I'm currently in school so I can't work on this guide everyday. I plan to finish it during the next month or so. What you see now is not the finished product.

Chapters I am planning on adding:
Runes
Masteries
Items
Skill Sequence
Spells
Summary
Pros/Cons
Detailed Matchups
Team Fighting
Tips and Tricks
About the Author
and maybe a few others that I haven't thought of yet

Hi, I'm Datroke and this is my first guide. I'm a Support main and Leona is my favorite champion. I have about a 67% winrate with her and I have mained her all the way to platinum.
I would really appreciate any feedback you can give me, good or bad. Feel free to put me on blast (be mean) if you think this guide sucks.

Pros
+Tanky
+Easy to pick up
+A lot of hard CC
+Great All-in potential
+Good early game damage
+Works well with several ADC's
+Good snowball potential
+Good roaming
+Low cooldowns on her stun
+Can instantly kill a ward with AA-Q-AA combo
+Good burst with passive



Cons
+Not the best in terms of defense
+Short range
+Low Mobility
+Almost no damage after the very early game
+Ultimate can be difficult to land
+Doesn't have any poke
+Not as good when behind
+Passive is useless when alone

I prefer 0/21/9 masteries because Leona needs to be tanky so that she can survive engaging. There's not a whole lot to say here. I don't take any points in because you won't need the MR during the laning phase unless you are against an AP support with decent damage or poke such as If you are up against a support with good magic damage you can take your points out of (That's Garen's passive I know. There is a tank mastery with the same name and I'm not quite sure how to distinguish between which one i want when coding the guide. Sorry, I'll try to fix it later.) and put them into instead.I'm going to add more to this section I just need to think about it some more.

Starting with a point in is the best option that Leona has. Leona has a fairly weak lvl 1 so getting as much CC as you can at lvl 1 is very important for her. At lvl 2 I always take a point in and look for an all-in if the enemy is still lvl 1. This is a guaranteed way to get first blood or at least set it up by burning a few summoner spells. If the lvl 2 all-in works then you have established a very earl lead that will most likely snowball into a won lane. At lvl 3 I always take a point in because it does good damage and makes you stupid tanky.
I max in the order of R>W>Q>E. I never stray from this order because it is the most effective and efficient way to increase your tankiness and CC output. Maxing Q after W is better than maxing E because it allows you to stun enemies much more frequently.

Flash is a MUST. The ability to instantly reposition yourself is irreplaceable. Flash is good for engaging, good for running away, and good for dodging things that would suck to get hit by. I insist on taking flash 100% of the time.


Exhaust is a great summoner spell for supports because so much of your time is spent fighting the enemy ADC and protecting your carries from the biggest threat to them...burst damage.
Exhaust does it all. Slows the enemy, lowers their resistances, lowers their attack speed, and most importantly, reduces their TOTAL damage output by 40%. This summoner spell saves lives. Although it can be used offensively to chase down opponents, it is ideally used defensively. But, you know, kills are kills, don't let that free gold get away if it comes down to saving your exhaust or burning it.


Increases your early kill potential at the cost of almost all of your defensive capability. Ignite is very risky on supports because if you don't get kills with it then you have basically wasted one of your summoner spells. Ignite doesn't scale into the late game as well either because it deals flat, true damage, instead of reducing enemy stats by percentages. Also, giving up defense on Leona is a very bad idea as she lacks it already. Her all-in potential is good enough without ignite.


TL;DR You NEED flash. Exhaust is better on supports than ignite so take it.

Vision during the early game is very important as this is the phase where tiny leads can snowball into big leads. I recommend different warding strategies for different sides.
If you are on Blue side...
This is my favorite side to be on for bot lane because you can place a pink in the tri-brush and defend it easily. The other spot I recommend warding is dragon pit. You should place the ward a little closer to the pit than where the crab buff goes when it is killed. This way you have vision of dragon's HP, the entrance to the enemy jungle, and a large portion of the river.
this ward will give you enough time to back off of you enemy, even if you are pushed to their tower. If possible, have your ADC place the pink in the tri because ideally you should save yours for when your jungler calls for dragon. I don't recommend warding the bush that's really close to lane because this doesn't give you enough time to react to ganks. The only time you should ward this bush is if they have a jungler who can jump walls easily such as or

