Leon Chameleon – A Comprehensive Guide

Overview

This guide will try to explain as much as possible about everyone’s favourite French chameleon – his strengths, weakenesses, tactics on how to play him, a large amount of different builds, explained, as well as synergies with other Nauts.

Introduction

I see you have found this guide! Well done on picking Leon as your Awesomenaut. He is potentially one of the most powerful and scary ‘Nauts in the game if played correctly. This guide will attempt to help you reach that level of skill, by providing a variety of builds manipulating nearly everything that can be done with Leon

An Introduction to Leon Chameleon

Leon as a character fits under the role of melee assassin. This means his main way of dealing damage (which in Leon’s case is his auto-attack) is a melee attack, and he has ways to get his opponents into melee range to capitalise on is. Leon is one of the best characters for taking on opponents alone, since while other characters have better damage and burst, he has the advantage of being able to initiate nearly flawlessly on most characters and cripple them before they actually have a chance to react, pulling 1v1 fights heavily into Leon’s favour. Saying this, though, there are other ways to build into Leon rather than focusing on assassination and 1 versus 1 combat, which will be covered later. In the current meta, Leon is one of the 2 most powerful initiators in the game along with Skolldir.

Leon’s Base Skills and Stats.

Now you have at least a basic understanding of the role of Leon, I shall go on to list his stats, skills and upgrades.

Tongue Snatch
Base Damage – 12, hits twice
Cooldown – 7 seconds
Range – 6.6

Tongue Snatch is Leon’s best initiation tool. As well as dealing damage, it pulls any enemy Awesomenaut to where you are standing when you attack. This is his best way to get into melee range with a fleeing enemy, or to begin a fight. This is also his main source of burst damage.
Tongue Snatch pierces through any non-Awesomenaut target, but stops when it hits one or reaches max range and pulls back for the 2nd hit.

Tongue Snatch Upgrades
Spiked tongue piercing – 140 Solar, 3 stages. Increases damage of Tongue Snatch by 3 per hit.
Get kinky with this spiky accessorie.

This is a good upgrade, but outshone by Morning Star Piercing. Using them both together can make your tongue very painful, but if you’re only going to use one take Morning Star.

Tongue stretcher – 145 Solar, 1 stage, increases range of Tongue Snatch by 2.2.
Instructions: Apply sticky tape to tip of tongue, then pull and glue to the back of your head.

This upgrade is good. It makes it easier for all you poor little scrubs out there to hit at least something with the tongue. As well as that, it makes it easier and less risky to pull someone across the whole map.

Cheese & garlic mints – 150 Solar, 2 stages, adds 0.8 seconds of silence to Tongue Snatch per stage.
Reek like a real human.

This is one of the best synergy upgrades with Tongue Stretcher. Combine the two, and hope your team actually have brain cells, and then not even the fastest Frog will be able to escape being silence-pulled into a whole team! A nice item to take along with you when you know your team isn’t crap, and to help with those pesky Cocos that just pop sanic blaze and charge away as soon as you pull them.

Steel false teeth – 160 Solar, 2 stages, adds +8 lifesteal to Tongue Snatch per stage.
Now you can eat everything, even your car!

A hidden gem. If you’re swapping out Magnet Piercing for Tree like most people are now (myself included), this is a GREAT replacement for Regen. You can regain 64 HEALTH just from tonguing a creep wave! Recommended.

Morning star piercing – 370 Solar, 1 stage, increases damage of Tongue Snatch by 9 per hit.
Newest in our line of killer jewellery.

24 damage really isn’t enough on your tongue, and you don’t want to take Spiked Tongue because of what I said before. Solution – take this upgrade instead! It has exactly the same effect as Spiked but for 50 Solar cheaper. Highly recommended – this should nearly always be on your tongue loadout.

Magnet piercing – 60 Solar, 1 stage, each successful hit grants 1 solar.
WARNING: This product may cause spaceships to fly in your face.

Not really worth it after the patch. Someone did a test on it (I can’t remember your name, sorry!) and said that you can only make this upgrade worth it by tonguing a droid wave every single time it comes off cooldown, and droids have a longer spawning time than tongue cooldown. Solar tree outclasses it now.

