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What happened to LeBlanc?

MakersF··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

Sunfield3 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

MakersF3 votes

Just go check the matchup where she was strong before nerf and now. She should have destroyed Veigar: now he handles her pre6 just fine and instakill her at 6. She should have raped Ryze: now she won't combo over him ever due to cage. She should have erased fizz: now he troll poles and she won't land the combo.

Agaist champions that can not retaliate she's still really strong, but against the BIG number of champs that have a CC she can not combo any longer. And please, let's not forget that if she doesn't gets rolling before level 10, she wont do a thing in the whole game. Use her as a counterpick you say? The mid champs that don't counter her are really, really, really few, and many are not usually picked exactly because they lack that type of CC (now populare there is only Orianna that i can think of, but she scales greatly and has good utility, plus a shield to mitigate the DMG in lane)

BTW, if the win rates are not an indication of the strength of the champion (and I can agree to that), what should we use to discuss a champion? (open question, not rhetoric)

Sunfield1 votes

I dont know about her matchups, people dont play her anymore and I dont want to do theorycrafting without seeing how this plays out in practice.

Best thing you can use to discuss a champion is your personal experience.

AbodyHUN6662 votes

I think he means what other statistical data should we use since winrate isn't reliable. anyway I think she really needs a way to avoid enemy cc for her combo duration

Sunfield1 votes

I know what he means. And I tell you, discussion based on statistics is plain pointless.

I say that idea is at least problematic. If not cc, how will you catch her? In my opinion she needs more reliable ways of contributing to teamfights. But that would probably call for a rework

MakersF1 votes

Addressing by points

  1. Statistic is the only way to discuss about a problem. My experience doesn't matter, your neither. What matters is what do the majority of the LB players(and the worst and best 0.1% players in order to not have a champ with too high of a skill floor/ceiling). We can't discuss with the impression of 5-10 people, we need something that expresses what the majority of the players feels/do/achieve with her, and that's provided by statistic. I can agree with you that WinRate may not be the right one to use, but definitely a discussion should be based on DATA, which means FACTS, not impressions.

  2. She wont ever be good in TFs. Riot made a champion that's strong early and in lane, and weak late game (which means TFs). She's like Nunu: needs to get rolling in the early levels and later is more a presence than something else. There are many champs that are supposed to get caught by CC, but no one of them jumps in a straight line in the face of the enemy and totally rely on that to deal the 1/3 (the mimicked Q trigger) of the combo damage, and explodes the moment he's CCed. People that deal the same thing are like Jarvan, Malph and Vi ults, which actually are not stopped if not by killing them, and they all are pretty tanky. We have Kassa, that again doesnt' rely on the jump to deal damage, we have kata that has a strong AoE ulti with resets to get out as soon as possible.

The point is, in order to allow an opponent to react/retaliate (which is good), they prevented her to combo (which is bad). It is no longer a skill matchup: if the opponent has a hard CC you won't deal DMG, and eventually they'll scale better than you. There is no winning for LB.

Sunfield1 votes
  1. I dont think you understand how balance team works and what playtesting is.

"There are three kinds of lies. Lies, big lies and statistics"

You can judge a companys financial state based on statistics, not a champion or any competetive game.

2

. And I dont want to be rude, but again, do you know how reworks work?

MakersF1 votes

Look down in the post for the important part

  1. There are four kind of lies. Lies, big lies, people that don't know how to make statistics, and people that know how to make statistic and use this knowledge to circumvent the reader to believe what they wants independently from the real facts. Newspapers usually fall in the 3°/4° category when they use statistics.

Now, the last kind of lie doesn't work on the last kind of liers, as they know statistics and they can spot where the error was made on purpose to prove a point.

I assume no one wants to trick anyone here and we are having a sincere discussion.

Just to give you an hint, the balance team uses statistics, with much more detail than just the winrate of a champion. Based on that, they analyse and they make changes, that are then playtested. We are at the "analyse" stage here ;)

It's funny how you keep saying you can't use statistic to solve this problem, but you don't say why nor what should we use. But this is not the point of the discussion. Ps: the financial state of a company is NOT statistic. It's accounting and it's totally unrelated to statistic. Statistics <--/--> whatever kind of math

  1. I understand how reworks work. Leblanc doesn't have an old kit, nor a totally flawed one gameplay wise (she is just like every other assassin). The fact that right now the meta is more for late game champs doesn't mean all the early game champs will be reworked. The rework is made when the kit of a champion can not be fixed with just a couple of changes. She was considered OP with a silence, she is performing quite poorly without. I'm sure there is a middle point between the two that can fix her without needing a rework.

