I'll be the first to say that I was one of the players that was cursing Riot's name for changing one of my favorite champs, LeBlanc. I for one, was in the camp that the old LeBlanc was best LeBlanc, and any possible changes would make her horrible. Now that I've played around with her more, I'm ready to eat my words. New LeBlanc is incredibly fun, and legitimately OP. I feel bad for saying this because I don't want people to know how good she is, but LeBlanc currently has the highest mid win rate of 54.41% in Korea with a 59.37% ban rate. While she no longer has the ability to 100-0 in less than a second, she deals more damage upfront, just with a delay. I'd argue that patient LeBlanc players will find even more success and deal more damage than before, as the new LeBlanc takes a little more tact in the positioning and timing departments. First, let's examine the big changes to LeBlanc.

Passive

The biggest change to LeBlanc's kit is her reworked passive. LeBlanc's old passive, Mirror Image, is out. Instead the passive on old LeBlanc's Q, Sigil of Malice, is now her passive for every skill she hits. As OP as having a free Sigil of Malice proc on every skill you hit is, it comes with a caveat. Instead of automatically having the sigil mark opponents on hit, after successfully damaging someone with a skill, Sigil of Malice takes 1.5 seconds to fully charge. This gives opponents plenty of time to back up to avoid damage, or all in before the sigil can be popped. If you want to stay in range to deal damage, it's important to note that 1.5 seconds is more than enough time to get blown up, considering how squishy LeBlanc is. More importantly, this means the average LeBlanc player's play style is going to have to become drastically different. If you were to chain your spells in rapid succession the way old LeBlanc was played, you would be missing out on a large portion of your damage from the Sigil.

LeBlanc's primary source of poke in lane used to be the good old fashioned Q + W + auto attack combo for an instant Thunderlord's decree, and a sizeable chunk of health. However, because of the reworked passive, this combo doesn't work quite as well. LeBlanc's W, Distortion, also now comes with a 0.25 delay on when you can Distortion back to the original cast location. LeBlanc's new Q, Shatter Orb, bounces from the original target to new targets if all are marked with Sigil of Malice. Because all of LeBlanc's skills apply the Sigil passive, LeBlanc can apply multiple Sigils at once with her Distortion. If you wait for the enemy to walk near their creep wave, W the wave, Distortion back, Q the wave and watch it bounce to the enemy champion. This gives you safe, guaranteed poke as well as amazing wave clear.

Traditionally, LeBlanc has struggled with having effective wave clear. Getting pushed under tower was the worst, considering how slow her auto attack animation is and how little damage her auto attack does. Farming, and coming back from behind are easier than ever for LeBlanc. Because old LeBlanc was easy to deny CS, she had to rely heavily on getting a kill or two to get rolling. Now, it's not uncommon to see LeBlancs consistently having the highest CS in games.

Look at that beautiful wave clear

Ethereal Chains

LeBlanc's E, Ethereal Chains, is the same. However, while the initial tether no longer slows the enemy. Ethereal Chains does get a new interaction. The load time of Sigil of Malice and the tether duration to root an opponent on Ethereal Chains is the same. So, if you land only Ethereal Chains and manage to get the root, the second half of Ethereal Chains will proc Sigil for massive amounts of magic damage. The damage from Chain alone is enough to pop squishies or at least make them have to withdraw from fights.

Mimic

Perhaps the biggest change to LeBlanc's kit is her updated ult, Mimic. When casting Mimic, Mimic no longer casts a duplicate copy of her most recently cast skill. Instead, you get to select which skill you'd like to duplicate before casting. This means you no longer have to plan what skill to double up on. They scaled back the AP ratios on all of the Mimic version of LeBlanc's skills, so the damage feels not quite as strong as before, but all the extra Sigil procs, and the fact that you can select whatever skill to duplicate, compensates.

Mimic now also comes with an added ability. When selecting what spell to copy, if you chose Mimic, LeBlanc will create a clone that will move and use a skill on the nearest enemy champion. This clone does no damage but can get people to pop summoner spells, or make them back off minion wave. This ability has a relatively short cool down and a global range. Feel free to play mind games with your opponents all game.

Masteries

These are the current masteries I take on LeBlanc. It's a pretty standard bust mage mastery page. Two of the places that I experiment with are Assassin/Secret Stash and Vampirism/Natural Talent. Secret Stash and Vampirism are much better for laning, and will help your survivability. However, if you feel like you have a great match up or you feel like you're going to try to make your lane a kill lane, take Natural Talent and Assassin for the extra damage in trades.

