Diana Build Guide by misdirection

Introduction to myself!

Hello,

I am Misdirection and this is my guide to jungle Diana.I was Platinum in season 5. I mained Zyra in Season 3 and 4 and like to play AP-Caster or Assasins in general. In Season 4, I shifted my main role from midlane to jungle, where I also liked to play unusual picks like Kayle. Diana is a very versatile champion, since she fits in a lot of roles, from tank/bruiser to full-burst-assassin. Also, she can be played on top-, midlane or in the jungle. Her mobility and ultimate Lunar Rush make her very fun to play. It is almost impossible to write a "complete" Diana guide that covers every aspect of her and every playstyle. For this reason, I want to share an in-depth look on my favorite role: the full-burst-jungle!
My item-/runes-/masteryrecommendations and so on, are only for this particular kind of playstyle. As I said before: there are millions of ways to build her(hello Nashor's Tooth). But you can also find some general tips about her ie. in the Ability Section.

If you have any suggestion, which can help improving this guide, feel free to comment! Thank you.

Introduction to Full-Burst-Jungle-Diana!

Why jungle Diana?

Diana is very good at carrying the whole game on her own by ganking a lot and nuking any enemy champion. Especially carries that are out of position. She has a very weak early-game (pre-6), which - in my opinion - isn't very fun on midlane. That's why I like to "skip" her early-game in the jungle safely and start to gank as much as possible at level 6. I basically play her as a "roaming mid" champion in the jungle. Keep this in mind, when it comes to teamcomposition in championselect!

The main task of an assassin is to kill the enemy carry and get the f*** out alive. This is where you as Diana come into play. She can kill enemy carries in basically a split of a second, with no chance of escaping her. Due to her shield from Pale Cascade and Movement Speed, she is able to walk away alive after an assassination.

Pros / Cons

Pros

+ insane damage that NUKES the enemy + strong mid/late-game + fast camp-clear with Q + W and Passive + can catch up to almost any enemy due to her Movement Speed + Lunar Rush + very nice shield, which scales with AP

Diana is able to deal tons of damage in just a splitsecond with this build. As soon she hits level 6, she gets a huge powerspike with her Lunar Rush and a lot of ganking potential. Her Pale Cascade gives her a shield which is underestimated a lot by other players, since it deals a lot of damage and can tank a good chunk of incomming damage at the same time.

Cons

- very weak early - kinda squishy - needs an awful lot of mana - often gets flamed in early-game - only one CC-Spell

Diana is almost useless pre-6, because she doesn't have any ganking potential without Movement Speed and Lunar Rush. Thats also the reason why, I get flamed a lot in early game ("My jungler never ganks"). She only has one small CC-Spell which isn't that big of a deal ,cause your goal is to kill the enemy so fast that he didn't see what hit him.

Runes

This is my standart runeset for Diana. It is built to fit my playstyle, which is nuking the enemy champions with one skill rotation.

Items

• Sorcerer's Shoes: Not much to say about them. Diana wants to deal damage, so she needs Magic Penetration when the enemy is getting Magic Resist. Completing them early will help her catching up on enemies or getting out of a fight due to the Movement Speed.

• Ionian Boots of Lucidity: Take those if you opt for more CDR. Note that those will reduce the cooldown of your summoner spells (i.e. Smite) too!

• Stalker's Blade - Runic Echoes: My first choice of jungle items. Nice Movement Speed buff. UNIQUE passive - Echo is super useful, since it enables you to clear jungle camps better and you can jungle with low mana since you will get mana back from the passive. Use Chilling Smite to slow your enemies while ganking.
  However - if you already know that you are buying Rylai's Crystal Scepter later, you might consider Skirmisher's Sabre - Runic Echoes instead. Great debuff on the enemy which reduces their damage and makes them visible for 4 seconds!

• Zhonya's Hourglass: Use Zhonya's active after you hard engaged into the enemy team and need some time to get rid of your cooldowns. Buy this early when the enemy team has a lot of Physical Damage or you need to defend yourself against other assassins like Zed.

