Hi, everypony, I'm Twilight Sparkle and I'm a librarian in Ponyville. Before any of you non-bronies or pegasisters close this page, hear me out. You might be able to learn a lot if you can overlook my cuteness. This is my guide to playing an effective bottom lane, support Leona. As always, any and all feedback is requested in order to help me improve this guide. Thank you for reading!

Before we begin, I'm going to throw this out there: if you are looking for a conventional guide, this is not the place to be. Some good guides that influenced me and my Leona play style are C9LemonNation, Nusalk, MissMaw and Gleebglarbu's guides. I say this because I set up the runes and masteries in a different fashion. My runes and masteries are built around being a tank/support. Leona can take a lot of damage but won't deal out quite as much as other champions with this build. Leona will still play her essential role with this guide. I have tested this build in both ranked and normal play and won 4 out of 5 games.

Pros
- Incredibly tanky the whole game
- Can stun and slow enemies with many crowd control abilities ( Shield of Daybreak, Solar Flare)
- Has a gap closer ( Zenith Blade)
- Can increase magic and armor resistances for a short period of time but can be cast often ( Eclipse)
- Has decent burst damage (more than average for AD supports)

Cons
- Has no sustain or healing ability
- Low mobility unless using Zenith Blade to close a gap but requires an enemy champion
- Must be close to attack unless using Solar Flare or Zenith Blade

Standard:

Exhaust is a great spell to take with Leona because it allows yet another way to slow down an enemy for you and your team to escape or capture. Shield of Daybreak can stun an enemy or minion (aside from the Dragon and Baron) for 1.25 seconds. Solar Flare will slow any enemy by 80% of their movement speed for 1.5 seconds.

Flash is perhaps the most versatile spell for any champion. 99% of the time, summoner's will choose flash as the second spell because it can get you into battle for a quick initiation or out of battle and save your life.

Alternatives:

Teleport is a great spell for having a greater presence around the map in order to gank or support another champion in a hurry. It allows you to move to any turret, minion or ward in seconds.

Greater Mark of Armor Penetration - Leona can be an effective AD even in a support role. This gives her a slight boost to make her hurt more during trades in the early laning phase.

Greater Seal of Health - Standard health runes. Most effective in early laning.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist - I chose scaling runes due to the fact that AP champions get stronger and stronger later in the game. Early game they do relatively no damage to Leona. The lack of magic resist can be made up for with Eclipse.

Greater Quintessence of Armor - Armor is essential for a tank. It helps negate incoming physical damage attacks for the enemy ADC during the laning phase and throughout the game.

As far as masteries are concerned, I go with 9-21-0 for Leona. 9 points in offense give her a decent amount of damage when it's needed the most. 21 in the defense tree makes Leona very hard to kill. Often times she can last under fire from 3 versus 1 fights and make her escape simply because of her resists and the amount of health she possesses.

This ability sequence has been designed to max W and R first. Leona's Q and E do not need to be maxed immediately as they are effective with only one point in each. Q will stun for 1.25 seconds and does not scale the same way W and R do.

I won't go into too much detail concerning Leona's items since they're fairly self explanatory. I do want to make a note however that if Leona is facing an AD champion, Ninja Tabi are preferred over Mercury Treads. Homeguard is situational for the boots as well. You may or may not need this upgrade to your boots.

The second change I would like to bring up is that the Ruby Sightstone can be replaced with a Banshee's Veil if needed later in the game. It makes her even more difficult to kill.

As far as Warmog's armor, given that it doesn't add any resists, I wouldn't take it at all but it's suggested if you need health.

Initiation:

Leona should be the one to initiate a fight for her ADC. Because she's a lot more tanky than any ADC, it is her resoonsibility to take the damage while the ADC gets the kills such that both can escape to safety.

When initiating, Leona should start with Shield of Daybreak and Eclipse and then use Zenith Blade to get within range of the enemy ADC. Auto attacking the ADC will stun them for 1.25 seconds giving your ADC time to kill or substantially reduce their health bar pool. To slow an escape, Leona's ultimate can come into play. When paired with Exhaust, Solar Flare can keep an enemy close enough for a second zenith blade and stun or a kill for her ADC.

Leona goes well with Corki, Varus, Vayne, Ezreal, Ashe, Jinx and Caitlyn. If you'll notice, Leona, when paired with ranged ADC's performs very well. This is because she has a good gap closer and stuns to keep an enemy within range for a marksman to continue doing damage while the enemy tries to escape all the while staying a safe distance away from the fight. ADC's are usually fairly squishy due to their composure.

Leona should only kill minions if her ADC is at base or returning to their lane. The secondary objective for farming for Leona is to utilize the gold sharing capabilities of her Relic Shield, Targon's Brace and Face of the Mountain. Other than that, all cc should be priotitized to the ADC.

Here are some examples of good games I've had using this build for Leona:

Game 1. 10/6/12 - http://riot.com/1uZjTb7
Game 2. 2/8/9 - http://riot.com/15E5k3g
Game 3. 0/9/13 - http://riot.com/11ynQry
Game 4. 4/3/11 - http://riot.com/1uN5XvJ
Game 5. 4/2/11 - http://riot.com/11ZhBOe
Game 6. 1/5/14 - http://riot.com/1to08W7
Game 7. 2/7/16 - http://riot.com/15EOfX1

This guide is very much still a work in progress and I always have room to improve. Take my words with a grain of salt and do you own research and try to make sense of Leona. I found it was easier to ready many guides than stick to just one so maybe you'd like to try that. Thank you for reading and good luck out there, everypony!