A Complete Guide to Lee Sin's Level 2-3

Lee is one of those champions who, if you know how to play him, you never want to stop. With a ridiculously high skill-cap, crazy mobility, and unmatched versatility. I'm a diamond Lee main, and he's provided me with countless fun games. While Lee Sin has the potential to be one of the most fun, and most powerful champions in the game, he is also one of the hardest. While no amount of cheap tricks can replace time spent playing a champion, here are the dirtiest, most consistent tricks in Lee's arsenal.

Abusing the level 2 blue side invade:

This is Lee’s most reliable invade, and for this reason, he a much more powerful pick on blue side. Just as a side note, this is a solo queue strategy, it only works due to the hectic nature of the solo queue world. Here are the steps to the level two invade:

1. Start your red buff, get a good enough leash to be full health off 1 Health Potion

2. You have two options here, depending on how quick your leash was, and how fast a clear time the opposing jungler has. You can either walk to the opponent's red buff, ward the buff brush within vision of the buff, and wait for the opposing jungler to show up, or, secondly, if you get a good leash and the other jungler is a slow enough clearer, you can ward the same spot in the enemies brush, and stand here:

When I get to this spot unseen, the invade succeeds 95% of the time. Nobody checks this brush, and if they do, you can have a serious edge on literally any jungler in the game. Level two Lee Sin with the red buff advantage wins every matchup in the game, especially when he has the advantage of the element of surprise.

4.  Wait for your opponent to start red buff and waste their cooldowns on it. When they are lower than you and their skills are on cooldown, you go in. Depending on how confident are, you can either q your opponent and try and smite steal the buff, or q the buff and smite while you resonating strike for the execute damage.

There are obviously some risks involved with this invade—the enemy mid/top laners can collapse onto you before your lanes do, or you can miss smite on their red, but this technique will win you a lot of games. There is no legitimate counter to this invade other than the other team getting early vision, which is basically unheard of in anything under Master Tier.

Abusing the level three countergank:

Next, we have the level three top lane countergank. The most common jungle route for almost any jungler is starting the bot-side buff, clearing the jungle, and ganking top. Lee Sin, with his godlike mobility, can get there first, and he has one of the strongest level three, 2v2 fights in the game. The prerequisites for this countergank are that your top laner doesn’t get shoved in level two, you make sure your opposing jungler is starting the bot-side buff, and you didn’t do the previously discussed level two invade. To pull it off, you clear your jungle, go top, either through the tri-bush if you’re on red side, or through the lane from blue side, and get into the first top lane bush on your respective side. All there is to do then is wait—about 30 seconds is the most you want to invest here, if the enemy jungler doesn’t show up, just try and surprise the enemy top laner.


The surprise level three bot lane gank:

The prerequisites for this gank is simple: either your bot lane must be pushing or you must be on red side. If you’re on blue side, the only way to do it is the classic lane gank. Have your bot lane shove, and get in the bottom brush. Early game, when only trinkets exist for vision, these brushes won’t be warded level 3. At this point, it’s a patience game, just wait for the enemy bot to overextend, and jump in. If you’re red side, however, you have another option: go to red side tri-bush, stand against the wall adjacent to the river, place a ward in the river bush, and ward hop to it.

This is a technique Jarvans sometimes use to get past wards unseen, but I very rarely see Lee’s do it. If the enemies have the river warded, you getting into this bush unseen gives you a huge advantage. From here, just pull off a traditional gank, with veritably no chance of a countergank.

Often, no ganks seem to present themselves—top lane is frozen by the enemy tower, your mid got chunked and went b, you’re nowhere near bot lane, and a lot of people new to Lee Sin panic and try too hard to force a gank. Just because you can’t pull of a level 2 invade or level 3 gank doesn’t mean your early game powerspike is squandered. While not getting an early kill is a detriment to your game, it isn’t the end of the world. Your two options in this kind of situation is to batten down the hatches and farm your jungle. While you’re losing your early game snowball, you won’t get set behind near so far as you will from a gank turned sour. If you still want to be aggressive without ganked, go for a simple counterjungle. Lee has some of the best single target damage in the game, therefore his counterjungling is one of the fastest. Every time smite is up, just go take an enemy camp.

Lee is one of the most fun champions in the game. He is so versatile, so mobile, so powerful, no champion entertains me as much. At least one of these techniques will work almost every game. If one of them doesn’t, you probably chose the wrong one. Learning how to path and which technique to choose will take some practice, but it pays off.

Have some fun with my favorite champions, try out these techniques, and let me know how it goes. Good luck out there, summoners!

-Iron A1dan