OK to start off my name is James but I go by Smiff. Several people have asked me about how I build Leona so I decided to put this guide together. No I am not a pro just a guy who likes to play League of Legends. I hope you enjoy my guide and have as much success as I have had with it.

The first thing that I would like to say is LEONA IS NOT AN AP CARRY. she IS a tank. If you are looking for an AP build for Leona this is not the place to find that. I'm sure someone has put a build like that on Mobafire go read that.

Thanks to Searz for the awesome guide format! You can find it here.

I will not go through what the abilities do. It can easily be learned by reading the ability tooltips and simply using the spell.

Mouse-over any items or abilities to see their tooltip.

As you can see above I use 9/21/0. I have seen people use 0/21/9 or 9/0/21 but I prefer the one I use. This ends up being personal preference but if anyone has any reasoning for using the other ones and would like to share it with me please leave it in the comments.

This is one of the most important things about Leona. The main mistake that I see other people who play Leona is that they max her Q first. There are two reason why I disagree. One reason is that the stun does not scale. Secondly maxing Q would give you some damage but W does aoe damage and the armor and MR it gives is AMAZING. PLEASE if you take anything from this guide make it this... MAX W FIRST.

Leona is pretty bad by herself. You will rarely find yourself destroying people 1v1 unless you get mad fed and your burst is enough to kill them. Leona however is a MONSTER in teamfights. Leona is a champion with great burst damage but then can't do much after that initial burst until her cd are back up.

When you wish to initiate what you want to do is put your shield up, prep your stun and then zenith blade in. once you are in there your shield will blow up applying your passive to all surrounding enemies. You will stun the person you used your e on.

I see a lot of people who play Leona use her ultimate only to kill people. That is NOT what her ulti is for. sometimes it is a great idea to INITIATE with the ulti. That thing has a MASSIVE range. if you see 4 or 5 people gathered up in mid pushing and your team is preparing to jump in it may not be a bad idea to use your ulti to stun/slow all of them and jump in and do the above combo. Your ulti is on a low CD so using it to initiate makes even more sense.

There are a few tips that I have for plying Leona. I may have mentioned some of these earlier but I want to consolidate all of my tips into one spot.

- MAX W First (the bonus armor and MR is too good)

- Adapt your build to the enemy team this build is not set in stone make sure that you change your build accord to the opposing team composition.
- Your combo should be 1) Put your shield up 2) Prepare your stun 3) zenith blade into the fight
Alternately you can do that combo after initiating with your ultimate. Your ulti is also useful for stopping people from getting away from your team. Please remember that you are a TANK so please dont be a moron and use your ulti to finish kills and even take them from people. If they are at half health fell free to use your ulti so that your carry can catch up and finish the kill.
- A useful tip for Leona is to keep an eye on your cool downs. In the laning phase it is a good idea to initiate drop all your burst and then back off until your cd are back up. obviously keep and eye on your partner and try to take the damage for them. Make sure that you keep your shield up as long as possible.

- Your shield has a passive that if it hits an enemy it stats up for 3 more seconds. This is something that you need to take advantage of. That is any enemy though it does not have to be a champion. the damage you take is greatly reduced when your shield is up so try to always hit at least a minion with it.

- I never ever solo lane. Leona has a good bit of burst but no enough to kill someone one on one. She can hold her own in a solo lane by backing off and going back in when your cd are up but I feel that, much like Mummy, Leona simply has too much to offer with a teammate to leave her in a lane by herself.

- When I am in lane and another lane asks for help I try to always be the person to go over there if the help has to come from my lane. Like I said above leaving Leona by herself is not a good idea. Also Leona may not be a jungler but her ganks are mean. With the stupid amount of cc that Leona has with a stun a stun/slow and an immobilize she can keep someone around for a while. If you gank someone and the person in your lane can dish out some damage you are likely to take them down without much trouble. Just keep in mind to keep an eye out on your own lane.

- Map awareness Map awareness Map awareness. This is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS (at least in my opinion) as the tank you should be dropping wards the whole game. I wont point out where you should drop wards and where you should not because there are great guides on Mobafire by people who are probably better then me at this game telling you where you should put your wards at and they go into great detail.

My idea in this portion of the guide is to put any comments that you guys make into here. This will be for open discussion and I will also post my own things in here.

- Wanted to ask you guys if i should post some vids of me playing Leona on youtube. I already have all the tools just have not put any vids up. Is that something that you guys would like to see?

- My name in game is jtuxbury if any of you would like to contact me in game feel free to do so.