Leona in the jungle ?

Similar to how everything that Nautilius does as a support, Leona does it better, the same holds true for Leona jungle. Her early clear time and jungle survivability leave quite a bit to be desired, and she can't counter jungle. She doesn't even get significantly more gold or xp as a Jungler. It can work, it's just far from optimal

 

Not worth it IMO. Leona makes a great support, but she lacks the a number of attributes which make a good jungle such as healing abilities. She has some very useful skills which will come in handy late game, but if the enemy jungler goes in your jungle, you will be in trouble.

 

She can put off a good amount of damage early game, so it is possible for her to jungle with the right runes or masteries, but as the game goes on, she will be weaker and weaker. She is not designed to be a jungler, she's supposed to be a support. She can pull off early ganks very effectively if she has two of her stuns, but there will be no item that makes her stronger.

 

Something working and something being optimal are two different things.

Her early jungle clear is notoriously slow and dangerous, but something people often forget to mention is her vulnerability to counterjungling- there's not much damage on her kit, especially early, so pretty much any enemy jungler will be able to do what they please in her jungle. (This is assuming solo queue, where nobody pays attention to things like that)

Her passive is completely neglected in the jungle as well, as she can't proc it on her own.

In addition, she doesn't have the gold gain to be able to build anything except support (tank items are expensive) and that would overlap with the support in bot lane.

It might work in organized 5s where you balance around her and have a kill lane bot, for example. However, I think it takes too much organization to work in solo queue.

 

I read Morello was thinking about letting Leona take advantage of her passive on jungle monsters; which would significantly improve her clear time. But at the moment it's slow. Her ganks are very strong - gap closer that stuns as well as another stun and ult-stun/slow once she hits 6.

I don't see the problem. In the current meta, junglers (most) build support items because jungle never gives enough gold anyway. Ageis/Ancient Golem/Tabi/more tanky items. You build her just like Nunu or Nautilus and CC for your team and just be tanky.

That being said...no, Leona jungle not worth it compared to other junglers.

 

Leona jungle is a lot of fun in normal queue, but definitely not reliable enough for ranked. She's essentially a moving stun/damage boost, and she duels absolutely terribly. She actually clears her own jungle very well, but is too bad at counterjungling to even consider that. Her ganks work extremely well when Zenith Blade connects, but if it misses she's pretty much got to leave and come back in 15-20 seconds when it's clear that she has left.

 

She has the potential to gank, since her abilities are almost all cc, but the jungle clearing is too slow for it to be effective.

 

I think Leona jungle would not be too bad to try out. Especially if you use ghost as one of her summoner spells. She is a champion that has multiple stuns so she most definitely has great ganking potential. Now that you mentioned this, I kind of want to try it out but I am really bad at playing jungle though...

 

Leona's ganks are amazing and there is no real way to get out of them unless she happens to miss most of her spells, but even then the CC from the laner can set her up for a gank. The downside is that her damage is practically none and she lacks the jungle speed to be compared to any other jungler. You'd have to be pretty good to pull off an successful jungle Leona.

 

I don't agree with you. At the early levels Leona have one of the strongest burst, heck at level 2-3 often when you charge on a person you easily take 50-60% from his health and that pretty much continues to level 13-14.
However Leona jungle is utter nightmare. I've tried it and the sad thing is that she kills minions too slow. Even with all the new items that were added it's still rather pointless. The only way I can see this working is if people help her at blue/red(depending on which side they start) and you go for a gank to that lane straight away and hopefully get a kill. From there you will have to clear 1-2 camps of minions and gank and hope for a kill. Otherwise you will fall behind with items and levels and I'm sure noone likes it when their jungler is level 4 and the enemy is level 6-7

 

I have done Leona jungle before and it is really fun. I used ad runes and masteries because her abilities do not do that much damage. I would build damage items too. She is a really good junglers if you think about it. She has he E to get to the target and has an AOE supper slow. Then you have another stun to follow up and they cannot escape. By the time you combo they should be dead if the ADC does their damage.

 

jungle is so much more than ganks, you need mobility, sustainability and damage to move/ clear jungle/ earn money. Leona lacks all of these, and there are much better options available.

I jungle as my main, and I would love to go against a leona in the enemy jungle, would have so much fun countering

 

The problem is that she clears extremely slow and her dueling power is very low. Against popular junglers right now such as Shyvana, Olaf, Mundo, or Elise she would get destroyed 1v1 and any good jungler would just camp her side of the jungle and ward aggressively. She is also less mobile since she has no movement speed buffs which makes it hard to control the map. If they see you ganking one side, the enemy jungler would have enough time to make a play on the other side (Dragon, buff steal, counter jungle, gank) without having to worry about you doing anything to counter it.

 

I don't think leona is worth taking up a whole role. She doesn't need to supply enough damage and isn't very much of a threat once she's used three of her longish cooldown abilities. I don't know how well she'd farm but I don't know what she'd do with that farm because todays meta is damage-tank-bruisers.

 

Leona is an okay junglier and you'll even see people play her on streams and highlights, but she's a better support if anything. She was made to be played support and that's where she excels.

 

Dont think this is such a good idea. As stated before Leona is a great tank but she doesnt have enough damage. You would be too slow to clear out the jungle and would lack in levels. Then not even her tankiness can save you!

 

Leona's jungle clears are pretty painful in my experience. She lacks sustain and her clears are also pretty slow. Leona gets counterjungled so easily, as well. On the other hand her ganks are really great and she definitely has teamfight utility. The only problem here is that there are a lot of other junglers who offer the same if not greater utility in fights. There are also other champs that deal with counter jungling better. She can definitely be played in the jungle but she is a weaker pick than so many other junglers, so it just isn't really worth it.

 

I've played Leona in the jungle a few times. I had fun with it. Her clear definitely is lacking, which means she can't AFK farm in the jungle like some other champions can. Her bad clear is why you have to make use of her gank potential if you jungle with her. Her EQ combo can make for some pretty sweet ganks, and when you reach 6 with her, the gank will be pretty hard to escape. After buying Wriggle's, I found that her clear became bearable, but ganking was still my main priority.

The bad thing is that she can easily be counterjungled. Leona can't do anything about most other junglers if they take over her jungle. However, if your team will help you, all you gotta do is ward right and lock the enemy jungler down for your laner(s) to kill. Leona brings tons of CC to the table, so as long as your laners can do enough damage, it can work out well. It depends heavily on your team comp.

 

Leona jungle would be pretty good because of her amazing ganking spells. But the hard thing would be to start farming the jungle. It will actually take you an awful lot of time to clear the jungle with Leona.