Diana Build Guide by Chroume

Introduction

Hey I'm Chroume and welcome to my Diana guide. I'm here to show you what I've found to be the most efficient way to jungle with Diana.

This guide will definitely not be short, I won't refrain from explaining my choices extensively and accurately. If you don't have much time to read this through, just use the guide above, but if you want to know more about jungling and how to play Diana, then I urge you to read the whole thing.

Please don't downvote me without having read the whole guide, if you find something weird about my build, and I have not discussed it in the guide, feel free to comment, but don't downvote me for no reason.

Lore

An unyielding avatar of the moon's power, Diana wages a dark crusade against the sun-worshipping Solari. Though she once sought the acceptance of her people, years of futile struggle shaped her into a bitter, resentful warrior. She now presents her foes with a terrible ultimatum: revere the moon's light, or die by her crescent blade.

Though she was born to the Solari, Diana's inquisitive nature set her apart from her brethren. She had always found solace and guidance in the night sky, and questioned the dominance of the sun in her society. The Solari elders responded to her challenges with only derision and punishment. Diana remained convinced, however, that if she could find evidence of the moon's power, the elders would listen to reason. For years, she studied Solari archives in solitude until she discovered an encoded message hidden in an old tome. This clue led her to a secluded valley on Mount Targon where she unearthed the hidden entrance to an ancient, sealed temple. Inside, among aging relics and faded murals, she found an ornate suit of armor and a beautiful crescent blade, both inscribed with sigils of the moon. Diana donned the armaments and returned to the Solari elders that night. She declared that the artifacts proved others had once worshipped the moon as she did. Her discovery of evidence challenging Solari dominion shocked the elders. To Diana's horror, they pronounced her a heretic and condemned her to death. As the elders prepared her for execution, Diana's anger and sorrow overwhelmed her desire for acceptance. She lifted her gaze to the sky, calling upon the moon for strength. Lunar power surged within her and she shattered her bindings. Raising her relic blade, she turned and slaughtered the elders. With the temple in ruins behind her, Diana resolved to destroy all those who would deny the power of the moon.

"The sun does not reveal truth. Its light only burns and blinds." - Diana

Pros / Cons

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Pros + Extremely fast jungler + Amazing ganks throughout the game + Can win most 1vs1 fights easily + Shield will make you very tanky + Feels awesome to play with

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Cons - Terrible at escaping - Waiting for cooldowns can be annoying - Enemy CC causes a quick shut down - Can be quite squishy early game - You WILL get focused when fed

Masteries

For maximum burst potential, giving you stronger ganks and more survivability. This build is emphasizing on giving strong ganks. If you are having too much mana problems, you may want to switch your defense tree for utility up until Runic Affinity , making your skills more spammable.


These masteries are recommended for when you aren't level 30 yet or you don't have runes because you will lack damage. While jungle Diana is less viable pre-30, this will significantly increase your survivability. If you max Pale Cascade before Crescent Strike your jungling speed will become unrivaled. But you will lose a lot of your early ganking power.

Runes

• Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed: You're a jungler, speed means everything. Get it.
  
• Greater Mark of Attack Speed: Increases your clear speed, more love for your passive.
  
• Greater Glyph of Ability Power: Early AP so you aren't a weak pushover.
  
• Greater Seal of Ability Power: Early AP so you aren't a weak pushover. (Yes, I did that on purpose.)

Summoner Spells

Flash: You're out of jail card, use this to get out of sticky situations. Flash over walls, juke enemy hordes or use it to gain that tiny bit of range needed to finish off Teemo.

Ghost: If you aren't level 12 yet, don't like flash or just suck with it, then pick this spell, it will make your game a lot easier.

Teleport: Handy for those quick tower saves or to unexpectantly join a teamfight in seconds, although you lose out on actual mobility, I can see this being a viable pick in a lot of games.

Smite: Yes, always get smite as a jungler, no exceptions, I don't care if you replace Flash for Revive, but you don't mess with Smite!

Exhaust: I don't really think this spell is great on jungling Diana, because you will need to get rid of a better spell instead of it, you have Pale Cascade, you already have a slow and with Rylai's Crystal Scepter you should slow them even more, they shouldn't have time to attack you that much, so if you need this, they'll escape either way.

Ignite: Great for laning, but since you aren't laning, we'll stick with Smite. :)

Heal: This can make you very hard to kill, and those who can use it very well may find it useful, but you will need to lose either mobility or smite, and you should know they are irreplaceable.

Surge: You should have enough AP to kill the carry with your combo, it doesn't have enough impact to contribute that much, you will be able to kill one or 2 people with it, but then it's gone, and I bet those people could have died without it. Chasing the enemy with Ghost can easily result in a quadra kill.

