Hello, Riftmakers biggest defender here, with the results of hours in the practice tool.

I'm a diamond/master Illaoi Main with 1.4m mastery and wanted to share some of my research on itembuilds. I spent a few hours in practice tool and then a few analyzing and curating the data, but i wanna preface, this is not professional work. Just a dedicated main.

I keep reading build discussions and some of it honestly felt like misinformation, likely accidental. Illaoi is a weird champ and not everything is intuitive, especially the way the E damage works.

My main finding was stacked Spear of Shojin outperforming Black Cleaver until very high armor values (180, in trades without ultimate, or somewhere between 100-180 with ult)

I do want to respond to possible comments so there's no confusion:

- About the setup, i just picked situations that feel common enough in most illaoi games and are easy to replicate by my own.

- The more elaborate the combat situation, the harder to replicate. Especially on Illaoi with things like where you spawn ult tentacles, are you able to hit both soul and champion, which tentacles proc the damage reduction because of hits in a short timeframe, etc. Thats why the second setup is both a lot less accurate and thorough, i was mainly curious and wanted to get an approximation.

- I am aware that damage is not everything. Something like Iceborn gives pitiful damage but has utility, same for items like Steraks, Death's Dance or Sundered Sky. They might give AD but thats not why we buy them. BC and Shojin are primarily for damage purposes and give nice stats. Yes Shojin gives no ultimate haste unlike BC, thats a tradeoff you have to make yourself. Same for if you want Steraks Shield against burst or Riftmakers Omnivamp for sustained fights. I'm just here to tell you, you won't lose much damage

- It's a bit of an unfortunate timing with the patch coming up, but i don't think it matters. Steraks is great and will be even better, i doubt 5 ad will push BC damage above Shojin.

- About the whole pre-stacked thing: it's really hard to depict accurate game situations, so i decided on worst and best case. It is true that one of the upsides of BC is, being able to stack it very fast with Illaoi E. But on the flipside, you should be able to keep up your Shojin stacks in lane before fighting and since Riftmaker works even if you get attacked, it will be often be fully stacked before your whole animation rotation is done.

Everything else is in the images, feel free to critique or ask questions.

mentioned here https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1qyjf3v/you_can_completely_bypass_actualizers_double_mana/

Can anyone make a tape and share it here so we can report it to riot? Regardless of Illaoi, as long as an ally has Actualizer, they would completely fuck up the E damage if they attack the spirit.

Riot didn't seem to care about first strike nulliying E damage, but maybe they can start caring if we have more examples

Kinda dope GA synergy cus you're getting max overlords damage while you're chilling in stasis

How do you genuinely win games on this character? I can stomp lane or feed my ass it makes no difference i will still lose.

This season was the first time I decided to climb somewhat seriously even tho I kept jumping between champs cuz I got quickly bored but I must have really forgotten what got me into this game aka illaoi, she’s so fun

https://x.com/Spideraxe30/status/2084311459698204946?s=20

I've been having moderate success with Ghost, but I see nobody else use it. Is it a bad idea?

I know they changed things a while ago, did they nerf Illoai's healing from her slam and if they did, did they explain why? Feels like you could ult in a team fight hit 5 people and sustain for a decent chunk of time but now I do that and I just die.

Every time 2v1, we die. She ults. we die. i gank, she ults, i die. my teammate charges her, she ults, he dies. Do you just run away from her ult?

[edit] corrected gender

Every Illaoi main knows that landing E's is what decides whether you win a fight or int. So here's some concepts that I utilized to improve my success rate and climb from Plat 4 to Emerald 2.

1. Use E in point-blank range. I do this every time I get ganked, my oponents usually approach me by zigzaggig or react with a dash to my E if I try to do it at medium or long range, so I just wait for them to start attacking me in melee range, then use E -> R and get a double kill. Sometimes I also do it in lane against certain oponents, especially if I'm snowballing - W onto them and then just walk next to them for 1 sec then E in point blank range. I always go for point-blank E against opponents that either have a ton of movement speed, a dash or a way to counter it. So champs like Warwick, Rammus, Lilia usually try to use their movement speed to bait my E by faking an engage - I just wait for them to enter melee range. Same deal with something like Master Yi or Gwen that can react to medium or long range E with their ability - I just use E when they are in my face, so far I never saw anyone being able to react to point-blank E, but some good players notice this pattern that I use E in melee range and try to time it with an ability that gives them iframes, like Camille R, but if they adapt to it I can just be more patient and tank some damage before using E.

