Hi I'm NotButter and this will be my build about Lee Sin, the blind monk. It will consist of a jungling section as well as a top lane section. This will mainly consist of build and gameplay, as well as general knowledge about counters and item build variations. I will attempt to make this as short as possible and contain the least amount of words I can, for the sake of providing a simple and comprehend-able guide.

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For top lane, I run 9 Greater Mark of Desolation since most top lanes build armor. I highly suggest AGAINST Greater Mark of Attack Damage because that 15 AD WILL fall off FAST.

I run 5 Greater Seal of Meditation for energy regeneration to keep my energy at an all-time high. I run 4 Greater Seal of Armor for that armor to help against most top laners as well as minions.

I run 9 Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction for more spammability in spells since Lee Sin is an AD burst fighter who utilizes spells more than anything else. Of course you could run magic resist or cdr per level also, it all depends.

I run 3 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage for more damage from all his spells, easier last hitting, and that early game advantage that just puts you a bit over the top.

ALTERNATIVES

Of course, there's people that disagree. Here are a list of runes that can be used otherwise:

I run a standard 15 AD from marks and quintessences to increase jungling speed and create an amazing ganker. I run armor Glyphs for more survivability in jungle, and to allow the choice to go something other than cloth armor 5x health potions while being about the same level in safety.

ALTERNATIVES

Greater Mark of Desolation

I run these summoner spells for the sake of a more aggressive and bursty top lane assassin. Flash will allow you to position yourself accordingly to, say, flash behind someone and Dragon's Rage them into your team.
Ignite allows better utilization of your Resonating Strike's now, sadly, 8% of their missing health in damage.

These are pretty self-explanatory. You want that early game shutdown of other lanes so Exhaust let's you achieve that with extreme ease. You also want a great counterjungling potential along with a great anti-counterjungling potential. Exhaust will provide you with both, and it allows an easier job to be an assassin.

I'm not going to list the items I've already included at the top of this guide, but I will explain them in a little bit more detail.

The Brutalizer provides you with that Attack Damage, Armor Penetration, and Cooldown Reduction. Same goes for Youmuu's Ghostblade. Now people may be wondering "Why the hell would you EVER go something like Youmuu's Ghostblade ? It seems so unconventional and useless." To put short, you're a fighter. You have the movement speed to catch up, the attack speed to fight effectively, the increased armor penetration and attack damage to burst them down even faster.

This is pretty much all I can say about the damage portion of the build. The boots of course can alternate with Ninja Tabi if you need to do something about strong AD enemies such as Tryndamere, Master Yi, Nocturne or Fiora at top lane or jungle.

I almost always play Lee Sin when I can in ranked because he's just an amazing and fun champion. In ranked play, he's more than definitely viable and my personally made build makes playing him worthwhile.
http://puu.sh/krXu That is a screenshot of my ranked stats with Lee Sin. If you don't believe it, then please feel free to search up NotButter on the NA server. My highest ELO is 2034 and I'm sitting at 1980s right now and even up in this ELO I still play him and I still do exceptional with him almost always.

Top lane is pretty simple to play. You farm early, hit around level 3-4 and begin your harassing. If they're a melee champion, you can walk up, Tempest, hit them twice, cripple, Sonic Wave, and finally Resonating Strike for the kill. If they're ranged, such as Kennen the yordle, then you're safer off playing passively with someone like that. So, to put in short, he dominates melee and is troublesome to play against ranged.

So the only thing I will provide in this guide is a path for him.

If you do Cloth Armor 5x Health Potion then your path is Red Buff->Wraith->Wolf->Their Red->Their golems->Your blue->Go back and buy.

If you do Vampiric Scepter then your path is Wolves->Blue Buff->Wraith->Their blue buff if they're a champion that starts red, your red buff if they are a champion that starts blue->Golems->Go back and buy.

Counter-jungling is relatively simple. You should always aim at weakpoints and make sure you know your enemy jungler extremely well. Well in the sense that, let's say, their jungler is Amumu for example purposes. He's going to start Wolf->Blue almost 100% of the time, so let's presume this game that he does indeed do that. Understand that Lee Sin excels in jungling in speed and damage output, so by the time you're at wraith, after taking red, he'll likely be at his wraiths which means you can go from your wraith straight to his red through your blue side of the jungle and invade from the bush. He will almost be 100% guaranteed to be low health and your exhaust should guarantee your kill without a sweat. TIP: When you land your Sonic Wave on someone who has Flash then make sure that you DO NOT activate Resonating Strike unless A. you will get the kill B. they have flashed, which lets you follow all the way over.

TL;Dr Keep an eye on their jungling path and their healthiness.

If you have ever achieved some sort of great score with this guide, feel free to comment below and I will try to post it here with your name as credits.

If the images are not clear, please right click them and click Open Image in New Tab for a clearer resolution.

NotButter
f4d3dmemories
Kuroshi no Sanji

I stream pretty often in clear 1080p at this address: http://www.own3d.tv/live/118694/NotButter and more than often I do play Lee Sin while I can. If you don't want to watch my stream then you can add me and ask questions in-game. I stream usually around 6PM-8PM weekdays and 6PM-6AM on weekends.

In all honesty I didn't make this guide to thoroughly detail everything because there's many, many other guides that have done that for me and my goal in making this guide isn't to regurgitate their words onto my guide in a different format. My goal here is to provide you with a build that worked for me in the ~500 games I've played with Lee Sin (I've played over a thousand normal games). This build has never failed me, and I have used it since people were so interested in Warmog's Armor & Atma's Impaler Lee Sin. It has not failed me yet, and I hope it does not fail you either. Of course, take note about the items and runes, that they ARE flexible; however I do use the same 3 core items: Wriggle's Lantern, The Brutalizer, Mercury's Treads without a doubt.

UPDATE: 9/3/2012 Lee Sin has still been the same, and I have yet to find any changes necessary to him.