Lee Sin Build Guide by xScarface
Not Updated For Current Season
This guide has not yet been updated for the current season. Please keep this in mind while reading. You can see the most recently updated guides on the browse guides page.
Team 1
Ability Sequence
Not Updated For Current Season
The masteries shown here are not yet updated for the current season, the guide author needs to set up the new masteries. As such, they will be different than the masteries you see in-game.
Masteries
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my build for 
Lee Sin. This champion plays in a unique play style in comparison to most other champions. What I mean by this is that all of his abilities have two different effects and basically count as two spells in one but you have to cast the first one to have access to the second ability but only for a few a seconds.
In this guide I will be explaining how I play Lee Sin in the lane and how I do it to my own advantage and to my team / laning partner. The item selection/s, masteries, rune page and skill sequence will be described also to the best of my ability to give you guys the most out of this build and why I prefer it to any other.
The complete build will be split into two half's. This one is going to be based fully on the lanes and how Lee Sin can be effective in it and the second half of the guide is going to be on the concept of jungling and how this can be used to make him a more efficient and diverse champion.
I will explain everything to a detailed standard to give you viewers the information you will need to be a (what I believe) the most effective way to play Lee Sin. Anything that you believe I have not mentioned in the build or you would like to have seen and wasn't here then please leave a comment in the section below to let me know and I will read them all and take them into consideration and maybe put a section on that topic into the build if I believe it is required.
Enjoy!
Pros / Cons
The first chapter I am going to go over is the good and bad points about Lee Sin.
Pros:
. Exceptional jungler
. Sustained burst with short cooldowns
. Amazing single target nuker
. Easy harassment with no cost due to no mana pool(energy)
. Brilliant chaser with ---> --->
. Excellent at initiating battles and exiting them with little to no damage taken
. Has several escape mechanics
Cons:
. Vulnerable to CC
. When doing your main attack combo on an opponent, in most circumstances you open with but if you miss the target with the ability then it could result in death because then you don't have a way of jumping to your target and initiating a fight.
. Requires accurate placement for because this can determine how a battle sets out.
. Timing your passive is key to mastering Lee Sin because this way you can go into a battle using minimum energy and deal bigger damage.
Laning Items
I am going to explain each individual item to give you guys a full analysis of why I take each one and how it helps me throughout the game.
and 3
are a great way to start the game with Lee Sin. The boots of speed provide you with a nice speed boost early game and the health potions are great for lane sustainability and save the need for recalls. I have experimented with several other starting items such as
Long Sword and
Doran's Blade but the boots and potions just seem to give me that nice survivability for the first part of the game and then it hardly costs any money to upgrade the boots of speed into my
Mercury's Treads
+
I choose to recall when I have around 920 gold to pick up two Doran's blades. Doing this will give you 200 extra health, 6% lifsteal and 20 attack damage. This is mainly for early game domination and you are confident that you are going to get kills.
After the Doran's blades you want to upgrade your boots of speed into your Mercury's Treads. This gives you the tenacity and protection from CC that you need to counter this vulnerability.
You may be wondering why I have put this in the build when I do not get
as an item. If you are having a strong early game, you can do one of two options. You can either buy
for 1337 gold and then later convert it into a ghostblade if you wish instead of a
or
. Or you could save up approximately 300 gold extra to buy a B.F.Sword. This can be made into your
and also gives you a huge AD bonus early game. (45 extra) Either item works perfectly fine but I personally get which ever I have enough money for at the time. (1337 gold or 1650 gold)
You can not build Lee Sin as a full DPS as he would be far to squishy and would be focused to easily. As for the same reason you can not build him as a full tank either as then his damage output would be to low. So to compromise this I think getting the
is a great idea. The 700 health on it gives you a lot more durability and the AD and snare just make your auto attacks make your target unable to escape you. Another reason why the
is effective is because to make your passive as efficient as possible you want to attack twice between your abilities to maximise its effectiveness. As you use Tempest when you auto attack twice the
will slow the target down and therefore Cripple is guaranteed to be in range.
