First Champion in League of Legends Nerfed for a Whole Year - Irelia

Players who have played League of Legends Season 2 must know Irelia, the Will of the Blades, the top solo champion either been banned or picked. She was once the dominator among top solo champions who was invincible in early game. She could enter and got out of opponent faction easily in mid game and dealt double or triple kill. Later, RIOT nerfed her several times. As a result, Irelia becomes powerless now and few players play her now.

Now let’s review the nerf history of Irelia.

1. Irelia is the first champion nerfed on concept art in the history of League of Legends.

The picture above is the concept art of Irelia released on magazine by Riot. We can see clearly that she has 8 blades as her weapons.

But when Irelia finally launched, the concept art changed.

These two pictures are quite different. Besides her narrower chest, there are only 4 blades now. Although the new Irelia seems more beautiful now from her face, it’s hard to accept the changes.

2. She rose in Season 2 and then was nerfed 13 times in a row.
Irelia was a normal champion at the beginning of her launch. All her stats were great and she could play varied roles. In eyes of players, Irelia was quite normal and needed to be buffed. Soon, the first buff came.

Then, nightmare began.

Some adventurous players began to try Irelia. They found that she could fight against all other champions when solo top lane and had dash skill, true damage, certain magic damage of skill, AD damage, directional ult with long range of damage, strong restoring ability, resistant to control. She could also slow and stun unit. Afterwards, Wicked developed the gameplay of Irelia with Wriggle's Lantern and Wit's End. Players started to notice Irelia. What was more, free Irelia week came and she became quite hot. RIOT also realized the power of such a top solo champion and started endless nerf of Irelia.

Irelia was nerfed ceaselessly during the whole year from March 15^th, 2011 to March 20^th, 2012. But she was still very powerful. However, with the joining of more strong top solo champions, Irelia faded away in the end.

Once there was a popular saying in the forum that “New champion is too powerful, seems that Riot will nerf Irelia soon”.

Also there’s saying in my heart as well as all Irelia fans’ hearts that “You have nerfed Irelia’s skills, yet you can’t nerf the will in my heart”.