Cloaking Skin
Cooldown – 10 seconds
Dummy HP – 40

Leon turns invisible, leaving a dummy behind to confuse enemies. This skill is great for getting close to an enemy undetected, and the clones can be made to be very versatile as well. It can also be used as a decent getaway tool, as you can cloak and go where you wouldn’t be expected to run to, or just completely take a different path to where they are going.

Cloaking Skin Upgrades
Surprise party mask – 140 Solar, 2 stages, increases the damage of the decloaking strike by 10 per stage.
SURPRISE! Happy stab-you-in-the-neck day!

Very painful. This upgrade works best in pubs on a more brawler-esque Leon, but not so well on an initiator since you’ll generally be tonguing out of cloak and won’t find a good use for this. Good for pubs, not very good in competitive.

Pinot Noir – 170 Solar, 1 stage, increases regen while cloaked by 5HP/s
Fruity, but with a horrible metallic aftertaste.

If you can find a space outside of clone-spam Leon in your cloak loadout, take this. Stacked with regen this is pretty strong. Recommended.

Basic AI chip – 205 Solar, 1 stage, lets your dummy walk.
It’s alive! It’s ALIVE!

This is a staple to Clone Army Leons. It is also fairly useless outside of a clonespam Leon. Only take it if that’s what you’re going for.

Aggressive AI chip – 225 Solar, 1 stage, lets your dummy attack.
Weaponise your friend in crime.

This upgrade is kind of in the same situation as Basic AI, but you can put one in the creep area and hope that the creeps spawn before the clone times out, or just put clones in really annoying places for the enemy team. Even so, it’s use is limited outside of a Clone Army build where it is the other staple clone upgrade.

Extra battery pack – 205 Solar, 1 stage, increases health of the dummy by 40 and longevity by 8s.
For those long lonesome nights, when you need a friend.

This is great… for clone army. (Who would have ever guessed?) Outside of clone army, all it does is let your useless clones be useless for an even longer time, because admit it, you haven’t seen someone fall for a clone before, have you?

Blow up doll – 200 Solar, 2 stages, dummy blows up for 25 damage per stage on death.
It’s dead! It’s DEAD!

This is the one you take is you’re not going Clone Army. If you leave it on the lane and droids kill it, that’s a fair amount of their health gone. It also works in a Suicide Clone build.

Slash
Damage – 8
Attack speed – 136.4
Range – 3.2

This is Leon’s main damage-dealing method – Slash, his melee auto attack. This is not very powerful at base but when upgraded can deal some of the best potential DPS in the game.

Slash Upgrades
Chainsaw addon – 210 Solar, 3 stages, increases damage of slash by 2 per stage.
In the French cuisine, you need a good knife.

This upgrade is pretty much mandatory. But face it, nine times out of ten DPS increasing upgrades are mandatory.

Enhanced muscle fibers – 200 Solar, 2 stages, increases attack speed of slash by 15% per stage.
Cut any vegetable or fiend in the blink of an eye.

And this is one of the one tenth. This upgrade is very helpful to have, but does not deal as much as Chainsaw can do, and as far as I know Leon isn’t a pacifist.

Clover of honour – 175 Solar, 2 stages, increased damage of the 3rd consecutive hit by 6 per stage.
Awarded to the heroes of the first AI war or whoever has 175 solar.

It can be very potent if you can use it well, but generally it’s less powerful than, say, Backstab. It can be used well by skilled players, in a clone army build (clones never miss droids) or a full Burst build.

Backstab blade – 180 Solar, 2 stages, increases damage by 4 per stage when striking the target’s back.
The backside of this blade is extra sharp.

This upgrade has mixed reactions from people. I personally think it is a very good upgrade, but doesn’t shine as much without Damage and EMF stacked with it. Then you get 65.63 DPS, the second highest in the game.

Hungry sword – 180 Solar, 1 stage, adds a 20% lifesteal to slash.
Because war is give and take

I wouldn’t recommend this outside of a Sustain Leon build. If you have one though, it’s mandatory for the build.

