Champion Spotlight
Recommended Items
Tips
- Playing As
LeBlanc
- Distortion allows you to be aggressive with your other spells while being able to return to safety.
- Using Distortion can help your positioning to land Ethereal Chains.
- You can chain Sigil of Malice and Ethereal Chains to prevent characters with blink abilities from escaping for up to 4 seconds.
- Playing Against LeBlanc
- Stunning or silencing LeBlanc will prevent her from activating the return part of Distortion.
- Stay behind minions to make Ethereal Chains difficult to land and force her to use Distortion in a suboptimal manner.
Tricks
LeBlanc is a demanding champion when it comes to managing her abilities. Although a little practice will help the player figure out the main combos, this section should helpful regardless to skip those parts.
- LeBlanc is a prime candidate for a solo lane due to her high burst damage and her need to level up quickly. Distortion also provides her with a deceptively large radius of threat.
- When using LeBlanc, you should not throw all of the abilities at once. Be sneaky and space out your combo.
- Distortion can be used as an escape mechanism as it can pass through thin walls.
- Distortion can also be used to "juke" enemies by dashing to one location, running, then using the second activation to return to the casting point.
- Never be afraid to use Mimic to double- Distortion out of a gank. Combined with Flash, this should make any ganks on LeBlanc difficult.
- Distortion/ Mimic Distortion allows LeBlanc to close the gap between her and her target.
- Distortion/ Mimic Distortion if timed right, can be used to follow opponents through walls since it counts as a dash.
- If you have Distortion/ Mimic Distortion and Flash up, try to use Distortion/ Mimic Distortion and then Flash to travel a longer distance.
- Distortion can also be used as a ganking tool as it can dash through enemies and has a second activation, that allows you to blink back.
- The second damaging part of Ethereal Chains can also trigger Sigil of Malice.
- If you are being chased, throw Ethereal Chains on the pursuer for the slow and potential snare, giving you a better chance of escaping.
- If you have used Ethereal Chains while you're chasing a single enemy, use Mimic Ethereal Chains to snare the enemy again and to insure the kill.
- When you end up in a team fight, you should consider utility of your spells over damage, and consider using Ethereal Chains as your Mimic spell for a double slow and longer snare.
- Do not use Mimic on a champion that has a spell shield. Use a basic ability to break the shield first, or wait for another way to break the shield.
- Distortion then Shatter Orb is the most reliable source of damage, since the duration of Distortion is long enough for you to escape without putting yourself out of position. But Shatter Orb then Ethereal Chains is the safest source of damage, which gives you 4 seconds of powerful disables to kite enemy champions.
- Ethereal Chains - Mimic Ethereal Chains - Ethereal Chains and juke in between is a must-known combo. This is also why you have to get high cooldown reductions.
- Practice to kill 5 raptors with a single Distortion Shatter Orb combo. It's basically a free canon minion.
- Learning to hide your chains is crucial. It is a really strong tool to catch/ambush a target. Use Ethereal Chains then Distortion immediately to cancel its animation.
- Mimic Shatter Orb is your strongest tool to deal with champions who has massive, point-and-click single target burst like Syndra, Veigar, and Malzahar. Dash in, Mimic Shatter Orb, juke, then continue your combo. By doing this, you put a huge pressure on them and force them to delay their retaliation. Even if you can't take them down, you can still out-trade them really hard.
- While the Mimic is still alive, do not use any damaging abilities. Practice to know when to retreat.
- While the
- Distortion - Mimic Distortion - Shatter Orb is a strong tool to clear a big wave of minions, or to apply multiple marks during a teamfight.
- Only go in when the enemies' hard crowd controls are on cooldown. This way to stay for your passive.
- You have to wait until the Shatter Orb has bounced to the right target before retreating. If you retreat immediately after throwing your Shatter Orb, it may not bounce to other targets.
- Use Ethereal Chains then Distortion toward another direction to juke. Follow with Mimic Ethereal Chains for the biggest damage output.
- Rune Usage
- LeBlanc utilises a really fast combo with multiple abilities, therefore the best keystone you should take 100% of the time is Electrocute.
- Electrocute procs for extra burst damage that deals reasonable damage throughout the game.
