LEBLANC NOT VIABLE NOW (NO SILENCE WTF???????)

JeffLaurentYung·Aug 6, 2014·4 votes·1,464 views

After the 4.10 patch, Leblanc had totally disappeared from the world's stage due to Rito nerfing her silence. Now Leblanc is a super weak champion that nobody plays. Without her silence, she is much weaker in the lane, disabling her ability to snowball and bully the lane. And plus she is pretty useless in teamfights too. I think she definitely needs a buff.

I accept any comments no matter it's positive and negative, but don't just say "stfu" and not telling me why. Please tell me your reasons behind your thoughts. Thanks

"Leblanc you bitch your useless now" -GG

24 Comments

OmnipheriousAug 6, 20144 votes

First of all, chain silencing from range is fun for the user but not for the receiver. There is literally no skill involved outside of how fast you mashed buttons. If you think that she is super weak because she can't silence anymore, that's a shame but you are entitled to your opinion.

Kassadin and Leblanc could close distance + attack you while being in little to no danger themselves because they completely prevented counterattacks unless you: a) Have powerful ranged auto-attacks + managed to hit them more than once b) Didn't die from the burst damage

If you can only win by taking away all control from your opponent, that's not a good thing.

Her damage is still good. Her chain tether range is still ludicrous. Not being a popular pick doesn't mean weak, it never has. Kayle got nerfed ages ago and people had a kneejerk reaction then saying she was suddenly shit and would never be played again. So how come months can pass with no changes and she suddenly sees play? Assassins fell out of favour because "Exhaust wrecks them". Really? What champion that is trying to deal damage isn't stifled by Exhaust? Also, last I checked assassins have ultimates on a shorter cooldown than Exhaust.

In conclusion, I disagree. I do not think she needs buffs.

JeffLaurentYungAug 6, 20141 votes

Thank you for your feedback :) But i think that Leblanc is pretty useless if her opponent didn't die in her whole combo (w and e at least 10 second cooldown) maybe she deserves a little buff in her cooldowns?

OmnipheriousAug 6, 20141 votes

No CDR Q - 6 W - 18>10 E - 14>8 R - 40>24

Alright, let's have a look. The above are her listed cooldowns. I think it is a fair assumption to say that Leblanc will at least get a Deathfire's Grasp in a game correct? Perhaps even an Athene's while the 5% CDR from masteries is a given. So at the very minimum, assuming only a DFG and masteries she would have 15% CDR in the late game without a blue buff on.

Min CDR Q - 5.1 W - 15.3/8.5 E - 11.9/6.8 R - 34/20.4

I dunno, those numbers look pretty reasonable for an AP assassin to me. Even more so considering she has an ultimate with such a low base CD anyway. The only ability I would say has a long cooldown is W but that's intentional. It is meant to be the mobility spell and should have a long base CD while being her longest CD non-ultimate. Even then, with minimum CDR it is 8.5 seconds. That's very reasonable considering you can jump twice per cast and snare someone for up to 3 seconds.

If you're still maxing W and wondering why you can't kill, then I can't help you there cause that's working as intended. Maxed W yields the lowest burst and has never been the optimal damage skill order anyway. People were maxing W first to make up for LB's shit wave clear and to give her more mobility, sooner. If you need a professional player's backing, Froggen has stated this back when she was a popular pick competitively.

If you wanted sheer power ASAP, Q has the most as a first max. Even so, it is not technically allowing maximum damage. Optimal first max would be E since it snares and allows you to also get AA damage in. Assuming you used W only for the close, a Q > R > E would be your best bet for sheer damage output just from abilities. If you aren't afraid to take some pain back, then Q > E > R is better because you can chain slow into double snares. Her snare has a tether range of 1000 and a cast range of ~700. If you are unable to take advantage of that, again I can't help you. That is ludicrously long given that it is her 2nd best damage non-ultimate ability.

Compared to LB:

Nocturne has a fear tether range of a measley 465
Karma's snare cast and tether are only 675
Fiddle's Drain has a cast of 575 and max tether of 750
Morg comes close with a ~600 cast and 1050 tether, but that's her ultimate

So please, LeBlanc isn't weak. Her cooldowns aren't bad. So what if she isn't popular anymore? If you like her, play her. She got changed and what people used to do all the time doesn't work anymore? *gasp How is this possible? If it ain't working then try something different.

12talesAug 6, 20143 votes

I believe she was buffed this patch, actually.