Clarity: You have blue. Why would you need clarity? O.o

Revive: This is Karthus his spell, he'll blow you up if you steal it.

Cleanse: If you get cc'd so badly that Mercury's Treads don't work anymore, you're dead. ( Quicksilver Sash is better, by the way.)

Ability Explanation

Moonsilver Blade
Diana has 20% increased Attack Speed. Every third strike cleaves nearby enemies for 20 / 25 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 65 / 80 / 95 / 110 / 125 / 140 / 155 / 175 / 195 / 215 / 240 / 265 / 290 (+60% of ability power) additional magic damage.
Your personal Tiamat with some major upgrades, this makes you able to clear large groups of enemies quickly and do quite a bit of extra damage in teamfights, when you learn to time your passive, you will get more control in your fights.

Crescent Strike
Diana swings her blade to unleash a bolt of lunar energy, afflicting enemies with Moonlight for 3 seconds and dealing 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 (+80% of ability power) magic damage in an arc before exploding.
Your prerequisite to dash, harass and your nuke, Crescent Strike does it all. It's damage is insane, and the best part is, it hits everyone that's in it's slash and where it land. Making you able to nuke everyone, and then pick them off one by one. Using this in combination with Lunar Rush makes you a very dangerous opponent.
Pale Cascade
Diana creates three orbiting spheres that detonate on contact with enemies to deal 20 / 36 / 52 / 68 / 84 (+20% of ability power) magic damage per orb in an area. She also gains a temporary shield that absorbs 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 / 155 (+40% of ability power) damage. This shield is refreshed if all three spheres detonate.
This is what makes Diana the tanky assassin that she is, while the scaling seems a bit low, it's pretty high, and don't forget that if you detonate all the spheres, your shield is refreshed, giving you near 1000-damage shields.
Moonfall
Diana draws in and slows all nearby enemies by 35 / 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 % for 2 seconds.
This is Diana's "I'm not done with you yet!" spell, also known as the "Get back 'ere!", using this spell efficiently can lead to devastating combo's that will makes a lot of those tough champions cry. It also cancels ultimate's that requires the player to stand still, namely Katarina's and Nunu's ults, making it a smart move to save it up when having them as your opponent.
Lunar Rush
Diana teleports to an enemy and deals 100 / 160 / 220 (+60% of ability power) magic damage. Lunar Rush has no cooldown when used to teleport to a target afflicted with Moonlight and will consume all active Moonlight debuffs.
Your trademark spell, the bread and butter of all your combo's, if you're going to fight, you're going to need to use it at least once, preferably with Crescent Strike used on them, it has a long cooldown without it, so make sure to only use it without Moonlight when you are positive it will end the WHOLE fight.

Skill Sequence

Your skill sequence is heavily dependent on one thing, it's dependent on how your team is doing. When you want to find out which sequence would be better, ask yourself this: "Do I want to gank or farm more?" If you're going to gank a lot, level Crescent Strike first, when you know your team are doing well and don't need a lot of help, max Pale Cascade.

In solo-queue, it's better to max Crescent Strike as you don't know how your team will do, if you do know your teammates and you're entirely positive they won't need many ganks, farm away, but know that with Pale Cascade maxed first, you will get more assists than kills.

This sequence is for strong and fast ganks, if this doesn't result in a kill when set up properly, then it will at least force them to recall and probably have them blow their Flash. You still jungle quite fast with this sequence, but the next sequence is much better at farming quickly.



This sequence will let you farm faster than the wolves can click Revive! But seriously though, sometimes you'll be using most of your time running instead of fighting since they'll be dead within 3 seconds with this and blue. But I recommend to use this one only as an exception, since your ganking power suffers, but you'll easily get a quick needlessy large rod like this.

Starting Items

Your standard starting items, it offers good speed so you can move around the map a lot, it helps keeping up with your victims and it gives you 450 free health. I use this most of the time and I finish early jungle easily with it.


This isn't needed unless you are really far below level 30, you started later in the game or if no one would leash for you. You can use it, but I usually have pots to spare so it's kind of a waste since you do everything slower.


I like to buy this anytime I have gold left and already bought a sight ward because this item gives you A LOT of AP for only 250g while reducing your CD by 10% which is awesome since you can't won't have blue buff 100% of the time. You really won't miss that gold and it will easily pay for its self.

Recommended Build

Mercury's Treads: You will be in close quarters combat, which means you will get hit by cc, especially when you're fed, because the enemy will start focusing you if they're smart, in that situation, this will save you, and that situation will occur a lot.

Deathfire Grasp: This is another nuke, you use this on your target to get a huge chunk of his health, it also gives you a large amount of AP and 15% CDR, when you have this with blue buff you will have 39% CDR, making you able to spam a lot more and be less of a punch bag.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter: This gives you, damage, survivability and a nice slow to your attacks, please note that Crescent Strike is AoE, so it has only a 15% chance to slow, Lunar Rush has it's normal slow rates though.

