The reason LeBlanc nerfs on PBE are not ok

Fisher No Chains··8 votes·1,206 views

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

11 Comments

ChaddyFantome6 votes
  • Everyone and their mother (including LB mains) say the issue is her E
  • Riot refuses to adjust her E out of some weird principle as opposed to any semblance of logistic reasoning.

These devs sometimes, i swear.

Fisher No Chains3 votes

Fun fact: even if she loses like half of her damage because of masteries changes and W nerfs, she will be obnoxious because her E is still kept the way it currently is.

Yes, these devs probably don't have any understanding of the game at all.

Raxistaicho2 votes

Oh don't worry, Riot's probably going to eventually hit her E, after it turns out nerfing her W didn't stop her from being the best mid laner in the game by a mile (now that Corki got nerfed).

It's just a question of how many other things they nerf first before they eventually face facts and gut her broken E.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p_P6Tmp0CE

Fisher No Chains4 votes

I really don't get it. People complaining for months about E, Leblanc mains being totally fine with nerfing E and its interaction with passive... And they nerf everything else except E.

Kinda sad, if you ask me.

Borbland2 votes

Stop complaining about LB, the changes were made under Twitter with the comment "THIS CHANGES ARE EXTREME AND UNLIKELY TO STAY AS SUCH!"

Fisher No Chains3 votes

Already said why I don't like them anyway. They're nerfing the wrong things.

I bet you didn't even read my post, yet you complain about it. What a community.

Aesteria1 votes

It's not just her E IMO. If you look at the stats, and yes I know winrates aren't the holy grail of champion balancing, but hear me out. If you look at winrate over game length, you see she dominates early and falls of pretty hard later in the game (from 55 to 46 % or something). Her insane early damage makes her super strong mid game but then it becomes harder and harder to win, now nerfing her early without compensating a little for her late game will make her, IMO, garbage. And the proposed changes on the PBE right now, will do just that and more ( nerfing both early and late)

Fisher No Chains2 votes

That's another reason I don't like those nerfs. She's SUPPOSED to be an early bully and fall off later in the game, but they're actually destroying the only moment she's good... I mean, late an adc can duel you before the sigil even activates.

Well, that was obvious anyway. For every class rework we have someone to gut... it's time for LeBlanc and Rengar to be the new Malzahar and Morde.

Lebłanc Bot1 votes

I'm a relatively new player in league and I have recently mained Leblanc. I agree with that maybe her e should be nerfd but her w change is totally bs. Honestly her passive damage reduction was also a big hit on her last patch. They hit the wrong thing to nerf on last patch and this one to. The whole point of Leblanc is to get ahead early so you arnt totally useless late but now games are starting to go longer and you need your team so you can't carry games anymore. So getting ahead early is a little lackluster because she can just get 100-0 late game if u mess up even just alittle bit. Leblanc also has a HUGE mastery curve so really that's a nerf in itself. I don't think they should nerf her w they already did that last patch with the passive nerf so don't do it again. I actually think the time it takes to come back after using w should go back to the old because 0.3 is somehow way to long. Especially late game where you can get one shoted. Also I do think her wave clear buff should stay the same. After the nerfs to her passive and her wave clear a couple patches ago laneing with Leblanc has gotten much harder.

Papa Slothy1 votes

they're experimental and could potentially be changed completely

VelvetCrotch1 votes

i'll take these two to go pls:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

ty =)

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