Hi guys,Driny here.

Today i want to give you my Leona champion guide.I've been playing her for quite a while,and as Leona is my favorite champion as well as pretty much my best champion this should hopefully be an awesome guide.Let's get started.

Remember that runes and masteries are all personal preferences and she be tailored to your playstyle

Ignite

Ignites target enemy champion,dealing 70-140 true damage(depending on champion level)over 5 seconds,grants you vision of the target and reduces healing effects on them for the duration.

Exhaust

Exhausts target enemy champion,reducing their Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 30% for 2.5 seconds and reduces their damage dealt by 50% for the duration.

Leona is a very aggressive support champion.She scales very well with gold because she can become ridiculously tanky.The Season 4 patch gave Leona an absolutely huge buff and she's definitely one of the best supports for carrying soloQ right now.As with every champion in order to play them effectively,you need to fully understand the strengths and the weaknesses,and then do your best to capitalize on the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses

Pros

+ Awesome engage + Powerful throughout the entire game + Natural tankyness

Cons

+ No sustain + Very vulnerable to poking + Vulnerable to kiting

Awesome engage:

Leona is one of the best supports at starting fights.It's so easy to just Zenith Blade in and start a fight at pretty much any point during the laning phase.This is due to the massive range that Leona has on her abilities.With Solar Flare Leona vastly out ranges pretty much any other support and this is the bigger strength that she has over most matchups.This range will allow you to control the flow of the lane and be very proactive,so you can start fights whenever you want,but also avoid fights you don't want by staying out of range.

Powerful throughout the entire game:

Once you hit level 2 you'll be strong in fights for the rest of the entire game,because of the gold changes you aren't going to fall off late game in terms of tankyness anymore.Your early laning is powerful too,since nobody plays Leona's bad matchups in lane,at least right now.This power is of course due to her massive crowd control and natural tankyness. Leona has 3 cc abilities in her kit,which is just absolutely absurd.These facts allow you to generate a lot of pressure whenever you have your skills up and be a massive force.

Very vulnerable to poke:

Leona is an all in champion and because of her lack of sustain she is very vulnerable to poke.This means that in lane it's important to be very decisive,know when you want to go in and you don't want to go in for a fight,if you get caught in the middle making a decision you'll end up getting poked down for free without really trading anything back or being able to heal the damage backup,that will be baited into a bad fight.However there are solutions to the sustain problem in the set up of the build and masteries we create for Leona that I will go over later.

Vulnerable to kiting:

Leona is vulnerable when her abilities are on cooldown.If you pick a bad fight or miss your skillshots( Zenith Bladeor Solar Flare)it can be difficult to do anything to aid in that fight,since you become very vulnerable to kiting.If you mess up or choose a bad fight it's pretty hard to disengage and you'll likely take a lot of damage and get kited in the process of running away,this is the key point of counter play that Leona has,this is the most important thing to not do on Leona,as it's the main way to beat a Leona in lane.You need to pick your fights very carefully and if you mess up and miss you need to back immediately to avoid the counter engage from the opponents.

In the laning phase with Leona it's all about pressure to control the lane.Applying pressure through aggressive positioning will allow you to be in a very good spot to start fights.If the situation is optimal do not hesitate to start fights,as that is what Leona excels at doing.Using the bushes is a key way for you to generate pressure and because of this,I pretty much get a Sweeping Lens on Leonaso you can deny vision in those bushes.Due to her massive range and strong cc Leona counters pretty much every ad carry that has no escape( Varus, Draven, Jinxetc.),you can jump in on them and then stick to that target for an easy kill. Leona just excels in general versus squishy targets that has no escape,as your crowd control,as well as damage from your passive can be quite powerful and set up for lots of kills.On the contrary tho, Leona does have some counterpicks. Lulu, Janna and Nunu & Willump are great at surviving Leona's engaging due to their kit,and then forcing Leona to disengage while poking her down and run away.However,none really plays those champions right now,so i wouldn't be too worried about them.

For the teamfight phase, Leona is actually really great at protecting the carries.Her massive crowd control allows you to kite and help kill tanks that are diving your team.A lot of inexperienced Leona players would dive in onto the opponents in teamfights,but most of the times that isn't really a good idea,since although Leona's damage in lane is pretty solid,in teamfights her damage is no longer as much,since her damage scaling into the late game is pretty poor.Diving in fights most of the times will just end up with you getting kited,rather it's much better to just try to cc the opponents while they're diving in on your carries,as your massive crowd control may keeping them alive fairly easy.However,there is one situation where you can dive in and that's when your team is in a great position to dive in and you have 2 to 3 people that can follow up on your crowd control to dive in with you,ensuring that you can kill your target.

There's a lot of tips a tricks that I can give you for Leona's mechanics,the first involves setting up for level 2 pressure using Shield of Daybreak you can kill wards all by yourself without any item,an autoattack, Shield of Daybreak,autoattack combo will be enough to hit a ward three times and kill it,this is why we get our Shield of Daybreak at level 1.Play like this allows you to set up for a solid level 2 fight,especially due to the significant lack of wards that people at level 1.
Another trick with Leona is that due to her massive ranges,you can actually counter mobility pretty easily.This is one of the key things that separate a good Leona player from a great Leona player,as you can use your Zenith Blade onto your opponent when they're in the middle of casting their escape spell and you'll just jump to where they end up effectively making their escape completely useless,the same can be done with Solar Flare of course,sometimes it's just kind of luck to do this,but predicting the opponents mobility spells is a key thing that Leona's kit allows you to do really well.Lastly when starting fights you want to try to catch your opponent off guard,one of the best ways to do this it's something that i call a "turn bait",act like you're running away and when your opponents start to chase you instantly turn on them with Zenith Blade,due to the way Leona's animation work this catches people off guard pretty easily and can be use to start some awesome fights.Also you can try to use the corners around the map to deny vision onto you and start a fight from there,or one of the most pratical trick you can use is to engage instantly when your cooldowns come back up.People often will overestimate your cooldown as they get cocky and think that your cooldown will still be down for an extra second or two,so if you engage the instant that your cooldowns come up you can catch them off guard and they'll be unsuspecting.