While some players wouldn't consider LeBlanc to be very strong as a champion, Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom thinks that you need to think outside of the box to get the most out of this mage.

In spite of all of these perceived strengths, however, LeBlanc is still considered to be quite weak by much of the League of Legends community. In reality, the problem with LeBlanc is that, when it comes to team fights, her presence is quite diminished. Other caster champions, like Annie or Anivia, have amazing utility spells that can swing the entire tide of the battle, but LeBlanc has no such potential (unless she gets so strong that she can wipe out the entire team with a Distortion AoE followed by a Mimic'd Distortion). I like to compare LeBlanc to Annie in the sense that both champions are absolutely reliant upon the glass cannon ideology of "I kill you before you kill me," but where LeBlanc has a lot of single-target utility, Annie has access to the greatest disable of them all: a stun. For Annie, being able to stun an entire team with Tibbers or a Cone of Fire means that she can throw out the rest of her spell combo without worry of being attacked, while I've noticed that when I engage with LeBlanc in a fight, I must wipe out the opposing team (or severely cripple them) within the time it takes for them to realize I'm there, or I'm pretty much toast.

Overall, however, LeBlanc can still function quite well as the spell-carry champion of her team as long as she learns to play a little differently than most mages. Where other casters rely on their team to protect them while they throw out enormous amounts of single-target and area-of-effect damage, LeBlanc relies on her team to distract the enemies while she sneaks in from behind to wreak havoc on the squishier champions. LeBlanc's real advantage over all of the other casters lies in her extreme mobility. The fact that LeBlanc can hop over tree lines with Distortion means that she should be able to pick off the backline champions in every fight: she just needs a team up front to get the enemy's attention off of her.

My advice for this champion would be to check her out during this week's free champion phase to see if you can get used to the idea of an independently mobile mage, as opposed to one who likes to hide behind her teammates. If you're really interested in purchasing LeBlanc, think of her as supplementing your team with a strong assassin character, similar to Kassadin, Poppy or Evelynn, and try to pair LeBlanc up with strong, distracting frontline champions, like Morgana, Gragas, Garen, Alistar Amumu or Singed. Remember, LeBlanc is called "the Deceiver" for a reason!