When you are Purple/Red side...
The only difference for ward placement when it comes to being on Purple side is that you shouldn't pink the Blue side tri. If you do you won't really be able to defend it and it will be a waste of 100g. If you are getting camped by the enemy jungle or mid laner and they are diving you or you expect them to then you should pink the tri that is near your tower.(this will happen if you are playing against )

When to ward...
You want to minimize the amount of experience you miss out on by leaving lane to ward. You can do this by waiting for the melee and siege minion to die and then going to ward while the caster minions are dying. Casters give the least amount of experience so missing them isn't too bad.

Warding when it's dangerous to do so...
It is not a good idea to leave lane to ward when you are pushed to your tower because you are far from the safety of the minion wave. If you are Red side then you can walk past your tower, through the tri and place a ward over the wall near dragon. If you are on Blue side you can ward the tri fairly safely. If you really need vision on dragon then you can place a ward over the wall of the pit. This isn't as efficient because it doesn't grant vision of the river, but if you are in a situation where just warding is dangerous then you need every advantage you can get.

But it's the jungler's job to ward dragon...
NO NO NO NO NO
It's the jungler's job to secure objectives, that's true. But you are constantly closest to dragon so you should be the one warding it. If the enemy tries to go for dragon it is bot lane's job to stall them until their jungle gets there. Also, if you start relying on others to ward things in Solo Q you're going to be seeing a lot of "DEFEAT" screens and not a whole lot of "VICTORY" screens.

During team fights your job is to CC the biggest threat to your carries. If there aren't any threats then your job is to lock down the squishiest or most mobile enemy champions that your team can efficiently damage. A good strategy for initiating a fight is to use when you can stun two or more enemies (preferably the enemy carries). You should then walk up to the most important of the two enemies you stunned and use to stun them further. You shouldn't use your to get to them if you can avoid it because you should save it so that you can jump to your carries if they get dived.
When the fight is going in your favor...
If your team is winning the fight then it is your job to lock down anyone trying to escape. This is done fairly easily as you have a root and a stun on relatively short cooldowns. Try to feed your team as many kills as you can, as a support this is your chance to turn a good play into a great play.
Quick Tip:Continue chasing other targets immediately after you CC the first. You don't have damage so helping finish them off is almost pointless.
When you are losing the fight...
This is a tougher situation for Leona because she is primarily an offensive support. This doesn't mean that she is useless for disengaging though. A cool trick that I like to do when two or more people are chasing my team is to walk back and then stun the one with the most damage. After they are stunned I use my to catch up with the enemy closest to my team and then if possible I use to put as much distance between them and myself as possible. I like to call this the Leap Frog.
Another trick you can use is to sacrifice yourself by giving the enemy team a guaranteed kill by walking in a more dangerous direction. The most effective way to do this is to run in a direction perpendicular to the direction your team is going. For example, when you are running down mid lane, heading towards your base, you can cut to the right or left (late game you should go towards dragon pit so that the enemy team isn't in position to do Baron after they kill you. If it's early game then you should head towards Baron if it isn't up or if you think they won't be able to do it.) Although it is less effective you can just dive back into the enemy team and pop your in the hopes that they will waste time killing you thus allowing your team to escape. This is a last resort tactic but it is very useful for damage control. As a support you are simultaneously the most and least important member of the team. While you may have no damage and are essentially useless in a 1v1, you have the most utility and indirect influence on the flow of the game.

3/23/2015 Added a few things to the notes for the "Build" section
Added "Pros/Cons" and "Masteries"
Added "Summoner Spells" section

3/24/15
Added a little to the "Masteries" section
Added the "Edit Credit Section"
Added the "Skill Sequence" section

3/25/2015
Added "Team Fighting" section
Added "Warding during the Early Game" section

I'd like to thank my editor Powell Bohler for helping me make this guide. I'm actually a porcupine so it's tough for me to write complete sentences that don't have several major errors. Thanks for catching my mistakes Powell Bohler.