Why play Leona Top instead of as a support? I came up with the idea of Leona top since when I play support I like to play champs that I can poke with often (Fiddlesticks, Sona, and Lux). Leona Top may sound like a troll pick but in reality she's just as viable top as Irelia is. Think of Leona like Irelia but with more hard CC and can benefit to the team a lot more.
When you play Leona top, you MUST be able to play a passive/semi-aggressive playstyle.
Leona has a good armor value and with her W you have really high armor for early game defense. On top of that she has a lot of hard CC: Q = Stun, E = Snare, and Ult = Slow/Stun.

Even though she scales off AP, running Leona as AD and using her abilities mainly for the CC is the main point of this guide.

You can skip to the very end if you just want to learn how to play AD Leona, everything before is just an explanation of the Items and such, everything will be visual so you can quickly skim everything and read the How To Play part.

I WILL BE RECORDING SOME OF MY REPLAYS OF MY LEONA TOP AND LINKING THEM HERE SO EVERYONE CAN VISUALLY SEE HOW TO PLAY EACH SITUATION RATHER THAN JUST READING THEM. I WILL UPDATE THIS GUIDE WITH THE VIDEOS WHEN I GET A CHANCE AFTER FINAL EXAMS!

Fairly Easy:

Fiora
Darius
Garen
Dr. Mundo
Riven
Sion
Shen
Volibear
Yasuo
Tryndamere
Maokai
Zed
Wukong
Jax
Cho'Gath


Medium:
Jarvan IV
Rek'Sai
Alistar
Gragas
Master Yi

Hard matchups:

Nasus
Renekton
Yorick
Vayne
Quinn
Ryze
Aatrox
Pantheon
Teemo
Olaf
Jayce
Lee Sin
Kennen
Irelia

For runes I run a standard
This is a fairly standard AD rune page. Personally I run Flat runes for the early-mid game advantage rather than scaling into late game (That can be itemized).

Flat AD Marks this will give you some bonus AD to help farm and win some early game trades.
Flat Armor to negate some damage from auto attacks and some abilities.
Flat MR is for champs that have abilities, (e.g Yorick and Irelia), who have some magic damage.

The Armor Pen Quints helps around the levels 9-11 when armor penetration is a lot more important than running flat AD. At this point in the match, your top lane opponent should have already gotten some form of Armor. If they didn't, that's their mistake.

Sorry if it syas there are 4 missing item icons in this section, please ignore those, it's something with MobaFire that I tried to fix.

I personally like to start with a Long Sword because it gives me 10 extra AD. Now you can also run Doran's Blade if you so wish for the extra health and life steal, but I personally like to get some extra pots.
Speaking of pots, take 2 Health Potions and one Mana Potion. Use these when needed and you shouldn't really need to run out of these pots until your first back unless you're going against a ranged top laner.

On your first back you should grab a Phage and some more pots and a ward or two. If you cannot afford the Phage then grab a Ruby Crystal, pots, and a ward or two.
On your second back grab yourself a Sheen and same as before grab some pots and a few wards.

Why buy so many wards? WARDING IS IMPORTANT!! Wards do not last that long and you need to have wards up constantly. One in River bush, one in TriBush or in front of Baron pit (or both).

By the third back you should already have 1100 gold, if you do not farm up until you do. Trforce is key to your damage and should always be your first item on AD Leona.

Your second item should be Blade of the Ruined King or you can substitute it for Ravenous Hydra or Wit's End or whatever your choosing.

For defensive items grabbing Sunfire Aegis if you're against and AD top. You can also grab a Cloth Armor a bit earlier in the laning phase and let it sit with you if you want. If you're going against an AP top I highly recommend grabbing a Spirit Visage.

your last defensive item will be a Warmog's Armor, however you can substitute this with whatever you like, the last item really is up to your preferences.

Your passive you don't have to worry about since you're going to be playing top lane. The passive is much more useless for mid and late game when you go to roam and get into teamfights. You can apply your passive almost everyone on the enemy team allowing for your team to deal bonus damage.

Take Shield of Daybreak at level 1 and when they come to close to you, Q auto them. If they attack you, Q auto. This does more damage than you would think.
Max your Q first as this is going to be your primary form of damage. Shield of Daybreak is an auto attack modifier, like Wukong's Q and Nasus' Q and this is why Triforce is to be your first item.

