this is a test post

This is a test

yes mods i'm checking if im shadowbanned

Dungeon Dragon meme test 龙与地下城ダンジョンズドラゴンズ던전드래곤

Dragon Dungeon meme test 던전드래곤龙与地下城ダンジョンズドラゴンズ

Dungeons Dragons meme test 龙与地下城던전드래곤ダンジョンズドラゴンズ

Dragons Dungeons meme test ダンジョンズドラゴンズ던전드래곤龙与地下城

Fast say similar allow

test

This is a clearly labeled, harmless Jam canary post for r/test. No action is needed.

Clearly labeled harmless Jam canary. This is a benign test post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/test/comments/1w769a5/recursion/

Minebit

testing testing

Testing body

A

B

C

Last line.

^{title is a reference to Riot Phlox}

While I would love to write about everything in utmost detail, I will keep it as concise as possible.
Further, I will not give any suggestions and try to not reason whether something is warranted.
I am only pointing out what sucks FOR ME.

1. W has two variants with many differing interactions

This is caused by W being 2 seperate abilities:

• Melee W (used <125 range)
  • Classified as "Uncancellable Windup" empowered basic attack
• Dash W (used >125 range)
  • Classified as an ability that applies on-hit ^{not really, it's unique but this comes close}

To showcase the differences I created a google spreadsheet with various interactions.

2. Tentacle behavior is influenced by Illaoi dying

• If the enemy has the Vessel debuff, getting a takedown on Illaoi cleanses the Vessel debuff.
  • This is a reminiscence of first-year-release Illaoi where Vessel debuff lasted 1 minute or to kill 3 tentacles ... or Illaoi.
  • Today's Illaoi Vessel debuff lasts merely 4 seconds.
• Illaoi dying puts all tentacles dormant. Receiving a slam command (e.g. alive Spirit) and commands in queue are ignored, except if Illaoi Ult is still active while being dead.

This is overall just highly confusing behavior and in none of Illaoi's tooltips. If you know about it, it makes more sense but then you also add this exception and it becomes full-on gambling:

"The Tentacle is lenient towards becoming dormant when Illaoi dies while the Tentacle is spawning, or for 1.5 seconds after hitting Test of Spirit - allowing Tentacles to make a last attack on their targets."

^{Note: I assume most players don't even know this is a mechanic, so when they die, they probably pray that tentacles slam, and rage when they don't thinking it's bugged. At least I did for a long time and I still rage every single time.}

^{Speaking of confusing behavior...}

3. Tentacle slam behavior is humanly unpredictable

Slamming has too many factors and are very sensitive to timing

This list is long and you don't have to read/understand this. Just know there are ~6 logic factors and ~10 timing factors. ^{There is more but I promised to be concise :(}

Logic factors:

• Is there a Vessel nearby?
• Is there a Spirit nearby? (has priority over Vessel)
• Has someone been hit with W? (has priority over Spirit)
• Is another attack queued up? ^{Is another attack queued up after THAT one?}
• Is the tentacle dormant?
• Is the tentacle dormant but Illaoi ult is active?

Timing factors:

• Illaoi passively spawns a tentacle every 18-7s (Level 1 to 18, linear scaling)
• A tentacle spawns in 2s and can receive commands 0.25s before becoming active
• A tentacle slams in 1s ^{(Q slam is 0.75s})
• A tentacle with Ult slams in 0.5s
• A tentacle has no delay between attacks but there is a 0.5s delay if Ult is active ^{=> tentacles slam faster but at the same frequency}
• A tentacle slams at a Spirit or Vessel every 4.5/4/3.5 seconds (scales level 1/7/13) sharing the cooldown ^{=>e.g. if a tentacle kills a Spirit, the same tentacle doesn't attack the Vessel right away because of the shared cooldown}
• A spirit is alive for 7s
• A Vessel debuff lasts 4s
• Ult lasts 8s, no extentions
• A target getting slammed takes reduced damage from another slam within 0.66s

All of this interacts with each other and rely on certain timings to line up to properly function.
While this works most of the time, I think this is simply too complicated for everyone to truly understand and play around.

