What About My Deceiving Friend?
Everyone remembers early 2017 when LeBlanc had way too much potential for damage and maneuverability in her kit. You were able to max her mobility spell, which allowed for maximum damage, and low cooldowns, making her unreasonably strong all around, but especially around the early and mid game. Her wave clear was obscene with her new passive, and she had very little windows of outplay provided to opponents.
Then, patch after patch, she got knocked down... Specifically, her W. Currently, the ability is considered "damageless" (think about it; an assassin has an ability that, if she got 1000 AP, the max-ranked ability would only deal 300 damage.) and she her kit now currently relies on a point-click ability that has little thematic relation to her, and is something that assassins, in all honesty, shouldn't have (referencing the fact that her core ability is point-click).
In May, there was a post made (link attached), speaking out about these issues. "We believe we need to do at least a small update to her as a result, not just balance work. Without some meaningful changes we expect she'll otherwise get stuck in a state where she's still dominant in certain circumstances and feels pretty bad outside of those (as a point of reference Azir has similar, though not identical, challenges). An update doesn't feel great, given we put work into her just late last year, but we do think it's necessary. It's also possible the above analysis may change once we start looking at LB in depth." -Meddler
So, my question is, has there been any progress, significant or minor, on these necessary changes? I'm surprised she is still thriving as is, but the unfortunate part about her current survival is the fact that it is totally based on Gunblade (if she didn't need anymore point-click reliancy) and her Q-passive combo. Her kit is simply unhealthy, and relies on thematically stale abilities.
I was initially hoping she would be hit a month ago when multiple champions (ex. Janna, Xin Xhao, Caitlyn) had pretty significant changes themselves. And with the recent Azir rework, I know they can figure a way to tune down her early game harass so she can be much more vulnerable at this stage.
So, what is going on with our two-faced magician?