Irelia’s rework was possibly one of the most impactful moments of this season. It’s created a whole new aura of League of Legends and has made the game more competitive in more ways than one. Before her rework, Irelia had a low pick rate on the competitive stage but now, she’s a top priority pick or ban.
What changed? Simply put, her kit was so outdated that the design team did an overhaul on her, reworking three of her four abilities while implementing a whole new passive for her. Afterwards, Irelia went on to become one of the most dominant champions in the game in exchange for a much harder skillset to master.
We’ll be taking a look at how her rework has influenced the different playstyles on the map and why you should look to prioritize on her pick in the upcoming season, provided she’s still a meta pick. What are we waiting for? Let’s get started!
I’m not going to get into the specifics of how the old Irelia worked but essentially, she was a one-hit wonder before her rework. Her job was to get in and do as much damage before dying. In team fights, she was near useless unless she managed to get ahead in the early game.
Her old kit was built more towards split-pushing thanks to an ability that allowed her to deal large chunks of true damage and an ultimate that was made to wave clear. However, she did have some crowd-control in her kit. She could stun at times if she waited just right and if not that, then she had a slow to close in on opponents.
However, this made her very one-dimensional. All she had to do was jump in and auto-attack while weaving in abilities until her opponent was dead or she was dead. Now, her kit has evolved past that. Irelia has completely changed in playstyle and use.
She can still be a split-pusher in many ways largely due to the fact that the design team still put her in place as a dueler but the way she can utilize her duelist potential can be put into many different variations.
As I’ve said before, the new Irelia only has one old ability from her old toolkit and that’s her dash, Bladesurge. Her entire kit works around this one ability. Now, it’s no longer how fast Irelia can one-shot a squishy like an AD Carry or a mage. Now, it’s about how well Irelia can play the fight in order to get that opportunity to try to one-shot someone.
Her ability, Bladesurge, can instantly have its cooldown reduced if she either kills a target or if she dashes to a marked target. That being said, using her two main reworked abilities, Flawless Duet and Vanguard’s Edge, help her dash around as much as possible.
Her Flawless Duet shoots out two blades one at a time wherever Irelia wants it. Once the second one has been shot out, the two blades will connect together and stun whoever is in their way, marking them. This allows a stun and an extra dash for Irelia but landing the stun in the first place is the hard part.
Her Vanguard’s Edge shoots out a storm of blades at an opponent and once they connect, the blades expand, creating a wall around the champion or champions hit. Each person hit is marked. This can allow for some pretty sick combos on Irelia where she dashes around with no one able to predict her next move.
That being said, the new Irelia is drastically different from the old one. The old Irelia was all about auto-attacking and utilizing your true damage. Now, the new Irelia is all about using her Bladesurge to its maximum potential and auto-attacks aren’t out of the picture just yet. She has to use her auto-attacks during duels and her passive makes sure that this is achieved so she has turned from being just a duelist to becoming a very mobile duelist.
An Irelia expert can turn this champion into the biggest threat one has ever seen. By using her mobility to literally be the hardest person to target and then using her variety of spells to hold the opponent down, a truly great Irelia can take down anyone.
The competitive scene is always evolving and looking for new aspects to put in their game in order to make it more exciting. Teams are always looking to find the best pick or the best strategy so that they can use it in their game to their advantage.
In the end, it’s always one-upping your opponent. Before Irelia came out, most top laners were centered around either carry bruisers like Camille and Renekton or straight up tanks like Maokai and Sion. This made the game extremely one-sided towards teams that were built around holding the frontline while the back line did as much damage as possible.
But now, with Irelia, the entirety of the top lane has shifted into something completely different. Because of the utility Irelia brings, she can take down literally every single top lane that is in the meta right now.
However, her appearance has also shifted her into the mid lane. It isn’t uncommon to see a mid lane Irelia. She changed the mid lane from mages and assassins to mages and bruisers and as you can see, the game is now shifted more towards building strong skirmishes rather than winning the early game outright.
Irelia herself is so dominant in so many aspects of the competitive scene that she managed to push bruisers into the mid lane. Furthermore, she wins lane nine times out of ten and because of this, professional players pick her to increase their chances of winning the early game.
She’s made the game much more fast-paced and if a player is lacking, then Irelia can easily come in and take them out. That means there’s a smaller margin for error on the competitive scene and the games are going at much faster pace now, all thanks to Irelia.
Irelia has shaken up the competitive scene so that obviously means that there are going to be some changes when it comes to the betting scene. It’s not going to be so easy choosing who’s going to win and who’s going to lose.
The reason Irelia is so strong is because she has a very diverse skill set you can use but that’s provided you know how to use it well. Plus, if you make one wrong move on Irelia, chances are you’re going to die either in lane or in a team fight. When it comes to Irelia, you have to play every single step to perfection otherwise you’re not going to get the results you want and when it comes to competitive play, this can be the difference between winning and losing.
Therefore, two teams go against each other and you see someone—whether it’s the mid laner or top laner—pick up Irelia, this can either be the breaker or maker of the game. For example, if you have someone like Lourlo, who specializes in playing champions like Irelia, then his Irelia pick will be more favored towards his team.
But if you have someone like Fnatic’s Caps who has been known to flop on Irelia, then an Irelia pick on him might not be the best choice. In the end, it always comes down to who picks the champion and if they have the ability to home in on the potential that this champion holds.
From a bettor’s perspective, as soon as you see that Irelia pick come in, you need to know who’s playing it because that player will dictate a large portion of whether or not they win that match. They can also be the same player that throws that match away.
At the World Championship, FNC’s Caps picked Irelia several times and sometimes, he performed extremely well, so well to the point that he carried the team on his back. However, he also flopped several matches. He lost several matches by himself due to the Irelia pick. It goes both ways. You can either be the most useful person on your team or you can be utterly uselss. You can’t win strong without losing strong at some point and this comes down to the player. Fnatic’s Caps lost bettors a lot of money at points.
Now, does this mean that he’s a bad player? No. In fact, he’s one of the key essentials to Fnatic and he loves playing carry champions. In the past, he’s clutched out several matches for FNC but the fact that Caps, a mid laner that specializes on carry champions, single-handedly lost matches for Fnatic due to his poor performance on Irelia goes to show critical a good performance on Irelia is.
So, in the end, it comes down to the player playing Irelia because if they know what they’re doing and they know how to player her and they execute well, your chances of winning that match are doubled. And if your chances of winning are doubled, then it’s most likely a good choice to go for that team betting-wise.
Her new ultimate forces teams to disengage if they get too comfortable in a fight and her Flawless Duet is perfect for zoning out damage dealers. Furthermore, her passive makes her deadlier the longer the fight goes and her Bladesurge makes it almost impossible to take her down at one instant.
Irelia is now a key piece to every single team and sometimes, she’ll be the main damage dealer for every single team composition. Whenever Irelia is played correctly, she can become the one carry that the team will need—no more no less.
However, if the person who plays Irelia fails to meet her potential, then the chances of their team winning become slim to none. It’s high risk but high rewards and by today’s standards, high risk is the norm. This makes Irelia a go to piece for any professional player, provided they know how to play her.
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