Abilities Breakdown

[springboard type=”youtube” id=”0QAY7rNoMfk” player=”xbla001″ width=”640″ height=”400″ ] Special 1: Clone – Leon’s clone is one of the strangest abilities in the game, and one of the most useful. It can be used to tank tower damage, it can be used to dish damage TO towers, hold off droid armies, or just for abilities that have nothing to do with the clone itself. Everytime you use the ability, you go invisible and leave a clone down with a certain amount of health (based on upgrades) that stays there for a very, very long time or until it dies. While invisible, the clone will not go on cooldown, but once you do anything but jump you’ll break invisibility and cooldown will resume. This ability is great for escapes, or for assassinations, if you want to focus on the invisibility aspect. If you want to use it as a pushing utility, it’s amazing for that as well, dealing massive damage to turrets and anyone that gets in the way of the mad-slashing clones.

Special 2: Tongue – Leon is a bit of a romantic, as such he wishes to French kiss as many people as possible! Even if they’re robots. Or brains in jars (with three eyes). The tongue grab is pure evil when used correctly (as is all evil). Leon has a million ways to get close to an enemy, so never lead with the tongue, always use it as the enemy escapes or to force them to take tower damage. Pull enemies who are just barely in front of their tower out of safety, or grab ambushers out of bushes so they forfeit their advantage. Last but not least, in a sustained fight use it for damage- it hurts. The tongue, for all its uses, no matter what is always best for grabbing the weakest, slowest character and slashing it to pieces.

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Builds

Level 2 Build

Leon has a lot of his most powerful upgrades at the earliest levels. Like most of the other Awesomenauts, you really only have two choices here, but they’re awesome so… don’t fret.

Stab Stab Stab

Here we’ll leave out lifesteal on the tongue, movement on the clone, attack speed and the regeneration. The focus with this build is… kill everybody. Just. Everyone.

If your enemy team is full of squishy, easy to kill enemies, just max your base attack damage. Taking backstab early is always a good idea for the sheer damage output. On top of that, enemies will have trouble approaching your turrets since every time they turn to run away you’ll hit them for big damage. The strategy for this build is simple, hunt people and kill them. Communicate to your team that you don’t plan to be pushing much so they don’t waste time trying to do what you do best. Ideally, you’ll want to max your basic attack as quick as possible, but if you have to fight enemies like Voltar or Froggy G you may need health due to their defensive capabilities. Above all, don’t die with this build, without pushing lanes you’ll have to get money from killing enemies and any other solar you can manage while invisible. Once you’ve got your attacks maxed out, go for the attack clone upgrade so you can double your damage output in a fight and eventually be of help to the push.

Push Push Push

This build is all about pushing the enemy’s base, farming solar and thwarting your enemies’ defenses. Take tongue early and max the grab length, this will help your team win the early parts of the game where everyone is jumping around hitting each other. Grabbing unsuspecting foes from far away is a great way to shift the tides in your favor. As the game picks up, take your regeneration or health depending on the enemy team’s makeup, then max your clones out. The idea here is to take moving clones and attack clones so they’ll run at the turret and deal damage. This also applies to droids as your clones will farm for you. Since the clones’ damage is based off of your basic attack damage, build basic damage next. Ultimately  the goal of this build is to just keep spawning clones, fight enemies off with raw damage and grab enemies trying to make their escape.

When you’re losing…

If you can’t seem to get your clones to the tower, build up your health and regeneration and any other healing upgrades you brought. From there, you’re probably best off using your tongue to move enemies around and force them to break up their attacks. It’s really easy to escape enemies as Leon, but if they’re onto your escape methods, it’s fine to stop trying to assassinate people and play more defensively. Just because you’re an assassin doesn’t mean you have to play like one, and combining pretty much any other Awesomenaut with Leon’s tongue should result in kills when further combined with a friendly tower.

Our Build

Leon, unlike many characters, can’t simply force his strategy into any game he’s playing, Leon has to adapt (much like a chameleon, fancy that). If you try to go with the clone push strategy and keep dying to AoE damage with your clones never even reaching the enemy towers, you end up feeding and you lose. If you try to assassinate everyone but they’re too tanky and they fight you off, you’re wasting your time and your team loses the push war. The list continues, as such Leon has to adapt to every situation, and that’s what this build is for, but it plays to no extremes as a result. You’re welcome to play Leon to a particular extreme, but you’d best have a team backing you up!

We can’t assume you do though, so here are our suggestions:

If the enemy team is tanky…

If the enemy team is too thick to bust through, work the grab from as far away as possible to force them to move. Maxing tongue length (in accordance with the enemy strategy revealing itself) is a good idea; take the extra damage if they refuse to change strategies. The tongue grab damage is ridiculous especially since it turns into guaranteed hits if it’s successful. Take the slow on your basic attack to make each grab even more painful. If your team is fairly aggressive, take the slow and tongue grab early if you need to be particularly annoying (or if your enemies are flighty). The slow blade and tongue should get you a 100% kill rate on an enemy Yuri early game.

If the enemy team is aggressive…

Leon has plenty of ways to escape, but he’s not the best at defending himself. In this situation, taking attack clones with health will do wonders to soften up the enemies as they push the tower. Send out as many clones as possible, then follow up with basic attacks. The tongue won’t be as necessary here since the enemy is already at your front doorstep, so take damage and attack speed to follow up and really lay on the hurt before they turn their attention to you. Hit and run works wonders on a team too focused on pushing.

If the enemy team is defensive…

When everyone’s stacked against the towers fighting your whole team off with relative ease, keep the clones coming with follow move, health and attack abilities. Raise your base attack damage to raise the clones damage. At this point your job is to not get hit by things, send clones at the enemies and keep any assassins off your tower pushing team mates. Take the tongue and extra range to pick off the defenders whenever possible.

When you’re losing…

Refer to what to do when the enemy is aggressive. The biggest difficulty a losing Leon faces is the reconciliation of his role and his current success record. Don’t keep running out there if you’re dying, it doesn’t help. Play defensively, since Leon’s basic attacks hit everyone in their radius, it makes him great for cleaning up droid waves, so build health, regen and use clones to give droids more stuff to hack their way through.

Variants

Scuba Steve

Scuba Steve-ing, so named after a player we encountered who incorporated this strategy. To properly implement this, build max regen with both health capsules, regen while cloaked and basic attack damage. Then, run repeatedly at the enemy towers when nobody is around and hit the tower while jumping incessantly. As your health drops low or enemies approach, drop a clone and runaway. Repeat ad nauseum. Note: this only works if you win fast or your team farms while you don’t, or you’ll be too underleveled and lose in the end. However, it IS hilarious.

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