Can we talk about LeBlanc for a sec?

THExJACKAL·Apr 4, 2014·1 votes·248 views

Okay so, LeBlanc is a pretty powerful champion, no arguments there, especially when she's played well, hell, even when she's played somewhat decent, she's still extremely powerful. The only real issues I have with her, is that her cooldowns are all so very low. I mean her ult doesn't cost mana for one, and has a 40 sec cooldown at level one and goes down to 24 sec at level 3. Her highest cooldown is on her distortion, which at max level is only 10 seconds. Add in some cooldown reduction from items and masteries, and these cooldowns are shortened even less. Basically allowing her to spam her abilities like crazy, especially with her ult not costing any mana whatsoever, which also increases the damage of the ability being mimicked. What I'm getting at, is she needs to have her cooldowns raised a bit, and give her ult some sort of mana cost. LeBlanc can essentially go to town so easily, with very little usage of resource. Yes she's squishy as most mages are, but when you can cast distortion 3 times in 15 seconds, using her ult, its like have 3 extra flashes, and she can escape so easily. Her stats as far as damage go, can either stay the same, or go down just a little, but her cooldowns, and mana cost should be raised a bit.

6 Comments

Sir ArmaMalumApr 4, 20141 votes

It's a difficult thing to balance because of the versatility of her kit. All of her abilities have so many use cases if you nerf her offensive capability you're also nerfing her mobility and defense. Now I'm not saying she doesn't need a bit of a tuning, I wouldn't be surprised if her mana costs got raised by hair on her W, but it will take a lot of abuse and popularity for her cooldowns to be looked at imho.

THExJACKALApr 5, 20141 votes

Well, I don't feel like it's necessarily abuse if her cooldowns were looked at. I mean she has some of the shortest cooldowns in the game, next to Ryze I believe, but even Ryze, as powerful as he can burst down a champ, he hasn't that great of escapes. Just his snare and his ult to run away. LeBlanc though has her triple distortions, or even just double distortion, which is like having 2 flashes, plus her snare, plus her passive. All this makes for a very tricky champ, which I'm sure is what she is intended to be like, since she's a magician, but her cooldowns, I feel, need to be looked at the most. Mana cost on her ult as well. She can abuse so much of her abilities, without that much cost to resources, with massive damage output.

Sir ArmaMalumApr 5, 20141 votes

That's actually my point though, any nerf to her cooldowns will knock down both her damage and her mobility, exponentially increasing the nerf's significance.

Essentially with LeBlanc cooldown nerfs will be two steps back in her power level and its hard to take one step forward without overbuffing another portion of her kit. I'm not saying its impossible, or not needed (I haven't played as or against a LB outside of URF for awhile now say I can't say I have an opinion), just that's it's much more tricky to balance her than another champion.

ChaosThiefApr 4, 20141 votes

Leblanc is actually balanced, and falls off TERRIBLY late game.

Unless she has a 2.0 scaling on both Q procs or something OP, just last into late game and catch up in gold. Anyone with some health and resistance can turn and kill her on the spot.

THExJACKALApr 5, 20141 votes

See, I don't quite agree with that. In regards to her falling off late game. The only people that can essentially survive her bursts, are tanks, and tanks are normally known for being slow, and not that powerful, so LB can just run away. Also, with her distortion on such short cooldown, as well as her ult, even if she were to get some sort of cc put onto her, once she's out of it, she can just dash away using her flash, then her distortion. Not to mention she also has her passive. So if she doesn't have any kind of buffs/marks on her, she basically has a slew of escapes, that are almost always readily available with such short cooldowns. And as far as late game goes, like I said, she does an extreme amount of damage, in such a short time frame, that she can kill someone, run away, wait a few seconds, come back and kill someone else immediately. I'm saying that her mana costs should be raised, as well as her cooldowns. Damage can either be the same, or maybe lowered just a bit, nothing drastic.

ChaosThiefApr 11, 20141 votes

The thing is, if you don't get directly behind them, they will kill you fast. For example, they push mid. To get close enough, you have to use w then r to dive in, only to be stunned by one enemy if they react fast enough (which isn't actually very fast).