This item just adds to your
to make you a lot more durable throughout the game. The
gives you 700 health so that is the equivalent of 14 AD added on due to the UNIQUE Passive that
gives you which is that 2% of your maximum health is converted into AD so getting some tanky items along side your DPS items will benefit you hugely as you will take a lot of damage and deal even bigger damage.
This item will almost make you unstoppable with the life steal and AD it grants with the ability to kill creeps and jungle mobs to stack it up to get even more! If you chose option two from earlier and got the B.F.Sword then it will only cost 1350 gold to convert it into one. The reason behind not getting it earlier instead of the
or
is because early game you are vulnerable to harassment and can get focused in team fights quite easily. So getting those two first is a much better option. Once they are completed the real damage items start to pump out and by the time you get the
it should be mid to late game and as most games last between 20 and 35 minutes you don't usually have time to proceed past this item.
There isn't much to explain behind this item except for the fact that it is an all around good item. It gives nice statistics (besides the 250 mana) and gives you yet another snare to use along with your Cripple and
. As you use sheen to build your
you get the UNIQUE Passive from it giving you bonus damage to add on to your abilities. (Choose wisely which ability to activate the Passive from Sheen)
OR
You can choose either one of these items to finish of the build with depending on the composition of the enemy team. Obviously if they are mainly AP based then go for the
but if they are AD based then go for the
or the third option is from if you bought
you could convert it into a
instead to give you the activation which almost guarantees to destroy an opponent 1v1 (if you use your abilities carefully and wisely)
Lee Sin Jungle Overview
Lee Sin jungles slightly differently in comparison to people like 
Nocturne, 
Warwick and 
Olaf. You should be starting at the wolves camp near the blue golem with a 
Vampiric Scepter. After killing these proceed to the wraiths near the lizard elder and 
Smite the blue one. Then you want to go to the mini golems near the lizard elder and kill them. After this, recall and purchase your Long Sword and go straight to the blue golem while your on full health to kill him first. Once you have acquired the blue buff head down to the lizard elder and grab the red buff of him so you then have both neutral buffs.
Now you are ready to gank and you should be level 4. After the gank be it successful or not head back to your jungle or your enemies jungle (if they do not have a jungler) and repeat this process. You purchase your 
Wriggle's Lantern a lot faster as we have saved 175 from buying health potions.
Jungle Route
The pictures below are a basic overview of the jungle route I take as Lee Sin which I believe is the most efficient and preservative, health wise. It involves minimal recalls and your levelling speed scales faster than the double laners and around the same time as the solo laners.
This is the starting area to jungle as Lee Sin. Take note what to do here. Use Tempest and then auto attack twice to set your passive off, then use cripple to finish and then auto attack twice again. Repeat this process on all jungle mobs to maximize your energy regeneration and attack speed from Flurry.
Head to the wraiths after the wolves and use Smite on the blue wraith because he has life stealing and does big damage to you considering you are level 1. Use the tempest, flurry, cripple tactic as I said before and finish of the small ones.
Put a rank into safe guard / iron will and head to the mini golems. The mini golems can be hard to kill if you do not have armour seals due to there being two of them and they hit relatively hard for a jungle mob. Keep safe guard up as much as you can and activate iron will for the life steal because it combines well with the Vampiric Scepter. Recall after defeating them and purchase your Long Sword or Boots of Speed depending on how much money you have acquired.
Head straight over to the blue golem and take him down. He should be fairly easy to kill considering you have recalled and are on full health. After slaying him and his minions put another rank into and then go for the wolves again. You can regenerate some of the health you lost to the blue golem here, preparing you for the lizard elder.
Once you are at the lizard elder you should be level 4 after killing the dogs again. Put a rank into because you will want to gank after getting the red buff. The lizard elder is easier to kill compared to the blue golem so it should be fine. Smite should come of cooldown by the time the lizard elder is on roughly 40% health. Now you are ready to gank.
