Illaoi is a frontline bruiser champion in League of Legends capable of dealing heavy, sustained damage over long periods of time while healing for a strong portion of the damage that she deals. The champion transitions exceptionally well throughout all stages of the match but comes alive mostly in the late game, especially when the enemies want to fight her head-on. In those moments, she unleashes her full potential as a damage-dealing, nearly unkillable tank, with the ability to destroy multiple enemies with the press of one button.
Illaoi is most closely associated with tentacles since she summons monstrous appendages across Summoner’s Rift via her passive, Prophet of an Elder God. Additional tentacle-focused abilities, including Tentacle Smash (Q) and Test of Spirit (E), are also cornerstones of her kit.
Given the recent buffs to some of her bruiser items, as well as the rise of melee, dueling top laners, Illaoi has been finding great success in solo queue, boasting positive win rates at platinum Elo and above, and quite a high pick rate, considering her low popularity (according to U.GG).
From runes to items and champion counters, here’s everything you need to know to make the best Illaoi build to win your League solo queue games in season 13.
Runes
There are technically two rune setups that work on Illaoi: Conqueror and Grasp of the Undying. Here’s how they work.
Conqueror Illaoi
Precision
Conqueror: Illaoi has a tendency to fight for extended periods of time, thanks to her innate tankiness and built-in sustain of her kit. For this reason, Conqueror is a great rune that boosts both her overall damage output the longer the fight lasts, and grants extra healing at max stacks.
Presence of Mind: Illaoi doesn’t have high mana costs on her abilities, but she wants to spam them as much as possible, which inevitably causes her to deplete her mana over time. Presence of Mind partially covers up this weakness and gives a big mana refund when she gets a takedown on the enemies, allowing her to continue fighting without worrying about her resources.
Legend: Tenacity: Illaoi is a great frontline bruiser, but she lacks the mobility that other champions have from this class. Therefore, having more tenacity ensures she doesn’t get crowd controlled to death, and can use her abilities to stay alive.
Last Stand: Just like most fighters, Illaoi will inevitably lose most of her health bar when she’s in the middle of the fights. Last Stand increases her damage, which in turn increases the healing she gets. The result is that her health bar will bounce back up, allowing her to make those unexpected outplays from near-death scenarios.
Resolve
Demolish: Illaoi is one of the few champions that want to splitpush, regardless of the meta she’s in. Demolish will greatly enhance that strength. Combined with her auto-attack reset on her Harsh Lesson (W), Illaoi can take down turrets at a rate that players are not usually used to.
Conditioning: Illaoi doesn’t really need Second Wind or Bone Plating because most top laners won’t beat her in one-vs-one situations. With that in mind, Conditioning gains a lot more value later on in the game, as the rune will further increase her resistances.
Grasp of the Undying Illaoi
Resolve
Grasp of the Undying: This keystone rune does a better job against tanks, and it’s specifically made for shorter trades. You want to proc the rune as much as possible to stack Illaoi’s maximum health, making her tankier the longer the game goes. That said, you will lose out on some damage later on, so get a feel for both and see which one you like better.
Demolish: This is the most powerful minor rune from Resolve, so make sure to always have it.
Conditioning: You choose it for the same reason explained with the Conqueror rune setup: it synergizes well with the long fights she tends to get involved in.
Overgrowth: All of the runes in this row of the Resolve tree are good on Illaoi. This is the most reliable one since it grants permanent extra health. Revitalize can be good if you know you can cast good ultimates on multiple enemies and take advantage of the extra healing. Unflinching, on the other hand, works better when facing heavy crowd control. Choose the best one according to the situation.
Precision
Presence of Mind: Among all the minor runes of the Precision tree, Presence of Mind is the most important since it fixes some of Illaoi’s mana issues.
Last Stand: The 11 percent damage increase is always valuable, and it will always make a difference when you’re casting the Leap of Faith.
Bonuses: +9 adaptive force, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor (or +8 magic resistance against magic damage top laners)
Starting Items
Corrupting Potion: Illaoi has one of the highest base health at level one, which means she doesn’t have to buy a Doran’s Shield or Doran’s Blade. Instead, she wants to get Corrupting Potion for the refillable healing and most importantly, the mana regeneration. In addition, she can deal some extra damage when she uses her potion, which is always a nice bonus to have. Make sure to activate them when you’re trading, and pay attention to your available mana.
Core items
Black Cleaver: After the recent buffs to Black Cleaver in the latest fighter item changes, it has tremendous value for its cost, and Illaoi is one of the primary Black Cleaver users. She can rush it, even before her Mythic item, to take advantage of the armor penetration. Thanks to her tentacles and abilities, Illaoi can quickly apply multiple Carve stacks and shred through the enemies’ resistances.
Iceborn Gauntlet: This is Illaoi’s new Mythic item. She no longer builds Divine Sunderer and prefers Iceborn Gauntlet instead. There are two particular reasons why she gets this item now: first, it has great defensive stats, which are perfect for her, especially against most top laners that deal physical damage. Second, its passive effect, which applies an empowered auto attack that slows in an area. This makes hitting tentacles and other spells much easier, and it can also be used to chase down targets. Paired with Black Cleaver’s additional movement speed bonus, it becomes incredibly tough to get away from Illaoi.
Plated Steelcaps/Mercury’s Treads: The boots choice is similar to most bruisers: you either go for Plated Steelcaps or Mercury’s Treads, depending on the enemy team composition or game state. In most scenarios, you probably would go Plated Steelcaps since it negates some of the enemy top laner’s damage. If you’re facing heavy crowd control, though, Mercury’s Treads gain more value thanks to the added tenacity. Regardless, both of them are great items.
End build Items
Hullbreaker: After closing out the two core items, Illaoi usually prefers going for Hullbreaker as the third item and boost her splitpushing power. The item isn’t that great stats-wise, but it gains incredible value when the passive effect is activated, which grants scaling resistances and additional damage to structures. Considering that the Kraken Priestess will be on side lane duty for the majority of the game, she will become a threatening presence. Most champions will not be able to win in a one-vs-one situation, and they will be forced to call their teammates to shut her down.
End build items
Sterak’s Gage: Sterak’s Gage has completely gone out of meta after the big changes last season. Since then, almost no one built this item. Now that it received a couple of buffs towards the end of the season, Sterak’s Gage has some value on certain champions. One of them is Illaoi, as she wants to have extra durability when she drops on low health. The passive shield gives her enough time to cast her combo during the teamfights and rise back again from the brink of death.
On top of that, she’s the second champion with the highest base AD (the first is Mega Gnar with 158.5), which means that Sterak’s Gage unique passive can grant Illaoi up to 76 additional AD at level 18.
Gargoyle Stoneplate: So far, Illaoi’s build has heavily revolved around attack damage and health, but it doesn’t have any resistances (aside from Hullbreaker’s passive). This is why Gargoyle Stoneplate has been rising up in popularity as a strong fourth item: it grants both resistances, and it can increase depending on how many champions have attacked her.
This guarantees a balanced amount of resistances, regardless of whether she’s splitpushing or fighting with the team, as Gargoyle Stoneplate will offset the loss of resistances from Hullbreaker. In addition, she gets another shield (which scales with maximum health) that can be cast whenever she needs it.
Spirit Visage: A good alternative to Gargoyle Stoneplate is Spirit Visage: take this item when you want to get increased healing and more maximum health. While the 25 percent increase may not look like much at the beginning, you will able to notice a major difference when hitting multiple targets with the ultimate.
