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What Succeeded With LeBlanc's Rework and What Didn't

Mr Mochí·2/28/2018, 9:53:13 PM·21 votes·14,738 views

I believe that adding LeBlanc's old passive to her Ult was a great and interactive change. It adds that touch of illusiony confusion without massive frustration keeping her unique and fairly skill based.

What failed was her current passive Sigil of Malice. Yes it added wave-clear, but it created an awkward window forcing a pseudo-counter-play: kill her or escape with in the next 1.5 seconds or you die. This lead to nerfs because of the toxic nature of this pseudo-counter-play ultimately ending up with a subpar assassin that gets out shined by literally any other champion in her class and forcing a build path with an item that she doesn't even gain full benefit from item 3146.

I would strongly propose that LeBlanc gets changed in the following ways:

  • Remove Sigil of Malice
  • Add back the dual damage from her Q (initial hit, followed again when the target gets hit with another ability)
  • Add a passive on her Q stating that if the target is killed by the first instance of her Q damage, the cooldown is partially reset and nearby enemies take residual damage. (Think Tristana's E passive but activated by abilities and not an auto attack)
  • revert damage nerfs on her full kit
  • remove RR clone and revert it to her old passive
  • Pre-rework key configurations (for purposes of her combos)
  • Keep clone use on her mimic'ed abilities
  • Possible "Ethereal Chains"(E) rework into a 90% slow and not a root.

I know that the balance and rework teams aren't currently looking at making changes to LeBlanc, but her current state is especially painful to Pre-rework LeBlanc mains knowing that her old state, while it did have a couple issues, was not as terrible is this current iteration.

36 Comments

RiotRiotRepertoir3/1/2018, 9:25:32 PM16 votes

I know that the balance and rework teams aren't currently looking at making changes to LeBlanc

We are. We're hoping we can go to PBE for feedback as soon as next week, though those things can change.

Reverent Wrath3/1/2018, 2:28:01 AM5 votes

I never saw the old Leblanc as a problem. Her kit forced you to build a certain way in lane but we see that still with many champions, Zed being a primary example. She had distinct weaknesses in having to choose between cs/waveclear and kill pressure. Any control mage with good waveclear could force her under turret and keep her there often ending with an early tower. If the enemy built early MR (much like you are STILL forced to build early Zhonyas vs. lethality Zed) her kill pressure went way down until 2-3 full items.

She also was distinctly disadvantaged in teamfight situations. I've only played her a handful of times since her rework but she feels much less rewarding for much more work. These days I find very little reason in playing pick comp champions. Its easier to just early snowball and pressure with strong teamfighters. It also is one of the few comps that gives the opportunity to turn the early enemy snowball around with a good lucky teamfight victory.

Black Jesus3/1/2018, 8:10:22 AM5 votes

This post tl;dr: Bring back her toxic laning phase and Remove the fun aspects from her rework.

SuperRiceBoi2/28/2018, 10:24:44 PM4 votes

Having only played new LeBlanc having started in season 7, I have no idea what playing as or against old LeBlanc was like. What I do know is that there was no counterplay. The ultimate issue with LeBlanc now is the cooking time and cooldown for her passive. As an assassin, you're supposed to delete someone then get out ASAP. 1.5 seconds is a long time to wait, especially when opponent are waiting for you to dive in only to CC you. Not only that, having to wait 5 seconds before you can use sigil on the same target again doesn't fit an assassin to begin with. I think that the double r is a nice part of her kit, as it can be used to make an outplay in a side lane or save a teammate.

I think the best way to tweak it, at least temporarily, is to have the cook time decrease by level, and the cooldown decrease by level.

Then again, I play LeBlanc because she's fun, and I'm better at ADCs and Control mages, so I'm not one to really have much to say on the topic.

Ionian Vulpix3/1/2018, 4:45:31 AM4 votes

The issue with old LB was that she killed you at level 3 with a Doran's Ring with a point & click spell and a dash you couldn't retaliate against since she could blink back immediately. And with the removal of MR runes, playing against her would force other mids to take extremely sub-optimal runes (Nullifying Orb is ok-ish but has a much longer CD than LB's combo, and the Resolve tree is mostly garbage as a mid laner) and even that might not be enough.

