Well I don't see the point of stacking HP since your sustain is not lifesteal or anything scaling. I'd rather much reduce the impact of hits on my HP% by taking little damage than by having still more HP. Better relative healing with W and R, easier to control my HP% for equilibrium, better defense against stuff like Kog, DFG, Madred...

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

September 25 2011 21:34 GMT

#83

I love warmogs on Irelia.

little fancy

Germany2504 Posts

September 25 2011 23:18 GMT

#84

I for myself prefer Irelia builds with around 2,5k HP and heavy resistances (= 200+ each AR / MR vs balanced team obv; if they have one-sided damage you can just stack AR or MR) because I wanna be the one the enemy hates being a pain in the neck in the centre of their line up!

It's not about being the main tank, but I love Qing into the opponent's rat pack at the very beginning of a fight and forcing them to decide between "wasting" their CC on me or letting me slowly dish out decent sustained damage (decent because my only damage items are Trinity Force and Wit's End mostly) that will cost them the fight in the end.

However, this strategy becomes less effective the more tankier the enemy team is.

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

September 26 2011 14:59 GMT

#85

Philo-Hog -> Triforce -> Wit's End -> GA or QSS, ggnore. I still don't know how Utah manages to be successful with his build. Irelia is like WW in that you gain so much more from resists than HP because you innately gain so much HP back in fights via your abilities, so the whole warmog's investment makes no sense to me since it's basically spending 3K gold to make sure that you don't die in the first 2 seconds of a teamfight, when I already don't have that problem.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

September 26 2011 15:20 GMT

#86

Well it doesn't hurt that having just Negatron leads me to having 100/100.

As for why it works, it's mostly because Irelia as a kit lends itself to my preferred playstyle, I think. When it comes down to it (and some of the people that've seen my hero complaining in skype can attest) the only things I really ask for in a hero is the ability to punish positioning, force them to make decisions about killing me (causes coordination errors), and the ability to punish them for leaving me alive. Irelia has a very good dash + semi-CC that makes it so I can usually catch someone and either rake them down for a lot of HP very quickly before just turning around and backing off or I force a fight because they think they can kill me - even if they can, ideally I'd have necessitated so much firepower that my team can come in and clean house.

In the end it doesn't really matter to me "what's the best way of optimizing her kit," she just has a fantastic kit for "doing what I need" while also having the added bonus of basically never losing a lane except against a very select few heroes.

Edit:
Like, I'd developed the habit of not actually trusting other people to start the fight, and I also don't really expect others to be in position when I do start one, so I've generally always favored forcing an engagement to happen and then being able to eat one or two full salvos before my team is able to engage. It leads to a lot of silly deaths but that's just how I play :|

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

September 27 2011 20:11 GMT

#87

I mean, with Philo-HoG-Triforce-Mercs, I'm in the 80-90 armor and 90-100 mres ranges with like 2-2.5K HP, then I add GA and I'm tanky as hell and do eleventy million damages that are impossible to escape from, while still being pretty impossible to kill. *shrugs*, I still initiate a lot with philo-hog-trifroce-mercs and an unfinished GA and I don't feel like I'm vulnerable doing so.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

September 28 2011 01:55 GMT

#88

I just don't like Triforce in general, as a survival item, lol. So when it comes to the best combination of EHP + damage output it just turns out to be Atmog, unless someone comes up with a better set :p

Edit:
For whatever it's worth I started just rushing Atma's Impaler and THEN buying the pieces of Warmog, as Atma provides a decent bit of damage even without any extra HP.

zulu_nation8

China26351 Posts

September 28 2011 02:29 GMT

#89

tifroce is cheaper, scales better and gives burst/mana/utility for laning and early/mid game fights, atmog is just too awkward to rush on irelia imo.

Craton

United States17261 Posts

September 28 2011 03:44 GMT

#90

Atmogs Irelia isn't very scary.

STS17

United States1817 Posts

September 29 2011 11:32 GMT

#91

I agree, Trinity Force is stronger on Irelia than Atmogs.

Slayer91

Ireland23335 Posts

September 29 2011 12:09 GMT

#92

One's tank, the other is mobility/burst. I don't understand the direct comparison and absolute judgements.

Flicky

England2665 Posts

September 29 2011 12:22 GMT

#93

On September 29 2011 21:09 Slayer91 wrote:
One's tank, the other is mobility/burst. I don't understand the direct comparison and absolute judgements.

Well I think the issue Mogwai has (and I have too) is that she doesn't make a great tank.

Slayer91

Ireland23335 Posts

September 29 2011 13:14 GMT

#94

Tank is a pretty shaky definition. The way I see it building tankier lets you go for their squishies more bravely because you take less damage, but reduces your actual threat factor. Vs a team with highly protected carries you can more easily get focused down with trinity force builds. The only thing is irelias passive scales so insanely well with movement speed because if you can't be cc'd you can just run away from damage if they try to focus you and burst people down if that don't. But if they have supression or something it's a different story.

clickrush

Switzerland3257 Posts

September 29 2011 13:24 GMT

#95

also the better you can stick to a target the more you heal yourself. So trinity kinda gives her alot of different things. I think the worst thing she can face is high burst damage if she goes trinity. Sth like wits end into atmogs can't be wrong to get IMO.

broz0rs

United States2294 Posts

September 29 2011 18:29 GMT

#96

I'm seeing a lot more greaves and tabi instead of merc treads because of tenacity buff to eleisa's miracle. It gives her more options instead of mandatory getting MR boots

Don't know if you guys have seen the Chaox marathon vids, but I've seen about half of them and his Irelia video is my favorite. He basically 1v5 the opposing team, who fed off his bad teammates. Really fun game to watch.

http://www.solomid.net/videoplayer.php?v=506

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

September 29 2011 19:53 GMT

#97

on top lane champions, if the opposing team is running an AD bruiser top and an AD jungler, it's a ninja tabi game. I feel like I'd rarely ever want zerker's + miracle instead of getting mercs and saving for a stronger lategame item than Miracle after Philostone has outgrown it's usefulness. Tabi are strong enough late in the game that I feel ok making that concession for them, but zerkers aren't bringing anything I care that much about to the table.

Alaric

France45622 Posts

September 29 2011 22:26 GMT

#98

In one game I had as Irelia with another one on the opposing team, whi played tanky with atmogs and all, he admittedly was the biggest problem on their team because he was just unkillable and could stay in hitting us, with his teammates carry free to attack us if we didn't ignore him.
Then we realized that his damage output was limited and that w/o the attention he drew by diving us and allowing his carries to focus ours he didn't threaten us at all, while I was able to 1v1 all of them (even him, he'd just be damn long) with my triforce/ghostblade build, even to 1v2 some pairs. So I just asked Malz to suppress Irelia and Cait to not give a fuck and auto-attack their carries without worrying.
Just diving Tristana and Kayle in the middle of their team was enough to make them shift their focus w/o their "tank" able to distract us, and we won all of those teamfights 5 to 0 or 1 everytime.

It was the most extreme example, but every game I had playing Irelia with one on the enemy team as well that went atmogs I just felt I was more threatening than him, and generally doing a better job as an assassin (passive + FoN + more movespeed made my Q some kind of a free taunt everytime I dived back in).
Granted, that's normals, and I'm not playing that great, so they may have been plain worse too.

Craton

United States17261 Posts

September 29 2011 23:46 GMT

#99

That's generally what I find happens. People are conditioned to be afraid of Irelia because of how strong and bursty she is with Triforce that when she goes atmogs they still think of her as the same level threat when she actually does significantly less damage.