League of Legends (LoL) Question: Maxing E on Irelia?

E offers great safety. If you're losing a trade, just simply pop your E and you'll be able to escape with relative ease. The issue with maxing E in my opinion is that your trading potential for longer fights really does plummet. You can't actually engage in trades if you max E against someone with a gapcloser as you'll simply be reengaged on after the stun wears off and you'll lose.

Maxing W is pretty fantastic for both the trading as well as the sustain it gives. 75 true damage for free is insane, and I believe it's 13 health just for basic attacking? That's pretty ridiculous.

Just look at your lane match-up, really. If it's someone you're expecting to get into a lot of fights with and they can easily reengage on you, say, Fiora or Gnar (or a lot of the top lane champions to be honest), then max W. Fantastic trading potential and fantastic sustain for after the fights. I'd also recommend you max it for lane match-ups which you can win with relative ease, since you can very easily bully people out with this.

Maxing E really would just be if you're expecting someone to engage onto you a lot, but you can't really expect to win it. Someone with really strong early game potential, think, I dunno, Jayce I suppose.

Personally, I still like W over E. If you max E, too much is just centered on that one ability, and you lose most of your lane pressure as well as options as to what you can do.

In worlds they picked Irelia as a counter to squishier champions because she has the kill potential that a lot of toplaners lack. Thats why they always ganked for her and maxing E increases kill potential in ganks.

Maxing W first is pretty much always optimal 1v1, as usual.

I was watching Krepo's stream as well when he talked about it and - since I'm basically maining Irelia atm and would like to believe I'm playing her the right way - immediately went to check a couple of profiles of high elo Irelia players on EUW. I couldn't find a single game in which any of those players maxed E first on her.

Having said that, I can definitely see how the increased duration (2 seconds at max rank instead of 1) and increased damage (goes up by 50 per rank) could make it a very strong ability to max first, especially against (ranged) champions who can kite well (as utopus mentioned).

I still need to check whether it was considered standard during Worlds or whether it was only done in specific matchups, can get back to you once I know more if you want.

I mean, if you're going up against a brutal lane like... idk Jax, I can see the reasoning behind getting equilibrium strike - you'll need that to disengage, and trade, b/c jax's autoattacks will probably be better than yours in a duel.

I guess I could also see maxing equilibrium strike vs champions that can kite you well, like Ryze, Jayce, and Nidalee. It'll let you stick to them better