Electrifier – 160 Solar, 2 stages, adds a 12.5% slow effect per stage to slash.
Batteries not included.

Very VERY helpful. As well as reducing their speed and jump height, it gives slower allies a chance to catch up. Recommended.

General tips

This section of the guide lists general tips for Leon, from basic things that everyone should know about to less well-known tactics to give you the edge.

1. (bolded for importance) DO NOT STAY IN STEALTH AND WAIT FOR A LOW HEALTH ENEMY TO APPEAR. YOU WILL NOT HELP YOUR TEAM BY DOING THIS, WHEN YOU COULD BE OUT FARMING CREEPS TO BOOST YOUR LEVEL, PARTICIPATING IN TEAMFIGHTS OR PUSHING. IF THERE IS ONE THING YOU SHOULD LEARN FROM THIS GUIDE, THIS IS IT.
2. You can ‘pre-load’, as it is called, Clover of Honour strikes. Because the amount of hits it’s counted never wears off until you miss, you could hit a droid twice, then attack an enemy with it and you will get the bonus damage.
3 Backstab Blade is great for clearing droid waves combined with your Tongue. With Backstab Blade you can jump over the droid, backstab it until it turns around, then jump back over it and repeat.
4. Magnet Piercing is tied with Baby Kuri Mammoth for being the worst upgrade in the game. Leave home without it!
5. Be careful when you’re in stealth not to reveal yourself. Taking damage will show the damage number where your position was when you got hit. Poison and Burn leave a poison and flame effect where you are, respectively, until they wear off. All Crowd Control (knockback is not counted as one for the sake of clarity) will leave an effect on your character as well, marking where you are until it wears off. Raelynn’s Snipe will mark you as long as she has her laserpointer on you, and picking up Solar will also reveal where you are, as will picking up health packs.
6. This one is more unknown, but you know the pads on AI Station that light up when you step on them? A cloaked Leon will light them up too, so be extra-careful there!
7. If you get invisibility from another source, be it Vinnie’s Smokescreen, or the Aiguillon Stealth Orb, you can get the +20 damage from Surprise Party Mask from those as well. So you could find a nice cute killable target, take the orb and hit him for an extra 20 damage, have a Vinnie pop Invis cloud on your face and hit him for another extra 20 damage and finally use your own Stealth for a total of 60 extra damage.

Leon Builds – Burst-focused Leon

As mentioned before, Leon is quite flexible and manipulable. He can be built in quite a few different ways but the 3 main ones are Bursty Leon, DPS Leon and Clone Army Leon. The way this section will be talking about is Bursty Leon.

Burst is my personal favourite way to play Leon. You can iniitiate with a very high amount of damage into someone’s face, which will generally take off about half their HP bar before the real fight actually starts.
The first build is for a pure bursty Leon. You will be able to melt a LOT of HP VERY quickly with a max of 114 burst from both of your skills, but after that your DPS is not as amazing as it could be (it’s still great though, don’t get me wrong).
You can buy Pills and/or Regen earlier if you would prefer. Tongue damage can also be rushed to deal with an annoying Gnaw, especially effective if the weeds don’t have Fertilizer. Remember that pre-loading is required if you want to get the full effect out of your skills. As well as this, you need to remember to be behind the opponent to get the max burst possible from the combo. A reason to bring Backstab as well as for the burst is thad quite a few people will be inclined to run after 114 burst in their face (or the back of their face if you want to get technical about it) and Backstab will punish them even more for it. Blow up doll couls be swapped for any of the other clone upgrades but I feel that Blow up is better because it’s the only one that can really work well on its own (clearing droid waves).

Pros –
Amazing burst
Respectable DPS
Strong presence on the battlefield when people realise how powerful you actually are

Cons –
Backstab can be countered by turning around
Less DPS potential than the other builds
No slowblade to make it harder for people to escape

You could also do what I do, and use a more hybrid build between DPS and Burst (still more focused on burst).
This build is generally the same as the other Burst build, but you’re swapping out the extra 20 burst for better utility and DPS

Pros –
Better chance to kill them if they survive the initial burst
Slow Blade
More reliable DPS that can’t be countered by turning around.
20 damage is a great trade-off for slow

Cons –
Not the highest burst you can get
14-14-26 damage can really surprise people (or with backstab 22-22-34), and you will not be able to do this.

