This is a short guide for Diana. This will be shorter and less in detail than my Ryze guide, since I haven't played her nearly as much. I picked her up as an ap mid champion and most of what I cover here will be for playing her mid. She can jungle of course, so I will address what I know about jungling her, but I don't have a whole lot of experience with that.
Why play Diana? She is a tanky bursty assassin with aoe cc and the best /joke in League of Legends. She can give your team a way of initiating and is great at setting up combos with other aoe ultimates. She scales and snowballs nicely and bursts hard.
Her passive grants her basically another spell in a combo. It scales very well with levels and it scales with ap too. You can see when this procs by the glow on her sword and by her animations. It also resets when you don't auto attack for 3.5 seconds.
Active: Diana unleashes a bolt of lunar energy, dealing magic damage in an arc. Crescent Strike afflicts enemies struck with Moonlight, revealing them for 3 seconds.
This is your farming, harassment and dps all-purpose spell. It is a quite straight forward ability, apart from the fact that it curves (did I really just write that?). Get used to the speed and area it hits, because it's key to be able to land this spell.
Active: Diana creates three orbiting spheres that last up to 4 seconds and detonate on contact, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies. She also gains a temporary shield that absorbs damage. This shield is refreshed if all three spheres detonate.
This is what makes Diana surprisingly tanky. Ideally you want to get hit a bit before all orbs explode to make the most use out of the shield refresh.
Active: Diana draws in all nearby enemies and slows them for 2 seconds.
Your main utility spell which allows your team to set up other aoe spells really well in teamfights. The drawing enemies in has a short delay after activation.
Active: Diana becomes the living embodiment of the vengeful moon, teleporting to an enemy and dealing magic damage. Lunar Rush has no cooldown when used to teleport to an enemy afflicted with Moonlight, and will consume all active Moonlight debuffs.
Gap-closer and damage spell that can have 6 second cooldown at level 9 when hitting every Q. You can't always get the reset, sometimes it's preferable to just use it twice or use it on a target to initiate or to escape to a minion.
3. Skill Order and Useage
R>Q>W>E Lane
WQW(E)->R>Q>W>E Jungle
Q is your main damage/farming spell and sets up your combo with R. Furthermore, with static mana cost and a cooldown reduction per rank this just screams max me. W will give you more tankiness and damage, which is why it's maxed second. Take it at level 1 and a second point at level 3 in the jungle, in order to stay healthier while clearing. E is mainly a utility spell and while it scales well with levels, the pull in at the highest rank is still the same and with 18 seconds cooldown at rank 5 you will probably still just use it once in a fight. So max E last.
In lane, use your Q for farming and harassment, try to avoid using shield too much to save mana. When you have your ultimate, you will probably be looking to hit your opponent with Q in order to be able to follow up. You can then either ult twice or ult once and try to hit another Q while chasing them, depending on how hard you can burst your opponent. Diana has no escapes, so be sure you know you are safe when you jump your opponent.
Q also gives you vision of your target and you should make use of that. It's great for checking brushes (some curved ones easier than others), farming wraiths or escaping in the jungle.
When ganking, try to bait out escapes first before following with R and then using E to pull them back. Diana is terrible at ganking pre-6, so if you jungle you shouldn't really bother with that too much.
4. Summoners
+ or
Flash best summoner, allows you to escape/disengage.
Ignite is the best for bursting your target down, I can't think of a summoner I'd rather have on Diana except for maybe exhaust. Teleport could be useful for a fringe case where your team wants to make use of it. Smite replaces it when jungling.
21/9/0 or 21/0/9 is a toss up really and you should judge which one you want depending on the match-up in mid. For jungle I'd shuffle some points around to make the clear smoother.
6. Runes
Marks - Magic pen or Attack speed
Magic pen marks offer you the best increase in damage you can get in this slot, so take them. In the jungle you can take attack speed to help your clear, but you can jungle without them. Magic pen is much better when fighting champions.
Seals - Armor, Mana regen, Health/level
When jungling most certainly take armor in this slot. Armor is a great choice for lane too, since it will help you deal with auto attack harass much better. Mana regen seals are a good alternative and can make up for the lost armor by providing more mana for shields. Health/level is viable, but on champions like Diana with a shield and high base health, resistances are preferred.
Glyphs - Flat/scaling magic resist, Flat AP
Against most champs that get played mid you want the flat mr in this slot, no contest there. When jungling you can go for flat AP or scaling magic resist. Flat AP will help your clear, but leave you in need of MR later in the game.
