Irelia is getting a hefty League of Legends nerf to lower her early power

Irelia has been one of League’s biggest early game threats since her rework. However, Riot is setting out to change that in LoL patch 11.14: the Ionian warrior is getting a hefty nerf to her early game power, with a trade-off meaning she’s better late.

Irelia found herself back in the League of Legends meta after her Season 8 rework as both a top and mid lane duelist. Dancing through minion waves to get on top of enemies, her 1v1 ability in the early game was unparalleled.

However, a series of nerfs toned back the Blade Dancer, cutting the effectiveness of all parts of her kit. While she received some buffs near the tail end of Season 10, Riot are starting to cut back at Irelia’s strengths again just as she rears her head in the meta.

The changes, according to developer ‘Phlox’, will give Irelia’s W “an actual powerful use case”, instead of just being a damage negator. It comes at the cost of the rest of her kit, which is facing significant early game nerfs.

Irelia’s base health and magic resist are being slashed, but she’s gaining extra health per level to compensate. Her passive will now also give less stats early, but have higher scaling with bonus attack damage to make her useful past her two-item power spike.

The same changes apply to her Bladesurge Q, which is now slower to dash. Her E can no longer be recast while CC’d, and the missile travel time is now a flat 0.25 seconds.

All of these changes look to shift her early game power towards late game, where Irelia is being buffed quite considerably.

Her Q cooldown will now be reduced via her ultimate, with a new passive slashing it by as much as 2.5 seconds at rank three. Her W now blocks both physical and magic damage, and deals a heavy burst at max rank.

The changes might lead to the rise of some new Irelia builds, focusing on W max with its insane AP and AD scalings for burst damage, before jumping in with Q for the kill. However, it’s likely the traditional build will be better overall — just weaker after the nerfs.

Riot are still tinkering with the changes on the PBE ahead of LoL patch 11.14’s release on July 7. You can find the current list of Irelia nerfs below (h/t Surrender@20).

Irelia changes in LoL patch 11.14

Base stats

• Health lowered from 580 to 520
• Magic resist lowered from 32 to 28
• HP per level increased from 95 to 110

Passive: Ionian Fervor

• Max passive stacks lowered from 5 to 4
• Attack speed per stack lowered from [8/12/16% based on level] to [7.5/13.75/20% based on level]
• Damage lowered from [15-66 (+25% bonus AD)] to [10-61 (30% bonus AD)]

Q: Bladesurge

• Dash sped changed from [movement speed +1500] to [significantly reduced]
• Minion damage changed from [55/75/95/115/135] to [55+12 per level]

W: Defiant Dance

• Damage reduction changed from [50% (7% per 100 AP) physical] to [40-80% Physical and 20-40% Magic damage reduction levels 1-18 (+7% per 100 AP)]
• Max Damage increased from [20/50/80/110/140 (+100% AD)(+80%AP) to [30/95160/225/290 (150% AD) (120% AP)]

E: Flawless Duet

• Missile travel time changed from [based on distance] to [0.25s]
• Cannot be recast while CC’d

R: Vanguard’s Edge

• [NEW PASSIVE]: Decrease Q cooldown by 0.5/1.5/2.5s before Haste