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LeBlanc W Changes on the PBE (Confirmed)

Necrinox·6/2/2015, 5:57:11 PM·4 votes·896 views

I have been playing Leblanc LeBlanc for a very long time. I am aware of her strength as a single-target assassin, and I feel that nerfing her W speed is absolutely the wrong direction to go in. Her dash is already extremely avoidable by MANY champions, and one of the main problems on LeBlanc is waiting for her Q to actually hit the target before using her W. Akali's Q speed was buffed for a similar reason back in 2013, and it helped her tremendously just in terms of using her kit as it was intended. Nerfing her W damage is understandable, but making highly mobile champions that counter her (including Ekko) even MORE effective against her is going to have dramatic consequences. I understand this is on the PBE, but the change is something Riot is very confident about and I really believe other parts of her kit should be looked at, (regardless of the fact that she's extremely counterable with MR runes., or simply picking Galio...) Her kit should be modernized and appropriated for the current flow of the game, not changed in a way that makes her clunky and awkward. (By the way, buffing her W retreat duration was so unnecessary and has hurt the game much more than a 1600 speed dash has)

15 Comments

Lugg6/2/2015, 6:23:20 PM4 votes

{quoted}

Her dash is already extremely avoidable by MANY champions

You can't be serious. It is basically instant and does AoE damage. It hits 99.9% of the time unless the person playing her is awful.

1000angrybees6/2/2015, 9:09:46 PM2 votes

Yes, her dash is "extremely avoidable," much like I am a multi-millionaire.

Dont lie to yourself honey.

Drunk Rummate6/2/2015, 6:13:05 PM1 votes

Here's the way I see it:

Champions with a dash rely on said dash to dodge stuff. If they can't dodge stuff, a fundamental part of their kit is missing and it ruins their design and balance a lot. Leblanc's distortion is supposed to be a dodgeable skillshot in the realm of design, but with it's current travel speed you can't really dodge it unless you predict when she's going to fire it off and dodge beforehand.

Leblanc's W does too much damage (especially in conjunction with the rest of her kit) for the damage to be guaranteed. If you make that damage guaranteed only against immobile champions, it makes balancing around the design of other mobile/immobile champions easier. You can now assume that Lucian dodges Leblancs W while Ashe does not, which makes balancing both of those champions around Leblanc easier.

The other direction Riot could have taken this change would have been to heavily reduce her distortion damage, while leaving the travel speed (or even increasing it/making it a blink). Make it/leave it as guaranteed damage and reducing her damage across the board to compensate. The former leaves Leblanc's power in tact, while this change would effectively throw her into the pile of champions needing a rework. We've seen what heavily reducing ratios or base damage does to champions in the past, and it's not pretty.

So in that sense I think this is a good change, because it gives champions with a dash sufficient counterplay to beat Leblanc while leaving her full power in tact if she can work around that cooldown. It also leaves immobile champions in the same place as before, in the same position they were designed to be.

HorusEye6/3/2015, 12:28:12 PM1 votes

Your thread is not gonna make any sense when she is still a crazy high pick/ban in the LCS.