Max Eclipse second and you will want to turn this on anytime you're going to take or deal damage. This is your primary line of defense, items are just going to boost this. It grants 20% bonus armor and MR, this may not sound like a lot but trust me, I've reached 339 armor with this on and I took little to no damage. This ability is what makes you a tank.

Zenith Blade is only important for the gap closing snare, you don't really need to max this since you won't be using it that often...at least not as much as Shield of Daybreak and Eclipse.

max Solar Flare whenever possible. Your ult isn't on that long of a cooldown so feel free to use it to secure a kill or to escape.

Ignite and Flash are good to take, flash is always a must. You can also replace Flash with Ghost since you don't have a reliable escape other than to use your ult.
Exhaust is good if you're gonna go against a top laner that does a lot of damage so you can use to negate some of it. Assassins like Zed and Akali are some examples.

Pros:

Tons of hard CC for yourself and Team
Deals surprisingly a lot of damage
Works well with team comp
Extremely tanky
Great for setting up ganks
Unexpected top laner
Even if you lose lane you're NEVER useless for the team

Cons:

no escape without having to use abilities
Can have a hard time in lane against ranged top laners
can't proc her own passive
Can be blamed for "trolling"

When the match first starts grab your starting items, Long Sword/ Doran's Blade/ Doran's Shield, Health Potion, Mana Potion, and Stealth Ward.

When you get into lane you wanna play a bit passive and just farm, you have a really high base AD and with the runes and masteries you should be sitting around 83ish AD (somewhere around this mark).
Now there are two possibilities.

when you're going against a melee opponent play a passive/aggressive playstyle. Since everyone thinks that Leona is mainly a Support and can't do damage like Taric, when they come close enough for you to Q, do a Q auto and immediately walk backwards. If they come back to attack you, just continue walking into your creep wave, if they keep chasing you, then you can auto attack back.

When playing against someone like Riven who has more than one active on their abilities, you can bait them into attacking you by walking up to them when you're both farming and just auto attack them. If they don't auto attack back then you can continue to auto attack them one or two more times, then you can Q auto if they continue to stick around. If they do retaliate then Q auto and walk back.

Champions with some kind of range like Zed, Akali, Gankplank, Renekton, etc.. farm passively until you hit level three. If you're against someone with a ranged ability, then your skill sequence would go: Level 1- Shield of Daybreak, Level 2- Eclipse, Level 3- Zenith Blade. You need Zenith Blade at level 3 because then you can trade back.
How it will go is Zenith Blade onto them, auto, Shield of Daybreak, auto, Eclipse, walk back to your side of the creeps. This should have chunked them for a good amount since AD top laners with ranged abilites tend to be a bit less beefy.

When you get those strange match ups like Vayne, Quinn, Gnar, Jayce, etc.. (this also applies to ranged AP tops) You're gonna really wanna play passively. Again you will want to play like as if you're going against a melee champ with ranged abilities. Once you hit level 3 put a point into Zenith Blade and trade with them by doing:

Zenith Blade, auto, Shield of Daybreak, auto, Eclipse, retreat. Typically the ranged top laners are really frail and you can chunk them close to half health by doing this.
I went against a Vayne top and I thought I would lose since it was the first time I played against a ranged top laner as Leona top but using this combination, the Vayne practically didn't exist the entire match.

Once you have at least 3 points in Shield of Daybreak and one point in Solar Flare, you can trade using this combination and instead of using Eclipse at the end and walking back you can use Solar Flare and get another auto or two off before using Eclipse and walking back.

Typically you would do the combination once, chunk them in half, wait about 15 seconds, then do the combination again and use your ult as well and that should be a kill.

In team fights you should already have your Trinity Force, Blade of the Ruined King, and begun building into a defensive item. When a teamfight starts it's best not to engage and make a teamfight since you don't have any defensive items yet you won't be as beefy. So wait for someone to get caught then go in with Zenith Blade, Solar Flare, and then find the enemy carries and use Shield of Daybreak and auto them down. Your main objective in teamfights is to help secure kills, peel, and drop as many hard CCs down on the enemy team as possible. The longer they're CC'd the better is for your team.

Remember that Your Shield of Daybreak is an auto attack modifier, so you can use this with the Trinity Force proc and take down towers and inhibs.