Important part of the post But all of this is not related to the discussion. I understand you are saying she is fine as she is now, but it looks like you don't play her that much. If you could tell us why you think she is fine, what is her role to you, and how you play her maybe you could show us that you are right and I'm wrong in saying that she is not worth picking as there are champs that do better and safer what she does

Sunfield1 votes

Im not saying she is fine as she is. I just dont want to derail this discussion by talking to people who have never played le blanc, but suddenly are experts on her and balance because they know statistics. Win and ban rates, as far as im concerned, are nothing but hints to balance team. They base their decisions on high ranked players feedback, closed testing, open beta and their own sense of balance. Discussion using only data without player experience leads to nowhere.

Thats why I said lbl could use a rework, it would make her less of a feast or famine champion

MakersF1 votes

Never said winrates and banrates are good statistics to look at for the balancing of a champ, but they are the only statistics we have. You said statistics where lies, I said that misused statistics are lies. Anyway, happy this discussion is closed :)

Any input about the direction of the rework you'd like to see?

They said they'd keep an eye on her, so it is not out of the question that she's OP/UP/fine. Moreover, looking at how some champions remained untouched and then out of the blue everyone was screaming OP (like Jax, like Akali, like LB, like Kayle, etc etc etc) and how many champs are considered in need of some tweaks, but they are left as they are, I'm not totally confident the balance team will eventually address every problem (they have a lot of champs to look at at the end). That's why I believe some constructive input could raise the attention of a @Riot er which would give us some insight

Sunfield1 votes

I have no idea tbh, its Riot that always finds a middle ground between preserving old and bringing new to a champion. I dont have enough experience with lbl myself to decide on anything. But looking at her like at a standard assasin, Id probably give some bonus effects on her q that would replace silence, ala Kassadin

iStarter3 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.

MakersF1 votes

Silence + root -> basically a stun. Some people would agree that's OP. Considered that you have time to react could be a good move, and make skilled LB players perform better than the average (the chain is kind of difficult to land). The only drawback is that in lane the opponent can always stay behind his minions, so you'd land a chain only if they are really miss positioned.

iStarter2 votes

True but you can still aa! Lol jk but essentially that's what she was doing when she had silence on q when she was actually able to land her chain. And the opponent staying behind minions would be a sort of counter play. Allowing them to be safe from her snare/silence, healthier then lb being able to get someone at anytime. I think it'll force lb players to be more aware of positioning and making them utilize their abilities a bit differently. Just an idea to open up more strategies for lb rather than her "wqr or qrw"

Earl Eulrich2 votes

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

ChaosThief2 votes

Before this, if I recall, was a 45-47% winrate..?

Earl Eulrich1 votes

~43 alltogether if i remember it correctly...which had been a common argument against taking the silence off of her even back then.

MakersF1 votes

http://lolbuilder.net/news/patch-4-7-win-rates#4-7-infograhpic

She was at least more than 45%, as she is not in the most losing champs, and the best of them is 44.9% And would be interesting to see how Diamonds performed with her (which are the people that know how to use her)

XEmpowered2 votes

my god, you are retarded.

You don't even say why you think she is strong.

Ofc ye is not strong at all. How is it possible for any champ to be that strong with a low win rate like that. It doesn't make any sense.

One thing is that LB is strong in lane, but overall, she needs a buff. Especially to her mid, late game.

Earl Eulrich2 votes

1285 + 337,5 % ap burst, pretty much in an instant. Go figure why that´s strong.

MakersF2 votes

Yeah, assuming you can actually combo. All my point is that, since you have to jump with W on the opponent to trigger 1/3 of the damage, and she is vulnerable not only to point and click cc, but even to slow moving skillshot CC (if you are W-ing you'll be caught 100% of the times by morgana binding, luck binding, xerath stun, etc etc etc), and wont combo almost ever. This is the same reason why thei make Zed appear behind the enemy and not in front of him in the last patch: because if you know where he'll be and when, there is no way for him to avoid hard CC which stops him (assuming you know what you are doing). And he's untargettable too during the dash and silences doesn't hurt him as much as leblanc!!

So, yeah, 310 (Q + trigger)+ 300(mimiked Q) + (145% AP) burst is not that much for an assassin, considering your jump can be stopped with almost everything and the chain is more of a situational skill (prevent gank in lanes, catch enemies alone, basically punishing others big mistakes). There are several ulties that deal that amount of damage without needing to combo.

Obviously, if you play with people that have no idea how she work and try to engage with their only skillshot stun before she even Ws than she's strong, but I'm not talking about playing with "not-so-skilled" players

Earl Eulrich2 votes

Obviously, if you play with people that have no idea how she work and try to engage with their only skillshot stun before she even Ws than she's strong, but I'm not talking about playing with "not-so-skilled" players

Yea, that totally explains why her winrate in Diamond is higher than in lower Tiers. If you cannot flank with one of the most mobile champs in the league it´s highly possible that you just don´t understand how she works and cannot play the map to your advantage. There´s a reason proteams were very successfull with her despite her lowish winrate in SoloQ. And they still would be if they hadn´t forgotten all about her (She´s a way stronger version of the current Kassadin).

