Lee Sin Build Guide by Gott der 7 Meere

Introduction

Hello Summoners,

Lee Sin is an all-round-DPS jungler or solo laner. His skills provide a lot of utility and make him very flexible. He may not be the best support, but he can definitely be played as one, not unlike Leona or Blitzcrank. However, due to his absurd AD-ratios he is still most effective as an AD-Bruiser or Off-Tank.

You can find guides on Solo Top and Jungle builds that work well here on Mobafire, so there is no need for another guide concerning these.

My guide is about a very unusual and strikingly different build, it will draw teammate aggro and might not work on your first attempt. I don't pretend that everyone else is wrong and that I have the only true Lee Sin build, but I do claim it to be viable and I would be happy to hear reasonable arguments, when you talk about Support-Lee Sin.

Feel free to contact me for questions and feedback,

my IGN is "Gott der 7 Meere" on EUW.

About this Build

Every build has its ups and downs. Playing Lee Sin like discribed in this guide works best, when your understand how it is supposed to work.

You will have ... ... a new perspective for supporting. ... you have very good early lane dominance. ... a free summoner spell. ... no mana and almost endless sustain.

You will lack ... ... AD (no farm) wich is sad regarding his ratios. ... support from your team for this build, as its unusual. ... wide item choice compared to mana-using supports. ... sustain compared to Soraka.

You will either dominate your lane with pure Q damage, be a passive shielder, but in both cases your E should decide clashes. There are some AD-carries that have good synergy with you like Lee Sin- Tristana.

Abilities and Skillorder

- improved by: AS
Flurry (Sustain, Damage): His passive forces Lee Sin to auto-attack between skills, as it is your only way to actively regain energy. If you are in a hurry, one hit is enough, but to maximise your damage output and profit from the AS buff, try to put in two attacks whenever you can. Even though the energy costs of each individual skill may seem low, you got 6 energy-skills and your energy pool can be depleted rapidly if you don't put in some AAs.

> > > - AD, APen, level, CDR
Sonic Wave (Reveal, Damage) - Resonating Strike (Damage, Finisher): Sonic Wave gives you a skillshot reveal that allows you to check bushes as a very limited Clairvoyance that will reveal the first enemy champion or minion it hits. Resonating Strike gives you a Flash to this target and deals significant damage, most notably the 8% missing HP regardless of rank or AD, making this useful for a support even with only one rank. This skill is very usefull for poking as the pure danger of it allows you to zone frightened enemies.


> > > - level, CDR, AP
Safeguard (Shield) - Iron Will (Sustain, Buff): Safeguard will be your main support spell, not only shielding your ally, but also yourself and allowing you to always be with them. With quick ward placement, this can also be used like Flash. Iron Will will give you high survivability stats, most importantly by increasing the effective shield value with additional Armor, but also by giving you high amount of sustain.
With some CDR you will be very mobile and can have your shield up constantly, the energy refund allows you to use it when you need it. Still, keep your energy level at at least 50.

> > > - AD, MPen, level, CDR
Tempest (Damage, Reveal) - Cripple (Slow, Debuff): This skill is outrageously strong. Tempest will reveal stealthed enemies, this will help you a lot against a Vayne-- / Shaco- / Twitch- / Akali- and many more. Even better than this, with Cripple you will get a massive AS and MS debuff similar to Randuin's Omen effectively equal to an Exhaust for affected AD-carries. Allthough the reveal has only a small AOE effect (350) the debuff range is is enough to catch running enemies (500).

> > > - AD, APen, level, CDR
Dragon's Rage (Damage, CC): Your ultimate is a similar to a -. First of all it can deplace and significantly damage a target enemy. But other than that, you can kick your target into his friends, knocking them up and damaging them too. It is especially usefull for cancelling channeled ultimates, disrupting enemy positioning and keep anyone away from your AD-carry.

Summoner Spells

Clairvoyance gives you awesome map-control, preventing and leading to countless kills.

SPACE

If Tempest is not enough, get Exhaust to have a long range dissabler.

Heal is good for beginners with Lee Sin-Support as it helps to stay alive.

SPACE

Ignite helps a lot against healers, maniacs, birds and bears.

