User blog comment:Ozuar/Don't Insult Anti-Meta: AP Leona vs. Fizz/@comment-9048637-20131213091250

I'm not going to say assassin Leona is completely unviable; there are lots of very good arguments why it's never going to be as good as support/tank Leona, or as most champions intended for the assassin role, but I've seen it, and it does work in a pubstompy kind of way - against people who can't dodge a max-range Zenith Blade, you effectively have a 700 range gap closer, which is something no assassin is going to sniff at. Then you get to laugh at being a high-damage character who still has quite a bit of effective tankiness. If you manage to snowball, it's pretty hilarious. More skilled players with never let you snowball, however, which is why it's not really viable in the sense most would use.

What I will definitely say, however, is that if you intend to build damage on Leona, AP is just not the way to go. Yeah, she has AP scalings; they're atrocious. You're far better off just building Sword of the Divine and a tonne of AD (yeah, you know your build's never going to hit mainstream when SotD is a critical component...). The only argument for AP ever would be Lich Bane, but... honestly, by the logic, anyone with relatively short cooldowns for frequent Spellblade procs can be an AP assassin. That feels kinda wrong to me. Would have to crunch more numbers than I'm currently willing to do to prove that it's ineffective, though.