Well, since this is my first guide, don't expect this stuff to be gospel, it's just whats worked for me in non ranked matches. If you're looking for a ranked guide or a pure AD guide, this isn't the one for you. Lee Sin is a very fun champ to play, specializing in mobility and early lane sustainability along with decent harassment and control throughout the game. Lee Sin excels in being a heavy mobility tank capable of starting team fights with ease.

Lee Sin is quite a strange champion in the sense that he has 'double spells', wherein after you activate a spell, for example, , another spell will become available depending on the previous spell but in this example .

Lets get started then, shall we? I'll be sure to cover the spells and what they do / how to use them effectively to dish out the most damage and sustain the mobility.

Flurry;

This passive procs each time you use a spell, it grants 50% bonus attack speed and energy regeneration on your next two hits. It doesn't need much explaining, use a spell and then melee to get some energy back. This passive also allows you to synchronize well with damage items due to the pure amount of attack speed you gain from it.

Sonic Wave and Resonating Strike;

Your main mobility spell, allowing you to fire a skill-shot in a straight line that will mark any target it hits with vision on them and dealing damage, increased by attack damage. You are then able to use Resonating Strike which allows you to charge to the target and deal a chunk of damage to them. This spell works very well with Trinity Force / Frozen Mallet as then it will apply a slow.

Safeguard and Iron Will;

This is your bread and butter for surviving early game. In my spell build, I usually get quite a few ranks of Safeguard / Iron Will because the life steal and spell vamp along with the armor is invaluably essential. Safeguard gives you a shield on an ally along with yourself, it costs bugger all energy and it allows you to use Iron Will, giving you a ton of bonuses and gives you tonnes of lane sustainability. You need to have ranks in these because not only is it good for keeping yourself alive, but it also allows you to re-position, shield allies or charge to somewhere to keep yourself alive along with all of the Iron Will bonuses. It is affected by ability power, though you will almost never get anything with ability power unless its something like Trinity Force.

Tempest and Cripple;

Tempest acts as a heavy aoe control and deals significant amounts of damage backed up by attack damage. Tempest deals aoe in a small-ish radius and then allows you to use Cripple, which then slows attack speed and movement speed of everyone around you. A great tool in lane if you Resonating Strike then Cripple and finally Safeguard to a minion to leave, you take minimal damage from the enemy champion and you deal a decent amount to them, leaving relatively unscathed. This also allows you to be able to 1v1 most melee champions due to the huge amounts of attack speed reduction.

Dragon's Rage;

Lee Sin's signature move, consisting of a legendary round house kick. It deals massive damage and knocks back the target, along with knocking up anyone your original target collides with. Generally it has one of three uses; a powerful finisher due to the fact it does alot of damage and scales with attack damage, a peel because of its knock back or a team fight control through kicking a main target into more targets for a suppression-like effect. You need to make sure you'll kill your target with this attack though before using it in case you just end up giving them a free escape from your wrath!


"Rotation";
Generally I use Q to hit the target, then Q again to charge to them. I then E and E again to cripple them from running, melee down until Q is available again since it deals significant damage. Just as they're about to die, i'll use R and if they decide to fight back, I use W and W again for the life steal and armor increase.

For runes I try and take a more aggressive stance and go for attack speed glyphs and seals ( Greater Seal of Attack Speed and Greater Glyph of Attack Speed) giving a heavier early game damage, some would take flat attack damage but I prefer the attack speed for energy regeneration from the passive, and besides that outside of your spells which have fairly lengthy cooldowns, your melee damage is all your doing. You might as well maximize it through armor pen as well, hence why I have Greater Mark of Desolation and Greater Quintessence of Desolation, some people go for Youmuu's Ghostblade for the armor pen but personally I think that its a waste of an item slot. It's great if you want to go heavy AD dps Lee Sin, but this is an offtank dps guide so I pass on it generally.

Some people prefer to take a more tanky rune page, although i'd strongly recommend having a good set amount of armor penetration through runes because of the early game damage increase and overall good scaling through melee damage. If you'd prefer to go for a heavier tank rune page I would suggest Greater Seal of Armor and Greater Glyph of Magic Resist for just overall resistance boosts. I'm not saying they're the best, just that they work well for me. Of course I prefer the attack speed glyph/seals due to the passive energy regen but its all personal preference.

The masteries are completely down to personal preference / judgement. You can either go heavy offense build, or more towards defense. Personally what you lack in defensive runes, I take in defensive masteries. As the mastery page above suggests, I take most of the important defense talents. Improved ghost purely because its totally awesome. You can go heavier into offense for your masteries but it leaves you more vulnerable and forces you more towards an AD build as a pose to an offtank dps build which is what the item build suggests.

Not really much discussion on these, they're fairly rigid and I wouldn't suggest changing them round alot just because i've always found using these two provides the best early game pressure, if its one thing Lee Sin can't get enough of, its mobility. I often use ghost to tower dive along with flash to escape or wall hopping, saving safeguard for charging out using minions or allied champions. He is an extremely effective tower diver especially if you're good at observing how the towers act and adjust to their actions accordingly.

Alternatives:

Ignite - Not really my cup of tea due to forgetting to use it and besides that if your in range to do ignite then your in range (basically) to tempest them, which allows more control. It's just not my choice on this one but you may find it works better.

Exhaust - Only if you take the mastery on it, I have used exhaust flash before and it works quite well but generally I just prefer ghost overall, more mobility = more kills.

Teleport - I have seen it work, don't like it though.

Heal - Same with teleport..

Almost anything else is utterly useless in my opinion.

This isn't meant to be a complete guide, just the basics and a few tips and tricks with Lee Sin, I absolutely love this champ and I try to play him in ranked as much as I can as solo top. I always build him this way and sometimes you get crazy results, just the other week I was sat on like 11-0-42, so much money.. I bought everything I wanted and suddenly I became immortal :) I hope this has helped you if you want to play him, he's certainly worth the IP / RP and he's just generally an epic champion to play!