LEONA BUILD GUIDE

 

 

Introduction

I picked up Leona at around September 2012 when I got really bored of playing Blitzcrank. After playing around 300+ games with her, I fell in love with her aggressive playstyle, and really like how she could remain incredibly effective throughout all stages of the game. Not only is she a fantastic support champion, but she also transitions pretty well into a tank/bodyguard with her toolkit. Overall, if you are looking for a very aggressive, reliable support champion, then Leona is perfect for you!

In this guide, I am going to discuss how to play Leona as a support champion on Summoner's Rift. If there is enough interest, I can write about how to play her in Dominion.

I apologize in advance for the crappy video demonstrations. I use a Mac and don't have LoLrecorder, so I had to scrape what I could find from streamed games.


Pros:

• High CC with Shield of Daybreak + Solar Flare.

• Free tankiness with Eclipse.

• High damage output with Sunlight.

• Great initiation with Zenith Blade + Solar Flare

• Highest base mana regen in the entire game

•  Very good pairing with almost every ADC in the game

Cons:

• Melee, so you're going to get poked

• If you miss your Zenith Blade, you're a sitting duck in lane and you're going to get poked

• Once you go in, you have to commit since you have 0 disengage. And if you got poked, you're not going to have too much hp.

• Because you can't proc your own Sunlight, Leona can't be played in others roles effectively except for support (and barely scraping by jungle)

•  Loses 1 damage to people with sunglasses :(

 

Summoner Spells

Exhaust
This is definitely the best offensive summoner spell for you. Exhaust is 100% necessary to lock down a high priority enemy, and you're one of the best users for exhaust because you can get close to this target with Zenith Blade. Definitely have this around if they have hyper carries (Vayne, Kog'Maw) or if they have assassins (Zed, Kha'Zix)



Flash
Flash is still one of the best summoners in the game. It can be your get-out-of-jail-free card if the enemy jungler comes to gank, or it could be your holla-holla-first blood-dolla card. If you are laning against an annoying map-finder girl like Ezreal, then use this offensively with Shield of Daybreak. This will make it a lot easier to land a follow-up Zenith Blade after the enemy tries to flash/dash away.



Ignite
Ignite is a lot worse than exhaust in teamfights since it's more effective to slow/reduce AS on the enemy ADC as opposed to doing a bit more damage. But if you 100% want to crush your lane because you want to snowball or play aggressive (like with Draven), then this is definitely a good option.

 

Skills

 

Sunlight

This passive gives Leona a lot of damage output. Since you need an ally to be able to proc the damage, it is absolutely necessary for Leona to have a lane partner in order to maximize your damage, preferably being an AD carry. Note that the damage from the sunlight is calculated from your ally's magic penetration, which is why having a laning partner that already deals a lot of magic damage (like Corki) is a great way to maximize the damage from your passive.


Shield of Daybreak

Your bread and butter. When you press Q, your next auto attack will be a guaranteed stun, which is a really nice asset to have. It's also on a fairly short cooldown at max level, which is really awesome since you can use it multiple times in a team fight. The only downside to this skill is that you have to get really close to them to stun them, but this problem gets remedied if you can use your gap closer, Zenith Blade. I max this skill second because it provides a lot of utility once you reach the mid/late game.

Something interesting to note is that this skill RESETS your auto-attack timer. Therefore, always try to land an auto attack before activating Shield of Daybreak in order to maximize your damage output. You can also kill wards instantly by an auto attack, Q, auto attack! Neat!


Eclipse

This is one of the most cost-efficient skills in the game. Having such a massive boost to armor/mr is HUGE early game, and the main reason why you can become so tanky without any items. This also spreads sunlight to all units that get hit after the explosion, meaning that this is also your highest damaging spell (besides your ult, of course). I max this first since it provides the most damage output and stat benefits.


Zenith Blade

If used properly, zenith blade solves the biggest problem you have as a melee support: closing the gap between you and the enemy. When laning, It is crucial that you land this skill if you are going to engage, as you need to be able to stun the enemy in order to set up an easy kill for your AD. As Morello would say, the use of this skill is what really separates the good leonas from the bad leona.

Something to note is that if you use Zenith Blade on both minions and a champion, you will jump straight to the champion, but still proc sunlight onto the minions. It's also worth nothing that if this hits multiple champions, you will jump to the LAST champion hit.

I like to max this skill last because the only benefit you get from more skill points is a lower cooldown and a little bit more damage.


Solar Flare

Solar flare is a really awesome skill! It has a very big casting range, but a fairly noticeable delay after you click on an area on the ground. The stun radius is very very small, but the slow radius is pretty big. Hitting a few enemies with this skill can set up your team for an easy teamfight as long as you can stun the majority of them.

Because of the casting delay, you should never cast your ultimate directly on top of the enemy. Instead, you should anticipate they will start to retreat once they see you and cast it a little bit behind them. You will always want to use your ultimate first 99% of the time (the 1% is only if your target is a sivir/nocturne/banshee veil who can spell block), then use zenith blade to close the gap.