What is Illaoi's niche supposed to be?

GhostOfShrimpmas·May 10, 2016·1 votes·344 views

In her current state, her main strength is as a powerful counter-initiator and stationary teamfight monster with her ult, with a secondary strength in ending sieges by grabbing a spirit.

What exactly is she supposed to be? The current set of changes (I know they're being rolled back, but I'm looking at the direction they're pointing) seem to be cutting away teamfight power in favor of more reliable sustain in lane. Which will kind of remove her only strategic niche, because being tough in lane and bursty but squishy and kitable in teamfights are roles shared by Darius, but not as well as him. At that point, the only real difference will be that her grab on her E has a longer range but less kill potential.

So, Meddler (or anyone else who wants to chime in), what exactly is her strength supposed to be? Why do you want us to pick Illaoi instead of any other fighter?

3 Comments

QuephaMay 10, 20161 votes

The changes aren't really about teamfight vs. laning for Illaoi so much as they're about shaving some power off her ridiculous high end (3 or more enemies standing in her ult not bothering to dodge tentacles) and moving it to her low end so she can take an overall power increase without ending up in a place where she can 1v5 the enemy team half the time and just stands around and slowly dies the other half.

Considering that change would have been packaged with a lower cooldown on W, I think her net power in all the situations where Illaoi really needed help would go up since she could get around team fights better and cause more swings from her passive tentacles.

Her niches would still be punishing stagnancy and giving her carries free time with enemy spirits, but there would be room to make her good at punishing small amounts of stagnancy instead of requiring the enemy to fall asleep at the keyboard for her to do anything but then totally blowing them away when that happens.

Sir HammerlockMay 10, 20161 votes

She's just incapable of being competitively viable because she's strong at stationary team fights. League of Legends has been in a mobility meta for a very long time.

redniwediSMay 10, 20161 votes

The big difference between her and Darius, even though they are both team fight focused, is Darius is more focused on picks and Illaoi is focused on spreading the damage around.

It's single target VS aoe. Even though they both do both, they each favor one over the other.