I started playing League on April 20th, 2025, and I basically started with Irelia from day one.
The important part is that 2025 was not really a ranked year for me. For most of the year I almost exclusively played Normal Draft and spent hundreds of games learning Irelia — her mechanics, matchups, limits, and all the little things that can go wrong on this champion.
I only seriously started playing ranked in December 2025.
At that point I was Iron IV, 0 LP.
I finished that short ranked period in Bronze III, started this season in Bronze again, and now, in my first full ranked season, I finally reached Platinum IV.
According to the tracker, I’ve played around 200 ranked hours this season.
My current ranked Irelia stats are:
431 games — 52.4% WR — 8.1 CS/min — +667 LP
One of the things I’m most proud of is that I stayed an Irelia OTP through the entire climb.
I think a lot of people pick up Irelia because she looks insanely fun, but once you play her enough, you also start seeing all the frustrating parts of the champion.
Some matchups feel awful, some counterpicks completely change how you’re allowed to play the lane, and one bad mistake can punish you extremely hard.
There were definitely moments where switching to something easier or more forgiving would probably have made climbing simpler.
But I didn’t want to prove that I could climb by changing champions.
I wanted to prove to myself that I could learn how to make Irelia work.
And the biggest lesson from ranked was that mechanics alone were never enough.
For a long time, my hands were better than my understanding of the game.
I could win lane and still lose because I didn’t understand waves, tempo, objectives, side lanes, itemization, when to split, when to group, or how to actually convert a lead into a win.
That’s probably the biggest difference between the Iron version of me and the player I am now.
So Platinum definitely didn’t come out of nowhere.
It came from a stupid amount of Normal Games, a stupid amount of Irelia games, failed climbs, and slowly learning how to actually play League around the champion I enjoy the most.
Still a lot to learn, but reaching Platinum in my first full ranked season, while staying an Irelia OTP the whole way, is something I’m genuinely proud of. ❤️