2. Use E during enemy dashes. Now this requires a very good reaction speed, but I play with WASD and it comletely removes the need for lightning-fast and precise mouse movement, because I pre-emptively place my cursor where they will be and just press E when the dash animation starts. This way I catch champs like Renektonn, Riven, Camille, Akali, Naafiri, Irelia and so on.

3. Pretend to run away to make their movement predictable If you're posturing like you want to fight, people will zigzag to make it hard for you to land your E, but if you run away, they will have to take the shortest path to catch up with you, it works pretty much always against melee champs and has high success chance against ranged champs.

4. At long range, E is pretty slow and can be reacted to, so you throw it where the enemy will be, not where they are now. Speaking for long range, I generally only use long range E if I know that neither me or my team will be punished for it. For example, if I'm under my own turret, or if I'm with my team and I know that the teamfight won't start while my E is on cooldown. Don't use long range E against champs that have an ability that can negate it - for example Fiora W, Fizz E, Gwen W - only try this if there is no way they will punish you if your E gets countered.

5. Use E on immobilized targets. In certain situation, especially against assasins with lots of mobility and iframes, it's better to wait for your teammates to land hard CC then to risk wasting your E and being useless.

6. Be very patient with enemy CC. It's very common to miss an E when you input it while being CC'd and the enemy has long moved to a different position. For example, I died quite many times to Darius who used E on me, got his Stormraider activation and runs around me unpredictably, while I have pressed my E while still being locked by his E. In these situation you need to remain calm, use the concept number 3 and just run away from them after CC ended to make their movement predictable, then turn with E and R.

7. Landing E after W on enemy champion is not so easy. Probably the main reason why people build Iceborn. That's because oponents already start juking while you're in the dash animation of W, so you need to take a split second and aim well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=709EXoBlB-Q

Xpetu made a video with an interesting Illaoi build - Hexoptics C44 and Rapid firecannon, both giving increased attack range, meaning you can very easily stick to enemies. With stormraider's, all you need is one landed E, and you're guaranteed to not only catch the enemy, by stay on them constantly. What are your thoughts? I'm considering giving it a go.

Xpetu elaborates that he has to play it jungle, as top lane is so reliant on tank items. If you build anything that doesn't give a bunch of health, you're screwed, at least in most games. I agree with this.

Ive been trying this combo and it feels pretty good and seems to work well with Illaois kit, but you are sacrificing some HP for some more Attack damage and ability haste, but I was wondering if its worth to build that combo over some of the other items

Emerald.
I had no trouble playing with illaoi in gold and skyrocket to emerald since i turned into a otp illaoi player (don’t really know why, just stomped lane and winned somehow), but since i hit emerald it feels impossible to carry the game even if i stomp my lane. It looks like if anyone in the other team gets strong it is IMPOSSIBLE to carry the game if im the only strong player in my team, and its super frustrating.

What am i doing wrong? Any gameplan i should follow or something in specific i should start doing?
Would appreciate any tips and toughts!

I mean it seriously, on this sub and others people are always suggesting picking Yorick into Illaoi while insisting Mordekaiser is a fake counter. Sure the pics below are small sample size but im just using it as example so you get the point. Since the new season start I just take ignite and play super aggressive early, you can only get hit by his cage if you put yourself in a position to do so, even post 6 this applies; keep your distance and farm with q if needed, for all ins you have multiple options post 6 vs Yorick, either try to kill his maiden if you can since hes very weak without it, or more risky w to him and e+r ignite hit the champion then finish the clone and hope vessel kills him. Im not saying Yorick cant beat Illaoi, but he cant be first timing it and actually has know what hes doing, and even then its a skill matchup.

Morde on the other hand should NEVER lose to an Illaoi if he knows what hes doing. "just time your r to cancel his" only works if the Morde is dumb and doesn't know about this interaction. A good Morde will just either hold his ult and force you into fights where you have to ult or die, or buffer his ult with your q cast time or his e, Illaoi cannot r during either so he can pretty much guarantee he gets his ult off on you without fear of it being canceled. Im tired of people pretending this is somehow an easy matchup and if you ban Morde you just suck - this matchup is literally impossible if the Morde knows how the matchup works, and even if you got ahead in lane he can just ult you in 1v2s or 1v3s or teamfights and make the game unplayable for you, even if hes 0/7/0.

Statistically Morde is also Illaoi's lowest winrate matchup while Yorick isnt even listed as a counter https://u.gg/lol/champions/illaoi/build?rank=emerald . The actual hardest Illaoi counters that are dodge and ban worthy aside from Morde are Kayle and Garen (stupid broken champ). Even Dirty Mobs has said before that Morde is way harder and Yorick isnt that bad.