Teaching Non-Supporters to Support

I bet you wanted pictures; time to man up and read.

It’s about that time again to get down on your knees, pray to whatever god above you worship, and hit the solo queue button with hope barely clinging to your heavy heart. You stare vacantly at the loading screen; sitting of course because your knees are weak, waiting to be matched with the group of individuals who will be responsible for not only your precious LP, but also for your happiness. In the face of adversity, as you watch every role being called, you begin to feel sick. You are going to have to support. I know you’re in a dark place right now, but there is one way to get back to the light. Unleash the sun that will illuminate the gloomiest spaces of your sinking heart, choose Leona.

Let's lay down a few ground rules for how this pick is going to go down. Thresh and Blitzcrank are banned because obviously you would want to play one of the fun champions if you could and you never play support so you have no idea what you are doing. The style that I am about to open up to you is not for the faint of heart. It isn’t for the weak knee, wide eyed, baby dolls who want to sit back and protect their Vayne as she passively farms for fifteen minutes sucking on her bottle all the while. You are going to be an armored terror who blindly rushes into any situation with absolutely no regard for human life.

This may be the most aggressive you ever play with a support and rightfully so, you are going to force your ADC to either snowball or lose the game; there will be no babysitting tree hugging corn farmers for this support.

 

The concept for solo queue, reckless, murder train Leona is simple: always be forcing engagements because you know you will always win. I’m going to assume that you know what Leona’s abilities do, so I won’t baby you through her abilities. You are going to be getting her abilities in this order - QEW then max W first and Q second. The most important thing to remember is her starting item and one of her mastery abilities.

You need to get the extra starting gold mastery so you can start with a Doran’s Shield and a ward. Yes you heard me, a Doran’s Shield. Wards are for people who aren’t going to have bush control and by god you will have bush control or die trying. For runes just make sure you have armor yellows, the rest can be whatever you want. I personally do armor reds, magic resist blues, and health quints but the choice won't matter much. Your summoners should be Exhaust and Ignite, because retreat isn’t an option for either teams. You aren’t afraid to light fires and steal kills because you aren’t the whining, passive, girly Leona; you’re the Leona with a mustache and beard who likes to wrestle dinosaurs with her feet while lifting trucks off of trapped house cats.

Playing balls to the wall Leona is a very simple concept: start as many fights as possible because with your CC and Doran’s you will be unmanageable for any supports or ADCs in an ALL IN SITUATION. You are not looking for trades, you are looking to go big and get a kill/force the ADC out of the lane. Don’t take poke if you can help it, but if you do it wont really matter because you don’t care about weak little stones being thrown at you because you are a wall made of wolf bones and triceratops skulls that you hunted down with your bare hands. Always be in a position to make a play; by that I mean try to stay within E range at all times, if they try to auto attack you they have to stand still, which means they will have no way of dodging your E. If you keep going in for kills, your ADC has no choice but to follow or lose the lane watching you go down in a blaze of glory. For wards, obviously your ward at level one will go either in the river near the dragon for an early gank warning, or it will go in the river bush if you don’t trust it getting easily pink warded. Remember, you only have one ward at level one, so you have to use it wisely.

On your first trip back to the store after a glorious victory over the forces of evil, you should go straight for a Sightstone. If you really feel like getting a gold per ten item, a coin will do, but you don’t truly need any of the gold per tens if you are playing the reckless Leona from the depths of hell that I have spawned for you. It is important to stay in the laning phase as long as possible so you can rack up as much kills as possible before unleashing your wrath on the other lanes.

You should be able to tower dive pretty early if you pick up some quick kills early; otherwise you are probably losing lane badly. Good ADCs for this strategy include but are not limited to: Ezreal. Get ignite on that bad boy, all in at level two and let no pigs survive your brutal slaughterhouse onslaught. Well that or, lose once you realize you have no real mid game if you don't recklessly destroy lane. Thus is the life of a Leona. I hope you enjoyed my support guide for non supports. I really want to see all of you doing some drastically crazy things in solo queue.

Love,

Whispers.