Boards›Gameplay

How come Leblanc's updated kit continues to not meaningfully fufill her theme.

The Class Cat··5 votes·678 views

As a long time Leblanc player, I knew her place of being a major rework in the Assassin Update was justified. To be honest, I was rather excited and I had possibly had put too much hope into it. My problems with Leblanc before was that she wasn't healthy in terms of game play and another problem was that her kit felt extremely underwhelming in regards to being deceptive. I'm glad with the Assassin update, Riot has addressed the 0 second burst and assassination part of the kit, but somehow I feel as though Riot is **not **really capitalizing on her potential to be a true deceiver. I have not seen anything substantial from the update that has Leblanc lying or giving off false information to the enemy and in essence this update feels as though her kit simply shifted elements while not fully committed to her theme. _

Here's a breakdown of her current kit :

  • Passive - Damage on a single target with a conditional AOE component.

  • Shatter Orb (Q) - Damage and can help with wave clear if you do W>Q with 1.5 seconds between them.

  • Distortion (W) - Damaging AOE dash with delay on the snapback.

  • Ethereal Chains (E) - Projectile snare.

  • Mimic / Shadow of the Rose (R1/R2) - Copied ability and separate ability to make a clone that fires a fake of the last skill used.

Of the 5 pieces of her kit (technically 6 now) - Only 3 of them can be labeled as something that is deceptive. Those three are her W, R1, and R2. The rest are essentially damage dumps with a little splash of CC. Of the three mentioned that could fit within the realm of 'deceptiveness', the only one that feels satisfying enough despite being superficial is her W. While I understand her mimic has been part of her kit since release, there's nothing 'tricky' or 'deceptive' about it in practice. In theory, I understand where this idea of deception can happen. The opponent would think that a Leblanc player would have exhausted all of her basic skills and when Leblanc fires that mimicked ability - it's supposed to feel surprising. However, I don't believe anyone has felt that playing against her and would just chuck it out as another skill altogether. There's no suspense or shock to it. While I understand once you play against a Leblanc, there are no surprises anymore; the least that could be achieved is having the enemy be actually scared of what the ultimate is if Leblanc continues to have mimic.

The second component of her ultimate - Shadow of the Rose, seems like a cool ability. And it is. Going back to execution, I just don't think it hit the mark. The fake Leblanc would run up to you and cast ONE skill that does no damage. Sounds deceptive, however it falls flat on itself. In a situation contrasting a real Leblanc player and the clone, the Leblanc player would be seen walking up to the opponent. Instead of walking to be exactly in range for her skills, the player would usually try to quickly close the distance with distortion (though not landing it) to set up her Q and E. On the flip side, say if you wanted to be deceptive and put her clone mid lane while traveling bot to actually gank them as part of a mix up, it's not possible. The clone is programmed to do nothing but charge at someone to get into the range of the last skill used and copy it. It would be extremely easy to read it and there would be no real way to actually set it up without the other player already knowing what might happen. There are few situations in which this ultimate can deceive the opponent - for instance popping it in a brush and having it rush to the mid lane. However in most other situations particularly mid fight it can be hit or miss.

The only way it would be fixed in terms of having it be used to pretend gank or stay in the lane was if there was no indication that she had cloned herself and that the real Leblanc is invisible with a ms boost to leave quickly to roam and with the clone set up as a bot that farms and harasses (but maybe does little or not damage on her skills).

**tl;dr - **Leblanc's kit continues to not capitalize on her theme. Her W is the only real skill that feels deceptive to the Leblanc player. Her passive, Q, E are nothing but damage and a form of cc. Her R is highly gimmicky and not really useful in practice and her mimic continues to not do much for her theme despite being there since release. This is also solely focusing on just her problems on her thematic side not gameplay.

4 Comments

Handy Sandy 2 votes

kinda does tho

gives no examples

Zyphex2 votes

{quoted}

kinda does tho

gives no examples

Yes he does. If you read, he gives why he doesn't feel the rework fulfilled anything beside lessening the burst speed. I also agree with him on the points he made.Think of it this way, In what world does a ryze level waveclear match Leblanc the deciever? She has 3 damage abilities. One is a point and click orb, another is a dash, 3rd is a chain. Do any of those sound decieving in the least? You would say 1 (the dash) but since they even decided to add a 0.3 second wait before you can snapback, even that is being limited. The only thing they did with this rework is slow her down and turn her into a burst mage like ahri for example and gave her waveclear. They didn't come up with anything originial for the rework either. They literally took the clone from the passive. Put it on the ult and made it global while at the same time making it worse because you can't control it. I don't think I can consider her an assassin anymore considering her suggested items are tankier items such as ROA and GLP. She has no surprise burst anymore. Its just you lay down a rotation of spells to proc a 1.5 SECOND WAIT FOR YOUR MAIN DAMAGE....that takes much longer than an assassin should ever have to wait to even start their damage rotation. You basically have to walk along side of your target so you can Q or E them to proc your passive then try and outplay them if that doesn't kill them. The rework is extremely gimmicky. They didn't do anything unique and its saddening.

The Class Cat1 votes

Looking at the Talon, he seems great and I loved how they explored his theme of assassinating people from different vantage points that will expose their weak side and introduces a cool mechanic that doesn't really fall on the gimmicky side like Leblanc's R2. Many of the assassins got cool changes but Leblanc just falls on the side of meh aside from the buffed up wave clear.

With the 1.5 second delay that was one of my main concerns as well, it feels like an eternity to wait for it. I understand why it's there but it might be a tad bit too long. She gained a huge opening with her passive + 0.3 delay (to do any meaningful damage) and there's nothing that really stops the opponent from trying to kill her if they have CC. I mean she has a 1.5 second grow time on passive, 1.5 second chain time with the requirement of being exposed and she has a small delay on her W now.

Catastrop1 votes

I'm quite sure he was joking about himself saying it does, but then not giving any examples to back up his statement.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes