RTO Here! About Me I am a Peak 578 LP Challenger, North American Top Laner and Streamer representing Team Radiance, whose mission is to promote positivity in League of Legends. My main is Renekton, but I play many other champions when I am target banned. I also have an incredible amount of top lane knowledge that I want to share with you guys. Illaoi is a lane dominant powerhouse, who also excels at teamfights. She can be rather complex to learn, but the effort is worth it. She has decent sustain, insane 1v1 potential early game and can easily outplay 1v3 - or more - scenarios. If you like this guide, make sure to check out my even more in depth guides at my new website

Early laning phase, you will just want to let your lane opponent push, and using Tentacle Smash to trade, and farm. Don't take bad Harsh Lesson's, because it can put you in an awkward spot for taking high minion damage.
Levels 3 and onwards, laning gets a bit easier now we have all 3 of our necessary abilities. With Conqueror, laning is easier for us than previously with Kleptomancy, as we can benefit instantly from the healing it provides. You'll want to try and position near at least one of your spawned tentacles, and just try to farm up for your first item.

Once you're 6, you can focus on pushing the wave and pressuring the enemy laner. Since you have Leap of Faith, you can generally take a 1v2 if you get ganked at this point. Harsh Lesson can be used to hop over thin terrain, if you can get vision of, and in range of, a jungle minion - such as Gromp.
Illaoi's laning phase is all about pressuring the other top laner, and snowballing your own game, eventually being a late game monster that can 1v5 an entire team.

Help out your jungler if he comes to take Rift Herald, and secure first blood tower for your team. At this point you can potentially invade the enemies jungle, taking away vital XP, gold and their blue buff, if you're on red side.





Outside of laning phase, you have the option to group with your team and take objectives, or split push. If your team has a strong team fight, you can group with them, invading the enemy jungle, forcing fights over objectives, or pushing lanes.

If you decide to split push, you can very easily achieve this goal with minimal input. You're wanting to make the enemies come and address your monster split push, meaning you need to be vigilant on watching the minimap, and understanding where the enemy team is at all times. Low elo players generally struggle to understand what to do with a splitpushing toplaner, so now is your chance to ping and direct them where to put pressure on the map, such as taking important objectives on the opposite side of the map to yourself.

If Baron Nashor is alive and your Teleport is available, you can split push bot lane.
If Baron Nashor is alive and your Teleport is down, you will be split pushing top lane.

If Baron Nashor is dead, and your Teleport is down, you will split push bot lane, especially if a dragon will be spawning.
If Baron Nashor is dead, and your Teleport is available, you can split push top lane.

You want to split push the lane opposite to the most important, neutral objective, if your Teleport is available. This way, you can take the majority of pressure off the objective, as the enemies will not be able to answer you solo, and they give up the objective to your team. If you know the enemies will be collapsing on you soon, you will want to spam ping your team to complete the objective as quickly as possible. If the enemies collapse on your team, you can Teleport to them to quickly reach the fight.

Teamfighting with Illaoi has a lot of boons and completely turn the tide of a fight, but it isn't the most ideal situation to be in. If you're doing the Baron Nashor dance, try and poke down the enemies first with Test of Spirit, your team can take off a massive chunk of an enemies health, potentially making the fight a 4v5 before it even begins. Unless your team has engage, you'll want to wait for them to make the first move, and then Test of Spirit into Leap of Faith onto at least two champions.

One of the main problems Illaoi faces in teamfights is her lack of mobility, and the ability to be heavily kited by ranged champions, especially if you miss your Test of Spirit.

Be careful if the enemy team have a Lulu, she will Whimsy you, completely negating any of your damage and essentially rendering you useless. The same goes for any very hard CC such as Morgana's Dark Binding, or Malzahar's Nether Grasp, or an Ezreal that has built Iceborn Gauntlet to kite you.

I hope you have enjoyed and learnt enough from my Illaoi guide, to smash your enemies, and conquer the game.

If you're interested in seeing more of Illaoi, Renekton and myself, please follow my stream! I am streaming every day, and I engage with my chat consistently.

If you like this guide, make sure to check out my even more in depth guides at my new website