Making Leona into a Jungle

SandTrout·Sep 6, 2015·2 votes·509 views

I have played Leona in the jungle with some frequency, but honestly, she its a bit lacking in terms of clear time and mobility.

In general, I'm not a fan of champions being relegated to a single meta-role, so I like the idea of most champions being a flex-pick.

To this end, I propose a simple change to Leona to enhance her jungle-mobility without significantly affecting her clear-time (appropriate trade-off for the strength of her ganks) or effectiveness as a support.

Allow Leona's Zenith Blade (E) dash to Large and Epic neutral monsters.

This would give a bit of mobility to escape engages in the jungle, slightly increase clear-time (by virtue of getting to camps a couple seconds quicker) and would generally not affect laning.

10 Comments

FiveofswordsSep 6, 20153 votes

you can jungle with her, but its not optimal. If you want to use her for a strange role, then you should be willing to make sacrifices. Cant have your cake and eat it also.

Also this WOULD effect her laning, because you grant her a new method of escape.

SandTroutSep 6, 20151 votes

The circumstances during the laning phase where a jungle-monster can be used to escape is pretty limited.

Why do champions need to be stuck in just one role though?

Lord DusteonSep 6, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The circumstances during the laning phase where a jungle-monster can be used to escape is pretty limited.

Why do champions need to be stuck in just one role though?

They don't have to, but if a champion is amazing at one role and meh at others, and you buff the other roles, you also likely buffed their amazing role to make them overbearing. This change, for example, would move support Leona from being one of the best engage supports to being the best (because you just gave her a medium range gapcloser/dash/escape on her E) while making jungle Leona slightly better. Sure, her jungle is a bit better but her support is now overbearing.

SandTroutSep 6, 20151 votes

That... doesn't actually follow that Leona's support would become overbearing from that.

It would be ridiculously conditional escape for a support. She would need to basically be IN the jungle for this to have any effect, or for the outer turret to be down (grab gromp or golums).

Not like I'm asking to dash to siege minions here.

HaIlMonitorSep 6, 20152 votes

It would also let her escape using jungle camps like someone else we all love..... Thresh . I love leo jungle it is a lot of fun and I approve.

IcyPepperSep 6, 20152 votes

Er, I don't think that's a good idea. Here's a few changes that (maybe?) could help:

Her passive being proc'ed on monsters by herself. Highly unlikely, though, if I recall correctly Rito wants this to always be ally-only as to keep her identity as a protector.

However, I can see her W getting the Shyvanna treatment and dealing a little extra damage to monsters. Highly unlikely to affect jungle leashes since most Leona's take Q at level 1, and could help her early clears.

But the thing is, Leona is a ganking tank/fighter jungler, not a farming champion. Her ganks are amazing, but her clears are meh. And that is totally okay.

SandTroutSep 6, 20151 votes

Allowing her to Proc her passive on monsters also passed my mind, but I honestly don't think it would be a good idea to significantly boost her farm in that manner, hence I addressed the mobility issue instead of clear speed, which IMO is appropriately slow.

IcyPepperSep 6, 20151 votes

I don't think giving her more mobility is a good idea.

She already has offensive mobility, a defensive steroid, and two cc spells. If she gets caught out, she's not defenseless and has tools to make ground between her and the enemy. Otherwise, she does not need an escape mechanism.

She's a tank, not an assassin. She's designed to go in and kick ass. If she and a partner are caught out, she's designed to stand her ground and give her ally time to escape. Leona is not the type to run away when the going gets rough, but rather make at tactical retreat (using your cc, essentially).