Hello, I am Thunderstruck170 and this is my guide for taking Leona into the jungle. A little bio, I am a Support/Jungle main and I am currently in Gold. I played Leona support nearly exclusively to get out of Bronze and Silver. I played Jungle Leona a few times in Season 5 with mixed results, but with the revamping of the mastery system and some item changes in patch 6.6, I think that Leona Jungle is viable. She certainly cannot single handedly carry games but she offers a lot of utility while you can have a healing/AP support. This is my first MOBAfire guide so the feedback would be most appreciative and I will be adding more to the match ups the more I play her. Lets begin!

PROS:

-Tanky: similar to Support Leona, this build will be a little bit of damage with defensive items

-Good CC: Leona has a root ( Zenith Blade), a stun ( Shield of Daybreak), and a stun/slow ( Solar Flare).

-Good Early Ganks: with her passive( Sunlight) dealing extra magic and 2 (pre six) CC abilites, she makes good ganks early game and even better ones with her ultimate, Solar Flare.

-Excellent Pick Potential: Leona thrives on catching people out. If timed to the max, individually, you can target one person to not be able to play League of Legends for 3.25 seconds. In team fights, you are also probably not going to get focused because most Leona's do not do damage.

CONS:

-ITEM DEPENDENT:

All of Leona's abilities have AP scaling and as such you will be doing most of your damage in auto attacks. Until you complete your Titanic Hydra and Skirmisher's Sabre - Cinderhulk, do not expect to win any 1v1's. Even then, you are not yet tanky (only health items) so you are still vulnerable to assassins and ADCs.

-Bad/Slow clear without items: Leona's clear early game is very poor, you'll most likely be a level behind their jungler (Especially Shyvana and Master Yi) as such, you will have to make up by either taxing lanes (with permission) or gank with the intention of killing your opponent.

-Weak against counter jungling: If you die to a early gank (trying to clear first buff) you will have a terrible game. Coupled with your slow clear and giving the enemy jungler an advantage, you will have to play very smart and safe. This is why Rengar and Lee Sin are marked as very difficult because of their greater probability of counter jungling.

-Poor Sustain in jungle: Leona doesn't have any shields or innate lifesteal. This is made up by having a Hunter's Potion but it is not a permanent solution.

0-21-9 Mastery Setup

Thunderlord's Decree ??

(TLDR: helps early game)

-I value having Thunderlord's Decree over Strength of the Ages because your first 2 items are going to be health items and Thunderlord's help with dueling early game as well as late game in team fights if you focus their ADC.

- Recovery over Unyielding for a similar reason, Unyielding is Bonus armor and magic resist and that won't be until mid game where as Recovery is throughout the game

- Precision is also more useful early game than Swiftness or Legendary Guardian

Quints and Marks:

Pretty self explanatory, they offer the best Attack Damage ratios compared to Glyphs and Seals.

Seals: Same reason as Quints and Marks, they offer the best ratio for Armor. Base Armor rather than scaling armor because it gives more stats to your W.

Glyphs: Base Magic Resis Glyphs because it gives more stats to your W and Attack Speed because it helps clear camps faster early in the game.

Starting Items:

Hunter's Machete or Hunter's Talisman, its more of your preference, you will be using your abilities frequently with Leona but I find running low on mana not to be a problem.

Tiamat:

with Patch 6.6 giving the passive component back, I find this to be faster at killing camps and giving you better sustain (Health Regen) than Bami's Cinder

Smite Upgrade:

As stated previously, any of the smite upgrades: Skirmisher's Sabre, Tracker's Knife, and Stalker's Blade do well with Leona.
Tracker's Knife because of the ward active helps with map control and setting them in the river helps lane allies.
Stalker's Blade helps slow people down so that you can chase them or run away.
I find Skirmisher's Sabre most useful because it helps win an invade and if you smite an enemy at the beginning of a gank you will do more damage.

Skirmisher's Sabre - Cinderhulk: you're an AD bruiser/tank and the Immolate passive helps clear camps.

Zz'Rot Portal: Even with the reset nerf to its stats and the active, it still is the only one of 2 items that has both Magic Resist and Armor (which help your W, Eclipse. The active is still can pressure the map and help lanes that are struggling or are pushed. Plus you still gain the gold from the voidspawn. This item should be built around 20 minutes in and by then you should be focusing more on helping lanes than clearing your jungle.

Trinity Force or Iceborn Gauntlet: Personal preference again and situational. These items are mostly for the Sheen proc and it depends on whether you want more AoE CC or do more damage.

Standard Clear at start:

Leona's early game clear is horrendous, as such you want to maximize damage output while at the same time avoiding as much damage as possible. (FYI, AA means auto attack)

The standard combo for clear a camp at level 1 (starting Q, Shield of Daybreak) is:

AA->Q->AA

Shield of Daybreak is an auto attack reset and try to use this to your full advantage between auto attacks.

Once you have all of your abilities, this is the standard clear combo I do.

W ( Eclipse) -> AA -> Q -> AA -> E ( Zenith Blade)-> AA

Zenith blade will not transport you to the target as it only hits champions, but it still works does some damage and if you have the mana, use it

Once you have your Tiamat clearing becomes much faster:

W -> AA -> Q -> AA -> Tiamat active -> AA -> E -> AA

For smaller camps you do not need to use Zenith Blade as your Shield of Daybreak also procs Tiamat passive and the camp should almost be dead.

In conclusion, Leona Jungle is certainly viable and can be very beneficial to a team comp. I hope that this guide teaches others on how to play her in the Jungle. I will be adding more to her later on but as this is my first guide I'm still learning on how to makes these guides. Until then, please offer a critique and on how to make my guide better. See ya!

Thunderstruck170