Talk:Irelia/@comment-4046013-20120216081106/@comment-2124153-20120217212559

CDR is one of those things that's nice on Irelia, but itemizing for it is usually counterproductive for one reason or another. Frozen heart has a useless stat (Irelia does not need +mana), the Armor is only good if you have a lot of HP behind it (like Frozen Mallet or Warmog's), and the aura is situational. So this is not always a good item to buy, and in many cases you'd want Randuin's Omen instead, which is more cost-effective and has a stronger attack speed slow on the active.

Spark is OK, but not great. Irelia can use the abilities on it, but Wit's End is better since Irelia is mostly an assassin and prefers the extra MR. Spark is better on people like Shen, because he needs the unique AOE active in order to farm up minion waves. As you may have noticed, Irelia has no problem shredding minions, between the on-kill cooldown reset of Bladesurge and the blades from her ult. It's an OK pick, but not recommended.

If you are married to CDR, you may want to look into Spirit Visage as a defensive alternative to Youmuu's. Spirit Visage has all of health, MR, and CDR on it. Plus, the 15% boost to self-healing works on both Hiten Style and the healing from her ult.