This map is the jungle route from start to finish.
KEY:
1 | Wolves Camp
2 | Wraiths
3 | Mini Golems
4 | Recall
5 | Blue Golem
6 | Lizard Elder
7 | Gank
Jungle Items
In this section I am going to explain what items I take as [Lee Sin]] and why they help me for different reasons.
I start with this item because combined with Iron Will you will heal back up so fast there is no need for the health potions and cloth armour. Also I build this into my wriggles lantern and it only costs 1150 gold to purchase it.
I choose this to build into my 
Madred's Razors.The cloth armour shouldn't be purchased over the Long Sword because your safe guard will protect you enough so you won't need the bonus armour.
I choose to get my tier 1 boots before the Madred's Razors because by this time you will be level 4 and ready to gank. So in order for it to be successful you will need some speed to catch up to people.
Now it is time to get the razors. This basically removes the need for Smite as you kill the Lizard elder and Blue golem fast enough with minimal damage taken, due to the UNIQUE Passive it comes with which counts as Smite with no cooldown.
The life steal, armour and damage you get from this item will make jungling SO much easier. It still has the razors UNIQUE Passive so you can kill the creeps with ease.
Once you have completed your wriggles upgrade your Boots of Speed into your Mercury's Treads. This compensates for the vulnerability you have for CC so picking these up nice and early will benefit you in the long run.
Now you have completed your Wriggles lantern and Mercury's Treads, the build is the same as the laning items. So start building your 
Phage and save up for the Frozen Mallet moving onto your Atma's Impaler afterwards. Then get the B.F.Sword and purchase your The Bloodthirster and then go for sheen and eventually Trinity Force, finishing off with your choice of Randuin's Omen, Force of Nature or Youmuu's Ghostblade.
Skill Sequence
I rank up first because when laning this is the best skill to harass with and initiate your devastating combo with. When you can't put ranks into this I subsequently rank up safe guard / iron will because this will give you a nice shield to block harassment on yourself if you have fast reactions, and you can activate iron will to give you life steal, spell vamp and life steal temporarily so it is nice to attack with. I rank up last because I believe that Lee Sin's other abilities have more priority as they help a lot more and are used for more important reasons. (initiating fights and gaining a damage shield) I considered ranking up tempest / cripple instead of safeguard / ironwill but I think Lee Sin's damage is huge as it is with this build and therefore I only use his E ability for the slow and to reveal stealth champions such as 
Evelynn 
Shaco 
Akali 
Twitch 
Vayne 
Teemo and 
Wukong. I much prefer the shield and the armour / life steal from iron will.
Obviously gaining ranks in your ultimate Dragon's Rage at levels 6 | 11 | 16 are essential as this does huge damage and can shred up to half of someone's health pool off if you time it correctly.
Runes
The rune page I use for Lee Sin is quite straight forward. I have put the runes that I personally think will excel his abilities and damage and I have also based the rune page around where I think Lee Sin is succeptable to.
Marks | - Armour penetration - Greater mark of Desolation
Seals | - Flat armour - Greater seal of Resilience
Glyphs| - Magic resist per level - Greater glyph of shielding
Quintessences| - Armour penetration - Greater quintessence of Desolation
I use these for particular reasons. I grab armour penetration marks and quintessences for maximum damage against squishy targets and champions with high armour. The seals and glyphs are purely for the survivability and defensive part of Lee Sin as I mentioned in the
section above. Flat armour will help me defend against AD champions throughout the game and the magic resist per level is purely for late game because I do not get any items which have magic resist on them until last (
force of nature)so acquiring these glyphs will give me the protection I will need until I purchase this item.
The main objective that I wanted to achieve with this rune page was to make Lee Sin a huge damage dealer with some durability and defensive statistics.
Masteries
As for masteries I follow a 21/9/0 build. I go into improved 
Exhaust and put 4 points in each of
Alacrity
and
Sorcery
then going into
Sunder
for the armour penetration to boost my runes and then I complete
Brute Force
and skip
Lethality
because crit damage isn't important to Lee Sin so it would be a waste of mastery points putting them in there. Then finally I pick up
Havoc
for obvious reasons.
