About Illaoi
What the hell are you even supposed to do in lane against her as a melee?
Calling for ganks and "pick a ranged champion" doesn't count.
Yea, and dodging every single spell and tentacle isn't possible except on 
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Yasuo is pretty good against illaoi. dodge all them abilities and just what her have 0 mana in no time
lmao. she gets a double kill when she gets ganked.
Literally everything she has relies on her either being fed, surrounded by her tentacles, the enemy team being made up of idiots, or landing her incredibly slow skillshots. If people who play against her use common sense, she won't be able to get any of those.
Dodge her Q which literally gives the choreographed hitbox before it hits. Dodge the incredibly slow E, or you know, just stand behind a minion. If she hits you or a nearby minion with W... wow, guess what? Just step out of the way.
Kill her tentacles whenever you can do it without getting yourself risked into a bait too much. Executioner's Calling (for AD) and Morello (for AP) are both effective against her, as is plain armor. She is also practically helpless against ganks pre-6, so abuse that as much as you can in early.
She's a bruiser with lifesteal. Focus on farming because unless you can all-in her, she'll just slowly gain it back from farming/poking. Try to maintain an even gold advantage, build armor/Grievous/whatever, don't engage her when she has her E + ult up or is surrounded by tentacles.
You can ask for help with killing tentacles and kiting you know, you're not the only one in the team. Also I suppose it's fairly obvious you shouldn't group her in a teamfight, but you're asking about laning phase so that's a different story.
And no, dodging every spell and tentacle is incredibly easy if you have half a brain.
Learn to exploit her weaknesses.
1- She's not like Darius (I truly do think Darius is a BS champ who wrecks any melee match up. Such a bs champ ...). As in, she's NOT super strong early ... and unlike Darius she doesn't need to get an early lead to be useful late game (that's my best Darius counter ... either get someone who can fight him early and heal it back up like Trundle or prey that he doesn't get fed as you play like a bitch under tower cause a 'just even" Darius can be next to useless late game). She scales up with the game but she starts it weak ... like Susan. (I also hate Susan but I realized that the best way to fight one is to pick a champ who can wreck him at early levels and shut him down)
2- Her whole kit is skill shots and relies on a visible win condition. Remember this when PLAYING WITH an Illaoi to! It annoys me to no end when people get bitchy because at level 3-4-5 I'm not helping them chase down a random close kill into the enemy jg. Like ... dude, my passive doesn't pop up that often at this level, I have no completed item and no ult. Da fuck you think is gonna happen if someone catches me in river without a tent?
There are some things that I have learned with my 80 or so games with Illaoi.
Illaoi needs time to set up her area with her passive. But she can do it easier if you become a vessel. Avoid that by staying behind minions and dodging, orfighting her if she pulls your spirit to reduce the time it is out. If your spirit is out avoid giving her the easy hit of hitting you and your spirit as that does more damage. So keep some space between you and the spirit.
If you (and your jungler) are going in on her, pay attention to whether she is running to a wall or her tower. If it is a wall be carefully as she is baiting you and will try to pull the spirit of you or the jungler. If that happens back off, with one tentacle on the wall a spirit, and you and the jungler that is up 4 tentacles that will smack down. Also the tentacles see the spirit the same way that they see a vessel, which causes theme to strike right away. So with your spirit out and she ults you and the jungler the tentacles will immediately smack the spirit and all near it, than she will use w to cause them all to smack at a target and possibly the spirit if they are still close. This can all happen really fast.
If you get ulted, just leave the immediate area, don't stay and tradeare her chase you down since she is now commented and will be down an ult.
If she becomes too much to deal with in lane than you need to start focusing your efforts to other parts of the map and help with objectives and getting your team fed. Either she pushes far into your side and you whole team can collapse on her or she will have to help her team and if you can keep switching the locations for quick fights she won't have time to set up much.
Also she can not really Initiate team fights, but she is really good at punishing those who try to initiate on her.
Sometimes it is better to not fight for your spirit. But don't be afraid to fight if you know she is alone.
Keep moving. She literally tells you that is how to be successful.
Also she only does physical damage, build some armor to take the edge off of her attacks.
To move is to live. -Illaoi
Play and learn that champion yourself then you'll understand.
People like to fight her near her tenticals for some reason.
First keep them dead because she's actually very weak when she's not around them.
That's about all I got.
People are complaining because she's finally viable for once. Give it time, people will learn to play against her.
Her ult is still useless in teamfight settings.
I believe the only real strategy you can do is keep out of tentacle range, dodge as many spells as possible and wait till she runs low on mana. In my opinion the problem lies within her being a zone control champ. other zoning champs like 
and 
all are known to be a pain to lane against since there is a wall of damage between you and them and most people who like to play them know where to stand to keep themselves out of harm's way.