Leon Builds – DPS Leon

If you feel like the pain should take longer but be just as horrible, there are the DPS builds. You will not absolutely murder HP bars in 1 second, but you won’t have to wait for your skills to come off cooldown to be able to destroy the back of someone’s face.
Like before, I will be showing off 2 builds. The first one I’m showing is as follows:
This build is more focused on dealing high DPS in a short amount of time, hence having Backstab instead of anything else. It can very easily kill people who aren’t paying enough attention, punishes overextenders very well and can effectively force someone back, or kill them if they’re far enough away from their team. It also takes one stage of Damage to inflict a decent amount of pain when you pull them, and Range so you can pull them back into the omnipotent blade of destruction that is your Leon build. Unlike the Burst build, where tongue is a farming and a burst tool and not much else, this one, as well as being good for farming, still has decent damage and great ranged initiation.

Pros –
Good ranged initiation
High DPS
Doesn’t rely on skills to deal max damage
Cons –
No slow blade
No good burst in a game where burst is king

There is another variation on this build (as I said I’m showcasing 2 builds of each main type. The next one does not deal as much damage, but focuses more on debuffs to render the opponents’ attempts to escape ineffective as you go in for the kill.
The idea of swapping out damage options for disabling options is to manipulate Leon (like I said before, he is a character with a very big space for changing and build diversity) to make him less of the assassin he is normally, but more of a team player and a powerful initiator, pulling an enemy in, slowing and silencing them and having your team do most of the damage while you keep them slowed.
Pros –
Good team player
Silence and slows put the pressure on slippery nauts a lot more, namely Coco, Froggy and to an extent, Vinnie and other Leons.
Great initiation skills
Clone army
Cons –
Less DPS than the earlier build
Worse in pubs, where you generally have to expect the worst from your teammates
No good burst

Leon Builds – Clone Army Builds

The last main way to build Leon is with a Clone Army build. For anyone unfamilliar, Clone Army is the name for a Leon build that generally ignores the bursty and DPS ways of playing Leon, and focuses on upgrading clones to push lanes easier. Clone Army Leons can be tricky to deal with sometimes since the clones themselves inherit half of the damage their owner has (4 at base, 7 if the Leon has maxed Chainsaw), they inherit the same attack speed, Clover of Honour, which also has its damage halved, slow blade and backstab. They also use Hungry Sword, an upgrade that one of the 2 Clone Army builds showcases, but they do not heal themselves, they heal the Leon that controls them.

Swiftly onto build number 1:
This one is a more offensive Clone Army build, focused on pushing and generally harassing with clones. Slow could be debatable, but it’s still highly useful when you’re attempting to get a kill yourself. If you don’t take Slow, take Clover instead. This build is very close to the Burst build #2 which I showed earlier, excpet the clone row is swapped out for these clone upgrades.
Pros –
Decent damage potential
Pushing and harassing
Slows. Slows EVERYWHERE.
Cons –
The damage is only decent, nothing is outstanding
It’s more of a hybrid build so nothing is really focused into for damage.
Kills are less likely.

The last build I will be showcasing in this guide (for now!) is more of a ‘fun’ build. The idea of it is not to be an assassin at all, but you end up with a lot of sustain from all the lifesteal, and clone lifesteal. This is an idea I have tried expanding on, and have had limited success, but since I’m sticking with the whole “two builds for one tactic” idea I’m not going to publish it until I think of a good alternative build for it.
Anyway, the build is as follows:
The general idea, like I said, is not focusing on kills at all. You can’t tank but you can take pokes and heal them off easily with Lifesteal Tongue (64 health per creep wave? Yes please!), 4 extra health per hit (8.352 per second from your blade, 4.176 per second from each clone) for a potential total of 20.88 heals per second. Of course, you won’t be able to keep all 3 clones up at the same time, and you won’t be able to keep hitting something all the time, but this is a really high number, even if you can manage to keep it up for just one second.
Pros –
VERY good sustain (20HP/s potentially + 32/64 potential burst heal every 8 seconds)
Pokes will be able to be healed off very easily
Cons –
Really not very easy to secure a kill with this. No Slow Blade or Backstab severely hinders the killing potential.
It’s not very easy to get to that point of regen.