Moving onto the defensive tree I go 3 points in
Resistance
for the magic resist because as I have Magic resist per level glyphs The flat magic resist from the mastery is nice to level it out with my armour. Then I go into
Evasion
and placing my final mastery point into
Nimbleness
because of the lovely movement speed when you dodge attacks.
Summoner Spells
Preferred:
The main reason I choose flash is the same reason I choose it for any champion, because it gives a nice easy escape mechanic and can get you out of tricky situations like ganks and when you are close to death.
I choose exhaust because when you do not have a clear line of sight to aim your to get to your target then exhausting them and literally using alternate routes to them is much easier. Using to slow them initially will help you land the exhaust more easily. Obviously you can use it defensively to slow an enemy which is chasing you if you are confident that you could not kill them.
Others and why:
This summoner spell can used over any of my preferred but I don't use this because I think that speed or catching up to people is already sorted with your abilities but ghost is always nice to escape ganks or even gank other people.
Heal is always nice in combat when an opponent thinks that they can kill you and you pop this spell when you are on the verge of death and give them the shock of their lives and the tables turn. You can use it for regeneration but I don't think it is necessary for that purpose unless you are on drastically low health.
I have to say that this summoner spell is useless for any champion due to the fact that yes it can allow you to come to life and enter battle again with super speed but if you didn't die in the FIRST PLACE then there wouldn't be any need for it would there? Quite useless in my opinion and definitely something to avoid.
Not much to say about this really apart from the face that it should only be used to jungle as it is a waste of a summoner spell if you are laning for most of the game.
Teleport is a good spell to use and you can go straight back to your lane and losing minimal experience. This is an amazing spell to use in the mid lane especially if you are getting pushed back. I do not particularly like using it as a melee champion because once the laning phase is over I am usually in team fights and then the spell is useless because everyone moves together (most of the time) but I like to have summoner spells which help me from beginning to the end of the game and that keep their effectiveness.
This is a spell which I don't use much with any of my champions but that doesn't dismiss the fact that it is a brilliant spell. It can be a brilliant source of getting away from ganks, due to it removing any snare and / or debuff (except 
Ignite) so it can give you the edge to getting away from things like Nasus's 
Wither which dramatically slows your movement speed down.
This spell I choose to use when I am playing tanks. I do this because when playing an AD / AP DPS I prefer having summoner spells which will benefit me personally like Flash and Ignite. When playing a tank or support champion then getting fortify would help your whole team out if you were in danger of losing a turret. If you decide to pick up the defensive mastery
Reinforce
then it can do splash damage and even pick you up a nice kill as it increases the turret attack speed by 100%.
This is the most useless spell for Lee Sin purely because he doesn't have a mana pool and therefore the spell wouldn't do anything for him.
This is a spell I was choosing between along with Exhaust because the damage over time effect it has is excellent at picking up kills if you can't catch up to them. I personally prefer getting Exhaust as melee champions because your damage is displayed in auto attacks and therefore a dot wouldn't benefit you to much in comparison to a ranged AP champion.
Rally is generally not worth it as it requires to much thinking of where to place it and who on your team is near by when you put it down. It is not as effective as an instant click summoner spell like flash or ghost.
This spell is perfect for a support champion because their job is to buff and help out their team. So showing where enemy champions are can give you the upper hand before a team fight begins. As for a DPS champion you rely on the support champion but overall it generally isn't worth it.
Unique Skills
I am going to mention some fun and unique things that Lee Sin can do which are good things to note down because doing them will make your games a lot smoother.
The flashback:
This is where you use to hit a target enemy champion, then following up with resonating strike. Once you hit the target you use safe guard / iron will to a friendly champion or minion. Doing this will provide you with great harassment and unless your enemy laners have lightning reflexes then they won't be able to hit you whilst you are in the process.