JeffLaurentYungAug 6, 20141 votes

yea her w mana costs

Knight SoIaire Aug 6, 20142 votes

rather a minor rework to give her kit a sence her ult has such a potential but all they gave to it is more dmg

JeffLaurentYungAug 6, 20141 votes

I agree her ult has great potential, but if you change her ult its like destroying the old Leblanc (no mimic). I would like to see some cc's on her abilities. Hope Riot can do that.

PokladnicaZlaAug 6, 20142 votes

Her silence was removed,because 0 counters play. Point-click CC on an ranged assassins = BAD.

Agree she is weaker now,but her R has to much potential.She is supposed to be the deciver.add more of that to her R.

JeffLaurentYungAug 8, 20141 votes

Talon also has a point click silence (e) too. After he e to u he will just q-w and walk back to position, tbh i lose lane everytime i use an ap champion against Talon, do u think he needs a nerf? Because as you say silence is 0 counter plays ( i dont mean you are wrong)

PokladnicaZlaAug 8, 20141 votes

I said on ranged assassins.LBs silence was on a long duration and it was ranged.

Talons silence places him in the melee range of tha target and 1 sec silence.Thta isnt that bad.

Bit his kit,needs some big powershifting.

Cloud PotatoAug 6, 20141 votes

Personally I thought LeBlanc was fine with her Silence, since Q has a short range and W is the only way to reliably pop it, so she couldn't say W to close gap, Q, then RW to pop. In fact, Mimic's mechanics helped balance her combo a lot.

The shift from maxing Q to maxing W is what wrecked her, since before then she had to either burn her only escape, which would be on a long CD, or risk E missing due to its poor missile speed. Once maxing W started she could Silence a lot more reliably, meaning she had a lot less downtime due to CDs. Grail becoming ubiquitous also didn't help.

I always thought that she was one of the more balanced Assassins since while she was a strong duelist she was weak in teamfights but not so much so she was useless. If she tried to burst someone she would have a hard time getting her full combo off before becoming a smear on the ground, but she had CC she could use to help peel if she wanted to protect the squishies.

As for 1v1, she's only a problem when she can walk up to you and kill you without using her full combo, because walking up to you and Q RQ W E has a lot of room to counter. The problem every Assassin has is doing so much damage they can no counterplay instagib someone, but number nerfs can handle that. The issue is the Q W combo that had no counterplay would wear down someone into the instagib zone, like a weaker version of what old Kassadin had.

So to sum up unless they gutted W's CD the Silence had to go, and they probably felt the mobility was more important to LeBlanc. However, I think LB could get into a good spot with some small changes. I've put too much thought into this thread already though so I CBF thinking of any changes.

41lCtSziRCAug 6, 20141 votes

if you want to complain about Leblanc , just keep in mind that if any other champion that required certain abilities to close the gap or escape Fizz Ahri Veigar , Leblanc would completely destroy those champs with the silence and burst damage combo, and if you can not adjust your strategy, you should not even be playing league.

NsquiAug 6, 20141 votes

LeBlanc is still a good champion. If you look at her win rate at high levels of play (Plat and above) you'll see she hasn't suffered at all. Her pick rate may have, due to people like you thinking that the removed silence kills her, which it does not. LeBlanc is still a very poke / mobility centered mid laner who will still melt people in the right person's hands. And yeah, sure, she's not played at the pro scene any more, and yes, you can attribute that to the silence being removed, but that doesn't make her a champion whom is no viable, it merely means she's not the "I will melt you and there is no counterplay to my face melting" champion that she was before.

EDIT: I understand her disappearance from the pro scene is not all attributed to the removed silence, I merely mean that with other, stronger picks out there, she's not as influential to pick. Before, she was good AND had an ability with practically zero counterplay. Now, she's merely good, so not as big of a deal when you have things like Xerath Syndra as well.

SpankMyPhatAsheAug 6, 20141 votes

43.05% please she is the new urgot... he is not last place anymore

Urgot Don't worry guy I'm making a comeback!

NsquiAug 6, 20141 votes

43.05 is not at all a bad win rate. She is almost at 50%. This means she is balanced. And, no doubt many people choosing her are of the variety whom believe they are good with her (assuming this from her prior kit, which tilted every fight in her favor) and truly are not the best with her mechanics, which therefore leads to them loosing and dragging her win rate down.

