The New LeBlanc - No Longer an Assassin - An In Depth Opinion on the Changes

I will prefix this post by saying that I love playing LeBlanc and I have put many games on her. I know how to play her well and understand where she is strong and where she is weak. I have also tried out the reworked LeBlanc on the PBE server and tried out her abilities.

Summary - TL/DR I see the changes made so far being huge nerfs to her overall gameplay. I will admit that her early game was given a noticeable buff, but her late game received considerable nerfs. She gains a lot of damage an all in potential during the laning phase. This is offset by her restrictions in the late game and forcing her to have a timer on how quick she can kill someone, even while excessively fed. In the end, she no longer plays like an assassin, but instead fits more of a diver style like Diana.

Abilities

This is probably where I have the most grievances against the new LeBlanc. In the early game, it has a small difference between the current LeBlanc and the new LeBlanc for lane bullying. The main difference here is that instead of immediately using distortion after a sigil of malice for burst damage, it's become either a distortion in to apply the passive to the enemy champ and the minions and a sigil to proc all those effected by the passive or using the new sigil to begin the passive and a distortion after a delay to trigger it. Either way, the 1.5 second delay doesn't hurt too much. The benefit to the passive comes in the form of wave clear. Using distortion on the wave, however, becomes a necessity to apply the passive on most of the creeps and using a sigil to trigger the passive. For me, I like this addition as it adds a lot of early game wave clear to LeBlanc that she has normally been lacking. Used properly, The combination can be used to harass and wave clear at the same time, so the extra use of mana and cooldowns isn't too much of a factor. Once the laning phase ends, this passive becomes the bane of my existence. It has straight up put a timer on how quickly someone can be killed. It doesn't matter how fed you are on LeBlanc and how far behind the enemy is, you cannot kill them faster than 1.5 seconds due to this passive. I played a bot game to get a feel for LeBlanc's new abilities and get a feel for how she plays, and at the 24 minute mark had 40 kills and 200 CS. I was level 16 and tried to kill a level 8 Cassiopeia bot that was level 8. It still took 1.5 seconds to kill her. I had RoA, Protobelt (both are now recommended), and Deathcap at the time and could not kill the Cassiopeia prior to that 1.5 second delay due to the passive. Give me any other AP mage, Viktor, Annie, TF, Ahri, Brand, Aurelion Sol, Lux, Katarina, Kassadin, Ziggs, even another Cassiopeia, and I will kill that level 8 Cassiopeia in under 1.5 seconds. To me, this is flat out unacceptable, especially for any so called "assassin" and is not a healthy form of gameplay.

Q - Shatter Orb There isn't too much to say about this ability as it's very similar to the current Q for LeBlanc, Sigil of Malice. The change of no longer applying the Sigil of Malice proc is an obvious nerf as the ability loses a lot of its strength. But since the proc was moved to the passive, it really isn't a major nerf.

W - Distortion Another spell that didn't really change much from the current version (thank god!), but did receive a nerf by putting a delay on the return time to 0.3 seconds. Although some people might think that this isn't much of a nerf and shouldn't even be mentioned, that 0.3 seconds is the difference between getting caught by CC, such as a Lux binding, while doing a turret dive on a low health opponent. The delay also prevents immediate snap-backs after a distortion during the laning phase that can be used to clear waves, harass opponents, or bait out enemy CC. Although it is a nerf and one that can be very obviously felt while playing LeBlanc, I can understand the need to do it and can respect Riot's decision to add it.

E - Ethereal Chains Another ability that got next to no changes. The added indicator for how far LeBlanc can be before the chain is broken has been a much needed addition for a long time.

R - Mimic This is where things get interesting again as Mimic is probably LeBlanc's most important play-making ability and requires the most game knowledge and experience to make the right decisions for how to use the ability. Similarly to the current LeBlanc, the mimic allows for the repeated use of one of the other abilities, but now also allows for R to be mimicked.

