the only champion whose design bothers me

Alpaca·5/9/2016, 1:09:44 PM·6 votes·1,212 views

So I've always felt that there's something wrong with one of the mages kits, that being Leblanc. She seems to be the only champion with no drawback holding her back from going crazy every chance she gets. So Leblanc is an assassin, and the main characteristic of an assassin is high damage in exchange for a high risk playstyle, mages on the other hand can also have a high amount of danage, but are handicapped by giving them limited mobility to allow for counterplay. And thats where Leblanc completely breaks the rule, because looking at most assassins you'll see that their escape is limited, either by being forced to gain a reset like khazix, or by killing their targets before they kill the assasin. However, LeBlanc's escape is applicable at almost any given time as she has the ability to jump back instantly for three seconds, regardless of whether she succeeded at assassinating or not, while also having a higher damage output than most assassins and a rather low skill requirement to do so ( looking at champions like zed who is rewarded for skill). And it's not like I'm crying while not having played her myself, every time I do, I hit level 6, press q r w and my lane opponent is dead within a second. While I find that questionable in itself, her ability to escape sticky situations almost always bothers me, and the passive just adds insult to injury, because stealth and a duplicate makes walking back to your turret so easy -> impossible to gank. Either the second cast of distortion needs to be different, or her proc on q should do a dot or something of that sort, so she has at least some counterplay.

37 Comments

Sylverblitz5/9/2016, 1:42:08 PM4 votes

"she has the ability to jump back instantly for three seconds"

It's four seconds, they buffed it. Her risk is that of hard crowd control and her early game is very poor against people that know how to play against her. If she dives in and gets snared then she is most likely dead soon afterwards. It's a lot easier to snare a LeBlanc than it is Zed and his shadows.

Zed players have the easiest last hitting in the game and almost infinite lane harass as well as a lot of mobility and dive potential. There is no escaping his ult now that they have changed the items and his ability to escape from a bad situation using his ult and / or W is just as good if not better than LeBlanc.

Something not many people know is that when her passive clone is popped it will always walk straight unless the player controls it very quickly. It used to stand still and not run making it easier to fool people with it but now it's easier to spot because the one still walking in the original direction is the clone. You can also tag LeBlanc with ignite and it will stick to the actual LeBlanc when the clone pops.

Lady Hammerlock5/9/2016, 1:47:43 PM2 votes

Because if you can't play her well late game team fights are a nightmare for Leblanc players you either Die really fast or make them die really fast,she also has decision making and juking choose huge AOE dmg with W and R,choose lock down with E and R or choose massive single target burst with Q and R(possibly finishing with a W)

late game is also the time where people with a brain build a defensive item like MR or banshee's veil or Maw she also hates bruisers and tanks although she can kite them she can't kill them very fast

you also would never fucking pick an immobile champion>LB unless you god damn trust your self or you have some way toe easily interrupt her dash

Critmaster Garen5/9/2016, 2:32:55 PM2 votes

while i think some champions are not very well designed, i think those are the actual design horrors of this game:

Leblanc 0 risk assassinations. jump in range with w, hit q + r + q on a low health target? failed? immediately hit w to jump out of range and try again later

Tryndamere captin rng

Evelynn stealth paranoya.

hotarse5/9/2016, 3:39:42 PM2 votes

you just realized this now? welcome to the club!

Michael Sykes5/9/2016, 4:31:17 PM1 votes

Well, when you are able to qrw your opponents at lvl6, they are very dumb. I don't see your problem. Her kit is not problematic in the current balancing state. If you look at the statistics, even mains have problems at the moment (maybe because her hardcounters got buffed). As you can read in the comments below, she HAS risk, and the only assassins that work well have a save escape OR they are so strong that they can burst their target in the most cases and get their resets. This escape mechanic helps an assassin to be not completely useless when behind (like Kha'zix)

Sniper 05/10/2016, 12:22:38 AM1 votes

Yorick

cocacolalips5/10/2016, 12:51:13 PM1 votes

Her lane is so bad though. Trying to cs with her gives me cancer.