This guide is under construction. Feel free to read it and leave feedback but don't follow it blindly until it's fully updated. Cheers!

You are playing a mind game and it all comes down to knowledge, information and adaptation. This guide will not make you a more skilled player but provide you the tools to win this mind game. In this guide I will focus on the champion Lee Sin and the different roles he can take on, but certain parts of this guide might apply to the game in general.

Feel free to leave a comment and vote, wether you liked the guide or not. I'm new to writing (guides in particular) and feedback is always good. I will update and improve the guide as long as I find it enjoying.

Happy reading,
Worr.

Pros Strong early game. Potential to snowball. Good peel and utility. High outplay potential.

Cons Falls off late game. Difficult to play. Relies on ganks. Lee Sin is blind.

Synergizes with Late game hyper carries like Jax, Vayne and Kassadin. Snowball champions like Kha'Zix, Riven and LeBlanc. Champions that needs peel like Jinx, Ashe and Kog'Maw. Yasuo, because you provide an AoE knock-up for his ultimate. A duo queue partner, because you can snowball any champion.

Countered by Teams that outscale him like those mentioned to the left. Strong crowd control that makes diving harder. Junglers that he cannot easily duel, like Udyr. Thresh's lantern and champions that are hard to gank like Shyvana. Teams that wards their jungle (It's solo queue, who am I kidding?).

Boots Mobility Boots Ninja Tabi Jungle item Spirit of the Ancient Golem Offensive items Ravenous Hydra Last Whisper Armor items Randuin's Omen Sunfire Aegis Thornmail

Magic resist items Banshee's Veil Spirit Visage Maw of Malmortius Locket of the Iron Solari Other items Warmog's Armor Frozen Mallet Sightstone + Oracle's Lens

Flurry

gives you 40% attack speed and returns 15 energy on your next 2 auto attacks after each ability activation.

• 40% attack speed gives you fast jungle clears.
• Use at least one stack of your passive to conserve energy.

Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike

allows you to jump to your target if you land the skillshot.

• Second activation amplifies all your previous damage by 8%.
• Escape to jungle monsters or lane minions.

Safeguard / Iron Will

allows you to jump to an ally or friendly ward. If you activate it again you gain lifesteal and spellvamp.

• You can jump to other things than wards, such as Jarvan's flag, Zyra's plants, Annie's Tibbers and Tresh's lantern.
• You heal yourself from all damage abilities and smite with the spellvamp from second activation.

Tempest / Cripple

damages and gives vision on first activation, slows attack speed and movement speed on second activation.

• Use this ability first when you gank someone from behind. The slow will make skill shots easier to land.
• Reduces damage taken in jungle because it slows attack speed of jungle creeps.
• Use this when the enemy tries to juke you in a bush.

Dragon's Rage

kicks your enemy away from you and knocks up all enemies your target hits when airborne.

• Your target becomes a projectile while flying back and damages anything it hits.
• Use ward hop to kick someone back to your team. Only use this on ganks as it's hard in team fights.
• Kick away enemy bruisers from your carries.

Offensive Tree

In the left column I pick up Double-Edged Sword , Expose Weakness , Spell Weaving and Blade Weaving . Lee Sin takes full advantage of these cheap stats for only 4 mastery points. Futhermore I take both Executioner and Dangerous Game from the right column to increase my potential in close fights.

From the middle column I take 5% cooldown reduction, 1.25% attack speed, scaling and flat attack damage. I skip Warlord because it gives at best around 10 attack damage with my item build and continue to finish off the offensive tree with Devastating Strikes and Havoc .

Defensive Tree

I choose Block , Unyielding and Veteran Scars for early game fights and Enchanted Armor and Juggernaut for some scaling defensive stats. The sustain from Recovery , Tough Skin and Bladed Armor are not nessesary for Lee Sin.

Marks and Quints

For offensive runes I run flat attack damage. I feel like this works best but feel free to try armor penetration or movement speed if you want. I have experimented with using my marksman rune page with 4% lifesteal against jungler that outsustain me early game, like Warwick and Fiddlesticks.

Seals and Glyphs

I always run armor seals because they are nessesary to sustain yourself in the jungle. For Glyphs I take scaling magic resist. If I'm against a magic damage jungler like Elise, Amumu or Fiddlesticks I consider flat magic resist instead, depending on the rest of the enemy team. I haven't tried cooldown reduction glyphs on Lee Sin so I can't comment on them but I feel like cooldown reduction in general is not the most effective stat on Lee Sin. His cooldowns are already low and you can use them twice per camp if you want. It won't matter much in team fights because you are already limited by your energy.

Standard start

On your normal game you want to start on the bot side buff for a strong leash. Make sure bot lane walked away before you kill your buff with smite and then head over to Wolfs and your second buff. Again use smite to last hit the buff to avoid it getting stolen.

Early invade

If your team have a strong level 1 you can group up and invade the enemy junglers first buff around 1.20. This is usually the bot side buff, but certain champions like Elise, Amumu and Evelynn choose to start blue buff even if they are on blue team.