Runes

For runes, if you feel incredibly comfortable in lane, I like to take magic pen reds, scaling health yellows, a mix of scaling CDR and scaling AP blues, and AP quints. This is set up would be for maximum damage, and if you feel like you'll take the role of lane bully. If you're in a lane against an AD assassin like Talon, Zed, or Yasuo, instead of scaling health, I like to take flat armor yellows. If you're in a lane where you want early MR, replace your CDR and scaling AP runes for flat MR blues.

The skill order I take is W -> Q -> E -> R and then prioritize R>W>Q>E. This is the most common skill order that I see LeBlanc players take. Distortion is great poke level 1, and gives you the ability to get out of a sticky situation if you get level 1 cheesed. However, now that a lot of her damage and focus has been shifted away from her Q, a new skill order that I've seen floating around is to prioritize leveling up E over Q. While not many people are taking Ethereal Chains over Shatter Orb, the ones that do are seeing a 69% win rate with it. It's worth playing around with to see if you have a preference.

Item Build

For builds, I personally rush Morellonomicon. The 20% CDR early is crucial on LeBlanc. Next I generally like to build tier 1 boots, then resistances in the form of MR from Abyssal Scepter, or Zhonya's Hourglass if I'm facing AD. After my second damage item is done, I'll finish Sorcerer's Shoes. Next, I'll build Luden's Echo into Deathcap for a huge power spike in raw AP and then I'll finish with a Void Staff. I try to avoid building both Zhonya's and Abyssal if I've rushed Morellonomicon. If you have CDR runes like I do, building both items will overcap you on CDR which is wasted real estate in your inventory.

Alternately, LeBlanc's new load time on her passive puts her in the line of damage longer than her previous iteration. Items that give health as well as raw AP such as Rod of Ages, and Hextech Protobelt are great if you feel like you're spending too much time in harm's way and need beef up to pull off kills.

My typical full build for maximum damage output

General Tips

LeBlanc has an insane amount of mobility. Something I never see enough of is LeBlanc players baiting skill shots and then Distortioning out of the way to set up a combo. For instance, when laning against Lux or Ahri, if they don't hit their skill shot CC, they are almost assuredly are going to lose a trade to LeBlanc. Just walk up to them. You know that when you get close enough, they're going to try to CC you, so just bait it out, Distortion around it, and then obliterate them.

Also, now that you have more flexibility with what spell you choose to copy, you can double chain on command. In small skirmishes, assassins normally want to focus on one target carry and one target carry only. But LeBlanc can stun two simultaneously if the conditions are right. Removing a carry and the peel from the game for even a second can be back breaking for a team.

Look for roams. With the new LeBlanc's wave clear, it is comically easy to push your opponent under tower. Push up, leave, and make plays in other lanes. If you ward well, you can even mess with the enemy jungler. Shutting down the enemy jungler is going to be crucial going into Season 7 because of how much gold and experience jungle camps currently give. This pattern of play will lead to you snowballing and closing out games fast.

LeBlanc can now split push. That's right, you heard me. LeBlanc's new wave clear makes her a split pushing monster. You have amazing 1 v 1 potential, are incredibly slippery, and push with the best of them now. Try it in your next game, seriously.

Lastly, use your global mimic as often as possible. Use it to get people to burn their cool downs or summoners. You can also do it to lull people into a false sense of security. Send your clone bot lane so that they think you're elsewhere, and then Distortion in like you own the lane. Going forward into season 7, I think a player's ability to effectively use this skill will separate the ok LeBlancs from the S+ LeBlancs.

Things Not to Do

I know this goes against previous LeBlanc muscle memory you may have, but don't mash all your abilities at once. If you do, you miss out on a ton of damage that you get from Sigil of Malice. Don't forget that it takes 1.5 seconds to charge before you get to hit for extra magic damage.

Secondly, you can no longer dive into the middle of team fights with Distortion. I mean, you can, but if you do, chances are you'll get blown up. There's now a 0.25 second delay on when you can Distortion back so pick your dash destinations more carefully.

Lastly, don't be your team's engage. Be opportunistic. The scariest LeBlancs are the LeBlancs that you don't know are there. Try to look for flanks and look for gaps or openings where you can pick off carries. Even though you have the kit to dash around, you're still dead to hard CC, and incredibly squishy.

LeBlanc has been a favorite champion of mine for quite some time now. At first, I was really sad to see her insane upfront 100-0 potential gone, but I really think that her new version is equally fun. Her burst damage is still there but you now have to be more tactical. You can't instakill people before giving the enemy a chance to react, but in return we get amazing wave clear, and even more tools to mind game people. New LeBlanc takes a lot of practice, but she is truly worth mastering.

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