Let's talk about LeBlanc

Dear Riot,

I'm not a good player nor am I a one trick pony, but still I would like to talk to you about Emilia because I enjoyed playing her and kind of still do. She was my to go pick when I didn't feel like playing anything else and I felt comfortable with her. After her rework I basically dropped her completely because she felt clunky and was way different to play which annoyed me a lot especially since my other to go pick (Rengar) suffered a similar fate at the time. After half a year of ignoring LeBlanc decided I'll give her rework another chance. And here is what I think.

For me used to be the fluent single target roaming early game nuke mage who had a rough time laneing due to her squishiness, lack of sustain and waveclear. Over all a fun to play concept but relatively toxic to play against when she got ahead.

So what changed?

Lets start with her fantasy: "The deceiver". This without a doubt got better with the implementation of Shadow of the Rose. Though I barely use this ability to actually deceive my enemies, rather I consider it to be a scouting tool to locate the enemy jungler which in my opinion is a good usage of this ability. It is a great ability and allows you certain mind games even though relatively hard to consistently use as an actual deceiving tool. In my opinion though this was a great addition to her kit. Props on Riot for that.

But here is where my satisfaction with the rework ends. Basically all of LeBlancs damage went into her passive which makes her kind of unintuitive and clunky to play. What do I mean by that? With most champions, when hitting my abilities I am able to inflict damage instantly but with LeBlanc I have to take time into consideration as well. After marking a target it just feels terrible to wait 1.5 seconds until you can put out damage. This makes time and not cooldown dependent wich is really odd to play since you have to guess whether you survive the time in an engagement to proc your Sigil or you have to bail out early.

Those 1.5 seconds annoy me the most when I use Distortion on a minion wave. I am standing there waiting and waiting until the Sigil is charged and I can use Shatter Orb in the hope that the minions didn't move to far apart so it actually bounces. It just doesn't feel fluent like Ryze waveclear or similar.

Aside from that, with her new passive a lot of power in her kit shifted towards Etheral Chains which I consider problematic since now doesn't have a tradeoff for using Distortion to clear the wave whereas before the rework you had to decide whether to use it to waveclear or to harrass. Meaning she is now more obnoxious to lane against because her strongest damage ability has not to be used to clear the wave.

Which leads me to the Distortion ability. A mobility spell with a solid base damage of 40-100 with a 20% ap ratio. It is a super fun ability to use but it is nothing like it used to be before the rework. When you use Distortion on an enemy Champion it literally feels like a joke. I don't mind that this ability is no longer a damage source but it completely shifted the playstyle of LeBlanc.

People are trying to make LeBlanc an assassin again with the Gunblade build. But it feels just wrong to build and I think something is terribly wrong when a champion who is designed as an assassin who hasn't got any ad scaleings builds a niche hybrid item just for an extra upfront burst spell and sustain.

What really upsets me is the great identity shift LeBlanc has taken with the rework. She went from an assassin to something like a snowbally kite mage with an even worse late game than before. Now she is reliant to get the extra damage spell and sustain from gunblade which seems to make her broken. Which leads to further nerfs to LeBlanc.

Final thoughts: I think the LeBlanc rework, even though it has some good aspects, has missed its goals of makeing her less toxic to play against. The champion seems hard to get into a balanced state with so much power comming from her passive.

I really hope Riot finds a way to get LeBlanc into a balanced state what I, in her current iteration, doubt.

Thank you for reading Lord Cicero