Flurry effectiveness:
In order to make your passive as effective and efficient as possible, it is advised that when casting tempest you auto attack twice to activate your passive, then use cripple after the two auto attacks then repeat. This gives you a lot of energy refunded back to you and maximum damage from Flurry.
Singling enemies:
In team fights Lee Sin can do something very sneaky which can separate one person from the rest of their group making them an easy target to focus first. If the person you want to separate is near a thin wall such as the one surrounding the wraiths, then you can sonic wave them followed up by a well executed Dragon's Rage to knock them over the wall then finally using resonating strike to follow them over and then you have them all to yourself to kill first and if this person is the enemies carry then you are guaranteed to win the team fight. It can be hard to execute sometimes as they need to be at the perfect place at the right time. If you pull it of though it can end in amazing results.
Just a small thing that I do sometimes. If you are not playing aggressive and not going in the brush to try and get first blood then wait at the spawning pool for 10 seconds after the minions have spawned. Doing this will allow you to have enough money for a fourth health potion for even longer lane sustainability.
Team Work
In this chapter I am going to be explaining some ways in which Lee Sin can help out his team mates and how they can help him.
Lee Sin can help out his team in several different ways. He can use safe guard to jump to his team mate or minion to save him self from being chased.
He can also use to slow down enemies and reduce their attack speed which can be a really nice opener and initiator to a team fight.
Using Dragon's Rage can be an excellent way of killing single enemies. For example if your team are gathered in mid lane and so are your enemy team you could go round the side and wait in the water brush, doing so wait for one of your opponents to make an inadvisable decision and step away from the group. Once someone does this (which they will eventually) seize the opportunity and sonic wave in followed by a resonating strike and roundhouse kick them into your team to pick up a free kill.
You can use to jump to friendly sight wards, vision wards and if you have a Teemo on your team then you can even jump to his 
Noxious Trap!!!!!
Tactics
As you can see by this short clip, using tempest can reveal stealthed units so if you are laning against a stealth champion and are worried about being attacked then use and it will reveal them and deal damage as well.
This is the method of harassment I was talking about earlier in the build. Using sonic wave and resonating strike and then finishing off with a safe guard to a friendly minion or champion to prevent yourself from being harassed yourself. This method can be used very effectively and is the best way of harassing until you have an opportunity to strike your full combo at them.
As you can see by this clip I was being harassed a lot by an enemy Wukong and I am forced to run away before he kills me. As I do not see any clear route for escape I notice a sight ward I placed down previously, so I juke him into the brush and safe guard to my ward over the cliff and escape from my enemy. I buy sight wards just to do this tactic because this can fool your enemy because they have no idea you have a ward in the first place.
This was the tactic of separating a target from the rest of their team. Even though I do not show a full team and me executing it how I said above, you can still see the idea of how you should do it. Sonic wave at them and then roundhouse kick them through the terrain and then follow up with a resonating strike to go through with them to fight them along without their team. Only do this is you are confident that you will kill them because this will give your team a big advantage when a team fight begins.
Example Game / Score
Here is an example score of when I managed to achieve all of my items. As an AD champion It became quite hard to get kills due to their being a 
Tryndamere and Twitch who are excellent at getting them. I was jungling in this game and I had a nice minion kill count so this is a nice example to show you guys.
Summary
I hope you have enjoyed reading my Lee Sin build and I hope it will help those players who were looking for a solid build. I have tried my hardest to cover everything you will need to know about playing him, his strengths and weaknesses, my full selection on everything I use for him (masteries, runes, skill sequence, item purchases)and some tactics and methods of laning harassment / sustainability to keep you going.
Please leave a comment below to let me know what you think and tell me what I could do to improve. Thank you again for reading and I hope to see some Lee Sin's using this build!
I would like to thank xIPainIx for helping me complete this guide and please go and see his brand new Wukong build. Extremely detailed!
http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/wukong-that-funky-monkey-detailed-guide-106047#chapter4
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Guide Discussion (11)
