Playing leblanc feels clunky and actively punishes you for building CDR (solutions inside)

Dread Nacht·Feb 7, 2018·3 votes·632 views

Leblanc is currently one of (if not) the worst assassin post rework (fizz is the other contender, but he has AoE burst/hard CC so he has teamfight potential Leblanc lacks). She has to wait 1.5 seconds for a significant portion of her damage to "proc" and the rest of her damage aside from her q and rq is lackluster at best. Also, once she procs her passive, she can't proc it again on the same target for 5 seconds. Both of these traits effectively make her the epitome of a "feast or famine" champ, because 1.5 seconds is enough time for the ADC to kill you before any of your damage goes off, and on the off chance you somehow survive, you can't do it again for another 5 seconds, or roughly the time it takes the adc to kill you 3 times. So you need to have a massive lead so you don't die to them and they get one-shot, both of which are incredibly unhealthy for the game.

Leblanc also likes to build Morrello & zhonyas for sustain and a chance at living through the adc's barrage between procs, but her passive (which is a significant portion of her damage) becomes extremely clunky due to her abilities essentially "outscaling" her passive, forcing you to wait for your passive to come up in order to do anything, which punishes you for having built CDR in the first place. There's a reason why the Koreans build Leblanc ADC, it's significantly less clunky and more rewarding to the player to use her kit to evade and reposition, while not being gimped by the passive. I can see four ways in which Riot can resolve this problem:

Take damage from her passive and move it back to her W and E and make her have autonomy from her passive.
Make her passive hit harder to further reward/incentivize her to build around it (so build less CDR in favor or ROA/Runic Echo/Liandries/etc.)
Make both aspects of her passive scale with CDR, so that building CDR rewards you with smoother gameplay and more options when it comes to ability use.
Make both aspects scale with level. Smoother gameplay similar to Option 3.

Analyzing the problems of each change may bring clarity and perhaps more insight on what Leblanc's identity/intended weaknesses are supposed to be:

Option 1 is akin to simply reverting her back, meaning that her W and E will be too effective and safe for poking and make her extremely unfun to play against and lack counterplay, so I don't recommend this option.
Option 2 would give her way too much early game damage and will inevitably cause her to snowball out of control with her new build will making an already difficult champion to pin down that much harder to kill with all the extra HP she will be building from ROA/Liandries/Rylais. This option is better than option 1 since her mid-late game issues remain the same unless massively fed. This is my third-preferred option.
Option 3 incentivizes Leblanc to build CDR/Squishy and leaves her early game the same, while making her a more effective assassin come mid and late game, while still keeping her intended weaknesses to CC and burst. Think Urgot before they stripped him of sterak's (both of which were on the same power level). Problems could arise as now her passive (without cosmic insight) has .9 sec for the person to react, which might be too short. An easy fix is to make the passive proc at 1.65 seconds baseline instead of 1.5 so that with 40% cdr the proc goes off in 1 second. This is my top-preferred option.
Option 4 is similar to 3, but slightly worse due to punishing her for the loss of lane exp when she's roaming for kills, which goes against the identity of an assassin, but would still be a tolerable change as opposed to what she has now. This is my second-most preferred option.

I know Leblanc was absolute cancer in her prime and people might still hold a grudge against her receiving any love from Riot, but I believe that her current state prevents her from fulfilling her identity as an assassin. What do you guys think of my solutions, do you have any other options that can be made to accommodate Leblanc? I look forward to reading the responses [leblanc-funny] .

7 Comments

PoskeFeb 7, 20183 votes

Or you can like learn how to play her XD. Yes I lolskilled you have no fking idea but thats ok LL explain some stuff

I do agree that after certain point she scales bad with cdr I think its around 24% Cdr

[{quoted}](name=Dread Nacht,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=z3IbdxEX,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-02-07T07:31:13.054+0000)

Leblanc is currently one of (if not) the worst assassin post rework (fizz is the other contender, but he has AoE burst/hard CC so he has teamfight potential Leblanc lacks).

When Played to her maximun potentional Le blanc is the best assassin in game after katarina (Granted kata just got nerfed) Edit: Well midlane assassin that is. Kha is quite insane assassin in jng

She has to wait 1.5 seconds for a significant portion of her damage to "proc" and the rest of her damage aside from her q and rq is lackluster at best. Also, once she procs her passive, she can't proc it again on the same target for 5 seconds. Both of these traits effectively make her the epitome of a "feast or famine" champ, because 1.5 seconds is enough time for the ADC to kill you before any of your damage goes off, and on the off chance you somehow survive, you can't do it again for another 5 seconds, or roughly the time it takes the adc to kill you 3 times. So you need to have a massive lead so you don't die to them and they get one-shot, both of which are incredibly unhealthy for the game.

