Ilumia: Illuminating The Mid Lane

Build and Guide Ilumia: Illuminating The Mid Lane

Cheat Sheet
Skill Build 

Cataclysm > Divine Light > Banish 

Recommended Talents 

Flicker, Purify

Items 

Orb of the Magi, Flashy Boots, Hecate's Diadem, Virtue's Necklace, Holy of Holies, Ancestral Glory

Arcana 

Violate, Devour, Hex



Introduction
Ilumia is one of the most unique mid lane heroes in Arena of Valor. Ilumia is covered in forms of crowd control and knockbacks, as well as an ultimate that lets her gank every and all enemy's from mid lane. If you are someone who loves to mess with people, or simply have a presence in the game without leaving your lane. Ilumia is perfect for you, and we will talk about how.

Skill Build
Cataclysm > Divine Light > Banish 



Ilumia summons a small circle below all enemy heroes. After a short duration, the ability explodes damaging and stunning any enemy hero that did not move out of the circle in time. Making this a great ability to use on top of your teams' crowd control effects, or when fights are busy and people aren't paying attention to their feet. This is especially nice to use against enemies who are low and trying to teleport back to their base and can't see or dodge the circle as easily.

Banish causes Ilumia to twirl around releasing an area of effect spell that does some burst damage on top of knocking enemies back away from Ilumia. While Divine Light doesn't gain cooldown reduction per level like Banish does, we want to max Divine Light first. Your passive will double whatever Divine Lights damage is, and the higher that is, the better.

Divine Light is a medium ranged skill shot with a wide area of effect. It explodes when it hits an enemy and stuns them momentarily. If enhanced by your passive, this spell will deal double its damage, and knockback.

Your passive Goddess allows you to use two of your abilities to strengthen your next Divine Light within 3 seconds and will refresh its cooldown. This is why we level Divine Light before Banish. You can poke hard for a long time, provided you have the mana to use it.

Talents
Flicker, Purify

Flicker 120-second Cooldown: Teleports your hero a short distance

Even with a number of knockbacks and crowd control Ilumia has, I will always recommend Flicker on most if not all heroes. Any ability to instantly jump over a wall will save your life at least once a game if you position poorly. If you can control Flicker well enough, you will be able to reduce your mistakes leading to deaths every single game. 

Purify 120-second cooldown: Removes all debuffs and control effects on yourself and gains immunity to them for 1.5 seconds. 

Purify gets a mention here as a talent that can be used against team compositions that are heavy in crowd control. Since some people can use stuns often or even from a range. They may catch you out of position at some point. Flicker would save you as well, but if you are not great with Flicker, Purify will let you attempt to get out of the way or get close enough to stun the enemy. 

I don't list Endure here, as you don't have the mobility to let the enemy get close to you and get away.

Items
Orb of the Magi, Flashy Boots, Hecate's Diadem, Virtue's Necklace, Holy of Holies, Ancestral Glory

Rush Phoenix Tear as fast as you can. Anything that allows us to cast more and reduce our need to recall for health or mana will let us get ahead more and more in the game. Especially with how easily we spam our ability to clear minion waves and keep certain mid lanes off of us. Mostly the popular assassins at the time of writing this guide. 

Flashy Boots because casting our ult more often is fun. The more often you can ult, the more likely you are to accidentally kill or assist in a kill in either bot or top lane.

Hecate's Diadem just adds plenty of extra damage on top of what we're doing early game. Magic Pierce early is always good, not to mention the bonus 35% ability power will make our stacks on Orb that much better.

Virtues Necklace is an alright item by itself. Ilumias spell costs and spam kind of make this a requirement. 

Holy of Holies just stacks extremely well with Hecate's Diadem. The bonus 1400 health also makes Ancestral Glory worth buying.

Ancestral Glory is another item that helps a lot of players get away with bad mistakes. Not to mention giving you a short time to reduce your cooldowns to knock back and hopefully Flicker away from the enemy after the revive is complete.

Arcana
Violate, Devour, Hex

Violate gives us some much-needed early game damage with flat ability power and magic pierce. You can run Enlightened Arcana like the game recommends, but I've never been a fan of gaining 1 extra ability power per Arcana over the 2.4 magic pierce per. More stats per Arcana over flat Arcana is my recommendation. However, if you don't have Violate. Enlightened is still good for your flat damage early.

