Illaoi is an awkward mess to play against.

Hi, I'm a controversial ex-gold2 player caught in ELO hell after going 8-2 in the new-season placements. Illaoi is cancer. That's all.

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Well, I got 3 reasons why. And then I got some suggestions on how to make her less unfair.

1. Her kit in general. Riot put a tip in their loading screen that says, "Sometimes, the THREAT of an ability is more powerful than the usage of that ability." Illaoi is the most profound example of this. You don't want to fight her, because she HAS the potential to keep you shut down and in the dirt. So all you can do as an opposing melee champ is try your best to last-hit in the hopes she doesn't hit you with her...

2. Misleading hitboxes. Eventually, I just began telling myself, "I'll just learn to play against her!" which entails dodging her gigantic Tentacle Slams. Which is a pain in the ass on its own! You know that every time you go in to last-hit a minion, you're going to have to try side-stepping one of those giant rectangles of despair. And when you do, you'll realize it has a big problem shared among other notorious champions: misleading hitboxes. I was playing Tryndamere against her one game, which meant I could always dash to the side when she uses her Q. But even when I did dash away, and I'd be outside of her visible Q hitbox, I would still get damaged! Every time! I would be thinking to myself, "Okay, she's going to Q me when I get this cannon minion, but I'm ready to sidestep it. Okay, I hit it, and now I dashed aw- WAIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!?!?!?" every single damn time that unfair mess happened. And it's even worse when she ults! You're physically incapable of dodging them with anything other than a literal blink ability, because her Cocaine Tentacles strike you down faster than advertisers when a YouTuber says the N-word! You don't even have to be near her when she ults, for every Cocaine Tentacle will start giving you shit from an unfair distance away!

3. (1, because I typed 1 here)Back to her horrid kit, her E. It has a long, long range, and if she hits you with it, you lose 45% (+8% per 100 of Illaoi's AD) of your health, if you neither run away as fast as you possibly can nor foolishly think you can fight her fairly. That's a lot of damage on a short-cooldown ability that SLOWS you as well. I don't know how many times I'm in lane, and she walks behind my minions just to shit one of her E's at me. And on the occurrence that she lands one of them, by the time I'm forced to dodge her tentacles under my own tower, she's waiting for me to sidestep another tentacle so she can shit out ANOTHER E. AND ANOTHER. AND ANOTHER. ETC. It turns your venture in the top-lane into a pure dodging minigame whilst denying you the ability to even hit your own CS without popping like a balloon.

4. (And I typed 3 here, smh Riot boards) Her base stats. Wow, they're high. Like, DAMN, they're high. Her Q does 100 damage at level 1. And if the ONLY damage item Illoai buys is a Sterak's Gage, her Q alone will do 592 damage (Increased to 967 if she hits you with her E, first), WHILST HEALING HERSELF. So you have four options. 1. Play someone that deals damage and get erupted immediately by her unfair, unfun, high-damage garbage, or 2. play a Tank and never, ever kill her, because she just keeps healing herself, 3. Ignore her for the sake of teamfights, whilst letting her push into your base, or 4. Have you and your teamwork together to cc-lock, kite, and eventually shut her down, whilst letting the other 4 people on her team secure objectives and push into your base uncontested.

Everything about Illaoi is of poor design, and she should have never been made in the first place. But, since we have to live with this mistake, I at least have a few suggestions to make it at least a bit bearable.

1. Make her Tentacle Slams scale ONLY with bonus AD. Not base. If she's gonna instakill me, she better not have 4000 health, 300 armour and a 1333 health shield when she does so.
2. Lower her healing from Tentacle Slams, but let it scale with bonus AD as well. This one is something I can't make a good argument for. I just want it to happen, because it's just a bit more fair and punishing to this putrid "Tank Assassin" meta we've been seeing.
3. Fix those obnoxious hitboxes, already. Fix everyone's obnoxious hitbox, but fix hers, first!
4. When she ults, make the circle around her that the tentacles form the radius which her Cocaine Tentacles are influenced by, instead of the WHOLE MAP. Illaoi's only known way to be countered is to "Bait out her ult xD" which is of a poor design philosophy. But the fact that her Cocaine Tentacles still follow you AFTER she ults is just plain ridiculous. No one should have THAT much map presence.

So, what do you guys think?