Big hit for Irelia ultimate with Patch 8.8 this week

Some changes on the way to Irelia with patch 8.8 this week, according to the latest PBE update. But she still an OP and dominated champion.

Unfortunately, Irelia is running totally rampant in the top lane meta, with a 51 percent win rate and an incredibly high 13 percent play rate, according to League of Legends stats site OP.gg. There are more nerfs coming her way with this week’s patch, assuming the current changes on the PBE aren’t reverted, but they won’t be enough to knock her down.

The largest change is hitting her ultimate ability, Vanguard’s Edge. For those of you that haven’t played with the new Irelia yet, this ability creates a wall of blades around your cast location. When passing through the wall, enemies take damage, are slowed, and are disarmed, disabling their attacks temporarily.

The ability’s cool down is going up by 20 seconds at ability rank one, 15 at second rank, and 10 seconds at the ability’s final rank. The 20 seconds at rank one will undoubtedly hurt a little bit early on, but 10 seconds won’t make much of a difference later in the game, especially when factoring cool down reduction into the equation.

The ability’s damage is taking a little bit of a hit, too. The damage from the projectile portion is being reduced at higher ability ranks, but it’s remaining unchanged at rank one. On the other hand, the wall’s damage is being lowered drastically by 50 damage at the first rank and 100 damage by the time it hits its third rank. Combined, these damage nerfs are significant, but Irelia’s dueling power isn’t restricted to her ultimate ability like some other champions.

The other changes coming her way are minuscule. First, her base armor is being increased by three points, which is negligible. Secondly, her Q, Bladesurge, will now deal 70 percent damage to minions, up from 60. It isn’t a huge buff by any means, but it offsets the severity of her ultimate nerfs by at least a little bit.

For remind you There are currently 65 items in game that provide cooldown reduction, 56 on Summoner’s Rift specifically.

These Irelia changes must be arriving with Patch 8.8 in this week.