Boards›Gameplay

What happened to LeBlanc?

MakersF·8/21/2014, 10:45:53 AM·5 votes·2,669 views

In a not-so-recent patch Riot removed the silence from LeBlanc. After waiting a bit of time to let players adapt to the change, we can see that LB is kind of struggling (to use an euphemism), with a win rate of around 43-45% in diamond and a win rate of 43% across all the leagues

Why I linked the diamond statistic? To show that LB is not in a difficult position because of an high skill cap, and it is not in a difficult position because people pick her when they shouldn't ( at least, I expect Diamonds to pick her in average when it makes sense)

So, why did a facerolling champion become from terrible to play against to kind of UP? The damage remained the same, and the remove of the silence should mean that the opposing player can react to the aggression. This is what riot is thinking in their mind

LeBlanc's a champion who has a lot of power associated with her character - omnidirectional movement, high burst damage, precise target selection, a cool hat - so it's been difficult to give her meaningful counterplay without directly hurting that identity. We're taking a more deliberate approach here because we want LeBlanc to remain an exciting champion to play and watch, but removing the silence on Q means at least her opponents can fight back when she's QRWEing (or WQREing or WRQEing for those long range fancy plays) around the fight. That said, LeBlanc will definitely stay on our radar as we track how she's performing post-change.

But the effect was something else: LeBlan can not perform her combo anymore on the big majority of champions. The reason is simple: whatever root/snare/silence/knockup/stun (basically, whatever is not a slow) blocks her combo, so she can no longer make the Mimicked Q mark trigger.

Here are some mid champs: [remember that W and mimmiked W are dashes, not teleports, so you get CCed if it while in the air]

Lux roots you while you jump on her Veigar stuns you while you jump on him Xerath stuns you while you jump on him Ahri charms you while you jump on her Zed can avoid W with shadow Talon can E behind you Kata can E behind you Yasuo can knock up with Q while jumping Fizz can avoid the stack with troll pole Fiddle no way to stop drain, silences constantly, can channel the ulti in your face and you have no way to stop him.

There are many others which can out trade thanks to shields or damage as they now where you will land: Kassa, Ori, Velkoz, Malhazar.

And we should also remember that Braum wall blocks your Q,E, and Thresh E blocks your W, so that if they are in the team gets really hard for you to combo.

Now, you could say that this is fair, as it is not nice to get stomped in lane by an assassin which can go and snowball other lanes too. I agree with that, but the point of LB is snowballing early in order to give and advantage to the team. If she doesn't get a couple of kills at level 1-8, she wont do much the rest of the match. She is a high risk low reward pick, as a single mistake at early level compromise your whole game (opposed to, let's say, Yasuo, which will comeback even if he's 0/4 in lane)

So, what am I proposing? I don't have a solid reply here, I'm not in the balance team. I think making the W a flash would be terribly to strong, making her untargettable like fizz would people hate her even more before. Definitely she needs an interrupt like kassa Q where there was the silence before, but I'd like to go be a bit more innovative, and suggest the addition of one of this:

  • silence the target but allow whatever dash/movement/flash ability (hard to do as there is not an effect like that in lol, and hardly they'll introduce a new one)

  • silence the target for a really brief duration, like 0.3 s (with the QRW it would become around 0.4/0.5 secs, like blitz ulti silence)

  • make here immune to the next CC after a mark explodes for 0.2 secs (we want to give her the time to W on the target, but in teamfight if a teammate CC her this should stop her). Not refreshable with multiple triggers and not cumulative.

My point is: it was not fair when LB dived you under tower and you couldn't do anything to stop her, but right now she can hardly output the damage she need to output in order to be relevant in the game, as her combo is nullified by basically every mage/support.

What do you think? If you need to commentate with a "leblak is OP chomp, nerf111 nublord, destry her!!1one" please refrain to commentate, I'd like to have some constructive discussion here

EDIT: @Ghostcrawler mind to share your ideas about the problem and/or point us to the right dev to ask to?

34 Comments

iStarter8/21/2014, 2:22:39 PM3 votes

She's always had a low winrate, her recent popularity is what made her get hit by the nerf bat. The silence was a decent way to go about nerfing her without ruining the damage but like you stated, she lose an important of her combo that allowed her to output damage. Right now she basically jumps at someone and hopes they dont blow her up. She does need something though.

My personal proposal is putting the silence on her chain. That way they have time to react to the chain since it takes time to activate. This would allow counter play in some way and would require lb to actually be able to hit her e if she wants to be safe.

Sunfield8/21/2014, 10:54:54 AM3 votes

Im sure that wall of text has some good points to it... But the "So, why did a facerolling champion become from terrible to play against to kind of UP?" sentence baffled me.

Le Blanc has always had low win rates across all tiers. She was NEVER a faceroll champ. Its the competetive scene that made her famous. Once competetive scene dropped her, everyone did. Removing the silence didnt hurt her even half as much as lack of attention.

Those win rates you posted are almost the same that the ones from before her nerf

Earl Eulrich8/21/2014, 11:51:03 AM2 votes

She´s still really strong, she certainly does not need a Buff. And she always had a low winrate despite being damn strong.

Hyrum Graff8/22/2014, 7:58:24 PM2 votes

I'll start by saying up front that I agree with you that LB is weak right now, and could use SMALL buffs. I'll get to what I think those could be in a minute.

I DON'T agree with the reason you state she's weak. You say she has trouble proccing her mark, but she didn't receive any change in her ability to proc her mark. What she did get, was the ability for her opponents to trade with her - before, she'd q-w-e-w, then walk away, and you (a caster) couldn't do a thing about it. Now you can harass her while she walks back to safety, or all-in her if you're that type of champ.

So, what leblanc needs back is a way to avoid getting harassed or all-inned on her way back to safety, after a combo. But it can't be a silence like before.

That's just not healthy. Even if it's a skillshot silence, if LB is good at skillshots (or, more likely, W's on you and then point-blank silences you), there's no way to outplay her. Either she does her combo well and wins the trade, or does it poorly and loses the trade. More importantly,

#A silence isn't in line with Leblanc's theme as a deceiver

A deceiver doesn't get in your face and prevent you from doing anything back, she whacks you, then leaves you so confused that you don't know how to wack her back. Leblanc needs ways to trick her opponent into missing her with their attacks. She needs her clone at every engage.

I haven't thought about exactly how I'd like to see this work. When I do, I will likely create my own thread with proposed changes. At the moment, I'm thinking something along the lines of:

#Q: Mark of Deception. LB's next ability will trigger the mark. If she triggers the mark, she will become stealthed for 0.5 seconds. When the stealth ends, she creates a controllable clone of herself for 8 seconds. (ie, her passive triggers). This does not affect the cooldown of her passive, but LB cannot have a clone from both passive and Q.

Crazycatperson8/21/2014, 3:14:23 PM2 votes

I personally don't feel like leblanc is a good pick for solo queue in general, as she has to rely on the rest of her team in large-scale fights. She's still very strong in lane, removing the silence just means that it's more important to q-r-w people than to e-q-r them.

reiniat8/22/2014, 5:41:16 PM2 votes

I want to know how many people that use LeBlanc know that you shouldnt jump straight in front of the enemy but just near enough to deal the damage... Or how many people use WQE as harass now, or use ER in teamfights. How many people gets a kill pre-6 because the enemy was dumb enough to stay in lane with half health?

And even then she needs a buff, my idea? Add a shield to her Q (both the mark and the trigger)

Kazellion28/21/2014, 10:56:24 AM1 votes

Her damage was too safe therefore needed to destry her!!1one since leblak was OP chomp and needed nerf111 nublord.