Late invade

If you are against a jungler who is blue buff dependant such as Amumu, Elise or Evelynn, you can choose to do a late invade. At 1.55 you enter his blue buff with everyone who can help you. Kill anything you can and steal the buff. Make sure you combo the buff with Resonating Strike and smite because the enemy jungler might stay near to smute it.

Level 2 solo invade

If you are blue side you can start your red buff and then head over to the enemy red buff. Against a slow clear jungler you want to start the buff and drag it into the bush so you can smite it while denying him vision and against a decent clear jungler you want to wait for him to show up and kill him or get him low before you take the buff. Be careful with enemies rotating to help their jungler as that can get you killed.

Level 3 solo invade

If you have a stronger level 3 you can do your standard route and then head over to the enemy jungle. If he was purple he probably did Blue, Wolfs/Wraiths, Red and is now heading to golem or top lane. On blue side he probably started Red, Wolfs/Wraiths, Blue. It's harder to predict his next move here because there are more options for him. Either he is doing Wight, heading back to Wraths or ganking mid or top. Needless to say, this is easier to pull off if you are on blue team.

(under construction)

Turrets

Lee Sin can take down turrets with a decent speed. If an enemy laner is missing, feel free to push in a lane and get damage to his turret. Keep your passive attack speed up by rotating your abilities efficiently. Remember that you get more stacks of his passive if you use both activations so use enemy minions to your advantage. Save Safeguard in order to make a quick escape if you don't have vision of the enemy. Even if the enemy does show up behind you there is always almost a way to escape. Running through the turret and into the enemy jungle often catches the enemy by surprise and there are plenty of jungle camps to jump to and walls to jump over. Keeping several enemies busy chasing opens up other objectives for your team.

Dragon and Baron

Lee Sin can solo Dragon relatively early but it's always safer if you get help. A pink ward is always a good buy once you finished your core. Something you should look out for is where the enemy jungler is. If you see him ganking top lane or heading to his red buff you can easily take a free dragon.

Baron is not as easy. Lee Sin can tank it with a few defensive items and especially if he have the lifesteal from Ravenous Hydra. However, he cannot easily kill it himself unless he is fed like crazy and building both Ravenous Hydra and Bloodthirster. If one of your team members gets far ahead, such as Riven or Yasuo, you should look for opportunities to two-man Baron.

Smite combo

Lee Sin has good dragon and baron control due to his high burst combo when he combines Resonating Strike with Smite. Let's have a look at it:

Smite deals 390 damage on level 1 and scales to 1000 damage on level 18. Because it deals true damage, you don't have to take resists into account. It will always deal exactly as much damage as the tooltip says if you hover over the summoner icon with your cursor.

Resonating Strike deals 170 + 90% of bonus AD + 8% of target's missing health. At level 18 with one Doran's Blade and Ravenous Hydra you will have 75 bonus AD, which adds another 67.5 damage. The bonus damage from missing health is capped to 400 on monsters but already around 8 minutes into the game Dragon will have enough health to reach the cap and so will Baron when it spawns 7 minutes later. This equals to 170 + 67.5 + 400 = 537.5 damage. Dragon have 21 armor (around 20% reduced damage) and Baron have 120 armor (around 50% reduced damage).

Because there is a reaction time, I usually tag the objective with Sonic Wave around 2000 health and cast Smite followed by Resonating Strike when I know I have the combo to kill it. The most important thing here is to not do your combo too early. If the enemy flashes in he will most likely only have his smite to contest where as you will have your full combo.

If you are on the opposite side of the pit, try to land your Sonic Wave on Baron or Dragon. It will give you vision for 3 seconds and the ability to do your standard execute combo. If you hit an enemy, at least you will get the vision and damage to him when you jump in. Always have a ward nearby to cast Safeguard to in case the enemy waits for your Sonic Wave to fade.

Protecting Baron and Dragon from getting stolen

First you must recognise that nothing can stop you from casting smite. As long as you are in range, it doesn't matter if you are stunned, rooted, silenced or knocked-up. You can still cast smite. However, there are still some things you can do. The first thing you should consider is to wait until the enemy jumps in and simply kill him before you finish. Keep in mind that even if your team stops damaging the baron at 2000 health there is nothing that stops the enemy jungler and his team from damaging it and finishing it by himself.

Remember when I said that crowd control doesn't stop someone from smiting? That doesn't mean crowd control is useless in this situation. Smite is probably one of the only things that cannot be stopped with crowd control. If you lock down the enemy jungler outside the pit he cannot flash in, unless he was something silly like Olaf or Alistar.

When you start a baron or dragon that can be contested, as in you didn't ace the enemy or at least kill everything that can burst down the objective like a jungler, Gragas or Lux, you should probably look to bait the enemy team and kill them rather than finish the objective and trusting your smite skills. Lee Sin is very strong in this senario, because he can jump over from the pit and kick an enemy carry into your team on the other side.

Last but not least, never underestimate the power of your ultimate. You can easily kick a jungler back over the wall after he flashed in. If he stands to close to the wall, you can even kick him out of flash range from inside the pit.

There is a reason I put this chapter after objectives because bla bla bla (under construction)