Quints - AP, Health Regen, Movement speed
Flat AP quints are pretty good on any ap champ and I recommend them for Diana too. They give Diana better farming, better jungle clear, stronger harassment/burst and a stronger shield. Health regen is best against lanes with strong harassment in lane and help you survive the laning phase. I'd suggest them vs cassio or swain for example. Movement speed quints are a viable alternative, movement speed is always a good stat to have. With a 900 range gap closer, getting close to a champion is often not an issue though, so they aren't crucial to Diana.
7. Build
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Start with boots and 3 pots for both jungle and lane. The movement speed too good.
You don't necessarily need Dorans rings for Diana, but they are nice to have.
Season 3 came along and as it looks, DFG is core on her again.
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I generally prefer Sorc shoes on her, but you are gonna be in melee and you are gonna get hit with cc, sometimes merc treads are the better choice.
Abyssal is great on Diana. With her shield and high base health, you want to get resistances. Furthermore the better part of her damage will be applied in melee range anyway, so the short aura range doesn't hurt her much.
Zhonyas has an amazing active which will help Diana survive when diving in and stall for cooldowns. I prefer having this over Deathcap usually.
Guardian Angel is great on anyone who dives into the enemies and anyone who can reposition quickly after getting up. This is an especially important item when you are the biggest threat on your team.
When you are in no fear of dying yourself, this with DFG will help you burst everything and everyone. It's expensive, but provides a lot of damage via ap.
Void Staff is a lategame item you get against high amounts of MR. Usually your Abyssal+Sorcs (and maybe Haunting Guise) should take care of the MR of most squishies.
Pretty much the same build I like to use when I go AP mid as Diana.
Boots + 3 > kages is always the way to start. Then it really depends how you're feeling against the enemy mid. Usually I do prefer to get DFG asap just for the added burst, but sometimes I like to grab Negatron into Abyssal after I get Kage's just because the magic resist + aura is extremely helpful, especially if you're going for some early team fights around dragon etc etc.
So, DFG & Abyssal should always be your first/second items. I feel hourglass should always be your 3rd. This gives you great MR from Abyssal and also great Armor from Hourglass, plus having the 2 sec invulnerability is priceless when team fights start and all your spells are on CD. Best thing to do is Q someone, R & DFG, W, E & Zhonyas. You'll then hopefully have a couple enemies stacked ontop of you due to your E, after zhonya's finishes your Q should be just coming off CD which then let's you Q someone away from the team fight to run away or it then just allows you to Q > R > R and hopefully finish somebody off.
I'm wondering what some thoughts are on Lich bane. All the stats are great for her and honestly you auto attack quite a bit with her so the Lich Bane proc would come in handy (not to mention the MR and movement speed). My only problem is I don't ever see a great time to build it on her because as I said I prefer sorcs > dfg > abyssal > hourglass > deathcap. I suppose you could build lich bane as your final 6th item but at that point you'd probably be better with a void staff for the magic pen. I suppose maybe going Lich Bane inplace of Abyssal could work out. I might have to mess around with that.
On October 12 2012 09:00 Praetorial wrote: Just wondering, what motivates the Exhaust pick over Ignite?
is it because Diana needs to stick to her target for the AP scaling auto?
That I took the wrong picture. Fixing it :D
On October 12 2012 08:53 SidianTheBard wrote: I'm wondering what some thoughts are on Lich bane. All the stats are great for her and honestly you auto attack quite a bit with her so the Lich Bane proc would come in handy (not to mention the MR and movement speed). My only problem is I don't ever see a great time to build it on her because as I said I prefer sorcs > dfg > abyssal > hourglass > deathcap. I suppose you could build lich bane as your final 6th item but at that point you'd probably be better with a void staff for the magic pen. I suppose maybe going Lich Bane inplace of Abyssal could work out. I might have to mess around with that.
Lichbanes problem is that it is very expensive and the proc is physical damage and before you have a lot of ap, the proc isn't even better than just the sheen proc. It's alright, but you gain more from other items.
How would you guys go about building Diana top? Obviously I'm looking at some sort of AP bruiserish play style, and because of that the more glass cannon midlane style doesn't seem so great. That combined with the DFG nerf makes me wonder what I should be getting instead.
Doran's on jungle Diana are good and reccomended by me. The manaregen is a necessary sustain since philostone isn't a good item on her (with her shield you shouldn't really need HP5 and you want to build AP) and it speeds up jungle significantly. I'd reccomend flat AP blues for jungle though. The increased clear speed is imo very worth it. You will be hurting for Mres in the midgame, but at least you will have more AP AND exp to show for it.
For jungle, I like Havoc more than Attack Speed. A lot of damage comes from your abilities, so the 1.5% damage increase that multiplies everything should be more than the 3% attack speed that will actually be about 2.6% autoattack damage increase and lvl1 and decrease with every level.
