If they did option 1... you just end up with yasuo that has 1-2 sec cd on dashing to same target during fights. Anything longer than this for lockout on dashing to same target isn't reasonable for the irelia player. But anything this short leaves her even more frustratingly mobile to play against. It reduces burst a little bit, but not much.
If they do option 2, well that's a whole nother headache of multiple balance sessions to try to find the right amount of armor pen or shred to equal what it currently does. If you do shred, it's even worse because people already seem to incorrectly blame cleaver as the reason tanks are weak due to the armor shred it offers during teamfights. Truth is, it has much more to do with conqueror, crit, %hp damage, and too much power given to dps champs both melee and ranged as far as being able to kill tanks w/o building any armor pen. Cleaver armor shred is about the last reason on the list. Still... adding it to irelia would create tons of complaints about that.
Continuing with option 2, that might just lead to assassin irelia in the same line as zed or talon... with lethality items. You give her armor shred or pen and she just buys more of it so she deals true damage to squishies and then all your changes have accomplished is to change her itemization while still leaving her an assassin with nuke damage.
If we look at option 3, we aren't reducing her damage at all. And the sustain she gets from her bladesurge is pretty close to what an adc gets from their aa's mid/late game so I don't think it's really broken or anything.
I'm no irelia fan and I think she did deserve some nerf along the line of the latest one she got, but people need to realize adc and other roles are different. I see so many posts like this irelia one... and in many of those (not this one) people complain about the burst adc's have to deal with and blah blah blah it's not fair and no counterplay. But the truth is while it's frustrating to play against burst from melee champs and get deleted in 2.5 sec with no counterplay... the same can be said for playing against adc's. You've got your untouchable double tear iceborn ezreal that no melee can stick to long enough to kill by themselves. You've got your mid game lucian that hurts like hell when most adc's are "weak" and is very hard to stick to while having tons of burst damage himself. You've got your vayne that kills anything with just 2 items and 4-7 aa's all while stealthing around with q's and condemning you away so you can't stick to her and only gets more scary with more items. And then you've got your mid/late and late game crit champs who at that point kill anyone in sight with about 7 aa's or fewer. So if you teamfight vs them and you get cc'd at all, you die to them with 0 counterplay. You got on them and nuked 90% of their hp before getting cc'd for 0.5 sec thanks to your tenacity? You still die. And die with 0 counterplay because crit makes ranged champs have greater movespeed than melee in combat and most melee don't have 2 sec cd gapcloser to overcome that.
This is WHY melee's have adapted to build for 1-shot. Because of unfair and illogical higher movespeed of adc's in combat thanks to adc itemization. Either the melee 1-shots, or they're killed with equal lack of counterplay. Sure... it might take a whole extra 1.5 sec, but it's equally bs with no counterplay.
Tying it together... irelia is a caster-based champ. Caster champs largely do burst damage. Sure there's ryze and cassio to name 2 common sort-of exceptions, but even they have some burst. Because irelia is melee, the burst part must apply even more... because she must take greater risk and close the gap more to do said damage. If they were to make irelia more sustained damage focused like cassio or ryze as a caster-based champ, then they would also have to give her a way to KEEP her targets marked longer AND more ways to mark her targets for continued casting of bladesurge... because ult and a singular flawless wouldn't cut it. Moreover, that leaves her much more at the mercy of enemy cc in teamfights and potentially getting blown up before she does any damage... much like a caster-based more high skill floor required melee version of a crit adc. She'd have all of the challenges they do and none of the benefits of the range, ability to build raw damage, etc. that they have.
I think if champs and roles were properly balanced and fights made to be much longer, your idea of irelia the way I describe her in last paragraph could be made to work as a dps champ. But with the current "quick fights, quick games" mentality meta Riot wants to force, it isn't a very viable or reasonably feasible thing to enact. Either she's left very bursty, or her damage is so abysmal that if she gets focused at all, she's useless and might as well be considered troll pick. As far as fixing adc's, bruisers and fighters, tanks, etc. I've made several posts about what needs to be done to be fair to ALL sides.
So many people just look at things from the narrow perspective of the champ/role THEY like to play. I don't. I consider what frustrations each champ/role is dealing with as well as what crazy strengths it might bring to the table at some points of the game too. I consider counterplay to what a champ does and if that even exists or is a fair/reasonably feasible counterplay or if more/different/better counterplay should be available. And then I make recommendations to reduce frustrations for all roles that would return champs/roles more to doing the job they've traditionally been made to do, to reduce the more broken aspects of champions, to improve counterplay (and counterplay options), etc. that in the end would make it more fair and more about skill for everyone. Because I feel the game should be testing skill more than it should be testing ability to pick x to auto-beat y.
