title is a reference to Riot Phlox
While I would love to write about everything in utmost detail, I will keep it as concise as possible.
Further, this post has zero suggestions, but one at the very end.
I am mostly writing this to just point out what sucks.
tl;dr at the end
1. W has inconsistent interactions for the same condition
This is caused by W being 2 separate abilities:
- Melee-W (used <=125 range)
- Categorized as an "Uncancellable Windup" empowered basic attack
- Dash-W (used >125 range)
- Categorized as a dash-ability that applies on-hit (not really, it's unique but this comes close\)
To showcase the differences I created a Google spreadsheet with various interactions. [⤤]
Having differnt interactions for the same condition is very confusing and hard to memorize.
2. Tentacle behavior is influenced by Illaoi dying
The exact timing of Illaoi's death can determine whether her Tentacles are going to slam.
This is caused by 2 mechanics.
- If the enemy has the Vessel debuff, getting a takedown on Illaoi cleanses the Vessel debuff.
- This is a remnant of first-year Illaoi, where Vessel debuff lasted 1 minute
- or to kill 3 Tentacles (removed\)
- or Illaoi (not removed\)
- Vessel debuff lasts merely 4 seconds now
- If the Spirit happens to die after Illaoi, the Vessel debuff is not cleansed.
- Illaoi dying makes all Tentacles go dormant
- all commands are ignored
- except if Tentacles are still buffed by ult
- or a Vessel is nearby (usually cleansed\)
- and some more confusing exceptions
Trying to influence your death timing is rarely possible (for both sides). It is almost entirely up to chance whether the timing lines up for Tentacles to slam. For example, Illaoi dying 0.01s before the Spirit dies lets all Vessel debuff slams happen but dying 0.01s after means the debuff gets cleansed entirely.
3. Illaoi mechanics are obscure and humanly unpredictable
Illaoi has around 15 different timing factors.
Most of them interact with each other and the way they line up affects gameplay greatly.
While this works most of the time as expected, sometimes it just doesn't. I think this is too complicated for everyone to truly assess and play around all these timings, so no one does. Sometimes you can just watch and see if a certain slam happens or not but just don't know beforehand.
To prove my point, I have to show the list of all the timing factors, but if you take my word for it, there is no need to actually read or understand the list.
The point I am making is not that playing around an "obscure timing" is humanly impossible, rather playing around so many is.
So the sheer amount is all that has to be recognized.
That said, at the end of the list, there will be a section with oddities around these timing factors.
3.1 Time Factors (skippable)
Illaoi passively initiates a Tentacle spawn every 18-7s
- linear level scaling
- Tentacles take 2s to spawn
- and can input a W-slam-command into the slam command queue 0.5s before becoming active
A Tentacle slams at a Spirit or Vessel every 4.0s/3.5s/3.0s
- sharing the same cooldown for both
- e.g. if a Tentacle kills the Spirit, the same Tentacle cannot attack the Vessel immediately after
- scales level 1/7/13
- a new Tentacle always spawns with this cooldown ready
- these periodic slams don't interact with the slam command queue
A Tentacle slams in 1s
- a slam is used 0.25s into its animation
- assumed to start the periodic slam cooldown at this moment
- cast-instance prior to this point is used on impact even when overridden
- a Tentacle after a slam appears to delay its next periodic slam by another 0.25s
- (thus the real slam cooldown is 4.5s/4.0s/3.5s)
- Q slam is always 0.75s
- Tentacle damage is penalized within 0.66s of a previous slam (including Q)
- -50% for one previous slam
- -75% for two previous slams
Ult cast time is 0.5s
- ult lasts 8s
- ult doubles the speed of slams
- but adds a 0.5s lockout after each slam
- Tentacles slam faster but at the same frequency as without ult
- otherwise they would penalize themselves by the 0.66s penalty window
- ult buffs existing Tentacles after a 0.25s delay
- Tentacles spawned with ult are immediately buffed
- persists through death
- prevents Tentacles from going dormant
The Vessel debuff lasts 4s
- a Vessel spawns Tentacles similarly to Illaoi
- spawning a Tentacle has no cooldown
- the spawn-distance rule is the only limiting factor
- 700 unit distance for Vessels (1,000 for Illaoi\)
The Spirit is alive for 7s
- timer starts immediately when E lands
- independent of when the Spirit actually becomes targetable, which takes approximately 0.75s
- so real Spirit uptime is approximately 6.25s
Excluded mechanics: Tentacle dormancy timers, ability cooldowns
Having this many adjustable levers must be a nightmare for any designer. Even one of the most capable designers states that he doesn't want to mess with this. [⤤] (granted: context more towards the technical side\)
Riot Phreak: "And so I spent \...] between half a day and a day [...] digging in and being like 'Okay, how do all these mechanics work?' because there is a lot going on [...explains Illaoi coding...] and I was like: 'not messing with that'.")