Toggling Mimics - I do like this change as it allows for a larger variety of combos to be performed. However, the change also results in a reduced spell activation time. The extra key press does take a noticeably longer time period to use the ability after having used the current mimic version for so long. Although arguably not a relevant increase in time, the extra .1 seconds or so it adds can still mean the difference killing the enemy and the enemy getting their last ability or auto off that can kills you. Overall, I see this as a wash and find the trade of the extra press for more options acceptable.

Mimic's New Clone - Although I find the idea interesting in concept, I have found the execution very lack luster. I feel like after people get used to seeing the new version, the short invisibility and slight moving of positioning will have very little effect on people. After watching the video for the preview of the ability, I can already see patterns appearing from the mimic such as the clone casting slightly ahead of the real LeBlanc and the real LeBlanc being the one displaced from the original position. Unless the clone will allow LeBlanc to dodge targeted CC when used, similar to Shaco, I don't think the clone will be all the useful.

RQ - This is again very similar to the current LeBlanc except now the combo of Q Mimicked-Q does no where near the same amount of damage (due to the change in the passive and sigil of malice). While I do find this to be rather annoying as it prevents blowing up priority targets quickly and accurately, I will accept it for what it is, although it is an obvious nerf. RW - This is almost the exact same as the current LeBlanc mimicked W and doesn't warrant much discussion. The change to toggling does still reduce how fast this can be performed, but it isn't very major. Also, to any posts thinking that you cannot double distort, don't worry, it still works. It's still possible to distort twice and choose which one to return to, although it feels a little odd trying to go back to the mimicked one when the last button hit was W instead of R, but that's more due to it being a habit from playing LeBlanc so much. RE - Similar to the mimicked distortion, there isn't much of a difference here so I won't really mention it. RR - Now this is something I find to be very interesting and can definitely see it having its purpose. The creation of a clone that tracks the nearest champion, gives sight, and is global seems honestly a little too strong. I see this as having a global blue trinket that is also a homing beacon to the nearest champion. This will be an amazing ability to use for checking barons, dragons, or even face checking bushes for enemies. There's also the use of it to try and get enemies to blow spells on the clone or just scouting for the enemy jungler before going all in on an opponent. It's a very unique ability and I do think Riot did well making this one, but I'm concerned for how powerful it may be. (Small side note: I'm not sure if this is an intentional game mechanic or not, but you cannot use the R mimic when the other mimic is on cooldown. Personally, I find this to be very weird and think it would be better if I could use the R mimic completely separately from the Q,W,E mimic.)

General Gameplay For the most part, LeBlanc's kit it relatively similar to the current one. The problem is that when it comes to actually playing the game and trying to use her throughout different stages of the game, she no longer feels like an assassin. A lot of this comes from her new passive and the required delay time of 1.5 seconds before she can kill anyone. The new delay results in two general styles of play: first style, LeBlanc has to initiate the passive countdown using a Q and hope they don't run away, making it so LeBlanc can't trigger the passive, or the second style, LeBlanc has to go all in, using W to get close, E for applying and procing the passive, and Q for additional damage. Although any of the abilities can be mimicked, E will be the most likely one to be mimicked as it is now LeBlanc's most damaging spell. This in itself is a huge problem, but I will get to that in a second. In the first style of play, unless in the laning phase of the game (and still occurring quite frequently there), the target opponent is just going to run away and wait for the 2.5 second window to wear off. They can also just force the use of distortion as a gap closer instead of a damaging spell in order to trigger the new sigil of malice, which again, reduces LeBlanc's damage and making her less like an assassin. In the second style, LeBlanc will generally use a distortion to get close to the target and use the first proc of Ethereal Chains to initiate the passive and the second part of Ethereal Chains to proc the passive. This means that LeBlanc is now forced to stand around their target for 1.5 seconds and no less than that as her new kit doesn't offer enough damage to kill anyone faster. LeBlanc isn't even guaranteed to kill her target after the passive proc either and may still have to stay around to try and do more damage. It's because she's forced to just stand around the enemy and really can't kill her target quickly that she no longer plays like an assassin, which Riot themselves describes as being champions that are designed to "quickly dispatch high-priority targets." She now plays much more along the lines of a diver, or as Riot defines it, a champ that is the "mobile portion of the Fighter class," and "excel[s] at singling out high-priority targets to blitz toward." Diver gives a much more accurate description of what LeBlanc does now in fights and seems to have become more similar to the way Diana (who is classified as a fighter) plays compared to that of other assassins such as Zed, Fizz, Talon, or Shaco. Her recommended items even reflect the change of LeBlanc's playstyle away from an assassin as she's now recommended to build a Rod of Ages as a first item, followed by a Deathcap and Protobelt. Building health and survivability is not how assassins should be played. Riot even defines their overarching class, slayers, as being "fragile but agile damage-focused" champions. Having around 3K health after 3 items and being level 18 doesn't describe a fragile champion. It describes one that wants to dive into a team and target a single champion (coughDIVERScough). It's because of this change in gameplay that either LeBlanc needs to be removed from the assassin class entirely, or some changes need to be made.

