If you're expecting an detailed guide to explain everything to the mobafire looks and standards, this is not the guide for you. There is plenty of very detailed and well written guides out there right now, and this one is mainly for a friend. I also apologize in advance for large masses of text, I'm not writing this to be pretty.

Feel free to use this guide how you please, i will mainly be doing my best to go over key points without skipping anything important.

This actually applies to alot of champions, but is more notable after your first items.

ALWAYS factor in what your team and your enemy team has before building your items. There will always be core items that are common for every character, but as games will usually not be the exact same 5 champions vs the the exact same 5 champions, it is likely that your build will follow this concept as well, even if it is as simple as build order.

As you can see, i have Tiamat and Doran's Blade built in all three of my starting items, Besides Last whisper, this should be the only offensive item as well as core item you should need. The other four slots that you have should be for three defensive items, and your boots.

Boots will be one of the following

SPACESPACE

Ionian Boots of Lucidity Balanced Enemy team, no one really fed, not a massive amount of crowd control to be worried about

SPACESPACE

Mercury's Treads Enemy team has a marginal amount of Magic Damage or Crowd Control (or Both)

SPACESPACE

Ninja Tabi Enemy team has moderate or low crowd control, but only Attack Damage type champions are your problem.

As Three Items are completely ignored until this section, i will now explain them and my reason why.

Defensive Items are items that are more or less picked to counter the enemy team's threats and potential threats later on. That being said, there is over one hundred champions in league of legends, this means that your lane as well as both teams will almost always be different, that's also putting aside the possibility that that you do get the exact same pairings of champions again, which doesn't mean things will play out the same.

Here's a list of Defensive items and how they can work in certain situations.

Sunfire Aegis and Randuin's Omen

Sunfire Aegis provides Health which helps counter burst, as well as armor. The only other item that does this is Randuin's Omen and both items have slightly different pick reasons.
Sunfire Aegis costs 350 less, but gives you a small magic damage aura. Considering your primary damage function as Lee Sin and most Bruisers is Attack Damage, this is a very nice source of extra damage and wave clearing.
Randuin's Omen May cost 350 More, but brings a worthy amount of armor and health over Sunfire Aegis and gives you a source of Anti-Kite/Peel in the form of an aoe slow that can be activated on command. This active also works very well with Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike and Tempest / Cripple

Spirit Visage and Banshee's Veil

Both of these items do a great job at what they do, but should be considered for slightly different reasons as well. Banshee's Veil could very easily save your life from a very crucial enemy skill, which the damage will be 100% negated, it also makes you a target (as enemy teams hate blue circles) which can be nice for delaying engages and wasting the enemy team's skill shots if they don't land. Spirit Visage However, may not be able to completely negate a skill, but instead gives you cooldown reduction (which means more skills being thrown out, which means more potential damage and survivbility) and an extremely useful passive that increases healing related abilities and items. Spirit Visage combined with Ravenous Hydra and Safeguard / Iron Will Can completely negate alot of damage you soak in a team fight, as well as when you are being poked in lanes. Simply find some safe enemy or neutral minions, and watch your health skyrocket back to full.

Guardian Angel

Whether your team is ahead or behind, Guardian Angel can almost seem to change enemy team game plans, especially if you're far ahead. It can demoralize the enemy into either not knowing how to deal with you or not wanting to fight you in general, or it can simply save your life as well as mess with some focus that is put onto you. As Guardian Angel also provides both armor and magic resist, it's never truly a bad item choice.

Locket of the Iron Solari and Mercurial Scimitar

Both of these items are *Is my...?* based items, meaning you need to ask yourself one of the following questions to see if you would want to get one.

Is my Support struggling or behind? - If this question bothers to enter your mind, check the scoreboard by hitting tab, and ask them if they wouldn't mind you building the item instead. this can put a lot less gold stress on your Support, which will likely mean more wards later into the game.

Is there someone on the enemy team that can completely lock me down? - Whether it's a large amount of crowd control, or a simple Malzahar ultimate, Mercurial Scimitar can negate it. Another bonus being that if the skill is channeled, some of your foes may not realize it right away, and not react immediately, giving your team as well as yourself more time to do what you need to do. Mercurial Scimitar however does not provide many defensive capabilities besides the passive, and may discourage crowd control from being placed on you, and to be placed on someone else (whether you like it or not.) Try to only pick up Mercurial Scimitar if the situation arises where it will be a good pick.

There is a few items i don't mention that can also certainly be picked up, for the sake of this guide however, i will be leaving them out for various reasons.

Blade of the Ruined King

Blade of the Ruined King is still a good item even after it's nerf, you can decide to get this over Ravenous Hydra if you chose to if not even get both. I personally do not like the item unless there is too much kiting on the enemy team and need another method of preventing it earlier in the game.

Bloodthirster

Bloodthirster isn't a bad choice either, however it involves the expensive B.F. Sword in which less expensive parts of Tiamat could have been bought in the process, and i find that any very potential bursty ad bruiser's like Lee Sin and others with auto attack refreshes like Shyvana would benefit from Ravenous Hydra over pretty much any other life steal source.

Ruby Sightstone

I'm not mentioning this item only because it's mainly picked while jungling. It can easily be picked up in lane to fill your warding requirements forever in lane as well, I just think that gold could be put towards a slightly more durable item as i find that i'm required to build more hefty early due to my team's progress in the game on average.

Elixir of Fortitude Health Potion Health Potion Health Potion

The only reason i have not mentioned the above start, is because this is a beginner's guide, nothing more or less. This is a fine hard snowballing start if you know you can pull it off.