3.2 Oddities (skippable)
Note: Oddity doesn't mean that it sucks, nor that it is bugged. I just find it conceptually weird, even though the mechanic itself is working as intended.
If a Tentacle kills the Spirit, it is faster for a new Tentacle to spawn and fully complete its slam before the already existing Tentacle even begins to slam again. [⤤]
- impact timing gets narrower at level 7 and 13
Using the exact same scenario, level 7 does more damage than level 13 because the latter lines up the timing of the 0.66s slam damage penalty[⤤]
- this oddity can happen in various scenarios
Due to how the penalty window extends: A Tentacle's contribution to the penalty window can have its damage outweighed by the penalty it caused
- Meaning: An unfortunately timed additional slam between consecutive slams can cause less total damage
- Consequently: An enemy that dodges that unfortunately timed additional slam receives more total damage than if they had not dodged that slam, assuming they get hit by the same timed slams after
- On a more common occurrence: using that unfortunately timed additional slam deals the same total damage as without it
- (although this feels way more natural as being part of Illaoi's main gimmick)
All Tentacle spawns initiated from the Vessel debuff <2s before it expires cannot commence an attack on the Vessel
- the Vessel debuff simply runs out before they become active
- making it somewhat questionable to initiate Tentacle spawns after that point
- this is very common and the most frequent cause of uncertainty about imminent Tentacle behavior
Some important interactions are based on server-tick processing
E.g. level 7 lines up the timing for a Tentacle to slam a Vessel twice exactly on the same server-tick where the Vessel debuff expires. However, this Tentacle never slams.
- only reason being that the Vessel's status is processed before the Tentacle's based on their spawn order (always the Champion/Vessel first)
- this is just a friendly note that this might be prone to breaking from a presumably unrelated system change
- currently this has no real-game application except for clones [⤤]
Illaoi's mechanics require to be precise, but the game just isn't. The exact timings of E are arbitrary, probably based on more server tick related topics.
When comparing multiple clips of E synchronized on their animation, there is a considerable difference. Most of the time, this won't affect anything, but it is just a matter of sheer numbers that it will occasionally. [⤤]
Slam cooldown scales on level 7 as opposed to level 6.
Consequently, all ult related timings line up differently for level 6 specifically and change at the very next level.
4. Conqueror is janky to use
Note: Some parts are hard to confirm without a Debugger and are just educated guesses.
Most of Illaoi's damage comes from Tentacle slams, yet only one specific slam (E-Slam-1) is likely to stack Conqueror while all other slams are unlikely to stack.
The jankiness comes from the following rules around Conqueror and Tentacles:
- Conqueror does not grant stacks from the same 'cast-instance' within a 4s-window (intended\)
- A periodic Tentacle slam may not grant a stack depending on whether it connects within the 4s-instance-timer of the last periodic slam (observation\)
- Dealing damage with W grants a stack and overrides the cast-instances of all Tentacles to belong to W (guess by observation\)
- Consequently, all slams that impact within 4s after W are now within the 4s-instance-timer, including the slam that is commenced by W itself (by design intended\) but also any after
Default case: Landing E causes two periodic slams.
