Talk:Irelia/@comment-173.209.168.28-20120511184302/@comment-4957501-20120515185612

Maybe it did need a nerf, I'm not going to deny that, but I still think 50% might have been a tad too much at the end of the day. Nevertheless, I still presonally disagree with your "fact that she isn't useless now shows just how crazy viable she was before" statement. The only hero made completely unviable due to nerfs, according to the Riot team themselves, is Evelynn, and even that was done on purpose by them till the (so far still non-existent) stealth rework comes out.

What I'm trying to say is, champions undoubtedly become weaker after nerfs, but they never become completely unviable. Take for example what I said earlier, imagine reducing Olaf's Vicious Strikes lifesteal/spellvamp by 50%, it'll hit him pretty hard no doubt, but this isn't going to make him unviable and make people stop playing him. Same thing with say removing the stacking damage portion of Jax's Counter Strike or Burning Agony's tenacity for Mundo. These are pretty serious nerfs, but they're not going to make them overall unviable, just weaker. Irelia is far from unviable yes, but she's also a lot weaker than she was before. But that doesn't have to mean she was OP before.

From what I've gathered, all solotop's either have some kind of sustainability or good cheap burst. Sometimes both. I doubt Hiten Style set the standard for these changes, since sustainability up top was popular in the books long before Hiten Style entered the scene. But then again, who knows, maybe it might've been. I don't feel CC reduction is that much of an advantage that it automatically makes these few champions more viable than regular solotop's, tenacity is useful no doubt, but it's also very overrated. If it were as powerful as people made it out to be, let's just say Cleanse would be a lot more popular than it is now.

Though I do hope Riot's done with their tinkering for now, atleast for a while. Irelia might not be in the best place she's ever been, but she's not in the worst either, and I think she's as balanced as she's going to get atm.