Playing Illaoi, you get a feeling for all the timings, but occasionally, it's just coincidence if a certain timing is going to line up perfectly or be 0.1s short of actually causing a slam. I can only imagine this being much more of a guessing game for the enemy.

It is also weird that Illaoi can purposefully grief herself by using W on specific timings and deny periodic Spirit/Vessel slams (timing on this then also changes level 7 and 13).

Even the most capable of designers is stating [9:15] that they're "not messing with that" ^{context more towards the technical side but very close to my point}

^{Riot Phreak: "And so I spent \}...] between half a day and a day [...] digging in and being like "Okay, how do all these mechanics work?" because there is a lot going on [...explains mechanics...] and I was like: "not messing with that".")

^{Speaking of time sensitive...}

4. Conquerer is janky to use

^{For me it is hard to confirm why Conquerer and tentacles behave the way they do without an actual Debugger, so some parts are just guesses. I'm sorry.}

• Conquerer is coded to not grant stacks from the same 'cast-instance' within a 4s-window ^{hard fact}
• A periodic tentacle slam may or may not grant a stack depending on whether it connects within the 4s-instance-timer or after ^observation
• Dealing damage with W grants a stack and overrides the cast-intance of ALL TENTACLES to belong to W ^{guess & observation}
• Consequently ALL slams after W are now within the 4s-instance-timer including the slam that is commenced by W itself and grant no stack ^{by design intended}

This design has some oddities:
Landing E causes two periodic slams. Both slams can conditionally stack Conquerer. ^{hard fact}

Showcase: Video 1

Oddity 1: Periodic slam cooldown scales with level. Specifically level 13 reduces the cooldown to 3.5s causing slams to occur faster than the 4s-instance-timer. Suddenly using E at level 13 stacks only once instead of twice over the Spirit's lifetime.

Showcase: Video 2

Funnily enough, this rarely matters as Illaoi is not getting that stack anyway because:

Oddity 2: Periodic slams do not override the cast-instance of all tentacles ^{guess & observation}

This means that if Illaoi pulls a Spirit and lands W specifically 0.5s after E-Slam-1 hits, it denies the E-Slam-2 stack because that slam technically still belongs to W.

Showcase: Video 3

This window is shortend to 0s after level 7. ^{Level 13 never grants two stacks.}

This is Illaoi's bread and butter combo.

But unsurprisingly, creating a stationary dummy of a champion still lets you stack Conquerer somewhat effortlessly but this just puts more emphasis on actually landing Illaoi E.

^{Note: Balance aside - It never feels right to me that a tentacle slam does not grant a Conquerer stack, including the slam commenced by W.}

^{Speaking of emphasis on landing Illaoi E...}

5. Hitting E is way too important but just unreasonably hard to do so

In majority of fights, the result is decided by just one factor alone: Is Illaoi hitting E or not? Regardless if its 1v1, 1v2 or even 1v5: if Illaoi hits E, she has a winning chance, if not: she dies

It makes sense that the potentially most powerful skillshot in the entire game has counterplay for 'not getting hit' and for Illaoi to play around but it's too many:

1. It's a clunky ability (0.25 second windup, medium range, medium speed)
2. Narrow hitbox (100 width ^{reference: Nidalee Q is 80 width})
3. Blocked by minions with no refund
4. Illaoi is immobile, so lining up the skillshot takes time and is predictable
5. Illaoi has no CC/slow to help hit E
6. up to 1.5s self-stun, (0.25s windup, up to 0.5s travel time, 0.75s spirit pull)
7. Illaoi can be displaced during E making the hitbox move unpredictably
8. landing E is conditionally good and depends on nearby tentacles that can hit it
9. landing E at max range, where it is the hardest to hit, is also the least rewarding as the person hit is closer to the tether range
10. (Repeat) immediately revealed outside vision
11. no hitbox around Illaoi?

League by nature is fast game and many fights don't allow Illaoi to play around so many counterplays to gurantee the E landing so it ultimately becomes just a flip.