Both slams can stack Conqueror [⤤]
Jank
Periodic slam cooldown scales with level. Specifically, level 13 reduces the damage interval to 3.5s, causing another hit to occur faster than the 4s-instance-timer. Suddenly, using E at level 13 stacks only once instead of twice over the Spirit's lifetime. [⤤]
Funnily enough, this rarely matters as Illaoi is not getting that stack anyway because:
A periodic slam does not override the cast-instance of the Tentacle (guess by observation\)
Only landing E overrides the cast-instance of Tentacles to E (guess by observation\)
Consequently: Illaoi can unfortunately time W to deny Conqueror stacks
This even holds true when using W on a different target with no commenced slams. [⤤]
For the default case:
- Level 1: Using W after 0.5s of E-Slam-1's impact is going to deny the E-Slam-2 stack
- Level 7: 0s after
- Level 13: Suddenly, using W exactly in the animation time from 0.25s to 0.5s of E-Slam-1 is going to grant you the stack from E-Slam-2 that would have been lost otherwise
- different timings with ult active
All started Tentacle slams (except Q) don't adjust for stat changes.
Consequently, gaining a stack mid-slam animation won't boost its damage.
- also, Melee-W/Dash-W difference [⤤]
Note: Balance aside - It never feels right to me that a Tentacle slam does not grant a Conqueror stack, including the slam commenced by W.
5. Hitting E is basically required but also very difficult
In most fights, the result is decided by just one factor alone: Is Illaoi hitting E or not? Regardless if it's 1v1, 1v2 or even 1v5: if Illaoi hits E, she has a winning chance, if not, she dies.
Landing E is tied to so many of Illaoi's mechanics that she is simply required to hit E to play a fight, especially because she has no bailout option unlike other champs.
It makes sense that the potentially most powerful skillshot in the entire game has counterplay, but it's just ... a lot.
League by nature is a fast game and many fights don't allow Illaoi to hold E and play around so much counterplay to guarantee landing the E, so it ultimately becomes a flip.
Oddity(?\: More often than not, the slams that are locked behind landing E are more important than the transfer damage itself, so Illaoi players will often aim their E at the target that is most likely to get hit, whoever that target may be.)
Counterplay (skippable)
- It's a clunky ability
- 0.25s windup, medium speed, medium range
- Narrow hitbox
- 100 width reference: Nidalee Q is 80 width
- Blocked by minions with no refund
- Illaoi is immobile
- lining up the skillshot takes time and is predictable
- Illaoi has no CC/slow to help hit E
- Up to 1.5s self-stun
- 0.25s windup + up to 0.5s travel time + 0.75s Spirit pull
- Requires Tentacles that can hit the Spirit
- The further it hits, the less rewarding it becomes, as the target is close to the tether range already
- Some Spirits vanish even before one basic attack can land
- Ironically also difficult to hit in close melee range due to no hitbox on/around Illaoi
- Windup is revealed immediately outside vision
- Illaoi can be displaced during E and it does weird things
- visually always weird and depends on skin
- mechanically depends on windup completion (I think)
- Due to its small size and slow speed, it can be blinked over easily and looks confusing visually [⤤]
6. Playing around vision is nearly impossible
Playing around vision is a fundamental skill that, when mastered, can be highly rewarding. For immobile champions especially, this can be their gap closer that they don't have.
In theory, Illaoi fits perfectly as a champ that would benefit heavily if she plays around vision but this fundamental skill is almost completely denied for her due to the following mechanics:
- Tentacles are always visible to enemies within 1,000 units. [⤤]
- even if the Tentacle is placed inside a bush and has never attacked before
- if you want to trap anyway, you have to purposefully place a Tentacle in a weird location outside the 1,000 units
- resulting in not having a Tentacle to actually fight with
- this can also be detrimental to Illaoi's allies
- Illaoi casting Q or E (towards a champion) reveals Illaoi immediately. [⤤]
- Due to the long windups, this eliminates a large portion of the benefit of casting abilities out of vision
Tentacles themselves provide no vision for Illaoi, whether idle or being attacked.
