Try on hit. She doesnt scale directly with AD, so there is no need to focus on that. While she does have a naturally good attack speed. Wits end, triforce, madreds, malady. all very effective on her.

Personally, because her AP ratios are far from good, I'd get a sheen over a Wota.

I would contest that her entire kit is designed to get her safely into melee range and keep her there. Her E gets you right into melee range. Her Q resets her autoattack and stuns the target for 1.25 seconds. This means you can E, autoattack, reset autoattack with Q for more damage plus stun, and still have time for another attack. Combined with Phage, this locks down one person indefinitely. W keeps you alive and continues to stack the Sunlight passive without the need for fancy target switching which is at best unfocused and at worst unreliable. Instead of needing 3.5 seconds to match the AP *including* the ult, you have now done three autoattacks in the span of 2.5 seconds, a total of 3.0 ratio. In 0.5 seconds, you will have matched the single target AP Burst and can still be doing damage until your abilities are off cooldown. Overall, once the abilities are off cooldown 9.4 seconds later, you have dealt somewhere between two and three times the damage of the original AP Burst build and will continue to do so the longer the teamfight lasts.

Concerning the multi-target AP Burst, if we assume that you don't manage to kill someone in your initial burst, we must then examine what happens afterwards. First, a question: if you are a one-trick pony, as AP Burst is, what point is there to target you after you have used your abilities? By building AP Burst and successfully landing your abilities, you immediately fail your job as a tank, as you now draw no threat.

But let's say that they do consider you a threat. When your abilities come off cooldown, will you will do another 5.1 of AP ratio? No. Because your ultimate is down, you will only deal 2.7 AP ratio worth of damage in your next burst. So over the course of two sets of cooldowns, let's say 9.4 seconds, you will actually deal 7.8 AP ratio worth of damage, assuming you hit three targets again (despite how unlikely that probably is). Adjusted by price, an autoattack at 1.0 AS would need 14.43 seconds to deal the same amount of damage as the AP Burst.

So we can safely say that at 14.43 seconds into a teamfight, AD damage matches AP damage, not including the Q reset autoattack trick. If we continue the trend, we see that AP falls off quite quickly while AD rises consistently. If you plan for teamfights to last less than 14.43 seconds, AP Burst seems superior. If you plan for teamfights to last longer than 14.43 seconds, AD is the superior choice. Since I am uncertain how long a teamfight will last or whether or not I can hit three people at once but am sure that I will always be in melee because of my E, Q, and Phage, I prefer AD.

We have yet to consider another aspect of AD, however: utility. Unlike AP, AD can be used more efficiently for all of the following tasks: farming, taking down towers and inhibitors, jungling/dragon/baron. This alone is a very strong case for AD builds: being able to help your team with tasks other than teamfighting means your character is not completely useless in other parts of the game.

Even with all of this considered, there aren't many spaces in an initiation tank's build for damage items. If I had to put a damage item in one slot, it'd likely be a Wit's End and not anything specifically AP or AD. More attack speed lets you do more damage while your spells are on cooldown, merely attacking increases your MR so you're more resilient, and 42 magic damage per hit with that kind of attack speed behind it will likely serve you better than picking up something like Atmas, especially if you got a Sunfire Cape. It also helps her farm quicker. The only thing AD has over it at this point is tower damage.

But, generally speaking, you have to dedicate too many slots to tank and CDR items so you can actually do your job. Any kind of thoughts about increasing damage output would be secondary.

With weak mitigation, and aoe disruption, I find she is terrible at late game or 5 man initiation. Its better to play with someone else fairly tanky, and double init, or play as counter initiation.

Thanks for all those who shows interests. I wonder if the reaction would've been any similar if I had posted on my "DoransTroll" account, haha.

For those of you who thinks that her ratio are low--AoE 'em minions. If you fight inside a minion group, you're going to heal a butt load.

The key here is build augmentation (plugging holes). Champions like Leona already excel at 1 area or another. Taking one as priority (damage or CD) means giving up the other. Using risk analysis, I am simply pointing out that a third variable (spell vamp) can marry the two together. Luckily, WotA is dirt cheap and has excellent item path. It is not meant to give her carry level damage--it is meant to make her more of a threat, but more importantly allowing her to function as a late game tank (by remaining in the fight longer), similar to old Alistar.

Now multiply that into EHP compared to other builds--AD packs much less armor, especially since Triforce is 4000G. It also clogs up your inventory (build path factor) for a third of the game with items that are not really used for tanking.
(My) Leona is still a tank, not a DPS. Building higher damage at the cost of her tanking power is not an option (for my purpose). I do not doubt that AD has better damage, but what she needs is CDR and survivability--something pure AD or AP build does not give.

I'm not sure I understand when you say she has an armor or MR hole to plug... Build a Brutalizer, receive AD, CDR.

I don't see how two stuns and free 70 AR/MR for 6 seconds could possibly be considered "weak mitigation".

We have different assumption--you're trying to make DPS Leona (try tanking with that, I dare you). I'm making a tank Leona (wouldn't want to use that for DPS, trust me).

70AR+MR = awesome. But without CDR, you're looking at near uselessness as far as CC and damage goes.

So your proposal is build AD. That would augment her damage, but remove her entirely from tanking role. There is no AD champ that doesn't build some kind of life steal, unless they have innate lifesteal (or heal) like WW, Irelia, etc. You can build Brutalizer, but you would need to invest an extra few thousand golds into life steal item in order to stay in the fight, or rely on regen items (again, a few thousand golds for reliable regen). Because trust me, when the barrage comes in, a piddly 70AR/MR (without extra from items, since you just sank a few k's into damage) is not going to keep you alive. This is especially bad for Leona, since she does not have the ability to split up enemy groups. (You could Zenith to the back, Shield the DPS, then bomb the main enemy group with your ult, but that would only isolate one person while leaving most of your team at the mercy of your ult (which is a short stun)..a very risky gambit in my opinion...even if I pull it more often than I should.)

The reason I propose WotA is because it covers your damage as far as you need for tanking. But beyond anything else, it has extra longevity factor (spellvamp) built in, all for just about 2100g.

If you want an ap tank pick amumu his passive takes mr off whoever he headbutts, his bandage toss has a 1:1 ratio takes a little more skill to use but only takes up one spell slot instead of 2, His AoE % aoe also does base drain, his close aoe does good damage blocks a little bit of damage and has a short cooldown if hit, and last but not least he has a huge Aoe ult with a 1:1 ratio that can also snare the enemy team and is way easier to land then leonas ult. And to top it all off he jungles like a boss and only costs 1350 ip. Im sorry but leona can't beat that.