It’s that time again folks. Another champion released, which means another guide by yours truly, Enryuu. Leona is Riot Game’s idea of a female tank and quite frankly she does it quite well and meets that role requirement perfectly.
Champion Spotlight:
Abilities/Passive:
 | Sunlight Leona’s damaging spells affect the target with Sunlight for 3.5 seconds. When allied champions deal damage to those targets they consume the Sunlight debuff to deal additional magic damage. Bonus damage is 20/35/50/65/80/95/110/125/140 (upgrades every 2 levels). |
 | Shield of Daybreak Leona uses her shield to perform her next autoattack, dealing bonus magic damage and stunning the target. |
 | Eclipse Leona raises her shield to gain Armor and Magic Resistance. When the duration first ends, if there are nearby enemies she will deal magic damage to them and prolong the duration of the effect. |
 | Zenith Blade Leona projects a solar image of her sword, dealing magic damage to all enemies in a line. When the image fades, the last enemy champion struck will be briefly immobilized and Leona will dash to them. |
 | Solar Flare Leona calls down a beam of solar energy, dealing damage to enemies in an area. Enemies in the center of the area are stunned, while enemies on the outside are slowed. |
These are the runes that I run on Leona. I use Armor Penetration Marks and Quintessences on Leona to help her deal out physical damage as you will essentially be building Leona as a tank with a hint of tanky DPS. Leona’s abilities are lack luster for damage in general so having Armor Penetration over Magic Penetration allows Leona to auto squishies down within the duration of her crowd control. For Seals I use flat Armor and for Glyphs I use flat Magic Resistance. This allows Leona to be tanky early without her W ability at the early levels and even more tanky when you start putting points into Eclipse later on.
Masteries:
This is the mastery set up I run for Leona, which is a 0/21/9 build. This mastery set up is a standard tank mastery set up. I grab everything in the Defensive Tree that could help Leona survive in the lane and towards late game such as the 4% reduced damage talent Tenacity. There is no point in grabbing points in Nimbleness or Dodge as you have no real runes for that and personally I don’t like the RNG of dodge chance. I prefer the flat mitigation I get from armor over dodge chance. In the Utility Tree I grab Greed just to help with gold production on top of your gold per ten items, but if you want you can put that point into Utility Mastery for increased buff duration. Personally I feel this is worthless because Red or Blue buffs should be going on your carries and not you. They are nice to have if you get them from a kill, but in most cases you will be the master of assists.
Summoner Spells:
Flash/Ignite
I run flash and ignite on Leona. Flash is good for escaping as Leona is quite slow so a quick blink for a head start is a nice thing to have. Also Flash is great for helping Leona initiate a fight. Ignite is great for the early laning phase for picking up kills and in general nice to have for the healing debuff it provides.
Skill Order/Priority:
Skill Order 1-6:
E>Q>W>W>W>R
or
E>W>Q>W>W>R
Skill Priority:
R>W>E>Q
You definitely want to max out Eclipse or your W ability first, and then your initiation ability E for catching up to champions. However in the lane leveling up Eclipse early or not is up to you as this depends on who you are fighting against.
Items:
Whether you are soloing top or laning in a duo lane bot, your starting item is the same. Start off with a Regrowth Pendant and 1 Health Potion. This will give you both lane sustainability and will allow you to build it into a Philosopher’s Stone on first recall for your gold income. If possible you will grab both Philosopher’s Stone and Boots, but if not then Philosopher’s Stone definitely is a priority to start your gold per ten income. After buying those you should farm some more and grab Heart of Gold so that you have more passive gold farm coming in. Not to mention you get some extra health and regen with these two items. Afterwards you want to go and rush Sheen and Phage, then turn that into Trinity Force. Trinity Force is your main damage and burst, so as to make you a threat instead of someone that CCs and is then ignorable when spent. Afterwards you want to grab a Chain Vest and Negatron Cloak and start turning those into Force of Nature and Frozen Heart. Turn your Philosopher’s Stone into Shurelya’s Reverie and pick up Banshee’s Veil last for some more magic resist and health. Shurelya’s Reverie is great for helping your team escape and pick up runaways when they are just too fast. This item is great for utility and support as a tank, not only does it give health, but for Leona provides some much needed cooldown reduction. This coupled with Frozen Heart will help her greatly as her abilities are all on fairly long cooldowns. Some other items you could supplement in for health and to turn her into a tanky DPS are Frozen Mallet, Warmog’s Armor and Atmas Impaler.
Laning:
Leona in the lane is best in the solo top lane. She can hold her own here fairly well and this allows her to farm freely and quickly get her items. Leona can pretty much solo carries 1 v 1, but the only person I see her having trouble with is Akali 1 v 1. The burst is just a bit too much even with Eclipse. Leona can even handle 2 v 1 top lane if needed. As for a duo lane, she is definitely capable, but she requires a lane partner that has some form of CC as well or heavy damage. This will allow you to win your lane in duo bot as you can keep the enemies off your tower and maybe even pick up some kills for some much needed gold. This will aid you as you will most likely be giving up most of the farm to your lanemate in the duo lane versus soloing top where all the money is yours. Duo lane bot will slow your build down a bit and make you fairly squishy if things go wrong.
Whether you are soloing or in a duo lane the concepts are the same for Leona. Always initiate with your E ability and make sure that you have your Eclipse charged so that upon a successful, Zenith Blade cast, you can use Shield of Daybreak afterwards and follow up with Eclipse’s detonation effect for more burst damage. This combo is deadly early game to most squishy carry champions and even tanks if they are not careful. Some combinations you want to try besides that is to just harass with E and W to whittle the opposing players’ health pool down. This will not only let you win your lane by making them have to go back and play cautiously but may even net you a kill or assist. When you are laning and have Sheen or Trinity Force, be sure to use your Q or Shield of Daybreak on towers for pushing. Your Q ability applies extra damage to towers and coupled with Sheen or Trinity Force will do even more. Most people will ignore you because in most cases you will seem like you lack damage. But your disruption with CC and your Trinity Force procs, they will think otherwise when you take down their carries. Leona’s burst from a successful combination of all her abilities is quite deadly in a teamfight and in 1 v 1 situations. So be sure to try and land all your abilities otherwise you will just be running around waiting for your cooldowns to come back up because you failed. As for teamfights initiate with your Zenith Blade with your Eclipse charged so as to give you more mitigation. Then, follow up with Shield of Daybreak to stun the enemy you’re on, which is hopefully a carry, and if they are fairly close together use your ultimate Solar Flare to stun and slow for some decent damage. Your job as Leona no matter what is to protect your carries, while disrupting theirs and focusing theirs down. You can easily drop and die as Leona, but that is like any tank when Void Staff or Last Whisper is bought by the enemy carries. However, what matters most is if you did your job and used your abilities effectively to help your team.
Jungling:
Credit goes to Stonewall008 for this jungle guide. I will say in my opinion that Leona should not jungle, but only as a last resort as her damage is quite low and therefore her jungling is extremely slow, also this guide for jungling uses different masteries and runes then what I use for laning.
Conclusion:
Overall, Leona is a great addition to League of Legends and definitely is the female tank that everyone wanted. Leona may seem a bit underpowered due to her low base damage abilities and low AP ratios, but she brings a lot to the table for CC and as a meat shield. So if your looking for a tank that does some mediocre damage but does a lot of CC and can take a lot of punishment, then look no further then Leona, the Radiant Dawn. I hope this guide will help those that are still having trouble with Leona, so have fun on the fields of justice summoners with Leona, the Radiant Dawn the newest edition to Runeterra.
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