7. No game plan and no agency
Outside of the laning phase, Illaoi has no game plan that works for her, and the one thing Illaoi excels at, countering an engage on her, is inherently not her agency.
That said, being good at this is a major part of Illaoi's power fantasy. She is allowed to win some fights that no other champ could even think of winning. But she has absolutely nothing else.
- Illaoi is immobile and requires Tentacle setup
- reacting to plays is slow and leaves her Tentacle zone
Vision play is denied by her own passive
- moving for an invade is questionable as it might ruin the element of surprise
Massive AoE potential but shockingly still bad at teamfights
And despite having really good waveclear, once she is at the turret there is nothing she can do
- her turret damage is mediocre at best
- she doesn't have the right tools to dive the defender
- just 'weaving in' turret damage is difficult as it usually comes at an HP cost that cannot be healed back up on the next wave (her heal does not function that way)
- and easily hard-countered by the 0/10 midlaner with waveclear
- ... or any ranged for that matter
The only real form of agency she has is to R-Flash onto someone, which is admittedly decent, but that comes at the cost of using Flash obviously ... and is also countered by Flash.
8. Bugs
Currently there are over 40 unexpected behaviors listed for Illaoi on the wiki.[⤤]
This section will only talk about 2 high-impact bugs.
Bug 1: Dash-W timings are broken [⤤]
This bug has existed since Patch V7.23
* V7.22 unbugged example [⤤]
* smooth animation for all Ws
* V7.23 bugged occurrence [⤤]
* animation does a "hiccup" at the end of the W
Showcase video takes some leeway (1-3 frames)
* Voltaic is used to detect the on-Attack trigger
* timing these was difficult, and my method may be faulty
- Illaoi basic attacks scale on-Attack and on-Hit with total attackspeed as expected
- on-Attack: certain triggers like Energized, projectile creation
- on-Hit: trigger of the basic attack damage
- Empowered Basic Attacks can use the same formula or be special-cased
- Melee-W scales identically to a basic attack
- Dash-W is either special-cased to always be very slow or bugged
- Dash-W on-Attack scales identically to a basic attack
- Dash-W on-Hit does not scale with item attackspeed and only very marginally with level up attackspeed
- throughout the game, the timing is close to a level 1 basic attack
- Quirk: Dash-W triggers Energized effects mid-air before Dash-W itself connects [⤤]
- Level 1 usually does not misalign but rarely it can too
Consequently, Dash-W is just incredibly slow.
That said, even if it is intended, regardless: it sucks
However, the animation timings are definitely bugged.
* looking at Illaoi with high attackspeed specifically [⤤]
* animation expects the hit to occur on the "on-Attack" timing
* reaching this point freezes the animation and drags Illaoi to the target until "on-Hit" is triggered
* deceptive animation might lead players to take plays that cannot be done timing-wise
* e.g. flashing after seeing the animation finish (on-Attack only) and cancelling the on-Hit by doing so
I can't confirm if Dash-W was historically always so slow.
Recreating the champion spotlight W-showcase in fact appears to be faster in the live version. [⤤]
However, I would like to compare it to a similar ability currently in the game that does not suffer from being awfully slow: Wukong-Q [⤤]
* Wukong Rank-5-Q has the same range as Illaoi Dash-W (350)
* Wukong-Q appears to be special-cased to always act like a basic attack with 1.00 attackspeed
* also included an edited version where the same delay is applied to Wukong
* in numbers:
* Wukong-Q always connects in 0.208s
* Illaoi-Dash-W on-Hit always connects in approximately 0.342s
This delay might not look impactful, but it definitely is.
Gameplay Bug Showcase (Tyler1) (skippable)
counting Illaoi-W frames by using video frames and only estimates
you can pause and move frame by frame with "," and "."