Devour is here mostly due to there being no good replacement. I don't think you will get an extreme amount of healing from the magic life steal unless you are looking to use area of effect abilities on minions. Like your knockback for example. However, that just seems like a waste of mana to me to regain health.

Hex over Focus Arcana, unlike the game, recommends. Same reason as Violate as well. I just don't see why I would want to get .3% cooldown speed over the 2.4 ability power per. You can replace this with anything tanky as well if you don't have these two Arcana, but we mainly focus on Arcana that helps us hit harder and ult more often.

Early Game
Early game is a farm fest for you. Stay safe and farm for Orb of the Magi. You do mild damage to your lane opponent but anyone who knows what Ilumia does should stay out of your range. If you do wish to trade you can always abuse your passive to poke with Divine Light if you can force them out of the lane. However, in quite a few matchups if they are able to dodge your skill shots, or simply stay in lane longer. Play safe, you don't want to fall behind in lane because you spent all your mana and had to teleport to base.

Mid Game
At this point, you have quite a few items giving us an insane amount of regen in mana and health for a caster. At this point were basically wanting to poke mid lane constantly. You can even roam to another lane. If you get behind the enemy, you can knock the enemy bot lane with Banish. Use your divine light to stun them again, and immediately cast it again to knock back and stun the enemy again. This major stack of crowd control will basically ensure you kill someone in lane. 

Late Game
Late game should do one of two things. If you are ahead enough and the enemy lacks any hard damage or hard crowd control. You have the option of knocking them around or splitting the team with your area of effect spells. If the enemy has ways of dealing with you quickly or it's too risky. You can just poke from a distance with Diving Light and use your ultimate when a good amount of the enemy either engages or is hit with hard crowd control.

FAQ/Tips
You are covered in ways to displace people. Try to combo your Divine Light into your Banish. If you can control people well enough you can use your buffed Divine Light to really do some damage to someone without the enemy being able to do anything back to you.

Your ultimate can be a great way to mess with the enemy jungler, or even accidentally steal a buff. Sometimes I like to use the ultimate randomly just to see if I get anything out of it if nothing is working out.

Matchups
(Butterfly, Easy) 

Butterfly mid is all about getting close to her opponent and harassing them with short ranged abilities. Your mid lane is all about knocking close people away from yourself and hard crowd control. Butterfly lacks any form of crowd control reduction as well. This basically makes you impossible for Butterfly to even attempt to fight, as long as you aren't wasting your crowd control to push your lanes minions.

(Airi, Easy)

At the time of writing this guide, Airi is a new hero so things may change with patches. However, she is a great jungle/mid lane and sees a lot of play. So were listed what to do against a mid Airi. Basically, do not attempt to poke. Just farm up and wait for allies to get to your lane for team fights. She has all the tools needed to easily dodge your skill shots and fight you. As long as you have your ability to knock back with Banish you are a threat. If she attempts to jump in, use Banish to knock back and immediately Divine Light to stun her. From there you can Divine Light and either run or ult depending on your current location. However, if you do waste abilities and she dodges them. She has everything she needs to dodge everything you toss at her.

(Natalya, Easy)

Natalya gets a special mention since her ultimate makes her stand still. While she is ulting she gains a shield, and is immune to crowd control effects whilst that shield is up. Your ultimate at every level does more damage than her shield can deal with. As soon as she ults, use yours. You will deal some decent damage to her, and then you can combo Divine Light, Banish, and Diving Light again. Basically, turning her ultimate into its own form of self-hard cc.

(Krixi, Hard)   

 Krixi's abilities are much longer range then yours are. Other than her ultimate, every single spell she uses can be used from a safe distance outside of your range. This makes her a hard opponent to deal with, as you can't get near her without taking massive damage for possibly no reason. Best thing to do is wait for allies to get to lane and help.

(Veera, Hard)

Veera mid lane has great range, great damage, and is quite frankly a nightmare to deal with. Your stun is a skill shot, hers is locked on. The only thing you can hope to do is fight when minions are nearby. Since her bats will target onto enemies, and not just enemy heroes.

(Ignis, Hard)

Ignis deals massive damage from a range just a bit further than yours. His ultimate also does massive true damage. This is one of the heroes you really want to rush health items against. Consider getting Holy of Holies much sooner than normal.