Leon Builds – Community Builds!

This is the section where I will list the builds of community members who agree to let me use their builds in this (you will be given credit for the build, do not worry!). The template I would like builds to be laid out in is this:

Title
Summary
Nautsbuilder link
More in-depth description and choices

Thanks in advance!

Synergies – Leon’s Friends and Foes

Like all characters, Leon has ‘Nauts that he works especially well with, and also characters that he has to watch out for and act extra-careful around so to not give away free solar. As probably one of the best initiators in the game so far, if not the best one, he has a lot of good synergies, but these ones are some of the best:
Yuri – We’ve all seen Tongue into Mines. It makes you have to act extra careful aroumd Yuri or just his mines in general, or you will suffer a lot.
Derpl – Tongue into Grid Traps is less seen, but is nearly just as deadly. You have to remember that it will most likelly end up with a 95 damage nuke on your face and both Leon and Derpl wailing on you. It hurts.
Raelynn – Tongue through rift. It’s basically a 4 seconds stun if Slow is fully upgraded.
Skolldir – This one is harder to pull off but if you do get hit by it you’re most likely just as dead. Leon pulls an enemy into Skolldir, who then Oily Throws them. It’s much safer to get kills as Skolldir if you have a Leon on your team doing this rather than running into their face yourself.
Clunk – Tongue into a Clunk that’s priming explode, or if it’s a good Clunk he can probably manage to land a snaresplode this way
Gnaw – Not as effective as the other builds unless Gnaw has a full damage weeds build, but Tongue into a Weedling nest can hurt a lot. One of the saving points of it is that it doesn’t require the Leon to be actively following Gnaw around.

Like I mentioned before, Leon also has a lot of characters that he should watch out for:
Clunk – One of the characters he synergises well with is also one of his hardest counters. If Leon tries to initiate into a Clunk, he will probably die from snaresplode, or at least be forced to retreat.
Skolldir – If you do get thrown, you’ll most likely have to retreat unless he does not have Oily, though that means he will most likely have 80 damage throw, which is only 20 less than a base oily combo. (45 less if the Skolldir knows how to activate the 3rd punch glitch)
Raelynn – Raelynn can scan for you by waving her Snipe laserpointer around and it will turn yellow if it hits you, as well as putting a mark over you for the time it is on you.
Yuri – Yuri can do the same with Slow Laser. He can swing it around and it will mark where you are with the “Slowed” debuff icon over you.
Derpl – Even base Siege Mode can nearly outDPS a DPS AA build without backstab. Backstab gives you the upper hand, as long as you can bait out his nuke or wait for him ro fine it before attacking.
Lonestar – Facemite. Missiles. Bull. What more is there to say?

Changelog

V1.4 – Changed some upgrade descriptions, gave credit to people who I forgot to before.
V1.3 – Updated builds and fixed some very embarrasing errors.
V1.2 – Updated the skills & upgrades section, giving my own opinion on every upgrade.
V1.1 – Added Synergies since I forgot to do it in the first release.
V1.0 – This guide was made

The end… or is it?

This is the end of the guide for now, I very much appreciate you reading through this great wall of builds! Since this is a “comprehensive” guide, I’d very much appreciete other builds and tactics to add to this guide! Leave it in the comments or get hold of my Steam somehow (Generally I ignore random friend requests, please tell me you want to duscuss the build via a profile comment and then I know to accept). Feedback is obviously welcome in the comments section (please only CONSTRUCTIVE criticism if you do have something to criticise me on, flamey comments are more likely for me to ignore, and generally make you seem like a bad person), and I will add anything you guys say that I missed out, or any builds that you guys want to add, and your name will go into the guide as well! I want to give a special shout-out to rpvarela and the Wiki admins, who have kept the Wiki going which has been a valuable asset to help me write this, and also Leimi, the person who made Nautsbuilder!
Once again, thank you for managing to read through all of this!