Counter Guide

How to Beat Illaoi

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Illaoi doesn't out fight you. She builds a room, waits for you to walk into it, and then the room fights you.

She's one of the few champions in the game where the ground matters more than either player. Her damage comes from things she placed earlier, so the same fight is either wildly one sided or almost free depending entirely on where it happens. She's also slow and obvious (and she can't catch anybody), so every one of those fights was one somebody chose to have. The advice that beats her is spatial, and it requires the discipline to give up farm you feel entitled to.

Matchup Snapshot Illaoi, the Kraken Priestess

Where You Meet Her Top lane

Damage Type Physical, delivered by things that are not her

Why She Is Frustrating You are fighting five of her at once

Mobility Almost none

Biggest Threat Test of Spirit [E]

Hardest Counter Heimerdinger

What a Counter Needs

Range, or a dash that gets you out of the ground she has prepared
Grievous Wounds, because she gets her health back from the same swings that hurt you
The patience to give up a wave rather than contest it in the wrong place

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Illaoi on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Illaoi

Heimerdinger683 games56.7%
Trundle753 games55.4%
Mordekaiser2,758 games54.5%
Garen2,597 games53.9%
Teemo2,001 games53.2%

Picks Illaoi Beats

K'Sante864 games41.2%
Renekton1,785 games42.3%
Gnar758 games43.1%
Jax1,554 games43.2%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the top lane against Illaoi. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 52,077 Illaoi games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Illaoi Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

She fights with more bodies than she has. Every tentacle she has placed is another source of damage, and none of them can be killed or crowd controlled.
The spirit turns a duel into a trap. Test of Spirit [E] makes everything she does to a copy of you happen to you as well, and running away from it costs you the wave and often the tower.
She heals in the middle of the fight. The health she takes back comes from the same swings that are hurting you, so trading her down is a project that resets itself.
Her ultimate punishes a team that grouped. Leap of Faith [R] is at its worst against one person and at its best against four, which is the opposite of most top laners.
She wins a fight she didn't have to be winning. A team fight in her prepared ground goes her way regardless of gold, items or who played better up to that point.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

She can't catch anybody. No dash, no gap closer and no reliable slow. Everything she does requires you to have walked to her, and you never have to.
Her damage stays where she put it. Move twenty steps and most of her kit is decoration. The tentacles don't follow.
Grievous Wounds is the item that beats her. The sustain is the reason a lost trade turns into a lost lane, and it's bought off with a cheap component.
She is helpless against range. A ranged top laner doesn't have to enter her ground at all, and there's nothing in the kit that makes them.
Her ultimate is a long cooldown. Without it she is a slow melee champion who has to walk at people, and that state lasts a long time.

Countering Illaoi

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Illaoi comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Give up the wave rather than fight on her ground. This is the counter, and it's a discipline problem. The farm you refuse to lose is what she's being paid in.
Break the tether immediately or not at all. Half measures are the worst outcome. Either leave straight away and accept the loss, or commit and kill her, but don't stand there deciding.
Buy Grievous Wounds in lane. (By the third item it's too late.) The health she takes back mid trade is what turns an even exchange into a death.
Spread out before she casts her ultimate. It's worth what it catches, and what it catches was decided while your team was walking somewhere in a clump.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies work anyway:

Playing a Bad Illaoi Matchup

Play the lane short and take the fight nearer your own tower, where none of her ground work exists.

Ask for a jungler once her ultimate has gone down. Before that, a gank into her prepared ground is a gift rather than a play.

Split her from her team rather than fighting her with yours. She's one of the strongest five on five champions in the top lane and one of the weakest one on one against someone who can leave.

Best Illaoi Counters

Three ways to beat someone who fights on ground she prepared: never enter it, drag her off it, or fight her on ground of your own. One counter each.

Teemo Never Enters The Ground

He's the specific answer rather than a general one. He can trade from outside everything she has placed, and his blind removes the swings the sustain depends on.

It's an uncomfortable lane to play, granted, but she has no tools for it at all (a rare thing to be able to say).

Mordekaiser Drags Her Off It

His ultimate drags Illaoi into a one-on-one arena for seven seconds, and her tentacles don't come with her. Everything she set up stays behind, and she spends the duel against a champion who's also stealing a slice of her stats.

That's the fight she's worst at, one on one with nothing placed in advance.

Trundle Brings His Own Ground

He has a zone of his own. Standing on his ice gives him attack speed and movement speed (and 25% more healing from everything), so a fight in the spot he picked is as lopsided for him as a fight among her tentacles is for her.

His ultimate settles it. It drains her armor and magic resist and hands both to him, which is a bad trade for a champion who wants to stand still and soak up the first few hits.

Itemizing Against Illaoi

The first two are the matchup and the last two are ordinary insurance:

Bramble Vest and Executioner's Calling are the same purchase for the two halves of the roster, and one of them has to arrive in lane rather than after the second death, because the healing is the reason a bad trade becomes a lost lane. Plated Steelcaps blunts the swings that carry most of her damage. Randuin's Omen is the team fight version of the same idea, and it's aimed at the moment after her ultimate, when there's far more of her on the field than there was a second earlier.