Diana is one of the strongest jungle champions in League of Legends season 12. Although she has been played in the mid lane, Diana’s changes have made her burst damage and jungle clear extremely effective. She can hold her own in a variety of situations such as duels, teamfights, and ganking.
Much like the other champions in League, Diana uses a variety of items to suit different situations she may find herself in during the game. While this is the case, Diana has some core items that best compliment her kit and will help bring out the best results.
Runes
Precision
Conqueror: Diana is going to be using abilities and auto attacks simultaneously, which produces tons of damage. With this rune, players will aim to maximize the potential output they can have in teamfights while also guaranteeing themselves some healing once Conqueror is fully stacked.
Triumph: While playing Diana, players’ goal should be going all-in on enemy carries to burst them down as quickly as possible. But it’s not advised to build tank items on Diana, so she’s going to be exposed to a lot of damage. Picking Triumph will try to enhance her survivability in late-game teamfights, while also granting additional gold and sustain after early ganks.
Legend: Tenacity: With Diana, the perfect setup would be to start snowballing as early as it is possible. Due to somewhat low mobility and no escape tools, players should pick Legend: Tenacity to increase their resistance to crowd control spells. With higher tenacity, you’ll close the gap between yourself and the opponent faster, and you will create escape routes for yourself as well.
Last Stand: On Diana, you will often find yourself low on health, so increasing your damage while you don’t have much health left in the tank seems like a sensible option.
Inspiration
Magical Footwear: Since Diana needs to build some damage as quickly as she can, spending gold on boots isn’t the brightest idea. Magical Footwear works just fine in many jungle champions, Diana included.
Cosmic Insight: Pivotal for many champions picked in the jungle position. It will lower your cooldown on Flash and Smite and your active items, which will come in handy on many occasions.
Bonuses: +10 percent attack speed, +nine adaptive force, +six armor
Starting items
Emberknife
Standard pick for junglers. Increases your damage to monsters, and after using Smite a couple of times it disappears permanently and upgrades your Summoner’s Spell. A must-have at the beginning on Diana jungle.
Refilliable Potion
A common choice for many junglers. The Refillable Potion provides you just enough health to replenish whenever you need it, and it refills itself every time you visit the fountain, which allows you to regenerate a bit of health here and there.
Core items
Hextech Rocketbelt
While there are a few other options that you could choose as your mythic item on Diana, like Night Harvester and Riftmaker, Hextech Rocketbelt is the best option in most cases. Since she’s a burst champion, enemies, especially squishy ones, will usually build magic resistance against you. This makes Hextech Rocketbelt pivotal since it grants your other legendary items additional magic penetration.
It also possesses a powerful active ability that will improve your one-shot potential. With its unique dash, players will also be granted another escape ability.
Zhonya’s Hourglass
Stacking armor is always handy in the current meta. Zhonya’s Hourglass not only gives you 45 points of the stat but also gives you another unique active skill, which will greatly increase your chances of survival in teamfights and will allow you for potential reset.
Sorcerer’s Shoes
With Sorcerer’s Shoes, players are able to ignore even more of the magic resistance that opponents have built. For mages and champions dealing AP-based damage, there is hardly a better alternative. Naturally, though, there are some instances where going for Plated Steelcaps or Mercury’s Threads makes more sense.
Late-game items
Rabadon’s Deathcap
If there’s an item in League that is associated with increasing your ability power, it’s Rabadon’s Deathcap. The item gives you 120 AP and increases the stat by a total of 35 percent. No other item is going to boost your damage later on in the game as much as Rabadon’s.
Shadowflame
Shadowflame also grants players an enormous amount of ability power (100), as well as health (200). This item, however, has made a name for itself for its unique passive, which ignores a certain portion of enemies’ magic resistance, depending on their level. For 3,000 gold, it’s hard to find a better option for Diana.
Nashor’s Tooth
An important part of Diana’s kit is her passive, which makes her every third basic attack cleave enemies nearby with increased damage. Therefore, obtaining items that will increase attack speed as well as your AP is a sensible choice. Luckily, there’s Nashor’s Tooth does exactly that. On top of that, the item comes with a unique passive that makes every basic attack deal damage on-hit.
Situational items
Void Staff
Today’s meta in League is full of AD-based champions. Nevertheless, that doesn’t necessarily mean that compositions full of AP-based champs are gone for good. In cases like these, consider buying Void Staff. It grants you 45 magic penetration and increases your ability power by 65.
Demonic Embrace
Demonic Embrace is an item that’s picked very rarely on Diana. Your primary job on the champion is to burst down squishies. Sometimes, however, the opposing squad may pick a composition full of tanks and bruisers. In that case, it’s better to stack up on some health. Demonic Embrace fits perfectly since it presents you with 450 health and 60 AP. Its passive will also provide you additional ability power equal to two percent of bonus health.
Morellonomicon
Choosing Morellonomicon makes sense when you find yourself facing compositions like the ones described above. Both Demonic Embrace and Morellonomicon work fine together. You’ll also be able to inflict Grevious Wounds on hurt enemies, which should do wonders versus those types of teams. Besides that, you may also want to pick Morellonomicon when playing against a comp that’s full of healing champs (Soraka, Sona, Gangplank). Applying Grevious Wounds on them is the first step to sending them to the fountain.
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