The reason LeBlanc nerfs on PBE are not ok
Hi, I'm not a challenger LeBlanc player, but I'm still a LeBlanc main and I've played her for 3 seasons now.
I played her even when she was considered a troll pick just because I like her theme and playstyle, and what really bothers me about PBE nerfs is that they're going to change it.
I'm not saying she's fine currently, I'm aware she can be disgustingly op if properly used, but there's a lot of things you can tweak without changing her playstyle at all.
I know PBE changes are extremely WIP, but I still want to point out why you're going in the wrong direction.
For people who don't know yet, her Q is getting the bonus damage to minions back to 80% and her W and RW damage AND scaling is getting halved. Let me explain why this is not the right direction you have to go to nerf her.
First, you want her to max Q instead of W and choose between damage and mobility/roaming potential. Well, anyone who knows the champ enough will just agree with me that there is no reason in maxing Q first. Pre-rework you maxed it first to have a higher burst because the sigil was in her Q (and even the silence, rip), but now that the sigil is her passive and since Q has shitty base/scaling, there'a no point in maxing it first; also, Q already has a low cd early so there's no real need to max Q over W.
W just works as intended. She has to choose between damage and mobility/escape. LB W'ed at you? Well, she's vulnerable to ganks and you can also punish her to melee range once she dashes on you. She didn't? She loses A LOT of her damage by choosing safety. Decision making, trading safety for damage, and I think it is totally fine for her to deal some damage with W if she also loses her safety, especially early in the game when W has a super high cd.
Now with those nerfs it will go this way: pre-6, she will safely farm thanks to her waveclear, poke with some Q, a W to proc the sigil or trying to hit a chain. Post 6 she will be old LB again, just trying to Q R and use W only for escape because it will deal no real damage, since it gains a whole 100 damage from rank 1 to 5. Her lane will be less interactive than pre rework. Farm simulator, Q>W/E, back to safety and repeat until you have enough AP to kill your opponent or otherwise become useless later in the game.
No one complained about her new W, you also added a delay to reactivate it and I think that it is her most iconic ability. Please, just don't gut it.
Suggested changes:
-
Increase passive cooldown on the same target and maybe make it scale with level? Like starting at 7/8 down to 5 at lv 16.
-
Reduce the passive sigil duration, so she has a smaller window to burst people and if she's not fast enough or her opponent is smart, she can't proc the sigil at all.
-
reduce W dash speed again like you did with pre-rework LeBlanc or reduce his reactivation time from 4s to 3/2s, like old LB; this way she'll have a less forgiving play style since she can't just dash, wait for sigil to activate and then go back to safety.
-
MOST IMPORTANT, reduce her E range and tether range and its damage and change the tether time from 1.5s to maybe 1.4s, so it can't proc the sigil by itself. You could also reduce her snare from 1.5s to 1s so she has less time to unleash a combo to a poor snared target.
That's it. Sorry if the post isn't that well written, writing from phone.