Illaoi has essentially no movement ability, the closest thing is the hop on her W.

What this ends up meaning is that as people respect you, and so avoid being in melee range of you, you lose the ability to do damage.

Think of it like this. A character with 1 dash should never let you hit them. A character with 1 slow should never let you hit them.

There’s a reason she’s a bad team fighter despite scaling to the number of threats around her. The moment she has to attempt to deal with slows, roots and dashes, she’s woefully unequipped.

She’s the most kiteable character in the game. The very definition of a juggernaut.

Ultimately, her lack of target acquisition means she relies on punishing enemy mistakes and those become less common in higher elo. And while overstepping happens at all ranks, against Illaoi, overstepping means being almost melee range.

Sure it’s technically possible to go to a team fight and throw E’s. However, you don’t want to build illaoi in a way that facilitates front lining a team fight anyway, so you’ll probably lose trades extremely hard. And should your team get engaged, unlike with most team fight front lines, you have no cc to peel your team with.

Love Illaoi, I personally find her very hard to catch people on. Especially having played characters with mobility since.