E - Ethereal Chains - LeBlanc's new strongest spell With this new rework, Leblanc's main damaging spell has switched from her Q to her E. In terms of damage, no other spell matches is. This is not how it should be! Ethereal Chains has always been a way to either proc Sigil of Malice, hold a target in place that lives through burst, or to keep divers/tanks off of LeBlanc so she can get away. The rework has made it so that Ethereal Chains is now a mandatory spell to use for damage. The root is now more of a side thought than the defining feature of the ability. Again, let me emphasize this, LeBlanc's CC should not be her most damaging ability. In a lot of ways, making Ethereal Chains the new powerhouse ability makes LeBlanc's Shatter Orb next to useless besides in two scenarios: triggering the sigil of malice on multiple targets (again, not very assassin like,) or two, hitting a target that's blocked by minions or other champions which prevent Ethereal Chains from hitting them. Other than those reasons, Shatter Orb seems extremely unimpressive and even rather pointless.

Suggestions Now I wouldn't be doing any favors if all I did was complain without giving some suggestions on how to improve the champion. The best one change I can think of to put LeBlanc into a better place is to make the timer of her passive decrease per level and put a cooldown on how often it can be applied to the same champion (which I believe is already in place.) I believe that if you were to reduce the timer on the passive to between 0.3 seconds and 0.5 seconds by level 18, Leblanc would return to her assassin playstyle. The starting timer may need changed to make nice round numbers for the decrements per level. An example would be that the delay = 1.3 - (0.05 * level). This would start the delay at 1.25 seconds at level 1 and decrease to 0.4 seconds by level 18. Retaining the delay even at 0.4 seconds would allow for an ample window of time in which LeBlanc could be stunned or the target could get away from LeBlanc with something like flash or Ezreal's arcane shift, while maintaining LeBlanc's ability to burst down squishies and punish those out of position. I also think that a change to Shatter Orb should be made to make it more important to LeBlanc's kit. An example would be to increase the damage dealt by the passive to champions if Shatter Orb is used to trigger the Sigil of Malice. This would give more incentive to mimic Shatter Orb along with give it more value to LeBlanc's kit especially since in most scenarios in the late game don't have LeBlanc applying the Sigil of Malice to more than one or two targets (such as jungle fights.) The increase in damage could remain fairly minor, like 2% increase at level 1 for Shatter Orb and increase to 10% by level 5 Shatter Orb. Similarly the mimicked version would increase the damage from 3% to 15% and would scale with levels in Shatter Orb. This would also force LeBlanc's to be slightly more mechanically gifted (which again caters towards assassins in which Riot says should be "high skill cap champions" and live up to the "skill fantast,") to make the most out of her kit and also make the choice between which skill to mimic more important than what the current rework is.

These are my overall thoughts on LeBlanc and I'm only posting this because I'm actually concerned for her gameplay in the future. Right now I think she's on the track to losing her assassin playstyle and I'd rather have her retain that instead of becoming a diver.

I'm also curious as to what everyone else thinks about her for the moment, so leave your opinions below.

Also, for those who want to see Riot's definitions of different champ classes and subclasses: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/gameplay/dev-blog-classes-subclasses