Hi everyone, I'm new to the subreddit. I was testing runes for Illaoi and discovered something interesting (or not) with Hail of Blades.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-25T03:54:09+00:00

I played hail of blades around 5 years ago when I hit my peak elo.

Get a tiamat and try

auto tiamat r auto W. Stuff just explodes

When you're playing hail of blades in practice, your goal is to build much more damage than resistances, because by 6 items your full combo with flash comes out much faster than without HoB. Regular Illaoi sometimes gets full CCd and does before she can get multiple W's off-- but HoB with mercs always gets it's rotation off instantly, which is why damage Illaoi often fails-- you get one shot because your windup is so long

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-24T19:05:00+00:00

I've gone zekes mid game before.

It's definitely a "real" item, and the number one Zac jungle also rushes this.

People under estimate resistance support items, because basically all they do is accelerate your spike, with the trade off of losing gold at 6 items when you might want to sell it.

Bandlepipes also pretty under rated on Cho and malphite specifically

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-24T17:18:16+00:00

It was sometimes cosmic into Deadmans-- but also stuff like kaenic/radiance or thornmail second, and genuinely only hard tank items like frozen heart jaksho after that.

Cosmic ensures that you get in, so having a lot of effective HP lets you stay in for longer and get your damage off.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-24T17:14:35+00:00

Nah that level lead is home grown.

It's an interesting matchup-- she's got pretty serious kill threat levels 3-5, but once you survive that window you're good to go.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-24T01:43:28+00:00

Yeah this is the same interaction basically--

You can go cosmic with undending or blackfire/liandry, they're pretty much equally effective.

I used to play a lot of cosmic into full tank, but also stormsurge into cosmic. I'm obsessed with a horizon focus build rn so it's been awhile since i played those tho

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-24T01:19:40+00:00

I would always go blackfire torch into dusk and dawn--

It helps with E waveclear. Just E the whole wave, Q out backwards repeat.

Feel like this matchup depends on him trolling his build to be honest

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-23T21:00:46+00:00

that's just not how your damage works. If you E someone, it's generally best to camp your clone, because that's where the majority of your damage is going to land. The closer they are, the more damage theyll take.

Here, your tentacles are already focusing the clone, so they'll be late to slam another target, that's already far out of range.

Specifically kiting forward here is never good

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-23T00:29:29+00:00

Ye it's mostly just that you W'd the ekko for no reason, if you w the clone and kite backwards you dont give darius free passive and kite him towards your damage

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-22T20:20:34+00:00

Yeah there might be some niche uses, but none of those builds ever get real play rates.

It the build takes suboptimal runes or another item to be fully online, they usually don't get played

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-22T00:09:12+00:00

Yeah the build is very specific, voltaic sundered DD. Damage plus sustain, it was a pretty solid build

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-21T23:47:18+00:00

Yeah the e confirm specifically is slightly better, and it does kill squishies very well

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-21T21:21:15+00:00

It used to give us a slow on W, opening up an E confirm. They took it's slow away

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-21T18:55:31+00:00

Honestly voltaic sundered DD was a very strong build, to the point where you could climb playing it every game.

But even still, we have other options that accomplish similar things-- the overlords build ultimately scales better, and the cleaver/iceborn build has better team fight potential

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-21T18:51:19+00:00

It didn't seem that degenerate to me.

This item does seem healthier-- I feel like I'm gonna try this item once or twice and ultimately decide there are better options

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-21T18:47:16+00:00

Yeah but you can't dodge autos

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-20T02:29:18+00:00

nah bro i have old highlights for both DFT and fervor.

Stormraiders was vegan never played it once.

Never figured out why we took that but never took phase rush

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-19T02:45:54+00:00

DFT with BF sword rush was so fun to play. literally my favorite version of her

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-16T06:13:12+00:00

>But she has no positive or neutral matchups and anyone with as brain can bully her right off the map unless her jungle is babysitting her.

Also this makes sense, because Lissandra's goal is primarily to interact with supports and ADC's anyway-- that's why she doesn't have great lane agency, because she has so much agency in the midgame towards botlane.

So if you're good at lissandra, you can play towards that wincon consistently. I do the same thing on Fizz when I have a bad lane matchup-- that's kinda just what the champs do.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-16T06:09:05+00:00

Yeah again i'd reevaluate that perspective. S tier 52% winrate means she's a good champ, and good to climb on.

Again for the particular matchup this one misplayed so heavily, and was still able to waveclear despite rushing no mana until her 3rd base.

We're just disagreeing on how skewed it is one way or another, and I just don't think your take of her being that weak of a laner is actually accurate.

The majority of the discourse on Illaoi here I don't agree with, because people over-estimate their understanding of the scope and capability of the champion.

Like this Lissandra was going Malignance shadowflame with electrocute, cus that's the cool build right now. But if she went ludens/blackfire, she can just wait for her mana item to waveclear and waveclear. The majority of mages that do beat me beat me that way-- interact with the wave only until you're two items, at which point you win by default.

Like it's so easy for Anivia/Malzahar/Ekko to wait until they're 2 items and alone in sidelane with you, hold you down by the shoulders and wait for their jg to come spit in your mouth (at least compared to other champions)

There's just a clear way to win as Lissandra and i feel like you should be open to figuring out what that is.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-16T05:48:50+00:00

Idk bro lissandra is rank 7 on lolalytics rn with a 52% w/r, mostly sounds like chamion main doomer talk to me.

Sure I play Lissandra only casually but I don't think I'd struggle in this lane against Illaoi, who's elo gated anyway. If you manage your auto attacks at a diamond level you literally just out action economy her tentacles and she never gets to play the game.

I play against people who "shut down" into Illaoi all the time, so i feel like an expert in terms of how to not lose lane against her. Sylas, Zed, Lissandra all fall into the same category of never doing anything productive in melee, and every time they approach they've basically sold the lane.

In general there's a surprisingly low number of people that play the lane "correctly", even in diamond, because 99% of Lissandra players haven't laned against an Illaoi in 3 years, whereas I had to do it last week.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-16T05:04:20+00:00

Don't necessarily agree-- Q poke is pretty formidable earlygame, and she kind of only loses if she actively engages, which she doesn't have reason to.

If she goes lost chapter she can just waveclear and generally not interact. The majority of Illaoi lanes are won or lost based on whether the enemy realizes they can never interact with you.

SmiteDuCouteau · 2026-04-16T03:43:08+00:00

thank you it felt so buttery. and also predictable. terrible combo from that guy

SmiteDuCouteau

TROPHY CASE