A humble Irelia main's guide

Hi,
In this guide I will be covering Irelia the blade dancer as she is one of my favorite champ out of all of the 148, and I can say I have learned her well. I hope that everyone can learn something new from this article, so if you are interested in her I recommend you read this article.

-Items

Her core items are: Blade of the Ruined King, Trinity force, Sterak's Gage and Titanic Hydra.
Blade of the Ruined King is for split pushing on Irelia, Trinity force is for team fighting, Sterak's Gage is for team fighting as well and Titanic is for split pushing. For boots you can decide what to build based on the enemy team, but it's usually one of these two: Ninja Tabi or Mercury's treads. For other items you can build: Spirit visage, Guardian angel, Wit's end, Black cleaver and Mortal reminder.

-Runes

For runes you want to take Conqueror so you can teamfight better with the sustain it gives you and it's better in drawn out fights in the laning phase.
For your primary rune tree you want to take:
-Triumph: a standard rune for fighters like Irelia as the sustain you get can often turn fights in your favor. As Irelia does a lot of diving in and out of fights, often times if you go in, get low health, and then get out and your team finishes low health enemies, you can go right back in.
-Legend Bloodline: Irelia has a pretty strong early game, and has amazing outplay potential in the correct hands, but her late game isn't the best out there, this is why Legend Bloodline is my favorable choice. But if you don't feel like you can get kills early you can always take Legend Alacrity for early pressure. In short Legend Alacrity is for for reliably snowballing while Legend Bloodline is for late game scaling and making your leads bigger.
-Coup de Grace:Coup de Grace is a perfect rune for a fighter like Irelia because it allows you to finish fights strongly. A key factor with team fighting as Irelia is that one of the best things you can do is finish off weak enemies, so that you can get your Q Bladesurge reset from a kill.
For what you take for the secondary rune tree you can take:
-Inspiration with boots and biscuit delivery for more lane sustain.
-Sorcery with manaflow band and transendence for mana and extra cdr.
-Resolve with bone plating and overgrowth for safer laning phase.

 (This is the rune page I usually use on Irelia)

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Incredibly fun to play if you know how to play well with her
• Very easy CS
• Can often 1v1
• Can safely split push
• Built in sustain
• Fits perfectly into dive comps
• Safe first pick
• High skill ceiling

Cons

• High Skill Floor
• Weaker late game than other top laners
• Easy to punish yourself by not getting a Q reset
• Weak to Crowd Control
• When behind it can be difficult to catch up

-Gameplay

• Early game
  

  Irelia can use enemy minions to easily dance around skill shots! But make sure to Q minions that are nearly dead. A trick that I use is that while I'm hitting the enemy with spells I usually aim for the minions as well to get them low enough. That way I can fight and simultaneously prepare minions to Q mid fight. It gets especially easy when you build your first item. Never underestimate the healing that you get from your Q as well! Also a strategy that might be useful early game is to Q 5 minions in the first wave and fight the enemy top laner. If you are smart enough you Q 5 low health minions and save you last Q for your enemy's flash/escape.

  You can also take advantage of the enemy panicking when you throw your E out. Try to throw out the first part of your E and then auto the enemy as they try to dodge two or three times, then E again. If you have a hard time landing you E try to throw the first part of it behind them and the other behind yourself.(and hit minions as well to Q them as I explained earlier)

  When you have Sheen or Trinity Force take advantage of the fact that each cast of your E procs the Sheen bonus damage, this also works on turrets! So to get the most damage out of a rotation, try and get an auto in between each ability and wait out that 1.5 second cooldown, you will see a massive spike in your auto attack dps.

If you are building Blade of the Ruined King(BoRK for short) you can either use the BoRK active reactively or proactively. You can use it to chase someone down with the movement speed it gives, or slow down your enemy so you can land your E easier.

• Mid game

  Look out for small fights breaking out in mid lane or in the upper jungle, if you are able to get in range and land your R you may quickly pick up 2 or 3 free kills.

  I usually watch my bot lane to see if I should tp bot lane. Oftentimes you can 1v2 the enemy bot lane if they are somewhat weak from a trade. If you are ahead, you may be able to 1v2 them even if they are full health! Just don't forget that you are very weak to hard cc.

  Unless you are really ahead, be sure to position carefully. In team fights you should wait for others to engage and for the enemy to use their cc so you can dash around freely. With you R you can easily get to the backline and if you're ahead you can kill the enemy adc with just a stun two Qs and a few auto attacks. Then you can easily take out their tanks and finish a fight. Just remember that as an Irelia your main job is to take out the enemy carries.

• Late game
  

  While split pushing might not be the most exciting gameplay, if you don't take objectives like turrets, you can't win. Taking pressure off of other areas of the map is so important. And as a late game Irelia can likely 1v1 most people on the enemy team, you can sponge a lot of pressure for your team as the enemy may have to send 2 or 3 members to try and stop you, allowing your team to have the numbers advantage in their fight. Vision is key for this strategy. Have good map awareness and know when to back off if you don't know where 2 or 3 of the enemy team is. If the enemy does not react though, continue your path of terror and take some towers while you are at it! Don't be surprised when you have 300+ CS at the end of a game, with such a powerful wave clear with Titanic Hydra and Bladesurge you shouldn't miss a single CS late game.

  Irelia can have a tough time in the late game as enemies will be looking to target you with CC abilities and an immobile Irelia is often a dead Irelia. But if your team has other people looking to dive and soak up the damage such as Jarvan IV, Galio, Nocturne, Camille, etc, then the enemy team won't be able to handle all of you. It even works if there are just 2 people diving since hitting an E on a carry usually means their death. Dive in and take them out!
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Wave Management

  Wave management on Irelia is really important. It can be the deciding factor in winnig or losing a 1v1. As Irelia your easiest way to win a 1v1 is to stack your passive (Ionian Fervor) before going in! The golden rule is fast pushing the first wave and slow pushing the 2nd and 3rd. After that try to freeze it close to your turret and look for a mistake your opponent makes. This way you can even kill your opponent multiple times. This is why I don't recommend building a tiamat early because with that item you can't punish mistakes that hard, and you will be constantly pushing the wave and it will be harder for you to kill your enemy. Also freezing is very useful especially when you have a jungler who comes top often.

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading my guide, I am just beginning my journey of guide writing! All of the guides I'm writing will be for League of Legends. I hope that even Irelia veterans can appreciate this guide and hopefully there were little gems of information that everyone came away with from it. Have a nice day everyone!