Illaoi Counters: How To Counter Pick Illaoi

Illaoi is a heavy-weight top lane champion with good sustain and high damage output. Oh, and she uses tentacles as her weapons! In this article, we discuss how to effectively counter Illaoi.

Best Illaoi Counters

• Lulu
• Vayne
• Tryndamere
• Jarvan IV
• Nasus
• Fiora

Void Bringer Illaoi

Illaoi Counter Picks

Now that you know who counters Illaoi, you can finally counter pick Illaoi in any matchup. Let’s take you through some tips on how to use a few of these champions who are counters to Illaoi. After, there is a general section explaining how to use any LoL champion as counters for Illaoi. After all, if you know how to play against Illaoi, you can play safely and effectively to defeat Illaoi in a lane.

Lulu

Use auto attacks to easily kill the tentacle (gain gold). Just Pix her if she gets you with the E spell, you will reduce her burst and punish her hardly (Illaoi is pretty weak early).

Vayne

Vayne has high mobility. So every time Illaoi uses Q just dodge it with your Q, just like her tentacles. If you are little bit better in positioning, it won’t be a problem to avoid being hit by her main damage dealer – her tentacles.

Nasus

• Nasus can stack off Illaoi’s tentacles. Use them to gain the upper hand in damage.

Official Illaoi Skin Concepts

Tips For Playing Against Illaoi

• When Illaoi uses her E to rip out your soul make sure to either stand apart from it (in order to stop her AOE hitting you multiple times) or else leave the tether range. Note that leaving tether range will still apply her tentacle spawner onto your champion.
• Illaoi has a hard time chasing people due to a lack of good gap-closers. Pick champions with high mobility or movement speed. This also helps to avoid tentacle attacks.
• Avoid standing close to the tentacles she spawns as she is likely to use this chance to dunk you with her W and cause the tentacle(s) to hit you and heal her slightly.
• If she is hard focusing your soul, attack her while she’s doing it as you can do more damage to her than she can to you focusing your soul.
• Be careful when ganking Illaoi after level 6. If she can land her Test of Spirit and Leap of Faith properly, the fight will quickly turn against you.
• Remember that Illaoi’s healing is more potent the lower her health, which makes her deceptively durable.
• Dealing damage over time to Illaoi is very effective for reducing your Spirit’s duration because it will be reduced by 1 second for each tick of damage and you won’t need to attack Illaoi directly. The more ticks, the less Spirit-related damage for you.
  • Every damage (like On-hit effects or spell effects) that deals additional damage with your basic attacks or abilities will reduce the Spirit’s duration by 1 second, each.
• Should you get hit by Test of Spirit and don’t necessarily wish to fight Illaoi for it, a trick you can use to minimize Tentacle spam is to break the tether and dodge the first tentacle that spawns. Do not kill it immediately, instead simply wait near it for the remainder of the Vessel debuff. Assuming Illaoi doesn’t chase you down, the tentacle will not take any further swings at you. Once the Vessel curse expires, you can remove the tentacle freely. This method not only prevents you from having to focus on dodging multiple tentacles over the course of the curse but also prevents Illaoi from having more tightly clustered tentacles to abuse with any of her other abilities.

Illaoi

By using the champions who counter Illaoi and the LoL Illaoi counter tips above, you can now develop a strategy to help you, as a summoner, become an effective counter to Illaoi players.