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Locke vs Irelia
Mid Lane MatchupLocke vs Irelia MID matchup tips: who wins, how to trade, wave control and common mistakes.
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Who Wins
- Pre-6, Irelia wins most extended trades due to her passive damage reduction stacks, sustain from her passive healing, and the fact that your Q marks require setup time you won't always get against her aggressive dashes — level 3 is her strongest spike and she will look to all-in you there, so play defensively and avoid letting her stack her passive to 4 before engaging.
- Post-6, your R gives you execution pressure and a 99% slow that can lock her down long enough to stack Q and cash in with E, but Irelia's R can interrupt your setup and her sustain means you need near-full stacks to actually kill her.
How to Trade
- Your best trading pattern is to poke with Q from range to build nail stacks, then wait for Irelia to overextend or waste her E on a minion before committing to E-W all-in — never initiate the trade while she has 4 passive stacks active, as her damage reduction and healing will negate your burst window.
- If you land 3 Q stacks cleanly, the E dash into W activation gives you a tight burst window where your passive's missing-health scaling and stack consumption can delete her before she stabilizes.
Wave Control
- Push the wave early to deny Irelia her passive stacks from minion resets, since she needs minions to safely dash and stack her passive — a frozen or slow-pushed wave near your tower removes her ability to freely engage and limits her E targets.
- Avoid letting the wave bounce back to mid-lane in a state where she has multiple melee minions to chain through, as that gives her free reset opportunities to gap-close onto you.
Mistakes to Avoid
- Do not activate W preemptively as a defensive tool without a clear kill window — the true damage it deals to you is significant, and if you recast it early without landing your full combo, you waste both the healing and the damage amplification window.
- Irelia's CC from her R or a well-timed stun can interrupt your combo mid-execution, so never commit to E-W all-in unless you have confirmed she has no ultimate available or is already below the health threshold where your passive scaling becomes lethal.
Created on 08/18/2026
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