Irelia haters rejoice, Irelia lovers despair. The harbinger of effective deletes has declared Irelia to be his next victim!
You'd have to take years of drama class to come up with an overreaction this absurd. Bear in mind; this isn't an insult to you, I'm just really amazed at the overdramatic word choice.
First off, lemme start by debunking the whole "oh the Champion is getting effectively deleted" schtick, 'cause it's irritating as hell to see that practically every other rework.
Every time a Champion gets reworked and they hit the PBE, everyone has some huge issue with it one way or another. My biggest issue with Galio, for example, was that he was turned from a hunched-over gargoyle into the monolithic straight-backed humanoid he is now. (and "Justice Punch", but that's neither here nor there.)
But a lot of the time, people seem to throw everything out the window once they see the slightest surface-appearance of the Champion not being exactly like they were/are before Rework. Evelynn being a near-naked human-like appearance instead of an assassin in BDSM leathers, for example, or Galio not immediately breaking into some morose self-inspection about his failed duties or what-not.
"They deleted Galio and replaced him with this!?" "Who's this? This doesn't look like Evelynn...", etc. etc.
But, nobody really bothered to pay attention to all the details they kept. Like, Galio still has his introspective, sadder quotes.
"Tragedy is worse when you can do nothing about it."
"They made me to stop magic, and yet I hate when it's gone."
"I like you, small blue thing. You're the one who doesn't change."
"Ah, the world. It goes by in a flash."
Amongst a few others; Galio still has that to him. Riot knew how important it was to keep Galio somewhat somber, because that (alongside his Idol of Durand) was one of his most defining features.
As for Evelynn - they remade her into something more thematically correct than "BDSM Assassin" - she's now a demon, a primordial stalker and seductress. She still stalks and kills prey while looking unimaginably sexy, and, of course, she retains two of her signature moves; Hate Spikes and permastealth.
And those are just two examples I could think of right off-hand where people were godsawful appalled at how - gasp - Different the Champion looked post-update, despite Riot keeping a lot of the thematic and gameplay cores of the Champions.
So, yes - they do look drastically different, but that's the thing about Evelynn and Galio - they're not human, so they've got quite a bit of room to work on them when it comes to visual design, they should be allowed those liberties.
Next, there's this;
For her to get a rework means riot does not want her to be the same champ.
You're clearly looking at it through the wrong lens. It's not that Riot doesn't want Irelia to be the same Champion, it's that they want Irelia to be the Champion she sells herself as. The Irelia that her current kit fails to deliver on, where her thematics (telekinetic swordswoman) don't match her gameplay (enemy has more health than me = I stun them and win).
Let's look at some examples where Champions didn't really fit their thematics, and Riot elevated them to something wholly better, shall we?
First off, Warwick. Before, he was the Blood Hunter, some scientist who was in-league with Singed, bringing bodies for his inhumane experiments, and in order to do his job better, he had Singed perform some esoteric alchemy involving...Star organs, or something, to turn him into a werewolf.
...Yeah. Not a great thematic. It's silly, frankly. But, when they were reworking him, they stripped away the unnecessary details and refined Warwick. He was someone, who had the misfortune to meet Singed, and became a part of the inhumane experiments, becoming - not a werewolf - but a chimera.
And with the changed backstory and basic design inspiration (not a werewolf but still kind of one), they took his theme ("Blood Hunter") and cranked it straight up to eleven.
And I think anyone who plays Warwick nowadays will say he delivers really, really goddamn well on that theme - what with his Blood Scent and the long-range tackle.
Then, we have Urgot; disgusting, half-dead monster "human" with mechanical legs. That is nothing easy to work with. And yet, they took that, and made a trudging, powerful tank with heavy machinery and a massive human torso to give to us, in all his ruthless glory.
And I'm not saying Riot's reworks are all perfect, either. Everyone and their mother can agree that Ryze's rework didn't exactly cut it, and the Class Updates were pretty rough for some Champions. (Rengar being my biggest pain point), but with their VGU pods wholeheartedly focusing on Champions one at a time instead of broadly sweeping over a class/subclass to make distinct, you have to admit they've been extremely good about succeeding with these updates.
All said, I'm pretty interested to see how Irelia comes out - hell, maybe the rework will give me the opportunity to play and enjoy her. It'll definitely be better than the stale thing she is now.
