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Unpopular opinion on Leona.

PhearBunny··11 votes·1,108 views

I'm well aware that Runes Reforged has drastically improved Leona at her primary role as a support.

But as a former Leona main, i am incredibly bored that her gameplay is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO singular now. Literally the ONLY way to play her now is as a pure support tank, running Aftershock. There is literally no other way.

I really enjoyed playing Jungle Leona, and Leona Top prior to these rune changes, and now it isn't even remotely possible. i also enjoyed having the flexibility to play her differently in lanephase as support depending on the matchup. Could build offensively, 15AD+Thunderlords or Fervors depending on things, and insta gib things. Did they counterpick me with Thresh or Morgana? Okay, i better Rune/Mastery to be a peel bot and prepare to play a passive lane.

Same thing while jungling. Do they have a team, where its not really reasonable to assume i can delete anyone? Okay, going to run 9AD+Attackspeed, with CoC.

Do they have a team where they have a lot of accessable squishies? Okay, 15AD+Thunderlords.

Do they have a team, where I'm going to be forced to fight extended duels with melee champs? Okay, 9AD+Attackspeed, with Fervor.

and now....support+aftershock, 100% of the time. Yawn.

8 Comments

TitanAnteus1 votes

Ok so the problem is different lanes need different stats. Sometimes giving certain stats to a champ makes them viable in one lane but too strong in other lanes. Look at mages like Xerath going support right now.

I won't deny that being able to take your champion into weird lanes is fun, but leona's design philosophy is to help teamates especially with her passive. They've focused on that, and I think it's fair for them to give a strong direction for a champion when it comes to design instead of them just being bland like Kayle.

Attticus Finch1 votes

Leona is not and was never designed to be a top laner or a jungler, and there is no real way to make her effective in those Lanes without significantly disrupting her kit bot Lane.

Emphasis on effective. I'm sure you can't wait to tell me about your 65% win rate with Leona jungle in Platinum or whatever, but at the end of the day she's just an easily counterable cheese pick in both of those roles and has been for years.

PhearBunny1 votes

Really the only counterable things I had to worry about, wasn't from the jungle. Iverns and Nunu's could be annoying, but theyre Iverns and Nunu's that's what they do.

My biggest threat was always the bot lane. Morgana, Thresh, and Vayne specifically at Plat would force me to depend on my team more than myself. I would guess I had like a 40% winrate vs those 3 specific champs.

Nothing else was really a red flag to me. Leona was a incredibly strong duelist, especially in the early game, so there wasn't much to fear. And catchup exp existed to make up for the fact that I would have to skip chickens to have a healthy first clear+gank.

Häxel1 votes

idk. Can't you try press the attack jungle leona? Prescision gives you attackspeed and the pta boost in fight is as strong, probably even stronger as ferfor on her. It is jsut that aftershock is now even far better as courage of the colosus ever was on her.

PhearBunny1 votes

Its weaker than fervor, on her atleast. But no, the AS isn't enough. She needs the lil bit of AD to actually clear at a reasonable speed. Since her Q is a AA reset, she doesn't maximize clearing with just attackspeed.

With the removal of catchup exp, a slow clear on her, isn't really acceptable. You'll lose one camp to the enemy and never catch up.

and yes, Aftershock is better than CoC. But I wasn't forced to play CoC in everysingle game. And in the games where CoC is what made sense, it was more than good enough.

NekoniClaws1 votes

Leona's winrate right now is inflated by two things- 1, she can survive in lane (like all the other tanks who are dominating bot) 2, she can snowball the AD carry. I'm pretty sure you can just AFK after giving them 5 kills and win the game. She's not strong outside of her subservience to snowballing people.

Everyone's complaining about her damage... yeah, well there are about 140 other champions who're dishing out too much damage. I took 200 health with a Q level 1 as Zoe, and Sona still takes 100 health level 1. The issue is you used to be able to lose to a Leona-lane and come back from it. Easily. Because her E-Q-W combo and autos don't scale like your sona's AP and heals do.

As for Aftershock- I don't like it. It actually hurts my winrate as a Leona player. I play in low-ish elo, often the highest ranked player on my team trying to carry from support- Matchmaking can be cruel. Often I will trade in lane and walk out with my ADC not having done a thing. In teamfights, sometimes it feels like my team hasn't seen a Leona before, and their slow reaction to my engages and the temporary nature of Aftershock's tank stats are two things that don't intertwine.

So I started running Electrocute on her for I'd say, the majority of my games. Resolve secondary (the scaling, permanent stats) it's hyper aggressive but I don't notice any difference except it seems easier to carry with. Situiationally (squishies, assassins, bm) I may even grab a dark seal (+25% healing is actually pretty good). I've even gone as far as to get Liandry's, because death really is the best CC.

So there are options- Maybe not for high elo where you can make the most from coherent gameplay - and maybe not for other lanes, but you can definitely take her support in a different direction. So long as you keep relying on the adc. Bummer.

PhearBunny1 votes

The problem running electrocute is, comparitivly its so much worse than Thunderlords or Fervor was and even than Aftershock is now. It would be good if her default adaptive damage wasn't AP, but inorder to actually make electrocute usable, you would have to walk into lane with a Long Sword instead of a Relic Shield.

If they changed her default adaptive damage to be AD, that'd be great. Idk why its defaulted to AP....AP has never been good on Leona.

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