- LeBlanc is strongest early to mid, but falls off late game if she cannot snowball her lead. Using Electrocute will give you extra pressure in your lane to get your snowball rolling.
- Sudden Impact works with your Distortion since it is a dash and blink. This rune will give you bonus temporary Magic pen, especially against squishy targets it'll be more benefitial.
- Item Usage
- Cooldown reduction is the strongest stat on LeBlanc. You must reach the cap as soon as possible using Flat Cooldown reduction runes or itemization.
- Doran's Ring is a great starting item on LeBlanc, as she can make effective use of all the stats it gives. The extra health especially is very useful during trades due to her mid range, and the on-kill passive has fantastic synergy with the bounces on Shatter Orb.
- The Dark Seal is dangerous to start with, but it can pay off if you're able to keep yourself alive or if your teammates can protect you well. However, you should never start with this item if you aren't completely confident that you can win lane without dying once.
- Luden's Echo is a good item to rush on LeBlanc, offering mana sustain, ability power, and cooldown reduction. The passive portion of the item also helps out with burst or waveclear.
- Banshee's Veil and Zhonya's Hourglass are good against magic and physical damage, respectively.
- Both Ionian Boots of Lucidity and Sorcerer's Shoes are good boots for LeBlanc.
- Mejai's Soulstealer can be especially powerful, particularly if mid-laning. Be warned that due to her already snowbally nature, getting killed while using this item may cause her to fall even earlier in the game than necessary.
- As an ability power carry, Rabadon's Deathcap is an essential buy.
- Hextech Protobelt-01 boosts LeBlanc's mobility even more, while offering more cooldown reduction and health.
- Many enemies have magic resistance that increases as they level up. Buying a Void Staff as a last or second-to-last item will help LeBlanc's spells deal significantly more damage.
- Countering
- Be wary of LeBlanc's damage potentials when she has you marked.
- Presuring her into using both her Distortion can set her up for a gank by a teammate from which she can't escape, as they both have long cooldown.
- LeBlanc is extremely squishy so she is very vulnerable to hard crowd controls, such as stuns and suppression, and focus. Taking her out of the fight early prevents her from being able to burst down a carry.
- Avoid minion waves that was marked while you've been marked as well. Shatter Orb or Mimic Shatter Orb will bounces on you and deals massive damage.
- Both Ethereal Chains and Mimic Ethereal Chains are strong disengage tools. Create distance to avoid being rooted and seek to engage afterwards.
- All of LeBlanc's spells deal magic damage, therefore any form of magic resistance will mitigate her damage significantly.
- Banshee's Veil offers a spell shield to negate 1 spell from LeBlanc. Its magic resistance and health will help tremendously in surviving LeBlanc's burst, while possibly blocking LeBlanc's initiation. As such, it is a recommended buy if going against LeBlanc.
- After LeBlanc uses her Distortion and Mimic Distortion, she is at her most vulnerable as her damage and mobility are both dependent upon it.
- Do not be tricked by her mimics, try to save up abilities like ultimates during this situation, as the mimics can be used as a shield against certain attacks and abilities, making them get wasted.
- A common technique against LeBlanc is to play a champion that can easily guess where the Real LeBlanc and the clone of herself is. Fiora & Zed are considered the best choices, because Grand Challenge & Death Mark can let them easily guess which is the Real LeBlanc and which is the clone of herself before using Mimic.
- A common technique against
- Watch out when you see LeBlanc missing from her lane. Her gank potential is very good and may result in you dying in a 2v3 or 2v4 fight.
- Remember warn your teammates, when LeBlanc leaves your lane.
- Remember warn your teammates, when
- LeBlanc is surprisingly dangerous, especially when assassinating low-health champions due to Sigil of Malice, so beware.
- Lissandra is probably the best counter to LeBlanc for two reasons. First Lissandra can outpoke LeBlanc in the laning phase thanks to Ice Shard and second, Lissandra can use Frozen Tomb to negate LeBlanc's burst.
- LeBlanc is notorious for being able to burst down AP mid laners. However, because she specializes on bursting one target, having your jungler gank during her dives will cripple her aggression significantly and cause her to fall off prematurely.
- Warding brushes will make it harder for LeBlanc to juke using Distortion.