On October 26 2012 09:40 Scip wrote: Doran's on jungle Diana are good and reccomended by me. The manaregen is a necessary sustain since philostone isn't a good item on her (with her shield you shouldn't really need HP5 and you want to build AP) and it speeds up jungle significantly. I'd reccomend flat AP blues for jungle though. The increased clear speed is imo very worth it. You will be hurting for Mres in the midgame, but at least you will have more AP AND exp to show for it.
For jungle, I like Havoc more than Attack Speed. A lot of damage comes from your abilities, so the 1.5% damage increase that multiplies everything should be more than the 3% attack speed that will actually be about 2.6% autoattack damage increase and lvl1 and decrease with every level.
Alright. For jungling Dorans are probably required. But currently there really isn't much point in jungling with her. Her ganks pre-6 pretty much requires a Flash initiation.
Alright, I made some changes to the OP, working in scips suggestions for jungle and addressing items a bit.
Dorans are pretty good on her imo. I usually only get one though, which I feel gives enough stats to still make it worth it. After the DFG nerf, I need to figure out a new build too. I don't play LoL much currently though.
On October 26 2012 09:40 Scip wrote: Doran's on jungle Diana are good and reccomended by me. The manaregen is a necessary sustain since philostone isn't a good item on her (with her shield you shouldn't really need HP5 and you want to build AP) and it speeds up jungle significantly. I'd reccomend flat AP blues for jungle though. The increased clear speed is imo very worth it. You will be hurting for Mres in the midgame, but at least you will have more AP AND exp to show for it.
For jungle, I like Havoc more than Attack Speed. A lot of damage comes from your abilities, so the 1.5% damage increase that multiplies everything should be more than the 3% attack speed that will actually be about 2.6% autoattack damage increase and lvl1 and decrease with every level.
Alright. For jungling Dorans are probably required. But currently there really isn't much point in jungling with her. Her ganks pre-6 pretty much requires a Flash initiation.
thats like saying lee sin is not good in jungle because you cannot initiate with q in most cases but have to walk up for e. diana jungle seems to be very strong. Its just that her build is awkward because she can't go for a heavy ap build out of the jungle and cdr/tank items are not that great on her in comparison to junglers like skarner, amumu or maokai.
Indeed, the main problems I had with her were midgame and lategame. She jungles ridiculously fast and safely early game, and even faster once she gets her ultimate, but large amount of CC and tankiness are kind of expected from junglers at this point in time. I could see it working if you have some tanky middle lanes maybe like Malphite, or maybe Galio ? if he is still viable. She really needs someone to initiate teamfights for her diving-style.
Okay so I have been spamming a bunch of Diana games and I am now 12-4 and she brought me up to 1700 ELO for the first time.
I tend to go sorcs first unless I back with enough to straight up buy Guise, some games I skip Guise and when I do its generally lanes where I am having a tougher time where I will get a single dorans instead and go for an abyssal after sorcs. I like Both Zhonyas and Dcap after abyssal, if you are the main focus Zhonyas is helpful for your shield cooldown to come back up and if your super ahead or not the main focus DCap is obviously a great choice. I haven't once build DFG nor am I finding a reason to.
The Mpen builds provide enough burst against the squishy targets you are facing. If I were to ever finish a build it would be with GA and Void Staff.
Diana still feels super strong, she has really high burst and building her correctly gives her enough survivability and burst. I believe this is that build. She is a great stomper for solo que and great for more coordination due to her E and massive AoE on Q and the shield explosion. She also works in poke comps with her Q. Overall she is just very solid at practically everything so I would expect a few subtle nerfs sometime in the future if she catches on. If she doesnt catch on then abuse her IMO.
On a side note I use Kassadin to counter Diana. His silence totally shuts down her combo and he can match her dashing around. Diana also cant shut him down early so he can get his farm on.
Yeah, since the DFG nerf I don't care to go for it anymore and I do agree with the Sorc > Abyssal > Hourglass build. Usually I don't go Guise on her unless I can full buy it on my first time back, but even then I'd almost rather just grab a Blasting Ward or Negatron cloak just so I get that Abyssal so much earlier. It's usually a toss up though. If it's a more burst heavy mid I'd rather get abyssal asap, if not then Guise works well imo.
If I had to pick a counter for her I'd say Mordekaiser. He can shut her down pretty hard early. He can also farm better as well since he doesn't have to worry about mana. Although, it really depends on the enemy jungler though. I never Morde if they have a Maokai for instance because Diana + Maokai = Nope. Not getting away from that unless flash is up.
