League of Legends Video Goes Behind the Scenes of Irelia's Rework

A new League of Legends video has been released that takes players behind the scenes of the creation of the game's most recent champion rework for Irelia.

Irelia has been live in her reworked form for just over a week now and has already been toned down with a mid-patch nerf, but prior to her release, Riot Games worked on the champion's update for months. The behind-the-scenes video gives League players an idea of what the creation process was like with everyone from gameplay balancers to the audio team to normal players working on Irelia's rework.

"More often than not, it actually takes a few months to really get to the point where we feel like we have a kit that's trending in a good direction," said Michael Chu, product manager for League of Legends.

When creating the champ's new kits, the Rioters looked at each individual ability to see what the moves meant for Irelia as well as for the players who mained the champion. Her Bladesurge (Q), for example, is one that the Rioters mentioned is perhaps the champion's most recognizable ability that people play the champion for. When they first took a look at her abilities, the Bladesurge along with other moves were the first that were evaluated.

"The first pattern we hit for Irelia was through her passive, her Q, and her E," said Ford DeCastro, development manager. "When we have that, we've learned a lot about what the character is and probably should be, and then we validate that with Player Labs."

These Players Labs are a chance for normal players to come in and test the reworks and new champions where those who play Irelia the most can voice their opinions on the changes. Some well-known players are even brought in from time to time to test the champs, some of them being pros and others being devoted champion mains like Irelia Carries U.

"Irelia Carries U is like a really notable Irelia main in the community," Nathan Blau, researcher, explained," and we want to specifically invite him in to play test."

Riot took both the Irelia main's input as well as suggestions from other players into consideration when finalizing the rework and releasing the Irelia that's now available. The full video shows many more behind-the-scenes looks at Irelia's rework process, so give the whole thing a watch to learn more about the champ.