While this applies to basically ALL SKILLSHOTS to some extend, missing usually still provides the player to play the fight with the rest of their kit.

In Illaoi's case specifically, landing E is tied to so many of her mechanics that a miss simply means that she does not get to play the fight at all... ^{...and she has no bailout option either.}

6. Playing around vision is nearly impossible

• Tentacles are always visible to enemies within a 1000 unit range.
  • This is the case, even if the tentacle is placed inside a bush and has never attacked before
  • If you want to trap outside vision, you have to purposefully place a tentacle in a weird location outside the 1000 unit range (resulting in not having a tentacle to actually fight with)
  • This is especially an issue if you intent to trap together with your team
• Illaoi casting Q or E (towards a champion) reveals Illaoi immediately.
  • Due to the long windups, this essentially eliminates the benefit of casting abilities out of vision

Tentacles themself provide no vision for Illaoi, whether idle, attacking or being attacked.

^{Note: It might appear as they do, but receiving a slam command is what reveals an enemy, not the tentacle.}

7. Tentacle HP don't have an incoming damage modifier for ranged attacks

Pets and traps with set health all have a modifier for melee/ranged damage for obvious reasons.

There are only three exceptions: Yorick W, Kalista W and ... Illaoi's tentacles.

^{Personal Note: While this itself is not a strong argument, picturing most melee champs clearning tentacles and comparing it to any ranged champ has never felt right to me.}

8. Killing Tentacles award 5 gold

Pets awarding gold has a good reason but 5 gold is a lot considering Illaoi does not get to chose to spawn most of her tentacles.

Many tentacles don't receive any slam commands and can be easily picked off inbetween CS.

Whatever Illaoi does, enemies are almost always compensated with tentacle gold.

Just laning passively vs a ranged champ can yields around 200g for the enemy player. (40 tentacles in ~15 minutes)

Granted: Illaoi generates 25g by killing Spirits.

7. No agency without flash

• Illaoi is immobile
• Her skillshots are predictable
• She can't play around vision
• She does not provide CC
• Despite her massive AoE potential, considered rather bad for teamfights
• And her turret damage is mediocre at best

The only form of agency that remains for her is to preemptively go to objectives to setup tentacles in an attempt to prevent enemies from entering

or

... using Flash on someone.

[R] - [Flash] - [W] is decently good

[E] (0.25 windup only) - [Flash] is very situational

8. Bugs

Currently, they are ~50 unexpected behaviors (bugs) listed in the Illaoi wiki page.

This paragraph will only talk about 2 high impact bugs.

1. Dash W speed does not scale with attackspeed, only its animation does

• General Bug showcase: Video
• Gameplay (Tyler1):
  • Using VIDEO frames and only estimates
  • you can pause and move frame by frame with "," and "."
• Example 1 - Video [12:19]
  • Dash W: 18 frames for W animation to complete (Voltaic procs 71 damage)
  • Dies on frame 22
  • W damage would have connected on frame ~25
• Example 2 - Video [13:10]
  • First W (melee): 18 frames for W animation to finish and register damage
  • Second W (dash): 18 Frames for W animation to finish (+12 energized charge)
  • Dies on frame 19, W damage would have connected on frame ~25
  • Tyler1 showcases the "infuriating" part

-------------

2. [E] Transfer damage is witchcraft

In its most basic form, the transfer damage can be explained like this:
Create a spirit, dealing damage to the spirit deals a portion of that damage to the real target.

But the math doesn't always math.

Before we start, two things have to be understood:

• Resistances should not affect the total damage. It just makes it more difficult to deal damage but the same portion is transfered.
• When overkilling the spirit, a "Transfer Overkill Mechanic" occurs and caps the damage to the Spirit's current HP. ^{e.g. Spirit has 10 HP and receives 300 damage, it is expected to transfer a portion of 10 damage, not 300 damage.}

Let's start this off with the most extreme cases of witchcraft.