Pretty much the only way to win against a zone champ is to not enter their zone of damage, but that also means that you can't get close enough to kill them, so if they manage to get lucky and kill you once, you might be out of luck.
What the hell are you even supposed to do in lane against her as a melee?
Be thankful she's not Darius.
I actually love laning against Illaoi, although I think some of her abilities' hitboxes could use a bit of fine tuning. Anyone with mobility is pretty good against her, but even without mobility, rushing boots of speed still works. All of her spells are dodgeable; you don't have to be , and that's what's so fun about laning against 
, it's one of the most pure skill match ups in the game imo, although as a disclaimer I've yet to play Illaoi myself, my only experience with her is personally playing against her, and watching high elo streamers play against her.
The lane basically comes down to a few things:
- Dodge her abilities (obviously). All of her normal abilities have exaggerated animations and outlined hitboxes.
- Get movement speed. Movement speed is one of the most valuable stats against her. It helps with tip 1 and even as a melee there will be moments where you're forced to kite her.
- Kill her tentacles. It's free gold and it does reduce her power by a meaningful margin. There's not really any reason not to. Find good opportunities to take these out as much as possible.
- If you become a vessel, wait it out. If you get hit by her e you deserve to lose the trade. Unless you're already far ahead of her, or have some kind of advantage on her just take the loss and turtle until the status wears off. It's really short now.
- When she ults, run out of the vicinity. Her ult is actually really slow, and if you followed tip 2, you can easily get out without taking any damage. There's no sense in trying to brute force through it and trying to finish her off. Reposition, and re-engage during her downtimes. You can actually make her ult useless just by timing your aggression. No need for a gank to turn into a double kill.
- Grevious wounds is pretty accessible to most champions now. If you, for some reason, need or want to be able to brute force your way through some of Illaoi's abilities, grevious wounds will help you do that, especially if you are ahead.
There's a reason that Illaoi has always been considered awful by high elo players: her whole kit is basically countered by simple, fundamental game mechanics, which high elo players all have. Illaoi doesn't really bring anything to the table with her kit other than high damage. Just avoid the damage and suddenly she is just a wall of meat that does absolutely nothing.
Illaoi is only able to deal damage when opponents commit heavily to fighting her. This includes when she lands her E and when opponents attack her tentacles, so proceed with caution.
Illaoi is incapable of dealing magic damage with her kit and has % max health damage. Stacking armor is an effective counteroption, consider items like 
Grievous wounds work wonders when trading against Illaoi. Purchase 
or 
as soon as possible to make her cry salty tears.
Buy boots early to help with dodging her priority skillshots. Test of spirit is on a very long cooldown, punish her when the spirit dissipates or when she misses her pull.
Yea, riot did a 'great' job with that last buff. Now illaoi is righ on pair with release yorik and darius as a lanebully vs melees, if not worse. With the absurd buffs to her W, few champs can stand their ground in close combat even if they dodge her tentacles for most of it, and if you stay away from here she can shove in waves and harras you underneath your tower with q+e. And post 6. she can just walk up to you under your tower and try a point blank E. If you dodge it, no big deal for her, if it lands she just ults and dives you from fullhealth.
And just like yorik and darius, she falls of hard as the game progresses since she is easy to outmanouver later on and sucls in teafights if she doesn't get the perfect setup for her ult.
the fact that she does more damage overall than teemo and heimerdinger. show how much damage she has. now i have won lane against her. but even then. its always that am an inch away from dying. its like. you have to outplay her to win a fight. but she doesn't have to. she has to mess up for you to win. she can literally and technically. not lose lane against any match up because with just a black cleaver she can one shot the minion wave and waveclear like crazy.
her damage falls off late game also because she will die very fast if focused because in this meta you can never be tanky enough. however in lane its very hard to beat her.
i used to pick nasus against her. which i do sometimes. except few days ago i had 200 armor. she haven't even finished black cleaver and she did 90% of my health in damage in under 2 seconds. it isn't easy to dodge her skills being immobile. you can always make the argument that if you dodge zed q hes underpowered and will never kill you. but thats just a really bad argument.
illaoi wins every damage fight. idk try to snowball on her and kill her over and over again. dodging her skills isn't as easy say as dodging darius Q and then ruining his day. also her aa reset. hurts a lot now. and the damage on the E is too much.
Trynd
I think they should make her tentacles triggered by her W have .5 more seconds added onto their delay, then Illaoi would be much easier to deal with in lane.
I pick bruiser leona>illaoi it freaking works,leona has so much CC illaoi has trouble moving or brawling with her
Depends on the champion you're playing.
Maybe you're just bad against her. I've seen Garen's own an Illaoi.
Play Nasus. Its still absolutely cancerous and unfun, but you can stack the tentacles and then kill Illaoi's teammates.
Still easier to play against than a Darius.