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Illaoi?

AndurilWielder··1 votes·970 views

Landed her in ARAM, and I went like 0/11. (I think this was quite solidly the worst performance I've ever done in an ARAM by a vastly wide margin, bar none)

Granted, all we had were squishy, close range champs against a team with healers, global ults, lots of mobility and long range poke. They just kited and melted anyone who got anywhere close. Illaoi is slow, and that pull of hers which has a 14sec cooldown didn't really do anything. Sure, the effect is nice, but I didn't have anyone on my team that could follow up with that sort of engage.

If I used her W (I think it was her W), to attack and jump into their face, they all just hopped away. I tried to flash ult them, but I still didn't hit anybody. The tentacles did nothing because they could just poke them from range, and their Yasuo would just run in and clean up.

I feel like ARAM matches can be hugely one sided. Sure, we had a sona, but it didn't do any good, because nobody had any ability to engage a ranged bursty mobile enemy team comp.

On the other hand, I feel like Illaoi's gimmick is to just run around, spawn tentacles in areas you think the enemy would walk across, and...it hits them once every ten seconds? I didn't have much chance to read her abilities, to be honest.

So, I wanted to really gripe about that ARAM game because it left me very frustrated. However, I'm mostly concerned about Illaoi strategy, tips, how her abilities synchronize, various ways to combo her moves, and how to pop that ultimate off well. Obviously if you can get the enemy team in a cramped, close range team fight, but usually people I've played against are far smarter than that, I can only ever hit one person with her ult, making it...utterly worthless. It just spawns invincible tentacles for 8 seconds, one for every champ hit, doesn't do much damage and...that's...it? Is her job to peel? Do damage? I'm...a little confused what her role is supposed to be. It feels like she's just a champ with a unique kit that's simply...there as a Garen counter.

5 Comments

iiGazeii2 votes

Illaoi is a lane bully tank. She carves out her space and dominates it in the laning phase, and sets up engages while soaking up damage in the late game.

Generally, you're going to want to max her E first. It offers the most damage and CC and it best affected by rank, while the other ones scale more with the items you build. Maybe grab a second rank in Q if you really need the extra damage for waveclear.

Illaoi's ult doesn't seem like much on paper, but it's insanely strong. It spawns a tentacle for each person it hits, but it also sets her W on a basically nonexistant cooldown, letting her hop around a teamfight and repeatedly slam tentacles everywhere. Remember, every single tentacle that hits a hero, whether that tentacle was created by her passive, her Q, her E, or her ult, will heal Illaoi for 5% of her missing health. It's an immense amount of AoE damage and sustain. Even if you're just laning 1v1, it's often too much healing and damage for someone to deal with, killing them or forcing them to leave your territory... if they can. People usually take Ravenous Hunter and Spirit Visage on Illaoi for even more sustain.

Illaoi is a tank who sets up engages for her team and becomes a threat the enemy cannot ignore. Use your E to pull in an enemy's spirit, ideally a carry, while you're next to a tentacle, then pound it with your W. Either they completely disengage, or they suffer a good chunk of free damage before they get slowed and harassed by tentacles. You basically take them out of the fight, letting your team move into a 4v5.

Generally though, Illaoi's greatest strength is her split pushing power. She can clear waves like there's no tomorrow, and can win basically any 1v1 or even 1v2 the enemy tries to throw at her to stop her push. You force the enemy to split their focus, putting them between a rock and a hard place: lose this teamfight/objective, or lose this tower. She can also set up slow pushes effortlessly; if the waves are pretty much even and you have a good amount of AD, one Q will kill all the caster minions. Leave the melee minions, and go do something else. The wave will build up in a big wave and push all the way to the next tower, forcing the enemy to send somebody to go clean it up. Doing this a bit before an important objective can, again, net your team a free objective or a free tower.

AndurilWielder1 votes

{quoted}

Illaoi is a lane bully tank. She carves out her space and dominates it in the laning phase, and sets up engages while soaking up damage in the late game.

Generally, you're going to want to max her E first. It offers the most damage and CC and it best affected by rank, while the other ones scale more with the items you build. Maybe grab a second rank in Q if you really need the extra damage for waveclear.

Illaoi's ult doesn't seem like much on paper, but it's insanely strong. It spawns a tentacle for each person it hits, but it also sets her W on a basically nonexistant cooldown, letting her hop around a teamfight and repeatedly slam tentacles everywhere. Remember, every single tentacle that hits a hero, whether that tentacle was created by her passive, her Q, her E, or her ult, will heal Illaoi for 5% of her missing health. It's an immense amount of AoE damage and sustain. Even if you're just laning 1v1, it's often too much healing and damage for someone to deal with, killing them or forcing them to leave your territory... if they can. People usually take Ravenous Hunter and Spirit Visage on Illaoi for even more sustain.

Illaoi is a tank who sets up engages for her team and becomes a threat the enemy cannot ignore. Use your E to pull in an enemy's spirit, ideally a carry, while you're next to a tentacle, then pound it with your W. Either they completely disengage, or they suffer a good chunk of free damage before they get slowed and harassed by tentacles. You basically take them out of the fight, letting your team move into a 4v5.

Generally though, Illaoi's greatest strength is her split pushing power. She can clear waves like there's no tomorrow, and can win basically any 1v1 or even 1v2 the enemy tries to throw at her to stop her push. You force the enemy to split their focus, putting them between a rock and a hard place: lose this teamfight/objective, or lose this tower. She can also set up slow pushes effortlessly; if the waves are pretty much even and you have a good amount of AD, one Q will kill all the caster minions. Leave the melee minions, and go do something else. The wave will build up in a big wave and push all the way to the next tower, forcing the enemy to send somebody to go clean it up. Doing this a bit before an important objective can, again, net your team a free objective or a free tower.

Ah that makes sense. Thanks. So her ult is what heals her then? I had no idea she could also just W,W,W after ulting.

iiGazeii1 votes

{quoted}

Ah that makes sense. Thanks. So her ult is what heals her then? I had no idea she could also just W,W,W after ulting.

Technically, it's her passive that heals her. Any tentacle slam that hits a champion gives Illaoi a heal. Her ult just sets up a lot of tentacles and gives her the means to slam them repeatedly.

Poro Lord1 votes

she thick moving on

AndurilWielder1 votes

Yeah, and using W, marks a target to be slammed by more tentacles. Does one tentacle slam every 10 seconds, or 10 seconds per individual champ?

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