Champion selection is a crucial factor in ranked games, either solo/duo queue or premade 5v5. It not only provides a chance to synergize your team's champions and counterpick the opposing team, but allows you to begin with psychological pressure from the start. For the third installment, we'll cover Lee Sin, a versatile, mobile bruiser who excels at jungling or top lane.
Basic Introduction
Lee Sin is a dominant jungler and does quite well in top lane. His inbuilt sustain and mobility are his strengths and like all energy champions, he is an absolute terror in laning. Lee Sin also has significant utility, able to give allies a small shield while blinking to them, reduce attack speed, kick away enemies, and, most importantly, reveal stealth. Lee Sin's early-game damage is very high, but he will taper off lategame due to the need to build mostly defensive items. In the full-build lategame, consider transitioning Lee Sin to more of a defensive champion, using his kick/slow/shield to protect your carry instead of diving into the enemy team. This, of course, assumes your carry is strong and smart enough to actually do their job.
As a counterpick
For top lane, Lee Sin is probably the number one counterpick to Akali. He has two spells that reveal stealth, along with a better early game and innate sustain to match her spellvamp. Similarly, Lee Sin is also a counterpick to Wukong due to sustain, high early game damage to match Wukong's, and a stealth reveal. In teamfights, Lee Sin can also use Dragon's Rage to kick away Akali and Wukong to disrupt their positioning and spell usage.
If properly played, Lee Sin can go even or win against almost any champion top lane, so we'll focus on the matchups where he wins aggressively. Lee Sin has a field day in top lane against champions who have weak lane presence top and just want to afk-farm for 30 minutes. Singed, Nasus, Irelia, and Galio will have significant problems against an aggressive Lee Sin.
In general, Lee Sin's ability to beat common strong picks for top lane will depend on player skill, runes, and jungler interference. He is a very safe top lane and his early damage can put back champions that lack sustain or the means to stay onto him after he attacks. He tends to trade well, but not as well as some other early game monsters. Lee Sin has an advantage over champions reliant on mana and attack speed like Jarvan IV since he uses energy and his E can lower attack speed. He also gains bonus armor and sustain from Safeguard. A particularly cheeky trick is to Safeguard to allied minions just before they die to ruin your opponent's last-hitting.
Lee Sin is also an aggressive, invasive jungler. He can take red buff at level 1 with a leash, gank at level 2, and donate blue at level 4 to his mid. He can also invade with ease. His jungle speed and elusiveness allow him to easily steal camps from weaker junglers like Amumu, Rammus, and Fiddlesticks. Should the enemy team have one of these weaker junglers, Lee Sin can easily invade them, stealing their camps and putting them far behind. He is also a strong duelist and elusive, allowing him to either kill or escape if he should confront the opposing jungler while invading. Just make sure to bring a ward to Safeguard to.
In teamfights, Lee Sin's ability to contribute will depend on building and using his early game advantage. If he's sufficiently fed, he can dive in after the carry. If he's behind, he will have to play more defensively and focus on protecting his team. His stealth reveal makes him effective against assassins like Shaco, Talon, and Akali that rely on stealth for survivability. Another champion reliant on tactical stealth is Vayne and with Lee Sin's attack speed debuff and stealth reveal, he help his team pin her down and kill her.
A defensive Lee Sin helping protect Kayle from the front-loaded burstDragon's Rage will typically be used defensively, to separate a tanky target from the rest of the teamfight. If used offensively, it should be used as an execute or to boot a squishy target like Miss Fortune out of position back into his team. If Lee Sin is sufficiently tanky, he can also use Dragon's Rage to remove champions like Wukong, Fiddlesticks, or Kennen who need to be in the middle of the enemy team to use their ultimates. A Quicksilver Sash will be very helpful in the latter scenarios to quickly cleanse the CC from those ultimates and then remove the irritant in question with a roundhouse kick to the face.
A defensive Lee Sin is particularly annoying to bruisers who rely on attack speed. Since Lee Sin is more mobile than most other bruisers, he can easily shift from the front tank line back to protect his carry with Safeguard, slowing and reducing attack speed with Tempest/Cripple, and booting them away with Dragon's Rage. Champions like Irelia, Jarvan IV, Xin Zhao, and Jax are all susceptible to this treatment. In particular, Irelia's CC reduction does not work on knockbacks and Jarvan IV can kicked out of his own Cataclysm, leaving Lee Sin's carry inside the ring of terrain, temporarily protected from other melee attackers. Thanks, Jarvan!
As a synergistic pick
As might be expected for a champion with high mobility, early-game damage, and utility, Lee Sin embraces the split teamfight philosophy. In terms of team composition, Lee Sin is versatile, fitting well into balanced, tanky DPS, split push, or protect-the-carry compositions. Lee Sin does not fit well into AOE burst or heal poke compositions.