I consistently One shot People in less then 0.3 seconds with le blanc. But that is because I KNOW HOW TO. Whenever I see Le blanc player talking about the whole 1.5 seconds thats a red alert.

Le blanc has enough tools to be unfocusable during those 1.5 seconds reggardless. But hey this implies deep understanding of combos.. which you dont have

Leblanc also likes to build Morrello & zhonyas for sustain and a chance at living through the adc's barrage between procs, but her passive (which is a significant portion of her damage) becomes extremely clunky due to her abilities essentially "outscaling" her passive, forcing you to wait for your passive to come up in order to do anything, which punishes you for having built CDR in the first place. There's a reason why the Koreans build Leblanc ADC, it's significantly less clunky and more rewarding to the player to use her kit to evade and reposition, while not being gimped by the passive. I can see four ways in which Riot can resolve this problem:

No she doesnt. Both of this items are subpar on Le blanc. You might ask BUT WHO ARE YOU TO SAY THIS STUFF I am ex #1 LB WORLD. THE FIRST LE BLANC THE BEST LE BLANC THE ONLY GOOD LE BLANC.

Idk whats my LB rank atm but sooner or later ll get there again kinda switching to battlerite since league is hot garbage

Take damage from her passive and move it back to her W and E and make her have autonomy from her passive.

That is a massive AOE buff aka you have no idea what you are suggesting

Make her passive hit harder to further reward/incentivize her to build around it (so build less CDR in favor or ROA/Runic Echo/Liandries/etc.)

ROA on LB is some SIVHD trolling. there are no CHANGES to passive YOU CAN MAKE WHICH would make Le blanc players go away from the following items item 3145 item 3100

Hint clone can proc those items. So you end up procing each of them twice. This is why Le blanc is still bursty

Make both aspects of her passive scale with CDR, so that building CDR rewards you with smoother gameplay and more options when it comes to ability use.

Not every champion needs to scale hard with CDR. Le blanc scales with AP on hit items the best. She is also probably the best ludens user in game granted ludens aint at its strongest

Make both aspects scale with level. Smoother gameplay similar to Option 3.

I dont think unskilled le blanc should mention Le blanc smoothness ever

Analyzing the problems of each change may bring clarity and perhaps more insight on what Leblanc's identity/intended weaknesses are supposed to be:

Option 1 is akin to simply reverting her back, meaning that her W and E will be too effective and safe for poking and make her extremely unfun to play against and lack counterplay, so I don't recommend this option.

Option 2 would give her way too much early game damage and will inevitably cause her to snowball out of control with her new build will making an already difficult champion to pin down that much harder to kill with all the extra HP she will be building from ROA/Liandries/Rylais. This option is better than option 1 since her mid-late game issues remain the same unless massively fed. This is my third-preferred option.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Just straight up. None of your changes would lead to this. And this is also garbage idea and suggestion

Option 3 incentivizes Leblanc to build CDR/Squishy and leaves her early game the same, while making her a more effective assassin come mid and late game, while still keeping her intended weaknesses to CC and burst. Think Urgot before they stripped him of sterak's (both of which were on the same power level). Problems could arise as now her passive (without cosmic insight) has .9 sec for the person to react, which might be too short. An easy fix is to make the passive proc at 1.65 seconds baseline instead of 1.5 so that with 40% cdr the proc goes off in 1 second. This is my top-preferred option.

Speaking of smoothness rofl XDDDD plz stop suggesting anything Le blanc related. Also your incentive is extremly far from working LE BLANC build is hardcoded it wont change unless you change her ultimate clone. Also changing any AP champion in regards to current garbage AP itemization which needs rework is bad

Option 4 is similar to 3, but slightly worse due to punishing her for the loss of lane exp when she's roaming for kills, which goes against the identity of an assassin, but would still be a tolerable change as opposed to what she has now. This is my second-most preferred option.

I know Leblanc was absolute cancer in her prime and people might still hold a grudge against her receiving any love from Riot, but I believe that her current state prevents her from fulfilling her identity as an assassin. What do you guys think of my solutions, do you have any other options that can be made to accommodate Leblanc? I look forward to reading the responses [leblanc-funny] .

Yes never post anything Le blanc related thx

Atleast you didnt fail for the whole WE identify Le blanc as burst mage

Dread NachtFeb 7, 20183 votes

What are the combos you speak of then? Runes and item builds?

