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With the massive amounts of CC built into Leona, her stun and her root, you can proc Aftershock extremely easily. After 2.5s, you explode, dealing damage in an aoe around you, which adds to your burst window. During this window, it increases your magic resist, and your armor - which adds extra tankiness to an already tanky champion - something that is necessary on your all-in.

Font of Life is the only viable choice, giving Leona's allies a small heal when she cc's someone - easy to proc due to her stun and root. Demolish is a niche choice for ending games quicker, but you generally want to be letting your ADC take plates alone for faster power spike.

Leona is an engage champion, and frontline. She wants to be snowballing her ADC by diving into the enemies, making Bone Plating the best choice for her. The longer you survive, the more cc and damage you can output and Bone Plating enables this.

Unflinching is the best choice here, as a frontline engage support, you want to minimize your time CC'd.

Even though Leona may be tanky with the Resolve treeline and her high defensive base stats, she is still a melee champion, and against poke match-ups, Total Biscuit of Everlasting Will helps increase your sustain. She has a smaller mana pool than others, the biscuits also restore 10% of your missing mana, and also increase your mana cap permanently by 50 per biscuit consumed, or sold.

Hextech Flashtraption provides you with an extra, channeled Flash after you've used your base one. This means that you can use it to surprise your enemies from fog of war, and also works like normal Flash over walls, so you can continue to make aggressive plays.

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Boots of Mobility > MOVEMENT SPEED Leona has the option to roam to different lanes, and catch people out, so having the bonus movement speed is invaluable. They also help your engage and vision control. Mercury's Treads > TENACITY/AP RESIST If the enemy team has a lot of CC, or a lot of AP damage, you can trade Mobi's out for these. They offer +25 magic resist, along with reducing the effect of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds and immobilizes by 30%. Plated Steelcaps > ARMOR If the enemy team has a lot of physical damage threats, and you're the primary front line, or need some extra survivability, Plated Steelcaps's are the way to go, offering 20 armor, and reducing incoming basic attacks by 12%.

Zeke's Convergence > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/MANA Zeke's is a fantastic item on Leona as it offers armor, magic resist, ability haste and an extra 250 mana.When immobilizing an enemy, a missile is fired at them from your allies attacks and abilities, dealing bonus magic damage.

Redemption > CDR/HP+MANA REGEN/SUSTAIN Redemption offers an aoe heal in an area, adding a sustain for Leona's allies that her kit lacks. It also offers HP and Mana regen, meaning you can stay in the fights longer, recall less, and you can help out even while dead.

Locket of the Iron Solari > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN With Locket of the Iron Solari, you gain 30 armor and 30 magic resist, increasing your overall tankiness, while providing a shield to your allies upon use - and you also provide nearby allies 5 bonus armor and magic resist. It also empowers other legendary items to increase passive bonus resistances by 2.

Knight's Vow > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/SUSTAIN You gain extra HP, 25 armor and Ability haste with this item which are all great stats. If your ally is nearby, you redirect 10% of the damage they take, to yourself (increasing their survivability), and you heal for 10% of the damage they deal. If they are below 30% max hp, you take 20% damage instead, but this redirection will stop if you hit 30% hp. Usually a core item to take vs physical damage.

Thornmail > SURVIVABILITY/UTILITY Providing us with 60 armor and 350hp, Thornmail also deals 10 (+25% bonus armor) magic damage to the attacker, and inflict 40% grievous wounds upon them. Immobilizing enemy champions inflicts 60% grievous wounds - a good pickup vs heavy AD teams with a lot of healing behind them.

Mikael's Crucible > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/UTILITY A good pick when facing an enemy team with hard CC that you need to Cleanse on allies, such as Impale, Death Sentence, Cocoon etc and grants a small heal upon us. While granting you 40 magic resist, the mana regen isn't really needed on Leona, so she only wants to take this item for the utility it offers.

Gargoyle Stoneplate > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN/UTILITY Gargoyle Stoneplate provides you with some extra tankiness in the form of Armor and Magic Resist. It's most effective in the later stages of the game, when team fights are more prevalent, so you can trigger the passive effect reliably. The active effect really shines in those same scenarios, allowing you to survive through the fight and maintain control of the enemy threats.

Level 1 you will want to be levelling your Shield of Daybreak as it's your primary disengage tool, and your stun. You can choose to set up an invade if your team is not afk in base - going through the midlane to the right brush, as you will not be seen by the enemy until it's too late.When you're in laning phase, you want to be a dominant force, pushing and zoning the enemy laners out of cs'ing, with the threat of a Zenith Blade engage, or a Flash all in. You want to be looking all the time for potential opportunities, granting your ADC easy kills or setting up a gank from your ally jungler.

Level advantage is something Leona really benefits from, you can set up an all-in at level 2, especially with a burst ADC such as Draven. At minimum, you should be able to blow a Flash, at best, score a kill.

If you're laning vs a Morgana and/or a Sivir, you'll want to bait their Black Shield and Spell Shield before you make an all in, they're on relatively long cooldowns at the lower levels (26s and 22s), so you can take advantage of this. Baiting can be achieved by any means, moving in an aggressive way, getting into their face to take advantage of your Shield of Daybreak, or if your ADC has baited, using a spell such as Jhin's Deadly Flourish.

You want Control Wards around your bottom brushes to be aware of any impeding ganks coming, and to deny the enemies any vision of where your jungler or you, may be.

Proccing your Relic Shield, you'll want to be focusing the cannon minions as priority, then melee minions, and lastly ranged.

Once you get your first back, hopefully with at least one or two kills under your belt, you want to be looking to buy Mobility Boots for the roaming potential and start to build towards your core items. You can set up kills for your midlaner and get them ahead, along with your ADC.

If you can't roam, you want to be maximizing gold for your ADC, and this includes taking tower plates after kills. You can tower dive around level 3 with your Eclipse, depending on an ADC such as Draven, or Tristana, with her easy escape.


Outside of laning phase, you're going to want to be setting up a lot of wards around objectives, such as Baron Nashor and the drakes. If your team is ahead, and it is safe to do so, you can set up deep vision in the enemies jungle, allowing yourself and your team to get important picks, that allow you to take the previously mentioned objectives.As tanky as Leona is, you mostly want to be around your team, and helping out your ADC to (hopefully) continue his lead. You can still set up kills for him, and you're a strong threat to think about for an enemy wanting to set up a gank, as it's very easy for the tides to turn in your favor.

During teamfights, you'll either be wanting to make the engage on an important target, such as the enemies ADC, or a backline mage, or you will want to be peeling your ADC from targets such as Zed or Kayn. Locking down enemy threats as Leona is easy with Solar Flare, into Zenith Blade, and a Shield of Daybreak stun, it also helps your team land skill shots easier. Your kit is overloaded with cc, meaning you can 100-0 an enemy assassin in one burst window.

The main thing to be aware of, is making sure your teams threats stay alive, while removing, or zoning, the enemy teams threats.

Control Ward's are a staple part of any support, both to deny your enemies vision, and to provide your team extra vision. You should make sure to buy one at least every time you back, preferably to have 2 on you at all times.

I hope you enjoyed, and learned enough from my Leona guide, to play him as well as the pro's.

If you enjoyed my guide, you can check out my other guides here, in which I've covered more styles of supports, incase you want to branch out on supports such as enchanters.

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