* Example 1 - [⤤] [12:19]
* Dash W: 18 frames on-Attack triggers (animation complete) (Voltaic 71 damage)
* Animation is frozen and Illaoi is dragged for 4 frames
* Illaoi dies on frame 22
* on-Hit would have occurred on frame ~25
* Example 2 - [⤤] [13:10]
* First W (melee): 18 frames on-Attack and on-Hit trigger on the same timing
* Second W (dash): 18 frames on-Attack triggers (animation complete) (+12 Energized charge)
* Illaoi dies on frame 19, on-Hit would have occurred on frame ~25
* Frame ~180: Tyler1 showcases the "high impact" this bug has on his mental
Additional Info:
* this behavior is suspected to have started in Patch V7.23, but W was changed many times throughout the years, so it is difficult to pinpoint the exact patch and its effect
* historically W was always noted to work weirdly with high attackspeed
* Old wiki entry: "Having enough attack speed will make her do an unusual dunk."
* current Dash-W timings do not depend on the distance to the enemy
* doing Dash-W at 126 unit distance takes the full time as if it was used at 350 unit distance
Bug 2: Illaoi-E transfer damage formula uses the wrong order of math operations
This part contains 3 separate very impactful bugs all related to Illaoi-E.
Bug 2.1: Illaoi-E has variance [⤤]
This bug was first clearly documented on Patch V7.21, presumed to exist prior. [⤤]
* 4th and lethal attack on the Spirit deals 23 transfer damage to the Vessel
* Spirit is at 48 HP
* E-Transfer-% is at ~94%
* transfer damage should be 45
In its most basic form, the transfer damage can be explained like this:
Illaoi creates a Spirit, and dealing damage to the Spirit deals a percentage of that damage to the real target.
But the math doesn't always math, and causes variance in total damage done.
For realistic games, the variance for the E-transfer is (very) approximately 3%.
Specifics (skippable)
Before we get into why the math is wrong, two things have to be understood:
- In theory, resistances do not affect the total damage. It just makes it more difficult to deal damage to the Spirit but the same percentage should be transferred.
- When overkilling the Spirit, the transfer damage needs to be capped to the current HP of the Spirit
- e.g. Spirit has 10 HP and receives 300 damage
- it is expected to transfer a percentage of 10 damage, not 300 damage
Let's start this off with the most extreme cases of witchcraft.
| Target HP |
Resist |
Transfer-% |
Dmg to Spirit |
MPen |
Expected / Real Transfer Dmg |
Showcase |
| 500 |
25* |
30% |
infinite |
15/45%* |
150 / 500 (kill) ?! |
[⤤] |
| 500 |
295 |
100% |
infinite |
0 |
500 (kill) / 126 ?! |
[⤤] |
\essentially 0 resistance)
While these two particular cases are impractical to occur in a real game, it clearly shows something is not working right and it's that the math that is used to cap the transfer damage uses a wrong order of operations.
Order of Operations:
1. pre-mitigation damage multiplied by E-Transfer-% (?!)
2. if this value is higher than the Spirit's current health, the game thinks it's a kill on the Spirit (?!)
3. new capped value is the Spirit's current health
4. reduced by the Vessel's resistances at the last step (?!)
So whenever the Spirit is supposedly killed, the unexpected way of calculating the transfer damage causes variance, just not to the extreme extent that was shown in the witchcraft examples.
With realistic numbers the variance is more like 3% and is always dependent on the lethal hit applied to the Spirit.
In practice: Doing the exact same damage to the Spirit is always going to result in the same total damage but even as little as 1 minion attack can cause a difference to the lethal hit and as a consequence influence the total transferred damage.
If you are extremely unlucky, doing the exact same combo with a higher level can deal less damage, just by unfortunate alignment of the lethal hit. [⤤]
Bug 2.2: Transfer damage is also capped when it should not be capped[⤤]
This bug was first clearly documented on Patch V7.21, presumed to exist prior. [⤤]
* 1st and 2nd basic attack to the Spirit deals 296 transfer damage as expected
* 3rd basic attack to the Spirit is reduced to 180 damage even though the Spirit has not been killed
* damage got capped when it should not have been capped
* 4th basic attack to the Spirit deals 23 transfer damage
* expected to be capped for killing the Spirit
Because the order of operations is wrong, the math used to detect a kill on the Spirit is also wrong.
