Talk:Irelia/@comment-75.72.55.220-20120517194742/@comment-4957501-20120519095450

Agoraphobic has the truth of it. Irelia already has a weak early game, and champions that don't use mana or use energy almost always have strong ones, so remember, this is a really bad combination for you as an Irelia player.

Though technically the truth is, you can trade with Riven somewhat early game too. The thing is that these trades will usually still end up slightly favoring Riven, or just end up dead even at best. The biggest problem with this though is that after 3-4 of these exchanges, which won't take longer than a couple of minutes thanks to Riven's CD's, only one of you is going to run completely out of mana. So yeah, I'd discourage trading at all with her. You simply can't do much about Riven early game other than what you said, stack armor and hit under the tower. Glaring at her sullenly whilst camping there and promising retribution/making death threats in all chat helps lighten the mood sometimes.

Buy Tabi's instead of mercs if there isn't much CC/a lot of AD on the enemy team. Start with cloth and 5 pots instead of boots and 3 if you find it really difficult, though you should be able to manage without TBH. Once you hit 7-8, if you think Riven's warded, invest in a pink ward and clear it out. Ask for a jungle gank. While your jungler is waiting in the brush, bait out her Broken Wings and Ki Burst by purposely putting yourself in compromising positions while pretending to last hit minions.

Don't forget to surf your blade right over her corpse with shift+1 after the gank.