Talk:Irelia/@comment-173.209.168.28-20120511184302/@comment-50.103.5.219-20120514010405

To be fair, her early game sustain needed a nerf, the fact that she isn't useless now shows just how crazy viable she was before. Her ability to free-farm on top so she could faceroll your team later (due to her passive, mostly) was a problem, and deceptively powerful.

I get the feeling Hiten Style's effectiveness "inspired" the recent wave of changes and additions for sustain to other champs, like Fiora's passive (explicitly for early game; it's worthless later) and the buffs to Shen's Vorpal Blade.

By design, Irelia is one of those elite champs who have very few hard counters compared to most other champs, and so they're just going to be more viable by default (also shared by Olaf and Gangplank...CC cancellation/reduction is incredibly powerful).

More viable, unless Riot cuts their numbers down too much anyway. :\