FOTM Report: Leona Precision Tree Secondary Is Broken

If you've been looking at the charts and tier lists, you'll notice that Leona's been climbing up the ranks and finally reached God Tier this patch. The reasons that she's strong now include nerfed peel support stats and items, but runes also play a strong role.

The new Resolve tree is extremely good for certain tanks with high crowd-control and built-in scaling resistances...the very definition of Leona. Most people are still picking up the Inspiration tree, but what if I told you there's another tree that's blantantly overpowered on Leona that you should grab instead?

Read on for more information on how to make Leona achieve her maximum potential!

Introduction

If you've been looking at the charts and tier lists, you'll notice that Leona's been climbing up the ranks and finally reached God Tier this patch. The reasons that she's strong now include nerfed peel support stats and items, but runes also play a strong role.

The new Resolve tree is extremely good for certain tanks with high crowd-control and built-in scaling resistances...the very definition of Leona. Most people are still picking up the Inspiration tree, but what if I told you there's another tree that's blantantly overpowered on Leona that you should grab instead?

Read on for more information on how to make Leona achieve her maximum potential!

How to Play

Abilities: Q, E, W then prioritize R > W > E > Q
Summoner Spells: Flash + Ignite/Exhaust
Starting Items: Relic Shield + Health Potions
Core Items: Eye of the Equinox, Boots of Mobility, Locket of the Iron Solari, Righteous Glory, Zeke's Convergence, Gargoyle Stoneplate

Rune Setup

Primary Tree: Resolve Tree

• Aftershock: This keystone rune is amazing on Leona as it synergizes incredibly well with her Eclipse (W) and also boosts her defenses for free.
• Font of Life: This rune is pretty good for high attack speed markmen, but some people like to swap it for Unflinching instead if you're the only front liner.
• Conditioning: This allows Leona to scale very hard into the late game.
• Second Wind: While Overgrowth may scale better, Second Wind is crucial in lane to survive poke damage.

Secondary Tree: Precision Tree

• Triumph - 15% is an absurd amount of healing, especially for a tank. As a champion that enjoys going all-in and frankly must do so to be effective, this makes for an incredibly good rune on Leona. Domination doesn't quite cut it since she doesn't do all that much damage, but Triumph gives SO much in free health and allows her to snowball through team fights.
• Legend:Tenacity - This provides a maximum of 20% tenacity, reducing crowd-control and making it almost impossible to peel Leona off once she latches on.

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Alternative Secondary Tree: Inspiration

• Most people go Biscuits, gold runes, Inspiration, or Celestial Body. Overall, not very impressive.

Alternative Secondary Tree: Domination

• Cheap shot for extra damage, Zombie Ward for vision, or Relentless Hunter for extra movement speed. Again, overall not that interesting.

Alternative Secondary Tree: Sorcery

• The Ultimate Hat: Not bad, but Leona usually only needs to land one ultimate and has fast cooldowns.
• Nullifying Orb: Nice for tanks, but Leona's already incredibly tanky.
• Scorch: Good for some bonus damage, but not really necessary 

Why It Works

Triumph Is Bonkers
A single 15% heal at 3000 HP is WAY better than any of the other trees. (It's 450 HP for those of you too lazy to do math). If you manage to fully take down the team that's 2250 health that's already enhanced by all the resolve tree defensive tree boosts and Leona's natural defenses from Eclipse [W]

Incredibly Good Scaling
The health and tenacity from the precision scale very well compared to a lot of the other trees, which really focus on mid to late game. Leona does do best during the early to mid-game, and it's really the late game that she needs the help staying relevant against stacked penetration items and powerful peel supports.

Potential Pitfalls

Weaker Gold Generation
Leona using this tree won't have the gold generation runes from Insirpiration, which may delay some of her items if she can't keep up kill pressure in lane.

Needs to Snowball
If Leona doesn't manage to survive past the first takedown, then this secondary tree essentially goes completely to waste. However, if she does survive past the initial burst she can absolutely dominate a team fight.

Conclusions

Leona in the preseason is overall already a very strong support and is not a suprise to anyone seeing her in the top two win rate positions. However, many people are still playing her sub-optimally and by picking up Precision as a secondary can really make her overwhelming powerful.

Suggested Tier: God Tier

What do you think about Leona in her current form? Comment below!