Leona Build Guide by MTaur

Work in progress

I've been playing Leona since release, but I only started jungling recently. I'll change my build around later as I learn more about it.

Introduction

Leona is a bit of a slow jungler, but she has great ganks and benefits greatly from being liberated from the usual role of bot lane ward monkey.

If you're used to someone with a slow first jungle, like Sejuani, then Leona with an AD rune page won't be that much of harsh adjustment. Actually, comparing her to Sejuani, Leona with Regrowth Pendant and Health Potion will be maybe slightly slower, but she'll have more health after first clear.

It's all about the ganking. Leona benefits from incidental gold between ganks from the jungle, but really, she should just gank a lot, unless the enemies are all pushed to their turrets.

Clips

Here you go.

Not bad for first time in jungle with the champ.

Jungle clearing

Start at blue buff (have an ally draw aggro first), and then move on to wolves, wraiths, and golems; or just gank mid right after Golem. W, Q, and Flash are really all you need to kill or otherwise disrupt the lane of your choice. Ganking is so fruitful that the actual jungling part tends to be somewhat incidental, getting you a little bit of gold between ganks.

When clearing early on, it's better to lead with an auto-attack before activating Eclipse. Activating Eclipse and walking into range is slightly faster, but it wastes three seconds of the defensive buff, which you need for early clears. You can even lead with your basic attack/Q basic attack combo on the boss creep, wait for the stun to wear off, and *then* turn on Eclipse to maximize damage mitigation; having Eclispe on while the boss creep is stunned wastes the defensive buff, too.

If you think you might get counter-jungled, then hopefully your teammates are paying attention. You can save your Q if you're worried. The other thing is that you can recall if you don't know where their jungler is and you're about to get sort of low. Usually Leona is relatively safe except for that first, slow clear, and after that she ganks a lot anyway. However, "safe" is relative and dependent on operator input, and there's no substitute for map awareness.

Ganking

Try to get in and then out in the course of a single Eclipse. With health stacking and Zeal, you should be sturdy enough and damaging enough to make a big difference in one skill rotation, but don't stick around to take needless damage after Eclipse fades - the whole point of not building resists is that Eclipse has that base covered while you stack health + DPS.

That's how it works in general, anyway. In particular cases, it might be worth sticking around to finish the job if it's safe and/or they're just one or two hits away from death. You also might want to go farther along their escape route, so you'll be there for when your next stun is ready; the real point here is that it's sometimes worth hitting them more, but usually it's better to be in a good position to either escape or to use your next skill rotation if enough time passes.

Ganks run smoother if you have Flash and/or Solar Flare, but if they're over-pushed, then they're in deep trouble even without those two spells up.

The other thing is not to commit to something your ally can't handle. Leona isn't exactly Nocturne or Udyr, ready to cannonball in there and do all the damage regardless of whether allies are healthy enough to get involved. You might want to ping just to make sure they know you're on the way so you don't waste a stun on someone your ally can't even get to.

Of course, watch for counterganks, such as from mid or the other jungler.

Skill order

> >

Eclipse is good for damage, jungle clears, and surviving your own ganks (especially turret dives). But for getting more stuns out, the following is also debatable:

> >

Items

Assuming that bot lane support will be warding like crazy, you're free to build for damage + tankiness. Zeal makes ganks run more smoothly, eventually leading to Trinity Force. However, I suggest building health and postponing a full Triforce until you're tanky enough to live through your own ganks.

Shurelya's Reverie is a nice item, but you have to lose GP10 for it. It does free up an item slot, but Soul Shroud is tankier. If you're really good at using the active, you can consider Shurelya's Reverie, but this build both loses some tankiness and gains some move speed because of Triforce, so I went with the tankier Soul Shroud in the build for now.

I've found that GP10 doesn't really slow this build down, even if it's never upgraded. It also makes it possible to ward a little. Even though the plan is to eventually sell it in a long game, the stats are as useful as always, especially with that Regrowth Pendant otherwise just sitting around for too long. Building a Philosopher and selling it to build Warmog's Armor near the end is a gold profit compared to hanging on to the pendant to build into Warmog's Armor (if the game should even last that long). Heart of Gold can be skipped, possibly, but health is a very useful Leona stat.

It would take a fairly long game to finish Atmog's, but you'll be pretty scary if you do. You still won't want to 1v1 bruisers at full health, but you'll definitely be much better at finishing off strays all by yourself than a standard tank Leona, and if you dump everything on a carry, your allies won't have to get as many hits in to finish the job as usual. They also might underestimate tanky DPS Leona, engaging you when you can actually win the exchange.

Note that you might want to take Chain Vest or Negatron Cloak somewhat earlier, depending on the game.

Summoner Spells

Smite, naturally, and Flash for hard-to-escape ganks.

Runes/Masteries

Flat AD reds and flat armor yellows for jungle. For blues, cap off your CDR and then build MR/level. Move quints.

8/22/0 for smite, jungle, CDR, tankiness.

Pros / Cons

PROS:

Leona

Leona

CONS:

Leona

Leona