• Banshee's Veil: The shield from Banshee's Veil is very useful to block CC, while ganking. Also, it will easily replenish while farming camps between ganks.

• Rabadon's Deathcap: A must have on almost any AP-champion. This item will make your enemies explode. Get this as your 3. or 4. Item (Boots not included).

• Lich Bane: If you can pull of a strike with Moonsilver Blade and the passive "Spellblade" from Lich Bane combined, your auto-attack will hit like a truck!

Those items are very situational. In most cases I will take the build above.

• Void Staff: Buy this when you need to take down Magic Resit-stacking tanks. It ignores 35% of the enemies MR!

• Luden's Echo: Sell your Stalker's Blade - Runic Echoes and get Luden's Echo in the endgame if you have enough gold, to maximize your damage output.

• Abyssal Mask: This item gets more useful the more AP champions are in the game. All enemies in the range of the aura get 10% increased magic damage. At the same time Abyssal Mask provides a decent amount of MR to protect you against enemy AP champions.

• Rylai's Crystal Scepter: The fact that not only Single-Target, but also Multi-Target abilities slow the enemies by 40%, makes Rylai's Crystal Scepter a considerable choice in your build. Remember that you only had Moonfall as CC-ability before. With this item all of your abilites will slow the enemy!

• Liandry's Torment: This item synergizes extremely well with Rylai's Crystal Scepter, since it impairs the movement of the enemy, thus triggering the double damage from Liandry's Torments passive, when you cast an ability on the enemy. The downside would be that you have to buy Rylai's Crystal Scepter AND Liandry's Torment to get the most out of it. Despite that you can decide to buy Liandry's Tormenteven without Rylai's Crystal Scepter, when the enemy team has low Magic Resist but high Health values.

• Nashor's Tooth: Always has been a great item on Diana, because it synergizes so well with her passive. However I don't like the feeling of fighting more than 3 seconds in a 1 v 1 situation, because anyone with high damage and Lifesteal will eventually kill you.

• Hextech Protobelt-01: Diana is probably one of the best champions to buy Hextech Protobelt-01. All stats it provides work great on Diana. For the Hextech Protobelt-01-Combo, visit the ability section below!

Ability Explanation

For the ability description hover over the ability name with your mousecursor!

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• Moonsilver Blade: Diana's passive gives her 20% increased Attack Speed and a huge bonus on every third strike. You will get a base amount and +80% of your ability power as additional magic damage. This is one reason, why Attack Speed Runes and Nashor's Tooth are very viable on Diana. However in this guide you wont find any additional attack speed, because the goal is to kill the enemy with your other abilities.
  Make sure you are positioned correctly in the jungle to hit every monster with your passive and increase clearing time.
  Also, there is one little but important trick which I didn't invent, but I also never read about in a guide yet: When you want the enemy inhibitor to get damage by your Moonsilver Blade you should not just click the inhibitor. Instead, manually walk closer to the inhibitor by clicking right next to it. If you are standing close enough, the inhibitor will get damaged by Moonsilver Blade. Weirdly, a max range Auto-Attack does not proc Moonsilver Blade on the inhibitor! You can see this in the Video Section!
  
  
• Crescent Strike: This is your standart opener, when entering the fight. Notice that the bolt isn't moving in a straight line, but a curve. This makes the ability hard to land, because the enemy can walk in a straight line towards you and a bit to the left(since the bolt comes from Diana's right), to dodge the skill. The upside of the skill is, that it has a very low cooldown on max level.
  It also applies "Moonlight" on every enemy it hits for 3 seconds. The "Moonlight"-effect will be covered with her Ultimate: Lunar Rush.
  
• Pale Cascade: This one is an awsome shield-spell, which also does AOE-damage to all enemies standing in melee range to Diana. Use it to shield yourself, right after you used Crescent Strike+ Lunar Rush next to the enemy.
  
• Moonfall: Moonfall is your only CC-Spell with Diana. Use it when the enemy is trying to escape and run away from you. You can also use it to interupt spells like Katarina's Ultimate. In the jungle you can pull all monsters towards you, to ensure you will hit every monster with your passive.
  