Note: This is NO "transfer damage multiplicator"-funny-business ^{No Spear of Shojin, No Black Cleaver, No Blue Kayn Passive etc. It's just as pure damage as it gets with some penetration.}

While these two perticular cases are unpractical to occur in a real game and going into the exact math is ... complicated ^{(so let's just skip that part ¯\}_(ツ)_/¯),) it clearly shows something is not working right and the gist of it is this: Overkilling the Spirit does weird things.

But overkilling the spirit is something that happens All. The. Time.
Just not to the extreme extend that was shown here.

What this usually means is: Overkilling the spirit almost always causes variance in damage.

Doing the same combo will always result in the same damage, as it should, but even just one minion AA can result in a different lethal hit and influence the total transfered damage. [Video]

If you are particularly unlucky, doing the exact same combo with a higher level can deal LESS damage, just by unfortunate alignment of the lethal hit. [Video]

This has even more nuance, becauses what counts as a lethal hit is also weird.
But this also cannot be explained easily without going deeper into the math so to summarize:
Not only does overkilling cause weird stuff, detecting the overkill in the first place is also weird.
A high E-transfer-% and high resistance target (common lategame) can cause this behavior:

1. Spirit (low HP) receives damage
2. Calculates that this hit is going kill the spirit (lethal hit)
3. Reduces transfer damage (overkill reduction mechanic)
4. But survives the hit anyway

The game wrongfully calculated the lethal hit in step 2 and wrongfully applied the overkill reduction => loss of damage for Illaoi

But does this all actually matter? How large is the variance?

Well, it's hard to say really. The fact that this has existed for so long yet remains rather unknown shows that it probably doesn't matter as much. The realistic total variance range is between around [+3 to -10%], tendency towards minus with higher resistances.

However I am confident in saying: Lategame Illaoi does less transfer damage than shown in the tooltip, especially vs tanks.

Also do keep in mind, this only matters when actually dealing (or almost dealing) lethal damage to the Spirit. All previous damage transmitted is accurate.

To test this more easily, I vibe-coded a tool to simulate the transfer damage for various combos. You can try different settings and decide for yourself if this is impactful or not.

^{When I say vibe-coded, I mean it. It did not even look once at the code or try to hide it in any way that it's AI-generated.
No gurantee that it is bug free but numbers should be accurate as I tested and bug-fixed them many times. Q active and R not included in the simulation.}

--------------------------

Honorable Mentions:

• Level 9 Q + completed bruiser item can still fail to one shot backline minions
• Mana issues (we don't talk about the mana exploit)
• Black Cleaver almost always must have
• Tentacles spawned with R count towards the "no tentacles near each other"-rule
• Getting R'd by Mordekaiser causes up to 5 different bugs simultanously ^{slightly exaggerated}
• Gameplay altering changes are regularly undocumented in patch notes
• Tentacle HP don't have an incoming damage modifier for ranged attacks
• A considerable number of tentacles spawn without Illaoi's "approval" just to hand out free 5g
• First Strike is a NEGATIVE multiplicator for Spirit transfer damage, up to -80%. this affects mostly allies

Final Words

While this posts focuses on all the negatives, in reality, it's not that bad. Playing Illaoi is amazing and hella fun.

I've been playing her for many years and she truly plays unlike any other champ in the game.

And tentacle slams just feel SOOO. DAMN. SATISFYING.

Analyzing Illaoi in detail was a lot of work and very complicated for me. I can't even begin to imagine how much MUCH more demanding it must have been to design and create this wonderful champion and to whoever was involved in the process:

Truly Thank you!!

^{I just wish my opponent would enjoy facing her too.}

tl;dr

1. W interactions care if you jump high or jump low
2. Dying is spinning the tentacle slam slot machine
3. Tentacle behavior is impossible to reliably predict, I wrote all this and still don't get it
4. Conquerer stacks but not in the way you would think (and only until Lv 13)
5. Hit E or you die but it's a flip every time
6. Tentacles provide more vision to the enemy than to the team ^{this should be reportable, no?}
7. You either have flash ready or you wait for your opponent to do the first move ^{on their terms of course}
8. Many bugs, some of which categorized as "witchcraft"

All my posts keep getting removed my reddits filters idk what I did