How can I counter Irelia?

Question

I'm having trouble dealing with irelia in lane. How can I counter Irelia in lane?

Answer 1

Scarra has been quoted to say "irelia is now underpowered, never picking her again"

Her sustain has been HAMMERED. If you watch matchups today, irelia is losing lane more and more after her recent nerf. She hasn't lost much midgame to late game power though, being able to tank and jump ad carries.

The hit to her early game was brutal though.

Updated answer to new question:

Irelia has been severely weakened now. If you want hard counters, I'd go with warwick, who beats most tops due to his insane sustain. Olaf counters irelia hard as well, since she has no real way to deal with repeated reckless swings. You could also go untraditional and take vlad top.

For a generic champion, you need to quickly determine a) if you can outdamage her sustain and outdamage her. b) you will get any significant jungle help

Quite a few champions can snowball over irelia if they manage to get an early kill. Irelia is really weak early levels so you can fight aggressively here. If you can't straight up outdamage her, engage, bait her hiten style and run away. When she loses her true damage, engage her again.

Answer 2

Irelia

let's split Irelia in her skill set, so you can understand her a little more (Know your enemy if you want to beat him).

• Ionian Fervor: Reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, snares, immobilizes, blinds and silences for each nearby enemy champion.

Meaning

• Be aware of ganks in this point, she can dive you and leave really easy if you have nearby allies (like someone that is recalling near your location). This is an ability that save her live.

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• Bladesurge: Irelia dashes forward to strike her target, dealing physical damage. This applies on-hit effects. If it kills the target, Bladesurge's cooldown refreshes and refunds 35 mana.

Meaning

• This is how Irelia farm. She jumps into dying minions to get the CS, spend just a little of her mana, and be able to jump again. She can also use minions to get to you making distance VERY relative to her. Focus your attention on your minions too, see if they are in a good way that provides her to dive into you.

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• Hiten Style: Passive: Irelia's autoattacks restore health to her.

Meaning

• She can stay in lane forever if you let her farm free. Also it's the great point on her jungle. Avoid her farm as much as possible, so she can't recovery too much health from this passive.

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• Hiten Style: Irelia's autoattacks deal additional true damage for 6 seconds. Hiten Style's passive health gain is doubled for the duration.

Meaning

• Not too much to add, she probably will trigger this when she dives into you for the true damage (Damage that does not stop on your MR or Armor), or she sees that you will let her get lot's of minions (so she'll recovery faster her own health). A good way to prevent True damage is getting some extra health.

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• Equilibrium Strike: Irelia pierces her target, dealing magic damage and slowing the target by 60% for a few seconds. If the target has a higher health % than Irelia, she stuns the target for the duration instead.

Meaning

• This is a trick skill, She can use to chase you down by slowing you, or she also can use to stun and run from you or even (depending how is the situation) kill you. If you have more health than Irelia be careful, She can combo you with Bladesurge , Hiten Style , Equilibrium Strike She combo will drop your health very quickly, probably killing you. This is the most dangerous ability that Irelia can use against you in a 1x1 fight.

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• Transcendent Blades: Irelia summons 4 spirit blades which she can fire individually in a straight line to deal physical damage to enemies they pass through, and she heals for 25% of that damage vs champions and 10% vs minions.

Meaning

• Irelia may use this as part of her combo with Equilibrium Strike to burn you down, or even use this to quickly clear a wave of minions (and recovery some health at same time). Her Cooldown is very low (for an ultimate) and if she has cd reduction, she almost can span it (Cooldown: 70 / 60 / 50 seconds). This ability is hard to land on champions, you can do what you would do in the real live if someone is firing a gun at you, run in zigzag and try not to be predictable.

Those are generic advises that you can use with ANY champion.

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For Gear:

I advise you get some armor and some health.

• frozen hearth for mages
• atmas impaler for off-tank
• sunfire cap for tank/off-tank

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For Champion:

As I said before, those are generic advises and you can use it with any champion. But good solo laners will be fine versus Irelia.

• Yorick
• Olaf
• Lee sin
• Maokai

And others.

Answer 3

Well first you shoud see what her spells are doing . I myself am looking at heroes spells and know what ,,Damage and effect they are doing'' Mostly i think Irelia is Damage dealer and she has Hp recovery with her spells .. try doing more Hp and damage .. and for summoner spells i think Ignite will be nice counter for her Recovery + Exhoust so she can miss some of her hits .. this is what i think . Try some tactics and you will find the answer my friend :).

Answer 4

If your playing in a ranked match and are able to notice that their is an enemy Irelia on their team i would recommend running some Flat armor seals and health quintessences. Champions whom would be able to counter Irelia wolud be Olaf, Skarner, Rumble in top lane due to their High health and sustaining features.

IF however you aren't able to predict that you are facing an Irelia in your lane then i would recommend that you build to counter her to disable her killing potential on you and denying her snowball. This would mean that you build high hp/armor items like Randuins omen, Frozen heart, Sunfire cape etc. If you can deny Irelia killing potential and ask for some assistance from your jungle/midlane and manage to kill her then there shouldn't be any troubles laning against her. Also you should try to deny her early game farm as much as possible because during her late game the can become and unstoppable killing machine. You can abuse her early game with some early ganks.

I hope this was helpful.