Leona, the Radiant Dawn Review

Leona, the Radiant Dawn is the newest champion to join League of Legends.  Leona is the female tank everyone of the LoL community has been waiting for and is Riot Games’ take on a female tank.  Now did they hit the mark in creating the female tank everyone was hoping for or did they miss the mark?  Well from some player’s perspective they may say they hit the mark while others will say otherwise.  My personal opinion and review of Leona simple as a female tank, I believe Riot Games hit the mark with this one.  Leona is in fact a tank, she does not deal insane amounts of damage but instead disrupts enemy champions by crowd control abilities and is able to become a meat shield absorbing damage like a tank should.
Leona is capable of providing both a tank and utility to her team by just using her abilities due to her passive.  Leona’s passive is Sunlight, which marks the opponent that is his with one of Leona’s abilities and if an ally hit that champion it procs causing that champion to take extra magic damage.  This is great for team fights with some of Leona’s AOE abilities as well as her crowd control abilities.  Leona’s kit revolves around combos and chain stunning opponents to be an effective tank.  Leona is by no means an AOE CC type of tank as her ultimate has a small radius at the center that stuns the opposing champion within.  Most of the time you will slow the enemy champion instead of stun them due to the ultimate itself being relatively small but big enough to still be a key ability.  Leona is a great tank early on especially with her W ability, Eclipse as it gives her Armor and Magic Resistance.  The AOE damage on this ability is nice as well but the resistances you get from this ability is insane making Leona a great tank similar to Rammus with little to no items early on.  This allows Leona to be a great initiator in the laning phase whether in a duo lane or in a solo lane.  Especially during teamfights, which allows her to continually take a beating for awhile and mitigate a lot of the damage as the armor and magic resistance is quite a large amount.  This is a great ability befitting of a tank and this is what really makes Leona shine in comparison to other tanks in the game currently.  Her base health and health per level is great as well allowing Leona to grab gold per ten items to make money and allowing her lanemate to grab all the minions for money at little to no cost to her early on.
Leona’s E ability is a great ability in her kit allowing her to act as the tank and initiate fights when in combination with her Q ability that stuns the opponents on next attack.  All of Leona’s abilities fit well together in harmony and suit well for how a tank, at least in League of Legends should be.  A tank should be able to disrupt and perform crowd control during teamfights and absorb most of the incoming damage.  Leona does all this quite well, however as a trade off Leona’s abilities deal very little damage as a tank should.  A tank with insane amounts of damage and survivability would be overpowered by far, take for example the recent case of this after the Alistar remake and Alistar being able to be a mage nuker.  Just not good balance, while Leona is strictly a tank that deals fairly decent burst damage at the early levels but then fulfills her role well in the late game of being a tank and strictly that.  However, due to the strength of Leona’s W ability, Eclipse, Leona is capable of becoming a Bruiser/Tanky DPS, but not nearly as effective as those that are meant to be.  Leona has ability power ratios on all her abilities despite them being relative low ratios.  This makes Leona in my opinion weak if turned into a damage dealer by some players, but also a very weak mage, but instead a physical damage dealer with a lot of ability power based abilities.  This is ironic to some degree, but understandable as Leona wields the power of the sun, therefore magic damage makes sense.
For those that wish to play a champion that is a tank and has gratification in being a disruptor in team fights then I suggest playing and picking up Leona.  She is a great addition to the League of Legends roster and is essentially what everyone in the community wanted, a tank.  To some however, Leona may seem weak at first due to her low base damage on her abilities.  This may cause some to think she is not a great tank in the sense of maintaining threat, since in League of Legends a great way for everyone to focus the tank would be to have them deal enough damage to be a threat.  Otherwise, Leona fits the tank role well and is a great addition to the champion roster and like any other champion will be enjoyed by some while others will think otherwise.  So try her out and see for yourselves what you think of her.