What can they do with her? I don't know. Didn't play her before, don't play her now, but reworking to her old kit like you've suggested is not going to be healthy for the game. All the other assassins have some kind of delay on their burst now, save Kha'zix and SA Kayn who have their own burst gates.

Bisaknosp3/1/2018, 8:25:39 AM3 votes

her waveclear is so bad and she is basically a worse ahri atm (was the other way around when she was good xd) but now i always think that i have to work way too hard to do anything is there any champs she actually counters haha

Nameless Endless3/1/2018, 3:47:15 PM3 votes

First of all i'd like to say that Le blanc was at a very good state before she got reworked, and no i'm not saying that because i like leblanc, Le blanc is a high skill champion, in order to get to the point where you one shot the enemy ADC then something went awfully wrong in laning phase, or something went awfully wrong in the positioning. Pick champions w/ hard CC (morgana, alistar) then Le blanc is trash. If you had no follow-up or peel, it was almost impossible to carry the game as Le blanc. Anyway that's besides the point. What currently sucks about Le blanc is the fact that she's _not really _ Le blanc anymore. She doesn't benefit from her itemization (hextech + lichbane? wtf) , her abilities have been adjusted so many times to the point where it's just not fun to play her anymore. You can't compare old le blanc to the current meta, a lot of changes have occured ever since her rework. e.g league of shields, new runes, items.

What really needs to be changed w/ Le blanc is her passive and her ultimate. RRing twice is just bad, even though it gives you an outplay potential, it's just pretty useless most of the time. Passive is really bad due to the fact that it gives the enemy so much window to harass you / punish you.

What really made Le Blanc special and fun to play with, was the ability to dive into a teamfight deal the most possible dmg you can, proc your mimic passive which also gave you invisibility for a small amount of time and then get the hell out. People who say that her old image mirror passive was bad, literally had no idea how to benefit from it or how to use it. There were multiple scenarios where you could just outplay a gank.

Revert her Q & R. Give her a new passive or something similar with her old one. Instead of reducing W's base damage and giving her a fancy bouncing Q to wave clear which you've reworked a thousand times, just revert it back.** IT JUST DOESN'T WORK.** Instead of increasing Q's AP RATIO and reworking the bouncing DMG revert it. Revert her initial combos e.g There's no reason to press R and then W again. When you could just W + R(w) . Pressing W + R + W is not rewarding at all. Oh and by the way it's Sigil of Malice, not "ShAtTeR oRb"

Zoe another champion with such a unique kit, I don't even bother playing Zoe, i'm calling it now, this champion is going to be reworked in a few years, mark my words. Imo you can't just create a champion with such a unique kit and then just "rework" it so badly because there's a minority of people that are complaining about it. Same thing happened with rengar, ryze and fiora. Everyone stacked tears so badly about her ultimate but that's another story for another time. Bare in mind and remember that many of us put so much time into champions & reworking them for "the greater good of the rift" that turns out bad, is just sad.

Remove Jungle2/28/2018, 11:28:58 PM3 votes

I really dislike the RR clone bs. it slows me down + people get used to it.

The old passive was way more useful then RR

What I would like to see is just a full revent but give her W And R-W a 1.5 cooldown before being able to jump back.

And ofc balance her dmg. idc about her dmg just want her old kit back :S

xelaker3/1/2018, 5:59:37 AM2 votes

I'll take current lb over, welp lb is either a potato or we have to make this game last 30+ minutes so she falls off.

Teridax682/28/2018, 10:55:39 PM2 votes

Not a LeBlanc main here, but I think it could help her immensely if her innate could be popped at any moment to deal damage, even if it would be reduced damage. The absolute worst impact LeBlanc's rework brought to her flow is that it categorically forced her to sit around for 1.5 seconds, without really allowing her to cash in earlier for a reduced payoff. It feels tremendously arbitrary and artificial, and creates a whole bunch of situations where LeBlanc just feels weak or even powerless, even when being played properly. Shifting her innate from a hard gate (i.e. 100% after a mark, 0% before) to a soft gate (i.e. continuous ramp-up from 0% to 100%) would offer her much more flexibility while still letting her keep its counterplay.

