League of Legends (LoL) Question: Can LeBlanc top if u build correctly and take right runes?

I personally found decent success with LeBlanc on mid, support and ADC role. I have never played her top and if you ask me, it probably wouldn't be very strong. LeBlanc excels at burst damage, which is effective as long as you don't play against high sustain or high defense champions. Sadly enough most of toplaners either have very high sustain ( Pit Grit, Soul Eater, Goes Where He Pleases or a very popular Blade of the Ruined King rush) or they have shields, blocks and other forms of denying your burst damage ( Haymaker, Adaptive Defenses, Riposte, Defiant Dance...). That is something which you almost never run into if you play LeBlanc on mid lane or bot lane, making LeBlanc much better pick on those lanes. Also LeBlanc typically tends to get early kills, roam to other lanes and snowball her lead. That just isn't very realistic on top lane as you probably won't even kill your enemy and if you do, you will find your roaming options much more limited because top lane is very far away from bot lane, which is usually the place that LeBlanc wants to roam to, so you can basically only roam to mid lane. Also LeBlanc has relatively bad clear. She is forced to spend a lot of mana on minion waves or pick runes that limit her damage ( Minion Dematerializer) which feels bad on top lane as freezing is super popular tactic there. So yeah, there is a reason why burst mages basically don't exist on top lane and I do not have any hopes for top LeBlanc. Even as an off-meta pick, I feel like she would be extremely underwhelming :/

That said I do believe (laugh it or not) that AD LeBlanc might not be all that bad there. I already am a big AD LeBlanc player on bot lane and found a solid success there even though you basically build stats that none of your abilities scale from. It is a great way to slow down your game plan, farm without having to spend much mana and not setting your defensive ability ( Distortion) on cooldown while farming. You could poke out melee champions similarly to how Vayne does it and use your abilities as "emergency safe spells" which you'd use to escape ganks instead of using them to damage your enemy. Runes would probably require some testing but I'd say Hail of Blades into melee scaling champions like Nasus to punish their farming, Fleet Footwork into long range poke matchups and Lethal Tempo against everyone else can be really nice start. As for items, you can very much go something like Kraken Slayer > Berserker's Greaves > Runaan's Hurricane > Infinity Edge > ANY OTHER CRIT OR ATTACK SPEED ITEMS DEPENDING ON THE GAME SITUATION. And as for starting items, I can totally see Cull being picked and perhaps even combined with Cut Down to create high HP gap between you and your lane opponent while maximizing your damage. Or you can of course very much just start with Doran's Blade as it is more safe and reliable choice. Farm minions, use your Distortion and Ethereal Chains to survive engages and ganks, scale into a late game and become a solid DPS carry for your team with basically 4 dashes, 1 invisibility and 1 root. So yeah, AD LeBlanc would be super experimental pick but I do believe that with enough skill, picking up a 50% winrate and higher is very possible with her.

TLDR: I do not think AP LeBlanc top would be any good, however I do have high hopes for AD LeBlanc. Would require some polishing and testing different runes/items as well as discovering the playstyle behind it, but I think it is very possible to make it work.

Have a ravishing day and good luck with LeBlanc <3

EDIT: Here is the rune page that I would start with. I recommend you to edit it constantly everytime you think of something new about AD LeBlanc top or based on enemy teamcomp :)

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It turned out to be a rather interesting and informative article, thanks!