I will emphasise that thanks to his gap-closers, Lee Sin is one of the few supports that can skip Flash on bot lane and bring along two support summoner spells, which is extremely powerful. Keep in mind that you already have , and thanks to your mobility and shield you shouldn't need . Other summoner spells are very champion specific ( , , ) or underpowered ( , ).

Champion Statistics

In this section, I will talk about the most important stats for Lee Sin, how much you need of them, and where you can get it effectively. Unfortunately, as energy-using support, you don't gain benefit from all those mana-support-items. Still, you have a range of stats and items you can choose from.


Gold (g/10): - - - For one thing above all: warding.

-

Starting Gold: 475 + 20/40 - - [475-515g]
Gold gain: 13 on SR/TT + 0.25 + 1 + 0.5/1/1.5/2 + 5 / / - - [13-35.25 g/10s]
Assist Gold: 58% of the bouty (15 - 600g) split on all assisting +8/16/24 - - [8-375g]
Gold items are the way to go. One is enough, two are good, three may take up too many item slots. While HOG is very good for you, none of the other gold items really does something good. Take runes if you don't die due to lack of survivabilty.

Cooldown Reduction (CDR): - - - Rush 40%

-

CDR works wonders with Lee Sin enabling you to ...

• ... constantly shield with Safeguard, this is the only viable way to increase your shield, because building AP on Lee isn't very optimal.
• ... give you that round-house-kick twice a minute.

All in all CDR dramatically increases your mobility and utility, allthough it makes energy-management more crucial. You can mindlessly spamm your shield when in battle, as you will get the energy refunded, but you should be more cautious with your other skills. Its a good thing that your ultimate doesn't need energy.

Utility / Team Support: - - - Your team comes first!

-

You don't need to mindlessly buy aura items every game, but decide what your team needs most and focus on it. Appart from this, Aegis of the Legion and Locket of the Iron Solari or Randuin's Omen work as a good core in most cases.

• - dramatically increases survivability of AD based champions and when you need CDR.
• - especially when you notice no one is buying resistances. Every team should have this.
• - This is essential on any Support, unless your team can provide similar speedups.
• - if you need more defense against burst.
• - for AP DPS champions like Ryze, Cassiopeia...
• - This is a nice defense item against magic damage, keep in mind that the AP goes into your shield and the aura is pretty strong.

Try not to get aura items twice in your team.

Hit Points (HP): - - - ~500 bonus HP

-

Due to your awesome shield, you should generaly prefer resistances over HP, however, as you need to be in the think of things as melee, get at least two cheap HP items.

Magic Resistance (MR): - - - ~150 MR

-

Your runes and Aegis should be enough, get a Negatron Cloak if things get rough.

Armor: - - - ~150 Armor

-

Mostly your Armor runes, Safeguard and Locket/Aegis are enough. Cheap additional Armor items include Warden's Mail and Ninja Tabi.

Movement Speed (MS): - - - ~400 MS

-

Boots of Speed are already good, as your ability to jump around allows you to avoid kiteing pretty well. Still, upgrade your boots sooner rather than later, as you are a melée champion and want to keep up with any target.


Attack Damage (AD): - - - +100 AD would be good.

-

His incredible AD ratios (4.8 damage per AD) justify any amount of AD you can get. Allthough played as support, you will be able to smuggle in some AD with masteries, runes and items like Aegis of the Legion, Phage and Hexdrinker. You also will gain a huge benefits of AD auras like Gangplanks- or Tarics-.
Stats not listed here are truly ineffective on Lee Sin or go against the logic of this build (Mana, Crit).

Get as many - cheap - tire 1 items and gold/10 items as you can. Good upgrades will give you auras that synergize with you and your team.

Runes and Masteries

Red: AD (APen/Armor). Your awesome scaling merits this, Armor would be a decent alternative. Yellow: Armor (Gold). Armor or Gold. Blue: MR/lvl (AS/MR). You should prepare for taking damage in mid/late game so MR/lvl is optimal. Quints: AD (AD/HP/MS). Your lane will be a kill-lane, and you need the damage to kill or you are useless.
9/21/0 I try to get as much defense as you can together with 9 points into offense.