I also feel another problem with LeBlanc's rework is that it basically did the exact thing it promised to avoid, which was to turn her into a kite mage. When LeBlanc gets to use her W defensively, let alone both her W and her RW, she's unhealthy to play against, because it ends up becoming far too easy for her to escape from any situation at little cost. The fact that her E can currently single-handedly apply all of her passive damage worsens the matter. Giving her waveclear is okay-ish, but making LB this E-centric, kite-heavy champion wasn't a good move for anyone involved.

Because of this, one potential solution I think would be to change her innate in the following way:

I - Sigil of Malice: LeBlanc's spells mark affected enemies with a Sigil of Malice for 4 seconds. During this time, her next spell against a marked target consumes the mark to deal bonus damage equal to 0 - 150% of the marking spell's damage, based on how long the sigil was left to charge (fully charges at 1.5 seconds). Sigil of Malice has no cooldown, and spells that consume a mark also apply one themselves.

Assuming her other spells have their damage adjusted accordingly, what this means is that LeBlanc would be encouraged to use all of her damage against her opponents, including her W, because every application of it would count. Moreover, this would offer both her and her opponents more options: if LeBlanc doesn't want to wait for the full charge, she could sacrifice some damage for an early detonation, and if LeBlanc's target takes the bonus damage, they can still outplay her subsequent spell applications, and not just get chunked from a single ability.

Nymzo3/1/2018, 6:34:33 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Mr Mochí,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=FqkdfafJ,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-02-28T21:53:13.359+0000)

I believe that adding LeBlanc's old passive to her Ult was a great and interactive change. It adds that touch of illusiony confusion without massive frustration keeping her unique and fairly skill based.

Are you sure about that? I mean fair enough since it's your opinion but I have never personaly fell to that trick and neither did I see anyone else fell for it either. And for me, if a trick can be detected that easily, it isn't a good trick.

In fact I've seen LB players use it as a free scout instead of its original purpose.

Somebody Love Me2/28/2018, 11:27:47 PM1 votes

The only thing I like about reworked LB is her RR clone. I liked being able to summon it at will instead of having to almost die to be a deceiver.

If they put it back to her passive, I hope I can at least choose when to bring it out. I'd also like to be able to control it again.

The Headbutter3/12/2018, 1:46:11 AM1 votes

As a person who mained LeBlanc since this game started, the rework was probably the biggest failure in the history of league. The ultimate (double R) was completely useless. It was virtually never used and an idiotic change. The ultimate itself with any other ability was a complete travesty, I can't tell you how many times I press R + something and it fucks up internally somehow and ends up costing me a kill or getting me killed.

The biggest failure of LeBlanc is this: she is a high risk high reward assassin, and with the rework you could not even kill an ADC. Your whole kit pretty much revolves around landing chains, and late game the ADC just heals up with autos before your passive even goes off and kills you. LeBlanc was completely useless, whoever made the rework should be FIRED, and I never thought I would see the day that I get to play my beautiful assassin again. Rejoice people, she's coming back.

Just something to add: Riot said they reworked her because of her "lack of counterplay." Guess who one of the next champions was? Zoe. ..... Really, Riot?

SinSkar3/6/2018, 7:00:46 PM1 votes

I actually have an idea. Why don't they make her w like Warwick's Q? If w is pressed for like 0.5 sec then lb can dash but she cannot go back. And just pressing w will send her clone to the target location which will do damage. ( Keeping her current passive but removing that wait time )

Lunar Lunacy3/7/2018, 11:34:34 AM1 votes

I didn't mind the 1.5s delay for a very long time, until teams starting grouping as 5 more... That's when I realized that even while fed, Leblanc can't really carry a game. You can have a decent k/d/a and have kept up (or even been ahead) on farm all game, it won't matter unless the enemy makes the mistake of splitting up or not having good vision.

There isn't a hell of a lot Leblanc can do to defend against a siege or try to pick someone off when the enemy team is balled up pushing down the mid lane, whether she is fed or not.

And her wave clear requires her to W forward onto a minion wave.... which is way too risky or stupid to do while the enemy is sieging because they will just try to cc and then dive you.

So tl'dr, leblanc is fun and all when picking off single targets but if the enemy team is grouped, honestly good luck getting anything done, 1.5 seconds is too long when you need to kill someone instantly and get out.