On October 27 2012 14:27 SidianTheBard wrote: Yeah, since the DFG nerf I don't care to go for it anymore and I do agree with the Sorc > Abyssal > Hourglass build. Usually I don't go Guise on her unless I can full buy it on my first time back, but even then I'd almost rather just grab a Blasting Ward or Negatron cloak just so I get that Abyssal so much earlier. It's usually a toss up though. If it's a more burst heavy mid I'd rather get abyssal asap, if not then Guise works well imo.
If I had to pick a counter for her I'd say Mordekaiser. He can shut her down pretty hard early. He can also farm better as well since he doesn't have to worry about mana. Although, it really depends on the enemy jungler though. I never Morde if they have a Maokai for instance because Diana + Maokai = Nope. Not getting away from that unless flash is up.
Morde is kind of boned this patch due to DFG nerf though... kind of hard to say if it will still be favourable for Mordekaiser.
On October 27 2012 14:27 SidianTheBard wrote: Yeah, since the DFG nerf I don't care to go for it anymore and I do agree with the Sorc > Abyssal > Hourglass build. Usually I don't go Guise on her unless I can full buy it on my first time back, but even then I'd almost rather just grab a Blasting Ward or Negatron cloak just so I get that Abyssal so much earlier. It's usually a toss up though. If it's a more burst heavy mid I'd rather get abyssal asap, if not then Guise works well imo.
If I had to pick a counter for her I'd say Mordekaiser. He can shut her down pretty hard early. He can also farm better as well since he doesn't have to worry about mana. Although, it really depends on the enemy jungler though. I never Morde if they have a Maokai for instance because Diana + Maokai = Nope. Not getting away from that unless flash is up.
If you have enough for guise straight up its way better than a blasting wand. Take your sorcs and guise bot lane and get a double kill. You will deal true damage. This is best in safer mid lanes. Diana is incredible at assisting ganks, she does so much damage and the pull back is really powerful. Guise is great if you intend to gank and roam a lot, you get it much faster than abyssal so you don't need as much farm which if you are roaming and ganking you will be missing some.
I skip Guise in tougher mid lanes and if I expect to gank less, abyssal is better if the first fight is one for dragon. The aura is stronger in those situations.
I disagree on morde being a counter, she assists ganks like crazy. He does not. And everyone ganks morde.
On October 27 2012 14:41 Navi wrote: anivia, vlad, bruisers tend to be good vs diana in terms of lane matchup all lanes become playable with a blue buff and or jungle support
I agree Anivia and some bruisers are good versus her. But why Vlad?
I have laned this twice and demolished him. I gave up an early kill because im a moron in one of the lanes and still destroyed him early. This was a lane I went Sorcs - Guise in because I was behind so I wanted to all in as fast as possible.
In my experience Vlad cannot match her burst at all early enough. As Diana I was just QRW auto till pool R ignite. His damage early wasn't nearly enough to match mine and I was able to tower dive him at level 7.
I understand you play at a much higher level than I do, so can you please explain how this is the case. I do not understand and I want to be able to play it right.
diana has no threat on vlad pre 6 vlad outsustain and can match her farm post 6 if vlad can juke qs (know when to walk forward instead of back or which side the blade curves) it is straightforward to punish her in lane or force her to buy large amounts of pots to maintain lane he has a better time escaping ganks than her, although she has more cc to assist ganks, so that is fairly even but the sustain and ability to farm midlane if that's your goal (late game vlad is stronger on the whole) is enough for me to call this a win for vlad in scaling and ability to lane
i.e. this is one of the lanes where vlad just chips away at you while farming up solidly, if the vlad just tries to head on engage (heck if most mages try to head on engage diana) he will lose ofc
On October 28 2012 02:57 Navi wrote: diana has no threat on vlad pre 6 vlad outsustain and can match her farm post 6 if vlad can juke qs (know when to walk forward instead of back or which side the blade curves) it is straightforward to punish her in lane or force her to buy large amounts of pots to maintain lane he has a better time escaping ganks than her, although she has more cc to assist ganks, so that is fairly even but the sustain and ability to farm midlane if that's your goal (late game vlad is stronger on the whole) is enough for me to call this a win for vlad in scaling and ability to lane
i.e. this is one of the lanes where vlad just chips away at you while farming up solidly, if the vlad just tries to head on engage (heck if most mages try to head on engage diana) he will lose ofc
So the lane is reliant on Vlad juking her Q?
I feel like in early team fights Diana does more than Vlad and can more easily be the deciding factor.
However I can see how if they are aiming for late then Vlad can be stronger if all things equal, but in solo que all things being equal and aiming for late are risky assumptions
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