Game Walkthrough

These make you dominate your lane and keep that dominance when ganks come. Hop around and zone them. Lee is an unconventional Support and while other supports rush gold items, Lee Sin will rush kills. The Vision ward is essential to zone enemies from bushes and enable save ganks, since you also need quite some potions, there is no money for a big starting item like Boots. Since you lack a heal, and you are prone to recieve some enemy poke, you better start with at least one potion. Perfect to start with a big lane presence. This allows you to win early fights, should the enemy be stupid enough to fight you. Make them fear it, if you hit, they should die.

After your first kills, you should be carefull not to waste your money on too many wards before you can build up some gold items, or you will suddenly find yourself out of gold. This is the only good gold item for Lee Sin and your first priority item. Get them early or you will involuntarily feed the enemy a lot of kills. Prioritize Boots when a game is going bad.Philosoopher's Stone You need gold, regardless of the fact that this item doesn't give you ideal stats. This is your primary support spell, and you should max it asap. If you need another gold item, get this.

Survivability is your biggest concern, and this item is the best support item regarding defenses. Expensive, but you need tankyness. Get more HP with this and prepare for some upgrade options like Zeke's Herald or Shurelya's Reverie. This allows for amazing deplacement games. Can easily turn ganks and dives or just save your carry from a bad engage. Urge your jungler to get it, else you will have to buy Vision Wards / Oracle's Elixir.

Late Game is difficult to predict, you can either be money starved and just stand in the back line, shielding and giving away your auras, or you can go to a sort of AD transition to dish out serious damage.

Livesteal is probably the best contribution to your AD carry and bruisers in late game. Pay attention to the CDR cap of 40% if you get this. Burst heal replacement and nice addition to Lees utility. Get this vs. AOE burst damage ( Fiddlesticks, Victor, Gragas, Annie ...). This is a nice defensive item, that helps if you have to fulfill the tank-role against a mostly physical damage team. This aura item is very team specific and in most cases, someone else will get it. I just put it here, because the aura and MR are very good and should you be looking for both, don't hesitate to upgrade your Negatron Cloak into this. An important Support item, get one if your team doesn't need another item urgently. AP-DPS champions like Cassiopeia, Ryze, Orianna will gain a huge, game-decisive advantage from one or even two of these, and the good AP scaling on your shield makes this not entirely wasted on you either.

You have no real damage until now, and getting some AD late game is a good idea. Possible options include... - Normally, this item should never be bought, but as a support you can probably avoid to die and if you succed to stack it, its the cheapest AD you can get. - This is good on its own as well. - This is the other snowball item for cheap AD available to you. There is no need to farm, as assists will stack just the same. - If you don't want any snowball effects and some additional CC. - This is more a defensive item, but the additional AD is exactly what you need. / - I recomend especially The Black Cleaver for granting your team another benefit in reduced enemy Armor. - Allthough incredibly expensive, it is a good end game item for you. Starting with a Phage you will notice a nice damage increase. The Mana is pretty pointless, but you have to live with it.

Get tire 2 boots and focus on gold items. Don't ward too much, but ward important objectives (baron, dragon, buffs). Note that Lee will fall behind a lot and become more and more useless if he hasn't got the durability to be in the mid of teamfights. You should try to get some farm for core tank items like Aegis of the Legion and Randuin's Omen and stay close to your AD carry.


Protect your main carry with every possible action. Buy many wards and oracle. Get a Trinity Force if you can't loose.





I hope by now you realize that a clever build needs to be flexible. Every game has its own requirements and obviously teamplay is better than any build. Don't dismiss items just because you have never seen them on Lee, you might just never have witnessed the situation where they come in handy.

Guidelines for decent Gaming

Honor the Code and behave like decent Ladies and Gentleman should...

• "That heal/stun/slow/attack/ult saved my life, that was soo close, thank you very much."
• "I underestimated my enemy, it was my mistake, it won't happen again, I promise."
• "Kind Sirs, getting Mercs against that team is a decent thing to do."
• "[all] Talk kindly to your fellow gentleman, it is hard for them too."

... if you get my drift :D

Conclusion

As with almost every mobafire guide, credits go to jhoijhoi for learning about BBCode. I hope you learnt something from this guide, I wrote it to clear my thoughst on Lee Sin and to let others look at my conclusions.
I am happy with this guide as it is. If you have something to add to my line of thoughs, write to me. I greatly appreciate discussion and arguments about builds, I don't want you to adapt my style, I see it as an experiment that yields good results and should be appreciated as such.

Thank you for reading!