League of Legends: One Small Step For Diana…
By Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG League Reporter
Diana is a bruiser assassin that primarily deals magic damage. She has a highly aggressive playstyle, with an extremely long range, spammable gap closer that allows her to leap straight at weak targets whenever she pleases. Her incredible shield allows her to jungle effectively, while her Crescent Strike gives her a strong harassment tool on mid or top lane. She plays very similarly to Akali, with Diana’s increased durability and ability to jungle being what differentiates them from each other.
Pros:
Extremely high burst
Destroys most mages on mid
Strong Jungler
Deadly level 6 ganks
Magical damage is uncommon on bruisers
Very strong shield
Cons:
Her curved skillshot can take some getting used to
All her crowd control is tied to one ability
Has very low gank potential until level 6
No sustain
If she’s fighting, she’s going all in. No half measures
Ability Summary
Moonsilver Blade [Passive]: Deals magic damage every three attacks, and grants a passive 20% attack speed buff. Lets her build AP and still have effective auto-attacks. Always try to have this up before leaping at an enemy.
Crescent Strike [Q]: Curved skillshot that damages and grants vision on all targets hit. Hits like a truck and is on a low cooldown. Insanely good harassment tool.
Pale Cascade [W]: Creates a shield around Diana, while also surrounding her with three spinning orbs. If these orbs hit an enemy, they’ll detonate, dealing damage in a small AoE. If all the orbs are consumed, the shield will refresh. Makes her incredibly tanky provided she’s in an enemy’s face, and does a fair bit of damage to boot. This also scales on AP, allowing her to build offensively while still getting some survivability. This thing is like Riven’s Valor, but with a magical bent.
Moonfall [E]: AoE pull centered on Diana that slows any everyone caught in its blast. Ideally used near the edge of the blast as an enemy is trying to get away, dragging them back into auto attack range. It’s a super charged version of Darius’ Apprehend.
Lunar Rush [R]: Long range, high damage targetted dash. This ability has a very short cooldown, which can be immediately reset if you leap to a target already hit by Crescent Strike. Possibly the strongest chasing tool in the game, and completely invalidates any attempt to protect an enemy carry.
Combos & Shenanigans
Probably the hardest thing about Diana is regularly landing her Crescent Strike. The curve is nearly at a 90 degree angle, and resembles a C when targeted directly upwards from Diana. This C will scale with how far away you aim the shot, but it will always maintain the same dimensions. The C is at its thickest in the middle, making hitting people far more reliable at medium range when aiming past your intended target.
The quickest way to get a handle on this unusual skillshot is to use it in the same way as any other, but always aim at a spot that is 90 degrees clockwise from where you would usually fire. So if you’re standing to the right of your enemy, rather than aiming to the left hand side of your screen, you would aim at the top. Once you’re past the initial hurdle of learning how to hit reliably with her Crescent Strike, she’s pretty simple to play.
Your main goal as Diana is going to be to get as close as possible as quickly as possible to the squishiest targets on an enemy team. Her damage output is so high that anyone without survivability items or abilities is going to die from a single burst. With her combination of high mobility and durability, she’s uniquely capable of getting straight to the heart of an enemy team, killing her target and letting the rest of her team mop up what’s left.
Before leaping at someone, try to make sure her passive is up, indicated by Diana glowing white. Keep up pressure with Crescent Strike, and when you score a hit, transform Diana into the moon fuelled woman-missile that she is. Immediately smash into your victim with her Lunar Rush, and trigger her Pale Cascade when they try to trade some damage with you. When they realize they have likely lost most of their health, your enemy will likely try to run, or at least try to attack while retreating. Wait for them to get just out of auto-attack range, then pull them straight back in with Moonfall. If they’re low on health, finish them with another Lunar Rush. If not, wait for Crescent strike to come off cooldown (this should only be a few seconds), and then hit them with the whole combo all over again. For Diana, relentless aggression usually will net you a kill.
Her jungling snowballs hard, starting out fairly slow but ramping up quickly as she gains levels and gold. Due to her damage all coming from a single burst, she can clear camps almost instantly once she’s got some levels under her belt. This makes her mid game counter jungling extremely effective, as she can run into the enemy jungle, blow up a camp and then run off before the enemy team even knows she was there. Her ganking can be deadly, as once she’s landed a Crescent Strike, she can let rip with her full combo.
Conclusions
Thematically, Diana doesn’t stand out much. She’s got a very cold, aloof personality that serves her well, but neither integrates well with her mechanics (like Draven), nor really leaps out through sheer performance (like Nasus). The visuals on her character are good, and really drive home her moon theme, but they don’t really make me like the character herself much. While she doesn’t grab attention, she also isn’t an infuriating sex-appeal mannequin that can do nothing but spout innuendo, so at least she’s a good deal more empathetic than last patch’s Zyra.
Her whole kit was built around leaping ahead of her team and turning the enemy carry into a red paste before they even know what’s going on. She even has enough survivability to actually survive her insane suicide charges into the middle of enemy teams, especially if she’s backed by a character with some strong crowd control. Amusingly, this actually makes Leona one of the better choices to assist her in teamfights, being an equally aggressive crowd controller.
She’s fun to play, though she doesn’t bring much new to LoL. There’s already a number of highly aggressive, high mobility characters, and the only thing that makes Diana really stand out is that she can actually survive after being a madwoman.
Final Verdict
Stick her on mid to win games. She’s currently looking very, very strong. Crescent Strike and Lunar Rush are likely going to get nerfed, as their damage output currently is far too high on a character with such good built in survivability. If you’re an aggressive player, there is little reason not to pick her up.
To discuss Diana yourselves, post in the massive League of Legends thread in the free to play MMOs section, or post in the comments section below. If you haven’t tried League of Legends yet, you’re missing out.
