making her transition into the late game a lot easier. With this oppressiveness gone, she now has no way to force fights in the lane. If you get your spirit yanked, it's kind of whatever. I'll just kill 2 tentacles and I'll be fine. The fact that this ability is blocked by minions is still a mystery to me. It makes absolutely no sense. This ability is so predictable, it's range so mediocre, that it should ignore minion collision, ESPECIALLY considering that it has absolutely no interaction with minions or monsters. This ability needs a longer range or a faster cast time, it feels like crap to use and basically just feels like a giant reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse psychology game when you're trying to land it.

Leap of Faith - R Illaoi smashes her idol into the ground, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies. A Tentacle spawns for each enemy champion hit. Illaoi smashes her idol into the ground, dealing 150/250/350 (+50% bonus Attack Damage) physical damage to nearby enemies.A Tentacle spawns for each enemy champion hit and, for the next 8 seconds, Tentacles swing 50% faster, are untargetable, and Harsh Lesson has a 2 second cooldown.

-Where do we even start here. This is ability has so many issues that it would be easier for me to make a quick list of short points as to why this ability needs some rethinking.

--- the range feels like complete and utter garbage. It's too short. You have absolutely no way to enter a fight outside of flash > W even then in a game with so much mobility you're lucky to land this on 2+ people. --- You should be immune to CC While in the air. Currently, if you are jumping your ult can be cancelled by any displacement effect. To top it off, it goes on CD as if you had used it. Talk about overdue QoL changes. --- The ability is unbelievably binary. It is either absurdly strong to the point where nuking 4 people and getting away with over half your HP is a real possibility or you're just standing in the middle of an enemy team with a couple tentacles wondering why you're you're feeling so useless. The potential of this ability is massive but sadly the maximum potential of this ability is what it is holding it back. Much like Fiddlestick's ultimate in the sense that so much power is shoved into it that the maximum potential is so high that it's almost impossible to balance the rest of his kit. Illaoi has much of the same problem. When it's good, it's too good, and when it's bad it's too bad.

Here are my suggested changes:

• Prophet of an Elder God needs to give her some control over where the tentacles are spawning. Sort of like how Azir turrets don't automatically spawn on a downed turret, you get to choose when and where to spawn it. This would give her more tactical options and less outcomes that feel out of your control.

• Tentacle Smash This ability NEEDS a slightly faster cast time. It is just too slow. Speaking of slow, this ability needs one. Illaoi has absolutely no way to keep a target in place. She simply will not survive in any meta having ZERO crowd control as a top laner. The base damage needs to be upped and the ratio needs to go down to compensate for the new slow + higher base damage.

• Harsh Lesson This ability offers you a weird choice. As Illaoi's only gap closer but also main enabler of tentacles, what do I use it for? The answer a majority of the time, is as a gap closer. It's a pretty crappy one at that, but at the very least this ability needs a longer range.

• Test of Spirit I love this ability, even if it's now mediocre it's just so much fun to watch your opponent have to respond to the tentacles he/she is spawning. That being said, this ability needs some QoL changes. Since its duration nerf from a minute to 12 seconds, this ability is FAR less oppressive than it was and as such should be given compensation. Minions and monsters should not be able to block the grab. The range should be **FIXED ** in order to better reflect the tip of the tentacle.

• Leap of Faith Range needs to go up. Damage needs to go down. Larger range and lower damage makes the ability more reliable. She needs to be uninterrupted while she's in the air or at the very least, the cooldown shouldn't be going on a full timer if it is cancelled.

I don't mean to suggest that ALL of these changes should happen at once and on the same scale I'm suggesting but it's a good place in starting to consider meaningful changes for a champion that has so much potential and so much room for growth. Thematically, Illaoi is my favorite champion, I think it she has so many cool aspects about her, it's just a shame that it doesn't feel as cool as it sounds or looks.

TL:DR Illaoi feels like a complete mess to play with. Nothing makes sense. Everything feels slightly off. Nothing seems to come together. Each ability feels like an ability by itself instead of part of a kit, which is odd considering how much interaction there actually is within her kit. There's some things that need to be done to bring Illaoi up to today's standards of top laners. There's many QoL changes that need to be made. She has the type of play pattern that you would find in an old school assassin, such as talon, in that she is very feast or famine, except she has none of the tools you would expect to find in such a champion, like a reliable way to get in and out of fights or even a reliable way to do damage. Her AD ratios are some of the best in the game but she can not utilize them effectively because she must build mostly defensive items due to her "once I'm in, I'm stuck" game play pattern.