Irelia, The Will of the Blades, is one of the fiercest and deadliest solo laners to ever step foot onto the Rift, especially in the Top lane. Irelia is an extremely versatile and well-rounded champion who provides great engage potential to team fights, as well as enough health to allow for a significant amount of peel for your ADC. Despite Irelia's many advantages, she flies under the radar many times both in Solo Que, as well as in the NA & EU LCS, Champions Korea, and the LPL in China. This article will discuss Runes, Masteries, and Builds in order for you to “Forge Onward” through the Solo Que ladders heading into the Season 5 Ranked Season.

Runes And Masteries: The biggest reason why Irelia is such a strong pick, no matter what Top lane meta she finds herself in, is due to that everything about her can molded to fit whatever your team comp is attempting to achieve or however you prefer to play. These different styles of Irelia begin, like all champions, with the proper runes and masteries. Some examples are shown below of some of the most common Irelia builds, as well as some pros and cons towards each build and what you as a player are trying to accomplish.

Rune Page 1: 9x Attack Speed Marks, 9x Flat Armor Seals, 9x Magic Resist Glyphs, 3x Attack Damage Quintessences

Rune Page 2: 9x Attack Speed Marks, 9x Health Seals, 9x Magic Resist Glyphs, 2x Armor Quintessences, 1x Attack Speed Quintessences.

The First Rune Page is designed for a very hard hitting, damage item building Irelia that wants to be in the opposite lanners face all lane phase long. If you do not feel like you are doing “Tons of Damage” then you can also feel free to switch out the 9x Attack Speed Marks with 9x Attack Damage Marks. This rune page is more built for very high damage dealing Irelias. However, please note that this high base damage version come with the cost of being a less tanky frontline for your team.

The Second Rune Page is notably more expensive than the first, however it is optimized fully for becoming a bigger frontline without sacrificing the ridiculous amounts of mixed damage you will be doing through Irelias kit. In this example, you will see I switched from 3x Attack Damage Quintessences too a mix of 1x Attack Speed Quintessence and 2x Armor Quintessences. I also removed the 9x Flat Armor Seals and replaced those with 9x Health Seals to add some sustain and base health in the early lane phase. This change works nice with the built-in sustain that comes from Irelia's Hiten Style. I kept the Magic Resist Runes, however you could switch these as well too scaling Magic Resist. I personally prefer the base Magic Resist although it could be argued either way.

Masteries: 

Option 2:

Option 1: This Mastery page is going to be for those Irelias that want to do more damage overall, rather than worry about tanking for the team. This could be done when you have good Crowd Control from your Support and Jungle Champions who are tanky enough to peel for your ADC. This will give you good amounts of damage in lane, while working well with your kit in the masteries of “Spell Weaving” and “Blade Weaving” working with your “Bladesurge” and “Equilibrium Strike” abilities respectively to provide maximum amounts of damage output.

Option 2: This mastery page is made for a more tanky Irelia who is attempting to become a very powerful frontline for the team, peeling for the ADC and fighting like nobody cares. This page in combination with Option 2 of the Rune pages will turn you into the warrior that Garen will never be able to be, despite all of his Dematican might. In all seriousness however, this is a very valid mastery page that sacrifices a bit of your damage output, to put more points into the armor and magic resistances that the Defense tree offers.

Builds: Irelia item builds also backup the philosophy of the Rune and Mastery pages of being flexible per situation. Her core items go as follows: Trinity Force, Spirit Visage, and a Blade of The Ruined King. Other than those three, it up too the game you are playing, the items that the opponents are building, and what your team needs to determine the path for the rest of your items.

Some example build paths and final item sets are shown below. Once again remember that item builds are always relative to the game that you are playing and the builds of the enemy team. Use the below photos as guidelines of paths and orders you should build items. The first photo is describing what your general core build of end game Irelia should look like. The second is a more detailed build path that shows the order of purchases for the items.

Using these guidelines, you should be well on your way to once again fighting for Ionia and bringing honor and victory to those around you. Always remember that knowing is half the battle. So always remind yourself to check to make sure that you are optimizing your Runes, Masteries, and Builds for all of your Champions each patch, so that you can stay ahead of the curve in the Metta game, as well as between your fellow Summoners. If you have any questions, comments, or just want to stay in touch, feel free to follow me on Twitter @TheRealistSloth and be sure to keep up with all things Team Dignitas at @TeamDignitas as well as on Team-Dignitas.net

Good Luck on the Rift Summoner!