Consequently, the Spirit can survive the damage, yet transfer damage can still be reduced.
With these quirks accounted for, the actual E-transfer-% can differ from the tooltip described value by between +3% and -10%, from earlygame to lategame, but theoretically the range is far wider.
This can happen at any time but due to how the math works out, it happens more commonly with a high E-Transfer-% (>75%) and high resistances target (>150).
* whenever this happens, Illaoi loses a substantial amount of damage.
* expected to happen consistently vs lategame tanks
To investigate this topic more easily, I vibe-coded a tool for myself to simulate the transfer damage for various combos. Feel free to use it if you want to look at the numbers yourself. [⤤]
Note: While the bug has existed for a long time, system changes like the "Durability Patch"-V12.10 [\⤤]](https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/V12.10) that increased the armor of all champions and the steady increase of AD in the game have led to this bug occurring more frequently.)
Bug 2.3: Pre-apply bonus damage breaks transfer damage [⤤]
This bug has existed since Illaoi's release patch V5.23
* 5.23 occurrence [⤤]
* Illaoi-W transfer damage is 86 but should be ~139
E.g. Leona passive is "pre-apply" bonus damage.
If Leona uses her passive on the Spirit, it will break the resulting transfer damage when her passive is triggered.
Specifically, the damage that triggered her passive is set to the same transfer damage value as Leona's passive.
This time, it is easier to understand with numbers.
| For 70% E-Transfer |
Damage to Spirit |
Expected Transfer |
Real transfer |
| Leona Passive |
150 |
105 |
105 |
| any Attack |
1000 |
700 |
105 ?! |
| Total Damage |
1150 to Spirit |
805 to Vessel |
210 ?! to Vessel |
The Spirit takes the intended damage, so the reduced damage to the Vessel is forever lost.
Technically, this works the other way around too. If the pre-applied bonus is higher than the source that triggers it, it will increase the damage, although this is rather rare.
Known effects that break transfer damage:
| Items |
Champions |
Suspected, not confirmed |
| Bastionbreaker |
Leona Passive |
Night Harvester |
| Eclipse |
Renata Passive ally proc |
Kinkou Jitte |
| Scout's Slingshot |
Zoe-E |
"Searing Dawn"-Augment |
| Hextech Alternator |
Fiora Passive, all triggers |
"En Passant"-Augment |
| Elixir of Sorcery |
Qiyana Passive, except AA |
|
|
Qiyana W, except AA |
|
Special: First Strike, but only on consecutive use of the same cast-instance [⤤]
Specifically pre-apply bonus damage that is not solely triggered by on-Hit seems to be a characteristic, but hard to categorize exactly.
List used to find pre-apply bonus damage is franktheboxmonster's LoLDamage table [⤤]
Without exceptions everything commented as "pre apply" was tested, but the list is outdated, so there might be cases that were missed.
Note: The reason why this bug occurs is unknown, and it is quite likely not connected to the wrong-order-of-operations issue, but I decided to include it anyway due to the high impact it can have.
Honorable Mentions
ordered by annoyance when it occurs, ignoring rarity (and a bit nitpicky\)
- Spirits have the least priority for turrets and take -50% damage from them
- Mana issues when using mana to kill Spirits
- Morgana-Blackshield blocks Illaoi-E (unintuitively special-cased)
- Tentacles spawned with R count towards the "spawn distance"-rule for Passive/Vessel spawns
- Black Cleaver is basically required (and sold lategame for LDR)
- Q max + completed bruiser item can still fail to one shot caster minions
- Simultaneous slams don't all connect when the target dies to an earlier Tentacle (less healing)
- Omnivamp heals before Tentacles heal for missing%-HP (less healing)
- Ulting air is always silly but sometimes still optimal to get a kill
- Tentacle HP doesn't have an incoming damage modifier for ranged attacks
- Gameplay altering changes are regularly undocumented in patch notes
- A considerable number of Tentacles spawn without Illaoi's "approval" just to hand out free 5g
- Gwen is Immune to outside Tentacles even though Illaoi is inside. Inconsistent with Xin-R, Panth-E.
