Talk:Irelia/@comment-15562896-20120521170042/@comment-4957501-20120522051730

@OP Everybody has their own opinion on the subject, and it all just comes down to that in the end, but I'm certain that Irelia's still far, far from useless. Personally, I don't think she's UP and I consider her "balanced" along with most of the other champions now. But let's just say there are a few champions I don't consider balanced, but again, these are just my own feelings on the subject.

@anon They might not be the worst, but her patching history is definitely among the worst, she's right up there competing with Vladimir for the top spot. As lame and old as it might be now, there was a pretty good reason that meme came around in the first place. The buffs you're talking about were mostly minor, the ratio changes mostly negative, and bug fixes aren't really buffs. But yeah, she was a little too powerful on release, so most of those nerfs were justified I guess.

About the Hiten Style thing, it's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't played her extensively before the nerfs, but I guess a good way to put it would be to say that Irelia before the nerf simply wasn't all that imbalanced. The Hiten Style bonus was just useful for the laning phase and that was it. Her sustainability back then wasn't even the best back then, definitlely not in WW's or Mundo's league, but I guess due to her mid game being so powerful, a nerf might have been needed. 50% might've been a bit of a an overkill though. Now she's outsustained by everyone and their mother's in lane by everyone with any kind of sustain. Lee Sin, Olaf, WW, Mundo, Udyr, Vlad, basically every champion with any kind of sustain. Hell, you know how most people consider Fiora's passive a joke? Crunch the numbers together and you'll find even that's more than Irelia's current sustain. Now true, there are plenty of solo top's without any sustain, but they've been suitably recompensed for that with either having no mana costs, or having cheap easy burst or simply lots of inbuilt resilience or high base stats. Irelia isn't counted among these though, she's counted firmly as being in the "sustainable" group of champions but in the end doesn't actually match up to any of them.

As for using Hiten's active to sustain half the time, it's not the skill's mana cost that's the problem, play a few more games, and eventually you'll detect a pattern where a skilled lane opponent is much more likely to attack you/gets a lot more agressive when your Hiten Style is on CD. It's as much a "come at me and get a handful of true damage to the face for your efforts" deterrent as it is extra sustain. If it's down there's simply not much you can do to retaliate against a quick hit and run combo.