SpankMyPhatAsheAug 7, 20141 votes

43.05 win rate is very VERY bad it needs to be on 50% or damn close to it. 43.05% basicly mean she is trash tier. Her silence was her bread and butter if she can't have that then she gets outbursted or cc'ed to death before taking someone out. I'm sorry but riot split her head open with the nerf bat w/o trying to give her some other kind of bandage to make up for it.

NsquiAug 7, 20141 votes

This is just showing how little you know of the champion then, really. Silence, in itself as a mechanic, is not fun. Being unable to do ANYTHING for X seconds is ridiculous. LeBlanc with silence was a death sentence every time you fought her, and the ability had pretty much zero percent chance of missing (unless you're smartcasting and misclick a minion. In that case, whoever you were laning against would thank their lucky Heimerdongers that you did that.) Without her silence, she still is a great champion. She has AMAZING burst with her R combos, she has the ability to basically harass without taking any counter-harass ( W - Q - W or Q - W - W ) and she has a pretty easy to land root. So yeah, she can't walk into any lane and just trash on people, but that's a GOOD thing. And, as I stated, most players are probably playing her expecting to pubstomp any lane (thinking this because they did that in the past) and end up playing her incorrectly and loosing. She's not that far off from 50%, and if she was over that, there would obviously still be something messed up there. I'm not saying she's amazing or anything, especially not for someone new to the champion, but if an experienced LeBlanc player grabbed her, I'm sure he/she could win any lane (aside from maybe Galio or Diana, direct counters, but even then a good LeBlanc would probably have the strategy to beat them.)So sure, her win rate isn't the best. However, that doesn't make her a bad champion. So many factors must be accounted for when considering win ratios. If you look at the people who play her most though, http://www.lolking.net/champions/leblanc#summoners their KDA is really good. She's viable. She hasn't been nerfed to oblivion. She just takes a player who is highly experienced with her.

JeffLaurentYungAug 6, 20141 votes

Thanks for your feedback. Perhaps im not the right person and im bad?

NsquiAug 6, 20141 votes

I don't think you're bad at all... heck, you're probably better than I am. All I'm saying is that she's still good. I know how it feels to have your champion changed (I'm looking at you, Lucian ) but most likely you'll end up enjoying the champion still, and you'll realize you just need to get used to the changes. I initially thought that the Lucian rework was SUPER heavy handed, but after playing him afterwards, learning the correct playstyle, and basically overcoming my bias about the changes, I began to realize the changes were quite good. Riot seems to have a good idea of what they're doing, and I believe they made the right choices with LeBlanc.

Captainn GinyuAug 6, 20141 votes

i disagree lablanc needs no changes and no rework yes no silence means you have to be smarter but shes STILL capable of two shooting most non tank champions once she is built or fed i mean shes even capable of doing it with out being built her damage is still stupidly chart topping

HMIAVAug 6, 20141 votes

Leblanc lost her silence ability? Tell Kassadin about it. Who suffered much worse nerfs (but still manage to dominate mid :P )

SpankMyPhatAsheAug 6, 20141 votes

I used to play Leblanc all the time mid but with her massive nerf there is much much better picks to go for now. Other champions like Ahri Akali Fizz Katarina Nidalee Zed Khazix do a better job then her in almost everyway. Even Talon outshines her by a mile and its sad to say much like Sona RIP you will be missed :(

JeffLaurentYungAug 6, 20141 votes

I understand you. I used to play Leblanc all the time too but not now. Now i rarely play her. RIP

MrBuffingtonAug 6, 20141 votes

LeBlanc disappeared from professional play more because assassins in general were weak, not necessarily because LeBlanc was weak. LeBlanc was one of the few assassins to survive the nerfs to assassin gameplay (ie. Exhaust buff, nerfs to Zed, Fizz, etc. and the rise of more mages, ie. Lulu) because she was incredibly strong with her silence. Right now she's just as strong as any other assassin, maybe still stronger than most because she has so much mobility. If you're strong with LeBlanc, you'll still destroy anyone you play against, just like you would with most assassins now. You don't need a silence as LeBlanc, since if you're good with her, the enemy won't even see you kill them; your burst is so fast. Right now you only see assassins like Talon, because Talon is incredibly powerful, and occasionally Zed, because a lot of pro players are really good with Zed.

My 2 cents: next time Faker breaks out the LeBlanc and destroys everyone, no one will be QQing about LeBlanc being weak anymore.