Leona is a tanky support capable of locking down a target for an extended period of time with snares and stuns. She's great for early initiations, and just gets better as the game goes on. She's also amazing at peeling for your team, and with this build, you provide plenty of damage reduction for your carry and the entire team with Locket and FotM shields. In this guide, I'm going to teach you how to build and play Leona to the best of your abilities.

Pros:

1. Tons of CC for early fights and engages to get your carry kills.
2. Tanky, and able to last a long time in teamfights while using your item actives to keep your team alive.
3. Able to run to mid lane and gank pretty successfully throughout the game.
4. Peel Machine.
5. Long distance ult that can stun or slow multiple targets when it hits.

Cons:

1. No escape tools other than flash or using your ult to stun enemies to try to get away.
2. Can't really 1v1 anyone but the enemy support, and only if they're squishy and deal low damage.
3. Ult is pretty telegraphed and easily avoidable.
4. Without followup, early engages just result in you dying most of the time.

I know what you're thinking. "Why take Ignite? Why not Exhaust?" Well, it's perfectly valid to take exhaust depending on the situation. If the enemy bot lane has a champion with a ton of heals like Soraka, Sona, or Nami, take ignite. If they've got a squishy bot lane you know you can kill pretty easily, take ignite. If you're more comfortable taking exhaust in any matchup, then go with exhaust.

I've personally found that taking ignite, and using it properly, helps to secure more kills in the early game than taking exhaust. This build is pretty much all about getting your carry rolling early and keeping them ahead and alive, but it's still a matter of preference. Just use whichever you're more comfortable with. :)

Always take flash though, it's your only escape.

When I play as Leona, I like to be TANKY, so I run armor seals and quints to be able to take a lot of hits from the enemy carry early on. You can also run Movement Quints to run around and gank more, or even AD quints to deal more damage. It's entirely up to you.

I use AD Marks to dish out a bit of extra damage with my AA+Q+AA combos early on, and to give myself a bit of damage to help out in early fights.

MR Glyphs are pretty standard on supports, but if you're going against a support that doesn't deal much magic damage, or any at all, I'd throw on Scaling MR Glyphs to make yourself even tankier late game.

The Masteries are where it gets a bit spicy. I like to run 0/18/12, with my Keystone being Thunderlord's Decree for that nice burst of damage that the enemy team never seems to expect. You're going to blow flashes pretty early when you get an AA+Q+AA combo off on someone and they get locked down for a second and chunked for a decent amount of their health bar.

The 12 points in the Resolve tree allow you to stay alive longer and Wanderer gives you a bit of extra movement speed to get to mid-lane faster for a few nice early ganks. Runic Armor makes your shields just a bit better on yourself, and Fearless stops enemy assassins from bursting you down as quickly. It's probably not going to save you from a fed Akali, but when she first roams bot to try and get some kills, it should at least stop her from killing you.

Laning with Leona is pretty simple. You keep yourself between your carry and the enemy bot lane to zone them away and keep your carry safe. If they try to engage, use your abilites to peel them off of your carry, or to counter-engage. If you get any sort of lead, or are dominating your lane, engage on the enemy that needs to die first, (Usually the carry, but could be a Sona or Soraka.) and lock them down with your abilities.

My favorite way to cheese early game is to just sit right at the edge of your side's bush, and wait for the support or adc to walk too close, then just pop out and hit them with the AA+Q+AA combo to proc your Thunderlord's and probably blow their flash, if not kill them immediately.

Starting at level 2, you have a pretty solid engage. REMEMBER: DO NOT ENGAGE IF YOUR ADC IS LOW ON HEALTH. YOU'RE JUST GOING TO GET YOURSELF OR BOTH OF YOU KILLED AND LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT. That being said, if you're already slapping the enemy laners around a bit, feel free to use your E to jump on to whoever needs to die first and then immediately stun them with your Q. You can press your Q while you're getting pulled to them with your E and then click on them before you land to immediately stun them. They have to be MASHING their flash to get away from you when you do this, so it's pretty good to burn their flash early, or to secure the kill.

Once you get a few items, your job becomes warding, peeling, engaging, and shielding your carry. Always, ALWAYS have a control ward on the map. If the enemy keeps clearing them, buy more. You can have 3 in your inventory at any time, so do so if necessary. Ward tri-bush, river right near dragon, and if you can safely do so, ward your enemy jungle so they can't just pop into your lane unseen. Warding the enemy jungle will also help your other lanes, as having vision of the enemy jungler lets your laners know when to worry about ganks and when they're going to be able to go in.

Tip/Trick 1: I've mentioned it a few times in this guide, but the AA+Q+AA combo is really, really efficient, and extremely easy to do. Just AA the enemy, and as soon as they take the damage, use your Q (Which resets your AA timer) to stun them, and get off another AA before they can move. Doing this will chunk the opponent pretty hard early game, and will also allow your ADC to get a free hit or two onto them.

Tip/Trick 2: You can clear an enemy ward at level 1, as long as you're right next to it when they place it. If you're fast enough, you can use your AA+Q+AA combo on the enemy ward to get rid of it immediately. Granted, they may drop another ward there immediately, and you won't be able to clear it since your Q is on CD, but hey, they're down a ward, so that's a score for you!

Tip/Trick 3: You can often blow your opponent's flash by just throwing your E in their direction, not even onto them. This works best when you're way ahead. The reason this works is intimidation factor. If you've been able to jump on them with your ADC at least a few times and get a kill, especially initiating with your E, they're going to be scared of it. Throw it so it'll be just short, or just off to the side of them and see if they fall for it.

Tip/Trick 4: This one is just mean, but if you spam Leona's laugh, it's pretty tilting, especially if you pair it with flashing a Mastery Symbol. It's pretty likely to make your opponents mad, and mad players tend to be sloppy. It may backfire though and end up with your lane getting camped by the enemy jungler, so do this at your own risk.

Thank you guys so much for checking out another one of my guides. I plan on doing a few more for other champions that I play in the future. If you have any comments, compliments, complaints, or suggestions, definitely leave them in the comments on this guide. I'll be more than happy to address any questions or criticisms that you have for me!

I deeply appreciate the amount of people who checked out not only my Nunu Guide (SELF PLUG!) which can be found here, but also the views that the videos on that guide got. It's only a few hundred, but it's a lot more than I usually get, and I appreciate every single one of them.

I look forward to seeing you on the rift!