- Mordekaiser-R is realistically unplayable
- Many important mechanics not described inside tooltips (death dormancy, melee/dash-W)
Final Words & Acknowledgements
While this post only focuses on the negatives, in reality it's not that bad. I've played Illaoi for many years and I wouldn't have done so if she wasn't fun, but it'd be an overstatement to say she is perfect.
I did not provide a suggestion to any of the regular topics because I have faith in Riot's designers to find the best solution for all of them, if they think it's warranted to fix.
However, I do believe that Illaoi-E needs a rework to be healthy for the game, and I think it is really difficult to find a good solution without upsetting the Illaoi community. For that reason, I will conclude this post with just one suggestion, and that is for an E-adjustment.
Personally, besides E, I think Illaoi's kit is actually quite straightforward and satisfying to use. I know a major change like the one I am suggesting can only be assessed when trying it out in-game and some tuning, which I cannot possibly do. So my suggestion is meant as "I would like to see this given a try" and not "it would definitely be better like this". At the end of the day, I don't know what the best solution is.
With that, thank you for reading my post!
I am glad to have picked up Illaoi.
This post would not have been possible without the dedicated work of u/AnataBakka in maintaining the Illaoi wiki page for over 10 years!
His QoL-wishlist is also worth a read. [⤤]
9. Suggestion: E - Adjustment (skippable)
E-Vessel debuff (as it is currently): removed
E-tether range: 1700 -> 4000 (basically removed, except tp/recall)
E-transfer damage: immediate -> pre-apply bonus (damage is stored)
Illaoi and allies can damage the Vessel to deal bonus damage, based on stored damage
* up to 2x their damage
* consuming the stored damage
* lining up a slam with Spirit + Vessel means the damage is triggered instantly
Stored damage does not decay during Spirit uptime
Spirit survives -> stored damage decays rapidly (~1s)
Spirit is killed -> stored damage decays very slowly (~20s) +1s to 4s slow
* slow scales based on how much % of the real Vessel's-HP has stored damage applied
* 100% of Vessel-HP has stored damage -> 4s slow
* for current Illaoi-E: this scenario equals death
* decay means it is not applied as real damage
* using E on a Vessel again can be used to trigger already applied stored damage
* this is the new Vessel debuff
Tentacles attack a Spirit or Vessel (effectively) every 4.5/4.0/3.5 seconds (1/7/13)
-> Tentacles attack a Spirit (effectively) every 3.5 seconds
Spirit (effective) lifetime 6.25s -> 3.5s
New mechanic: Q, W and R increase the Spirit's lifetime by 1.25s, once respectively
Spirit lifetime cannot exceed 6s total
New mechanic: Using a basic ability on the Spirit refunds 50% of its mana cost
Intended behavior:
* E-Slam-1 always hits
* E-Slam-2 only happens when duration is extended at least once
* (alternative: duration has to be extended twice for E-Slam-2)
* (alternative: only once after level 11)
* E-Slam-3 can never happen
* 6.00s uptime only when extended twice
* limited by unique command
* cannot be 2x W or 2x Q
* W on non-Spirit still grants the duration extension when commenced slam lines up with the Spirit
Intended Goals
A slam to a real player is always initiated by Illaoi-W, never periodically
* less confusion for the enemy
* less reliance on NPC-initiated-slam to connect
* lessens frustration for the Illaoi player
* expected to reduce low-elo skewness by taking away power from NPC-initiated-damage
Attacking the Spirit can never kill the Vessel
* although this behavior could easily be preserved (not my intention)
* special-case: 100% of Vessel current HP has stored damage -> Vessel is executed
* this sounds broken on paper but is pretty much 1:1 current Illaoi-E behavior
Note: I believe many Illaoi players consider this to be one of Illaoi's power fantasies but I beg to differ. I think the general playerbase does not even understand why it is possible to kill someone by attacking the Spirit. Even after 10 years of Illaoi's release, I still see question mark pings when it happens. I think killing someone in a way they don't understand is too toxic to keep in the game and for that reason I think this behavior should not be preserved. My suggestion includes a 4s slow so Illaoi can chase that person and finish them off herself.