Lee Sin is best picked for his jungling prowess, his ability to reveal stealth, and/or his ability to help protect the carry while dashing around the teamfight. Teams are not generally built around Lee Sin. Instead, he is added to team compositions to compliment them or compensate for weaknesses.
Mages
As an energy-based champion, Lee Sin can freely donate blue buff. While the first blue golem can greatly increase his jungle speed, subsequent spawns of this buff can be given to his mage. Since Lee Sin is a poor initiator, he synergizes best with mages that can initiate, while he in return solves their mana/CDR needs by insuring they get blue buff an early buff. This includes mages like Morgana, Cassiopeia, Swain, Orianna, Annie, Anivia, Gragas, Veigar, and Malzahar. Note that the latter four mages generally prefer the split philosophy. All of them excel at punishing enemies who get out of position, forcing a teamfight under favorable circumstances for Lee Sin's team, which he can then exploit to further split the enemy team. Since Lee Sin's damage is primarily from abilities, he also benefits heavily from having a Will of the Ancients on the team.
Supports
Lee Sin's ability to help peel bruisers and assassins allows him to help defend a carry if the support is lacking in the peel department. The least effective support at peeling is Soraka, followed by Taric and Sona. In return, these supports all provide additional bonuses for Lee Sin in the form of heals and auras, be they armor, MR, AD or in the case of Sona, everything. Lee Sin scales extremely well with bonus attack damage, so Taric's Radiance at maximum rank adds 231 damage to Lee Sin's full spell rotations if used optimally (requires Sonic Wave/Resonating Strike to be used twice). And that is truly, truly, truly outrageous.
Carries
Lee Sin's ability to act as a second peeling support with his shield/slow/kick lend him to working well with traditionally vulnerable carries. Ashe can initiate for Lee Sin, while he helps protect her and helps her kite and reveals stealth enemies. Vayne and Kog'Maw both do lots of damage lategame but benefit from the extra support that Lee Sin brings, which helps make up for the fact that Lee Sin's damage falls off lategame due to building tanky.
Tanks
Lee Sin's gap-closer requires him to land a skillshot. This task is made easier with the help of a tank rendering a target immobile or taunted. Tanks that can do this and which also prefer the split teamfight philosophy include Maokai, Jarvan IV, Rammus, and Nautilus. Once Lee Sin has landed on a squishy target, he is both hard to kill and hard to shake, as Tempest/Cripple along with the very common Trinity Force and/or Frozen Mallet item allow him to deliver an effective slow to targets. Since Lee Sin cannot initiate well, having a strong tank is beneficial. Note that Lee Sin can use Safeguard on Jarvan IV's Demacian Standard.
Non-synergistic picks
Lee Sin does not work well with AOE burst champions. His one reliable AOE spell has a small radius and does the least damage. His ultimate is primarily used to split champions, not group them. Lee Sin is also not well-suited to a poke role, so there are stronger bruiser picks if the team lacks poke. His one poking skill loses more than half of its damage if he cannot use the second part without getting dived.
Lastly, as stated, Lee Sin is not a good initiator so if the team lacks one, starting teamfights will be reliant on the enemy team initiating or running straight into the opposing team. If the team does not have a pure tank, some other role should handle the responsibility of initiation. Lee Sin also needs lots of gold to be effectively tanky, so having more than one beefy champion is usually beneficial.
An aggressive Lee Sin taking advantage of Leona's initiation to flank onto a stunned CassiopeiaWhen to pick Lee Sin
Since his release, Lee Sin has been both strong and popular, so picking him early is important if the team composition requires him to shore up a weaker role, like a blue-dependent mage or a weak peeling support. His flexibility allows him to leave uncertainty on the enemy team, making him a safe early pick. Is he jungling? Is he top lane? They won't know unless you pick an obvious jungler like Dr. Mundo or Rammus. If you are using him to counterpick solo top or a jungler, pick him after you see a weak jungler like Amumu or beatable solo top like Wukong, Irelia, or Akali. For either jungling or top lane, Lee Sin is fairly difficult to counterpick and his counters aren't as hard as some other champions. That said, watch out for an Udyr or Warwick pick for either top or jungle. Once teamfights happen, Lee Sin can get revenge on them by hampering them from getting to his carry.
Summary
- Lee Sin is primarily a mobile early-game bruiser who can transition to a supporting role later
- Lee Sin is a strong counterpick for weak junglers and stealth champions
- Lee Sin can fit into balanced, bruiser, or protect-the-carry compositions and prefers split teamfight philosophy
- Lee Sin can donate blue freely and peels effectively, making certain mages and supports stronger picks when he is on their team by filling their weaknesses
- Lee Sin does not initiate well and his damage falls off lategame if he builds like a traditional bruiser, so compensate for these weaknesses with other picks like a strong tank and lategame carry.
- Lee Sin scales extremely well with bonus attack damage, so supports like Taric and Sona boost his damage.
This concludes our counterpicking guide on Lee Sin. Remember, pick Lee Sin, because annoying invisible champions are best dealt with by a blind monk!