Please Refer to the small notes written on both the Rune pages and Masteries by hovering your cursor over it at the beginning of the guide. Otherwise there's not much to write here other than why i have chosen what i have.

The rune page i've made is a niche page subject for person change, but it my personal preference of runes for those who do not have a major amount of IP to spend, like to play normal games a lot, or wind up fighting one of those teams where you have absolutely no idea where the enemy team's champions are going until you load up the match itself.

The above said about rune pages can also apply to my mastery page. You may prefer a different style, or even disagree with it. Since Lee Sin is quite versatile, feel free to switch to what you may think is better, or what you think your team may need.

Please note for your abilities, they are completely based on what is going on. If you know you should be able to kill the enemy middle early without much contesting, take the first route. If you're nervous about their level one potential, take the second route, and if you plan on farming hard early even through poke, take route three.OROR
Innate Flurry - This innate can separate a good Lee Sin player from a great one. Though in some situations it may be better to not spread your skills out too much in order to kill a target or save an ally, try to take as much out of this passive as you can in everything you do.

Q Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike - This is your engage, a method of disengage, and a farming utensil if you're in a situation where you cannot get close enough to auto attack.

W Safeguard / Iron Will - This is your main form of disengage, saving allies, and potentially getting in close to use your Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike

E Tempest / Cripple - This is your main damage source most of the game, as well as for farming, and preventing enemies from running away as easy, or simply lowering their attack speed.

R Dragon's Rage - This move has a lot of uses, it can be used to kick an enemy away to save someone's life, used after your Q Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike for a large spike of damage where the enemy target cannot respond until they land, or to knock up targets that are in the line of fire.

Lee Sin Is extremely fun to play in just the fact that all four of his abilities have very great synergy. Though you will find that it will take quite a bit of practice, here's a small list of combinations that can be done.

--
Safeguard / Iron Will to a minion next to a wave to then use an auto attack, Tempest / Cripple, and Ravenous Hydra to completely clear a wave of minions while regaining a large portion of hp
--
Lay a Sight Ward or on an ally champion use Safeguard / Iron Will while ganking in combination with Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike to cover a large portion of ground, to catch an enemy, and then do one of the following.
Tempest / Cripple for your team to catch up to a target or multiple targets
Flash in front of the target and immediately use Dragon's Rage to send the target back to your team
Dragon's Rage into a quick Tempest / Cripple while they are in mid kick to finish a target entirely.
Delay for your Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike to come back in which ever manner appeases you, tag the target with the first half of the skill, use Dragon's Rage followed by the other half of Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike
--

The above actually explains a large portion of combos you can do with Lee Sin and there is plenty more. One last note is that you can use Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike on any enemy or neutral minion to catch or escape an area as well!

Flash and Ignite are my personal choices for dueling enemy mid lanes, however there will be other combinations you may prefer as well as combinations you may want instead. An example of this is potentially taking Barrier against a Karthus to help deal with Requiem, or Teleport for additional roaming and counter ganking potential. Summoner Spells will always come down to what you prefer in the end however, feel free to experiment!

Since you're likely to not get your W Safeguard / Iron Will until level 4, try to pay attention to which angle your enemy mid laner comes from, as it will likely tell you which side the enemy jungler started from. Once it hits around three minutes in, it's likely the the jungler is not going to gank from the side that your mid laner came from as they have likely moved to another lane to gank or more likely, to their other buff. this can angle you to be a little more safe (and if things get rough you could always just use your Q Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike to the nearest minion or camp to get out.)

Focus on killing minions and farming until you are able to get in on your target with your Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike + Tempest / Cripple combo with your Safeguard / Iron Will ready to bring to safety or prevent damage. You have en extremely strong level four and six, and you can use that knowledge to attempt some strong harass or even a potential kill. Try to keep your enemy pushed to their tower unless you're feeling unsafe or your jungler wants to gank. If you do wind up able to push them to tower, put yourself out of sight as much as possible if you are unable to harass since this will lead to the enemy mid thinking you are going to roam to another lane for kills often. After you see a good opening after a short while, you can then roam with a higher chance for success as they may not ping you missing, thinking that you're still just around the fog waiting for them.

If you find yourself behind or being forced to your tower, take advantage of your wraith camp to catch up, and use your Safeguard / Iron Will and Tempest / Cripple to keep damage taken to a minimal, if the enemy middle does this often, it will likely lead in them wanting to roam very soon. Make sure to call your mias, and attempt to follow.

DO NOT stay middle if your enemy middle is missing, always attempt to follow! Unless you are guaranteed to take your middle turret, this can put your team severely behind if the roam is successful for your foes.

As Lee Sin your main focus will be the squishy targets of the enemy team, however there are a few things you need to factor in before jumping right into a fight with both teams.

1. Are you the only initiation on your team? if so, make sure your team is behind you if you're going in.

2. If you're not the only initiation, peel for your adc/most fed player if no one else will, otherwise continue to jump in the nearest squishy target's face

3. If you're being engaged on, use Dragon's Rage on the closest target if you're in no position to fight, otherwise, peel or force a counter engage if your team is with you.

One last note is to always use your Safeguard / Iron Will as much as you can on your allies until a team fight occurs to prevent as much damage as possible.

I certainly have skipped quite a few points, but like i said this is mainly for a friend. I will be updating this as league updates, and as i decide to put more into this guide. Thank you for time and if there's anything i have left out, feel free to mention it and i will incorperate it later.

I have no methods of actually taking videos for clarifications or anything (and i'll likely just explain details to my friend myself anyways with this as a main reference) so i apologize in advance for not looking for any nor posting any.

Thank you for your time.
Feel free to take anything from this guide you want and use it on your own, all i ask for is credit.