MakersF1 votes

Exactly (there is the correct way to engage with her and to handle her engages). But right now I'm talking more about the laning with her(flanking is a mid/late game thing). In TFs her silence wasn't that big of a difference as if she was to be CCed, that would have be done by the support or anyone else anyway, and she usually tried to shot the ADC which doesn't usually have that many options to escape her.

I agree with you that in early/mid she's currently better than Kassa in roaming (that last nerf to kassa really made him slow at roaming) and that's the reason I picked her, but kassa has a way safer laning and a better scaling going into lategame (mainly because he's no more the one-shot assassin he used to be. Or at least, I see him way different now). Moreover, as I said in the original post, she is no more dangerous enough that can threaten the opponent under tower and then go snowball the other lanes

Sunfield1 votes

Dudes got a point, she still can delete people like any assasin. She was Fotm with similar winrate and played by competetive scene quite often. She got nerfed having similar winrate.

Crazycatperson2 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.

reiniat2 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)

MakersF1 votes

No idea about that, I still haven't found a streamer at high levels using her..

The shield is a nice idea. Maybe something like morgana's shield, but with really low base + scaling (so that prevents CC but you can still damage her in return)

Hyrum Graff2 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.

MakersF1 votes

I guess no one wants to see her as strong as she was before the nerf or, God forbids, even stronger! So definitely a SMALL buff is the way to go.

I believe you got the reason why they initially give her the silence: to win trades. This had the really bad side effect of preventing the opponent not only to trade back, but even to flash/escape/shield/whatever from her combo. This last point was the problem riot tried to address with the nerf (IMO).

removing the silence on Q means at least her opponents can fight back when she's QRWEing

What I believe you might have missed from my post was not the fact that LB loses trades (you need to play kind of badly to lose trades with LB if you pull off a full combo, as she deals such a big amount of damage that the enemy shouldn't be able to hit you that hard), but the fact that now, as a side effect of the lost silence, they can not only trade back (which was intended and "healthy") but they can stun/root her, preventing her to do the full combo.

This not only make LB take damage while trading (which is good), but prevent her to deal the full dmg (which is bad)

My point was that the silence removal nerfed her 2 times so to say.

That's why I liked a lot the proposal that gave her a shield, or I initially proposed an immunity to one CC (she jumps on you in a straight line and you know she'll jump on you: it is almost impossible to miss any CC, skillshot or not).

Your proposal is not a bad idea, but a blue buff would make it totally useless, like ignite and any other buff or debuff. If they make it so the clone mimiks those as well your solution might actually work. (I'd make it last 2-3 secs, you just need it to not let the enemy understand from which position you are jumping, and if you have 2 LB you can not be as ready as before to CC.)

Hyrum Graff1 votes

I'd like to see her clone mimic buffs as well. I feel like, as to her identity, leblanc should feel.. "deceivey." Even if it's not needed from a gameplay perspective, I'd like to see more clone action, so leblanc can feel more like a grand deceiver.

Here's a thought: what if alt-casting made your clone use abilities on a separate cooldown (since none of LB's abilities can be self-cast)?

You could send your clone off to do cool distortion jukes, while you're actually walking away, out in the open. Of course, the clone abilities wouldn't do damage or cc, so if you get hit, it's obvious which LB is real.

MakersF1 votes

This is so complex (try to imagine who they would write the passive description. Then they should show the separate cool downs, the separate mana, the separate etc etc etc. It would basically mean having the control over 2 characters, and developers and designers said that league is not in a state where this is possible, due to technology limit, like not being able to select)

Hyrum Graff1 votes

try to imagine who they would write the passive description.

"Whenever LeBlanc is below 40% health, she will become stealthed for 0.5 seconds. When the stealth ends, she creates a controllable clone of herself for 8 seconds with 53 + (17 × LeBlanc's level) less health. The clone can cast all of Leblanc's abilities, on a seperate cooldown, but they do not cost mana, do no damage and do not apply cc. These abilities are used by alt-casting."

I agree, showing separate cooldowns could be an issue.

It would basically mean having the control over 2 characters, and developers and designers said that league is not in a state where this is possible, due to technology limit, like not being able to select)

The technology could be developed. However, it's a good point that you're basically controlling two champs separately, managing twice as many cooldowns, having to cast twice as many skills at once to get the maximum benefit out of it. That's hard, and while there's tons of room for mastery, perhaps it's unnecessarily hard.

What if LB's clone just mirrored the cast whenever LB herself cast the spell? (dashes: in the same direction, creates a 2nd pad. Q to the same target, chain towards the same point)

MakersF1 votes

Yeah, like how Zed's shadow Shuriken works. That is what I was thinking, but with W and E (Q too if it is in range). That's enough already as the enemy need to react to the right copy and stun it, instead of just aim in front of him and throw skillshots.

Kazellion21 votes

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

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