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I understand that these are "extreme and WIP" but these LeBlanc PBE changes are insane

MXXXXXL·2/24/2017, 5:58:40 AM·22 votes·2,770 views

Shatter Orb (Q) damage to minions increased from 40% to 80%

Distortion (W) damage lowered from [85/120/155/190/225 (+60% AP)] to [40/55/70/85/100 (+20% AP)]

Mimic'd Distortion (R+W) damage lowered from [125/225/325 (+50% AP)] to [60/120/180 (+30% AP)]

If you go back to the original LeBlanc champion spotlight (which is 6 years old btw): https://youtu.be/we5LawDUcCM?t=91

In it, coronach says that during LeBlanc's development, after Distortion and Mimic were created, Ethereal Chains and Sigil of Silence (now shatter orb) were created with two goals in mind: Create compelling choices to Mimic And give LeBlanc strong incentive to not just save Distortion to escape These Distortion/Mimic Distortion damage nerfs do exactly that, Distortion now does 100 damage at max rank with 20% AP ratio, i might as well use Distortion as an escape, or i could re-position and land an extra 2-3 auto attacks instead, and the only form of compensation she is receiving is just waveclear...

waveclear...

Just let that sink in for a moment,

Why does Riot consider waveclear to be such an important part of LeBlanc's kit now? Her kit might as well be better off without it, and she DEFINITELY shouldn't be seeing these massive nerfs for a minor part of her kit that nobody asked for, it doesn't belong in her kit, but if it's going to be here she shouldn't be making these trade offs for it.

This is like if Riot looked at and decided that they should nerf his DPS really hard in exchange for mobility.

Again, i know that these are "extreme and WIP" and that just by looking at these changes i can tell that they are very likely going to be reverted and are only still on the PBE because the next mini/whatever PBE update hasn't been released yet, but part of me still feels that Riot is going to go through with these changes.

43 Comments

Craft Zeppelin2/24/2017, 6:13:10 AM10 votes

Rickless, looking from the results of azir, akali, ryze, nidalee must be clueless. He is promoting passive gameplay style by waveclear and actually making leblanc safer. The general hard counter against leblanc was pushing your minions then roaming. This somehow doesnt apply in this rioters mind.

The mindset of these nerfs is just...uncomprehendable. If you give leblanc waveclear, she will roam harder. And if youre stuck in lane the chains have more chances of hitting you. There is nothing punishable of these "nerfs" in the run rather than making leblanc fall of harder lategame. But still making her early game annoying as ever....wasnt this rioter silver 2? Why is he even balancing high-end champions that are favored by LCK players. Watching a pro game doesnt mean you understand it. You at least need to play at the same level as these pros and see how it goes rather than making mundane players test it for you. The difference between reality and theory is too obvious and different. (hell, youre not even playing it youself to test it.)

Leblanc needs her E toned down, rewarded and having drawbacks for aggresive play. And have a SPECIFIC weakness. Just tone down the whole kit and mitigate the power of each skill evenly for damn sake not just ONE SKILL. This is kogmaw all over again.

Redesignated2/24/2017, 10:35:36 AM9 votes

Rickless has a very special method of balancing — when he goes for hard nerfs, he goes for hard nerfs. Unfortunately, that can have the side effect of people eventually accepting far worse a nerf than is necessary, even if it's less bad than what he originally proposed, because they got used to playing a wet noodle and anything feels better than that. There are a lot of arguments to be made against his specific style of testing changes besides that.

Distortion and Mimic Distortion doing less than half their current damage at most points is a horrible joke and I sincerely hope he realizes that even as a test, that should never have gone up onto PBE. He's "buffing" her waveclear at the same time as destroying a huge chunk of the damage that comes from her actively putting herself into harm's way, which just encourages a passive farm lane that you then can't counter because she's still mobile. Meaning she'll either be entirely useless, or after these nerfs go through, we'll probably be seeing her late-game power nerfed down the line too, because her inability to be proactive during laning would mean you couldn't shut down her scaling.

Really, these nerfs are the exact opposite of healthy for her as a champion and they won't solve any of her issues. All they'll do is make the angry people that got stomped by her happy.

BlueBilberry2/24/2017, 1:59:40 PM4 votes

Figures. Right after I seriously start taking her up, she starts getting really nerf-hammered. Of the last four nerfs, wave clear nerfs really have hurt - and Leblanc's wave clear is not that good atm. (This is coming from someone who has been watching the Master+ tier players with her.)

I mean this is becoming more reminiscent of the "Taliyah rendered useless" nerfs that happened last year. I still wonder why Riot goes with large nerfs instead recognizing that as they get to a certain point with a champion that gradual incremental nerfs could be used to bring a champ in line with the others.

CudyDarkyz2/24/2017, 11:18:50 PM4 votes

Taliyah Don't worry friend you will lose your wave clear later.

Mogarl2/24/2017, 6:00:28 PM2 votes

Perhaps Riot has come to the realisation that W can not be balanced as an offensive, defensive, and waveclear spell by putting nothing but damage on it. Without any kind of waveclear Leblanc can't meet the criteria for new assassins and be viable.

