Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

When Irelia gets a rework

Linna Excel·9/18/2017, 5:02:45 PM·10 votes·9,903 views

Is her rework going to be more of a modernization or a total reboot?

I ask this because while her visuals are a little dated she looks fine IMO and I'm fine with her lore as is, even if it needs to be fleshed out a little more. I'm in the modernization camp.

Gamplay wise, I know people hate her E's stun and riot wants to get rid of tenacity but she's got a pretty unique kit. I remember Gbay was complaining about her a few month ago just because her kit and how you play her is completely like any other toplaner. She doesn't want to trade like other champs, she wants to go all in or not do anything. My biggest complaint is that despite being listed as a fighter (with a bit of assassin in there) she builds a little bit too much tank by the end game and turns into more of a bruiser than anything. She's supposed to be a diver and I think that would work on her, but she ends up a bit more of a juggernaut/off tank if anything.

From both her lore and her gameplay, it seems like she's got a bit of an underdog/outplay theme going on. I know riot wants to go more psychic blades, but I think a better direction for her would be Rocky 2's big fight, except Irelia is calling for Soraka at the end. Assuming the stun on her E is going away, how about AD scaling on the W's heal and maybe let the E's damage scale better on irelia's missing health and maybe add a heal to it if the ult goes away or loses its heal. I say encourage her to build a little more damage and to keep hitting. I really like the self-heal on damage theme she's got going could that be added to her lore somehow. Maybe as soraka healed her, she gained a little bit of insight or something?

Also, could riot deemphasize the psychic blades theme they've been talking about. That's now kind of shen's thing and having played shen a little after the rework, I really don't like it. At all. I'm pretty sure there's some older shen players who agree with me on this one. I don't think an Orianna's ball mechanic would work too well on a melee champ either and I don't really see a spot for it unless irelia gets an ult that changes her from melee to ranged.

Now riot could make Irelia's ult a bigger version of kayle's E mixed with sivir's W (think of the krull flying dagger thingy but irelia's sword for 7 seconds), but that'd be a pretty big departure from the current transcendent blades. It'd be pretty cool to see her sword thingy flying around and would provide a big gameplay moment, but it's a pretty big change. Still I'd take it over anything that makes her remotely shen like. You could also make it a barrage version of katarina's Q but without leaving a dagger behind. Maybe have it reset the cooldown of her Q instead. Her gameplay would turn into an R-Q-AA x4 for her ult, but that's probably a flashy thing riot wants and wouldn't mess much with her existing kit/gameplay. It'd also make her sticky enough to be a diver and would allow for cool repositioning opportunities.

62 Comments

Sharjo9/18/2017, 5:24:33 PM11 votes

Personally I think Irelia needs a complete remake kit wise. Her kit may be solid sure, but not only is it a stat check nightmare, it also horribly fails at conveying her fantasy of wielding swords with her brain, which is a really cool fantasy. Nothing she does in game actually utilizes her theme in any way, and all of her active skills could be accomplished with a different weapon, which is a huge diservice to how cool that theme can be. In honesty I don't think there's anything in Irelia's kit aside from maybe her Q would or should carry over through a VGU.

Quepha9/18/2017, 11:13:09 PM6 votes

[{quoted}](name=Linna Excel,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=AAvkct6o,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-09-18T17:02:45.091+0000)

she's got a pretty unique kit.

Strongly disagree. She has one of the most interesting concepts (psychically controlled blade whirlwind) attached to the MOST paint-by-numbers diver kit the world has ever seen. Passive: stats Q: targeted gapclose. the reset mechanic primarily applies to farming and is otherwise just reliable single target damage. W: stats E: targeted cc R: damage and healing that's so reliable it might as well be labeled as more stats

She is far and away the most boring diver kit in the game at the moment, even counting Xin Zhao's old kit that is about to receive a much-needed update.

You talk about her as an underdog champ, but that's not actually how her 'underdog' mechanics play out. She does not do well diving into the middle of a teamfight as she still tends to go down pretty quickly when focused, she still heavily prefers 1v1's or maybe 1v2's if she's very fed and thinks she can pop one of the targets quickly. Her E isn't really a risk/reward mechanic in duels so much as a risk mitigation as her stun triggers on any trade that would be slightly bad and turns it into one that is slightly good. A good 'underdog' champion would be like Illaoi who's damage goes off the rails when she's outnumbered but if she doesn't get that damage off she gains no bonus durability to actually survive. Even Olaf's bonuses work better to create the feeling of being powerful when on the back foot because he actually has to be low health to get them while Irelia just needs to have 1% less hp than her opponent for "lol you stunned I walk away now".

LankPants9/18/2017, 5:11:55 PM4 votes

Personally I think something akin to Xin would be great for Irelia. A fairly small rework that keeps the same framework and the same basic idea behind at least most of the abilities. I think Irelia is an example of a champion who's aged really well, compared to most S1 champs she had a surprisingly well put together kit that needs far less work than champions released on either side of her.

Skelenth9/19/2017, 12:17:26 AM2 votes

I don't think Irelias Psychic Blades overlap with Shens. Shen uses what seems like a literal ghost sword. Irelia uses her mind to make her blades fly around. Apart from this probably looking hella cool, having swords that don't follow the rules of usual sword combat can make for some interesting gameplay (that doesn't exclude her trademark turn-around). What stops her from hitting you with three successive strikes in one swing? Imagine fighting General Grievous, but he has more arms and they're invisible. I think Irelia has incredible potential, even though I despise her current design and hope I'll never have to see it again.

Killaburn9/19/2017, 11:45:29 AM2 votes

I like irelia but i think the big 3 needs rework first before her (NUNU,MORDE and PANTH)

Smirkıngrin12/29/2017, 9:54:27 AM1 votes

Yes! I also think Irelia goes a little too tank, I mean she's forced to, since the only scaling ability is her q, and we all know we never use the ult for anything other than the sheen proc and healing on large minion waves, I find it so odd how Irelia is classified as a fighter, just like Fiora, Jax, and Yasuo, but she ONLY goes trinity and it is off-meta to go any other damage item, not only that but it's just no good on her, tank is the way to go if you're playing to win and not throw your advantage, Irelia is definitely a little too stack-checky in my opinion, she either gets a kill in lane then bullies them out with the level advantage and 1v2s if she gets ganked by the jungle prematurely quite easily then proceeds to one shot the adc and win the game but being forced to go tank, if she does not get a kill however she just has to watch the enemy laner push in waves one after another into her tower and try to salvage as much as she can with her q and sheen, it specially hurts when she dies before having enough to buy a sheen, it's deadly for her and she can get dived easily and be useless the entire laning phase, I hate depending on my jungle but him and roaming is my only salvation, seeing as her kit is so 1 dimensional that I just cannot outplay unless they ACTUALLY get under my turret for some reason.. I would love to see riot encourage more damage on her and give her a unique dueling kit with more mechanics to work with and variety, one good idea I can think of is giving her freedom to level up each of her 3 abilities as she likes, depending on her opponent's playstyle, in order to reward irelias who can detect a playstyle early on and level up the right things, like an aggresive laner going for the sustain, one who trades often for burst damage on third auto or mobility for passive laners, just basic examples but it sounds interesting and I wanted to throw it out there, of course letting her 1v1 anyone in the game is not ideal but I just want some more mastery reward or ways to show off my thousands of hours on Irelia even if just a bit, I'm sure most Irelia mains would agree,

Digielf12/29/2017, 10:37:25 AM1 votes

the reworks in LoL happen slower than Devil May Cry game releases