Counterplay after getting hit by E
* damage is stored and decays
* avoiding damage as Vessel avoids triggering the stored damage until it fully decays
* Illaoi has to interact beyond just landing E and blasting it
* if stored damage cannot be triggered: consolation prize is still +25g for killing the Spirit
Illaoi wants to Q or W the Spirit, ideally line up with the Vessel
* predictable and cooldown-window can be used to deal damage to Illaoi
* Illaoi can store damage but cannot easily trigger it if everything is on cd
* expected to still be a losing scenario for the Vessel (as it should be?)
* especially all-ins on her are still almost as deadly as before
Killing the Spirit is highly incentivized or landing E was pointless
* incentivizes going bruiser items instead of tank, as it should be
* incentivizes Q-max instead of E-max, as it should be
Tanks are generally easily hit with E but killing their Spirit at full HP is difficult
* E cannot be used for easy toxic poke anymore
* intent is to interact with the tank by regular means before using E
* or landing E near 2-3 Tentacles
* far more predictable and avoidable as the tank
Helping an ally when chasing someone is more effective as there is practically no tether range
* Illaoi can freely kill the Spirit and store damage for ally to apply
* because chasing as Illaoi is really awkward otherwise anyway
* becomes more than just an awkward slow as it is currently
Assumed to be a far less complex ability math and script-wise in general
* no need to calculate multiplicative scaling, pre-/post-mitigation bonuses, etc. during application of stored damage
Although storing the damage can be better in certain scenarios, I still consider this to be a massive nerf on average.
It can be better for preparing skirmishes by landing E before the fight
* stored damage cannot be healed/shielded/zhonyas'ed when applied
* allies and Tentacles don't grief by attacking the Spirit while the Vessel is in Zhonyas
* Vessel has a harder time entering the fight
* higher risk of getting bursted until stored damage decays
* can still be healed/shielded when triggered
* unique zoning tool for Illaoi
In exchange for the massive E nerf:
E gets easier to hit
R gets a dash
* + maybe: Powerball-Rammus-R inner hitbox
* if you get hit by this inner hitbox, slam commences to that target
* + maybe: knockup for that inner hitbox, identical to Powerball-Rammus-R
Issue: Visual clarity - how can anyone see how much damage is stored?
* too important to not have it be visible
* current pre-apply system is to never show (Leona passive, Renata Passive, etc.)
* Lore: probably does not align, although arguably current version doesn't either
Visual bonus: Triggering stored damage could be visualized as a Tentacle squeezing the Vessel
* slamming and squeezing are both major Tentacle fantasies
* squeezing does not exist in Illaoi's current kit
* at least landing E does not feel like squeezing to me, even if the Icon suggests it
* alternative: just the slam-hit VFX would also work probably
tl;dr
- W interactions depend on if you jump far or jump short
- Dying is spinning the Tentacle slam slot machine
- Tentacle behavior is impossible to reliably predict, there is no way anyone plays around it
- Conqueror stacks, but not in the way you would think (and only until lv 13)
- Hit E or you die, but it's a flip every time (and you probably still die)
- Every ~10 seconds Illaoi spawns a Tentacle to grief her own stealth play (and that of your allies)
- You either have Flash ready or you wait for your opponent to make the first move (on their terms)
- Bugs so obscure you don't even realize they happen every game (for 11 years btw)
- Suggestion: E-transfer-damage: immediate -> pre-apply bonus damage for upcomming damage