Lich Bane: When you get this item, you should be unbeatable, this is a must for Diana, you'll easily kill most carry's with your insane burst, while most of your games will have ended before you get this, it's better to wait for it till mid-late game so you can get a lot of AP so it will actually have an effect, early game you won't have that much AP so it will be worth less.

Rabadon's Deathcap: Your final damage item, just so you can get a lot more AP with it's passive, this should be in all AP caster builds, so in yours as well.

[Guardian Angel]]: Gives you more survivability, and gives you a second chance when you get insta-killed in teamfights, but don't waste it, don't go in alone 1vs3 thinking you can just revive, they will kill you twice.

Jungling

Here you will see the jungling route you will take for maximum effectiveness, and how you will get through it as fast as possible.

• You will start with the wolves, don't use your Health Potion yet, auto attack once to get them all in range, use Pale Cascade immediately afterwards, from there on you're passive will do the rest for you, but if you KNOW that no accidental kills will be made, you can let someone else damage the wolves for you after you attacked them first.
  
• Now move to the Blue Golem, you might want to take a Health Potion on this one, let your mid leash him for you, and immediately use Pale Cascade so you can use it again when he turns around to attack you, watch his health and Smite him when below 475 health, the minions will probably be dead by now, if not, finish them off. You should be level 2 by now, take Crescent Strike.
  
• Go to the Double Golems, use a Health Potion or save it for wraiths focus on the bigger one, start with Crescent Strike, then use Pale Cascade for it's shield and extra damage, use them when back up and auto attack until they're dead.
  
• Kill the wraiths, open with Crescent Strike while next to the purple one, they should line up nicely to be hit by Pale Cascade and Moonsilver Blade. You should be level 3 by now, choose between Crescent Strike and Pale Cascade based on what you'll be doing more, ganking or farming.
  
• Move on to the Red Lizard, use a Health Potion, open with Crescent Strike, use Pale Cascade when lined up in front of you, and let your passive do it's work, when it's health is low, use Smite.
  
• Now kill the wraiths again, use the same technique as before, and when you're level 4, take Moonfall.

Now you can do three things, you can gank mid or bot, if they don't need one or if they aren't positioned for a good gank, you can continue farming and counterjungle, if you have low health or aren't comfortable doing any of these things, recall and buy your stuff and a few sight ward][color=#ff8000s[/color] would be great for to help your teammates.

Teamfights

Diana is great in teamfights, but she can be tricky since she doesn't have a decent escape, but the basics are very simple, kill the carry.

When your team is on their side, waiting for an opportunity, be sure to know who you are going to kill first, switching during the teamfights will most often end in everyone in enemy team running away with 50% hp while yours is dead.

You let your tank initiate, while you're target is focusing him, it's your job to quickly use your combo to kill the carry, and get the hell out of there until it's a bit more safe, once they notice they lost the fight since their carry is dead, and you are back at your team, you can follow them and help finishing off the rest, you are #1 at chasing, so getting a triple kill won't be uncommon.

This is my standard carry kill combo, it has a lot of burst damage and it's annoying as hell, but it leaves you very vulnerable afterwards, so be sure to get out of there afterwards.

You start with Pale Cascade, dash to them with Lunar Rush, use Pale Cascade, by now they will have lost a lot of health so they will start running, Moonfall gets them back in place, keep auto attacking until they are dead, if they flashed out with 10% health, use your Lunar Rush immediately without the Moonlight debuff, if you do this, you really have to get out of there since you went into the enemies' space,so try getting around them, and then get back to your team.

A much safer, but less damaging combo is the one below, you can continue fighting alongside your team immediately in most circumstances, but you probably won't get the kill for the carry.

You start with your Q-R combo again, but move back close to your team until you can Crescent Strike again, finish her off and use your shield to safely, and annoyingly get back, if a player is stupid enough to follow you too far back, use Moonfall on them to pull them into your team and get a quick kill.

Never forget that the enemy minions are your friend, I don't know how many times I got saved be them by using my Lunar Rush on them to get away from the enemy team, they will most likely give up the chase after that, if not, just Flash to make the gap even bigger.

Summary

Well, that concludes my guide for now, of course I will try to add more sections and I will keep updating the guide, if I was of any help, please upvote me and leave a comment if it isn't too much to ask. ^^

If you have any questions or suggestions, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do. And if you have read the whole guide and still feel like disliking the guide, please leave a comment before that and let me know why.

Special thanks to jhoijhoi for his awesome guide that made this guide possible! Check it out here: Making A Guide.

And of course, thank you ALL for taking your time to read this guide!

Bye,

Chroume

Changelog

14/08/2012 - Released the guide