• Lunar Rush: This is probably one of the most fun ultimates in the game! Diana dashes towards an enemy and deals a good amount of damage on arrival. On max level the cooldown without any CDR is just 15 seconds, which is also nice.
  The best part: If the enemy is inflicted with the "Moonlight"-debuff, Lunar Rush consumes the debuff, but will not go on cooldown at all. So everytime you hit a Crescent Strike you can use Lunar Rush with an instant cooldown reset on your ultimate. This will help you basically at any point of the game. Since the Moonlight-debuff grants vision on every enemy it hits, you are able to Crescent Strike over a wall and as soon as you can see the enemy, dash over the wall with your Lunar Rush.
  
  It is important to say that the range of Crescent Strike(range: 830) is a bit larger than Lunar Rush's (range: 825). That means, that if you hit Crescent Strike at maximum range, you can't Lunar Rush before you closed the gap between you and your target at least a bit. An important case of that would be the Lunar Rush into the Dragon/Baron pit. Although you can hit the dragon from any point behind the pit with your Crescent Strike, you won't be able to Lunar Rush over the wall from the same point. I will demonstrate this later in the "Video Section" of this guide.
  
  Also notice, that Lunar Rush consumes ALL Moonlight-debuffs at once. When two enemies are inflicted with Moonlight, you can only use Lunar Rush on one of them to get the reset on the cooldown, since the debuff on the second enemy will be gone as soon as you use Lunar Rush on the first enemy.
  
  Another nice trick is to outplay the enemy with Lunar Rush when you are in a "longer" 1v1 fight. When you are in melee range to your target, you will dash behind them with Lunar Rush. Also you are untargetable for a very short amount of time. This allows you to dodge any skill, that is comming at you. Applications of this will also be shown in the "Video Section" later.
  
  Last but not least: You can press "R" even before the bolt of Crescent Strike arrives at the enemy. You will arrive at the same time giving you the cooldown reset on Lunar Rush.

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To maximize your damage output, make sure to max this first.

Take 2 early points on level 1 and 3, to shield yourself against incomming damage from the jungle monsters and max this as your second ability.

Most of the time I spend the first point in Moonfall at level 5. However, if you see a chance to gank pre-5 make sure you can use Moonfall when you are ganking.

As for most of the ultimates in league, max this at 6/11/16!

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Combos:

This is your main combo. When the enemy tries to Flash away or can create a gap between you two, you have to decide if you want to use Lunar Rush again, which will leave it on cooldown or to wait for your next Crescent Strike and use Lunar Rush afterwards.


Sometimes it is not neccessary to land your Crescent Strike before you use Lunar Rush. Hitting a Crescent Strike on maximum range is not easy, so you can Lunar Rush first and when you are already in close range, safely use Crescent Strike on him. Its better to land a safe Crescent Strike and deal damage than landing no Crescent Strike before you Ult. Also using Lunar Rush first gets you the element of surprise,since the enemy will immediatly retreat when he sees your Crescent Strike comming in and in the worst case missing him.

This is your combo for large teamfights, especially when you have to initiate for your team. Make sure your team can follow up, otherwise you probably will be dead.

This is the standart Combo with the extra active from Hextech Protobelt-01. Use it after Lunar Rush to hit as many bolts as possible to get maximum damage.

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How to play Diana

When to pick Diana?

Diana synergizes very well, with any hard engage champions like Amumu or Malphite. Malphite's ultimate plus your standard combo will be devastating for the enemy team. You can also team up with Orianna shielding you and ulting when you have engaged into the enemy team for insane amount of damage. Also any champion which has some CC-spells will work with her.

Other mentions would be: Leona, Lee Sin, Yasuo, Katarina(although hard to pull off)

When not to pick Diana?

Don't pick her when you don't have other tanks in your team.

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The goal in the early phase (pre-6) is to survive and get level 6 as soon as possible.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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Until this point, your teammates will hopefully have survived the early game too. Early ganks from the enemy junglers like Lee Sin, Shaco or Amumu can be a real pain for your team. Make sure to watch every lane while you are running or killing a monstercamp. It is not neccessary to look at the monsters while you are killing them.

