Riot Games specifically made Irelia to counter the heavy anti-melee metagame currently dominating League of Legends. Did they succeed? Find out!

Sadly, because players have been so heavily favoring these teams that are centered on piles of crowd control spells with one powerful long-ranged attacker, it has become nearly impossible to play a melee DPS champion in a setting like this. With so many stuns, snares and shields, how in the world are you supposed to break through it all to even hit that squishy champion in the back?

Thus, we have the introduction of Irelia, the Will of the Blades. For the most part, Irelia is a fairly standard melee DPS champion: her Q spell, Bladesurge, propels her forward to strike her enemy, dealing base physical damage; her W spell, Hiten Style, is a passive that grants Irelia a decent amount of life-steal and, when toggled, also grants her a hefty amount of true-damage for a brief amount of time; her E spell, Equilibrium Strike, deals base magic damage and slows or stuns her target, depending on if her health % is higher or lower than her target's health %; and, finally, her R spell, Transcendent Blades, allows Irelia to fire four directional-based blades that go through all enemies, dealing a decent amount of magic damage and leeching 20% of the damage dealt as HP.

Where Irelia really shines, however, lies in her passive ability, Ionian Fervor. Whenever Irelia is near enemy champions, she automatically gains an Ionian Fervor buff that reduces all crowd control spells on Irelia by 10% (at 1 nearby champion), 25% (at 2), and 40% (at 3 champions). With an incredible passive like this, Riot Games was hoping to create a melee champion that could actually dive into enemy teams to blow up their ranged DPS carry without being stopped by the dozens of stuns and snares. Could Irelia be the first truly viable melee carry that competitive players can turn to?

Sadly, the answer is still a resounding no. While Irelia is quite powerful when given the right items and a supportive team, she still suffers terribly from the fact that she needs to get into the fray before she can unleash her damage, and this not only leaves her open to enemy crowd control spells, but also the tons of AoE damage that most teams are capable of putting out on their front line. Ranged DPS champions are so strong because they are rarely in range of the enemy spells and abilities, so they don't take excessive amounts of damage. Even for a champion like Irelia, who has great mobility and tons of lifesteal, the fact that she needs to be on the front lines of battle just opens her up to a huge amount of damage that is difficult (but not impossible) to mitigate.

So, at the end of the day, if you were hoping that Irelia would be the shining beacon that all melee champion players would flock to as a go-to melee carry, she is, unfortunately, still not as strong as the perennial crowd favorites Kog'maw, Miss Fortune, Kennen, Tristana or Twitch. All of that said, however, Irelia is still fun to play as a champion, and her ability to turn the tides in 1v1 battles is simply phenomenal. My advice would be to utilize Irelia as an assassin-type champion that rushes behind enemy lines to take out the defensively weaker support champions. Irelia's powerful Ionian Fervor should be taken advantage of to force enemies to burn their crowd control spells on her as she sticks to a support champion, which should thereby give your team the opportunity to sweep in on the front. Granted, there are better choices out there if you want to maximize the potential of your champion (all of those choices are ranged champions, for one), but if it's fun you want, then Irelia just might a match for you.