Reining in Le Blanc

Jingerbeardman·Jun 3, 2014·1 votes·379 views

After playing a mirror match of Le Blancs (which was extremely insightful to her incredible strengths and lack of weaknesses) I decided to check on the PBE and see what changes are in store for LB this next patch. I first found some outrageous changes but saw they were reverted right away with the next update back to live values. While I know that people will disagree with me but the answer to increasing Le Blancs actual weaknesses and vulnerabilities is extremely simple.

Nearly all of LB's lack of weakness stems from the way distortion works. Since there is no downtime between using distortion and returning to your original casting location there is very little risk in the way she combos and farms. If an internal cooldown were implemented that prevented you to return to the casting location for a short period of time existed much of her overbearing dominance would balance out. When I say a short period of time I really mean short, nothing more than .75-1 seconds from the initial cast of distortion (meaning it starts before you even land).

What would this do? It would make players have to choose wisely when using distortion. Right now distortion is the quick and easy way to farm and deal fast and effective trades with little risk. Add in a period of time before you can return and you fix all of that. If you had to wait to go back, even if it is a short bit, it gives opponents time to act and retaliate compared to right now on live. Will this make Le Blanc unplayable and remove her viability? No. Since you will still be able to silence your target for 1.5 seconds you have more than enough time to distortion in and back out before they can cast anything while you are in the danger zone. However you wont have as much time to get away to a safe distance before the silence wears off compared to live right now.

The primary argument that will be brought up in opposition to this is that it would make her to easy to kill in skirmishes and team fights. I don't think it will though. Will it change how easy it is to eliminate a high threat target compared to right now? Definitely. It will take more teamwork to make sure you can get in and out safely. After all that is what team fighting is all about, working together. It wouldn't hurt to increase the time window during which you can return a bit if this were implemented. An additional half a second should allow enough time to distortion in and use Zhonyas without having to worry about running out of time to return after the 2.5 second stasis is done.

The only other ways to balance out Le Blanc is to reduce her base damage values and ratios or increase her spells cooldowns and no one likes to see that happen to their champion. This idea would make it so that wouldn't have to happen and yet still make facing Le Blanc a little more fair for everyone else.

4 Comments

Penguin EclipseJun 4, 20141 votes

LeBlanc is not designed to commit to a fight. Once she unleashes her burst, she has to escape because she literally has nothing. None of her abilities have a low enough CD to be spammable or used again in short time. She is super squishy and has zero sustain of any kind. She doesn't have invisibility nor an untargetable ability (passive doesn't count.) She has a jump in, blink out.

A timer on recasting Distortion might be okay in a 1v1 lane. But her juking and outplay potential takes a serious blow. And in team fights she will be completely useless. Assassins are supposed to assassinate. She shouldn't need her team to make sure she can get back out alive and teamfighting is not her specialty by any means. And any delay in being able to escape is long enough to get CCed and get instantly blown up. If she uses an hourglass, all they have to do is wait it out. That's assuming she can use it. The hourglass CD is a lot longer than her Distortion's CD and won't be usable the majority of the time.

JingerbeardmanJun 4, 20141 votes

I would have to disagree that she would be useless in team fights if this happened. This idea does not change her ability to assassinate targets but provides opportunities for her opponents to act. Right now Le blanc players can easily take out high priority targets in fights with not much thought to their own positioning. That is unhealthy to me because positioning should be everything for assassins. To say that her passive doesn't count is very short sided. when her passive is triggered she goes into stealth for a short bit which means she becomes untargetable unless she is revealed by some means. This is the case for many assassins. She also has far more available in her kit to keep her safe than just distortion as well.

Penguin EclipseJun 4, 20141 votes

LeBlanc cannot survive if her opponent has time to react. Her kit is literally built around jumping in, killing, and jumping out before anyone can react.

Unlike other assasins, when LeBlanc's passive activates you know exactly where she is. Throw an AoE ability there (even a Karthus Q has enough AoE to hit both her and her clone) and you will probably kill her in 1 hit. A crit from an adc can kill her before her passive even activates.

What exactly does she have to keep her safe in her kit besides distortion? She doesn't have a shield like Diana or Kassadin. She doesn't have a shroud like Akali or the sustain. Katarina has resets on an assist that allow her to jump back out or just keep killing. Fizz has a pogo stick. Etc. LeBlanc has a recast on distortion. Every ability LeBlanc has will be burned on her engage and none of them will be off CD in time to be used again before her distortion recast wears off. She might still have her E if she didn't need it, but it won't do a bit of good when she jumps in to a team fight and everyone is attacking her.

In low elo (bronze/silver) she might be able to jump back out without taking too much damage. In the much more organized high elo where timing is highly important, she will be dead before she can recast a delayed distortion.

JingerbeardmanJun 4, 20141 votes

You make it sound like her other abilities are useless. She has a 1.5 second silence, that prevents high damage casters who are one of your high priority targets from being able to unload on you if you don't end up killing them. Ethereal Chains is useful to keep bruisers and tanks from easily reaching you when you go in on an adc which should be a quick kill.

In high Elo, builds are far more situational than lower Elo and those players also know when is the right time to engage in on their targets. Those 2 together make it possible to use distortion and still survive for less than a second before returning. This internal cooldown would also be subject to cdr. I would also like to point out that if you had read the entire post all the way through you would have seen that the internal cooldown I proposed starts the instant distortion is cast. it takes about a quarter of a second of travel time when you cast distortion at its max range, by the time you use your other abilities the internal cooldown would have expired and you would be able use distortion again to return to the original casting location. The numbers I suggested are just that, suggestions. I myself cant go into the game, implement this, and test it internally. Neither can you. Try formulating a real response that prevents number and situations or scenarios rather than vomit out a useless uninformed opinion. It is also sad you are not even willing to post using your main which makes anything you post even less credible than it already is. Especially when people from other servers can post on CB and not just people on the NA server.