Snowman Arc2/24/2017, 6:09:17 PM2 votes

There are so many champions whose mobility spells don't deal tons of damage. For example, Khazix's E doesn't deal much. Kassadin's either etc. For some reason, Leblanc's W deals enormous AOE damage, that also lets her be double-mobile (4, if you count the ulti). That shouldn't be happening. Good riddance. She already have tremendous damage on her passive, Q and E.

Hupsis2/24/2017, 6:56:52 PM2 votes

W and RW are the only spells that are capable of marking multiple enemies with her passive. The choice is to either use them for escape or to mark a bunch of enemies for aoe passive proc'ing Q.

I'm not against the nerfs since they are clearly trying to fix the "max W first always" problem. By making W more of a mobility spell rather than dmg & mobility, this will hopefully be the result.

SnowFall2/24/2017, 11:59:36 AM2 votes

I knew Riot went insane the moment I heard that LB would have a proper waveclear now

Ultîma2/24/2017, 9:18:32 PM1 votes

Classic Riot; a hyper-mobile champion has an absolutely insane range on a tether. Let's nerf everything else except the obvious problem.

Heimerrhoids2/25/2017, 4:47:16 AM1 votes

Not that I agree with these changes, but I find it laughable that you say

''Shatter Orb (Q) damage to minions increased from 40% to 80%

Distortion (W) damage lowered from [85/120/155/190/225 (+60% AP)] to [40/55/70/85/100 (+20% AP)]

Mimic'd Distortion (R+W) damage lowered from [125/225/325 (+50% AP)] to [60/120/180 (+30% AP)]''

and forget to mention the;

Shatter Orb (Q) damage to minions increased from 40% to 80% Damage changed from [22/36/50/64/78 (+20% AP)] to [44/72/100/128/156/ (+40% AP)

Mannny2/25/2017, 8:57:20 AM1 votes

Lebluh

Revali2/24/2017, 6:19:03 AM1 votes

now and 6 years ago have nothing to do with eachother at this point.

QuickenedBlade2/24/2017, 6:48:29 AM1 votes

She doesn't need compensation lmao

she's busted as fuck

Steelflame2/24/2017, 8:04:44 AM1 votes

There is still a reason for her to go in though with W. Because it sets up her Q to proc her passive reliably, not based on a skillshot from E.

The adjustment to her Q damage to minions bonus is just so that she can still actually kill a wave ever, because with that low a base damage she pretty much can't depend on it to kill a minion wave even with RWW. This is still a nerf in all ways to her waveclear, it just is reducing the impact from "Can't ever even consider killing waves" to "W + Q for casters with AAs to finish meles, + E for Cannons"

She's losing 45-125(+40% AP Ratio) damage on her W, and 65-145(+20% AP ratio) from RW. They gave her 22-78(+20% AP ratio) waveclear on Q when proccing passive. She still is losing waveclear. She isn't magically going to start pushing harder because they reworked her Q damage to minions on bounce. You can shove her harder, put her under tower, and roam yourself easier now. Because right now, LB performs the same bullshit damage pattern old LB did. Spam Distortion jumps on you for a near instant unmissable nuke. For the strongest basic repositioning ability in the game, it sure didn't need that strength too.

sobi9992/24/2017, 8:09:28 AM1 votes

As far as lb can burst squishies like other mages/assassins/adc's and at the same time giving a small window of counterplay then the rework should be successful. You need to bare in mind that her W has great mobility together with her R. She is like zed as in she can kill her target and easily get away where as assassins like kat, ekko, akali and etc are much harder to escape with once you go in for a kill. If she does get gutted then atleast she dominated the rift for quite some time, you can even say nerfing her below average is fair.

Martyrofsand2/24/2017, 8:12:39 AM1 votes

Leblanc was seen as garbage for several season until someone got the bright idea of "hey if instead of leveling Q I leveled W I would still do insane damage but I would also have wave clear."

The second someone figured that out and pros picked it up we suddenly saw crap like Faker going undefeated and commanding a ban of Leblanc for over a freaking year because of it.

The riot reworked Leblanc AND GAVE HER BETTER WAVE CLEAR while still keeping her ability to delete people and wouldn't you know it, she has become a problem yet again. Literally delete all forms of AoE from her kit, don't reduce it remove it, make her W do single target damage or compensate her single target ability because flat out everytime she is given any form of wave clear she breaks the damn game.

invisiblecat12/24/2017, 4:21:53 PM1 votes

Still don't understand why they aren't just nerfing her cancer E damage and instead 1/3 her W damage

Fog Of Ignorance2/24/2017, 7:53:26 PM1 votes

i mained leblanc for 2 years. Win or Lose i had alot of fun playing her. She was so fun to move around with and do loads of damage to really only one target. now shes stressful as fck to play. land your w walk around for feels like an eternity try popping passive. she feels like im playing a damn robot try to get my passive on people and pop it. and hope to god i land a chain in the middle or u wont kill them and u stand there like a fcking idiot till u die. Her rework has made her do way more aoe which i loved the idea of but lets be honest shes not fun at all to play any more they made a robot. shes boreing which is a fcking shame and i hope they bring her back to her old self which is a single target blow up machine with shitty wave clear. becasue her wave clear in my opinion right now is still shit. fcking garbage im so pissed they made a fun champ so god damn boreing and robotic to play.