Currently, your comment just comes off as condescending and not very contructive. Basically saying my thread is invalid because i dont know how to play her, but you currently offer little insight in playing her besides "i can kill someone in .3 seconds" and a clone mechanic with on-hit items. The latter i didnt know about so thank you for that.

At the risk of being baited, id like to know more about playing leblanc, since you seem knowledgeable on her.

TheSandQratorFeb 7, 20181 votes

Yeah, actually I'd not known about that interaction with those items, either but it makes sense after thinking on it for a moment.

But yeah, the tone of that post could otherwise have been worded more than a little better. I'd really started to want to stop reading through it about halfway through. Picking apart the overview of someone's ideas separately from their followup on them is asinine.

There's being informative about something you've intimate knowledge on, and then there's being a twat.

It's really best to try not to dress down someone's ideas without providing informative content to the contrary, otherwise it makes you look like a child. (Especially if you have only like one or two lines between paragraphs of quoted text.)

PoskeFeb 7, 20181 votes

Ugh this is so time consuming ); I hope you ll appreciate it

Combo where you are waiting somewhere and the enemy is passing by unaware of your position

E>AA>Q>RQ>MB4+W (this can all be done extremly fast)

This one shots if you have some powerspike item such as item 3145 in 0.1 seconds (According to death recap) but that is just because almost all abilities hit in same time realisticly it takes you 0,3 seconds

Long distance combo out of champion sight range (This is why you never switch from yellow trinket / ms isnt important stat on LB)

W > RW >Protobelt Q MB4 > AA > W2

There are lots of situational alterations to this combo Such as one below

W > AA > E > RW > MB4 > Protobelt > Q > AA > W2

If you know enemy doesnt have vision of you the one below is better

With this combos and their alterations I consistently dive 1vs4 1vs5 kill one target and get out (No other champion in game can do that (Zed can but from like 600 less range with less dmg)

Copy my runes. Cookies + dematerializer is what you want. In easy matchups you can take secondary purple tree with cdr stuff You can cheese level 3 by killing siege minion but you generaly mark melee minions and 1 ranged

Le blanc has way to many combos ... + they ll change her again soon so I wont write more combos anywhere as for build

/ = You alternate depending on situation / get whatever spends most gold

No boots build Revolver > Nlr/ sheen > sheen / Nlr > Ludens/ lichbane > lichbane / ludens > / Voidstaff / Proto > Proto / voidstaff > thats your core build

Ussualy after core build I get banshee and spam blue elixirs for safety in my Rambo dives (clone has shield to for mindgames) Once you are done with Ludens/Lich guise is a good buy if you back with 1500 over proto / voidstaff

Sheen gives more dueling power counters hexdrinker kassadin / galio (you buy it first vs those hard matchups) Nlr gives more waveclear power

Atleast have 210 AP when you buy lichbane (i mean its efficient at lower values but this is what i suggest) Ludens is fantastic rush item so generaly go ludens > lich

Voidstaff / proto Voidstaff IS OP if you need it you need it else proto again guise if you land at 1500 is fine

Most champions even rush void as their second item so you need it more often then not

Sometimes you back with 300 gold so you get boots In that case the build is the same you just swap Ludens with boots and try to reach good Ap ammount before Lichbane

Dark seal and Doran are my common buys to

Never build gunblade Never build Glp never build rabadon never build void never build nomicon

Once new items come I ll still try to avoid boots Twin shadow / new item, Lichbane, revolver being cores < mostlikely

Dread NachtFeb 7, 20181 votes

I feel stupid for asking, but what Does MB4 stand for? Since I have a MMO mouse i'd assume you mean pressing mouse button 4, which for me is the trinket (since I'm using default keybinds). I'm also having trouble finding your rune setup, are you going down the dom, sorc, or inspiration tree as your main one?

Cookies and demat are on the same tier now it seems. For minion demat, which minions do you target? from my experiences I can normally almost one shot the caster minions with a W->Q, so do I kill 1-2 caster minions, 2-3 melee, and 1-3 cannon minions?

PoskeFeb 7, 20181 votes

Yes its mouse buttom 4. Also make sure you have CTRL + something / alt + something as one option in your clone move normal move commands else you wont be able to level up / selfcast and walk in the same time

How can you have trouble finding my rune setup. I got 2 setups bot have LB it its name

Oh that change is live. Well rip my combination then. Use cookies + something (gotta check whats left)

And obviously primary tree is electrocute tree