GENERAL TIPP: Use keys F1 - F5 to focus your allies and get vision of their surroundings.
Use Spacebar to focus yourself again. This method is much faster than clicking the minimap.

At this point of the game you have multiple options:

The Farm:
Sometimes it happens, that every lane is pushing so hard, that it is impossible to gank. In this case, just stay in your jungle and farm. If you know where the enemy jungler is, you could counterjungle or even try to kill him. When you both are even make sure you have more buffs on you than him. This will likely cause you to win the fight. A lot of low elo junglers underestimate the power of the Red-Buff in a 1v1 situation.

The Gank:
Probably the best choice at level 6 is to gank and try to get objectives after a successful gank.
The best way to gank , in my opinion, is to tell your teammates to start a fight when you are comming down the river. This will distract the enemies and you can just walk passed their wards. This will work especially, if the enemy is ahead and not expecting you. If he is ahead he will more likely fight back instead of just disengage. Due to your boots, Movement Speed items and of course [Lunar Rush]], you will be able to catch up easily.
Make sure to run as close as possible before you start any combo. The closer you are, the easier you will land your Crescent Strike. Also remember that Crescent Strike has a slightly larger range than Lunar Rush.
Engage with your standard Q-R-W-E combo. Make sure to use Moonfall only when the enemy tries get away from you, to pull him back and slow him. If you are not sure to hit Crescent Strike, use the Lunar Rush-first combo to maximize your damage, instead of just failing the Crescent Strike.

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In lategame, when a lot of teamfights occur, your primary goal is to assassinate preferably the enemy carry. Try to catch them out of position and punish them for their bad play. Often it happens, when the enemy team tries to engage on your team, that one of the carries is overextending hard. That is your chance to strike and nuke them, making it a 4 v 5. Another possibility would be to hard engage in their whole team with your Zhonya's Hourglass-Combo. You should only do this when you know your team is following and actually CAN follow you immediatly. Diana is very vulnerable to CC, so the best way to engage is when the enemy already failed their CC-Spells or when you engage second, after/with a Malphite ultimate for instance.

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Video Section

In this video section, I will show some video footage on how to play Diana.

TL:DR Section

Click this link for the Cheat-Sheet.

Quick-Tips:

• Don't gank pre-6, unless the enemy is heavily overextending.
• Try to be "invisible" by not showing on the map, if not needed.
• After a successful gank: push the lane!
• Buy Sweeping Lens, if the enemy team is warding a lot.
• Have an eye on objectives. Dragon !
• Diana's Crescent Strike(830) has a higher range than Lunar Rush(825).
• Diana's Combo: Q->R->W->E-> Zhonya's Hourglass->Q->R->W

  ->Q->R

  ->R

• Use this combo when you think you will miss your Q, but you want the damage: R->Q->W->E->AA's
• Use your Moonfall only if the enemy tries to get away, or to cancel abilities like Katarina's Death Lotus.
• Tell your team when you gank by pinging and make them bait the enemy into a fight before you arrive.
• Diana works well with: Leona, Malphite, Amumu, Thresh, Lulu, Orianna, Alistar, Katarina

Changelog

June 23rd, 2015:
- Created the guide!

October 21th, 2015:
- Added Changelog to keep track of the updates
- Added thoughts on Nashor's Tooth
- Added Void Staff and Abyssal Mask comparison

November 12th, 2015:
- Started to overhaul the guide for season 6

November 13th, 2015:
- New mastery recommendations yaaaay!

November 17th, 2015:
- Removed Twin Shadows
- Runeglaive rage :@


January 14th, 2016
- Masteries updated
- Items updated
- Abilities updated: important note on Moonsilver Blade!
- "How to play Diana" Chapter updated
- Video Section updated

Septembber 5th, 2016
- Added Protobelt
- Minor changes

November 11th, 2016
- Masteries updated
- Items updated
- shortened guide a bit

December 31th, 2017
- updated Runes
- updated Items
- Happy New Year!