The ultimate Lee Sin guide for any Elo
Quick Lee Sin AD Jungle Build
Summoner Spells
Starting Items
Best Overall Build
Intro
Hello, I'm Kalarn, a "retired" Lee Sin OTP from EUW with over 2 million points in total with many accounts who hit high Diamond multiple times in the past, currently chilling playing ARAMs casually most of the time.
In this guide I will try to talk about most things that I've been learning over the years to help you get better with this amazing champion no matter where you are playing or when.
If you have any question you can add me at League.
Basic tips
First of all and something that every Lee Sin player must know, Lee Sin is an early game champion. Obvious, right? This means that we will have to get ourselves and the team ahead in early-game as soon as possible in order to be able to close the game out quickly. But this doesn't mean we have to greed for kills. This is one of the most common mistakes specially in Low Elo. We have to be as active in the map as possible without greeding for kills that can get us or the team in trouble.
This takes us to the next point, don't go for flashy plays that are completely unnecessary. Yeah, I get it, most of us play this champion because of those flashy plays but those won't give us any real advantage in most scenarios, or maybe they do, but we will be wasting summoners or stuff that wouldn't be necessary playing smarter.
Like Dardoch once said, "you can win any Lee Sin game without doing a single insec".
Now this also doesn't mean you don't need to learn how to do those combos, you need to learn them because even if you don't need them you have to be capable of pulling them off if you see a good opportunity, but a real good opportunity is RARE. You have to consider many factors. Enemy champions, skills and their cooldowns, summoner spells and their cooldowns, etc.
This champion is all about practice and confidence.
When to pick Lee Sin
The best scenario for Lee Sin is a team with a lot of CC skills and possibility to frontline.
Lissandra
Nautilus
Sion
Sonic Wave / Resonating StrikeJungling
With Lee Sin you don't want to full clear in 99,99% of the games. You lose many opportunities of creating an advantage for your team in those first minutes if you do so.
Also, Drakes are not a priority if you are alone, Herald is 200% more valuable for you since it creates huge pressure in the lane it's used. Doing drake you lose time for something that won't give any real advantage. Obviously you still need to have it controlled so that the enemy team doesn't do it either, and if you can take it for free with your team after a successful fight then go ahead.
Ganking
Ganking as Lee Sin you should almost never start using Q unless the enemy is already super low on HP and you can just last hit him.
There are some reasons why you shouldn't start the gank with Q.
First, Lee Sin second Q deals more damage based in the enemy's missing health so using it as a gap closer in a full HP enemy will make you lose damage early on when cooldowns are still "high".
Second, you can miss it, and if you miss it you already lost like 70% chance of getting the kill since they will just run away.
Normally what we wanna do is W in lane minions/allies/ward-hopping, then E+slow making sure that we use autoattacks between all those skills to make use of our passive and when the enemy is low and maybe flashes away we land Q and secure the kill.
Teamfighting
Lee Sin can have different roles in a teamfight depending in many circumstances. You have to check the current game status and think how you want to play them.
For example, if one of your carries is fed and you think he can be relevant, it's a nice idea to peel him with your W, dealing damage to his closest threat and kicking them away if necessary.
If you are the most fed in the team you probably should be trying to catch people off guard camping a bush or flanking in a teamfight to make sure that you can get to the enemies that you need to kill, but make sure that your team is close or you will end up dying alone.
These are just some examples, there are more situations.
Runes
When it comes to runes, they are pretty standard most of the time. You just need to check the enemy team and see if they have a lot of CC skills or not.
- vs CC
- vs no CC
- fun full AD
Skill Path
Pretty much always the same as showed in the beginning. If you are playing against a jungler who clears camps REALLY fast you can consider taking 2 points into your E
Tempest / CrippleItem Builds
The build doesn't change much normally, but I will give some different options based in matchups.
If you play against full AD teams you should be playing a tankier build since this will make you unkillable and you will still be dealing pretty nice damage.
- Builds
Matchups and Synergies
Talking about matchups pretty much all the junglers outscale Lee Sin, but I will show few of them that can be very problematic in early game.
Also few champions that have good synergy with Lee Sin.
- Counters
- Synergies